The Silver Screen column discussion

[Blu Ian]

Wicked sick.

[Robert Siegel]

Originally Posted by MoulinBlu

Great job Robert. I wish more movie critics showed a similar enthusiasm for the industry and their trade, instead of the normal unenlightened and uninformative, cynicism and derision. Your style reminds me of Leonard Maltin.

Always a pleasure.

This BD just jumped to the top of my radar. Thanks!

Thanks for the kind comment. Wow, how thoughtful. I went into this wanting to do a style that was different, and every line of excitement that illuminates from my writing is genuine, I want people to feel like they are going to the movie in the year that it was made, while still providing a good history.

I had a best friend of 24 years that was a projectionist during the 50's through the 80's (when they started firing all of them) and he truly cared for his craft. I never got tired of the hours of stories he would tell me about the Minneapolis premieres of Cinerama, How the West was Won, The Sound of Music, Ben Hur, ect. He was projectionist at those very showings. I wish he were still with us to interview for the column and give some input to the releases of these classics. He died last year in the parking lot of the E.R....he never made it inside. But I learned so much from him and it adds to my writing so he's still around in that way!

[kopkiwi]

WOW. What a fantastic write up. Absolutely loved reading that.

Took me back to being a kid again in the early 90's. Still remember the excitement I felt first seeing that goat leg landing on the roof of the car.

[Prox]

I had never read a Silver Screen article before today. This morning, I noticed "The Making of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park" on the front page and finally decided to bite. I must say, I was simply blown away by the article. The depth was great and the pictures were unbelievable. Thank you for taking the time to write this!

[Robert Siegel]

Kopkiwi, thanks, that is exactly my intent with the columns, to bring people back to the times these films were released so I am so glad to hear it affected you that way and very glad you enjoyed it:-)

Prox, I am glad you enjoyed it, at the end of the column is a link to all of my older columns you might enjoy including The Ten Commandments, Star Wars, Close Encounters and many others. Welcome aboard "The Silver Screen."

[odvan]

I discovered this column some time ago and was struck by the depth and details, but like somebody has already mentioned, never read it fully.

Jurassic Park should change this!

You know the articles are huge, they are too long to read it at once. It would be really useful have only text with picture version people can convert and send on ipad/kindle for reading offline. Existing converters doesn't work great, because they cut pictures, so I forced manually create pdf for myself.

Anyway, thanks a lot for this work!

[benbess]

Great article on Demetrius!! Many thanks!

[rondanto]

YES,FANTASTIC AND INFORMATIVE ARTICLE. i GET NERVOUS WHEN I HEAR
BEST SURVIVING ELEMENTS BECAUSE I ENVISION A DISASTROUS BLU RAY A LA "GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD." THANKS AGAIN FOR A WONDERFUL ARTICLE ROBERT

[bluskies]

reemetrius...

Robert, you continue to stun me with each article. Fantastic work.

[JaseW]

Super job,Robert. The writing is fantastic and what sticks out is your passion for cinema. Its infectious!
Really enjoyed all the articles so far and would love to hear more of those stories told to you by your best friend back in the day. Im sure they would make for fascinating and insightful reading.
Thank you so much for some damn fine writing,Robert.

[Dubstar]

where's the link to the 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' thread?

[WileyWyler]

Nice little article on Chinatown. But you left out one major player, and one of the people who had one of the largest impacts on the film. Someone who'd worked on the film with the writer, and had been hired and laid out a lot of the film before Polanski had even been hired.

Production Designer Richard Sylbert. Nicholson, Evans, the cinematographers, and sometimes Polanski lavish praise on Sylbert's contributions to the film--not just for his precise design work, but for his contributions to the story and the telling of it. Major scenes had been storyboarded by Sylbert before Polanski was hired that are presented in the film precisely as Sylbert had intended. Check out the terrific book "By Design: Interviews with Production Designers" by Vincent Lobrutto, or Sylbert's unfinished autiobiography (he passed away prior to completing it), "Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist" by Richard Sylbert, which his friend's and family completed. Nicholson, in particular, points to Sylbert as having an equal thumbprint on the film with the writer and director, if not more so--as most of the subtext in the film is told through the production design of the film.

[Robert Siegel]

Thanks to Benbess, Rondanto and JaseW, Odvan, Bluskies, Jase W. for all of the kind comments. I am so glad you are enjoying my writing. Dubstar, I am updating the list of links today, so all of them should be there. As for several comments about making it easier to convert the column to ipad, ect, since I don't own any of these portable devices, how would the file need to be in order for you to view it properly?

[Robert Siegel]

I am taking requests.....What film would you like to see covered in the column that has already been released on Blu-ray. Please pick from the following (these are more-likely candidates). If you have other suggestions, they are welcome. These are listed in order of when they were released on Blu-ray (earliest to latest)

Superman 2
Battle of the Bulge
Jailhouse Rock
Viva Las Vegas
The Wild Bunch
2001 A Space Odyssey
That's Entertainment 1-3
The Final Countdown
Becket
The Pink Panther
Raging Bull
Disney's Pinncchio
The Robe
An American in Paris
Woodstock
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Towering Inferno
Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs
Rocky 1 and 2
North by Northwest
Logan's Run
Quo Vadis
The Green Berets
The Godfather 1-3
Bonnie and Clyde
Gone with the Wind
Doctor Zhivago
Spartacus
Clash of the Titans
A Star is Born
Forbidden Planet
Tommy
Carrie
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Charade
Treasure of the Siera Madre
Apocalypse Now
Alien/Aliens
The Sound of Music
White Christmas
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Fantasia
Alice in Wonderland
An Affair to Remember
Sweet Smell of Success
Twelve O'Clock High
Some like it Hot
Lolita
The Apartment
The Exorcist
The Empire Strikes Back
Network
Wings
The Buccaneer

[stobbart]

Great read as always. The part on Faye Dunaway has the first paragraph repeated.

[The Krouser]

Robert, concerning your request list . . . there's no need to choose! Do them all!! I mean, what else do you have to do?! LOL Myself, like all of the others, really do appreciate all of the hard work you pour into every article! Keep em' coming!!

[Robert Siegel]

Originally Posted by The Krouser

Robert, concerning your request list . . . there's no need to choose! Do them all!! I mean, what else do you have to do?! LOL Myself, like all of the others, really do appreciate all of the hard work you pour into every article! Keep em' coming!!

Thanks Krouser, I just thought I would get a sense of things. The titles I listed are all titles I will hopefully eventually cover, of course I do new releases as a priority. And with so many classics now, it's getting harder to find those in-between spots to go back to previous releases.

[Robert Siegel]

Originally Posted by stobbart

Great read as always. The part on Faye Dunaway has the first paragraph repeated.

Thanks Stobbart, it's been corrected. Glad you enjoyed the piece.

[Paulo Elias]

Hi, Robert,

I really appreciate your gigantic efforts to evoke and describe with such clarity the films of the past in your column. Congratulations! Well done.

I have the same sentiment about movies that I saw as a kid, but which never deserved home video editions on a par with their intrinsic merits, whatever they are.

In this regard, I was looking forward so much to get Rock-A-Bye-Baby and most importantly Who's Minding The Store on Blu-Ray, two of the best Tashlin-Lewis movies of that period.

But I was put off by Olive when I got to know that those discs had no subtitles whatsoever. And subtitles, mind you, are important to us foreigners who need to understand clearly what the actors are saying.

Another technical aspect that unimpressed me is that of the apparent lack of use of the VistaVision negative for Rock-A-Bye-Baby. This was included, if memory serves, in the list of films that were restored by Paramount and preserved in their vaults.

In my opinion Olive should have made an effort to rescue its picture quality by insisting with Paramount for a transfer that would be best represent the format. In addition, the inclusion of subtitles is common practice in this business, to a point that today we see Blu-Ray discs with an amazing collection of languages in one single edition. Why didn't Olive never bothered to include English is beyond my understanding. Surely, it couldn't be for a reduction in costs, so what is it?

If Olive intends to release these pictures for the local market only, so be it. I regret to say that they lost me as a potential customer. I deleted Rock-A-Bye-Baby from my wish list at Amazon's and I will be deleting the other one pretty soon!

[Pirate King]

Originally Posted by The Krouser

Robert, concerning your request list . . . there's no need to choose! Do them all!! I mean, what else do you have to do?! LOL Myself, like all of the others, really do appreciate all of the hard work you pour into every article! Keep em' coming!!

I agree. Your insight is always informative and entertaining. I can only imagine the hours of work that must be done for you to share each new article with us. I enjoy them all. It was nice to pay tribute to Jerry Lewis who has done so much for so many through MDA. I am also very excited about all the wonderful classic films that will be released on Blu-ray in the near future. Chariots of Fire was officially given a US release today. What an inspirational film! And on the horizon is Jaws, The Grapes of Wrath, Zorba the Greek.... and somewhere out there is Lawrence of Arabia which has been rumored to have a 2012 release date. It is going to be a good year... and you help us all enjoy it even more. Many thanks my friend.