Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Artist

Who says silent movies are dead! Congratulations to The Artist for receiving an Academy Award nomination for best film!

This is so exciting for us silent movie fans. Has anyone else seen it yet? What did you think? Do you think this opens the door to new silents? An appreciation for the classics? More opportunities for restoration?

I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Monday, January 2, 2012

Happy New Year!

Hi all!

Exciting news on the WTSM front: A long, looong time ago, I had announced a redesign for the site - yay. It never happened; work and life took over and I never followed through.

Flash forward to 2011: The HTML used for the old redesign? Out of style. And so, I have purchased a brand spanking new content management system that will do the job, and in proper style (i.e., CSS vs. tables).

This will be a work in progress for the next few months, but I think it will bring the site up-to-date nicely. This may mean something for only a very few, but: some of the pages are still solely written in straight HTML! Shocking, but true; they were originally built in 1996 (or thereabouts) and haven't been touched since.

So, this will be a true dragging of the site into the 21st century, and I'm pretty excited.

To celebrate, I have some new links to send your way, ones I've made note of (but never added):

The Russians discover a treasure trove of "lost" silents (Washington Post)

Barbara Kent, Star of Silent Movies, Dies at 103 (New York Times)

If you're heading to New York in the next month or so, be sure to stop by and visit “The Birth of Promotion: Inventing Film Publicity in the Silent-Film Era,” an exhibition at the New York Public Library's Lincoln Center gallery; it runs through Feb. 25, 2012 (New York Times)

Eric J. Schwartz’s love of film fueled his push for preservation of old movies (Washington Post)

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope it's a great one!