Betamax digitizing help of a rare film.

[LetThemEatCake]

I watched Cleopatra, once. Because I had to, for film class. I might watch it one more time because my tastes may have matured in my age, or because of hidden gems & references. That's it.
Star Wars is a cultural & geek thing that I can get into & bond with fam & friends with. It's melodrama, but it's iconic and epic, in a way Cleo never could be. Cleo & Ben Hur are those grandiose types in the manner of Intolerance. Yawn.

But don't mess with Indiana Jones! Yes, #2 and #4 faltered, but #1 and #3 are Tour-de-Force - in the writing (for adventure), editing, shooting. Have watched no less than 25 times each, and will gladly watch again, especially when grandkids are grown to be ready for them. Lucas may be overrated, but Spielberg is underrated (if that's possible). Mankiewicz is quite good, but he's no Spielberg.


Scott

Of course Mankiewicz is no Spielberg, Mankiewicz had actual talent, was a brilliant script writer, had flawless command of aesthetics and of cinematic language, which you clearly do not understand. Spielberg is just derivative of 60's New Wave, which is NOT cinematic language as it was created out of thin air by Hollywood and the Silent age, Spielberg is NOTHING compared to someone like Mankiewicz. It's like comparing Mozart to Jay Z. One is definitely nothing. The problem is that people like you go to film school and literally learn nothing because all you learn is Intolerance and then jump to Kubrick, and are taught the dogma that Kubrick 'fixed' cinema, which is pathetic.

There is nothing in common between Intolerance and Cleopatra. Intolerance isn't even a good movie. You want to see a true Hollywood silent epic? Try Ben-Hur A Tale Of Christ, not taught on film school and I'm sure you haven't even seen it. We can actually go back and find earlier films than Intolerance that invented what you see in Intolerance. The problem is that snide, poststructuralist teachers that look down on the art they teach, zoomed into Intolerance and it's the token film they teach in their dogma, out of a perverse sense of enjoying something so blatantly bad and racist being taken seriously. That's where you come from.

I still would like to hear what was said about Cleopatra in your film class. I'm sure the teacher knows nothing about the history of this film and how we never got to see what Mankiewicz, one of the greatest directors of all time, actually created.

Indiana Jones is shit and Harrison Ford never had any talent. He is all but forgotten now and his 'performance' in Blade Runner 2049, if you can even call it that, is laughable. When Marlon Brando starred in The Island Of Dr. Moreau weighing 300 lbs, you can't take your eyes off him, because that's talent. Elizabeth Taylor in The Mirror Crack'd and Sweet Bird Of Youth, that's talent. When you are really talented, the performances are still there. Harrison never had it and it just gets more and more obvious with age.

[LetThemEatCake]

Well, as noted earlier, I watched Cleo quite recently. I must have seen it before but I just do not recall.

To call it 'the greatest film ever made' does take the proverbial but then everyone is entitled to their opinion. So while the 'epic' nature of it struck me, so did the somewhat crass dialog in places. Example "Anthony. How will I live?". The greatest insight in to this film can be gleaned from that 2-hour docu which appears as a extra (also referenced to in an earlier post) on the blu ray. It is simply a flawed production with a studio digging a bigger hole each time it tried to get out of the last one it dug.

It is not a flawed production, reading the shooting script, which was only Mankiewicz' first draft, you can tell the film is actually perfect, and the greatest film of all time, in scope, nature and execution, in the vein of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and the opera AIDA. It was to be a film for the ages. If it is flawed it's because the cut we have is shit thanks to a charlatan like Darryl F. Zanuck. To quote Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, did I.Q.'s dramatically lowered in the new Millenium?? Your opinion doesn't even make sense. The film IS NOT FINISHED, IT WAS NEVER ALLOWED TO BE FINISHED. It's funny how sheeple go OUT OF THEIR WAY to justify SCUM like Ridley Scott and his trash filmography because he is never given a chance to edit to his liking because of the wretched evil studios, yet Cleopatra NEVER GETS A PASS. It's quite transparent. Sheeple will do as sheeple will do.

[Cornucopia]

It's clear from your past posts that you don't have a f'n clue about either the mechanics nor the aesthetics of film on the whole, or in detail. Just your little world. And you poo-poo those who know more than you, just because you can't handle being wrong or not an expert. And you have been shown up by many here, yet you continue to rant. Go ahead, rant away - we all know it for what it is.

Cleopatra: boring pomposity at its most acute.
Mankiewicz: only "All About Eve" could be considered a great film among his roster, though his Hepburn movies and few noirs are good.
I'm primarily a Formalist, but how you remark about Realist (incl. New Wave) film types smacks of pure, uneducated jealousy.

I feel sorry for you.

Scott

[lordsmurf]

Cleopatra.

To be blunt, I'd rather watch my cat take a sh!t than watch this Cleopatra movie. The #1 reason is that the cat is done in 3 minutes (or less), while the movie will drag on for 3 hours.

As an example, this is boring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB5Wv8IHVf0
It reminds me of 60s Star Trek or Doctor Who episodes, with quaint sets and acting. But it needs editing down, not drag on for 5 minutes. With all the silence and staring, it just looks like raw footage. The same sorts of entrances happened in Stargate SG-1, but didn't take 5 minutes, and yet you still got the same awe-factor level of grandiosity (and maybe arguably more).

If you want me to watch a 3-hour+ movie, it'd better be damned good, an imagination orgy. Cleopatra doesn't meet that high mark.

I also think Liz Taylor looks like a transvestite in this movie ... though with real boobs. The entire movie tries to make her look sexy, but with all that war paint, and her natural old-woman-face appearance, the outcome is she looks like a white RuPaul.

You want to see a true Hollywood silent epic? Try Ben-Hur A Tale Of Christ, not taught on film school and I'm sure you haven't even seen it.

That movie is an "epic" mostly for being 1st to do some things -- including massive animal abuse, including killing animals on set to film some of the footage. It's really f'd up what happened in its creation/filming.

I agree, not a bad silent flick. But actors like Harold Lloyd did far better and bolder things.

Trivia: Amusingly, Lloyd has an uncredited/extra role in Ben Hur, because lots of Hollywood actors wanted in on it at the time, solely due to the over-the-top hype/marketing. But I don't even recognize Lloyd without his trademark glasses.

[LetThemEatCake]

It's clear from your past posts that you don't have a f'n clue about either the mechanics nor the aesthetics of film on the whole, or in detail. Just your little world. And you poo-poo those who know more than you, just because you can't handle being wrong or not an expert. And you have been shown up by many here, yet you continue to rant. Go ahead, rant away - we all know it for what it is.

Cleopatra: boring pomposity at its most acute.
Mankiewicz: only "All About Eve" could be considered a great film among his roster, though his Hepburn movies and few noirs are good.
I'm primarily a Formalist, but how you remark about Realist (incl. New Wave) film types smacks of pure, uneducated jealousy.

I feel sorry for you.

Scott

Jealousy of what, exactly? being a charlatan like the directors you admire? I guess I could covet their money but truth be told, I don't really care. Joseph Mankiewicz has a huge amount of great films to his roster, and he was brilliant and contributed to many films and it is he who made the greatest film of all time, not anybody else. Suddenly, Last Summer is a flawless masterpiece, but it doesn't star Robert DeNiro doing his greatest impression of toxic masculinity so of course it is not worthy of attention by the fed on Scorsese crap film school graduates.

Cleopatra is boring at its most acute, I will agree, but it's because of Zanuck, what we have is not what Mankiewicz created.

[LetThemEatCake]

Cleopatra.

To be blunt, I'd rather watch my cat take a sh!t than watch this Cleopatra movie. The #1 reason is that the cat is done in 3 minutes (or less), while the movie will drag on for 3 hours.

As an example, this is boring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB5Wv8IHVf0
It reminds me of 60s Star Trek or Doctor Who episodes, with quaint sets and acting. But it needs editing down, not drag on for 5 minutes. With all the silence and staring, it just looks like raw footage. The same sorts of entrances happened in Stargate SG-1, but didn't take 5 minutes, and yet you still got the same awe-factor level of grandiosity (and maybe arguably more).

If you want me to watch a 3-hour+ movie, it'd better be damned good, an imagination orgy. Cleopatra doesn't meet that high mark.

I also think Liz Taylor looks like a transvestite in this movie ... though with real boobs. The entire movie tries to make her look sexy, but with all that war paint, and her natural old-woman-face appearance, the outcome is she looks like a white RuPaul.

You want to see a true Hollywood silent epic? Try Ben-Hur A Tale Of Christ, not taught on film school and I'm sure you haven't even seen it.

That movie is an "epic" mostly for being 1st to do some things -- including massive animal abuse, including killing animals on set to film some of the footage. It's really f'd up what happened in its creation/filming.

I agree, not a bad silent flick. But actors like Harold Lloyd did far better and bolder things.

Trivia: Amusingly, Lloyd has an uncredited/extra role in Ben Hur, because lots of Hollywood actors wanted in on it at the time, solely due to the over-the-top hype/marketing. But I don't even recognize Lloyd without his trademark glasses.

Your opinion is like textbook charlatan dogma. Why is that boring? It's boring TO YOU because you have no clue. Look at the scope of the production. Look at the soundtrack, look how the slaves move in unison with the soundtrack to create even more momentum. Look at the aesthetics. All of that is lost on you because you've been fed on the mediocrity of Tarantino and his 'soundtracks' and you think that's the be all and end all of everything. Cleopatra entering into Rome is one of the most intricate sequences ever filmed and one of the greatest pairings of music and image, it's better than all of Scorsese and Tarantino, who are garbage directors.

Saying that Ben-Hur is great because it did everything 'first' is one of the most idiotic things I've ever read. It did not do everything 'first', it's a masterpiece because it's flawlessly produced and you can't take your eyes off it. I have not found any credible account of the supposed animal abuse in that film other than IMDB trivia, but one person who was a true sadist to animals is one of the worst directors of all time, Michael Cimino, a sadist charlatan that for some strange reason has now been elevated to genius status by the Scorcese/Tarantino dogma mob.

[Cornucopia]

I rest my case.

Scott

[LetThemEatCake]

I rest my case.

Scott

Because you don't have one. The Dogma you've been told is basically nothing was good enough until ******* Scorsese and the new wave came in and fixed it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[DB83]

Aside from all the above, just how is that betamax digitizing coming on ?

[LetThemEatCake]

Aside from all the above, just how is that betamax digitizing coming on ?

I never heard from him again, he's one of those slouch photographer types, he digitized Vertigo because I left him with the money which must have been some pressure but he said not to let him any money this time until he actually did it and true to form it seems he hasn't done it yet.

[johns0]

Thread has gone long enough,closed.