AuteursGreat ArtSome Came Running by Glenn Kenny

Palate cleanser

By June 11, 2010January 12th, 20263 Comments

SB

The divine Buster, Steamboat Bill, Jr., 1928.

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3 Comments

  • bob roberts says:
    June 11, 2010 at 8:45 pm

    Thing is, I can­’t get into Keaton’s ancient act­ing style. I much prefer the post-modern com­edy of someone like Jackie Chan. Okay, all kid­ding aside, I take it that you have the Kino Blu-ray for review? May we pre­sume that it’s up to the stand­ards of THE GENERAL and most of the oth­er excel­lent hi-def releases from Kino so far?

  • Glenn Kenny says:
    June 11, 2010 at 8:52 pm

    Tres drole, Dr. Roberts. (And just in case any­body’s won­der­ing, I’m not telling any­one to boy­cott or not see the insouci­ant Ms. Dunham’s film; I was merely log­ging a per­son­al reac­tion that made me some­what less inclined to see it myself, or at least less inclined to make an espe­cial effort to see it. I’ll get around to it, I prom­ise. Maybe. Whatever.)
    This isn’t from the Blu-ray, which I haven’t snagged yet, but from the standard-def two disc set, which I only just got and haven’t looked into in its entirety yet. Icky old­ness aside, it looks prom­ising, and I’ll cer­tainly treat the Blu-ray in my July Consumer Guide if I get it in time. I find that even a small dose of Keaton is always genu­inely res­tor­at­ive stuff when I get bogged down in non­sense, self-generated or oth­er­wise. A return to first prin­ciples, as it were.

  • The Jake Leg Kid says:
    June 12, 2010 at 4:05 am

    Keaton’s brief encounter with the vent­ri­lo­quist’s dummy in STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. popped into my head early today for no par­tic­u­lar reas­on, as ran­dom moments from the Keaton ouvre often will. Just think­ing about Keaton’s films invari­ably light­ens my mood. His is a world where man is ulti­mately able to mas­ter tech­no­logy and nature alike, where the spir­it of vaudeville is still alive, and where your chimp sidekick will take over cam­era duties in a pinch if you’re try­ing to film a Tong war and things get hec­tic. Who would­n’t want to live there?
    I remem­ber see­ing OUR HOSPITALITY for the first time at Film Forum back in late ’91/early ’92. At the cli­mactic moment where Keaton saves Natalie Talmadge (well, a dummy stand-in) from the water­fall, some guy in the audi­ence spon­tan­eously shouted, “This is as good as it gets!” Brother, did he ever have it right.