Classic cinema - thoughts and questions

Bookworm data hack lets you map every word in 100,000 screenplays! You can do your own research here if you're interested in a particular word or director: http://movies.benschmidt.org/



From stuff The Guardian did:

If you’ve ever wanted to find out that Steven Soderbergh never put the word ‘sex’ in his films in the late 90s, or that ‘fuck’ has overtaken ‘shit’ as South Park’s curse of choice, you’re in luck: an ingenious data visualisation by US professor Benjamin Schmidt is mapping all the words used in 100,000 films and TV show episodes.
It uses the Bookworm tool, which has already visualised the words used in science publications, newspapers and Congress bills, and scans a database of captions to draw down its data.

You can tailor your enquiry to an impressive degree, searching the words used in individual shows like Friends and Family Guy, or by individual film directors including John Ford, Claude Chabrol, and Takashi Miike. There’s also scope for searching by genre, language, film studio and even filming location. Once you’ve got your search parameters, a graph is created with frequency of the words used plotted over the last few decades.

One example graph plots the amount that Woody Allen mentions ‘sex’ and ‘money’. As he gets older, the former declines while the latter ascends – psychologists can make of that what they will.

We took the tools out for a spin, and found the following factoids.

  • Across all film and TV, “sex” became more and more popular as the 20th century went along, reaching an apex in 2008 – since when it has markedly dropped off. Maybe we’re not all so single-minded after all.
  • Doctor Who mentioned “time” a faintly ridiculous 4,400 times per million words for its 1983 episodes, later settling back down to its usual level of 1,500.
  • For Steven Spielberg, “love” always conquers “dead”, with Saving Private Ryan notching a big 1,205 mentions of love. Only Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom sees more “dead” mentions.
  • Robert Altman also felt the love more as his career went on, reaching a swoony peak with Gosford Park and A Prairie Home Companion.
  • Aside from a dip in the mid-60s, Alfred Hitchcock became increasingly preoccupied with “dead” – rising from around 100 words per million in the 30s to 550 in his last films.
  • After an initial infatuation, Homer Simpson gets over his “doughnut” obsession for the central few series of the Simpsons, only to rekindle his love in the latest episodes.
  • “Meth” doesn’t deviate from a steady 350-400 mentions per million throughout Breaking Bad.
  • Martin Scorsese hit headlines for his “fuck”-filled Wolf of Wall Street, and it’s a word he’s become steadily more fond of, rising from around 500 per million in the 80s to 1,750 in recent years – and Shutter Island actually has more “fucks” per million than Wolf.
  • The cast of Lost, much like the audience, used the word “confused” more and more as the seasons passed.
  • Bookworm suggests that “feck” was used at a constant rate of 730 words per million throughout every episode of Father Ted. It might be a glitch.
 
Forostar said:
Saving Private Ryan notching a big 1,205 mentions of love
Click to expand...

That can't be right. It just can't. Saving Private Ryan is 169 minutes. Assuming "mentions of love" go from the very start to the very end, that's 7.13 loves per minute. That's a "mention of love" every 8.4 seconds on average.

I may have to watch this movie again, because that doesn't sound right.
 
That's very wrong...

http://movies.benschmidt.org/#?{"search_limits":[{"word":["love"],"MovieYear":{"$gte":1931,"$lte":2015},"medium__id":["2"],"primary_original_language__id":["1"],"director__id":["28"]},{"word":[""],"MovieYear":{"$gte":1931,"$lte":2015},"primary_original_language__id":["1"]}],"counttype":"WordCount","words_collation":"Case_Insensitive"}

The graph says 1998 Speilbergs movies mentioned the word 'love' 4 times, and the only movie it lists for that year is Saving Private Ryan.
It also shows Artificial Intelligence mentions the word 'love' more than any of his other films, at 34 times.

Scanned the subtitles file myself, the word love appears ONCE. 6 appearances including parts of other words - loved (x2), lover, gloves, beloved.

EDIT: The linked article shows a graph for the Saving Private Ryan fact specifically, and it says down the side "Words per million" (whereas my link above is to words in the entire film)... however, even changing my graph to that still gives a very different looking one to the one they provide.
Guardian:
485e1e2e-6ec8-4c60-9711-d982aeea585b-460x276.jpeg


Actual:
http://movies.benschmidt.org/#?{"se..."28"]}],"words_collation":"Case_Insensitive"}
 
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Every time I see a new post in this thread, I assume someone has died. Glad that wasn't the case this time. ;)
 
http://nofilmschool.com/2014/09/alfred-hitchcock-use-eyes-subject-video-essay

If eyes are the windows to the soul, then watching a Hitchcock film must be downright spiritual. Video essayist kogonada has culled a bunch of scenes from the work of Alfred Hitchcock to examine how the legendary director paid special attention to eyes in his films.


We love the video essays of kogonada, from his studies on neorealism to the use of hands in the films of Robert Bresson, and this one is no different. He manages to include such a wide variety of Hitchcock's films, as well as all of the iconic shots of eyes, like Jimmy Stuart's in Vertigo and Anthony Perkins' in Psycho.

So, Hitchcock likes eyes. So what? Why does any of this matter? Well, eyes are not only objects that can be peered into; they can also peer out. Eyes can be voyeuristic and voyeurism is a theme Hitchcock used constantly in his films (Rear Window, Psycho). And of course, eyes have an incredible capacity for relaying emotional messages. The viewer is constantly aware of where the eyes are looking, what they're looking at, and what emotion they're feeling while they're doing it. Essentially, Hitchcock mastered telling stories, narratively and specially, using eyes and eyelines, so if you need a damn good teacher to show you how to do it, he'd be the one. (If you have time, you should definitely check out this study of Hitchcock's use of eyes as well.)
 
Speaking of Hitchcock, a local theater is doing free screenings of several of his movies this month (outside on the patio). Vertigo, probably my favorite of his, is tonight. Looks like it will be a nice evening, so I think we are going.
 
Thanks .. I saw Psycho like this a few years ago. It was incredible seeing with a crowd ... everyone was really into it. I had only seen in on TV (VHS, LD, and DVD) at that point. It was a totally different experience with an audience. I would recommend doing it if you get a chance.
 
This should be interesting.


http://variety.com/2014/film/news/orson-welles-final-film-2015-release-1201341048/
Orson Welles’ unfinished final film, “The Other Side of the Wind,” may be heading for a theatrical release next year.

The New York Times has reported that Royal Road Entertainment has reached an agreement to buy the rights to “The Other Side of the Wind” with the aim of showing the film by May 6 — the 100th anniversary of Welles’ birth. The report said Royal Road is planning to promote the distribution at the American Film Market next week.

Welles shot the film-within-a-film between 1970 and 1976 and then worked on it until his death in 1985, leaving behind a 45-minute work print that he had smuggled out of France. John Huston starred as a temperamental film director battling with Hollywood executives to finish a movie –much like Welles did throughout his career. Susan Strasberg, Lilli Palmer, Dennis Hopper and Peter Bogdanovich played supporting roles.

To obtain the rights, Royal Road has negotiated agreements with Welles’s collaborator, Oja Kodar; his daughter and sole heir, Beatrice Welles; and Iranian-French production company, L’Astrophore. Welles had financed through a combination of TV roles and investors, including Mehdi Bushehri, brother-in-law of the shah of Iran and an investor in L’Astrophore.

As a result of clashing with Welles, Bushehri took control of more than 1,000 negative reels, which have been stored in a Paris warehouse.

Since Welles’ death, a multitude of efforts have been made to sort out the legal issues in order to complete. Two years ago, veteran producer Frank Marshall, who was a line producer on “The Other Side of the Wind,” joined with Royal Road’s Filip Jan Rymsza to approach Beatrice Welles and Oja Kodar.

Beatrice Welles, who manages the Welles estate, told the Times that the 2012 visit was key to starting the process of getting the film finished. Marshall and Bogdanovich will assemble the film.

“We have notes from Orson Welles,” Marshall told the Times. “We have scenes that weren’t quite finished, and we need to add music. We will get it done. The good news is that it won’t take so long because of all of the technology today.”
 
Nice! I like this:
bearfan said:
Welles shot the film-within-a-film between 1970 and 1976 and then worked on it until his death in 1985, leaving behind a 45-minute work print that he had smuggled out of France. John Huston starred as a temperamental film director battling with Hollywood executives to finish a movie –much like Welles did throughout his career.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a great topic for a film! :) Also cool collaborators!
 
I'm going to watch Telefon, a 1977 crime film, starring Charles Bronson and Donald Pleasance, directed by Don Siegel. The film is based on a 1975 novel about mind control, by Walter Wager.

A funny thing I read about it:

According to director Don Siegel, actress Lee Remick was terrified of Charles Bronson, and when asked to touch his face during a scene, responded
"I don't dare. He'll bite me!"
 
A few years ago, a writer for Forbes magazine ranked the top Christmas movies of all time. His #1 pick? Die Hard. Which begs the question, one I've debated with a number of people over the years: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Discuss.

Here is the case made by Forbes:
"Die Hard is everything every Christmas movie should always be forever. It’s a mix of the baddie from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas; the unbeatable hero who shows up to teach everyone a lesson from Miracle On 34th Street; the ghosts of past, present, and future who bring insight and change from A Christmas Carol; plus every redemptive struggle about family and personal evolution and good versus evil, all wrapped up in a big shiny box with a bow made of explosions and bullets."

My personal favorite Christmas movie is Bad Santa. Effing hysterical.
 
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Cornfed Hick said:
A few years ago, a writer for Forbes magazine ranked the top Christmas movies of all time. His #1 pick? Die Hard.
Click to expand...
I've been saying it for years. Die Hard is the story of a man making right with his family. What could be more Christmasy than that?
 
Which Sherlock Holmes adaptations have you seen?

According to Guinness World Records, Sherlock Holmes is the “most portrayed movie character,” with more than 70 actors having played the sleuth in over 200 films. Current renditions of the show, such as Sherlock and Elementary, give modern spins on the 125-year-old character, and recently Sir Ian McKellen has announced that he will be playing a 93-year-old version of the infamous ‘consulting detective’ in the 2015 film Mr. Holmes. Needless to say, Sherlock Holmes is alive and well, and possibly more popular than he’s ever been.

Holmes first appeared in print in 1887 by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He was featured in four novels and 56 short stories by Conan Doyle, and has since been written about by numerous other authors. Holmes made the leap to the visual medium in William Gillette’s 1899 play, Sherlock Holmes, or The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner, and has since been portrayed in every decade since, first on stage, then on the silver screen, and eventually on television.

It goes without saying that many superb and talented actors have played Holmes, from Charlton Heston to Christopher Lee, and from Robert Downey Jr. to Michael Caine. Still, not every actor who has played the part has done a stellar job: Roger Moore was famously bad as he tried to channel James Bond, and Robert Downey Jr.’s superhero version of the character would probably have Arthur Conan Doyle turning in his grave. There seems to be something about the paradoxical nature of Holmes that is difficult to pin down on film. There are some actors, however, who have personified the detective, and many careers have been defined by the role.

Here are 10 of the best adaptations of Sherlock Holmes as rated by viewers, critics, and polls.
http://whatculture.com/film/10-best-sherlock-holmes-film-adaptations.php

- - - - - - -


10. no
09. 1st film: no; 2nd: yes
08. Hound: yes; Sign of Four: not sure
07. yes
06. yes
05. no
04. yes
03. yes
02. yes
01. yes
 
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