Ever since the silent era, Hollywood filmmakers have traveled all around the world seeking realistic and exotic locations to shoot their films. During the classic era, Utah became one of the more frequent locals outside of California that Hollywood films used. Boasting desert locals in …
Continue ReadingThe Last Silent Picture Show — Book Review
The transition from silent pictures to all-talking and all-talking sound films is often told as a simplistic narrative: The Jazz Singer‘s success in 1927 revolutionized Hollywood as studios scrambled to convert their studios and theaters to sound as quickly as possible. William M. Drew’s …
Continue ReadingPioneering Utah Filmmakers: From Flickers to Sound
This post on early Utah independent filmmaking is the second historical overview in my series Celebrating 125 Years of Utah and the Movies. Visit the series page for other historical overviews and reviews of films shot in Utah or made by Utahns.
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Continue ReadingHypocrites (1915): Lois Weber’s Tour de Force
No era of filmmaking has the potential to shock and surprise you quite like the silent era. Numerous well-made, interesting silent films from around the world have waited over a century to be discovered by a larger audience. Some hidden silent gems are unearthed from …
Continue ReadingSix Films—Six Decades Blogathon
Anyone who has made a list before knows the labor of love required to whittle down dozens or hundreds of your favorites to select just a few. Instead of picking one single favorite film from each decade, sometimes I wished I could have made a …
Continue ReadingFaust (1926) and The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)
Legends become so enmeshed in the cultural consciousness that they appear in numerous forms and adaptations centuries after their initial creation. The German folktale Faust is one such tale, inspiring dozens of books, plays, operas, and films since its first iteration in 16th-century German literature. …
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