History of the Movies - 1896: "The Haunted Castle"

HISTORY OF THE MOVIES: The Haunted Castle

1896 by Georges Melies

Your boy GM burst onto the scene a year earlier with his first film, a remake of a Lumiere jawn about a bunch of old nerds playing cards. So stop complaining about all these remakes. It's nothing new.


Pretty soon Melies figured out how to translate what he was already doing on stage into cinema and quickly established his style of wild sets and wacky special effects. 


The Haunted Castle is a three-minute hellride about a dude being chased around a hallway by a bunch of ghosts and demons that a sorcerer is fucking brewing in a big pot (I think?).

Eventually they win and dude jumps out the freakin window. 


It's got giant flying bats turning into vampires, people turning into skeletons, witches appearing and disappearing, and ghosts ALL OVER THE PLACE.


This guy made over 500 movies in his lifetime and is so influential that Scorsese (your favorite) just made a movie about him all the way up here in the 21st century. 


Melies was The Master.

History of the Movies - 1895: "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory"

HISTORY OF THE MOVIES: Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory
1895 by Louis Lumiere 

1895 was the year the Lumieres had their first public screenings of their short films. This is basically the Beginning of the Movies.

Alright, so the Lumiere brothers….. These dudes were viewed as a couple of evil geniuses in their day. With the invention of the Cinematographe and the innovation of perforating their film to run more smoothly through the machine (a combination camera/projector), they revolutionized cinema as we know it. But they weren’t interested in sharing their inventions with other filmmakers of the time, so people also viewed them as a couple of brilliant assholes. 

They also thought cinema was a passing fad and didn’t want to contribute to the perpetuation of something as trivial as their incredible invention that we still use today.

The first film they shot was of workers leaving their factory at the end of the day and runs 46 seconds. 

It is as boring as it sounds. 

It is boring as hell.

 
And the fact that these two dopes wouldn’t let Georges Méliès near their precious machines only inspired him to get even more inventive than he already was. So if they contributed nothing else to film history (but, c'mon, they did) other than pushing that guy into the realms of psychotic genius that he eventually reached with his films, they’ve done their job and earned their place.

History of the Movies - The 1880s: Eastman and Hijinks

HISTORY OF THE MOVIES: Eastman and Hijinks
The 1880s in America

The 1880s were a time when every joker thought he was gonna be the first to do everything, and the ones with enough money could just pummel their competitors into oblivion. 

Between paper rolls, magic lanterns, and early sound experiments (they sound really cool), all kinds of fools were trying to be the KING OF CINEMA.

So Eastman comes along and just straight up patents everything in sight (also known as The Ol' Thomas Edison Trick).

After creating the Eastman Kodak camera and essentially inventing modern photographic technology, he put his money into colleges, dentistry, and some pretty evil eugenics programs. 

He eventually shot himself in the heart (also know as The Ol' Elliot Smith Knock-off Trick.)

While all this Eastman bullshit was going on, Edison was secretly working on the kinetoscope, the zoetrope was being prepared for public exhibition, and the Lumiere brothers were lurking in the background, about to just absolutely crush everyone else in their path by inventing the cinematographe.

The 1890s were gonna change everything and Cinema was about to officially be born.

History of the Movies - 1878: "The Horse in Motion"

HISTORY OF THE MOVIES: The Horse in Motion
1878 by Eadweard Muybridge

Uh oh! Curveball!

Not only do we jump back a full ten years on our trip through the History of This Stuff, the truth is this goddammer ain't even a movie!

It's a series of still photographs by famed photographer/murderer Muybridge (for real, he murdered a guy). 

The story is that the owner of this horse wanted to know if our man could use his big fancy camera to prove once and for all that a horse, while at a full gallop, would at some point have all four hooves off the ground. 

Boom. They do.

It took 24 frames to capture and repeat the cycle, which is also (possibly apocryphally) why 24fps is the standard to this day.

It's also true that 24fps is simply the smoothest photographic representation of what our eyes can process naturally in real life, but still, cool story, right?

Weird, too, that while 24 was the best then just as now, soon 16 became more of the industry standard but, again, if you can project it correctly, anything can look good (except those weird awful Hobbit frame-rate train wrecks P. Jackson was tryna shove down our throats a few years back. I've forgiven but not forgotten.)

Tomorrow the timeline gets back on track and we move Forward! through the history of Cinema.

Get your movie-watchin caps on.

History of the Movies - 1888: "The Roundhay Garden Scene"

HISTORY OF THE MOVIES: The Roundhay Garden Scene
1888 by Louis Le Prince.

The oldest movie in existence, this joint is basically a dude walking in a circle, in a garden, for two seconds. Not even "basically", really, it just is that.

This movie is so old it was shot before "24fps" was even a thing. [rimshot]

This movie is so old he had to build his own camera just to shoot it. [rimshot]

This movie is so old it's literally the oldest movie in the world. [rimshot]

What's crazy to me is that he built this camera, set it up, and didn't even want to have these people jump up and down or play with their dumb dog or push each other over? No? Just walk in a circle? I mean, that's cool and all. Not how I would've done it but whatthefuckyagonnado right?

Oh and that lady died a week later.

Summer Movie Preview - July 2015 (Part 1)

SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW – July 2015

Buncha stuff coming out this month. Let’s get down to it…

Faith of Our Fathers

directed by Carey Scott

Theater owners have no idea what to do with this pile of garbage. Odds are you’ll never see it cause no one books it cause no one has any faith in it. If anyone remembers this movie exists a month from now I’ll eat my shoe.

Magic Mike XXL

directed by Gregory Jacobs

Notice that doesn’t say “directed by Steven Soderbergh.” It also doesn’t have Betsy Brandt or Matthew McConaughey. What’s the point of this? How frustrating must it be to have made the first Magic Mike, a movie most people think is some dumb garbage stripper movie but is actually a great piece of filmmaking, then have someone else put out what looks like some dumb garbage stripper movie as a sequel? Too bad Soderbergh is some enlightened genius and probably doesn’t give a shit what people do with this property. I’ll probably see it anyway.

Terminator Genisys

directed by Alan Taylor

Skynet goes all Back to the Future Part II with the great director of LOST, The Sopranos, and Boardwalk Empire. He also directed Thor: The Dark World, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, so we’ll see how well this thing turns out. Prediction: really really fun, and really reallllly terrible.

Amy

directed by Asif Kapadia

That Amy Winehouse documentary. I don’t know anything about her (I liked Frank and “Tears Dry On Their Own” just fine, but whatever). But I’ll watch any documentary about a musician, when it comes down to it. Or maybe I’ll continue on my quest to never watch any of this director’s movies. I’ll let you know.

Minions

direceted by Pierre Coffin

I didn’t see the other Despicable Me joints because they looked absolutely hideous and obnoxious. This looks worse than those. Also I don’t watch movies made for eight-year-olds. Good luck to you.

Self/Less

directed by Tarsem

Go see whatever Tarsem gives you. Every time. I honestly don’t know anything about this one because I’ve been avoiding seeing anything about it before it comes out. The Fall trailer already told me too much and as a result I went in looking for something that wasn’t quite there. Visually, there really aren’t many other directors out there doing anything close to what Tarsem can do. Just go see it.

Ant-Man

directed by Peyton Reed

Looks like another Guardians-style jam, which was one of the only two good Marvel movies. Hopefully this will be the third. Also good to see Evangeline Lilly and Corey Stoll getting their hands on some of that Marvel money.

Trainwreck

directed by Judd Apatow

Honestly, fuck Apatow. But this is that Amy Schumer thing. She’s great. Go see it.

Smosh

directed by Alex Winter

Bill from Bill & Ted directed this. It stars some fucking youtube dorks. I don’t know.

Paper Towns

directed by Jake Schreier

YA horseshit. No.

Pixels

directed by Chris Columbus

Did you know Chris Columbus is still directing feature films? He is. This looks like Men in Black crossed with just random 80s nostalgia. Are we still pretending shitty arcade games are exciting? They are not exciting. They are fucking stupid. Know what I just watched for the first time ever? All these Aki Kaurismaki movies. You know that Proletariat Trilogy you’ve always heard about that everybody says is so great? It’s really great. These movies made me so happy. I don’t know much (hardly anything? nothing?) about Finnish Cinema but now I want to see more. The feeling of these films is incredible. I want to live my life that way. In the cold, going out to a brightly lit supermarket, living a weird solitary existence. I wish he was still making these things. Wait, no, fuck, there’s this movie coming out where Pac-Man attacks San Francisco.

Southpaw

directed by Antoine Fuqua

Remember when this was the sequel to 8 Mile? Hollywood is fucking insane.

Vacation

directed by John Francis Daley

SAM FUCKING WEIR directed this! I bet it’s gonna be terrible but, backtracking a little on what I said above about nostalgia, I will go see this because I want to give this guy money. Too bad I see all my movies for free.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Another Tom Cruise/Chris McQuarrie joint. Didn’t you see Going Clear?

Jurassic World

JURASSIC WORLD
Colin Trevorrow, 2015

Synopsis:
Dinosaurs are boring. Let's make new dinosaurs. Can't go wrong, right?

Review:
Wrong. It turns bad immediately. Obviously. Ugh.

JURASSIC PARK spent a lot of screen time establishing how and why the raptors were as intelligent as they were. This film features a creature that is super-intelligent... kinda just cause it is. And the rest of the plot hinges on that information. Alright, I guess.

While the movie gets in a few digs at the culture of bigger and louder sequels, other recent films have made the same point/joke more effectively, and at a certain point why not just give in and make your bigger, louder sequel if that's what you're doing (and honestly, it's not even a new thing, even though it is pretty much all-pervasive these days). My hope for Trevorrow is that this movie is a huge hit and he gets to go back to making more SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED-type stuff. 

Or am I misjudging all these directors? Maybe they all really want to be Spielberg and work as studio hit-makers. Maybe they DON'T want to keep making the smaller, weirder stuff they made their names on. Who knows. Watch this guy get hired to make a STAR WAR.

I guess I just don't get why Hollywood needs to constantly remake/remodel everything constantly. It's like there's an agenda to let filmmakers do whatever they want with minimal funding (like SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED) because they know they will then cull from that pool of directors to make the GODZILLAs, STAR WARS, CAPTAIN AMERICAs, and JURASSIC WORLDs. One way or another, all the real talent will be sucked into the machine. Agenda! It's like there's an Agenda!

It's crazy to think there was ever a time when these big-budget blockbusters were actually small passion projects from weirdo directors. A NEW HOPE, THE GODFATHER, THE MATRIX, all these films were things the directors had to fight for to get their vision onto the screen exactly the way they wanted it. But they spawned an entire culture of Hollywood bullshit that perpetuates to this day. The critically-hated STAR WARS prequels still weren't enough to stop THE FORCE AWAKENS from happening. And with it five or six more films from small-time directors (mostly, it seems) hoping to hop onboard that money train. And while I never fault filmmakers trying to make money, I mean... Who the fuck wants that headache? Have you ever seen a Peter Jackson or Michael Bay or James Cameron behind-the-scenes doc? It looks like the worst job imaginable. And when you're spending so much of the studio's money and they want very specific results (Marvel is allegedly the worst for this), I swear to god I can't imagine not wanting to just blow your brains out every second. Making any movie is hard enough because it's a constant drain of time and money and resources, but at least the end result is something to be proud of (hopefully). I just can't wrap my head around doing all that but on such a larger scale just to realize someone else's vision, when in most cases that vision is just a bunch of toys on shelves when it really comes down to it.

Okay, but anyway....

The big finale in this thing is pretty great though, despite the fact that when they first introduced the element early in the film that would eventually save the day, I kinda called it, but only because I've, like, seen other movies before. The ending still works, even if the first two hours really don't.

And by ending, I mean "there's one really cool shot that isn't as much of a surprise as the movie thinks it is."

Overall Score: ???/!!