The Great Train Robbery - 1903

The Great Train Robbery
Filmed in November 1903 at Edison's New York studio, at Essex County Park in New Jersey, and along the Lackawanna railroad and released in December 1903.
Directed by Edwin S Porter and stars Justus D. Barnes as the head bandit, G. M. Anderson as a slain passenger and a robber, Walter Cameron as the sheriff.

Ingmar Bergman

There’s always a tension in me between my urge to destroy and my will to live . . . Every morning I wake up with a new wrath, a new suspiciousness, a new desire to live.
– Ingmar Bergman

Alexander Sokurov

I think, that if an artist, a film director starts to treat himself as a person with unlimited freedom, then such a person becomes dangerous for humanity.

- Alexander Sokurov

Sokurov, directed Russian Ark, essentially the first un-edited motion picture, running 96 minutes without a cut. 

spelling is a lossed art

spelling is a lossed art form

Tom Waits For No Man - animation short

I just discovered this really nice animation of a Tom Waits song. The information after this clip is copied from the youtube page and there's a link to go to as well: http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/filmography/animation.html
It's fascinating that it was never released but the filmmaker, Lyon Lamb, received an Academy Award for this impressive rotoscoping work. The vibe is right in tune with Mr. Waits. I think this was done before his role in Jarmusch's Down By Law.



Tom Waits performed in 1978 live at the La Brea stage in Hollywood, photographed and rotoscoped.The original live action was shot with 5 cameras - 2 high, 2 low and one hand held.. shot by Dan O'Dowd and crew..The music from "The One That Got Away" blared in the background as Tom sang the lyrics. Donna Gordon is the dancer performing as the stripper, 6 takes and 13 hours of video footage were edited to make a 5 1/2 minute live action short which we turned into animation. A total of 5,500 frames were captured, re-drawn, inked and painted by hand onto celluloid acitate to create this film. Produced by Lyon Lamb Video Animation Systems and directed by John Lamb, the film bore some cool new technology and talent ..and was created specifically for a burgeoning video music market that didn't yet exist and arguably may be the first music video created for the MTV market.However, a series of unfortunate events prohibited the film from ever
being released or sold commercially, consequently catapulting it into obscurity.
In 1979, an Academy Award was presented to Lyon Lamb for the technology used in this short.
More about this amazing lost film can be found @ ....TomWaitsLibrary.com and Wikipedia.

The Big Red One - the novel

I realized I hadn't posted anything for a while so. Well I finished reading Sam Fuller's The Big Red One I've never been big on war books, but I trusted Sam Fuller to take me on a trip. I knew he wouldn't let me down. Sure he's not Faulkner but then again Faulkner wasn't Fuller when it came to the camera. Now I have to re-watch the film, and Lee Marvin is perfect for the Sergeant.

(I'd add a clip from the movie but like I said I read the book not watched the movie... I've seen the movie I just finished reading the book)

An Evening with Groucho

from:
http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_An_Evening_With_Groucho_Singles

An Evening with Groucho is a look at the life of Groucho Marx and the Marx Brothers, as told by Groucho.

Groucho Marx Biography:

Born: October 2, 1890 in New York City, New York
Died: August 19, 1977 in Los Angeles, California

Groucho was born Julius Henry Marx on October 2, 1890 in New York. He was the third of the five surviving sons of Sam and Minnie Marx. He was the first of the brothers to start stage career aged 15 in an act called The Leroy Trio. Other acts followed, but none of them was a great success. Twice the other members of the act disappeared overnight and left him penniless in a town far away from home.

When his brothers came on stage, they finally had a success with the musical comedy called I'll Say She Is. It was at one of the performances of this show that Groucho got his painted moustache. He arrived late at the theater and used greasepaint to create a moustache. He found this so much easier than a glued on moustache that he insisted on using this technique from then on.

Always being a liberal, Groucho sometimes made critical remarks about politics and had friends which were regarded as communist by the US of the 1950s. This led to Groucho being investigated by the FBI.

When Marx Brothers became popular again in the last sixties/early seventies Groucho made a comeback with a show in Carnegie Hall in 1972. At the film festival in Cannes in 1972, he was made Commandeur des Arts et Lettres and in 1974 he received a special Academy Award for the achievements of the Marx Brothers.

Groucho died on August 19th, 1977 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. His ashes are at Eden Memorial Park, San Fernando, California.

Armenians arriving to America

Armenian Community Opening from LaughingTree Films on Vimeo.

A short piece we produced, on Armenians immigrating to America. The entire segment focused mainly on California, but I'm really pleased with this opening.

The California Courier

This is a video I created giving a brief historical overview of The California Courier

The California Courier is an English-language Armenian weekly newspaper published since 1958 in USA. The current publisher of the weekly is Harut Sassounian.

In 1958, two young men in Fresno -- George Mason (Elmassian) and Reese Cleghorn -- had the foresight to publish an English-language newspaper, so that those unfamiliar with their native tongue could stay in touch with community news.
Cleghorn went on to become Professor and Dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Mason continued publishing the Courier with his popular weekly opinion column titled, "This and That" and wrote amusing Armenian wisecracks under the rubric "Uncle Hadji" and "Dear Dickran."
After moving to Los Angeles and becoming a prominent stock broker, Mason employed a succession of part-time editors and stringers. The most colorful personality to run the paper was a Japanese-American by the name of Seico Hanashiro, who worked at the Fresno post office during the day and published the Courier from his garage in his spare time. In the process, Seico knew more about the Armenian community than did most Armenians!
In 1983, Mason hired as full time editor of the Courier a young man by the name of Harut Sassounian, who subsequently became the publisher of the newspaper and moved it from Fresno to Glendale.

http://www.archive.org/details/TheCaliforniaCourier

Peter Falk

Dear Mr. Falk, you inspired us, you influenced us, you taught us. Thankfully you left a body of work that will continue to inspire and influence us. Thank you Mr Falk.