Category Archives: History

filmevolution filmevolution2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irxTFObMYH8

A diligently researched and rather excellent (if largely Hollywood focussed) montage by Scott Ewing, who (prior to suddenly disappearing from Vimeo) sez:

The following montage chronicles the evolution of film from its conception in 1878 by Edward J. Muybridge to the Lumiere brothers in 1895. Georges Melies a trip to the moon in 1902 was a total game changer and from there we go to the first theatrical releases starting in 1920-2014 … this portion of the montage is chronological. There are some notable films which are absent from the montage such as the Great Train Robbery (1903), The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) and Birth of a Nation (1915). These and many others were either impossible to find or did not fit in with the creative direction of the montage. There is also a Dumb and Dumber (1994) dancing clip between Tropic Thunder and 500 Days of Summer … this was intentional I assure you.

curiousbrain

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Liggy writes:

I thought you might like this framed photo seen in a South East London pub last weekend. Blackheath is the oldest open rugby club in the UK formed in 1858. In 1890, the same year Gladstone refused to consider Home Rule for Ireland, our rugby team headed over to Blackheath to play a game of rugby with the English team.Anyone know what the score was?

Anyone?

-1-4 -6 -5-2 -3

Of this nerdgasmic chocky-buttoned CRT orgy, John Gallen writes:

I took these pics down at IACT on Fitzwillam St Upper [Dublin] this afternoon – consoles, old Amstrads, Macs… and that’s Defender on the right screen in the first pic… ;)

Say their names. Right there. Oh yeah.

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Two prints from the Museum Of The City Of New York showing five photographers –  Joe Byron, Pirie MacDonald,  Theodore C Marceau, Pop Core and Ben Falk – posing for group selfies on the roof of Marceau’s studio in New York.

thisisnthappiness

 

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Photographer Christopher Morris’s shots of the NY subway 33 years ago – the grimy, crime-ridden, tag-covered face of what, until a crackdown by the NYPD and Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy in the late 90s, was one of America’s most dangerous cities.

(Top pic: An original chalk drawing by the late artist Keith Haring. Bottom pic; two vigilante ‘Guardian Angels’ )

designboom

london

In the mid 1920’s, cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene travelled around  the UK with his (at the time) high tech colour film camera to create a famous series of films called The Open Road, subsequently restored and circulated by the BFI.

Last year, filmmaker Simon Smith retraced Friese-Greene’s journey through London, mimicking the timing, angles and location of the original sequences shot for shot.

If you’re at all familiar with London, the side by side comparison above is somewhat awesome.

colossal/stellar

piroshpirosh
A letter sent by 24 year-old future screenwriter Robert Pirosh (1910 – 1989) to the directors and producers of Hollywood in 1934.

It landed him three interviews and a job as junior writer with MGM which led on to a gig writing for the Marx Brothers and, later, an Oscar for his script for Battleground in 1949.

lettersofnote

(Pic: guardian)

(H/T: Marsupial)