(no subject)
Mar. 8th, 2004 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutMy mini-orgy of Anna May Wong movies is over. I really had originally intended to catch Picadilly, but then I decided I really wanted to see the panel discussion with B. Ruby Rich, Jacqueline Kim, Karen Leong, the irrepressible Nancy Kwan, and Graham Russell Gao Hodges, so I also attended Toll of the Sea Sunday afternoon and stayed afterl. I can't wait until Karen Leong's dissertation is published.
Before that, G. graciously agreed to accompany me to Shanghai Express on Friday night. I have only recently expressed the depths of my movie depravity to him -- Shanghai Express was fun, but it wasn't essential, because it wasn't silent.
I don't know how I got interested in silent movies. And, like many quirky cultural obsessions of mine, I didn't realize that there were so many other people who shared it until I moved to San Francisco. I mean, I harbored my secret love of Anna May Wong for years, and suddenly there's a retrospective? A very popular, hugely-attended one? B. Ruby Rich noted that Wong is a gay cult figure. I didn't know that. Still? Who'd've guessed?
I'm sure I would be similarly shocked if it were possible to have a Theda Bara retrospective (most of her films are lost). Who are all these people in the theatre seats? How do they know about her?
Unlike most of the rest of the audience at Picadilly, I was not entirely happy with Jon Jang's commissioned score. It was OK, but there were points where the music was a little repetitive and didn't add much to the action, and other points where I think the music underplayed the moment. But I'm picky. Or maybe the new Metropolis score from a couple years ago set the bar too high.
I am so lucky to be living in the Bay Area, to be able to see silent movies in a theater like the Castro. When I was in Belgium, I caught Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood at the film museum in Brussels. The museum showed a silent film every week, which was way cool. But the theater was a tiny room that held maybe twenty people at most, plus a piano for the accompanying music. More like a classroom than a movie house. Very cozy, and I am not complaining in the least. Just a very stark contrast to what has become my default silent movie viewing experience. Belgium is what I expected my silent movie fandom to be like -- a small crowd, a small room, an intimate cameraderie. The Castro shows me something that I still haven't quite grasped.
Before that, G. graciously agreed to accompany me to Shanghai Express on Friday night. I have only recently expressed the depths of my movie depravity to him -- Shanghai Express was fun, but it wasn't essential, because it wasn't silent.
I don't know how I got interested in silent movies. And, like many quirky cultural obsessions of mine, I didn't realize that there were so many other people who shared it until I moved to San Francisco. I mean, I harbored my secret love of Anna May Wong for years, and suddenly there's a retrospective? A very popular, hugely-attended one? B. Ruby Rich noted that Wong is a gay cult figure. I didn't know that. Still? Who'd've guessed?
I'm sure I would be similarly shocked if it were possible to have a Theda Bara retrospective (most of her films are lost). Who are all these people in the theatre seats? How do they know about her?
Unlike most of the rest of the audience at Picadilly, I was not entirely happy with Jon Jang's commissioned score. It was OK, but there were points where the music was a little repetitive and didn't add much to the action, and other points where I think the music underplayed the moment. But I'm picky. Or maybe the new Metropolis score from a couple years ago set the bar too high.
I am so lucky to be living in the Bay Area, to be able to see silent movies in a theater like the Castro. When I was in Belgium, I caught Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood at the film museum in Brussels. The museum showed a silent film every week, which was way cool. But the theater was a tiny room that held maybe twenty people at most, plus a piano for the accompanying music. More like a classroom than a movie house. Very cozy, and I am not complaining in the least. Just a very stark contrast to what has become my default silent movie viewing experience. Belgium is what I expected my silent movie fandom to be like -- a small crowd, a small room, an intimate cameraderie. The Castro shows me something that I still haven't quite grasped.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-10 10:29 am (UTC)oh, wait! I think I might have seen the touring version with Neil Brand's score, and not the Jang. well, you may take my word for it- and the Guardian's! they said, "particularly egregious is Neil Brand's heavily processed and utterly anachronistic pseudo-jazz score, a nitwit's idea of noirish filigree that practically screams out, "'Shoot the electric piano player.'" I couldn't have said it better...
no subject
Date: 2004-03-10 11:44 am (UTC)I would love to hear your further comments when you have time.