For the Love of Film III: Bring Up the House Lights

Don't mind me...I'm just a little tired...


Whaddya know, the last reel rocked.

The Siren foregoes preamble to tell her patient readers, dear blogathon participants and generous, beautiful donors that our total zoomed up to $6,490 in the final stretch. That, my friends, puts us over last year's total.

Over the six-day course of the blogathon, we notched 208 posts (why do you think I chose that screencap?) from 112 bloggers. And, listen, in the two previous years Marilyn and the Siren were proud to note that many people wrote fine, fine pieces, ones the Siren still refers to on occasion. But this year--damn, you folks outdid yourselves. This has been excellent reading and the Siren is still wending her way through the links. She doffs her feather-trimmed fascinator to everyone involved. Y'all gave the Master nothing but the best.

So, where does that leave us in terms of streaming The White Shadow this fall? The Siren turns the microphone over to Annette Melville, the protean force behind the National Film Preservation Foundation's fundraising efforts. (Working with Annette behind the scenes has been David Wells, and a round of applause for David, too, as he's been tracking donations and just quietly being indispensable from the beginning.) Anyway, here's Annette:

There is no presentable digital copy of the film now. We have to raise sufficient money to make a digital copy, record the new score, pay the composer and musician, mix the score, and lay it down to the digital copy, in addition to the web hosting...We hope to raise these funds over the next few months...Plans are afoot but cannot be finalized until we have the all the necessary money.

In sum, what we have is not the whole megillah, but it's a darn good start. Annette says our efforts have gotten the NFPF a good part of the way--"the heavy lifting." The NFPF are deeply grateful, and in addition, "there is also an important long-term goal of planting a seed--of getting people thinking about film preservation and the value of supporting it." She's very happy, as are we all, that we've accomplished that.

We're done, and we did good. As Marilyn says, "it was an unqualified success as far as we're concerned." Back to our regularly scheduled programming here and at Ferdy on Films and This Island Rod.

The name of this here blog is, after all, Self-Styled Siren, not Widely Acknowledged Nag.

In the meantime, however, your good work is still out there, and the Siren suspects you haven't finished reading everything, either. Keep up the commenting, because a good comment warms a hard-working blogger's heart. For the posts you love, by all means, share via the social media of your choice; call your tech-challenged Aunt Mildred and read her the URL.

The donation link remains in service, now and for quite a while to come, because in the past we've gotten post-blogathon donations, and like an auteur working variations on the same theme, that could well happen again. The Siren's leaving hers up on the sidebar.

Some glad tidings of prizes for those who gave generously to the NFPF:

To Shannon Fitzpatrick goes an autographed copy of Roger Ebert’s memoir Life Itself. (Thanks to Mr. Ebert for donating that prize.)

Rebecca Naughten has won an autographed copy of Betty Jo Tucker’s Confessions of a Movie Addict. (Thanks, Betty, for offering that prize!)

To Peter Nellhaus goes a French Notorious poster, and I hope that poster appreciates its new owner, that's all I can say.

Aurora Bugallo gets the photo of Alfred Hitchcock and the giant telephone. (Warmest thanks to goddess Donna Hill for donating those last two prizes.)

And the Treasures DVDs from the NFPF go to Jill Blake, Thomas Bolda, Kenji Fujishima, Catherine Grant, Katherine Kehoe, and Lee Price.

Music, The End, roll credits...go hang out on a beach somewhere. We deserve it.

(One note: that screencap up top is from Sheila O'Malley, who has a magnificent post up about Cary Grant and the character of Devlin in Notorious. It was one day late for the blogathon, but you want to read it, oh boy do you.)