A little something of interest

One of our viewers has alerted me to a particular dance performance that doesn't quite meet the criteria to be shown at Classic Cinema Online, so it's playing on Classic Cinema Online's parent site, www.chattyworldcentral.com. The performance is Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance, and it's too awesome for words! Not only is it good entertainment, but it's what I would deem Irish culture at it's finest.

A sidenote about Chattyworld Central:
Chattyworld Central is a kind of spin off from a chat that started at City News, Inc, about 11 or so years ago, and was run by a man named Giles Rider. Giles, suffering from kidney failure, became too ill to continue running the chat, so when his chat went down, it's traffic was re-routed to Chattyboard Forums, which then became Chattyworld Central, the new home for the City News chatters, shortly before his passing.

If you enjoy an ecclectic mix of movies, you can visit Chattyworld Central's Movie of the Week. Some of those movies are pretty bad, and others are pretty good, for the most part they're newer than what you find here at Classic Cinema Online, and there seems to be a little something for everyone there.

Feel free to stop in Chattyworld Central's chat room, too, (there's a link on here to there) and say hello. If no one is chatting, type a hello note anyway if you'd like. It's a nice place.

"How do I download these movies?"

The number one question I see in emails is, "How do I download movies?".

Using Google
Because all of these movies are uploaded to Google, I've been advising people to download the Google player, which is free. To download the movie, you can click on the Google logo in the lower right hand corner of the player, then choose the one and only option that pops up to take you to the Google site, which brings you to the page the movie you're interested in sits on. You can choose, from there, to either embed that movie into your own personal web page or blog, or you may download the movie, provided that the party who uploaded it to Google has made the movie available for download. (Not all of these movies are uploaded by Classic Cinema Online.) If they have, you'll see a download button.

I found this video, brought to us via Google Video, by kevsvideotraining.blogspot.com which shows us how to download and use the Google video player to view and download movies, I've found it to be very helpful.


USING FLV Player
We have a viewer, David, who wrote in about the FLV player. Now, I've never used this player before, so I am not savvy on how it works.

David wrote,

. . . tell your viewers to run a google search for the flv player, or simply post the latest version of the viewer on your site. The executable can be run in a few seconds. Then when the movie has finished downloading, you can go to your temporary internet files and copy the movie to a different file. The Flv player will then play the movie offline.

I thought it was an interesting idea worth at least a look-see, so I sent him a reply to which he responded with the following:

http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3000-2139_4-10467081.html

This is the link for the one that I'm currently using. It doesn't enlarge to full screen, but does pretty well within the limits of the download quality. You simply wait until the online download is complete, then while it's still on the screen, go to the temporary internet files and copy the file to another directory. It's freeware, and has been downloaded several million times, so I assume you could post it on your site without any trouble. I don't know if it's the same as google's, but it's a stand-alone program, so it's very easy to use.

Thank you for that tidbit, David, I found it quite interesting and think other viewers may benefit from it.

As of this posting, Classic Cinema Online has about 160 movies uploaded to Google, and there are about 100 that we show that are uploaded to Google by others. Since Google hosts these movies free of charge, it's befitting for us to return the favor by promoting Google with the use of their player, which bears their logo, on our site. If we find movies on other sites and show them here, we'll use those other sites' players, too, in accordance with their user terms, as this is how we give proper credit where it's due.

We realize, however, that for people to download these movies and want to watch them off line, the idea of having to use up extra space on your machines with so many different players is preposterous, so what you do on your machine for personal use is up to you and you're certainly welcome to discuss those matters and details in our forum. You're also welcome to post your comments here.

As part of our own terms of service, we do advise all viewers that downloading movies should be for personal use, and when downloading, please refer to the host site's user terms of service.

Introducing our new forum!

I've been working on this forum for months now, not at all satisfied with the look, but decided we needed to put it up anyway. So I put our famous red Grand Drape up and stuck a forum on top of it. It's kind of ugly looking but I'll be working on the look as time goes on. At least it's functional. lol!

You can visit the forum by clicking here or on the link in the menu bar.

So as to not make people sick of our red drapes, I'd love to have a different background picture on the forum, so I have a kind of proposition for anyone reading this who might be interested.

If you are a photographer, budding photographer, or just someone who likes to take pictures and you would like a little exposure, I'm looking for a picture of the inside of a classic old cinema that I can use as a back drop for the forum. The picture must be legal, and I must have proof of that along with your permission to use that picture as Classic Cinema Online's forum backdrop. In exchange for use of the picture, we'll give you free recognition or advertising on our site for the entire time that we use your picture. The time frame of the use of the picture is fully negotiable.

Interested parties may submit pictures via email to: classiccinemaonline.com@gmail.com no later than September 30, 2007.

Pictures may be of the inside of the seating & viewing areas, the snack bar, or box office/ticket area. Pictures of Cinema Fronts may also be submitted.

Any pictures emailed to us that we do not use for this purpose will not be used for any other purpose and will be deleted.

Looking forward to seeing some of your creativity!

Our Top Ten Movies list

I thought it would be fun to post our most frequently watched movies just for the sake of trivia.

Of all time, our ten most popular movies are:
Long John Silver
Tom & Jerry Festival
The Gun and the Pulpit
Jack and the Beanstalk
Girl from Monterrey
Angel on my Shoulder
God's Gun
The Day the Sky Exploded
It's A Joke, Son!
The Sword of Sir Lancelot

Last week's top 10 were:
Jack and the Beanstalk
Long John Silver
Virus
The Gun and the Pulpit
Tom & Jerry Festival
Angel on my Shoulder
Calvary
Gone With The West
God's Gun
The Sword of Sir Lancelot

So there you have it. Wasn't that just the most exciting thing you ever read?

lol!

Lookie What I Found!

I really think old movies are fun, and surfing the net in search of sites that offer information about them has been entertaining. The creativity out there is just endless!

I've had the pleasure of being introduced to a few sites, as well as finding others through Google, there are so many out there that I can't possibly list all of the ones I liked so far on here, so I'll start with four of them.

1. Classic Movie Lounge
This is a rather informative site, which seems to have somewhat of an eclectic collection of information for Classic Movie Lovers -- there's something for everyone on there. I really like the way this Blog's author reviews movies, too, while watching them -- complete with personal little thoughts about whatever interesting thing pops up in the movie. Certainly this adds a new dimension to movie reviews, and I couldn't help but chuckle at a few of those.

2. Cocoa and Caffeine Hollywood Travels
This was another interesting blog, the gal who runs this one is a location scout, talent assistant, and writer. She, too, is witty and creative, and I couldn't help but spit my coffee out laughing at what she wrote in her May 15 blog entry. What a mess that made, but the laugh was worth it! And the next time I read her blog, I'm going to finish my coffee first.

3. Reel Classics
What I liked best about this site is it's comprehensive list of Classic actors and actresses, complete with a nice picture. As I looked through these lists, I couldn't help but think about how nice everyone looked in those days, with every hair in place, and nicely tailored clothing. Yesterday's actors and actresses make today's look like a bunch of slobs who just rolled out of bed and onto the floor.

4. The Movie Cliches List
Funny, but it's true -- you can't enjoy a classic movie without the cliches, even if you don't realize them. This site has a list containing about 75 different cliche categories, like "airplanes", "binoculars & glasses", "light", "villains", and "wood" just to name a few. Because of the lesson I learned while enjoying Cocoa and Caffeine Hollywood Travels, I did not drink any coffee while viewing this site, but I'm pretty sure this one's a "coffee spitter outter" too -- some of these cliches are hilarious!

The links to these appear in the Highly Recommended menu on the right, please click on them and enjoy! I'll keep surfing for more of these to post again soon.