Entertainment
This silent-film-era instrument is disappearing. Not on Joe’s watch
If you walked past Joe Rinaudo’s house in La Crescenta-Montrose, you probably wouldn’t think anything extraordinary of it. You wouldn’t expect, for example, that it contains a 20-seat silent movie theater with a semi-complete organ, a mini museum dedicated to instruments of the silent cinema era, or an extensive basement workshop whirring with the sounds of power tools. And you certainly wouldn’t expect the 74-year-old Rinaudo seated at a century-old instrument, yanking pull-cords and pushing pedals while the machine in front of him whirs and whistles to a rag-timey tune.
The instrument is Rinaudo’s primary passion in life, an American invention that was key to the viewing experience of silent films in the early 20th century but has been forgotten by most of the country: the photoplayer.
Joe Rinaudo plays a photoplayer in his living room.
A cousin to self-playing player pianos, photoplayers automatically play music read out of perforated piano rolls. During their slim heyday — from their invention around 1910 until about 1930, when the silent film era is thought to have ended — photoplayers delighted audiences (mostly in the U.S.) as accompaniments to silent movies, especially Buster Keaton-esque comedies. But then the talkies came, and photoplayers were rendered obsolete, slipping out of public awareness as quickly as they came on scene. Rinaudo, in love with these instruments and their role in silent cinema, has spent more than half a century tracking down, restoring and sharing the word about old photoplayers and similar instruments. And as he ages, Rinaudo hopes to guarantee the preservation of the photoplayer’s legacy with the creation of a nonprofit organization dedicated to the restoration of and education about these instruments and silent cinema.
Among the small community of people who adore the photoplayer, Rinaudo is something of a patron saint. “When people think of photoplayers, they think of him,” says Nate Otto, a restorer of player pianos and similar instruments including photoplayers in Anoka, Minn. Rinaudo’s notoriety is in no small part thanks to the visibility of the many YouTube videos of his playing, including a clip of his 2006 spotlight on “California’s Gold With Huell Howser” that’s been viewed 2.6 million times. Rinaudo is also a central connective figure for the dozen or so folks who actively restore or play photoplayers. “He knows pretty much all the American photoplayers that are currently being restored,” says Otto, “because all of us have contacted him for one reason or another.”
Preserving this slice of American culture and passing it down to younger generations is “my life’s work,” says Rinaudo. But it’s no easy task given how few exist today and how little access the public has to see them. Of the approximately 4,500 instruments produced between 1911 and 1926 by American Photo Player Co. — one of the earliest and most prominent photoplayer producers, and the brand of photoplayer Rinaudo is specifically passionate about — only about 50 still exist worldwide, and only about a dozen of them are in playable condition. Just one photoplayer, which Rinaudo restored and donated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, exists in a public space. The rest are tucked away — some owned by people like Rinaudo who play them and put them to use, but most stashed away by private collectors.
Of the known remaining photoplayers, Rinaudo has either owned or helped restore about six of them over the years — and at one point he owned four at once.
Born in Santa Monica in 1951, Rinaudo grew up when silent movies still aired on his family’s black-and-white television. His parents had a player piano in the living room, and at a young age Rinaudo learned how to service it when it needed repairs. As a teenager, he thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if the player piano could play along with a silent movie?” But that wasn’t really doable. Player pianos have space for just one piano roll, so when the track you’re playing runs out, you’re forced into a moment of awkward silence as you wait for the instrument’s spool to rewind so you can swap in the next track. At first he tried jerry-rigging his own setup to accommodate two rolls. But then, Rinaudo recalls, “An old timer said, ‘What are you doing that for? Why don’t you buy one of them photoplayers?’ And I said, ‘What’s a photoplayer?’”
Joe Rinaudo has a museum area in his home dedicated to preserving the history of photoplayers and other bygone film accessories.
Rinaudo spent the next few years searching for one, cold-calling player piano sellers, theater owners and antique shops. When he was 19, he got his first real lead. Word was that the Hoyt Hotel in Portland, Ore., had a photoplayer and a performer who could put on a show. Rinaudo cajoled a buddy to drive them up in his Volkswagen van one weekend. “This hotel was fabulous,” remembers Rinaudo, with a ballroom styled like a turn-of-the-20th-century bar with gas lights. And then there was the photoplayer.
“I was blown away by the sound coming out of it,” says Rinaudo. “People were singing and screaming and clapping — it was just unbelievable. And I thought, ‘I’ve got to have one of those.’”
When the Hoyt shut down a year later, that very same photoplayer went up for auction. Rinaudo drove back up, but was outbid at $8,600 (limited as he was by a 20-year-old’s income). A year later, he got wind of a man looking to sell a photoplayer for $5,000. He went to go see it, but once again he “just couldn’t afford it.”
But providence kept giving Rinaudo chances. A year later, the seller of that photoplayer came back to Rinaudo and offered it to him for just $3,500. Rinaudo’s first photoplayer was secured, and he would spend the next two years restoring the instrument in the living room of his parent’s house. “At first they were a little worried,” he says, about how he was spending his time and the mess in their house, “but they came around.” To learn how to restore his instrument, Rinaudo enlisted the help of a mechanic friend who taught him how to fix all the valves, gears, pipes and bellows. (For work, using the skills he learned, Rinaudo entered the automechanic business, but later left to start his own lighting business, which he still operates.)
A collection of photoplayer rolls sits on top of Joe Rinaudo’s photoplayer.
As soon as his photoplayer became playable, Rinaudo sat and practiced every day. Now, “I don’t know of any other players that can perform like I do,” he says. And when a photoplayer is performed live, “the whole room vibrates,” says Bruce Newman, a restorer of pneumatic instruments, including photoplayers, in Oregon who had the pleasure of seeing Rinaudo play in his home about 25 years ago. “You’re feeling it in the core of your body and it’s exhilarating.”
Over the years, Rinaudo continued to hunt for photoplayers, incessantly putting out the word to whoever might hear of a lead. He finally managed to purchase the Hoyt Hotel photoplayer, which wound up in Arizona. Other adventures included traveling to a warehouse in Seattle, but he couldn’t afford the asking price; getting outbid at a Las Vegas auction; driving to an old theater in Fresno that was said to have a photoplayer, only to learn that the building had been torn down; hopping through antique stores in Bakersfield after hearing a rumor; and searching an old 19th century San Diego hotel and coming up empty.
While Joe Rinaudo mostly focuses on photoplayers, he also has other memorabilia in his home, including this old film camera and a phonograph.
“One time, one guy told me, ‘There’s a photoplayer buried in the belly of the Regent Theater in downtown Los Angeles,’” says Rinaudo. He tracked down the owner in 1969, who brought him inside the dark, rat-infested building with a sledgehammer. The owner smashed through the stage, but there was no photoplayer. “That was one of many wild goose chases that I had to go on, because you never know,” Rinaudo says. “It was like I was on a hunt, or an archaeological dig.”
As he searched over the years, Rinaudo found a community of restorers who shared leads, expertise and parts. He built up a reputation. “I do see him as an authority,” says Newman. “If I have trouble identifying something, I call up Joe and he can help me figure it out.” And when YouTube came along, Rinaudo started sharing videos of himself performing, which many photoplayer lovers, including Newman and Otto, credit as their introduction to these instruments. A few thousand loyal followers keep tabs on Rinaudo’s work and performances via Facebook or through his Silent Cinema Society blog posts and newsletter.
Despite these admirers, whether photoplayers will survive the coming decades is in question. Most restorers are about Rinaudo’s age. At 61, Bruce Newman is on the younger side, and at 36, Otto — who Rinaudo calls “the future” — is the youngest by far. As Rinaudo sees it, photoplayers are meant to be played and enjoyed, but while his videos have undoubtedly helped grow an international awareness of and enthusiasm for photoplayers, the pool of restorers is not growing. And the future of the instruments’ playability is at stake.
“I’ve taken it upon myself to carry that torch,” says Rinaudo. To that end, he and a few friends and collaborators are starting a nonprofit group, Silent Cinema Art and Technology, dedicated to the preservation of and education about silent films and instruments like the photoplayer. The hope is that the organization can be a sustainable vehicle for raising money to fund future restorations. Rinaudo plans to use his home theater and museum space — a temple to his passion — to put on shows and screenings for benefactors and offer limited group tours and educational opportunities for children. He hopes that the nonprofit can preserve and use the theater and museum even after he’s gone.
“It’s a calling,” says Rinaudo, referring to the desire to share the gospel of the photoplayer and keep the history of silent cinema alive. “My dad always used to tell me, ‘You must leave this Earth in better condition than you found it,’” he says. “Everybody has to find their path to do that, and I hope I found mine. I think I have.”
Joe Rinaudo hopes to host tours and educational opportunities at his home theater and museum through a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving photoplayers.
Let’s just say that the wedding band has never occupied the most exalted rung of the ladder in music.
Playing “September” and “Celebration” is often what’s most required. As one member of the Bride and the Groove, the band at the center of John Carney’s new film, puts it: They’re not rock stars. They’re human jukeboxes.
But in “Power Ballad,” a wedding band singer and pop star cross paths. For one night, all of the stratification of the music world falls away. “Power Ballad” starts like a fairy tale.
Since 2007’s “Once,” the Irish writer-director has focused his films on the redemptive capacity of music. Carney, who was once a bassist for the Frames, knows from experience. From “Sing Street” to “Flora and Son,” he has made unabashedly earnest tales where a song, or just picking up an instrument, changes lives.
This can, undoubtedly, lead Carney into sentimental territory. Lucky for him, his chosen subject — music — is more worthy of sentiment than almost anything else. Yet the song doesn’t quite remain the same in “Power Ballad,” a movie that begins with the gentle sweetness Carney is known for, but detours into something more discordant.
Rick (Paul Rudd) is an American musician who gave up on his once-promising rock band’s future to instead live with his wife (Marcella Plunkett) and teenage daughter (a spunky, underused Beth Fallon) in Dublin. His former group was called Octagon, a perfect former band name if there ever were one.
But for years, Rick has fronted the Bride and the Groove. It’s an unromantic day job (or rather a night one) that hasn’t entirely sapped his belief in his own songwriting. During an encore at one wedding, he plays an original tune and is mentally transported to an arena full of swaying fans. When he snaps out of it, he’s staring at an empty dance floor and faces that say: That wasn’t Kool & the Gang.
At another wedding at at a castle, the band is asked to let a friend of the newlyweds sit in. They reluctantly agree, and are surprised to see the very popular boy band veteran, Danny (Nick Jonas), step on stage. He sings Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” and it’s great. Though Rick had just dismissed Danny’s music as “manufactured content for young, excitable teens,” he discovers Danny is a genuine musician.
But, later that night, something even more remarkable transpires. Rick bumps into Danny, and the two quickly hit it off. They begin jamming together and sharing songs that need work. They are both so jazzed by their unlikely collaboration that they play into the next morning.
The actual moment of artistic creation, and the craft it requires, is something the movies almost always skip over. But capturing collaborative juices flowing is exactly what Carney excels at. You can feel his joy in it. So it’s fitting that one of the unfinished songs Rick plays for Danny, “How to Write a Song (Without You),” is about creative invention.
It’s here when you wonder where “Power Ballad” is headed. Is this, for Rick, the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Will they turn into the next great songwriting duo, lifting Rick out of weddings and proving to the world that Danny is more than a boy-band pretty face?
That is very possibly the movie Carney might have made a decade ago. But “Power Ballad,” which he co-wrote with Peter McDonald (who also co-stars as a band member), shifts six months ahead in time. Rick is standing in a shopping mall when the familiar lyrics of “How to Write a Song” softly float through the stores. He stands dumbfounded in the gleaming halls of commerce, a befuddlement that slowly turns into outrage the bigger and bigger Danny’s smash hit grows.
“Power Ballad” loses some of its steam in its second half, which follows Rick’s struggle for justice. Making things considerably harder is that he can find no recorded demo of the song. His family and his band don’t even really believe him.
But even as the movie struggles to sustain its opening refrain, Carney’s film is always riffing on ideas of authenticity and aspiration in music. That Jonas is, himself, a former boy band star who has at times gone it alone, lends the movie a direct connection to contemporary music, where tussles over authorship are increasingly common.
Jonas has been good in other films (notably the “Jumanji” movies), but this is his most ambitious and convincing performance to date. It’s a testament to the movie that Danny’s theft isn’t a purely villainous act. He gives the song a bridge and the vocal power to take it to another level. He’s under mounting pressure from his label to deliver a hit. An executive (Jack Reynor) wants “Danny 2.0” but has little faith he can supply it.
But it’s an even more well-tailored role for Rudd. He memorably and very goofily played a bassist in the 2009 comedy “I Love You, Man.” But while he sings well, it’s not his musical chops that lift the performance. It’s more that Rick, a contented family man with unrealized rock-star dreams, gives the exceptionally genial Rudd more notes to play as an actor. Rudd makes for a very likeable everyman out to convince the world he is capable of a beautiful song.
And that’s the abiding belief of Carney’s. No matter all the struggles, the artistic injustices, the corporate hegemony, he still believes that if you make something truly soulful, it will break through. It will claw its way to the surface, and move people. It’s undoubtedly gotten harder since “Once,” this movie seems to admit. The world is against you. But what one person can offer, a ballad or otherwise, still has power. Fairy tale or not, that’s worth believing in.
“Power Ballad,” a Lionsgate release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language throughout and some drug use.” Running time: 108 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Entertainment
Review: Muscling past a flat script, a big-screen ‘Masters of the Universe’ embraces its own silliness
What will today’s kids think of He-Man, the muscle-bound ’80s relic with the most iconic bob after Anna Wintour? Launched in an era where machismo meant a goofy wrestler or metal singer with an eight-octave falsetto, the steroidal beskirted barbarian has always been a bit ridiculous. C’mon, his name is He-Man. What in the testosterone is that?
And so, director Travis Knight (“Bumblebee”) has made his reboot of “Masters of the Universe” a dopey, friendly comedy about modern masculinity in crisis with a He-Man who openly wonders what kind of a man to be. Hurtled out of the kingdom of Eternia as a boy, this Prince Adam (a terrifically game Nicholas Galitzine) came of age in Oklahoma City as a sweet guy who happens to be obsessed with swords. Instead of transforming into the strongest man in the galaxy to protect his throne from the evil duo of Skeletor (voiced by Jared Leto) and Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie), earthbound Adam parries HR complaints while sitting behind a desk plate that labels his gender identity not as He-Man but He/Him.
Times have changed. Even He-Man’s talking pet tiger (Tom Wilton) asks for consent before giving him a lick.
Galitzine’s He-Man is more Clark Kent than Superman, a gentle, funny, under-estimated dweeb. On a blind date, his descriptions of magical griffins and burning deserts sound humiliatingly immature. Dumped before dessert, he sulks home where his bro-y roommate (Christian Vunipola) secretly watches the weepie “The Notebook” when no one is looking as the soundtrack spins an acoustic cover of the Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry.” Every man in this movie has a public persona and a private one. Even Adam’s irritable female boss, Suzie (Sasheer Zamata), hides under a people-pleasing mask. “This is my mega-serious face,” she says with an unnerving grin.
The performances are good; the plot, postcard-sized: Adam returns to Eternia, unleashes his alter-identity He-Man and wrestles with the pressure to live up to his new biceps. Although Adam must rescue his royal parents (James Purefoy and Charlotte Riley) from Skeletor, he reaches for empathy before a blade. Could Skeletor really be that bad, he asks his childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes). “He has a skull for a face,” Teela insists. In this world, everyone’s measured against their looks.
Here’s another question: Could Skeletor really be Jared Leto? Physically, of course not. Skeletor is all pixels with a clattering jaw perfect for chewing the scenery. (The bully is especially hilarious when the story transplants him to an ordinary weight-lifting gym — call him Skele-Chad.) Leto’s grumbling Brit-inflected baritone is an unrecognizable concoction of trilled r’s and plummy vowels — and the best performance he’s done in years. With apologies to Bette Midler, you should hear the gravitas Leto brings to calling his minions “the buttworms beneath my feet.”
Yes, that’s the humor level of the dialogue. Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee and Dave Callaham have written a heavy-handed script in which, when Castle Grayskull comes under attack, Idris Elba’s soldier is forced to yell, “We’re under attack!” You know, in case the exploding laser beams weren’t obvious.
Obviousness is this film’s handicap — and the main joke. In this movie’s lore, juvenile Adam, played by an adorable Artie Wilkinson-Hunt, is the guilty child who invented his meathead He-Man moniker, as well the nicknames of his allies Ram-Man, Mekaneck and Fisto, who all look exactly as they sound to their chagrin. “I don’t fist anyone,” Fisto (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) protests. The grown-ups in the audience snicker.
Knight was a kid himself when the cartoon version of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” debuted on television. As with his “Transformers” spin-off “Bumblebee,” he makes movies like a child who loves taking his action figures out of the box and giving them a silly soul.
He’s no hack: Knight’s debut film, “Kubo and the Two Strings,” was nominated for an Academy Award for animation. Raised with an affection for brands (his father, Phil Knight, is the co-founder of Nike), he also feels obliged to include so much fan service for his generation that kids will have to swashbuckle through confusing callbacks to discover He-Man for themselves. One battle scene is scored to 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” simply as a nod to a He-Man mash-up video that went viral back in 2005, a clash as wonky as it sounds. Yet Daniel Pemberton’s opening theme music is a rousing crescendo of stadium rock synthesizers. You can hear Queen guitarist Brian May in the score — not merely as an influence. It’s actually him.
Culturally, hyper-machismo has oscillated from cool to lame to ironically cool and back again for decades. Even Queen itself was deemed lame until “Wayne’s World” resurrected “Bohemian Rhapsody” as headbanging slapstick. If you spot a guy swaggering like a brute from Eternia on the sidewalk, masked or not, he probably thinks he’s more awesome than everyone else does. Likewise, when He-Man smashes skulls to a wailing metal soundtrack, I no longer know if I’m meant to be snickering with the electric guitars or at them. Neither does the movie, which seems to decide each scene’s individual tone on a coin flip.
Frankly, the dorky version of Adam is more fun than the heroic He-Man, even with Knight hammering us every minute to laugh that he’s a total weakling. Galitzine embraces the indignity. Zooming through the air in a flying Sky-Sled, he wedges his face into a triple chin. Dazed and enthusiastic, Galitzine’s human charm counterbalances Eternia’s synthetic feel, a blandscape of bright forests and cliffside dungeons that looks dated — not to 1983 but to last decade’s greenscreen-heavy would-be fantasy franchises like “Clash of the Titans” and “John Carter.”
Please don’t make Galitzine do five of these movies, even though he’s very good. An unusually pretty leading man who is quirkier and funnier than he looks, Galitzine is the kind of rising talent Hollywood rarely knows how to handle. In his previous roles, he gave off the impression of being flummoxed by his own attractiveness, whether as a queer prince (“Red, White & Royal Blue”), a Harry Styles-esque pop star (“The Idea of You”) or a popular football jock whose high school classmates are oblivious that he has the IQ of a second-grader (“Bottoms”). Here, Galitzine multiplies that self-conscious gag times a thousand, visibly dazzled by his own six-pack when he transforms from himbo to gym-bro. Even Skeletor is agog over the “big long sword dangling between his thighs.”
Smartly cast, Galitzine could prove to have the potential of Brad Pitt, another blond hunk who longed to get weird, chafing against roles that made him take off his shirt until he hit 55 and realized it was a flex. But shouldering a wobbly, expensive summer tentpole is a risk — just ask Sam Worthington or Taylor Kitsch. If “Masters of the Universe” tanks, here’s hoping Galitzine summons the strength to dig himself out of the rubble.
‘Masters of the Universe’
Rated: PG-13, for sequences of violence/action, some suggestive material, and language
Running time: 2 hours, 21 minutes
Playing: Opening Friday, June 5 in wide release
NEW YORK (OSV News) – As America’s Catholic bishops prepare to mark the semiquincentennial by consecrating the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a French docudrama that can aid viewers in understanding the full significance of such an action makes its timely appearance.
A Fathom Entertainment presentation, “Sacred Heart: His Reign Has No End” will have a limited theatrical run June 9-11 and June 14. The version screening on June 10 will be dubbed in Spanish.
Following its initial release in France last fall, the film proved to be phenomenally popular, with ticket sales reaching the half-million mark in a country usually regarded as deeply secular. This unusual development clearly indicates that the movie resonated with audiences in a way that even its creators may not have expected.
Filmmakers Sabrina and Steven J. Gunnell examine the origins, meaning and enduring relevance of devotion to the Sacred Heart. They begin their exploration even before the landmark revelations received in the 1670s by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Burgundian Visitation nun, showing that earlier saints had focused on the subject in medieval times.
Using reenactments, interviews and archival images, the Gunnells also highlight the theological connection between the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist. This is done, in part, by recounting a few of the many Eucharistic miracles granted to the Church over the centuries.
By profiling contemporary devotees of the Sacred Heart, including formerly inactive Catholics, the picture demonstrates the impact the insights given to St. Margaret Mary continue to have on the lives of people around the world. Locations visited range from the gang-infested streets of a Parisian suburb to the once war-torn Central American country of El Salvador.
An excellent and enjoyable catechetical resource, the feature is also both moving and uplifting. It can be recommended for all but the youngest kids.
For theater locations and showtimes, go to: sacredheartfilm.us
Dubbed into English.
The film contains gory images of the Crucifixion. The OSV News classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. Not rated by the Motion Picture Association.
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