Joined: Apr 10, 2002 Posts: 10,213 Location: Talos IV
Posted: Fri 4th Jul 12:11pm Post subject:
I've watched it (well the 1 and a half hour version). I didnt like it.
Basically while I can appreciate the history and its influential place in history and all that, to a modern audience it is too slow, too static, and far far too German.
One of those things you'd watch if you were doing a course or something: not because you want to but because you have to, its a course requirement.
like all those awful books I had to read
I am nothing if not a pleb when it comes to my tastes in flim.
I saw a version (I think 2 hours long?) at NZ's first ever sci-fi convention, Wellcon in about 1978/79.
While I certainly appreciated it as a visionary masterpiece and thought the effects were actually pretty good, I'm with HDC - I found it a bit tedious.
Joined: Mar 10, 2004 Posts: 3,786 Location: The not too distant future...
Posted: Fri 4th Jul 12:28pm Post subject:
Dazzle wrote:
Credible claims are being made that a full, complete, 3 1/2 version has been swapping hands in Argentina for the last 80 years. And now a print has made it back to Germany.
http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/27/metropolis-vorab-englisch
Wow.
This is the holy grail of lost films. How could this be trading hands for 80 years without anybody realising? Not that I am complaining.
My favourite 'lost film' story is the colour videotapes made of Pertwee era Dr Who transmissions by the son of somebody high up in the BBC. High up enough to have a colour reel to reel video recorder at home in the early 1970s...
Joined: Sep 04, 2002 Posts: 20,881 Location: Riding the Entertainment Mastodon
Posted: Fri 4th Jul 12:37pm Post subject:
Henry Dorset Case wrote:
Basically while I can appreciate the history and its influential place in history and all that, to a modern audience it is too slow, too static, and far far too German.
Agree entirely. A bit like cubism, abstract expressionism and serial music: historically important but just a bit naff.
Have seen Langs 'M' recently, shot on a few years after Metropolis, and so completely stands up beside all the current police procedural TV shows on the stupid box these days. 75 years ahead of its time I spose. And has quite a bit more pace compared to Metropolis.
Have got a copy here of Langs 'Dr Mabuse The Gambler' on dvd. Shot before Metropolis. A solid 5 1/2 hours long! I sure hope it had a couple of intermissions for anyone without a herculean bladder. Gonna have to put the better part of a day aside to watch it.
There is the one FX shot in Metropolis that the vfx nerds spent decades arguing about how could it have possibly been done pre digital? The rings moving up and down around Maria during her creation. When they bothered to go and speak to the surviving family members of the technician involved - the answer - long long long exposures and christmas tree lights on loops of cardboard moving up and down.
Rad-ed, Its been siting in a couple of archives. Unless archives are super lana about taking out film and measuring how many feet long each roll is, and then super organised about recording the information and sharing it, it is easy for variations to slip between the cracks. Especially, like this, if there is no specific actual owner of the movie. At least with stuff that gets released on DVD by someone that owns it, they have some interest in checking around the various places around the world prints were sent/sold to try and find the longest versions of all reels available. Like as in the restored version of The Good, The Bad, The Ugly that Clint Eastwood had to dub lines for, cos some scenes had only survived in Italian.
My favourite - lost then found - footage I have seen.
A copy of the sketch comedy pilot that Graham Chapman and Douglas Adams worked on, and was only broadcast once. 'Out Of The Trees'. Its co-stars went on to work in Hitch Hikers Guide. Chapmans gay lover had a copy on an old video tape format sitting in his closet for getting on 30 years.
Only one of the missing scenes (the monk in the cathedral) remains missing, because it happened to be at a reel end that got badly torn. The rest is there.
The images you will find at the links Tom gave will show you some scenes, and also expose the amount of damage. They look indeed a little worse than the real thing, as they are frame grabs from a DVD transfer of the dupe.
About 10 pages of information and frame enlargements from many more missing sequences are in the printed edition of DIE ZEIT, which is coming out today. I guess you can find this at the news stands in most countries in Europe, don't know about the international edition overseas. Flip through it before you buy it, the articles about Metropolis are in the somewhat glossy "Zeit Magazin Leben" which comes with the paper. It will surely become a collector's item.
A lot of thinking is now necessary to find ways to incorporate this material into the existing restoration, released on DVD by Transit Film and Kino International, among others. It has titles and black leader where the missing parts once were so in principle one could just insert whatever is new at those inserts. The good news is that Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung intends to do just that once access to the material has been granted.
The critical edition of Metropolis on DVD, which Enno Patalas derived from the 2001 restoration in order to create a "full" version of Metropolis has even more information about the missing scenes, and has the option to fill the missing scenes with not only black leader, but information from the script and other sources. When ran in synch with the material found in Buenos Aires, it is amazing to see how everything falls into place now.
Awesome.
ALT TV ('free' to air on Sky and streamed off their website) will be showing the entire Scorsese documentary series 'The Blues', commercial free, on Sunday nights.
I've seen a few of these. Recommend the Public Enemy/Muddy Waters/Electric mud one, and the BB King one. Have not seen the Clint Eastwood directed one, but am very keen to do so, especially as he is such a fan of the piano blues and jazz.
Each episode is feature length and completely different to the others in style and content.
Woot.
Quote:
ALT TV to broadcast THE BLUES a series of seven films
Under the guiding hand of Martin Scorsese. The Blues is a seven-part television series of personal and impressionistic films viewed through the
lens of seven world-famous directors who share a passion for the music. The films, by Scorsese, Charles Burnett, Clint Eastwood, Mike Figgis, Marc Levin, Richard Pearce, and Wim Wenders, capture the essence of blues music and delve into its global influence - from its roots in Africa to its inspirational role in today's music.
Coming in August to Madman Sunday night movie slot - 8pm Sunday.
Feel Like Going Home (Martin Scorsese)
Red, White and Blues (Mike Figgis)
The Soul of a Man (Wenders)
Warming by the Devil's Fire (Charles Burnett)
Godfathers and Sons (Marc Levin)
Piano Blues (Clint Eastwood)
The Road to Memphis (Richard Pearce)
"The blues are the roots; everything else is the fruits" - Willie Dixon
"We're on the brink of something that I think is going to be very big?[The Blues] is going to bring in a lot of people who don?t know or only vaguely know about blues." - The New York Times
"For those of us who love the blues, this is a gift from the God of the Blues himself." - The Hollywood Reporter
"Martin Scorsese's documentary series is as soulful and authentic as the bluesmen it celebrates." - New York Magazine
Well, gotta run to my first NZFF screening - got a few tickets to get through.
The Incredibly Strange Film Fest kicks off tomorrow night as well (for Auckland and Wellington film fiends).
This movie is playing as part of the ISFF. The premiere got rave reviews - hanging out to see this one!
(How many featured movies can you name? Turkey Shoot, Mad Max, I recognise a couple more....)
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