Restored 1925 Lost World on Turner Classic Movies

[bh480@scn.org]

From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org
Restored 1925 Lost World on Turner Classic Movies

If your cable TV provider carries the Turner Classic
Movies (TCM) network, you can see the RESTORED version of
the original 1925 silent Lost World movie on Friday, July
20 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. This is the recently completed
reconstruction by David Shepard and Serge Bromberg that
runs 93 minutes and adds 50 percent more footage than any
version in the last 70 years (it was 108 minutes long when
first released in 1925). It is also available in DVD and
on tape. I've seen earlier cuts of the film and the stop-
motion effects are still pretty amazing (especially the
way the dinosaurs appear to breathe!), with a tour-de-
force dinosaur stampede during a volcanic eruption. The
dinosaurs are active and feisty, and have a kind of weird
surreal presence missing with modern digital effects that
try to make dinosaurs look like ordinary things inserted
into the real world. (I'm not knocking digital effects,
but good stop-motion has its special charms--I also
suspect that current digital effects will look rather
dated and creaky in another decade, and not nearly as
fascinating as vintage stop-motion. For one thing, I found
some of the digital nervous head and body twitches in
WDRNA dinosaurs rather artificial and annoying--along with
all the screams and bellows.)  Some of the more racist
elements in the original film reportedly have been toned
down, but the story may still drag in spots. The Lost
World will be followed by a showing of King Kong, the film
that gets everything right--briskly paced narrative,
brilliant editing, stunning atmosphere and mood, appealing
human characters, mesmerizing stop-motion--and arguably
the "coolest" (as opposed to scientifically "most
realistic") dinosaurs and other Mesozoic monsters ever put
on film.