AMY GOODMAN: A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. “Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Disturbingly, she writes that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well. The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced “sea-smurf.” These “sea-smurfs,” Cavallaro reports, have “spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle,” in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month “dwell time” — time troops are required to spend to “reset and regenerate after a deployment” — armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets....
FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.
It gets worse:
NAOMI WOLF: On October 1, 2008, President Bush deployed a brigade — which means three to four thousand warriors — somewhere in America. We do not know where they are deployed though citizens have informally reported to me having seen military vehicles and troops in Georgia and Alabama. We do know that their official mandate according to the first report is “crowd control” as well as action in the event of a mass civilian catastrophe. Initial reports described their technology “module package” as involving Tasers and rubber bullets.... The First Brigade is Bush’s force: they are not answerable to Congress or to the Governors of states: they are answerable to the Commander in Chief. In an Alternet posting, I interviewed Air Force Colonel (retired) David Antoon who noted that the troops must obey the president, even if he asks them to arrest Congress or fire on civilians or attack media outlets. If they do not obey orders, he notes, they face five years in prison.... Antoon himself calls the deployment “ominous.” Troops on our streets makes us something less than a democracy: one definition of a police state is when a leader sends his own military units into civilian streets. Meanwhile the civilian policing of citizens is becoming more brutal. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place in St Paul, dozens of journalists were arrested.... In St. Paul, funds were sent in advance to pay off the lawsuits against police forces that were guaranteed to arise from the planned abuse of citizens. This sort of thing is happening across the country. The tactic has established a closed circle that has turned citizens’ law enforcement agencies into contractors of a state that is directing acts of increasing severity against US citizens. Now a military brigade is being deployed....
FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.
Click here to see an interview with Naomi Wolf conducted in early October 2008.
For the past five years or so I hve been hearing rumors that Halliburton has been building (and has now finished building) 800 prisons throughout the USA, not yet functioning, but just waiting for the right crisis. I have not found reliable evidence for the specific quantity, readiness, functionality, locations, or details, but you might be interested in taking a look at page 5 of this Halliburton press release dated 26 January 2006: KBR has been awarded a contract announced by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component. The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contingency contract is to support ICE facilities and has a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term. The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.... Now, really, what are the chances of “an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States”? And what are the “new programs” that could come under “rapid development”?
FOR THE FULL PRESS RELEASE, CLICK HERE.
Above is a little clip that demonstrates the silent frame, 1.33:1, which should be projected with an aperture measuring about .90625" × .6796". Now, as you’ve all recognized, this is not from a silent film. It’s from Laughing Gravy, which was a talkie released on 4 April 1931. It was shot with the full silent frame, because it was issued with synchronized sound on Vitaphone disc, and so there was no need to reduce the picture size. I found this little snippet when rummaging around in the projection booth at the Frauenthal Theatre in Muskegon. Peculiarly, though, the print is rather modern safety stock. This was definitely a reissue from the 1960s or 1970s. This is readily evident from the shrinkage. Look at the actual sprocket holes on the left side, and, right next to them, look at the image of the sprocket holes on the original. That’s a sure sign of pretty extreme shrinkage. Also, look closely and you’ll see that the top of each frame is duplicated, due to the step printing (one-frame-at-a-time printing) to compensate for the shrinkage. Now, a reissue would have had the soundtrack on the film, because after the mid-1930s, Vitaphone bit the dust. Almost no cinema much after that would have had the ability to play Vitaphone discs. So where precisely did this snippet come from? And why was it printed like this? Mystery!
Can the IMDb solve this mystery? Nope. The “Aspect Ratio” is given as “1.37 : 1” — as though that’s all we need to know.
The snippet above comes from La grande illusion, which was shot with a 1.375:1 Academy aperture in the camera. Now, finally, you can see what monaural sound looks like. This is “bilateral monaural,” and the meaning should be obvious. Additionally, it is variable-width, meaning that the sound is recorded and reproduced by the varying widths of the little microseconds of sound track.
The IMDb gets this one right.
This one really interests me. Again, it is shot with a 1.375:1 aperture in the camera, and again it is bilateral monaural, but with a difference. Note the shape of the sound track. One edge of each half is straight, and the other provides the signal. This is also variable-width, but this particular version is called a bilateral “sawtooth” track. What this movie is, I don’t know. I discovered this snippet, maybe 10 or 15 feet long, at Don Pancho’s Art Theatre in Albuquerque, back in 1978. And so I ran it. The only words on those few seconds of film were: “...the 1949 epidemic...” and then the snippet ran out. It’s definitely from a newsreel of some sort. The person in the frame always looked strangely familiar to me, but I’ve never been able to place him. Another mystery. The brown streak running down all the frames, toward the right, is oxidization. There’s plenty more, and it’s quite plain, but it doesn’t come through in a scan. Note that this is nitrate stock, which is highly unstable. The emulsion gouge in the middle isn’t a gouge at all. The base began to degrade, and the emulsion simply disappeared. The projectionist allowed me to save these few frames for my collection.
This is a damaged bit from a beautiful movie called C’erevamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much), which came and went and is now almost forgotten. But what a gem it was! This particular shot takes place in the Trevi Fountain. On the left is Stefania Sandrelli, and on the right is Nino Manfredi. I can’t remember who that is in the middle. This was shot with a 1.85:1 aperture in the camera, which was quite common in Italy back then. Some of the other shots used a taller frame and were then masked to 1.85:1 in the laboratory. The sound is obviously monaural, but it is not bilateral, as you can readily see.
If you check the specs on IMDb, you will see that the “Aspect Ratio” is given as “1.66 : 1” — well, so much for official sources.
Here are two snippets from Excalibur, which Wolf Mankowitz denounced as the work of a fascist. Maybe I missed something, but that’s not what I got out of it at all. Anyway, the snippet at the top was shot with a 1.375:1 aperture in the camera, but it should not be shown that way. It needs to be cropped. The snippet on the bottom reveals why: Much of the rest of the movie was shot with a 1.66:1 aperture in the camera. The whole movie should properly be shown at 1.66:1. And that, of course, is why the 16mm prints and videos were wrongly matted at 1.85:1, ruining the compositions. And indeed, the IMDb erroneously lists the “Aspect Ratio” as “1.85 : 1” — sigh....
I can’t remember what this movie was called. It was Méxican, and the print I ran was so brittle that it crumbled as it came off the feed reel. I had to give up and ship it back. But what I saw was hilarious. It dealt with a priest who worked with juvenile gangs. And he was always having such fun, riding his motorcycle and singing catchy little songs all the time. If you can identify this movie, please write to me. Thanks! But back to the matter at hand. As you can see, it was shot with a 1.375:1 aperture in the camera. And, as you can see, it would be wrong to project it that way. Note the wasted space at the top and bottom of the frame. That was meant to be cropped away. This film should properly be projected at 1.66:1.
This one is really interesting. As you can see, the shot at the top is 1.375:1 in the camera. Then the next shot (you can see the laboratory splice made in the negative) is taller. It is the old-fashioned MovieTone, or Photophone, format. But pay attention. You can see that the corners on the right side of the frame are rounded, but that the corners on the left side of the frame are square. That’s because this particular shot used the full-frame silent aperture. The camera operator made sure to keep the important stuff out of the left side, because anything on the left side would be cropped off in the lab to make way for the sound track. You’ll notice, once again, in both shots, that there is wasted space at the top and bottom of the frame. It is impossible to judge the proper crop from a few frames, but it is almost certainly 1.85:1, though it could conceivably be 1.66:1, but is almost certainly not 1.75:1, which latter has seldom been used outside of the UK and Australia.
Let’s pull a single frame:
Let’s chop it down to 1.85:1 to see how much better it looks with the intended crop:
Let’s pretend we’re watching it at a cinema where the projectionist has made a mistake:
Let’s suppose that the projectionist has just noticed his mistake, and makes an attempt to correct it:
Or let’s pretend the projectionist has made the opposite mistake:
And let’s similarly suppose that the projectionist has just noticed this mistake, and makes this attempt to correct it:
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 Side A of the DVD, which the labeling implies is the original  Side B of the DVD, which opens with a warning that this has been modified from the original version to fit your TV screen |
Bananas, a movie I highly recommend. On the left is a battered piece that reveals the shadow of the lens barrel, which is cropped out when shown on cinema screens. The previous projectionist chopped this little snippet out, fearing it would not withstand projection. The pieces he didn’t cut out weren’t much better. Oh what a dreadful print that was. The previous projectionist also deliberately miscued the reels and deliberately remade some splices out of frame, just to mess me up. As I ran the movie, I flagged every bit that went wrong and, sweating bullets, respliced and recued in time for the next show. So when the previous projectionist returned to run the evening show, everything went swimmingly. That was a running gag. The manager would see that the previous show was fine, that when I came in there was a disaster, and that when the next projectionist came in everything was fine again. I was fired for that. Yes, that was indeed a running gag, and happened for at least half of the shows I ran at that particular cinema. Could I have played the game differently? Yes, I could have. I could have left the films alone, so that the next projectionist would have had unprojectable films on his hands. But then he would have accused me of ruining the films, and I would have been fired anyway. Odd thing is that, wherever I go, people find that I’m remarkably calm and soft-spoken and helpful and forgiving. But the movie and theatre and showbiz worlds are absolutely vicious, and the hateful behavior rubs off on me, and I end up being as bitter and as obnoxious as everyone else. You can see vestiges of my foul attitude in this essay, can’t you? And believe me, even if you work for the most wonderful boss (yes, there are a few in the movie world — very few), you’ll still develop a rotten attitude, because you’ll be surrounded day and night by movies. Movies are not healthy to be around. Oh, yes, a few of them are nice, a few of them are educational, a few of them are delightful, a few of them are insightful, a few of them are even transformative, but most of them are designed to turn you into robots who think that the indigenous peoples of the USA are white Europeans and that everyone else is scary or dumb — or both.
The IMDb lists the “Aspect Ratio” as “1.37 : 1” — evidence, who needs evidence?
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  From the DVD I can’t readily find this shot on the DVD, but it must be there |
Another one of my favorite movies. The Man Who Fell to Earth. 2.39:1 anamorphic. Shown with anamorphic lenses, the picture will stretch out twice as wide as it appears here. These are two shattered reel ends that a projectionist chopped out and that I rescued from the rubbish bin and joined together. I remember that when I ran this movie, on every leader and tail was large handwriting: “SHORT VERSION — R,” and that led me to assume that, somewhere on this planet, there was a “Long Version — X,” and it turned out that I was right, sort of. I went to see this movie again when it played at the Galleria Twin in downtown Albuquerque. That was a strange experience. It was still the R version, and I remember having a hard time following the story. I kept seeking out the symbolism, and I was quite convinced that director Nicolas Roeg was an occultist of some sort — a Theosophist, maybe? And screenwriter Paul Mayersberg was possibly one too. Hard to tell because the symbolic hints seem all to have been added in the visuals, and may not have existed on the printed page. The movie dealt, subtly, ever so subtly, with confusions of time and space and identity. Characters seemed not merely to influence one another, but actually to become one another. But that aspect of the narrative was so underplayed that not one person in five thousand would pick up on it. Now, what made viewing the movie that afternoon even stranger was that the cinema in which I was viewing it was nearly in the movie. At the beginning, David Bowie is being driven in a limousine through the streets of Manhattan. But what we see was obviously a pick-up shot, filmed in Albuquerque, with the Galleria Building in the background. In the top snippet above, we see Buck Henry occupying an office in the Galleria Building, maybe on the third floor or so. To this day I recall the construction going on in the background. And later on, when Bowie escapes from the prison improvised inside the (then historic but since plundered) Hotel Plaza, he walks down the street and, just barely hidden around the corner, just by inches, is the entrance to the Galleria Twin Cinema in the Galleria Building. If only the camera had moved a little further up and just a tad to the right, we would have seen the glass bubble on the left, which led to the staircase down to the basement cinema. Alas, that is a cinematic moment that never happened. Drat! So it was as though the movie was mixing itself into my life. Or vice versa. To mix it up even more, some time ago I got to know Buck Henry ever so slightly. Back in 1974 when this movie was filming in downtown Albuquerque, I had no interest whatsoever in witnessing it. My interests were pretty much in silents and early talkies, and I was actually a little bit annoyed that people were making a fuss about a modern film. What a mistake! I should have taken the bus to see all the action. I’ll never get that chance again.
Now, my notes from back in 1978 indicate that though the print I ran was optical monaural,
the original was
The IMDb lists this film as having an “Aspect Ratio” of “2.35 : 1” — which is close enough, I guess. Actually, though, if you run it with the old-fashioned 2.35:1 aperture, you’ll get frameline flashes at a few of the edits. So it’s a bit better to run it with the revised 2.39:1 aperture — even though that will likely crop off the very top of the skyscraper in the transition shot leading into Professor Peter Prouse’s only scene. (The skyscraper, by the way, was the downtown Albuquerque post office, or “DTS” to use local Postalese. And I kept on running past Peter Prouse in the hallways when I was a student at UNM, but I never exchanged even one word with him. Oh well....)
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE ON THE FILM |
WHAT THE ANAMORPHIC LENS DOES TO IT |
Just so that you can see what happens. I can’t identify this movie. Definitely Méxican. Definitely a Cantinflas vehicle. I probably ran it. Note, once again, that it was shot with the old-fashioned silent aperture. The give-away is that the corners on the right side are rounded, but that the corners on the left are square. The left side was truncated.
MORE TO COME, WHEN I GET IN THE MOOD
In the meantime, why not look at some machines?