The 100th Post

So we have made it to three figures! 100 posts!

There was a lot of options of what to do for the 100th post, but I have decided to lay out the moments of cinema that I feel are most important turning points in its history and why.

While there are countless key events and people that have helped shaped cinema as we know it, only a few are truly defining and ground breaking. It's also difficult to see what can have that effect on an industry until well afterwards, but some are more obvious that others and some are immediate.

So let's start with something everyone will agree on.

1. The introduction of Sound.

Now 1927 was not the first year sound was synchronised with film, but it was the defining year for mainstream, feature-length cinema to introduce sound. The Jazz Singer (1927) with Al Jolson gave us four individual moments of singing and speaking, and is considered to be the moment that the "talkie" was born. However, Don Juan (1926) had already been produced the year before as a feature fully synchronised with music and sounds. In 1928, Lights of New York became the first full "talkie". From The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) being the first feature-length narrative film to Don Juan, The Jazz Singer and Lights of New York, cinema's famous Silent Era lasted only a little more than 20 years.

It does have to be said, as pointed out in this 2023 article from Collider, that sound films were not a new novelty. I did a short piece of the Dickson Experimental Sound Film from 1894, but it just didn't take off. Sound was always experimented with, but the majority of historians point to 1927 as the year "talkies" arrived.

Fred and Ginger in full flow

From here we start to see the evolution into the "Golden Age of Cinema". Silent films were essentially a stage production filmed, but as the rapid rise of sound helped develop film, vaudeville dancers, comedians and musicians took the first big step into the new era. Not all were successful but they led the way to iconic names such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the Marx Brothers.

Personally, I don't believe that the introduction of colour had the same impact. It might have given more for costume and production design, but as movie posters were coloured anyway, this just allowed a further level of depth into the visual impact.

2. Next up - The B-Movie.

I can here people saying this is a bit of an odd one, but hear me out.

Jack Nicholson in his early B-Movie years

In the 1960's, a huge cultural revolution happened throughout the world. Ideals, beliefs and technologies shifted and developed, and cinema was not left out. The "B-Movie" genre took full advantage of this. Low-budget movies would look for ways to make their costumes are real as their minimal finances would allow, and certain people had a nack for that (I am getting to that later). B-Movies have always been around, from shorter films before a main feature in American Drive-In theatres to today's "straight-to-DVD" releases or, if you aren't as old as I am, online films shot on a shoe-string budget. But they erupted in popularity in the 1960's.

The B-Movie was a platform for everyone in the business. Writers, actors, directors and everyone behind the scenes could cut their teeth with B-Movies and their connections would help propel them. Actors, directors and writers were the most notable to succeed. Jack Nicholson, Robert Vaughn, Ron Howard and Francis Ford Coppola are just some of the huge names to come through the B-Movie route.

B-Movies also influenced some of the biggest names of today. Quentin Tarantino famously loves B-Movies, The Fast and the Furious franchise (2001 - Present day) stems from a B-Movie made in 1954 and starring John Ireland, who was already an Award-Winning actor at the time. Being known for being easy a quick to produce, B-Movies globally helped shape hundreds, if not thousands, of careers and I can't leave it off this list.

3. The Rise of... the Franchise.

For me this is has made the list in more recent years. However, I'm not fully convinced it is as good as some might think.

Franchises build around an idea, a book, an actor or even animatronics. They can steamroller and gain popularity, they can build whole new worlds, bring families together and they can come crashing down with issues, as well as not knowing when to stop!

Let's name some of the biggest franchises around and see what they have done.

Star Wars began as a little-known movie maker's dream and is now one of the biggest franchises around. Multiple, growing TV series and spin-off movies have been made and are continuing to be made, countless games series and a huge catalogue of canon for fans, as well as a huge part of the Disneyland parks. We thought three was enough. I still think three was enough.

Sexy Goldblum

Jurassic Park (1993 - Do the Jurassic Kingdom films count?) is another one that started as a one-off film and just couldn't be stopped. The first was iconic. HUGE continuity issues didn't affect the fantastic blend of CGI and practical effects, with animatronic dinosaurs freaking the actors and crew out between scenes. Jeff Goldblum made cinema and meme folklore and, while the second films was a bit of a duff, the third is still very popular. However, they didn't stop and decided to revive the series (because humans don't learn). It hasn't stopped and I'm not sure it will. But we have a huge series that is able to take the original premise, keep it's core story and still make some new and funky entertainment out of it. INVISIBLE DINOSAURS PEOPLE! Ok, adaptive skin changing, but still...

Marvel (2008 - 5008, I think) have just taken it to another level. Or 50. Films, TV series, games, comic books, and all in "Phases" planned years in advance. The advantage they have here is that they have a captive audience that they know will watch these films and series. That's not a criticism on anyone. That's bloody good marketing strategy. My issue with Marvel is there is just too much. I was on board with most of the original films, like Iron Man, Thor and Guardians. But they kept going and I just couldn't keep up. To me, things just got wrapped up in too many circles, and I have issues with time-travel stories that change things for convenience. I do love Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), though.

We can't leave out Harry Potter (2001-2011). The series is iconic, and people have been raised on it. It was new and innovative, with a huge amount of practical effects, which helped the realism of the films. The franchise bore a new set of films, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016-2022) (which didn't do well due to story issues, fan reactions and personal controversies), a theme park, a baking show, two "Making of" studio sites and a TV series. It has defined actors and allowed them to pursue careers outside of mainstream cinema as well as giving new generations of families a shared hobby and interest.

4. Special Effects

The Phantom

We can't really ignore the impact special effects have on a film. From the very early days of The Phantom Carriage (1921) with the phantom being shot on one reel, the living people and scenes on another and physically overlapping them, to Charlie Chaplin roller skating around a "balcony" which was created using a plane of painted glass, through to more modern techniques such as practical prosthetics, animatronics and CGI. The world of cinema was opened wider and wider with the more techniques that were developed.

I think a lot of people will forget that, while Toy Story introduced us to 3-D CGI as opposed to the more classic 2-D drawn Disney films and animations of earlier years, Gene Kelly's Anchors Aweigh in 1945 pioneered the incorporation of full live action interaction with cartoon animation. He famously dances with Jerry the Mouse, with Jerry going around him, between his legs and over his head. This would have been heavily choreographed, as the film editors wouldn't have been able to remove and add details as easily as they do now.

One of the many scenes in Lord of the Rings where effects were used

CGI and special effects are great, but they can come at a price and have a very strong negative impact on actors. During filming of the early scenes of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) Sir Ian McKellen has talked about struggling with filming his scenes as he was on a green-screen set alone, trying to interact with a hobbit and 12 dwarves who were not there. He reconsidered his position within the franchise, but everyone rallied behind him (physically and digitally!) and he was given a specially decorated area for him with lots of Lord of the Rings items and props.

Ewan McGregor spoke about his final scenes in Revenge of the Sith (2005) on several talk shows, such as The Jonathan Ross Show, of how awkward, difficult and sometimes embarrasing green screen acting can be!

5. Roger Corman (1926 - 2024)

No list about impacts in cinema would be complete without "The King of the B Movie" himself. I've talked about how the B-Movie genre has made an impact, but it is Roger Corman who has made the biggest impact. From cult favourites, such as the Edgar Allen Poe series with Vincent Price, to films that spawned global legacies like The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Grand Theft Auto (yes, it was a 1977 B-Movie starring Ron Howard) and The Fast and the Furious.

Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, 1972-1990), Ron Howard (The Da Vinci Code, 2006), James Cameron (Titanic, 1997), Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, 1976), Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) and Joe Dante (Looney Tunes: Back in Action, 2003) are all major directors who started their careers under Corman.

Huge names in acting also got their breaks under Corman. Jack Nicholson came through with roles in films like The Little Shop of Horrors, The Raven in 1963 and started off in The Cry Baby Killer in 1958 at 21 years old. Charles Bronson's first lead role was Machine-Gun Kelly in 1958, while Robert De Niro appears in Bloody Mama in 1970.

Death Race 2000 (1975) gave us an early glimpse of Sylvester Stallone, and we got to see a lot more of Sandra Bullock in 1990's Fire on the Amazon. 2003 Kill Bill's star David Carradine came through the "Corman Academy" in an early Scorsese picture, Boxcar Bertha, in 1972 , Jackson County Jail (1976) showed us what Tommy Lee Jones could do and 1958's Teenage Caveman brought Robert Vaughn into the fray.

Not only have hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals been able to forge their careers thanks to starting under Roger Corman, but millions have been impacted by his work and influence. Film, television, gaming and the theatre have all been impacted in some way by his work, and we wouldn't have some of the biggest names in cinema without him. That being said, the only film he was involved in making that ever won an award was 2014's Fist of the Dragon, which won the Bronze Award at 2014's WorldFest Houston. 1966's Biker adventure film The Wild Angels with Peter Fonda got a couple of nominations but no wins.

But Corman was being acknowledged for his influence as early as early as 184, when he was presented with the President's Award from the Academy of Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Since then, he was awarded with numerous Lifetime Achievement awards, including in 2010 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, or the Oscars). His influence is second to none, and we will never see someone with his influence again, simple because we will never see those times again.

So, those are my five most important moments and people in film. That's just me though. I am sure there are others out there for consideration.

Thank you for being here for 100 posts... let's hope we see 100 more!