Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Watch Heat vs Mavericks Game 1 Live

NBA Finals 2011
Watch Miami Heat vs Dallas Mavericks Game 1 Live from American Airlines Arena, Miami, Florida 9PM on the 31st day of May. It's NBA Finals 2011 between 2006 champion Heat and its rival Mavericks. So, prepare for the great rematch where Miami won 4-2 it against Dallas.

What are you predictions for the game 1 of Heat vs Mavericks Live on ABC in US and TSN in Canada? Can Mavs stand the Heat's big three? for the meantime, check out the free video clip of the upcoming NBA championship best-of-seven game.



Be back here for the Heat vs Mavericks Game 1 Live here as we bring updates and highlights. So, don't miss to Watch Heat vs Mavericks Live. Witness the thousand fans at the Miami, Florida as hard-court actions begins. Enjoy!

Disney's Kim Possible


Disney's Kim Possible is an animated television show that features a teenage heroine who never fails to triumph in her daily activities of fighting crime and saving the world. Aside from the action packed life that Kim Possible leads as a heroine, she also has to deal with problems as an average teenager. In reference to the psychoanalytic theory, Kim is the Id. She represents the instinctual self and often breaks the rules in order to carry on the heavy task of defeating villains and stopping them from taking over the world. Risk-taking is what ultimately allows her to carry out this responsibility. Although her position as a heroine requires Kim to rebel against the norm, her personality is known to appreciate the excitement of living in the moment and feeding off her own adrenaline. Kim's best friend Ron Stoppable is the Ego, he is the wimpy sidekick that would only take risks when desperate times call. Ron often disagrees with Kim's way of doing things because she is unexpected, acts impulsively and always expects him to follow her lead. He tends to get stuck between playing it safe, and breaking the rules. Rufus, the naked mole rat, is the Super Ego. Rufus is obedient, aware of the rules that society has implemented, and the warning symbol that continuously presents itself to Kim and Ron. This little rodent always warns Kim Possible of the consequences she might have to face as a result of acting on impulse, as well as rescue Ron and Kim from many sticky situations. 

This text takes on the idea of a "sidekick has a sidekick." Ron Stoppable is Kim's sidekick, and Rufus is Ron's sidekick. The sidekicks act as weight, for when the hero gets way over her/his head. The show also makes use of words that characterize Ron and Kim. Ron Stoppable is taken from "unstoppable", and Kim Possible is derived from "impossible". These words send the message that the dynamic duo are not to be messed with.

aishwarya looking sexy in a bra













THE HANGOVER: PART II (2011)


This was a very entertaining movie, fun to watch and makes you laugh. This time around the guys are in Bangkok and all hell breaks loose. The movie didn't have many differences with the original. The first is still the funniest and best. Part II didn't have much of a change or feel to it, besides having the same story in a different setting and country.

The Hangover: Part II gets 6/10 stars

Monday, May 30, 2011

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (2009)


I didn't like this movie at all. It wasn't worth it. Things didn't fall together and certain characters that were in this movie, I wanted more of. The ending was terrible and not all that good.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine gets 1/10 stars

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (2006)


To much was happening in this movie all at once. Some scenes just didn't make sense at all. This third movie really lacked in certain parts and wasn't all that good.

X-Men 3 gets 5/10 stars

X2 (2003)


Very fun sequel I enjoyed it better than the first X-MEN movie. The way the movie starts off is great and it grabs your attention. There is more of a story with this film and everything come together in the end. Leaving it open for a third film.

X2 gets 8/10 stars

X-MEN (2000)


Very good movie. It was interesting to see the X Men come to life in a feature length film. Some elements were good and some were not quite there. The cast is great and each character really shows there side.

X-Men gets 7/10 stars

KUNG FU PANDA 2 (2011)


I enjoyed this movie a lot. It was cute, funny and very entertaining. This sequel is concentrated more on what PO is and where he came from. The action is great and the kids will enjoy this movie. If you loved the first movie, you will love this fun filled sequel.

Kung Fu Panda 2 gets 10/10 stars

aishwarya flaunting her cleavage













Saturday, May 28, 2011

Aishwarya exposing her deep cleavage













The Tramp, No. 6 - Modern Times (1936)


Oh multitudes of ironically ironic ironies! The final silent film made in the silent film era is called Modern Times. And that titular dichotomy is no accident.

Charlie Chaplin persisted in his refusal to kowtow to the overwhelmingly popular “fad” of talking pictures, with their vulgar verbiage, for if anything would destroy the Tramp (synonymous with Chaplin himself), it’s sesquipedalian loquaciousness. To release a silent picture in 1936 is a work of dog headed ludditism, but surely Chaplin knew that time was coming to an end for his Little Tramp. The Tramp’s so-called franchise was dated, not for a loss of popularity or quality or inspiration or proliferation (all these things it excelled at – quite possibly among the most triumphant film franchises ever), but by technology itself! Thus Modern Times doesn’t simply stand as a final farewell to the Tramp, but to an entire form of filmmaking he represented.

With technology (sound technology) making the Tramp obsolete, Chaplin chooses for the theme of his little guy’s final outing technology itself. Though have no doubt that with the Great Depression still in full swing, the Tramp’s position as the silent spokesman for an entire class of underprivileged makes him as potent as ever. But once again, as with City Lights, the march of time changes the nature of poverty right underneath the Tramp’s comically oversized shoes. No more bindles and apple cores, like some John Schwartzwelder script. Progress has come for our Little Tramp, and with it industrialization, atomization, and the dehumanization that implies.


Modern Times thus opens in a lovingly designed Art Deco factory floor, all oversized steel gears and degraded laborers performing repetitive tasks upon the assembly line. Oh, and the Tramp’s there too, working the assembly line like Donald Duck and Lucy Ricardo would do after him. As always with Chaplin’s films, the humor comes directly from the Tramp himself, an alien creature in a more recognizably human world, acting in ways humorously divergent from proper behavior. An abstract grotesque like the Tramp is a good way to engender yuks, but it’s pretty hard to critique an entire system of production with such a tool. (That’s what she said!)

Make no mistake, Chaplin intends a Grand Sweeping Statement with Modern Times, his most overtly political film yet – until he’d take on ze Nazis. It’s kinda hard to miss Chaplin’s point about the drudgery of the capitalist industrial complex when the movie opens by juxtaposing sheep with factory laborers. I suppose at one point that was a clever comparison, and not a fallback for internet trolls. And while some of Chaplin’s past efforts have begged us to consider his politics, it’s practically impossible not to now. Okay…Chaplin was a leftist. To ask the FBI, he was a Communist. He is undoubtedly critical of capitalism, for all the inhumane worker conditions and whatnot. Former filmic efforts have dramatized the plight of the poor, but at last, by directly addressing the system, Chaplin discovers satire, and can have an impact – not with sympathetic, humanist portrayals of the poor, but with specific criticisms of the Robbers Baron (or is that Robber Barons?).


All this places Modern Times squarely in a realm of propaganda…sort of. The image of the Tramp and his coworkers struggling against anti-human forms of machinery recalls many a Soviet effort. Metropolis, a similarly minded German Expressionist masterwork, presents similar imagery. There’s possibly a bit of Dziga Vertov in here too, but with the irony that Chaplin cannot celebrate his adopted nation’s (that’d be the U.S.) technical might, because he is somewhat ideologically opposed to it. I feel this is becoming an ugly summary.

One of Chaplin’s most potent filmic techniques for condemning technology (oh the ironies in that statement!) is quite perfect for his chosen format: the use of dialogue. Say wha?!?! In a silent film?!?! Oh yeah, Modern Times one ups City Lights as a pseudo-silent, building on that film’s synchronized soundtrack by adding in actual chatter...but with a point. The only comprehensible verbiage is spoken through machines, be it via telephone or recordings or oddly retro-futurist tell-o-visual-matic device machineries (i.e. TVs). Genuine human discussion is still rendered, when needed, through title cards. This is a clever means, very in keeping with City Lights, to disregard sound film, even if there’s no particular persuasiveness to this argument.

The Tramp’s time on the factory floor is, while politically loaded, comedic gold – a wholly realized combination of setting and gags and Chaplin’s celebrated pantomime. It climaxes as the Tramp is sucked down into the machine’s innards, made so insane by his repetitive job that he can no longer physically control himself (note the over-your-head message).


This image somewhat recalls Buster Keaton’s great moment of despair in The General, when he is carried away unawares on a train’s spinning rod. Man against machine was always Keaton’s favorite theme, with the whole world presented as a mathematical device pitted against the hero – who could only overcome through technical superiority. Keaton’s comedy is deadpan and relatively rigid, most unlike Chaplin’s fluid, often overacted cartoonish lunacy. Thus pitting Chaplin against a gewgaw yields a very different end result, one focused upon his outsized physical gyrations – Chaplin becomes a part of the machine, and retains those traits upon leaving the factory, while Keaton makes the machine a part of himself.

At this point, Modern Times would make for a fantastic short film, with the Tramp’s time in the factory almost exactly two reels long. The movie has peaked, with still an hour to go and nothing nearly so pointed to do with it.

Unemployed and out on the streets, the Tramp reverts to his usual hobo ways. Much of that sleek set design, so striking against the Tramp’s old-fashioned frame, gives way for a more blandly realistic look at industrial slums – like something from the Italian neo-realist school. There are social problems to explore, like picketing and riots – resulting in the Tramp leading a Communist parade. While this is potentially an honest mistake, one can kind of see where the FBI’s suspicions arose. The Tramp is tossed into prison, where a new set of comic set pieces can arise to no ultimate end (be it narrative or thematic), and so on.


The rest of Modern Times is a largely disparate collection of comic moments, some of them notably stronger than others – with only a rather light basting of industry and “modern” technology to connect them. (A frankly stronger version of the same notion can be found in Jacques Tati’s Play Time.) Narrative fragmentation is a common feature of Chaplin’s, er, features, owing to his sporadic and improvisatory means of working (also his peculiar perfectionism). Somehow this episodic construction feels more damning in Modern Times, which doesn’t have as strong of an emotional through-line as some of Chaplin’s more overtly melodramatic works. It’s simply assorted random settings:

- The department store
- The shack
- The dance hall
- The prison
- The docks
- The suburbs
- A brief return to the factory

There is a larger connective tissue than simply assorted misadventures. Any guesses as to what that will be? Yup, a Girl. Specifically, a Gamine, which is (I suppose) a rather more specific generic appellation – “gamine” meaning a female hobo, but somehow also meaning what Audrey Hepburn once was, which is a difficult thing to reconcile. As usual, Chaplin casts his…er, let’s say “girlfriend,” because it’s unclear whether he was ever actually married to Paulette Goddard, unless a legally questionable and possibly apocryphal ceremony in China counts. Anyway, Paulette Goddard plays the leading lady, and I must say, she is easily the best gal in a Chaplin picture!


Goddard’s Gamine is a feisty young woman, self-dependent as she steals bread for herself and her fellow hungry wharf rats. Her poverty rivals – nay, exceeds – that of the Tramp’s in any picture, possibly because it comes across as infinitely more realistic. The Gamine is a thoroughly believable person, and thankfully separate from the standard silent film tactic of wilting violet female leads. The Gamine is anything but naïve, and makes a remarkably strong impression in her introduction, an extended dramatic sequence of survival entirely removed from the Tramp’s tomfoolery. Though Chaplin the director does insert some rather cloying melodrama into this section, Goddard nicely sells it.

It helps that Goddard seems, visually, quite out of place in a silent feature – or really any film from its period. Her facial structure, hair and expressions all seem – to excuse the obvious word – modern. There is nothing of the twenties’ doe-eyed waifs in her appearance, no period signifiers of attractiveness – nor does Goddard overplay her beauty. Covered in oil and rags, with sneaky little sideways glances throughout, she rather acts against her beauty, which comes across through a rambunctious energy instead.

It is inevitable that she shall share a romance with the Tramp, though it’s surprising just how equal that romance is. Both are of the same class, put there by social conditions. They are on a surprisingly equal footing in every sense, so Modern Times completely skips any “getting to know you” period (which Chaplin’s films often don’t move beyond). Tramp and the Gamine are a couple from the outset. A lot of the set pieces that follow are then centered upon their domestic life, be it in poverty, in fantasy, or hidden in the department store.


This is Chaplin telling a domestic comedy, in a sense, though marriage is never broached (from what I can tell). That’s a surprising scenario for a silent comedy to take, simply because it feels out of place with the format’s usual regard for “boy meets girl” stories. Take it as a sign of maturity, or of changing times, but there’s a lot in Modern Times which feels out of place in silent cinema – sleek design, Goddard’s timeless appearance, suburban domesticity…cocaine (which would feel out of place in any movie prior to the 1960s, and results in the Tramp’s same basic untempered zaniness). Domesticity is the most interesting element, because there are daydream moments where the Tramp and the Gamine basically picture themselves on the set of a 1950s sitcom. How anachronistic! Obviously a spotlessly clean scene out of “Leave It to Beaver” was conceivable in the ‘30s, in order for Chaplin to parody it. Still, this mode of comedy is light-years separated from the dusty, earthy stunt work most associated with the era.


Yes, a lot of Modern Times is atypical, and while there is no doubt as to its classic status, it is difficult at times to square away with Chaplin’s main body of work (best exemplified by City Lights). Since this is meant as the Tramp’s final farewell, it pushes him to the apocalyptic limits – cocaine, the 1950s predicted, breadline riots, all material that is utterly alien to the Tramp, and perhaps an argument for his departure. How does Chaplin end such a statement?

Well, the climax comes first – in Chaplin’s work, often a bravura stunt sequence. Modern Times, true to its form, goes an idiosyncratic route instead…

THE TRAMP VOCALIZES!

Worry not, he doesn’t speak (which would violate Chaplin’s conception of the little guy), but he’s called upon to perform a song at the club he and the Gamine now work. As a fun little meta joke that wouldn’t be possible without a career of silence behind him, Chaplin milks the moments leading up to the Tramp’s singing for all they’re worth. And…the Tramp sings “The Nonsense Song,” filled with verbiage in the same sense that a James Joyce novel is filled with things that some would call words. Gibberish, in other words. Literally off the cuff, where the smeared lyrics are written. This retains the illusion of the Tramp’s verbal “otherness,” and creates a moment the character cold never improve upon.


The final shot provides closure for the entirety of the Tramp’s adventures. The classical ending sees the Tramp walking alone down the road – “The Lonely Man” from “The Incredible Hulk” optional. Only this time the Tramp is joined by the Gamine, his female counterpart – each abandoned by the ever-evolving nature of progress, but complete together. The Tramp has gotten the girl before, in The Gold Rush and assorted shorts, but this has a greater air of permanence. This is the Tramp still as the Tramp, not transformed by narrative circumstances into someone else.

As a postscript, Modern Times by no means signaled the end of Chaplin’s career, though it would be the last time he would appear as the Tramp. The distinction is somewhat academic, because in The Great Dictator Chaplin appears in two roles with arguable Tramp-like tendencies – as a Jewish barber, and as an ersatz Hitler. (Charlie Chaplin : Adolf Hitler :: Tina Fey : Sarah Palin) The Great Dictator, openly critical of Nazi Germany before it was cool, is a talkie, with a specific plot the Tramp simply does not fit into. For these reasons, it is not a part of the Tramp “continuity” – the Tramp’s essential pantomime is gone, even if Chaplin’s barber retains the Tramp’s visual appearance. Chaplin morphed his Tramp into new characters, evolved him beyond his very Trampiness. It isn’t a clean break, as The Great Dictator is still dependent upon memories of the Tramp, but it is fundamentally different.

The Tramp, No. 6 - Modern Times (1936)


Oh multitudes of ironically ironic ironies! The final silent film made in the silent film era is called Modern Times. And that titular dichotomy is no accident.

Charlie Chaplin persisted in his refusal to kowtow to the overwhelmingly popular “fad” of talking pictures, with their vulgar verbiage, for if anything would destroy the Tramp (synonymous with Chaplin himself), it’s sesquipedalian loquaciousness. To release a silent picture in 1936 is a work of dog headed ludditism, but surely Chaplin knew that time was coming to an end for his Little Tramp. The Tramp’s so-called franchise was dated, not for a loss of popularity or quality or inspiration or proliferation (all these things it excelled at – quite possibly among the most triumphant film franchises ever), but by technology itself! Thus Modern Times doesn’t simply stand as a final farewell to the Tramp, but to an entire form of filmmaking he represented.

With technology (sound technology) making the Tramp obsolete, Chaplin chooses for the theme of his little guy’s final outing technology itself. Though have no doubt that with the Great Depression still in full swing, the Tramp’s position as the silent spokesman for an entire class of underprivileged makes him as potent as ever. But once again, as with City Lights, the march of time changes the nature of poverty right underneath the Tramp’s comically oversized shoes. No more bindles and apple cores, like some John Schwartzwelder script. Progress has come for our Little Tramp, and with it industrialization, atomization, and the dehumanization that implies.


Modern Times thus opens in a lovingly designed Art Deco factory floor, all oversized steel gears and degraded laborers performing repetitive tasks upon the assembly line. Oh, and the Tramp’s there too, working the assembly line like Donald Duck and Lucy Ricardo would do after him. As always with Chaplin’s films, the humor comes directly from the Tramp himself, an alien creature in a more recognizably human world, acting in ways humorously divergent from proper behavior. An abstract grotesque like the Tramp is a good way to engender yuks, but it’s pretty hard to critique an entire system of production with such a tool. (That’s what she said!)

Make no mistake, Chaplin intends a Grand Sweeping Statement with Modern Times, his most overtly political film yet – until he’d take on ze Nazis. It’s kinda hard to miss Chaplin’s point about the drudgery of the capitalist industrial complex when the movie opens by juxtaposing sheep with factory laborers. I suppose at one point that was a clever comparison, and not a fallback for internet trolls. And while some of Chaplin’s past efforts have begged us to consider his politics, it’s practically impossible not to now. Okay…Chaplin was a leftist. To ask the FBI, he was a Communist. He is undoubtedly critical of capitalism, for all the inhumane worker conditions and whatnot. Former filmic efforts have dramatized the plight of the poor, but at last, by directly addressing the system, Chaplin discovers satire, and can have an impact – not with sympathetic, humanist portrayals of the poor, but with specific criticisms of the Robbers Baron (or is that Robber Barons?).


All this places Modern Times squarely in a realm of propaganda…sort of. The image of the Tramp and his coworkers struggling against anti-human forms of machinery recalls many a Soviet effort. Metropolis, a similarly minded German Expressionist masterwork, presents similar imagery. There’s possibly a bit of Dziga Vertov in here too, but with the irony that Chaplin cannot celebrate his adopted nation’s (that’d be the U.S.) technical might, because he is somewhat ideologically opposed to it. I feel this is becoming an ugly summary.

One of Chaplin’s most potent filmic techniques for condemning technology (oh the ironies in that statement!) is quite perfect for his chosen format: the use of dialogue. Say wha?!?! In a silent film?!?! Oh yeah, Modern Times one ups City Lights as a pseudo-silent, building on that film’s synchronized soundtrack by adding in actual chatter...but with a point. The only comprehensible verbiage is spoken through machines, be it via telephone or recordings or oddly retro-futurist tell-o-visual-matic device machineries (i.e. TVs). Genuine human discussion is still rendered, when needed, through title cards. This is a clever means, very in keeping with City Lights, to disregard sound film, even if there’s no particular persuasiveness to this argument.

The Tramp’s time on the factory floor is, while politically loaded, comedic gold – a wholly realized combination of setting and gags and Chaplin’s celebrated pantomime. It climaxes as the Tramp is sucked down into the machine’s innards, made so insane by his repetitive job that he can no longer physically control himself (note the over-your-head message).


This image somewhat recalls Buster Keaton’s great moment of despair in The General, when he is carried away unawares on a train’s spinning rod. Man against machine was always Keaton’s favorite theme, with the whole world presented as a mathematical device pitted against the hero – who could only overcome through technical superiority. Keaton’s comedy is deadpan and relatively rigid, most unlike Chaplin’s fluid, often overacted cartoonish lunacy. Thus pitting Chaplin against a gewgaw yields a very different end result, one focused upon his outsized physical gyrations – Chaplin becomes a part of the machine, and retains those traits upon leaving the factory, while Keaton makes the machine a part of himself.

At this point, Modern Times would make for a fantastic short film, with the Tramp’s time in the factory almost exactly two reels long. The movie has peaked, with still an hour to go and nothing nearly so pointed to do with it.

Unemployed and out on the streets, the Tramp reverts to his usual hobo ways. Much of that sleek set design, so striking against the Tramp’s old-fashioned frame, gives way for a more blandly realistic look at industrial slums – like something from the Italian neo-realist school. There are social problems to explore, like picketing and riots – resulting in the Tramp leading a Communist parade. While this is potentially an honest mistake, one can kind of see where the FBI’s suspicions arose. The Tramp is tossed into prison, where a new set of comic set pieces can arise to no ultimate end (be it narrative or thematic), and so on.


The rest of Modern Times is a largely disparate collection of comic moments, some of them notably stronger than others – with only a rather light basting of industry and “modern” technology to connect them. (A frankly stronger version of the same notion can be found in Jacques Tati’s Play Time.) Narrative fragmentation is a common feature of Chaplin’s, er, features, owing to his sporadic and improvisatory means of working (also his peculiar perfectionism). Somehow this episodic construction feels more damning in Modern Times, which doesn’t have as strong of an emotional through-line as some of Chaplin’s more overtly melodramatic works. It’s simply assorted random settings:

- The department store
- The shack
- The dance hall
- The prison
- The docks
- The suburbs
- A brief return to the factory

There is a larger connective tissue than simply assorted misadventures. Any guesses as to what that will be? Yup, a Girl. Specifically, a Gamine, which is (I suppose) a rather more specific generic appellation – “gamine” meaning a female hobo, but somehow also meaning what Audrey Hepburn once was, which is a difficult thing to reconcile. As usual, Chaplin casts his…er, let’s say “girlfriend,” because it’s unclear whether he was ever actually married to Paulette Goddard, unless a legally questionable and possibly apocryphal ceremony in China counts. Anyway, Paulette Goddard plays the leading lady, and I must say, she is easily the best gal in a Chaplin picture!


Goddard’s Gamine is a feisty young woman, self-dependent as she steals bread for herself and her fellow hungry wharf rats. Her poverty rivals – nay, exceeds – that of the Tramp’s in any picture, possibly because it comes across as infinitely more realistic. The Gamine is a thoroughly believable person, and thankfully separate from the standard silent film tactic of wilting violet female leads. The Gamine is anything but naïve, and makes a remarkably strong impression in her introduction, an extended dramatic sequence of survival entirely removed from the Tramp’s tomfoolery. Though Chaplin the director does insert some rather cloying melodrama into this section, Goddard nicely sells it.

It helps that Goddard seems, visually, quite out of place in a silent feature – or really any film from its period. Her facial structure, hair and expressions all seem – to excuse the obvious word – modern. There is nothing of the twenties’ doe-eyed waifs in her appearance, no period signifiers of attractiveness – nor does Goddard overplay her beauty. Covered in oil and rags, with sneaky little sideways glances throughout, she rather acts against her beauty, which comes across through a rambunctious energy instead.

It is inevitable that she shall share a romance with the Tramp, though it’s surprising just how equal that romance is. Both are of the same class, put there by social conditions. They are on a surprisingly equal footing in every sense, so Modern Times completely skips any “getting to know you” period (which Chaplin’s films often don’t move beyond). Tramp and the Gamine are a couple from the outset. A lot of the set pieces that follow are then centered upon their domestic life, be it in poverty, in fantasy, or hidden in the department store.


This is Chaplin telling a domestic comedy, in a sense, though marriage is never broached (from what I can tell). That’s a surprising scenario for a silent comedy to take, simply because it feels out of place with the format’s usual regard for “boy meets girl” stories. Take it as a sign of maturity, or of changing times, but there’s a lot in Modern Times which feels out of place in silent cinema – sleek design, Goddard’s timeless appearance, suburban domesticity…cocaine (which would feel out of place in any movie prior to the 1960s, and results in the Tramp’s same basic untempered zaniness). Domesticity is the most interesting element, because there are daydream moments where the Tramp and the Gamine basically picture themselves on the set of a 1950s sitcom. How anachronistic! Obviously a spotlessly clean scene out of “Leave It to Beaver” was conceivable in the ‘30s, in order for Chaplin to parody it. Still, this mode of comedy is light-years separated from the dusty, earthy stunt work most associated with the era.


Yes, a lot of Modern Times is atypical, and while there is no doubt as to its classic status, it is difficult at times to square away with Chaplin’s main body of work (best exemplified by City Lights). Since this is meant as the Tramp’s final farewell, it pushes him to the apocalyptic limits – cocaine, the 1950s predicted, breadline riots, all material that is utterly alien to the Tramp, and perhaps an argument for his departure. How does Chaplin end such a statement?

Well, the climax comes first – in Chaplin’s work, often a bravura stunt sequence. Modern Times, true to its form, goes an idiosyncratic route instead…

THE TRAMP VOCALIZES!

Worry not, he doesn’t speak (which would violate Chaplin’s conception of the little guy), but he’s called upon to perform a song at the club he and the Gamine now work. As a fun little meta joke that wouldn’t be possible without a career of silence behind him, Chaplin milks the moments leading up to the Tramp’s singing for all they’re worth. And…the Tramp sings “The Nonsense Song,” filled with verbiage in the same sense that a James Joyce novel is filled with things that some would call words. Gibberish, in other words. Literally off the cuff, where the smeared lyrics are written. This retains the illusion of the Tramp’s verbal “otherness,” and creates a moment the character cold never improve upon.


The final shot provides closure for the entirety of the Tramp’s adventures. The classical ending sees the Tramp walking alone down the road – “The Lonely Man” from “The Incredible Hulk” optional. Only this time the Tramp is joined by the Gamine, his female counterpart – each abandoned by the ever-evolving nature of progress, but complete together. The Tramp has gotten the girl before, in The Gold Rush and assorted shorts, but this has a greater air of permanence. This is the Tramp still as the Tramp, not transformed by narrative circumstances into someone else.

As a postscript, Modern Times by no means signaled the end of Chaplin’s career, though it would be the last time he would appear as the Tramp. The distinction is somewhat academic, because in The Great Dictator Chaplin appears in two roles with arguable Tramp-like tendencies – as a Jewish barber, and as an ersatz Hitler. (Charlie Chaplin : Adolf Hitler :: Tina Fey : Sarah Palin) The Great Dictator, openly critical of Nazi Germany before it was cool, is a talkie, with a specific plot the Tramp simply does not fit into. For these reasons, it is not a part of the Tramp “continuity” – the Tramp’s essential pantomime is gone, even if Chaplin’s barber retains the Tramp’s visual appearance. Chaplin morphed his Tramp into new characters, evolved him beyond his very Trampiness. It isn’t a clean break, as The Great Dictator is still dependent upon memories of the Tramp, but it is fundamentally different.

The Tramp, No. 3 - The Gold Rush (1925)


To recap (mostly for myself), by 1921 and The Kid, Charlie Chaplin enjoyed the following freedoms: Autonomy as lead actor, writer, director, producer, editor, choreographer, composer, et cetera, free to make movies unhindered by financial necessity or the whims of a distributor, subservient solely to his muse. The only way Chaplin’s self-dictated Little Tramp series could get even more privileged would be if Chaplin started his very own movie studio.

Well, he’d already done just that…in 1919, Chaplin created United Artists (with D.W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford) to escape the standard studio system.

We are well into the 1920s now, the height of the silent film era…and Chaplin significantly slows down his output, with the assurance he would remain a draw regardless. It has been opined [citation needed] that Chaplin wouldn’t create new comedies for his Tramp character unless inspiration hit. One could say, with The Kid building upon assorted shorts, that the Tramp had done all he could in his usual setting of urban poverty. The Gold Rush hails a setting switch.


This wouldn’t come out until 1925, four years after The Kid, with nothing in between to rival it (just a few minor shorts such as The Idle Class, Pay Day and The Pilgrim). By modern terms, four years isn’t that long to wait for a sequel, but compare this to Chaplin’s initial turnaround, between Kid Auto Races at Venice and Mabel’s Strange Predicament: Two days! Two days to four years, a quantitative change which indicates the effect of switching over to feature filmmaking. As vindication of this slow-down, The Gold Rush wrangled up an unfathomable gross of $4,250,000, plus one extra dollar. Four million dollars, in 1926 money (the highest grossing of all silent comedies!) – not only did Chaplin remain a draw in considerable absence, he became a rarity, more valuable in measured doses.

The Gold Rush's genesis lies in sudden inspiration, since Chaplin wasn’t simply developing Tramp vehicles willy-nilly, but waiting for the perfect concept. Chaplin read up on the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush, about the hardships prospectors faced in the icy north. For whatever obscure reason, this historical reality of mass poverty and starvation, this material spoke out to Chaplin and said “I would make for an hilarious comedy.”

It’s true that Chaplin’s comedies derive much of their power from non-comic scenarios. Look to the The Kid’s black comedy of child abandonment, then picture an entire movie based around funny death. Slapping the Tramp into 1897 lets Chaplin mine for comedy just as the Tramp simultaneously mines for gold. Some of The Gold Rush’s funniest moments come early, through the simply contrast of the Tramp ambling awkwardly past icy precipices and unseen brown bears.

Actually, The Gold Rush is no mere pastiche of a more ostensibly serious gold rush movie. It is the era’s premiere, nay possibly only worthwhile look into the setting. The Trail of ’98 and Klondike Annie would only come later, for the spirit of copycatting is as old as time itself. Chaplin, in assembling his picture, did painstaking historical research, creating an accurate look back into the nostalgic “Gay Nineties” (tee hee hee!, I know), which just happens to feature the Tramp. Hell, some of Chaplin’s (the director’s) heaviest lifting occurs in sequences not even having to do with the Tramp! Consider his staged recreation of the Chikoot Trail –


- compared to the real deal –


For a comedy film, this is nearing Cecile B. DeMille levels of spectacle, what with the hundreds of faceless extras, meticulously recreated ginormous sets, and an utter lack of special effects to cheapen the effort – “spectacle” is the most successful form of silent film drama. Since Chaplin, with his storied love of pathos, is increasingly inclined to create serio-comic dramedies, it’s welcome that he embraces this mode of seriousness.

Actually, there is an element of The Gold Rush which recalls some of the less maudlin works of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd – fellow comedians more wholly devoted to comedy-as-thriller, comedy-as-stunt-show. There is a palpable danger in the wintry Klondike, well beyond the mere tragedy of the gutter – Chaplin’s favored setting. The Gold Rush is an adventure film, in its way, repeatedly placing the Tramp in harm’s way, then devising comic solutions to rescue him. This being Chaplin, and not Keaton, there is a noted de-emphasis upon stunt work; danger comes from different areas, of greater interest to Chaplin.


For instance, much of The Gold Rush sees the Tramp ensconced away in a single, one-room cabin during the worst of winter. His solitary mate: Big Jim (Mack Swain, professionally enormous man). Ignoring a brief run-in with a murderous fugitive (Tom Murray), the duo mostly holes up to face hunger and want and loneliness – certainly subject matter dear to Chaplin’s heart. Despite whatever hazards the setting itself might toss out – blizzards, bears, cliffs, ice flows, avalanches – cabin fever is Chaplin’s meat. Chaplin himself (or the Tramp, at least) is also meat, to go by Big Jim’s famished hallucinations of a man-sized chicken.

Keaton, given the same setting, would have no doubt emphasized the storm – Steamboat Bill, Jr. provides a good example of that. He would have also played up the mechanical fact of mining, be it panning for gold, or digging shafts, or chipping away at cliff side. It’s surprising then to note that the Tramp never mines on screen, just as the Dude never bowls. One might consider this an oversight on Chaplin’s part, except he clearly retains an interest in depravation for its own sake – In place of a raucous mining set piece, instead the Tramp boils his boots, and eats the laces like spaghetti. (A classic example of Chaplin humor, more gentle than hilarious.) There is greater humanism in joking about hunger, especially with Chaplin’s street urchin childhood, not his millionaire superstar 1920s fame.

It’s easy enough to question how Chaplin could draw out a feature film (meaning now 96 minutes) with the Tramp merely sequestered in a cabin. He cannot. Before the film is even halfway over, Chaplin relocates the Tramp to a gold rush town, to basically forego prospecting lunacy for the rest of the running time. This is, for me, a mistake, as it removes that danger element which makes The Gold Rush so involving. The Tramp, being a timid soul, instead becomes the Alaskan equivalent of a street bum (Levi Johnston?), attempting to survive via odd jobs and whatnot. Snow shoveling, largely, a chance for momentary physical hijinks. This is much closer to a generic Tramp movie, with the setting barely even mattering. Sigh, at least they’re not going with one of those archaic “Tramp falls for the Girl” stories.


Oh curse it all, they are! Meet Georgia (Georgia Hale – no points for that name), the saloon girl. The Tramp falls instantly in love with her and…well, quite frankly, I can barely even recall much of what occupies the vast majority of The Gold Rush – at least, not in the specifics. An occasionally lopsided tale of frontier romance plays out. The Tramp plays each moment of romantic success by smiling warmly towards the camera, or otherwise telegraphing his joy. I suppose it makes me a heartless curmudgeon that I am mostly apathetic towards this. Chaplin’s appeals to genuine emotion, while no doubt hugely effective, always seem somehow distant in my mind. I am more moved by Buster Keaton’s completely emotionless stone face than all the heart-grabbing, spontaneous joy the Tramp evokes. (Yeah, yeah, my devotion to the other great silent comedian becomes my great undoing in trying to engage this series.)


So be it. It still behooves me to at least point out the classic moments. Chief is Thanksgiving dinner, where the Tramp (now inundated with food) performs a little soft shoe routine involving a couple of dancing bread rolls. Just as Duck Soup’s immortal mirror routine didn’t originate with the Marx Brothers, so can Chaplin’s famous loaf dance be traced back further, to The Rough House with Fatty Arbuckle and – oh no, here it comes! – Buster Keaton. Okay, okay, calm down, Chaplin is good, he elevates a forgotten gag to the level of revered pantomime, I am a Grinch.

This whole middle section is, in retrospect, greatly irksome, when the same exact tomfoolery wouldn’t be out of place in a more typical Tramp short. Why? That Klondike setting. There’s so much potential, with the whole great outdoors, and thousands of men all desperately facing the elements to discover minimal financial reward. Why why why take that promise, deliver a few good starvation gags, then revert into the same standard love story as always?! What’d odd is The Gold Rush feels, somehow, less coherently singular than the lesser The Kid – which made its pseudo-fatherhood story the crux. The Gold Rush has moments of greatness, almost all pertaining directly to the fact of, well, a gold rush. The cabin scenes beforehand – totally wonderful. Thankfully, there’s a bit more where that came from.


Pausing for a moment…Chaplin films, more so than other silent comedies, dwell upon their happy endings, to a fault. Whether the Tramp gets the Girl or not, attains wealth or not, there is a carefully controlled emotion (i.e. pathos) to go out on. (Meanwhile, Keaton would sometimes end his onscreen romances with tombstones, to avoid all treacle.) Given a gold rush, the natural conclusion is to see the Tramp attain riches…and Georgia on his side, for good measure. And it just so happens that Big Jim had discovered a mighty gold claim before ever even meeting the Tramp. Only now he’s come down with the amnesia, as obedient to plot as ever, and the cowardly Tramp is called upon to return to the feared Arctic and find Jim’s lode.

So the two head back to the cabin, and it’s astounding to see the Tramp actually, in some vague way, earning his triumph for once. Compare it to A Dog’s Life, where he simple finds stolen riches, the end. Here, the Klondike demands some degree of effort, and even if we never see the Tramp directly seeking gold (despite that being his reason for being in Alaska to begin with!). At least he does something to earn his top hat and monocle at the end.

But first, this happens…


That occurred during an overnight snowstorm, with Jim and the Tramp (sounds like a morning drive-time DJ combo) asleep unaware in their beloved death cabin. And thanks to immortal drunkenness, when the cabin tilts, it’s written off as a hangover. So start many, many minutes of sublime comic suspense, a literal cliffhanger of balancing this precarious building. Now this is the sort of physical adventure I’d hoped for throughout, even if it retains that Chaplinesque air of pantomime, never inching into Keatonian daredevilry. That means when the Tramp wanders out into the drop-off – which is inevitable, given the scenario – his dangling is shown not through insane stunt work, but with a stop motion, miniature Tramp. The effect is rather noticeable today, but it doesn’t harm the sequence – the thrill comes from how things are choreographed, not just executed. And with this climax, The Gold Rush completely redeems itself.


I’ll largely pass over the epilogue in silence, where the Tramp, Robber Baron, has his final romantic reconciliation with Georgia. As an ending, it means to emphasize the value of love over money, and I’m not touching that one.

Postscript: In 1942, Chaplin re-released The Gold Rush as a talkie (…sort of). It features a musical track, with Chaplin himself narrating the film as a substitute for the usual title cards. There are some further changes, to projection speed and the romantic subplot. As tinkering goes, it’s not nearly as infuriating as George Lucas’ Special Editions, but it seems fed by the same sort of myopia. The additional aural elements overemphasize the maudlin pathos of the endeavor, which is appropriate enough in the Georgia sequences, but not really needed with Big Jim. With silence, one is freer to read a preferred mood (the great joy, and great challenge, of silent cinema, which demands much more of the audience). I personally prefer the silent version (which is, oddly enough, completely silent, thanks to the 1942 version’s impact – I just put on some Ennio Morricone instead). Though for the average viewer, the sound version is certainly more accessible. I’d almost call it a perfect gateway to silent films.

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