I am not very good at long term efforts, but I've found making a yearly list of the movies I watch really helpful. My 2009 list stranded in like May or something, but last year I only stopped updating it twice for for maybe two consecutive weeks before resuming and trying to fill in the gap. I think my 2010 list is still missing a few movies because of this, but still, ~I made it~ aww yeah. Maybe this year will be the year I totally pull it off!

2009; 2010

I haven't indicated which movies were rewatches before, but I think I'll do that this time around. I rewatch a LOT of movies so probably this year's list will end up being mostly that, but whateva, no shame. I have a lot of love for a lot of movies ok!


2011

( January )

( February )


( March )

HAPPY NEW YEAR FLIST! I hope 2011 will be a badass awesome year for all of you!


I am totally bummed right now because we are snow-and-iceless once more, which of course happened like two days after I bought a pair of awesome winter boots and was feeling stoked about the prospect of long walks during which I would not fall on my ass. OF COURSE.

HOWEVER I managed to catch on film the most awesome-looking icicles I have ever seen, which were conveniently located in our back yard. We are not a snow and ice kind of country generally and so I don't get to see icicles a lot, BUT EVEN IF I DID I have a hunch that these would still have impressed me! Maybe this just betrays my ignorance of the average awesomeness of icicles but whatever, it is what I choose to believe.

So yes, idk, here is like 1.5 minutes of me saying inane things about icicles while wondering what they are called! The best part is that I kept actually wanting to call them icicles and then thinking NO TSAR YOU IDIOT ICICLES ARE THOSE THINGS YOU EAT. I know better now.





JS THE SCREENCAP IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OK, the rest of the video looks better and also contains much more fabulous ice than that, but I guess photobucket totally wanted to sell me short~


BUT HOW EXCITING RIGHT


RIGHT

so i finally made that intertitle tumblr i've been talking about for like five years: http://silentintertitles.tumblr.com is now live aww yeah. you should go follow it if, you know, you like silent film intertitles. and also silent film photos and anecdotes and gifs and what have you, which i'm sure i won't be able to resist posting for long.


in even more belated but continuing and still baffling to me news, guess what!









MOTHERFUCKING SNOW IS WHAT.

i keep meaning to take some pictures while outside too because lol how are these for making me look like a shut-in, BUT WHEN I'M OUT I'M TOO BUSY NOT FALLING ON MY ASS OK.

seriously, omg, i can't. what is this. WHAT IS THIIIS. we don't normally get snow until like january or february, if at all, and then it lasts a day and becomes sludge and disappears within a week. except last year when we suddenly had srs bsns snow in late december, but i'm pretty sure everyone thought that was a fluke. BUT NOW IT HAS BEEN SNOWING SINCE LATE NOVEMBER. please god don't tell me we are about to have like four months of snow. I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THIS POSSIBILITY.

i mean, it looks like a wondrous magical fairyland and all but I WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO GET AROUND WITHOUT NEAR FATAL ACCIDENTS OF THE ON-ASS-FALLING KIND ON THE DAILY, THANKS. and also now i have no appropriate shoes because WHO EXPECTS SNOW IN NOVEMBER. NOT THE NETHERLANDS THAT'S WHO. so probably these coming weeks will mark the tragic end of my €5 knockoff converse, and if i haven't found affordable boots by then WHICH IS LIKELY, also my super cheap probably made of cardboard or some shit H&M flats. RIP in advance.

also i am back on ADD medication and am feeling surprisingly good and undepressed, which hopefully doesn't mean that the side effect is just gonna start manifesting itself like, tomorrow, but rather that for the first time ever i actually have a competent psychiatrist who can work out my medication problems! i don't think i ever mentioned my last psychiatrist here but she was the single most horrible and cruel person i've probably ever met, and i tend to give people the benefit of the doubt for pretty much ever so this is saying something. but now i have a new one and she is awesome, fuck yeah! plz wish me luck in my continued attempts to be a functioning member of society, lol.

and lastly but not least...ly: i'm still shaking and crying cause totally managed to find an affordable secondhand copy of my most coveted silent film book: Behind The Mask Of Innocence: Sex, Violence, Prejudice, Crime - Films Of Social Conscience In The Silent Era by my ~hero kevin brownlow. seriously, seriously, is there a better subject for a nonfiction book than this BECAUSE I DOUBT IT. SERIOUSLY. oh kevin brownlow, if only one day i could be you.

i think this may be my favourite intertitle of all time.


if anybody feels compelled to comment to this entry with their favourite intertitle (or hell any intertitle you liked enough to save) i would NOT MIND THIS AT ALL.


ALSO, i need help with a decision! a_suitcase is throwing a Harry Potter themed birthday party very soon and she is totally not going to let me in if i am not dressed up, SO:

do i dress up as dolores umbridge or as sybil trelawney? OPINIONS PLEASE.

i am totally leaning towards umbridge because, i mean, hello amazing, but i'm afraid i won't be able to find a sufficiently umbridge-y outfit in time and within my budget aargh. but on the other hand i can't wear trelawney glasses because... i need my own glasses, and i will never be able to get my hair like that ever and i am not so sure about buying a wig. wah wah wah. WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK!

I HAVE BEEN MEANING TO DO A BOLLYWOOD POST FOR AGES SO HERE IT IS IDK


About a month ago, my parents bought a new (huge enormous what the fuck it's a monster) television. We had to switch to digital tv in order for everything to not look like crap on it, and with that came a two-week free trial of EVERY DIGITAL TV CHANNEL AVAILABLE IN THIS COUNTRY, which included four totally English subtitled Indian channels, two of which broadcast Indian movies NON STOP, CAN YOU IMAGINE MY JOY, I DO NOT THINK YOU CAN.

I basically spent two weeks glued to the tv while everybody else was all I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS AMAZING SUMMER WEATHER, I AM GOING TO GO SUNBATHING ON THE BEACH AND BIKING AND PICKNICKING and I was all ~lol fuck that I HAVE BOLLYWOOD~. It was glorious.

But then the free trial expired, we couldn't afford to subscribe to the Indian channels, and now I'm all mopey and piney and basically watching Om Shanti Om on repeat to console myself.

I legit miss those channels so much haha, it's so much less exciting to start watching a movie when I already know exactly what it's about and who's in it and what people all over the internet have said about it ~because how else would I know what to download~, instead of being all OMG I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS BUT I SAW KAJOL IN THE TRAILER FUCK YEAH, or turning on the tv and finding yourself in the middle of an early 90s SRK movie about dramatic terminal diseases and eye transplants and religion, or a classic from the 40s that I have never heard of but evidently should have. I am not even a little bit embarrassed that being glued to the tv was basically the highlight of last month for me, because it was AWESOME.

Anyway idk I just wanted to lament this amazingness that has been lost to me and also to ask this:


PEOPLE ON MY FLIST WHO LOVE BOLLYWOOD MOVIES: PLZ RECOMMEND ME SOME.

Anything you like, throw it at me! Especially older movies would be much appreciated because I've only seen like 5 pre-90s Bollywood movies. I will admit tho that I tried some of the 80s ones that were on tv, but I have come to the conclusion that I dnw the Bollywood 80s any more than I want the American and European 80s which is basically NOT AT ALL. All that fighting man, it gets so boring!

But yes plz throw recs at me! And also if I posted like, a whole slew of Bollywood music videos sometime, would any of you guys be like FUCK YEAH and listen or should I just not bother?


idk this was a weird post, have a picture of Rani Mukerji lookin' fine with a moustache for your time







okay actually have a whole bunch of bollywood stuff that idek where else to post anyway~





( I should probably cut this for excess amazingness )

YOU GUYS



YOU GUUUUUYS



I TOTALLY WENT TO AN OPEN AIR SCREENING OF SHERLOCK JR.


IN A PARK


WITH LIVE MUSIC







LIKE THIS, BUT WITH BUSTER KEATON


IT WAS THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD



I TOTALLY FORGOT THAT BACK IN ~SILENT MOVIE DAYS THERE WOULD OFTEN BE TWO TAKES OF EVERY SCENE, ONE FOR THE HOME NEGATIVE AND ONE FOR THE EXPORT NEGATIVE, AND THIS VERSION WE SAW WAS TOTALLY A EUROPEAN PRINT SO IT WAS FULL OF COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TAKES FROM THE DVD VERSION OMGGGGGGG


SO I GOT TO WATCH THE SAME MOVIE BUT IT WAS TOTALLY DIFFERENT AT THE SAME TIME AND I AM UNREASONABLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS OKAY!!!!!! FNAJSDKG;LXKZBBLKF



K END OF CAPSLOCK BONANZA I JUST NEEDED TO GET MY EXCITEMENT OUT



HAVE SOME BONUS GIFS OF BUSTER KEATON BEING BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE IDEK HOW ELSE TO MAKE THIS POST TOLERABLE:









K THE END BYE, I HOPE YOU WILL ALL STILL RESPECT ME IN THE MORNING

Meme time, hell yes!

This would be the one where you all can ask me to list 5 things that remind me of you, and then you write about those in your LJ.


I got 5 from batarde:

fanaticism towards long dead celebrities
Oh god this is pretty much a SUMMARY OF MY LIFE. Though sometimes I include a not-yet-deceased person! I feel I should add that in the interest of seeming less deranged. But yes, famous dead people! I love famous dead people, there are so many to choose from. I'm pretty excitable and prone to huge obsessive phases in general I think, so I am pretty easily won when I find out about somebody famous being awesome. This, added to the fact that for some reason unknown to me I have a huge boner for pop culture history, means that I am saddled with many dead people crushes. I still don't know where my actual boner for pop culture history (or the 20s in particular) came from, though.


displaced zeitgeist
I've had so many people say some variation of ~you were totally born in the wrong time am i right~ to me over the years, but I think I agreed maybe once when I was fifteen and then I snapped out of it. I'm way more excited about and smitten with a lot of 1920s (pop) culture than is probably wise, considering how butthurt I then get that I can't go there and be awestruck irl. Still though, zeitgeist encompasses so much about an era, whereas I really pick and choose. When I'm watching old movies, listening to old music, and reading about the awesome adventures some people back then had I'm all ~O MAN IF ONLY I'D BEEN THERE~, but I can't ignore how much more racist, sexist, homophobic, etc etc ad nauseam even progressive people generally were in the 20s. I mean, most people even today hold beliefs that make me furious, let alone being stuck in the 20s. I would probably want to die, much as I love so many things about it in a totally creepy way.

I actually think maybe I am more of a ~child of my time~ BECAUSE I have the opportunity and the privilege to completely immerse myself in a bygone era like that. Regardless of the fact that I really don't have that much money, I still have endless amounts of media from and about my favourite eras at my immediate disposal, from all corners of the world. I really value this position of having such a wide spectrum of historical creative output available to me to enjoy and actually keep for myself, so I can watch the same silent movie a hundred times if I want, instead of seeing it at the theatre and then never again, or maybe once on television decades later. I can read about all of these things from the viewpoints of the people who were there and experienced them, but also from people who are more in touch with the way people look at things today. So, I dunno. I think I do have a stronger desire to experience a past era than probably a lot of people and if I had a time machine available to me I would spend a LOT of my free time chillin' in the 20s (in NYC or Hollywood or Berlin or maybe Paris tho, not here) - but I wouldn't want to be stuck there, if I could help it. TOTALLY HANGING ON TO MY 'I AM SECRETLY FROM THE 20S' LJ TAG THOUGH OKAY, WHATEVA.

neo old school european
Maddy I don't know why you had to pick all this smart sounding shit, it makes me feel like all my answers are going to sound enormously stupid. Especially this one because I totally don't know what to make of the concept. WHAT IS OLD SCHOOL EUROPEAN? I have no idea! It totally sounds appropriate except I have no idea what to actually make of it in specifics. My brain is all LEONARDO DA VINCI!!! but then I still don't know what to say. Curses!!

bollywood vs. old school hollywood
OKAY NOW THIS I REALLY LOVE. Ngl though, my real old school Hollywood knowledge is totally limited to the silent era and like 20 other films from the 30s and then 10 more spanning the 40s-60s or something. Well okay more than that, but not much! So basically... I am going to cheat and make this about the 20s!

Well for starters ~I love both~ OBVIOUSLY. Both get a pretty bad rep for melodrama and overacting, both are perhaps more full of fierce ladies than one might expect, both are oten felt to be or have been popular only because its intended audiences just don't and didn't ~know any better~. Both are often visually really stunning, which is part of why I like them so much!

I think with both it can be hard to navigate between all the things I love sooo much about them and the things that make me go "oh, right :/". It's never pleasant to suddenly be confronted with blackface outta nowhere, or with somebody derogatorily being called a half-caste in the midst of an adorable movie. -isms abound wildly in both genres, as they do everywhere else I suppose, but both silent movies and many Bollywood movies can be super blatant about it. But on the other hand, I've been surprised at the number of movies from both groups that I have seen (I haven't seen any silent Indian movies yet though sadly) which were actually really blatantly about promoting women's rights, and those were really exciting and amazing and did not mince words at all. Idk idk, I am really annoyingly good at finding meaningless parallels everywhere so I could keep going on about this forever. I should move on before this actually happens, lol.

sailors
MADDY. WHY SAILORS. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND!! I feel like I've missed something about myself here because this one came out of left field lol. I guess I love Buster Keaton and he loved boats and I love Buster Keaton on boats? But I doubt that counts. My brother is a qualified sailor though which is pretty badass, but I don't trust boats one bit, man.

Ooh, I do see a segue to talk about one of my favourite fashion trends OAT though which is wigs with boats on them! I don't know why I love it so much. People used to also have bird cages with live birds in them in their wigs and I feel like I should like that even better but I totally don't, I prefer the boats.




THIS TOTALLY ISN'T EVEN REAL BUT HOW AWESOME IS IT?! It's much better than the pictures I have of the real thing because they are all wigs on boring blank mannequin heads. I've been meaning to find paintings of this phenomenon from the actual correct era, but I keep forgetting!


So um, idk, that was it! It's been like a month since I got these but I am very good at procrastinating. Feel free to ask me to name 5 things for you to talk about in the comments and I totally will!

So it's been a while since I posted an entry with actual fun things in it! This state of affairs cannot continue etc, so... um, here is this post!


Remember the time when I decided to scan parts of the 1920s film magazines I had bought? Yeaaah, that did not work out so well - I'm still planning on getting around to it, sometime, but right now I don't have enough time or nerve for it, since the binding is so fragile that I can't let go of the half of the magazine that isn't in the scanner without the whole thing falling apart.


BUT GUESS WHAT I FOUND YOU GUYS AND THIS IS WAY MORE EXCITING THAN MY SIX ISSUES OF PICTURE PLAY

You all know and love archive.org I am sure, but you are about to love it A WHOLE LOT MORE because they have A TON OF FILM MAGS FROM THE '10S AND '20S. And I mean scans of the ENTIRE THING, ad pages and all. Literally YEARS' WORTH.

You can read them on the site itself or download them as glorious, glorious .pdf files, or you can save single pages from the online reader as .jpg files by right clicking on them and selecting save image as.

Here are some random screencaps of pages from some of these magazines to convince you that you need them:














So yes, have a list of everything they have! Or at least everything I managed to find on there over the course of a few days, which boils down to more or less the same thing. I did promise you guys scans so scans you will receive, even if they aren't of my actual magazines lol.


Photoplay Magazine

This one was to my knowledge the most ~reputable popular American film magazine around at the time - Kevin Brownlow for instance quoted from it a lot in his books, and since Kevin Brownlow is what I aspire to be when I grow up, I kinda trust his judgment.

Photoplay - November 1914
Photoplay - December 1914
Photoplay - January 1915
Photoplay - February 1915
Photoplay - March 1915
Photoplay - April 1915
Photoplay - May 1915

Photoplay - July through December 1925 (YES REALLY)
Photoplay - July - December 1926
Photoplay - January - June 1927
Photoplay - January - June 1928
Photoplay - January - June 1929
Photoplay - July - December 1929
Photoplay - January - June 1930
Photoplay - July - December 1930


Picture-Play Magazine

The magazine I have a book full of! Pretty similar to Photoplay from what I've seen.

Picture-Play - January 1922
Picture-Play - April 1922
Picture-Play - May 1922


Movie Weekly Magazine

Movie Weekly - March 4 1922
Movie Weekly - March 18 1922
Movie Weekly - March 25 1922
Movie Weekly - April 1 1922
Movie Weekly - April 8 1922
Movie Weekly - April 15 1922


Pantomime Magazine

Pantomime - January 21 1922
Pantomime - February 18 1922
Pantomime - March 11 1922
Pantomime - March 18 1922
Pantomime - March 25 1922


Motion Picture Magazine

Motion Picture Magazine - December 1912
Motion Picture Magazine - May 1914
Motion Picture Magazine - July 1914


Other magazines

Film Fun - May 1922
Movie Pictorial - December 1915
Filmplay - June 1922
Screenland - April 1922
Screenland - October 1923
New Zealand Theatre & Motion Picture - May 1 1922



So that is all! I feel like this should be enough to keep most of us busy for at least the next few years, lol.


Additional tip: if you are into that kind of thing, searching for "photoplay" or "motion picture"/"motion pictures" on archive.org, you'll get a whole lot of books from the '10s and '20s about the industry, how to get into it, how to write for the movies, and all kinds of fun stuff like that.


END OF MONSTER POST, I hope you will all be as excited and screamy and flaily as I was when I found this! EXCITING SHIT MAAAAN

You guys.


I HATE TAX LAW SO MUCH, YOU GUYS.


My exam is tomorrow and I am going to fail spectacularly. Even the fact that I already know this doesn't make it less depressing, because I will be getting up at 7 in the morning (I have a sleeping problem man, this is hard for me!) for the express purpose of FAILING.

FUQ U, TAX LAW. I DO NOT LIKE YOU, I DO NOT LIKE YOUR FACE, AND IN CONCLUSION I DO NOT LIKE YOUR MOTHER.


Confession: I was going to turn this into a picspam entry full of random shit I love to cheer myself up, but if I did that I would never respect myself again because those things always take ages.

Sooo idk, I will just post the picture that is currently the only thing keeping me from wanting to cliff myself and then return to my books! It almost sounds responsible~





:')





Srsly tho guys. WHY IS TAX LAW.

SO DO YOU GUYS WANT TO SEE SOMETHING AWESOME I BOUGHT LAST MONTH, I bet you do!


What I bought was 500+ pages of awesome shit about silent movies, in the form of 4 monthly Picture Play magazines from 1926 all bound together in one volume. Well okay awesome shit about silent movies AND a ton of ad pages, but those are also amazing because not only are women told all the things they should buy to be less hideous and unfit for polite company, but men too are told that they are baldies and fatties who should shape up and work on their ugly accent while they're at it! They did not beat around the bush in the 20s man, I love it.


So I took some pictures! My poorly old camera is not the best at photographing things up close but they are very exciting pictures so you should look anyway tbh.









( MORE HERE~ )


WASN'T THAT AWESOME? (Yes it was.)

I kind of want to take more pictures of all the awesome stuff in there, and see if I can scan some things without damaging the book too much. There's SO MUCH in there though, I'm kind of at a loss as to where to begin.

SO basically, you guys get to request stuff! If there are certain people/movies/topics or whatever that you'd want to see the articles about or the pictures of, let me know and I'll see what I can find for you! And seriously you guys, DO IT. Don't be shy or whatever, I need a starting point lol.