The Story of Laurel and Hardy...

[Marty Bonnar]

...yes, another three dot thread.

...and it's relation to Golf Course Architecture...

Gotcha!

Restoration:
When the original film stock is lovingly tended to and all the scratches, faults, skips and jumps are removed - WHETHER manually or digitally. The end result - a beautiful, exquisite re-telling of the original.

Renovation:
That STUPID 'colorification' of the 70s where everybody gets an Orange face and a Blue suit and we're all supposed to ooh and aah over the magnificent result. Fake, as false as Hollywood boobies, a sham, tasteless, tacky commercialised drivel. Fast Buck central.

Modernisation:
Turning the whole thing into the crappiest CARTOON possible. Remember that stuff? Cheapo animation, rather pathetic exploitation, drivel, network time-filling nonsense.

Any parallels...?(see, three dots can be cool - like 'em, you'll come to learn to love 'em later)

FBD

[Garland Bayley]

Martin,

I think you forgot reperfection.

I.e., Removing pimples from ....

[Adam Clayman]

I'll agree with you Martin. Carefull restoration shows a respect for the original artists hard work.  Those who tear down that notion appear to have a separate agenda. But there I go again, generalizing.

As for Garland's gag... I laughed until I realized that the original artist/designer is still around to make their own decisions on how to reperfect and is something completely different. (almost a M. Python reference)

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Martin,
I cannot post the images I have been doing lately for certain golf clubs that don't need to be mentioned, but I have been colorizing old photos and honestly, beyond the raping of certain classics like Laurel & Hardy, the features are amazing in color--even if it's fake color. The bunkers even seem to be that much more dramatic.

Ted Turner may have been on to something.....

[Jim_Kennedy]

Ted Turner may be on to something..

I think it can all work, as long as 'they' realize they would kill the story line if colorizing the first twenty minutes of The Wizard of Oz.  

[Peter Pallotta]

Jim K - well put.

Martin - nicely done. Some more possible parallels:

I think a large percentage of movies made before 1940 or so no longer exist (NLE) - the negatives were tossed/destroyed to make room in storage. Were there a few great movies in there amongst what were probably mostly B pictures? Do we have an inaccurate idea of Hollywood's great old days of movie-making given that the bulk of what they produced was apparently thought -- by them -- worthy only of the trash bin?  

I think it was Martin Scorsese who led the charge to protect the integrity of some of those old motion pictures. (It takes a great film director, apparently, to honour the great directors/films of the past.)  It happened around the time they colourized "It's a Wonderful Life"...while Frank Capra was still alive no less.  Market studies told them that most modern viewers were immediately turned-off by black and white films. Have you ever seen a pristine black and white print of that film? My goodness, there are scenes that take your breath away in their play of light and dark.

I don't remember the specifics, but I think I have the percentages basically right: I read that the average Bugs Bunny cartoon had something like 5,000 frames per minute, while the average modern cartoon had something 500. (This was before the recent up-swing in quality, at least in the feature-length market). 5,000 hand-drawn and coloured frames, each an individual little gem; any wonder those cartoons still look great and work so well. What's it been: changing industry technology or changing public tastes, or both together in some dreadful dialectic? (Well, dreadful dialectic is over the top and unfair, at least for a gca parallel)

Peter

[Tony_Muldoon]

yet more..

Go back a little further and the analogy is spot on. Silent Cinema is equivalent to the Gutty era of Golf.  There’s plenty of research showing lost films and whole techniques that passed with the coming of sound. (Before there was a soundtrack, cameras were hand cranked and the best cameramen would minutely slow down or speed up to accentuate a mood.) The new technology had a similar effect on both industries, and the burst of energy led to a golden age. Whole films by innovators like King Vidor and DW Griffith (The OTM of Film?) have been seemingly lost forever.  Others have been pieced together from various disparate sources.  


Just as there are those who lamented what the continuing changing technology has done to golf, there’s plenty of elegies for the Silent Era as the true golden age of Hollywood.

The debate will continue forever, and you have to come down on one side or the other. Were Laurel and Hardy funnier in their silent shorter days or in the later much better known features? There are persuasive advocates for both.

And of course the ‘Stars were much bigger then’.

[Marty Bonnar]

Very nice additional thinking, gentlemen.

The more and longer I think about course architecture, the more and longer I can see the parallels with so many other artforms.

The blend of the 'practical' scientific (grasses, drainage, irrigation, playability) with the 'romantic' art (shapes, lines, historical reference, landscape context, contrasts, blends, colours, shapes and textures) is what really floats my clyde puffer.

It still isn't International Politics, however....

FBD.

[Dan King]

Martin Glynn Bonnar writes:
Fake, as false as Hollywood boobies, a sham, tasteless, tacky commercialised drivel. Fast Buck central.

I was watching Dances with Stars the other night, and I gotta say, I was very impressed with Jayne Seymour's boobies. Very impressive for a woman in her 80s..

Cheers,
Dan King

My husband said "show me your boob" and I had to pull up my skirt... so it was time to get them done!
 --Dolly Parton

[Steve Okula]

I understand that a lot of films were lost simply because the celluloid decomposed in the can. It is not terribly stable stuff, after about 50 years in storage. Plus it is highly flammable, and any sort of spark would set it off. Before digital technology, it was an expensive process to copy films over to new celluloid or video tape or whetever, and there wasn't a lot of room for improving them.

Perhaps there is a parallel in golf architecture, that today with articulated earth moving equipment, laser guided box-blades, advanced turf breeding, irrigation technology, GPS, and the rest there is the possibility of restoring and maintaining some old classics true to their original design, where it wasn't possible to keep them up for long in the 20's and 30's, hence the alterations over the years.

[Marty Bonnar]

We had Stephanie Beacham in our version. Went out in the first round. Still pretty hot for an older gal...
Rod Stewart's wife Penny currently fighting it out with Billy Zane's squeeze, Kelly Brook for eye-candy honours.

FBD.