Posts tagged ‘Buster’
The Great Big Beautiful Project Keaton Blogroll
Wow! What a month it’s been. I hardly know where to start .
Project Keaton has been a daily thrill over on the Project Keaton Tumblr page as well as here on The Pictorial, and with the project officially ending yesterday, I am delighted to post the our Great Big Beautiful Project Keaton Blogroll. The following is a list of every single contributor with links to their respective sites. If you haven’t been following Project Keaton on Tumblr, this is your chance to catch up on a month long of Buster Love. (Click here for a PDF of our blogroll_list.)
Silent film fans from all over the globe came out in droves to show their support for the project: England, Scotland, The Netherlands, Australia, Spain, South America and North America. The creative output has been fantastic. Thanks to every last blessed one of you for giving Buster something to smile about in October. Read more ►
Those Damn-Fine Damfinos: A Chat with the International Buster Keaton Society
The Kitty Packard Pictorial recently sat down with the Vice President of the International Buster Keaton Society for a chat about all things Keaton… and Damfino.
Some of silent film’s greatest legends are alive and well on a sleepy tree-lined street in West Hollywood. Douglas, Charlie, Roscoe, Rudy and Max (respectively) bullet out the front door in a kinetic burst of energy, every bit as charming as their silver screen counterparts, and nuzzle me up their front stoop. The rambunctious crew of spaniels belong to the lady waiting for me at the door. Dr Tracey Goessel: Vice President of the International Buster Keaton Society, Douglas Fairbanks historian supreme, an all around swell dame and owner of the most infectious little bunch of bow-wows in town.
With Doug and Charlie playing at my feet, I joined Goessel in her sitting room for a chat about the man of the hour, silent film legend Buster Keaton, and the venerable institution founded in his honor: The Damfinos. Read more ►
Project Keaton Guest Post: Silent Volume
Silent film blogger Chris Edwards runs Silent Volume, a site dedicated to the art of silent filmmaking. Its tagline, “this medium is not dead,” is backed by a wealth of reviews, editorials and general musings on silent films great and small. In conjunction with Project Keaton, Edwards has written a fabulous piece exploring the deeply human everyman appeal of Keaton’s work and its particular relevance in the 21st century. Follow him @SilentVolume
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Framed: Keaton in THE GOAT (1921)
My Twitter avatar is Buster Keaton. It’s a screenshot of him, behind bars, from THE GOAT, one of his short films.
People love it. They’ve called it ‘perfect.’ It’s cool to them the way Buster’s bars exactly touch the edges of the frame, as though he’s imprisoned in Twitter’s own digital superstructure. One small, innocent man, peeking out of one window, in a building that has millions of them. Read more ►
My Somewhat Neurotic Relationship with Buster Keaton Movies and Why They Make Me OK with Being Me.
Image ©2011 ~TheBalloonMan
So here we are, day one of Project Keaton. Submissions are pouring in and The Pictorial is buzzing with excitement. The Project’s Tumblr and Facebook pages are up and running and … this is gonna be awesome, guys.
So for the first official Project Keaton post, I’m going to be a total prima-donna and grab the mic for a minute and reflect back on why the heck Keaton matters very much to me in the first place.
But I’m gonna leave the sociological and academic analysis of his films and their seismic influence on the framework of modern cinema to the Leonard Maltins and the David Thomsons out there, and instead, simply confess that the reason I love Keaton is because of something he excelled so very much in:
Timing.
Now, as you all know, I am a massive Charlie Chaplin fan. MASSIVE. In many ways, Charlie is the love of my life. I was 10 years old when I fell in love with Charlie. A wondrous, marvelous, romantic age to discover anything.
I was 14 when I saw my first Buster Keaton film.
Being 14 sucks. In fact… few things suck more than being 14. (Except, maybe, 15.)
Which is why Sherlock Jr. absolutely rocked my world when I first saw it flicker on the old movie channel one random weekend. If anyone’s life sucked more than mine, it was Buster’s. That sweetly honest stone face that just couldn’t catch a break. The woman in his life was weak, his boss was a jerk, his future prospects were dim, he’s painfully awkward and the only ray of sunshine in his life involved celluloid fantasies.
Yeah. I knew that guy.
Here I am at the cusp of 30 and I realize that I will always know this guy. And when chaos consumes, and all I have to keep my sanity is my sense of humor, there is nothing more therapeutic than a Keaton film. That’s when I switch on Steamboat Bill Jr to watch Buster battle hurricanes, or Seven Chances to watch him dodge a gang of pissed off jilted brides, or The Cameraman to watch him fight urban turf wars.
It’s absurd.
But so is life.
Buster knows it. His films get it. And, in so many ways, he is all of us. Buster doesn‘t always get the girl, beat the bad guy or ride off into the sunset… and somehow, it’s still OK. Which is why 116 years after he was born, we’re still so deeply affected by his work. And only one of the countless reasons the Pictorial is championing that deeply human comedy of his in our month-long celebration of all things Keaton.
Thanks, Buster, for always keepin’ it real.
The 21st Century REALLY needs you.
And so do 14 year olds.
*puts down mic, disembarks soapbox, and lets the festivities begin*