Jennifer Lawrence's silentmoviephobia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/movies/jennifer-lawrence-in-silver-linings-playbook.html

Mainly a routine NEW YORK TIMES puff piece on Jennifer Lawrence focused on her role/performance in David O. Russell's possible mainstream hit THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.

But Ms. Lawrence's candor heads towards unapologetic ignorance in this passage:
“I like making movies, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch a black-and-white, freaking boring” — here she amped up the sarcasm with an unprintable word — “silent movie,” she said.

It's easy to say that her attitude is common to her generation--haven't seen too many, don't wanna see them, they're all boring.  And she lives in a time where "old movies" tend to be the Rob Schneider vehicles she buys for her home library.

And it's probably useless to convince her that old "freaking boring" silent comedies such as Harold Lloyd's SAFETY LAST, Buster Keaton's BATTLING BUTLER and Charlie Chaplin's THE KID might have greater long-term value than say, Schneider's THE ANIMAL.

Plus it's a waste of time to say that late-period silent dramas such as BEGGARS OF LIFE, PANDORA'S BOX (the first two starring the never out-of-date Louise Brooks), UNDERWORLD and THE KISS have greater visual and dramatic sophistication than Ms. Lawrence's modestly entertaining (due to performances) but shaky-Cammed and timidly adapted THE HUNGER GAMES.

So, I know to keep my freaking mouth shut should I ever encounter Jennifer Lawrence in Los Angeles.

The battle for her cinematic soul has been won.

THE ARTIST really doesn't live up to its hype.

Before filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius crafted THE ARTIST, he made a couple of comedies inspired by the French O.S.S. spy series of the 60s.  These films (one of which I saw) are essentially AUSTIN POWERS-meets-BORAT satires of racism/colonialism/sexism; they got some art-theater showings and are available on video.

THE ARTIST is a straight-up attempt at remaking the kind of silent film with intertitles plus a musical track that Charlie Chaplin did twice in the 1930s (CITY LIGHTS and MODERN TIMES).  It's technically brilliant (looking spot-on like a shot-in-the-20s actual silent) and will undoubtedly make an American star of Berenice Bejo (who will probably be inundated with offers to play wild-and-crazy girlfriends of Jason Segel and/or Paul Rudd).  And it has Harvey Weinstein pulling out the promotional stops to make it a left-field Oscar winner in the tradition of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.

Unfortunately, the film is overlong, overthin, a bit too one-dimensional--and, as with the somewhat superior HUGO, unlikely to find a supportive mass audience in an era where silent cinema is as much a thing of the past as books, print newspapers, VCRs, DVD players and reviews by people who were once paid a lot of money just to write film criticism.

Silent film poem: CHARLIE AND EDNA IN HAWAII 1917