The Weekend Read is weekly roundup of some top notch film articles that we think deserve your attention.
Sam Raimi’s Oz, The Great And Powerful is still doing some gangbuster business in its third weekend of release with the prequel to the literary The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz being poised to easily pass the $200 million mark in domestic ticket sales over the coming week. But what of other cinematic trips over the rainbow to author L. Frank Baum’s magical land? Over at the George Eastman House blog, there is a short post about how the museum is preserving not only the original Technicolor camera negatives to the classic 1939 MGM The Wizard Of Oz but also their preservation of the only known print of a silent 1910 Wizard Of Oz film.
And speaking of film restoration, Some Came Running has an excellent, in depth interview with British film restorationist James White about his work in preserving the likes of Hitchcock’s silent thriller Blackmail and Lucio Fulci’s notorious Zombi. The conversation covers the transition from the more traditional methods of photochemical film restoration to work that is now being all done in the digital realm and what dilemmas that can pose for those doing the work.
And while digital distribution and presentation is clearly the future of the moviegoing experience, Open Space, the blog at the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art extolls the virtues of the film print by talking about their first viewing of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo in its original imbibition Technicolor format.
And to finish things up, the New York Times has an appreciation of the nearly forgotten comedy duo of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey to coincide with the release of the nine film Wheeler & Woolsey: RKO Comedy Classics Collection from the Warner Archives Collection. If you have a love for other early film comedy the likes of Laurel and Hardy you should find something to like here. The Warner Archive has also posted a portion of the films online.
