The Keaton movie I know best is Steamboat Bill, Jr., having accompanied it at the Plaistow, NH library on July 28, 2023. The previous silent I’d accompanied there was Chaplin’s City Lights, and the differences between Chaplin’s and Keaton’s approaches stood out. City Lights tells a story, but it feels like a series of skits put together to comprise a story. The club scene, the robbery scene, and the boxing scene almost stand on their own. Chaplin’s Tramp is pretty much the same from beginning to end. Steamboat Bill, Jr. is more of a continuous story, and Keaton’s character grows a lot during its course. At first he feels out of place, having come from a Boston-area college to a run-down steamboat in the South. By the end, he’s become highly competent and saves four lives. The gags are as important as in a Chaplin film, but they’re more integrated into the plot.
Today (Wednesday, February 14, 2024), at 8:00 PM Eastern US time, I’ll provide live accompaniment on Twitch for a classic silent movie, Son of the Sheik. Before the main feature, I’ll show and accompany a Harold Lloyd short, Young Mr. Jazz. I hope you’ll be there.
Gallup doesn’t understand set theory
According to a Gallup Poll article, “Less than a third of Americans say they would be willing to vote for someone nominated by their party who is over the age of 80 or has been charged with a felony or convicted of a felony by a jury.” If that’s true and Trump and Biden are the major-party nominees in 2024, then two-thirds of Americans will sit out the election for that reason alone.
Is that what the poll actually shows? The article goes on to say, “The poll addressed the issues of felonies and candidate age with separate questions each asked of about half of the poll’s respondents.” That makes it impossible to draw the conclusion stated at the top of the article. It’s an issue of set overlap.
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