Forgotten Silver (2000)

Good movie but grossly overrated

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Colin Mckenzie was a brilliant New Zealand filmmaker who FINALLY got his due from Peter Jackson's brilliant documentary, "Forgotten Silver". Mckenzie seems to have inspired Jackson quite amusingly, because you can totally see some of the elements used from his 'Salome', (Which I attended the world premiere of it's restoration) in his Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. In Forgotten Silver, Jackson intertwines footage from Griffiths' early movies and his masterpiece Salome, with interviews and a fascinating trek into New Zealand wilderness to try to find the sets used in 'Salome'. It's all quite interesting and absorbing. I admire Jackson for unearthing this silent movie master (which actually I knew about before this movie came out), and await when Salome comes out on DVD!ps Yes, I did get the joke ;)

To me, it is really a mystery why this one isn't more widely known. I admin, I got it via P2P. But after watching it I went searching for a retailer. None of the native retailer I know sold this one. Amazon of course did. This 'movie' is really a absurd venture into the movements of some movie-maker, who, by some force in the world, misses numerous chances at world fame by just utter bad luck. For me, it left me chuckling for weeks. Really brilliant.I can't recall anything quite like this. A must-see for anyone interested in deeper backgrounds of making a documentary without any notion or adherence to facts.

Spoilers herein.In 1988, Peter Greenaway made a little film called `Death in the Seine.' Filmmakers have long played with notions of created reality, but this was a clever take: real people drowned in the Seine during a period that by political accidents was erased from the calendar. But we have the reports of the coroner for these anonymous people. By `showing' them, Greenaway was reinvesting their lives with reality. An amazing idea, made sweeter by having the `corpses' obviously be alive.In 1994, film enthusiast Peter Jackson did much the same thing with `Heavenly Creatures.' He took a real story about a famous but now forgotten case and turned it into an essay on constructed film reality. In his case, this involved Orson Welles and an ersatz Camelot named Borovnia (borrow nvia).To judge from that film, he took the matter seriously. To judge from this one, he took it personally. The `creatures' weren't the girls, instead the fictitious beings they animated. The next year he made this film with himself as the animator. In both cases, he plays with the nature of writing. He references Welles, of course, and `Picnic at Hanging Rock,' of course. But most of all he plays under the kiwi skin with all sorts of inside jokes to exploit the national foible.But there's enough for the rest of us, especially if you love movies. He says this is just a joke, and he may even believe it. But there's plenty of intelligent foolery here: just in the `Salome' section. This is a recreation using exclusively modern idioms. This is post- 'Battleship Potemkin' and more obviously post- `Godfather.'It is as if we were given a Shakespeare play that mentioned watergate. The one really big goof is Harvey Weinstein (combined with industry shill Leonard Maltin). They could as easily have been talking about `Lord of the Rings:' huge marvelous cities in New Zealand, stock that steals 2000 eggs, deliberate pies in the face, and even the soap opera about our poor sojourner. Rings or films, it is all magic.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Sadly disappointing mockumentary of about the quality and incisiveness of a particularly bad late in the day Saturday Night Live sketch. The humor is flat and the concept runs out of steam early on though it continues flapping for the full hour. The only point of interest on the DVD is the attached documentary on the mockumentary which gives a glimpse into the unattractively self- congratulatory Jackson talking about his use of silent film techniques (embarrassing as they are not convincing) and the amusing comments from New Zealand viewers who actually were fooled (wanting to heave bricks though TV New Zealands window). Shines an unfortunate light on the weaker parts of TLOTR when we understand Jackson is an unfunny geek with the self-satisfied confidence of a local film poobah made good in the big leagues. The failure of his humor has obviously benefitted his non-comedic projects ... lets hope he sticks tot hat now that he has his big franchise.