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All hail Buster Keaton! The Great Stone Face's pre-feature output is a comedic treasure trove that allows us to watch a performing genius perfect his filmic persona. Lobster's all-new restorations debut some alternate scenes and fix a number of broken jump cuts. It's the whole shebang -- the earlier Fatty Arbuckle shorts and Buster's later solo efforts. Buster Keaton The Shorts Collection 1917-1923 Blu-ray Kino Classics 1917-1923 / B&W / 1:37 flat Silent Ap / 738 min. / Street Date May 24, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 59.95 Starring Buster Keaton, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. . Original Music Robert Israel, Donald Sosin, Stephen Horne, Timothy Brock, Neil Brand, The Mont Alto Orchestra, Sandra Wong, Günther Buchwald, Dennis Scott Directed by Roscoe Arbuckle & Buster Keaton

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

What's this, a full compilation of Buster Keaton Shorts? Kino has released sets of these before, including a 3-disc Blu-ray package from back in the summer of 2011 and overseen by Kino's Bret Wood.

Abingdon Theatre Company presents a concert reading of Merton Of The Movies -- an uproarious new musical comedy set in the rollicking age of Keystone Cops, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and Buster Keaton -- with book by Donald Brenner, music and lyrics by Doug Katsaros, on Monday, December 8 at 7pm at the June Havoc Theatre 312 West 36th Street in Manhattan. Donald Brenner, whose directorial credits include March Madness and the upcoming Mallorca at Abingdon, will direct.

Review by Sam Moffitt

I love the silent era of movie making. I’ve written of this before and will again, many times I’m sure. Roger Ebert, on his website, made the observation (accurately I’d say) that silent films are not just movies without sound; they are a different medium altogether from the movies we are used to seeing now. Silent films are as different to sound films as radio is to television.

Hollywood Cavalcade was one of the first movies to look back at Hollywood history, and managed to involve several artists who were instrumental in making films that are still enjoyable today.

Hollywood Cavalcade tells the story of Mike Conners (Don Ameche) and his partner, ace cameraman Pete Tinney (Stu Erwin) and their trip to New York City to find a stage actress they can take back to Hollywood and make into a star of moving pictures.

The Los Angeles Film Festival has announced several free community screenings to take place in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the festival.

Screenings include including Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (pictured), Luis Valdez’s La Bamba, Dave Lamattina and Chad Walker’s I Am Big Bird, Buster Keaton’s Cops and Sherlock Jr. and Thomas Miller‘s Limited Partnership.

The festival is set to run from June 11-19.

Today’s short is the 1922 film Cops. The short is written and directed by the duo of Edward F. Kline and Buster Keaton, the latter of whom also stars in the feature. No discussion of the Hollywood silent era is complete without mention of Buster Keaton, who has nearly 150 acting credits to his name. He has also written and directed numerous films, many of which were initially uncredited to him. Keaton died in 1966, remaining in the industry until his very last year.

****...

Silent cinema diehards, take note: Kino's DVD box set "The Slapstick Encyclopedia Videobook" was made available September 25 on Amazon for the frankly unbelievable price of $11.68. Any buyers of the company's previous VHS and DVD iterations of the high-quality, impressively-programmed collection know this is jaw-dropping. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and other early pratfallers, cane-twirlers and funny stuntsman are all part of the 18-hour collection. The collection is curated by film historians David Shephard and Joe Adamson, spanning 1909 to 1927. It carefully traces the beginning of the Hollywood slapstick phenomenon from its founder, Keystone Cops-creator Mack Sennett, to iconic stars such as Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle, names better-known by contemporary audiences and, interestingly, who ultimately felt alienated by Sennett's control-hold at Keystone. More than 50 silent short films are included, with transfer quality ranging from...

Cinema Circus is clearly a product of the great, yet under-reported MGM peyote-poisoning of 1937—how else to explain its baffling, surreal, Technicolor, grotesque yet undeniable existence? It is a chilling documentary record of some things that were performed in front of a camera, once upon a time.

A man in a gruesome Joe E. Brown mask is helped from his leering false-face, revealing another leering false face, that of Lee Tracy, who attempts to justify what we are about to see as the realisation of a long-cherished dream, although the exorcism of a recurring nightmare would be at least as plausible.

Big top performers will trot out their tricks in brief visual bits, watched by earnestly faking-it movie "stars," few now recalled in the contemporary pantheon: Olsen & Johnson, the Ritz Brothers, Leo Carillo...

Meanwhile, more hideous outsized masks are sported, embodying movie stars too authentically famous to be roped into...

Your Weekly Source for the Newest Releases to Blu-Ray

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

Battle Beyond The Stars: 30th Anniversary Special Edition (1980)

Synopsis: Shad must scour the cosmos to recruit mercenaries from different planets and cultures, in order to save his peaceful home planet from the threat of the evil tyrant Sador, bent on dominating and enslaving the entire universe. Joining this “magnificent seven” of mercenaries are the deadly Gelt, carefree Cowboy, and the sexy Valkyrie Saint-Exmin. (courtesy of Blu-Ray.com)

Special Features: Audio commentary with producer Roger Corman and writer John Sayles; Audio commentary from production manager Gale Anne Hurd; The Man Who Would Be Shad featurette; Space Opera on a Shoestring featurette; Still gallery; Poster gallery; Theatrical trailer; Radio spot.

Brazil (1985)

Synopsis: In the future, a clerk at the all-powerful Ministry of Information sticks to his ideals and ends up crushed by the system in this half comedy, half...

Kevin Smith is having title trouble again. After previously dealing with censorship related to the title Zach and Miri Make a Porno, the filmmaker has run into a snag with his next movie, originally called A Couple of Dicks. Warner Bros. has changed the title of the comedy, which will star Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan, to A Couple of Cops, obviously so as not to confuse anyone with the multiple (including the offensive) meanings of "dick." But this can't be the end, because nobody in their right mind would distribute a movie with that new title. I'm pretty sure the word "cops" is poisonous. Has there been a single good movie with that word in the title since Buster Keaton's < ...