Word: mgm
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...other a kind of filmmakers' cooperative that nurtured indie-minded directors from D.W. Griffith to Woody Allen - both of which had fallen fallow. Almost instantly, Turner was obliged to sell the studios and their California real estate; but he held on to the library of 3,000 old MGM, Warner Bros., UA and RKO films. These were the programming staples for his TNT channel (Turner Network Television), which went on the air Oct. 3, 1988; the first movie shown was Gone with the Wind...
...basic collection. Even when TNT had commercials and AMC didn't, the Turner network had an edge because its library was stronger than its rival's. Turner had (and has) the grandeur of MGM, the grit of Warners, the swank of RKO. And the movies usually look great. This is a living archive; it keeps restoring classic films so they look as pristine as when they premiered. That's thanks in large part to George Feltenstein, whose title is senior vice president of theatrical catalog marketing at Warner Home Video, but who is really the boss of all things...
...Silent films. Once a larger part of TCM programming, mute cinema is now mostly confined to a Sunday-midnight niche - a glorious grotto, whose saints are Lon Chaney, Lillian Gish, John Gilbert, Marion Davies and other stars of MGM silents. The slot also is home to early masterworks from France (Jacques Feyder's Queen of Atlantis), Germany (F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh) and Sweden (Victor Sjostrom's Phantom Carriage). The country doesn't matter; all these films speak an eloquent visual language...
...great movie sensation a dozen years before, presented a series of 3-D documentary shorts to a New York City audience, who viewed the short documentaries through anaglyph (red-green) glasses. In the 1920s, many 3-D shorts appeared on programs at theaters such as New York's Roxy. MGM presented three 3-D talkie shorts from 1936 to 1941, the last one in Technicolor. The Polaroid filters created by Edwin Land were used for a short shown at the Chrysler Pavilion of the 1939 New York World's Fair...
...oversimplify with my usual abandon, I'd say that Pixar movies are animated features in the old, elevated Disney style, and DreamWorks films are flat-out cartoons, proud to be descended from the knockabout traditions of Warner Bros. (Bugs Bunny) and MGM (Tom and Jerry). You can spot the difference in the kinds of stories each studio favors. Pixar makes movies about couples - guy-guy in Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars, Ratatouille and this summer's Up; guy-gal in Finding Nemo and WALL-E - who build a relationship out of initial antagonism and shared need. In other words, buddy...