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One of the most lauded directors of the twentieth Century was Fritz Lang, and many of his films are considered the finest examples of cinema ever created. Lang's masterpiece, Metropolis has been in the headlines quite a bit recently after a complete print of the film was found in Buenos Aires. Prior to this though, Lang directed another of his triumph's, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler. Unlike Metropolis, which was a flop, and was subsequently butchered, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler was a massive hit. It could be considered The Lord Of The Rings of it's day. There was a huge advertising campaign leading up to the film's release. Norbert Jacques' novel, on which the film was based, was serialised for magazines, and the novel was released twice in hardback and paperback. There was a great deal of public awareness about the Mabuse character.
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Umm, so I accidentally called it the Malt Whisky Heritage Center in the video titles, and the video is dark, and my battery was dying. But anyway, here's a wee dram's worth of the Scotch Whisky Heritage Center in Edinburgh -- a veritable "It's a Small World" of whisky. After a tour and talk through the workings of distilleries and such, one gets so sit in a theater while a ghost teaches you about blending whisky. Then the main attraction is a barrel ride through the history of scotch whisky as told through life-size dioramas. Throw in a free dram of the day, a great restaurant, and an awesome gift shop, and you have the perfect toursit stop after you've finished with Edinburgh Castle.
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That some of Bollywood's worst sins have been committed in the name of nepotism is a fact which anyone who has borne witness to Karisma Kapoor's early career can sadly attest to. For the Hindi film industry's directors, stars and producers, dynasty building seems to be a top order of business, right alongside the practice of their chosen craft. For a fearsome reminder of this, one need look no further than Raj Kumar Kohli's 2002 film Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, as terrible a monument to a father's love for his son as has ever been erected. I recently found myself trying to defend it, arguing that, while the film was indeed searingly bad, it was also very entertaining, a fact which I felt should place it above other Bollywood films that were comparably bad but also boring. On second thought, though, I had to reconsider that opinion.
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When I recently set about the task of converting all my old VHS tapes to DVD-R, I started rediscovering a lot of films I hadn't watched in years, not since first I plucked them out of the dollar bin at whatever video store was trying to get rid of them. It was a big chore, because I had a lot of VHS tapes, and some of them were copyguarded for reasons I will never fathom. Who in the hell copyguards Archer: Fugitive from the Empire? Half those tapes are so old and worn at this point that they could snap at any moment, and what then? What happens when Archer: Fugitive from the Empire finally gets eaten by my aging VCR? What happens when The Barbarians can't be played anymore? So I decided to take my holy assignment one step forward and make sure I reviewed as many of these films as possible, because the internet is going to last forever, and one day we will create sentient computers by downloading the whole of human knowledge as represented by the contents of the world wide web into it's databases. At that time, the computer will become a living, thinking creature. It will also be an idiot, thanks to the fact that most of what's on the internet is blogs written from the viewpoint of someone's cat or reviews of movies like Solar Force starring Michael Pare.
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Time to travel back, back in time to the very dawn of cinema. This time around, the B-Masters pay tribute to the silent era of filmmaking. From master criminals to outer space to the wild, wild Alps, this roundtable showcases the fact that silent films were often far more lavish, experimental, and daring than modern audiences seem to recall. There's a lot more to silent film than people in heavy make-up making really exaggerated facial expressions. So join us for a lesson in film before sound.
Our Contributions: The White Hell of Piz Palu in which Leni Riefenstahl and her friends climb The Alps and run into all manner of danger, The Godless Girl, in which Cecil B. DeMiller teaches us that there's nothing atheists love more than handing out pamphlets, and finally Fritz Lang's epic Dr. Mabuse The Gambler, the film that would serve as the template for all movies about criminal masterminds that were yet to come.
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