Last night Alex and I saw Metropolis at the Royal down on Santa Monica. It was pretty fantastic, especially on the big screen. Sometimes I forget how wonderfully artistic - and dramatic - silent movies can be. In case you are unfamiliar, Metropolis is a 1927 sci-fi movie about a futuristic city run by workers ("the hands") and inhabited by the planners ("the mind"). Eventually the workers begin to be convinced that they are living unjustly, and things start getting crazy.
The movie was just recently restored with 30 minutes of extra footage thought to have been lost, making it just over 2 and a half hours long. It was also one of the most expensive film productions of all time, and had over 37,000 extras. All I can say is: epic.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j8Ba9rWhUg&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]