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Quote from: M.10rda on August 16, 2026, 05:17:34 PMA FOOL AND HIS MONEY (1912):
This 15-minute silent is often called history's first film w/ an all black (in this case, specifically African-American) cast and was directed by Alice Guy-Blanche, who is often cited as history's first female filmmaker.
Guy-Blanche wasn't black but rather a white (French) woman who'd been making films for 15 years by the time she made this one. She has a huge resume yet most of her catalog is (of course) apparently lost. That's an almost criminal shame - she really knew how to direct actors! 4/5

Oh man, now I'm regretting my sincere yet perhaps overly exuberant praise of Alice Guy-Blanche!

THE EMPRESS (1917):
...'Cause this, my second AG-B flick, has none of the pure cinema magic of A FOOL AND HIS MONEY! Put simply, I couldn't make heads or tails of the plot of THE EMPRESS from its visual storytelling and performances....... and alas, it survives without any of its intertitles!

I can tell you that the feature-length EMPRESS has about 35 minutes of inert romantic melodrama followed by a some pearl-clutching and fainting, a handgun, a speeding car, a s*i*i*e attempt, and then apparently a happy ending. Beyond that, I can only defer to the Letterboxd synopsis and concede that there's probably some mistaken identity and blackmail happening, I guess.

EMPRESS star Doris Kenyon looks exactly like Elizabeth Moss in the first shot of the film, then not really thereafter. She also looks breathtakingly gorgeous in the still at the top of THE EMPRESS' Letterboxd page - but I don't recall that shot (or that amount of gorgeousness) from the actual film. Kenyon and everything else about THE EMPRESS is very underwhelming. The surviving print comes to us from Guy-Blanche's homeland of France, but it was produced in English, and I guess the French exhibitor had no interest in the English intertitles so just cut 'em out altogether.

It's possible that extraordinarily well-written intertitles might make THE EMPRESS a much better film, but... I'm dubious. It's also possible that neither FOOL AND HIS MONEY nor THE EMPRESS are good median representations of Guy-Blanche as a craftsperson. She made over a hundred films, I think, and only a handful survive. Maybe we have one of the best and one of the worst, and most of her output was somewhere in the middle. But as for this one - 1.5/5. It's also possible that all of the credit for FOOL AND HIS MONEY belongs to that film's cast and Guy-Blanche was lost w/o good actors!

Good Movies / Re: Recent Viewings, Part 2

Last post by Dalmatian Bobby Samaritan - September 06, 2026, 09:53:57 PM

Quote from: lester1/2jr on August 28, 2026, 04:07:43 PMZodiac (2007) - I somehow didn't know about this or that David Fincher directed it. The first thing you notice is the real lack of Hollywood glamour. It's like he was making it for A and E or even PBS. There's even Wikipedia ish scenes where they make sure the audience gets certain facts "Here it is Christmas 1970 and we just got the second Zodiac letter. It sure is a crazy world." etc.

The Zodiac killer is loose in early 70's California and cops are having a hard time figuring out who he is. He does the thing where he writes taunting letters to the newspaper and sends them weird codes to decipher, but always stays a step ahead, somehow. Robert Downey Jr, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Chloe Sevigny are among the cops/ newspaper people whose lives would come to be defined by the whole thing.

Again, it's basically a 2 (and a half) parter A and E season opener, but where it's all re enactment and no talking heads or voiceover.

5/5 I'll be watching something a little more lively next, but I can't deny the formal integrity on display.

Tauntuan Heteroptera agitate and Madam Curie or Eocene bug Morphology looks like the Star Spangled banner on the cover of Smithsonian 2014. Does it matter if we can make Bugs glow in the dark now with stem cells. And I don't mean fireflies. Call Jake Gyllenhall..I think these people have wish they were Luke Skywalker and could have had a chance to sleep in a Taun Taun Syndrome.
That is an almost epic Ax grinding takedown of the movie. Call Jeff Meldrum and have him make a cast of your foot stomping it.

It seems like in a way too. Zodiac was a bit callous and disrespectful to the events that actually happened. Not very prudential. I mean if it is based on something true. If you want to learn how to make a movie based on something true (or somewhat fictionalized true) and that happened fairly recently, I believe The Right Stuff did it right.

Bad Movies / Re: Bad movies you have a pers...

Last post by M.10rda - September 06, 2026, 09:52:17 PM

My aunt was a theatre director and professor who took acting classes in the late 70s with Tracy Pollan (aka Mrs. Michael J. Fox), who at that time was dating Kevin Bacon, thus my aunt knew him, too. He was really excited about making his big break in this movie FRIDAY THE 13TH. According to my aunt, all his friends were embarrassed for him when it came out.

Bad Movies / Re: RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie...

Last post by LilCerberus - September 06, 2026, 08:50:03 PM

Tonight's Stinker
I Love Maria(1988)
https://youtu.be/y9-sjq4H0jw?si=TK1UelwMhbeaw2Wd

A klutzy reporter show up to an active crime scene, where police fail to stop a giant robot from robbing a bank.... The next day, the reporter loses his camera at a press gaggle at the police station, but is helped out by a klutzy scientist.... The scientist later proves his bosses new machine gun won't work, & tries to talk the leader of the science team into his design for a ray gun.... His boss brushes him off, more concerned about his job than stopping the robot.... Later, the scientist helps out a drunk at a bar, who's a former member of the robot gang....
Meanwhile, the leader of the gang has built a robot in the likeness of his girlfriend, Maria, who's not too happy about her doppelganger....
They send the robot to kill the drunk, who's rescued by the scientist, and the robot malfunctions after getting wet.... The drunk & the scientist find themselves on the run from bot the police and the mob....

The English dubbing cuts out & goes to Chinese many times throughout this print, so It's kinda hard to know what they're talking about.....
Other than that, there's plenty of decent slapstick, and the robots, the stuff they smash & the practical effects are fairly impressive....

Bad Movies / Re: 100 Movie titles that are ...

Last post by HappyGilmore - September 06, 2026, 05:27:29 PM

Quote from: zombie no.one on September 06, 2026, 02:48:34 PM
Quote from: HappyGilmore on September 06, 2026, 01:28:01 PM99.) Hercules

1997? The Disney film.

we done had that there one at #82

as usual I will exclude myself from posting the heroic #100 entry...

99. MARNIE (1964)

Ah, bummer. I missed that one.

#10

Off Topic Discussion / Re: Random Statements About So...

Last post by Rev. Powell - September 06, 2026, 04:43:03 PM

Quote from: indianasmith on September 06, 2026, 04:10:31 PMMy weight has dropped from 273 in June to 248 earlier this week! (249 this morning because we had ribs for supper last night, LOL!).

Still, 25 pounds is making a difference. Next stop, 30 pounds down!

This is the one case where I'll say less Indy is a good thing!

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