I couldn’t sleep last night (noticing a trend this week?) so I decided to watch Buster Keaton’s 1923 silent take on the Hatfields and the McCoys. You can watch it yourself, and read a short review here.

I couldn’t sleep Sunday night, so I watched The Phantom of the Opera and ended up on a deep dive in to the history of the film, and it’s place in old Hollywood lore. What follows are links to watch both major versions of the movie, a discussion of the history and preservation status of the print, a brief synopsis, and a small review. Dig in, this is a fun one.

As part of my Film Preservation project, I am cataloginging all the public domain movies I watched this year. This blog post is taken from a thread over on the fediverse, and expanded a bit with links and the like. What follows is a list of more than 50 movies that are in the american public domain, along with links to those movies on various platforms, a short review/synopsis, and comments on the quality of the available prints.

I make no secret of the fact that preserving old media is pretty important to me. Most of my efforts thus far have focussed on cataloging and adding metadata to the items that others have preserved, and finding the best available versions of those items. Recently, though, it has come to my attention that there is more I can do. As such, I’m undertaking a Preservation Project.

[This is a thing I wrote back in May. It's sad, and deeply personal, and not at all about computers. Content Warnings for 9/11, cancer, death, eating disorders, economic strife, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.]