With the closing of Gamecenter I guess I'm feeling a bit melancholy, so naturally my thoughts turn to that most melancholy of actors, Buster Keaton. Was there ever an actor who's sad expressions made us laugh more?

I was lucky to see most of Keaton's major films over the course of several months at a retrospective shown in St. Louis nearly twenty years ago. The experience is doubly etched in my mind because I had just started to date my wife-to-be at that time.

So every weekend for several months we had a date that was going to the Art Museum to see these Keaton films. We'd get the 5-minute talk before the film started, but as the lights dimmed and the projectors rolled, it was like being in any regular cinema. I remember that good feeling of wiggling my shoulders and settling into my chair and grinning at my girlfriend as the black and white film started to roll.

What I remember about them is that not only were they quite funny -- you have to see them on a widescreen with an audience to really experience them -- but they were a tour-de-force of special effects. Keaton did all his own stunts and some were amazing. For example, in one movie a framework of a house collapsed around him. He stood in the middle and all four walls fell one by one and each would have crushed him were it not for him standing in the exact spot where the open doorway fell. Pretty amazing, especially when you consider that he actually had to stand there and these walls actually had to fall. They couldn't fake this. Had he miscalculated about where the wall would fall, it would have been ugly.

I think the funniest film he made was one where for some reason every woman in town wanted to marry him and they all showed up in wedding dresses and chased him up and down hills, replete with Keaton dodging boulders. There were hundreds of women pursuing him. It was pretty stinking hilarious as I recall.

Anyway, I'm just writing this to introduce a new section on these messageboards. Consider yourself invited to post new threads about your favorite movies or movies you've seen lately. So post!

I dunno about this Buster Keaton fellow, but Jim Carrey talking out of his ass is funny. Huh huh, I'm laughing just thinking about it. A talking ass... it never stops being funny.

On a related topic, what has happen to all the black & white films? Especially the silent films? Even in the 80's they were shown late nights on local stations. Its seems like some big hole has open up and swallowed them all. Even cable channels such as TCM and AMC now show movies made after 1960.

I don't have cable so I don't know what they show on those stations anymore. We still get black and white films on PBS now and then.

I have a fondness for the old movies. I like the Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart movies, the old Hitchcock films, etc.

If I had to guess why they're not being shown as often anymore, I'd say the networks have probably determined that newer movies get better ratings.

"I dunno about this Buster Keaton fellow, but Jim Carrey talking out of his ass is funny."

That's nothing. I like it when Adam Sandler talks in funny voices. Now *that's* funny.

(Although I can't very well post here without bringing up how incredible "The General" is. Come to think of it, I'm off to look for a copy of that to own...)

-Tom

>>That's nothing. I like it when Adam Sandler talks in funny voices. Now *that's* funny.

That Waterboy, that Little Nicky... man, I laughed so much at those movies I nearly died. I know humor, and Adam Sandler is very funny. I really liked those movies he did with that really fat guy. He was funny too.

I hope that you all are being sarcastic

Heh -- Jim Carrey can be pretty funny though. I really enjoyed The Mask.

Adam Sandler I don't get also. I think his days as a big star may be fading.

My favorite Adam Sandler movie of all time would have to be...let me see...umm...oh, I know!...Happy Gilmore where he hits the guy right in the *nuts* with his golf club! Can you believe it? In the *nuts*! That was great!

"I really liked those movies he did with that really fat guy."

Yeah, it's a shame than John Candy died, especially what with the way his brother, John Belushi died. It's funny how comedy is just tragedy plus time.

-Tom

>>My favorite Adam Sandler movie of all time would have to be...let me see...umm...oh, I know!...Happy Gilmore where he hits the guy right in the *nuts* with his golf club! Can you believe it? In the *nuts*! That was great!

HAHAHHAHAHA, I TOTALLY loved that! And it had that Pat Sajak guy he attacks! Wheel of Fortune Golf! Man, it doesn't get any funnier then that.

>>Yeah, it's a shame than John Candy died, especially what with the way his brother, John Belushi died. It's funny how comedy is just tragedy plus time.

Yeah, that was pretty funny. I mean, what you said, not that he died and all. Getting hid by a car, what a terrible way to die for a comic. Though I bet he did die laughing... I know I often died laughing while watching his movies.

"On a related topic, what has happen to all the black & white films? Especially the silent films? Even in the 80's they were shown late nights on local stations. Its seems like some big hole has open up and swallowed them all. Even cable channels such as TCM and AMC now show movies made after 1960."

I blame Ted Turner.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

I think "Better off Dead" is my favorite comedy. "Fletch" is pretty damn good as well, and "The Cable Guy" is underrated, IMO, Carrey's best work.

I dunno, it's hard to think of comedies off the top of my head.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

I like men. I like to be manhandled. I like you.

AMC and TNT runs Godzilla marathons every now and then some of those are pretty old and the first ones are in black and white. You just can't beat Godzilla for a marathon man!!!
Go! Go! Godzilla!!

ShiningOne
May Peace Favor Your Sword

The biggest surprise for me when I watched a Buster Keaton film for the first time was how real and subtle an actor he was. I don't know what I was expecting...pratfalls and hamming it up I guess. What I got was just this incredible piercing sorrow in the middle of all this comedy, and what struck most of all was how modern and honest his work was. Just not what I expected from a silent film actor.

Yeah, I think Keaton's work holds up about as well as you can expect silent film to work these days. Chaplain's stuff holds up well too.