Buster Keaton

If you're a fan who doesn't own The General, you should get the new Kino edition, struck from a camera negative. Clarity is amazing.

http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=936

(there really isn't much to the bonus disc, tho)

Steamboat Bill, Jr. out today on Blu-Ray and standard 2-disc editions.

does anyone else find 'the general' to be a little underwhelming? it looks great but i've never really found most of it very funny -- buster's picture of himself with his train excepted.

'sherlock jr' is fantastic, though, and hilarious pretty much all the way through.

i haven't watched 'the general' in years, but yeah i don't remember it being all that lol...but like more amazing in terms of inventive, intricately timed visual pieces. something like how playtime isn't particularly lol but really cool ne how like miley's upcoming vid

The General, and several more classically Busteresque features, are more astonishing than funny, esp on a theater screen.

I think my favorite thing ever written about "The General" was a story about some French writer who said that Buster Keaton's intense desire to film in authentic Civil War battle sites led him to make the movie in Orgeon.

After six years of knowing my husband I figured it was an OK time to try & get him into Buster Keaton. He clearly was not. into. it. I don't think it helped that every time I laughed I would follow it with some smug statement like "ah...true genius" or a trivia about how Buster did that thing. (The film was "Sherlock Jr." btw.)

maybe he's more of a chaplin guy?

or Harold Lloyd?

If you can't like Sherlock Jr. on any level I don't know what to tell ya.

Yeah we had watched a Harold Lloyd movie w/some success with my brother & his wife back in May, which I think was the trigger for me thinking this could work. OTOH he had been trapped a week with my Mormon family & no entertainment except a very shitty airport book about a megalodon, so maybe the laughter there was just from being shown any entertainment at all.

My brother, and his wife, didn't like Keaton either, but they'd only seen "College" so I was blaming it on that.

College is really not that good, but man, the movie theater scene in Sherlock, the pool-playing sequence, the motorcycle, the stunts! Just one amazing bit after another. Incredibly condensed genius.

I'd never really truly forgotten, but rewatching Shrelock Jr. also reminded me that he's like my all-time best looking guy.

just for a harold lloyd derail, seeing 'safety last' in a screening room full of jaded students, pretty much all of whom were delirious with joy by the end, remains one of my all-time-favourite moviegoing experiences.

(also: the original 'to be or not to be' in a crowded, uproarious left bank paris theater)

"It's hard to think of another creator of mass entertainment who has been such an inspiration to artists (a word he refused to apply to himself) — including Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, and Samuel Beckett — yet cared only for making people laugh."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/09/genius-buster-keaton/

FYI, if you are in NYC the Film Forum is having a Keaton series over the next few Mondays.

I have all those at home, of course

planning to visit his grave this summer tho

college was just being watched by me via streaming netflix yesterday - as HE predicted would one day happen

I like him in the movies he did with Fatty Arbuckle.

yeah, he even smiles a few times.

in those days no one was ashamed to be fat - they hailed it as a crowning victory! You would never see a "Fatty Rosseane Barr" today - instead they take a vacuum cleaner to their thighs

my scholarly silent-comedy friends refer to Arbuckle as "Roscoe"

there was also a crude but hilarious silent trio known as both Ton o' Fun and The Three Fatties

and lest we forget laurel and hardy. They should be on our money. not Tommie Jefferson

so Kino has remastered the silent starring shorts and put em out on DVD and Bluray:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/buster-keaton-the-short-films-collection-1920-1923/2070

Are any of these not in the box set? I think all of the titles I saw in that article are.

yes, they are, but they look (a little bit) better now, with some new music. The supplements are new.

they've been doing the same thing w/ the features for awhile.

The John Bengtson book Silent Echoes is a must for buffs --- tracing BK's shooting locations in LA by frame analysis.

Sherlock Jr. is number one and the best, of course, but I have a soft spot for The Navigator - the his reaction to the coffee the girl makes with sea water is one of my favorite moments from his entire canon. also I find the term "sea tuxedos" endlessly amusing.

is Buster's appeal/iconic stature fading, and is that why Sarris checked out?

http://www.fandor.com/blog/video-andrew-sarris-on-buster-keaton

where Buster met Fatty

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/dec/07/manhattans-forgotten-film-studio/

Mother Keaton's vaudeville scrapbook now online via the Academy

http://digitalcollections.oscars.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15759coll8/id/417

wtf zero votes for "Our Hospitality"? That is clearly the funniest.

it's up there.

i stan for the navigator.

wow, morbz, that's amazing, thank you!

Fantastic link; cheers.

I just watched 'Our Hospitality'. No one put his body on the line for his art like BK.

Chan has been injured frequently when attempting stunts; many of them have been shown as outtakes or as bloopers during the closing credits of his films. He came closest to death filming Armour of God, when he fell from a tree and fractured his skull. Over the years, Chan has dislocated his pelvis and also broken numerous parts of body including his fingers, toes, nose, both cheekbones, hips, sternum, neck, ankle, and ribs.

he's Keaton's closest match, p much, but yes had bigger medical bills.

Wow. How is he still alive?

unfortunately he died in 1966 :[

He steppedbefore a film camera for the first time 100 years ago today

http://binniebooks.com/first-picture-the-butcher-boy/

https://gracekingsley.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/keaton-met-the-camera-today/

https://gracekingsley.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/correction-keaton-met-the-camera-on-march-21st/

http://binniebooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Keaton-Datebook-March-1917_Butcher-Boy_cropped-First-Picture-2ab-2012-AMPAS.jpg

if you aint had the pleasure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxQveXScnbY

one of the coolest nights ever was going to see The General performed with live organist accompaniment at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. the organ rises out of the floor. it was amazing.

a gravestone for dad

http://www.busterkeaton.org/joe

Chapter 1 of a new book: "Buster Keaton's Climate Change," on STEAMBOAT BILL JR.

https://fqtemporary.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/fay-inhospitable-world-page-views.pdf

attention, LA, it's Keaton Weekend. Alas many events are full.

http://www.busterkeaton.org/weekend

A friend mentioned this and I hadn't heard -- Peter Bogdanovich has made a feature doc about Keaton, The Great Buster, which showed in Venice. Early word is not the greatest! But I suppose I'll eventually want to hear what Dick van Dyke and, uh, Johnny Knoxville have to say...

http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2018/lineup/venice-classics/great-buster-celebration

Michael Nordine, lukewarm:

https://www.indiewire.com/2018/08/the-great-buster-a-celebration-review-peter-bogdanovich-buster-keaton-documentary-1201997753/

I suppose I'll eventually want to hear what Dick van Dyke and, uh, Johnny Knoxville have to say...

Coincidentally, Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson covered The General in their new podcast about the AFI top 100 list, and their interview segment that week was with Jackass director Jeff Tremaine.

it's his 123rd

A scantily clad, beer-gutted Buster Keaton, later in life, surveys with pleasure (?) his Lionel train set. pic.twitter.com/ghfoDqRMVO

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) October 4, 2018

Just bought three Kino Blu-Rays of Keaton stuff: 2-disc sets containing The General and Three Ages and Steamboat Bill Jr. and College, and a 5-disc set containing all his shorts, including the early ones with Fatty Arbuckle. I watched One Week earlier today and laughed my ass off.

I just watched the Kino The General last night. I've seen that movie 5 times at least and still find it astonishing.

https://scontent.fnyc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/40477603_10156485320404000_7344300914024382464_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&oh=b8bfe6f135f7fa5e33a5f31764fbe9e6&oe=5C4B5753

Was watching the Criterion commentary for It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World yesterday. Don't think I even noticed Keaton the first time around - think the movie's sledgehammer approach to comedy had already defeated me by then - but once you notice it's him it's amazing how all that grace is still there, for the two seconds that he is onscreen.

I love ‘One Week’ - usually what I show to sceptics/young people.

yeah, when he scoots around those cars it couldn't be anyone else xp

AFI Silver's 2018 Silent Cinema Showcase will feature a number of Buster Keaton restorations. I'm making my plans; is anyone else interested in going?

This looks dreadful but I'm surprised by how lovely Keaton's speaking voice is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWEDF4FdgxQ

Keaton's MGM talkies are largely dreadful. And while I wouldn't describe his voice as "lovely," it does fit his persona and physique remarkably well.

Ok maybe not "lovely" but a lot of marble-y character - he sounds great 30 years later on Buster Keaton Rides Again, too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfQgTirVhdY&index=2&list=PL67E56794F9608FDA&t=0s

Try again...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQIJZ5zX6nw&app=desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQIJZ5zX6nw

In the Gilbert Gottfried podcast w/ James Karen that was recommended after JK's death last week, Karen describes Joe Keaton tossing Buster into the wings and occasionally into the audience in the family act (when BK was 5 or 6). He quoted Buster: "The old man wasn't so bad... Before he threw me into the audience he'd say, 'Better tighten up your asshole, Bus.' "

The Bogdanovich documentary opens here over Christmas. Keaton died in '66, which leaves the window open for some "Buster and I" anecdotes. I'll see it anyway.

Caught the last screening of The Great Buster. Well intentioned, but I don't think Bogdanovich does Keaton any favours. He makes this odd decision to save the 10 features--"The Keaton decade"--for the end of the film. So you get his life story up to 1921 or so, brief mention of what comes next ("But we'll get to that later"), then the story picks up as sound comes in and Keaton's career starts to fall apart. My guess is that Bogdanovich wanted to end with the period of triumph rather than the checkered rest of his life; there also may have been the assumption that anyone seeing this knows the films and the life story well already. Maybe--I have to believe some people will see The Great Buster knowing very little about Keaton, and how do you give full weight to his appearances in Sunset Boulevard and Limelight without the context of those 10 features? I also thought that maybe Bogdanovich the film critic would have all these insightful things to say about the films being saved for the end. No: he offers plot summaries and assertions ("one of his funniest scenes," etc.). The interview subjects are a mixed lot. Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Dick Van Dyke, absolutely. Werner Herzog and Tarantino--sure, why not. But the director of the Jackass films gets more screen time than any of them (or anybody else, I think). If you go for the clips, there are lots of them; if you're looking for more, be forewarned. (Big surprise: Orson Welles gets worked in towards the end.)

watched the great buster on a flight today. it was pretty wack ... as clemenza mentioned above the structure just didn't make any sense, and the people being interviewed were really hit or miss. It would have been better, i think, to have told his life story in chronological order, peppering in some notable gags and maybe interviews with those who actually knew him. it was obviously the narrators passion project, and that intensity did show through in a nice way at times. still, it was a bizarre hodge-podge tbh

BK Day next Monday on TCM. Kinda mean to show Doughboys? As is showing the Lost Horizon remake on Liv Day.

http://summer.tcm.com/

BK's MGM talkies leave much to be desired, but Doughboys is hardly the worst of the lot. How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, OTOH....

I didn't see The Great Buster when it was in theaters, and I have no intention of watching it on TCM. Bogdanovich's reputation for Golden Age brownnosing put me right off. I almost wish Jeff Tremaine, or other people doing contemporary physical comedy, had made the documentary and interviewed Bogdanovich.

As for the 1970s version of Lost Horizon, I saw on TCM.com requests--presumably from authentic watchers--that it be screened. Between the fans and the aficionados of flop films, there's an audience.

afaik I haven't seen Doughboys. I suppose it can't be worse than the Durante teamings.

I've been looking at some of the shorts with Arbuckle that I realized I'd never seen (or had forgotten): Out West, Moonshine, The Rough House, Oh Doctor1 etc. Still strange to see him pulling faces, crying, and all that. In Out West he's kinda like Deadwood's Al Swearengen.

TCM is mercifully omitting Free and Easy (the final musical number...). Although I wouldn't mind seeing Estrellados, the alternate Spanish-language version.

Adam Gopnick:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/what-made-buster-keatons-comedy-so-modern-biography-james-curtis-dana-stevens

Oh, is that bio out now? Thought about ordering a copy.

I leafed through Stevens' on my Sunday bookstore run; got it reserved in the library after Gottlieb's Garbo bio.

Oh, I only knew about the Curtis one.

Oh, I see. The Stevens is out, but not the Curtis until next week.

Wonder if James Karen is interviewed.

but the Roman sequences are done with even more panache than Mel Brooks’s “History of the World, Part I.”

Have you read the book about Dietrich by her daughter, Maria Riva?

https://filmforum.org/series/busters-century

Would be nice to go to see James Curtis introduce.

Autographed copies of the Dana Stevens at MoMI.

Nice article by Geoffrey O’Brien in current NYRB.

Actually I didn’t read the article yet, just the email about it which also mentions and links to several other relevant articles from yesteryear.

Have both the Curtis and Stevens books, the latter is shorter so I will try that one first.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n02/john-lahr/puzzled-puss

I read the Stevens and enjoyed it very much. A good biography interspersed with many interesting diversions about the times Buster lived and worked in. I started the Curtis but felt like I was getting pummeled with biographical minutiae and didn't get very far.

Sounds about right, thanks.

yeah i just finished the Stevens and it was good but does zigzag around quite a bit

Miniseries from Blank Check on Keaton’s movies.. starts here

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/three-ages-our-hospitality-with-dana-stevens/id981330533?i=1000612019681