Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Really funny DVD!, November 10, 2001
I am a Buster Keaton fan, even though I had only seen a few of his films until now. My favorite remains "The General" which is a great Civil War adventure with a lot of laughs, too. This Kino DVD, a combo of Sherlock Jr and Our Hospitality, is hilarious! Our Hospitality is the first on the DVD and tells the tale of Buster Keaton's woes when he wanders into an old blood feud between families and spends half the film blissfully unaware that he is a walking bullseye. The film is set in the 1830s and has some hilarious scenes, such as the early railroad trip back to the old homestead (some of the jokes in this part are a prelude to The General) and some great stunt work (Keaton on the edge of a REAL waterfall). And Keaton does all his own stunts, it's amazing he didn't hurt himself more often!Sherlock Jr. is probably one of Keaton's more famous works, but to be honest, I liked the first movie on the DVD more. This one is funny, too, but it's kinda scattered, plot-wise. Keaton plays a movie projectionist who enters his movie (in a dream), solves the mystery, and saves the girl. It's really an excuse for some great special effects (back in those days, at least!). I guess some things never change (I wonder if Sherlock Jr. was a summer film...) but this film is still really really funny. Back to back, these films are funnier and more original than almost anything you'd see in theaters today. Just a few words about the DVD itself - these films are 70+ years old, so they aren't in perfect condition. Our Hospitality has scratches and dust. The source print is ok but looks its age. At least the image is clear with good contrast, unlike a lot of silent films which look all black with patches of white. Sherlock Jr's print source is great! It almost looks new and has great contrast. Plus, the best part is the soundtrack. The Sherlock Jr soundtrack is really jazzy with bits of James Bond/Batman/saxophone music; it doesn't have the typical ragtime piano or organ music you usually hear and it really makes the movie sound fantastic (that's something you don't hear much about silent films...) Too bad there are not extras on the DVD, except for chapter search. I would have liked to see a Keaton biography or filmography, especially since this DVD is a little pricey. Still, a great DVD, and a must for Buster Keaton fans! Get the General, too! Or any of the Chaplin feature films (get them from Image, which has access to the Chaplin vaults and has the best looking films as a result).
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sherlock Jr.: A genuine legend, December 2, 1999
Keaton's "Sherlock Jr." One of the genuine legends of film history. While it's not as tragic as Erich von Stroheim's "Greed," "Sherlock Jr." is an experience that simply must be seen to be believed. Buster Keaton's mastery of physical comedy reached its zenith with this exercise in surrealism that is pure joy from beginning to end. It's only forty minutes long and there's not much of a plot to it -- Keaton plays a projectionist at a movie theater who wants to be a detective, but stumbles at his first attempt to solve a crime. He falls asleep in the movie theater, and his dream-self walks into the movie and takes part in an comedy adventure consisting of stuntwork so incredible, it made my jaw drop when I saw it for the first time. Most of the stunts here are filmed live, and Keaton uses masterful editing to bring them all together. One scene here, where he falls from a water tower onto a railroad track, actually broke his neck in real life -- but he didn't even realize it until a physical examination several years later!
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Music purists beware, February 28, 2005
I don't have too much to add re: the movies themselves, because previous reviewers have covered that territory pretty well. The prints are reasonably good (Sherlock Jr. struck my as *very* clean) and the speed was also pretty good, although I could have used the framespeed maybe just a shade slower here and there, but that's usual for films of this era because they were hand-cranked and usually a tad slower than 24 frames/sec.
I'm a pianist who has played silents for years, first at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and a few years later at the American Museum of the Moving Image. I found the score of Sherlock, Jr. totally distracting and bizarre. Movie scores are best treated like makeup: if you notice it's there its just *too much*. With a frenetic movie like Sherlock Jr. it's simply disasterous to shift music to attempt to make clever commentaries on each scene...the James Bond reference made me groan, and the blues guitar whenever a wooden shack appears in the scene is simply childish and derivative. I think if you're into avant-garde treatment of Buster Keaton movies, I think Bill Frissell did a much better job. Anyway different strokes I suppose, but the Club Foot orchestra turned a happy, brilliant movie into a narsisistic exercise in disconcertive disruptive twaddle.
So I'd recommend turning the sound down for Sherlock Jr. and maybe just putting on of the the Paragon Ragtime albums or Dick Hyman...the movie will be tons more fun that way.
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