Rest in Peace alt.movies.silent

[Tommie Hicks]

I found this link in an old back-up and was saddened to see this corpse. This was such a place of fellowship and learning and now its gone. It's interesting how things change. I wonder if the spammers here make any money on their ads?

Rest in peace old friend and a salute to the old sincere contributors.

Tommie Hicks

P.S. Does anyone know where I can get a cloned ATM card so I can steal some money?

[Ian Partridge]

"Tommie Hicks"wrote:

"I found this link in an old back-up and was saddened to see this corpse.
This was such a place of fellowship and learning and now its gone."

Yes, I too remember the wonderfully informative posts on silent films by
excellent contributors. It is sad that it changed. A lot of the spam is
generated by sinister agencies to stifle independant thought and information
that cannot be censored.

[Dave Garrett]

In article <e849e57d-86e2-4f01...@googlegroups.com>,
tommie....@gmail.com says...

It's not just a.m.s, but Usenet in general. There used to be no shortage
of newsgroups that were equally lively and informed, although a.m.s was
certainly one of the best in that regard.

At least many of the folks who used to be regulars here migrated over to
Nitrateville, which I don't check nearly as often as I should. It sure
beats Facebook, which I can't stand but maintain a presence at in order
to keep in touch with folks I care about for whom it's the preferred
online platform.

--
Dave

--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com

[weary flake]

Is there anything wrong with continuing to post
about silent movies right here at alt.movies.silent

The last silent I watched was The Mystery of the
Leaping Fish (1916) short from an Alpha DVD. It's
watchable but I didn't like it too much with the
coke shooting and opium eating. Opium is called
"hop" so to eat great gobs of it causes one to "hop"!
That sort of drug silliness. It'd be easier to watch
if there was a source better than Alpha.

I'm in the midst of watching the Blu-ray of "Laurel
Or Hardy".

It seems the mystery with the defective Slapstick
Encyclopedia reissue by Madacy, why some can play
the DVDs while others can't. It turns out that
these discs can only play in a pure DVD player,
they cannot play through in a Blu-ray/DVD player.
Check the "A Rare Charlie Chaplin Snippet" on Disc 4,
the most sensitive error I've found on more than one
copy, to test a player to see whether it can play it.
DVD players can, Blu-Ray players cannot.

[Dave Garrett]

In article <hIidnQvyWqMMOu79...@giganews.com>,
weary...@gmail.com says...

>
> On 3/25/21 7:02 PM, Dave Garrett wrote:
> > In article <e849e57d-86e2-4f01...@googlegroups.com>,
> > tommie....@gmail.com says...
> >
> >> I found this link in an old back-up and was saddened to see this corpse. This was such a place of fellowship and learning and now its gone. It's interesting how things change. I wonder if the spammers here make any money on their ads?
> >>
> >> Rest in peace old friend and a salute to the old sincere contributors.
> >>
> >> Tommie Hicks
> >>
> >> P.S. Does anyone know where I can get a cloned ATM card so I can steal some money?
> >
> > It's not just a.m.s, but Usenet in general. There used to be no shortage
> > of newsgroups that were equally lively and informed, although a.m.s was
> > certainly one of the best in that regard.
> >
> > At least many of the folks who used to be regulars here migrated over to
> > Nitrateville, which I don't check nearly as often as I should. It sure
> > beats Facebook, which I can't stand but maintain a presence at in order
> > to keep in touch with folks I care about for whom it's the preferred
> > online platform.
> >
>
> Is there anything wrong with continuing to post
> about silent movies right here at alt.movies.silent

Absolutely not, but it's kinda difficult to sustain when the number of
people actively reading it can probably be counted on one hand.

> The last silent I watched was The Mystery of the
> Leaping Fish (1916) short from an Alpha DVD. It's
> watchable but I didn't like it too much with the
> coke shooting and opium eating. Opium is called
> "hop" so to eat great gobs of it causes one to "hop"!
> That sort of drug silliness. It'd be easier to watch
> if there was a source better than Alpha.

Ah, the infamous "Coke Ennyday". Quite the memorable role for Fairbanks.
It's included in Flicker Alley's DVD set Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern
Musketeer, and without having seen the Alpha DVD I'd bet the Flicker
Alley version beats it handily in terms of quality.

> It seems the mystery with the defective Slapstick
> Encyclopedia reissue by Madacy, why some can play
> the DVDs while others can't. It turns out that
> these discs can only play in a pure DVD player,
> they cannot play through in a Blu-ray/DVD player.
> Check the "A Rare Charlie Chaplin Snippet" on Disc 4,
> the most sensitive error I've found on more than one
> copy, to test a player to see whether it can play it.
> DVD players can, Blu-Ray players cannot.

I wasn't aware Madacy had reissued Slapstick Encyclopedia, but that's
pretty odd that Blu-ray players have trouble with it. The typical Blu-
ray player can handle CDs and DVDs as well as Blu-rays, and the optical
pickup in such players houses lasers of three different wavelengths, one
for each format (780, 650, and 405nm, for CD, DVD, and Blu
respectively). Given that Madacy has never exactly been a trademark of
quality, I'd guess that either something in these particular DVDs
deviates from the format standards just enough to cause problems, or the
disc replication facility screwed up somewhere and caused the discs to
exceed most players' ability for effective error correction.

[weary flake]

On 4/15/21 8:42 PM, Dave Garrett wrote:
> In article <hIidnQvyWqMMOu79...@giganews.com>,
> weary...@gmail.com says...
>>
>> On 3/25/21 7:02 PM, Dave Garrett wrote:
>>> In article <e849e57d-86e2-4f01...@googlegroups.com>,
>>> tommie....@gmail.com says...
>>>
>>>> I found this link in an old back-up and was saddened to see this corpse. This was such a place of fellowship and learning and now its gone. It's interesting how things change. I wonder if the spammers here make any money on their ads?
>>>>
>>>> Rest in peace old friend and a salute to the old sincere contributors.
>>>>
>>>> Tommie Hicks
>>>>
>>>> P.S. Does anyone know where I can get a cloned ATM card so I can steal some money?
>>>
>>> It's not just a.m.s, but Usenet in general. There used to be no shortage
>>> of newsgroups that were equally lively and informed, although a.m.s was
>>> certainly one of the best in that regard.
>>>
>>> At least many of the folks who used to be regulars here migrated over to
>>> Nitrateville, which I don't check nearly as often as I should. It sure
>>> beats Facebook, which I can't stand but maintain a presence at in order
>>> to keep in touch with folks I care about for whom it's the preferred
>>> online platform.
>>>
>>
>> Is there anything wrong with continuing to post
>> about silent movies right here at alt.movies.silent
>
> Absolutely not, but it's kinda difficult to sustain when the number of
> people actively reading it can probably be counted on one hand.
>

There's always many more readers ("lurkers") than posters.

I'll add rec.arts.movies.past-films to this post, just
for the "hey" of it.

>> The last silent I watched was The Mystery of the
>> Leaping Fish (1916) short from an Alpha DVD. It's
>> watchable but I didn't like it too much with the
>> coke shooting and opium eating. Opium is called
>> "hop" so to eat great gobs of it causes one to "hop"!
>> That sort of drug silliness. It'd be easier to watch
>> if there was a source better than Alpha.
>
> Ah, the infamous "Coke Ennyday". Quite the memorable role for Fairbanks.
> It's included in Flicker Alley's DVD set Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern
> Musketeer, and without having seen the Alpha DVD I'd bet the Flicker
> Alley version beats it handily in terms of quality.
>

I see at

https://silentera.com/video/mysteryLeapingFishHV.html

there's a choice of DVDs between Kino and a box set from
Flicker Alley, which is a bit much for just one short.
I'm not interested in Fairbanks himself.

It could happen that someone will make a compilation
of old drug shorts, maybe licensing Leaping Fish from Kino
or Flicker Alley. I bought the recent Blu-rays of talkie
drug movies from Kino: Marijuana (1936) etc.

>> It seems the mystery with the defective Slapstick
>> Encyclopedia reissue by Madacy, why some can play
>> the DVDs while others can't. It turns out that
>> these discs can only play in a pure DVD player,
>> they cannot play through in a Blu-ray/DVD player.
>> Check the "A Rare Charlie Chaplin Snippet" on Disc 4,
>> the most sensitive error I've found on more than one
>> copy, to test a player to see whether it can play it.
>> DVD players can, Blu-Ray players cannot.
>
> I wasn't aware Madacy had reissued Slapstick Encyclopedia, but that's
> pretty odd that Blu-ray players have trouble with it. The typical Blu-
> ray player can handle CDs and DVDs as well as Blu-rays, and the optical
> pickup in such players houses lasers of three different wavelengths, one
> for each format (780, 650, and 405nm, for CD, DVD, and Blu
> respectively). Given that Madacy has never exactly been a trademark of
> quality, I'd guess that either something in these particular DVDs
> deviates from the format standards just enough to cause problems, or the
> disc replication facility screwed up somewhere and caused the discs to
> exceed most players' ability for effective error correction.
>

The Passport DVD company hates the producer of the Slapstick
Encyclopedia set, because he publicly complained that Passport
was stealing his property so I suspect Madacy purposely wrecked
the DVDs as a favor to Passport. Madacy also reportedly
refused to pay the fee promised to the producer for it's reissue,
also suggesting bad faith.

[MummyChunk]

Still enjoyable reading with a good filter


This is a response to the post seen at:
http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=587294051#587294051

[MummyChunk]

Group is still here even though Google Groups
is going away in February 2024