Moderator: Ras
Eelco wrote:I have not yet 'The Shining' in my possession, but I discovered it is possible to now download the good old B & W movie Casablanca from the Internet archive. Royalty free!
https://archive.org/details/casablanca-1942_202012
There are several versions, I downloaded a few, it also lists a link with 109 files but I did not check that. The Matroska file is 4.8 GB so that takes a while to download. The .zip file (link '6 original' files) is equally large as the matroska I find and does not seem to contain anything extra, but that I do not know for sure. The .MKV has several different language versions and subtitles, that is its main advantage. Sound is mono. But the H.264 is a lot smaller, only 512 MB and not less in quality of picture I think. H.264 I thought, is a sound standard, I don't know much about it, the sound quality is good. It lists as stereo in VLC player but I think it is still mono? For this version, there are no subtitles I think and only the English soundtrack. But that is good enough for me. (Maybe it is possible to add the subtitles from the other version to this one.)
From https://filmschoolrejects.com/casablanca-true-story/ :
(Note, the **** is from the auto moderation here)You must remember this: Casablanca, the 1942 masterpiece directed by Michael Curtiz, is based on a true story. Set in the time in which it was filmed, the height of World War II, the movie centers on a place called Rick’s Café Américain, owned and operated by Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart).
Casablanca, the second largest city in Morocco, in Northern Africa, has become a hub for refugees seeking to flee Europe. But the city is controlled by Vichy France (the French State following the **** invasion), making it dangerous for enemies of the Axis powers to pass through. An American expatriate, Rick must navigate his mix of clientele and the various sides to which they belong.
Rick soon faces the ultimate test. One night, his former lover, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), enters Rick’s...
Ed's forum sometimes feel a bit like Rick's Café Américain.And Ed having to navigate between all the different powers at war and the people displaced by them.
Soon, real World Events catch up with the film in progress, I quote again;
In 1942, Allied forces, under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, launched Operation Torch to secure Northern Africa. The mission included the bombing of Casablanca. Allied forces secured the area as a means to begin their assault on the Axis powers in Southern Europe. To coincide with these real events and drive interest in the movie, Casablanca premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City on November 26, 1942.
In January, the Moroccan city hosted the Casablanca Conference. In attendance were a number of Allied leaders, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Joseph Stalin declined to attend due to an ongoing offensive by the Soviets against the *****. At the conference, Roosevelt and Churchill promised unconditional surrender and “the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people.”
The release of the film is brought forward by these events:
Casablanca entered wide-release on January 23, 1943, to coincide with the end of the conference on January 24. At the time of its release, Variety predicted the movie “will take the [box office] of America just as swiftly and certainly as the [Allied forces] took North Africa.”
To the makers and all the people involved in the making, the threat and sorrow of the war must have been very real.
At its end, Imagine a January 6, US Capitol scenario in an online forum with ~20 active participants
Looks like the collective memory hasn’t faded enough yet.Robert Pope wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 3:50 pmIt was basically a forum for a handful of people to post political and/or racist rants. Good riddance.
At the start, it was a place where forum members could get together and discuss non-chess related topics. There was a lot of discussion involving topics such as science, technology, religion and politics. Of course, some of these topics generated heated arguments, but the arguments were more reasoned back in the olden days. Over time, the forum degenerated, as have so many forums of a similar nature. A few intelligent, thoughtful posters passed away, while others moved on. At first, CTF could be read by anyone, but the content became more embarrassing, and CTF was hidden from those who were not logged in to CCC. At the end, CTF was a typical alt-right, ad hominem filled forum, with a very few centrist/leftist diehards opposing the tide. I barely posted there at all, but used to read it regularly until it became a racist pile of nonsense.
There's a pretty fine alternative: https://discord.gg/TvHDBDSWEM