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Call of Cthulhu Available on DVD
An anonymous reader writes "The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society is finally finished with the ultimate labor of mythos-love. The Call of Cthulhu is now available on DVD! For those not familiar with the long-awaited project, The Call of Cthulhu is a silent film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's famous literary masterpiece of the same name. It really looks like something that would have been shot in the 1920's silent film era. I, for one, welcome our new multi-tentacled, aquatic, ancient overlord. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn."
Coralized links
t ore.lasso?1=product&2=8l
http://www.cthulhulives.org.nyud.net:8090/store/s
http://www.cthulhulives.org.nyud.net:8090/toc.htm
These links do not go over standard port 80 and so may not work behind company firewalls
Modern Times, starring Charlie Chaplin. The mechanical salesman has audio, the rest is a normal silent film (IIRC). Last one, AFAIK.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/
Well, how about Mel Brook's "Silent Movie" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075222/
Flying Spaghetti Monster has existed forever and never had a father.
Mel Brooks' Silent Movie is, as the title suggests. Except for that one line spoken by a mime...
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
I'm really glad to see the correct spelling of "Iä Iä". As a native Swedish speaker I use the "ä" daily as it is a common vowl in Swedish. "Iä" is pronounced quite like an English speaker would pronounce "yeah". I'm not quite sure of how Lovecraft would've pronounced it though.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
I, for one, don't even know what this particular overlord is!
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Cthulhu is real. Here's the proof :)
e a-creature_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-07-02-s
For those of you who have no idea WTF is this, here's the original text:
_ Madness
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu
and one of my favourites, the Mountains of Madness:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of
In general, wikipedia has lots of material on Lovecraft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft
Another great of the field was L. Sprague De Camp
The Elric Saga by M Moorcock remains my all time favourite.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Although not a "silent film" per se, an interesting French movie that came out in 2003 is The Triplets of Belleville. There is a small bit of spoken French scattered throughout the movie, but very little. For the most part you can watch it and fully understand what's going on even if you don't speak French, because they did a very good job of communicating the characters' feelings and other plot elements without the use of words. I'd recommend it to anyone.
From TFA: "Format: NTSC, Region 0, Black & White (special features in color with sound)."
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
The DVD is region 0, which means region-free.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
If you want to see a great silent movie, check out Buster Keaton's 'The General'. Made in 1927, Keaton did most of the stunts himself and they are pretty incredible. Set in the Civil War, Keaton is a locomotive engineer too small to make it into the Confederate army, so he helps out any way he can. Great comedy too! Note: this is not entirely OT, it's a *real* 20's film, so you can use it to set the mood before your next Cthulhu campaign.
Dos it have to be a print copy?
If not, try this: The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft, completely free (and legal!) in HTML. His works are available in a few other places online too, like here (see the copyright information at the bottom of the page-- most or all of Lovecraft's work is in the public domain), here (complete works, mostly in PDFs-- probably your best source), here (PDFs of several works), and here (a 100-page collection in a few different formats, including PDF and HTML).
Since most of Lovecraft's work is in the public domain, you can find other sources around the internet.
If you do want books, please consider buying from Arkham House, which has done a lot to promote Lovecraft's work, encourage and publish studies of it, and keep the genre alive by publishing the works of other authors. You'll find Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi (the leading Lovecraft scholar), and other authors like August Derleth on the authors page. You may notice on the main page that despite Lovecraft's works being available in the public domain, books of his works are three of the top five sellers at Arkham House.
Whether you read Lovecraft in electronic format or in bound books, enjoy!
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
A lot of Rowan Atkinson's work (that is to say, Mr Bean) had no dialogue at all.
Mind you, any of his live performances (with a lot of dialog) are quite funny (with a fair bit of wit) as well.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
A minor correction here: Keaton's character tries to enlist, but as an engineer, he is desperately needed right where he is.
The movie is based on the Anderson raid, "The Great Locomotive Chase."
Bear in mind that the site is still slashdotted, so I'm essentially ordering the DVD sight-unseen, but with the Canadian dollar worth $0.85 of 1 USD, *and* the fact that I'm not supporting the MP** with this purchase, it's worth it already.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Okay, I'm confused.
t m )
When HP Lovecraft wrote his work, IIRC, copyright was for 14 years, with a possible 14 year extension.
He died in 1937, meaning all of his work would have been public domain by 1965. Specifcally, The Reanimator in 1922 would have expired in 1950.
In 1976, the US extended copyright retroactively to the life of the artist plus 50 years. So, Lovecraft's work was then removed from public domain. All of his work would be copyrighted until 1987.
Then, in 1996 - thanks to Sonny Bono - copyright was again retroactively extended to life + 70 years. So Lovecraft's work is now copyrighted until 2007.
Even the supposed official HPL site says, "Please note that Lovecraft's fiction is still considered to be under copyright by Arkham House, and any texts presently available on the web without their consent are in violation of that copyright." ( http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/hwr.h
So, what's up with that?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
The Reanimator is definitely in the public domain by now; any creative works produced in the United States with a publication date prior to 1923 is considered to be public domain, no matter what. Reanimator just squeaks in at 1922.
Anything published after that is iffy -- but could very well be free, depending on how careful Lovecraft or his estate holders were in renewing their copyrights after the initial period was up. This includes Call of Cthulhu, which was written in 1926, and thus I assume published sometime in the late 1920's.
For much of the 20th-century, initial copyright and renewal was for 28 years, by the way, not 14. Later on the renewal period was extended to a whopping 67 years; this includes anything published after 1922 -- which, as I mentioned above, includes a substantial portion (but by no means all) of Lovecraft's work. This doesn't change the fact that it would have to have been renewed in order for Arkham House to claim ownership.
As for the "death plus 50/70" situation, that was generally only applicable for unpublished works. So if you're digging through some murky basement, and you stumble across a pile of ichor-splattered, hand-scrawled notes of hitherto unknown Lovecraftian ghoulishness, you can publish that in 2007.
Here's a nice site with a handy-dandy chart that can help clear away some of the murk for you.