Movie Collection

I log my DVDs into a databasing software called "Movie Collector," which queries a bunch of online sources (like IMDB, Amazon, MovieDb.org, MovieMeter.nl) to fill in the cast & crew, cover, length, format, etc.  It's pretty handy.

I wish their "Music Collector" software had that feature.

Anyway, the database lets you query and arrange the contents any way you want.  I can tell you, for instance, that my oldest movies are The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922), The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and Hitchcock's Easy Virtue (1927).  My longest sets are The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus (29:09), Alien Nation Complete Series (16:29) and Twilight Zone Season 1 (15:30).  My shortest is Jan Nickman's Canyon Dreams (music by Tangerine Dream) at 0:40.

After I posted this I decided to give Music Collector another chance.

The latest version is improved -- it downloads the cover, tracks, label and a few other things -- but not the musicians or the country or the date of recording.  Lots and lots of fiddling to get it anywhere near as useful as my old DOS database.

But I'll load a couple hundred albums and see how it goes. It supposedly will take an import from iTunes and/or an XLS file. Maybe I can shortcut.

NoCoPilot wrote:

...my oldest movies are The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922),...My longest sets are The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus (29:09)...

I used a similar database program years ago (may even be the same one), but got tired of typing.

I also have the Monty Python set, but The Sopranos or Breaking Bad are possibly longer series; haven't checked.

My copy of Nosferatu is on S-VHS (ripped from LaserDisc). Yes, I am old.

I don't have The Sopranos but Six Feet Under is listed by season one, season two, etc. Monty Python is what, 17 or 19 discs?

My set of Monty Python is only 14 disks. Maybe they have another set with more extra stuff.

I have a new oldest movie: "Birth of a Nation" by D.W. Griffith (1915).  I've never seen the movie and I've never seen it for sale before.  A silent film about the Civil War that glorifies the Klu Klux Klan as peacekeepers after the war, and denigrates (pun intended) the Black race as unequal to Whites.

Controversial, influential, groundbreaking (the first 12-reel film) and historic.  

We'll see if it's any good.

Howard, this film might have still been in theaters when you were growing up.

You know, call me crazy but I think "Gone With The Wind" was a remake of "Birth of a Nation."

Both depict the Civil War and its immediate aftereffects, both portray the South as the moral victor in the clash of ideologies, and both blame Northern carpetbaggers and vengeful Negroes for the Southerners deprivations after the War.

Of course I'm not the first to notice.
http://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/film/gwtw&bn.htm
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma99/diller/mammy/gone/reaction.html
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC28folder/PinskyRacism.html

And yet, you never hear the scorn for "bad history" heaped on GWTW that's universally applied to TBOAN.

As the whether it's any good, well, it's nearly a hundred years old.  Back then movies were basically just stage plays filmed, with exaggerated acting playing to the last rows.  The film is full of jumps from damaged and missing frames, and the sound -- Dvorak's "New World Symphony" -- keeps jumping.

But some of the acting is quite good.  Lillian Gish is one. And there are some outdoor battle scenes that rival Gone With The Wind for epic scale. The soldiers are mostly on horses, and I suspect back in 1915 they weren't so careful about not injuring animals during filming.

The depiction of the battle scenes is eerily prescient to the conduct of WWI three years later.

Two trenches of soldiers within sight of each other, occasionally somebody tries to run across 'no man's land' between the trenches and gets shot. Meanwhile terminal boredom sleeping in a dirt trench in the pouring rain, month after month.

Griffith prefaces the film with anti-war sentiment. His plea was not heard.

Okay, I have fallen asleep at least 5 times trying to make it through GWTW but never actually finished it (just like "La Dolce Vita."). I saw a copy at Half Price Books when I bought "Birth of a Nation," so I went back and picked it up today.

It certainly deserves all its Oscars for cinematography and costumes.

I'm afraid I'm seeing it in a different light than most however -- all the talk of the golden era of slavery, and the spoiled rich white folk who think that preservation of their inherited privilege is what the war is about. These people are excrable.

"spoiled rich white folk who think that preservation of their inherited privilege is what the war is about"

Well, that much hasn't changed. And there's a lot of truth to that.

Surprising number of scene-for-scene remakes of "Birth of a Nation."

One historical fact, put forward by TBOAN, which I need to check for veracity, were the Southern state legislatures majority black during reconstruction,and did this lead to widespread mistreatment of the whites?

Made it through the incredibly-long* GWTW last night, awake.  It is a masterpiece of epic storytelling, with great cinematography, great costumes, good sound.  It is a marvel for 1939.  Hattie McDaniel certainly deserved her Oscar.  None of the other actors did much in the way of acting, and the characters they portrayed were mostly loathsome (but I understand that was the point).

The revisionist history of "Birth of a Nation" was still on display, but less overt.  By avoiding mentioning the Klu Klux Klan the controversy was apparently kept under the rug.  As I mentioned there were more than a dozen scene-for-scene remakes, so it is apparent Selznick was intentionally remaking TBOAN but taking out the objectionable bits.

I never knew that before.



*- two minutes shy of four hours

NoCoPilot wrote:

"Birth of a Nation" by D.W. Griffith (1915).
...
Howard, this film might have still been in theaters when you were growing up.

Ah, yes. Saturday matinees, wearing our white hoodies...

NoCoPilot wrote:

One historical fact, put forward by TBOAN, which I need to check for veracity, were the Southern state legislatures majority black during reconstruction,and did this lead to widespread mistreatment of the whites?

Turns out to be mostly true, although the perspective of the slave-holding Southern whites -- doing their utmost to prevent the integration of blacks into society -- clashes with the perspective of the winners of the war, the Northern whites and free blacks, who sought to bring equality to their Southern neighbors.

Wikipedia wrote:

From 1863 to 1865, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson took moderate positions designed to bring the South back to normal as quickly as possible, while the Radical Republicans (as they called themselves) used Congress to block their moderate approaches, impose harsh terms, and upgrade the rights of the freedmen (former slaves). Klose and Lader argue that Johnson "favored a moderate policy ... He proceeded, therefore, to carry out a policy similar to Lincoln's." Klose also compares African American freedmen to "children," however, and claims the Radical Republicans "unwisely and revengefully sought to give full and immediate equality to the former slaves."[2] In fact, Lincoln's last speeches show that he was leaning toward supporting the enfranchisement of freedmen, whereas Johnson was opposed to this. Also, Johnson's leniency toward ex-Confederates assuming positions of power and getting their lands back went far beyond anything Lincoln had envisioned.

Johnson's interpretations of Lincoln's policies prevailed until the Congressional elections of 1866 in the North, which enabled the Radicals to take control of policy, remove former Confederates from power, and enfranchise the freedmen. A Republican coalition came to power in nearly all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, using the U.S. Army and the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau protected the legal rights of freedmen, negotiated labor contracts, and set up schools and even churches for them. Thousands of Northerners came South, as missionaries, teachers, businessmen and politicians; hostile elements called them "Carpetbaggers". Rebuilding the rundown railroad system was a major strategy, but it collapsed when a nationwide depression (called the Panic of 1873) struck the economy in 1873. The Radicals, frustrated by Johnson's opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, filed impeachment charges but the action failed by one vote in the Senate.

President Ulysses S. Grant supported Radical Reconstruction and enforced the protection of African Americans in the South through the use of the Force Acts passed by Congress. Grant suppressed the Ku Klux Klan, but was unable to resolve the escalating tensions inside the Republican party between the Carpetbaggers and the Scalawags (native whites in the South). Meanwhile self-styled Conservatives (in close cooperation with Democrats) strongly opposed Republican rule.[3] They alleged widespread corruption by the Carpetbaggers, excessive state spending and ruinous taxes. The opposition violently counterattacked and regained power in each "redeemed" Southern state by 1877. Meanwhile public support for Reconstruction policies faded in the North, as voters decided the Civil War was over and slavery was dead. The Democrats, who strongly opposed Reconstruction, regained control of the House of Representatives in 1874; the presidential electoral vote in 1876 was very close and confused, forcing Congress to make the final decision. The deployment of the U.S. Army was central to the survival of Republican state governments; they collapsed when the Army was removed in 1877 as part of a Congressional bargain to elect Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president.

Reconstruction was a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States, but most historians consider it a failure because the South became a poverty-stricken backwater attached to agriculture, white Democrats re-established dominance through violence, intimidation and discrimination, forcing freedmen into second class with limited rights and utterly excluding them from politics. Historian Eric Foner argues, "What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the genuine accomplishments that did endure."[4]

_Howard wrote:

I used a similar database program years ago (may even be the same one), but got tired of typing.

A few years ago I bought myself a handheld barcode scanner for inputting movies and CDs. I never could get it to work reliably on my laptop -- and now that laptop has been stolen and not replaced -- and the iPad does not have a USB input.

I did discover, however, that MusicCollector software will use the camera in the iPad to scan barcodes directly, and that works gangbusters. I never have to type anymore.