FilmJerk Favorites

A group of unique directors and the essential works that you've got to see.

||| Buster Keaton |||
Buster Keaton

If you like Chaplin you will absolutely love Keaton, who is widely acknowledged for being one of the greatest directors of all time, a great screen legend and one of our finest actors, as well as one of the three top comedians in silent era Hollywood, and a true pioneer for the independent filmmaker; producing, controlling and owning his films.

Offered as one of three films in the Buster Keaton Collection, The Cameraman is Buster at his deadpan funniest. After becoming infatuated with a pretty office worker for a Newsreel company, Buster picks up a movie camera and sets out to impress the girl, which makes for some very interesting, visually groundbreaking and cleaver footage, capturing the essence of what it was like to be an innovative cameraman.

Based on a true incident, “The General” is a classic of silent screen comedy. Keaton is a Southern engineer whose train is hijacked by Union forces, which leads to a classic locomotive chase and some truly impressive and hilarious stunts, some of which could only be produced by CGI today.

Sherlock Jr is one of the comic's most inventive efforts (introducing a concept oft repeated) depicting a movie projectionist entering the film he's running in order to solve a jewelry theft. Known for doing his own stunts as well as filling in for his costars, Keaton actually fractures his neck on screen as the water from a basin flows from a tube and washes him onto the track.

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'The Wind Done Gone''

By EdwardHavens

April 27th, 2001

Writer Alice Randall has what I think is a great idea... retelling Gone With The Wind from the viewpoint of a slave. However, the estate of Margaret Mitchell disagreed. Despite Randall's protests that her novel was parody protected by the First Amendment, US District Judge Charles Pannell blocked publication of the novel.


Thankfully, Randall and her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, were granted an expedited appeal of Pannell's ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A hearing date has yet to be set. Enterprising readers who received advance copies of the book found the time to head over to EBay, commanding as much as $485 before the site pulled all copies from bidding.