Occasionally, I will write on a baseball game I have watched. This is #1. MLB.tv offers a free game per day, which I like to watch, as I am too cheap to buy a full subscription and lack cable TV at the moment. It is an interesting way to follow the game, never knowing what the next game will be. You get to see every team over a period of time. Right now I'm watching Kansas City at Texas. Yesterday I watched Seattle at Minnesota. Watching a random game takes the fan emotion out of the equation. You hardly ever get to see your team. Also, it's very interesting to watch bad teams. They can teach as much about the game as good teams.
Seattle (24-31) v Minnesota (23-29) isn't as bad as, say, Miami v Houston. But pretty bad. Both teams have little if any chance to be playing post-season baseball. I wonder what players on teams that are out of it in June think about while they are playing every day. Take the money out of it for a moment. Each player on each team has had tremendous individual, if not necessarily team success throughout his baseball life. They are all great players, so much better than non-professionals that most fans watching have no idea just how good they are. To get an idea, try watching a few high level amateur games. And yet here they are, grinding out game after game in a season where .500 (81-81) would be a great accomplishment for each of these teams. Perhaps they concentrate on every game as they play it and don't worry about the drab context they are in. And for great players on bad teams, like Seattle's Felix Hernandez or Minnesota's Joe Mauer, do they wonder "How did this happen to me?"
It was an interesting game, with a fabulous finish, in which Minnesota won on a triple by Ryan Doumit.
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2013_06_01_seamlb_minmlb_1&mode=box#gid=2013_06_01_seamlb_minmlb_1&mode=video
and click on "video" "Doumit's walk-off winner."
Doumit is in his 15th professional season, with 6 minor league teams, as well as seven seasons with Pittsburgh and two with Minnesota in the majors. He has had many great games.
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/D/PX_doumr001.htm
This was one of them. His third hit of the game beat Seattle's stud "closer" (a 9th inning only pitcher who's only job is to get three outs with his team in the lead), what is known in baseball as a "walk-off" hit. It must have been very satisfying for a guy who also caught the whole game, the last third of which was played in a steady rain.
Other interesting features.
A. Home Plate umpire Tim McClelland, who is in his 33rd major league season, and who has umpired the plate over 1050 times, did not call a single third strike in the entire game. Home plate umpires' signature calls are their called third strikes, the one time they can really express themselves. McClelland's regular called strikes are so nonchalant they are hard to recognize, so I kept waiting to see how he would express himself. I'm still waiting.
B. Minnesota regular first baseman Justin Morneau reported to the park sick, so rookie Chris Colabello replaced him. Colabello has a pretty unique background. He played seven years in the independent CanAm League,
http://www.canamleague.com/history.php
of which he is one of three current graduates to the major leagues
http://www.canamleague.com/alumni.php
He then played two seasons of minor league ball before getting to the majors. The broadcasters mentioned this during the game, so I watched him closely during his four at bats to see if he would have stars in his eyes. But he didn't. He had perfect major league body language. He looked like a ten year major league veteran to me. Too bad he had only one hit in four times at bat. When Morneau regains his health, Colabello will return to the bench. But what a story this is, even if Colabello never plays another major league game. There's a movie to be made of this guy's life. I hope someone makes it.
Update 3: Colabello came out of the blocks in a big way in 2014, putting up great numbers for in his first week. He went 9 for his first 23, with a home run and 11 RBI as Minnesota split 6 games. .391 ba, .696 slg. For his highlights for the week see:
http://mlb.mlb.com/search/media.jsp?player_id=499624
What a story!!
Update 2: On Labor Day, Sep. 2, Colabello had a career day v Houston. He hit two home runs (5th and 6th of the season), drove in 5 runs, and won the game with a grand slam home run in the top of the ninth inning.
Home run #1:
http://wapc.mlb.com/play/?content_id=30260527&c_id=mlb
Grand slam home run:
http://wapc.mlb.com/play/?content_id=30267995&c_id=mlb
Obligatory interview:
http://wapc.mlb.com/play/?content_id=30276197&c_id=mlb&topic_id=vtp_behind_the_scenes
Update: July 27, 2013. On Jul. 20, Colabello was called up by the Twins for the third time this season. On Jul. 26, again vs Seattle, after entering the game as a pinch hitter in the 8th, Colabello came up with a man on in the 13th.
http://www.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=29177513&c_id=mlb&topic_id=vtp_longest_drives
1st Major League home run, and it won a ballgame.
Obligatory interview:
http://wapc.mlb.com/play/?content_id=29182219&c_id=mlb
Go Chris!!
C. Minnesota is presently playing with a 25 man roster, 13 of whom are pitchers. This left manager Ron Gardenhire, with Morneau being sick, two position moves to make for the entire game. Does any team, much less one that is out of contention in June, need eight non-starting pitchers?
Which leads to the most interesting part (to me, anyway) of the game. In baseball, TV commentating is usually done by a two man team, one who tells you what you are seeing (a pretty redundant role, especially with all the graphics available today, for any fan who watches the game) and an "analyst", usually a former major league player who can tell you a whole lot if you listen. For example, in the June 1, 2013 game between Chicago and Oakland, Oakland baserunner Yoenis Cespedes was picked off first and headed to second. It took the Chicago defense four throws to get him. First baseman to shortstop to pitcher to second baseman to catcher. This is an excellent run-out rotation primer for a pick-off run down. But the idea is to do it with the fewest throws possible as plan A, and with the runner going back to the base he came from as plan B. Chicago violated both these rules and it was only Cespedes' increasing exhaustion as he headed toward second for the third time that allowed the Chicago catcher to tag him. Chicago analyst Steve Stone, a very intelligent ex-pitcher, summed this up succinctly. "That's exactly how you want to work your run-down. You want to throw the ball as much as you possibly can." Stone can be a very funny man. Don't believe it? See:
http://wapc.mlb.com/play/?content_id=27649537
But I digress. The Twins analyst is Hall of Fame ex-pitcher Bert Blyleven.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/blylebe01.shtml
Blyleven won 287 major league games in 22 seasons. He pitched over 300 innings once, and over 250 innings 8 times. He threw 262 complete games and 60 shutouts. As you might expect, he takes a dim view of how managers handle modern day pitchers, and an even dimmer view of so called "pitch counts." It was wonderful to hear Blyleven pontificate on these matters more than once during the telecast. He especially relished talking about a contemporary of his, Mickey Lolich, who once pitched 376 innings in a season and pitched over 300 innings four times.
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/L/Plolim101.htm
Blyleven finished by editorializing something to the effect that he had his own feelings about the state of modern day pitching, but couldn't say how he felt on the air. He said he might blog about it sometime. As for me, that blog can't come soon enough!
All in all, a lot of food for thought in a single, pretty much meaningless baseball game that will be forgotten as soon as yesterday's newspaper. And thanks to the free game of the day, I got to see it all.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
William Wellman meets Kenneth Anger
What a small world the film world is. Last night I went to our newly expanded art museum, the Chazen to see The President Vanishes, a little known Paramount film made in 1934. The Cinemathique was showing it as part of its New Deal Cinema series, in conjunction with the Chazen's new exhibit: A New Deal for Artists.
The film is interesting as an artifact of its time. The plot, basically, is that the President fakes his own kidnapping in order to keep Congress from approving of entering a war which has just started in Europe. He must do this because the villains of the piece are conspiring to brainwash the yokels into war fever. And who are these villains? This is where the film is quite daring, for its time, or any other. They are a lobbyist, a big banker, a munitions magnate, an oil baron, a newspaper baron, and a judge. Originally, the judge was to be a Senator, a la the corrupt Senator Payne (Claude Rains) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. However, the Production Code Administration would have nothing to do with that.
The villains' conversation in a smoke filled room at the beginning of the picture is the highlight. They need to convince the yokels to go to war in order to guarantee their profits. In addition, the oil baron is running a fascist organization called the "gray shirts" who break up workers meetings and beat the hell out of any dissenters. Pretty amazing stuff. The film is played much more harshly than the Capra populist pictures (in particular, Meet John Doe) that came along later. Capra without the corn. That's because the Director, William Wellman, harbored no illusions about fascism, the social failings of Capitalism, or the dark side of human nature (see his The Ox Bow Incident
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036244/
The Public Enemy
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022286/
or Wild Boys of the Road
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024772/
for more with regard to those issues.
This picture lacks some of the very basics in terms of what the film gurus would call "production values." The acting, with the exception of the always excellent Edward Arnold and a surprisingly strong Rosalind Russell (in a small part), is terrible, and the writing melodramatic, oversimplified, and overwrought. But it's hard to argue with Wellman's credentials as movie maker. The camera moves all over the place and Wellman can hold his own with anyone when it comes to montage or super-imposition. So this one is attractive to watch in spite of its weaknesses.
While I was watching, I took particular notice of a character part (personal bodyguard of the President). The actor looked familiar, but I couldn't place him until the end credits identified him. His name was Paul Kelly. I had an aha! moment but wasn't sure until I got home and pulled out Hollywood Babylon II, by Kenneth Anger. HB II is the sequel (written in the mid-1980s) to a much better Anger volume, Hollywood Babylon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Babylon
(Pay no attention to the criticism in the article. While it is mostly true, it takes nothing away from the entertainment value of the book). See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/aug/22/fiction.features6
for a more nuanced vision of Anger.
There it was, the first chapter of HBII, devoted entirely to Paul Kelly. It seems that Paul Kelly was having an affair with the wife of stage actor Ray Raymond. Raymond objected to this and they got into a drunken brawl. Kelly ended up beating Raymond to death. Both he and Raymond's wife ended up in San Quentin for a couple of years. Both were model prisoners and Kelly ended up with a long film and stage career after his release. The President Vanishes is one of the first movies he made after his release.
Small world.
The film is interesting as an artifact of its time. The plot, basically, is that the President fakes his own kidnapping in order to keep Congress from approving of entering a war which has just started in Europe. He must do this because the villains of the piece are conspiring to brainwash the yokels into war fever. And who are these villains? This is where the film is quite daring, for its time, or any other. They are a lobbyist, a big banker, a munitions magnate, an oil baron, a newspaper baron, and a judge. Originally, the judge was to be a Senator, a la the corrupt Senator Payne (Claude Rains) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. However, the Production Code Administration would have nothing to do with that.
The villains' conversation in a smoke filled room at the beginning of the picture is the highlight. They need to convince the yokels to go to war in order to guarantee their profits. In addition, the oil baron is running a fascist organization called the "gray shirts" who break up workers meetings and beat the hell out of any dissenters. Pretty amazing stuff. The film is played much more harshly than the Capra populist pictures (in particular, Meet John Doe) that came along later. Capra without the corn. That's because the Director, William Wellman, harbored no illusions about fascism, the social failings of Capitalism, or the dark side of human nature (see his The Ox Bow Incident
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036244/
The Public Enemy
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022286/
or Wild Boys of the Road
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024772/
for more with regard to those issues.
This picture lacks some of the very basics in terms of what the film gurus would call "production values." The acting, with the exception of the always excellent Edward Arnold and a surprisingly strong Rosalind Russell (in a small part), is terrible, and the writing melodramatic, oversimplified, and overwrought. But it's hard to argue with Wellman's credentials as movie maker. The camera moves all over the place and Wellman can hold his own with anyone when it comes to montage or super-imposition. So this one is attractive to watch in spite of its weaknesses.
While I was watching, I took particular notice of a character part (personal bodyguard of the President). The actor looked familiar, but I couldn't place him until the end credits identified him. His name was Paul Kelly. I had an aha! moment but wasn't sure until I got home and pulled out Hollywood Babylon II, by Kenneth Anger. HB II is the sequel (written in the mid-1980s) to a much better Anger volume, Hollywood Babylon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Babylon
(Pay no attention to the criticism in the article. While it is mostly true, it takes nothing away from the entertainment value of the book). See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/aug/22/fiction.features6
for a more nuanced vision of Anger.
There it was, the first chapter of HBII, devoted entirely to Paul Kelly. It seems that Paul Kelly was having an affair with the wife of stage actor Ray Raymond. Raymond objected to this and they got into a drunken brawl. Kelly ended up beating Raymond to death. Both he and Raymond's wife ended up in San Quentin for a couple of years. Both were model prisoners and Kelly ended up with a long film and stage career after his release. The President Vanishes is one of the first movies he made after his release.
Small world.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
A fun way to "watch" historical ball games
I found a new (well, not so new, its been around since 2010) baseball site today. Absolutely fascinating. The great sites
http://www.retrosheet.org/
and
http://www.baseball-reference.com/
have text play by plays going back to 1945, with pitch by pitches going back to the late 1980's (except for Dodger games, which have pitch by pitch accounts going from 1949-1964, thanks to the genius of their great statistician Allan Roth
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Allan_Roth
who kept official track long before anyone else.) Unfortunately for baseball fans, Roth left the Dodgers in 1964 for NBC, so we only have pitch by pitches for Koufax and Drysdale for one of their great years (1963). Text allows you to imagine watching the game, and with baseball-reference, you can even keep track of the pitch by pitch (retrosheet keeps pitch by pitch data in a separate file, which is designed for export into statistical programs, so it's much more difficult to follow casually).
And all that is wonderful, it really is. You can read games that you went to, or follow particular players or pennant races. But it still isn't really "watching the game."
If you want to have some fun, try Back to Baseball:
http://www.backtobaseball.com
Here, you can pick a team, and follow every game it has played since 1945, both regular and post season, or search for a particular game, pennant race, or player. What you get is just like the old timey mechanical scoreboards that they used to have so people could follow old-timey ball games before the days of radio and TV. See:
http://www.schubincafe.com/2012/09/26/watching-remote-baseball-games-before-tv/
It's just like that, only electronic. And the cool thing is when a right handed batter is up, his name is in the right handers batters box, and a left-handed batter is in the left handed batters box.
You still need retrosheet and/or baseball-reference for the context of the game (pitchers records, standings, etc.). But backtobaseball specializes in taking retrosheet data and turning it into an actual animated ball game. Of course it ain't TV, but try finding a game from 1946 on TV.
I tried it with two games today. I also have some ancillary information that enhances the experience even more.
A. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (Fireside Press, 2004). The heart of this incredible book is a census of pitchers and what they threw. Every pitcher who threw 1,000 innings or in 400 games, along with a whole lot who didn't, are in the census. Neyer and James have researched and sourced the repertoire for each of these pitchers. So you get the name, handedness, career span, and record of each of these pitchers, along with their repertoire. Great pitchers have more information.
B. I have access to full text Newspaper accounts from the NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the entire span of the modern era, as well as microform access to every major newspaper in the US for the same time period. So I can look up major accounts for NY Yankees, NY Giants, Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, LA/California/Anaheim/LA Angels, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Milwaukee Braves/Brewers games easily, and have access to newspaper accounts of every game played since 1901.
So I experimented today with two games.
1. Opening Day, April 10, 1959, Chicago White Sox at Detroit Tigers. Chicago--Billy Pierce (5'10" 160lb, Lefty, 211-169, 3.27 ERA, 1945-1964--threw fastball, curve, slider [added in 1951] and change. There is also a major article on Pierce in the Neyer/James book. He was a tremendous though now almost forgotten pitcher in his era.
v
Detroit--Jim Bunning (6'3" 190lb, righty, 224-184, 3.27 ERA 1955-1971--threw slider, fastball, curve, and change. He threw sidearm and Ted Williams remembered his slider as rising not dropping.
Unfortunately, as described in the Chicago Tribune article of April 11, by Richard Dozier, the game was played in blustery, 37 degree weather. It was an extra inning game, 14 innings, and lasted over 4 hours. I won't spoil it by giving you the winner, except to say that Nelson Fox had a career day for the White Sox. It was a high scoring game, with many pitchers, so not so much fun, except for the drama of the game, as an old fashioned pitchers duel would be.
Watch the game at:
http://www.backtobaseball.com/gamesiteregularseason.php?IDindex=DET195904100
Click on "View Game."
2. An old fashioned pitchers duel, in the heat of the 1967 American League pennant race, July 13, California Angels at Chicago White Sox.
California--George Brunet (6'1" 195lb., lefty, 69-93, 3.62 ERA, 1956-1971--threw fastball, experimented with a knuckle ball in 1964, developed changeup in 1966, added a slider in 1968. So basically a power pitcher who was a relief pitcher much of his career, and then became a part time starter near the end of his career.
v.
Chicago--Gary Peters (6'2" 200lb., lefty, 124-103, 3.25 ERA 1959-1972--threw sinking fastball, slider, changeup, curve.
This was a tremendous pitcher's duel in the age of pitcher's duels and if you watch the game, notice how the two pitchers got most of their outs, in light of the kinds of pitches they threw.
Edward Prell, in the Chicago Tribune of Jul. 14, emphasizes the pop gun nature of the Sox "offense" that year, and said that Peters knew whenever he pitched, he also had to hit if the Sox were to have any chance to score.
John Hall, in the Los Angeles Times, gives a bit more insight than Prell's basic account of the game. Buck Rodgers (later a manager at Milwaukee) caught the game with a broken right thumb. Woody held pinch hit with a fractured toe for California. Bill (Moose) Skowron pinch hit for California, batting for the first time since suffering a 20 stitch cut to his hand a month earlier.
Watch the game at:
http://www.backtobaseball.com/gamesiteregularseason.php?IDindex=CHA196707130
Click on "View Game".
Backtobaseball provides the most visceral way this side of old recordings or kinescopes to follow the baseball from 1945-2012. And with the Neyer/James volume, its almost like you are an advance scout. A different kind of experience. The anti-SABR approach, if you will.
Enjoy!
I'm kicking around some ideas to use the sources I have to follow some of the greatest pitchers seasons and report on them in the blog. Koufax--1963, Gibson--1968, and perhaps the greatest single season pitching performance in the history of baseball--Carlton--1972 are among the candidates.
http://www.retrosheet.org/
and
http://www.baseball-reference.com/
have text play by plays going back to 1945, with pitch by pitches going back to the late 1980's (except for Dodger games, which have pitch by pitch accounts going from 1949-1964, thanks to the genius of their great statistician Allan Roth
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Allan_Roth
who kept official track long before anyone else.) Unfortunately for baseball fans, Roth left the Dodgers in 1964 for NBC, so we only have pitch by pitches for Koufax and Drysdale for one of their great years (1963). Text allows you to imagine watching the game, and with baseball-reference, you can even keep track of the pitch by pitch (retrosheet keeps pitch by pitch data in a separate file, which is designed for export into statistical programs, so it's much more difficult to follow casually).
And all that is wonderful, it really is. You can read games that you went to, or follow particular players or pennant races. But it still isn't really "watching the game."
If you want to have some fun, try Back to Baseball:
http://www.backtobaseball.com
Here, you can pick a team, and follow every game it has played since 1945, both regular and post season, or search for a particular game, pennant race, or player. What you get is just like the old timey mechanical scoreboards that they used to have so people could follow old-timey ball games before the days of radio and TV. See:
http://www.schubincafe.com/2012/09/26/watching-remote-baseball-games-before-tv/
It's just like that, only electronic. And the cool thing is when a right handed batter is up, his name is in the right handers batters box, and a left-handed batter is in the left handed batters box.
You still need retrosheet and/or baseball-reference for the context of the game (pitchers records, standings, etc.). But backtobaseball specializes in taking retrosheet data and turning it into an actual animated ball game. Of course it ain't TV, but try finding a game from 1946 on TV.
I tried it with two games today. I also have some ancillary information that enhances the experience even more.
A. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (Fireside Press, 2004). The heart of this incredible book is a census of pitchers and what they threw. Every pitcher who threw 1,000 innings or in 400 games, along with a whole lot who didn't, are in the census. Neyer and James have researched and sourced the repertoire for each of these pitchers. So you get the name, handedness, career span, and record of each of these pitchers, along with their repertoire. Great pitchers have more information.
B. I have access to full text Newspaper accounts from the NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the entire span of the modern era, as well as microform access to every major newspaper in the US for the same time period. So I can look up major accounts for NY Yankees, NY Giants, Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, LA/California/Anaheim/LA Angels, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Milwaukee Braves/Brewers games easily, and have access to newspaper accounts of every game played since 1901.
So I experimented today with two games.
1. Opening Day, April 10, 1959, Chicago White Sox at Detroit Tigers. Chicago--Billy Pierce (5'10" 160lb, Lefty, 211-169, 3.27 ERA, 1945-1964--threw fastball, curve, slider [added in 1951] and change. There is also a major article on Pierce in the Neyer/James book. He was a tremendous though now almost forgotten pitcher in his era.
v
Detroit--Jim Bunning (6'3" 190lb, righty, 224-184, 3.27 ERA 1955-1971--threw slider, fastball, curve, and change. He threw sidearm and Ted Williams remembered his slider as rising not dropping.
Unfortunately, as described in the Chicago Tribune article of April 11, by Richard Dozier, the game was played in blustery, 37 degree weather. It was an extra inning game, 14 innings, and lasted over 4 hours. I won't spoil it by giving you the winner, except to say that Nelson Fox had a career day for the White Sox. It was a high scoring game, with many pitchers, so not so much fun, except for the drama of the game, as an old fashioned pitchers duel would be.
Watch the game at:
http://www.backtobaseball.com/gamesiteregularseason.php?IDindex=DET195904100
Click on "View Game."
2. An old fashioned pitchers duel, in the heat of the 1967 American League pennant race, July 13, California Angels at Chicago White Sox.
California--George Brunet (6'1" 195lb., lefty, 69-93, 3.62 ERA, 1956-1971--threw fastball, experimented with a knuckle ball in 1964, developed changeup in 1966, added a slider in 1968. So basically a power pitcher who was a relief pitcher much of his career, and then became a part time starter near the end of his career.
v.
Chicago--Gary Peters (6'2" 200lb., lefty, 124-103, 3.25 ERA 1959-1972--threw sinking fastball, slider, changeup, curve.
This was a tremendous pitcher's duel in the age of pitcher's duels and if you watch the game, notice how the two pitchers got most of their outs, in light of the kinds of pitches they threw.
Edward Prell, in the Chicago Tribune of Jul. 14, emphasizes the pop gun nature of the Sox "offense" that year, and said that Peters knew whenever he pitched, he also had to hit if the Sox were to have any chance to score.
John Hall, in the Los Angeles Times, gives a bit more insight than Prell's basic account of the game. Buck Rodgers (later a manager at Milwaukee) caught the game with a broken right thumb. Woody held pinch hit with a fractured toe for California. Bill (Moose) Skowron pinch hit for California, batting for the first time since suffering a 20 stitch cut to his hand a month earlier.
Watch the game at:
http://www.backtobaseball.com/gamesiteregularseason.php?IDindex=CHA196707130
Click on "View Game".
Backtobaseball provides the most visceral way this side of old recordings or kinescopes to follow the baseball from 1945-2012. And with the Neyer/James volume, its almost like you are an advance scout. A different kind of experience. The anti-SABR approach, if you will.
Enjoy!
I'm kicking around some ideas to use the sources I have to follow some of the greatest pitchers seasons and report on them in the blog. Koufax--1963, Gibson--1968, and perhaps the greatest single season pitching performance in the history of baseball--Carlton--1972 are among the candidates.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
An interesting movie.
I'm taking two film classes this semester, as a senior guest auditor (meaning it's free). So I'm in hyperdrive with films and wanted to recommend one to you. It is called Die Wiesse Holle Vom Pitz Palu/The White Hell of Pitz Palu. If you've seen Inglorious Basterds you might have heard of it. It was made in 1929. Sound had already come to America by then, but the Europeans held back a bit because sound was expensive and risky. And so this one is silent. It was one of a specific German genre known as the Mountain Film. Most of them were directed by Arnold Fanke, who discovered the actress and later film maker Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl was a big star by this time and insisted that Fanke hire G.W. Pabst to help him. Pabst was one of the greatest of a galaxy of German Directors in the 1920s (Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, and Paul Leni were some of the others).
The Mountain Films were shot on location and the actors did all their own stunts (except, of course, when they fell to their deaths in giant crevasses). This is an example of the peak (no pun intended) of the silent cinema. The film is three hours long, and the inter-titles are in German. The titles don't make a bit of difference in understanding the film, because, as Norma Desmond/Gloria Swanson said much later in Sunset Boulevard (paraphrasing here) "Talking pictures, nothing but a bunch of yak, yak, yakking." WHPP has been reconstructed with a beautiful soundtrack and is a joy to watch.
Silent films from about 1925-1930 were at the apex of an art form that was completely independent from the films that followed. Silents were not an evolutionary step on the way to sound, wide screen, and digital. They were an art unto themselves, a lost and buried art. If you are interested in seeing why, Kevin Brownlow's The Parade's Gone By... is a great starting point
I've been watching quite a few lately, The Wind (1928--Victor Sjostrom) (Intoduction by Lillian Gish) (Vimeo--music is jarring, you may want to watch it with no sound at all)
The Docks of New York (1928--Josef Von Sternberg)
Nanook of the North (1922--Robert Flaherty)
Robin Hood (1922--Allan Dwan--I watched this one with my mom, and as her vision isn't the best, I acted as her Benshi, really got into the role),
The Last Laugh/Der Letzte Mann, Sunrise, and Tabu (all F.W. Murnau, 1924, 27, and 31 respectively)
The Abyss (turn closed caption English on) (1910--Urban Gad, the film which introduced Asta Nielsen, one of the first great actresses)
Die Nibelungen (1924--Fritz Lang)
J'Accuse (1919--Abel Gance)
Man With a Movie Camera (1929--Dziga Vertov)
The End of St. Petersburg (1927--Vsevolod Pudovkin)
and the last silent film of the 20th Century, Juha (trailer only) (1999--Aki Kaurismaki)
Next time you watch a modern film, ask yourself how much of it is carried by the dialog. There is no dialog at all in Tabu.
WHPP is unique. I've never seen anything like it. If you get a chance, feast your eyes on it.
The Mountain Films were shot on location and the actors did all their own stunts (except, of course, when they fell to their deaths in giant crevasses). This is an example of the peak (no pun intended) of the silent cinema. The film is three hours long, and the inter-titles are in German. The titles don't make a bit of difference in understanding the film, because, as Norma Desmond/Gloria Swanson said much later in Sunset Boulevard (paraphrasing here) "Talking pictures, nothing but a bunch of yak, yak, yakking." WHPP has been reconstructed with a beautiful soundtrack and is a joy to watch.
Silent films from about 1925-1930 were at the apex of an art form that was completely independent from the films that followed. Silents were not an evolutionary step on the way to sound, wide screen, and digital. They were an art unto themselves, a lost and buried art. If you are interested in seeing why, Kevin Brownlow's The Parade's Gone By... is a great starting point
I've been watching quite a few lately, The Wind (1928--Victor Sjostrom) (Intoduction by Lillian Gish) (Vimeo--music is jarring, you may want to watch it with no sound at all)
The Docks of New York (1928--Josef Von Sternberg)
Nanook of the North (1922--Robert Flaherty)
Robin Hood (1922--Allan Dwan--I watched this one with my mom, and as her vision isn't the best, I acted as her Benshi, really got into the role),
The Last Laugh/Der Letzte Mann, Sunrise, and Tabu (all F.W. Murnau, 1924, 27, and 31 respectively)
The Abyss (turn closed caption English on) (1910--Urban Gad, the film which introduced Asta Nielsen, one of the first great actresses)
Die Nibelungen (1924--Fritz Lang)
J'Accuse (1919--Abel Gance)
Man With a Movie Camera (1929--Dziga Vertov)
The End of St. Petersburg (1927--Vsevolod Pudovkin)
and the last silent film of the 20th Century, Juha (trailer only) (1999--Aki Kaurismaki)
Next time you watch a modern film, ask yourself how much of it is carried by the dialog. There is no dialog at all in Tabu.
WHPP is unique. I've never seen anything like it. If you get a chance, feast your eyes on it.
Harvey Goldberg--Ideology of Private Property--1977
Here's my first shot. It's an annotated transcription I did some time ago of Harvey Goldberg's Lecture on the origins of private property.
Original audio lecture (#39) is available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120511113937/http://brechtforum.org/harvey-goldberg-lectures
You can read it at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0GaXGfixoCMZWtaa3Q5c2d3d1E/view?usp=sharing
This is a Microsoft Word document that has been saved into Google Documents. The links, though appearing to be live, may not be. I have discovered that if the internal links wrap around a line, they will not work from Google docs, as Google docs has inserted a line break, thereby breaking the URL. These URLs should work if you download the Word document and read it out of Word directly. Eventually I will put each URL on its own line. (8-Jul.-2013). If clicking on them doesn't work, then down arrow to save the file, and either save it to use with live links later, or open as a Microsoft Word document in another window. Once you have a live, working Word document, to get the links to work, just hit the CTRL key and left click the mouse on the link simultaneously.
Note that the links in the footnotes were put in over a year ago. Most of them work. For the ones that don't:
Cut them out of the browser (you won't be able to out of the Word document) and go to:
http://archive.org
remove the http;// from the "Wayback Machine" and paste the link in there. Find a date that is circled, and click on it. It will point correctly to the link that has since been changed. I know. I checked.
Original audio file (#39) is available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120511113937/http://brechtforum.org/harvey-goldberg-lectures
Hope the transcription is legible to you. Enjoy.
BTW: Who's Harvey Goldberg, some of you might ask? See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Goldberg
Original audio lecture (#39) is available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120511113937/http://brechtforum.org/harvey-goldberg-lectures
Address in the transcript may be out of date.
You can read it at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0GaXGfixoCMZWtaa3Q5c2d3d1E/view?usp=sharing
This is a Microsoft Word document that has been saved into Google Documents. The links, though appearing to be live, may not be. I have discovered that if the internal links wrap around a line, they will not work from Google docs, as Google docs has inserted a line break, thereby breaking the URL. These URLs should work if you download the Word document and read it out of Word directly. Eventually I will put each URL on its own line. (8-Jul.-2013). If clicking on them doesn't work, then down arrow to save the file, and either save it to use with live links later, or open as a Microsoft Word document in another window. Once you have a live, working Word document, to get the links to work, just hit the CTRL key and left click the mouse on the link simultaneously.
Note that the links in the footnotes were put in over a year ago. Most of them work. For the ones that don't:
Cut them out of the browser (you won't be able to out of the Word document) and go to:
http://archive.org
remove the http;// from the "Wayback Machine" and paste the link in there. Find a date that is circled, and click on it. It will point correctly to the link that has since been changed. I know. I checked.
Original audio file (#39) is available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120511113937/http://brechtforum.org/harvey-goldberg-lectures
Hope the transcription is legible to you. Enjoy.
BTW: Who's Harvey Goldberg, some of you might ask? See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Goldberg
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