the m0vie blog

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a fortnightly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This time, Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman’s The General.

Johnny Gray is a train engineer working in the South during the Civil War, with two loves in his life; the southern belle Annabelle Lee and the train engine known as The General. When a group of Union spies abscond with both, Johnny finds himself an unlikely hero on a quest that takes him down train lines and across enemy lines.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 151st best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Show Notes:

• Recorded 12th August 2017.
• The General at The Internet Movie Database.
• The IMDB 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
• Link to watch The General on YouTube, with Carl Davis’ 1987 score.
• Link to watch The General on YouTube, with Carl Davis’ 1995 score.
• Eileen Jones at The Jacobin on the Cinematic Lost Cause, August 2015.
• Special issue of The Keaton Chronicle devoted to the problematic Civil War politics of The General, Summer 2015.
• Alison Willmore at Buzzfeed on the evasion of slavery in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, June 2017.
• John Seavey at Fraggmented on the Confederate politics of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, December 2010.
• Angelica Jade Bastién at Vulture on how best to approach cinematic monuments to the Confederacy, September 2017.
• Caroline Halleman at Town and Country Magazine on how most Confederate Monuments popped up in the twenties, August 2017.
• Derek Lewis recounts to B.E.T. an awkward story involving a rescue mission and a Confederate flag, August 2017.
• Kenn Morris explains at The Los Angeles Times that General Lee did not want monuments erected in his honour, May 2017.
• Mary Ann Akers at Politico on how The Dukes of Hazzard became a seemingly unlikely vanguard of the neo-Confederacy, August 2017.
• Roger Ebert reviews The General, May 1997.
• Jim Emerson at RogerEbert.com on how Our Hospitality served as a forerunner of The General, August 2011.
• John Bengtson at Silent Film Locations on the filing of The General in Oregon, September 2014.
• Pamela Hutchinson at The Guardian on Buster Keaton’s history as “the boy who couldn’t be hurt”, September 2015.
• David Lobosco at A Trip Down Memory Lane on the later years of Buster Keaton, March 2011.
• Matthew Dessem at The Dissolve on the enigmatic Clyde Bruckman, April 2014.
• Ethan Gates at New Republic on the sad story of Clyde Bruckman and history of joke theft, September 2015.
• Composer Carl Davis at The Guardian on the history of music in and the art of composing for silent movies, January 2011.
• Buster Keaton explains to Henry Gris how to make one of his famous pork pie hats, 1964.
• Follow The 250 on Twitter.
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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: buster keaton, film, podcast, The 250, the general |