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of time to say that late-period silent dramas such as BEGGARS OF LIFE, PANDORA'S BOX (the first two starring the never out-of-date Louise Brooks), UNDERWORLD and THE KISS have greater visual and dramatic sophistication than Ms.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 NEW YORKER's Richard Brody on last night's Oscar duel between HUGO and THE ARTIST.

From Brody's article (link below):


The element of nostalgia in “The Artist” isn’t for a style of filmmaking but for a style of deportment. It’s essentially a movie about formalized clothing and formalized behavior, about personal style as subjected to discipline and deference to public norms of graciousness, and he adapts a very narrow range of the styles of movies from those days to suggest the amiable, sociable, witty, and graceful yet ingratiating decency that seems to him to be exemplary and admirable.



“Hugo,” for all its historical archeology, is entirely different; Scorsese’s past is one in which geniuses can be ruined and forgotten, in which families are precarious and orphans are relentlessly pursued, in which the aesthetic graces conceal indifference and violence along with lost modes of artistic genius. For Scorsese, the technical side of the movies doesn’t just provide opportunities and delights but also quasi-metaphysical mysteries and profoundly intimate modes of self-discovery.



Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/02/the-oscars-dull-nostalgic-but-not-without-a-glow.html#ixzz1nZPKJaGc

Silent film poem: CHARLIE AND EDNA IN HAWAII 1917