Spy a few movies in Crystal City on Mondays

Summer is the season for free outdoor film screenings, and with seemingly every neighborhood and area in DC now hosting its own business improvement district, there’s no shortage of places to see a movie outside on a big screen. We felt like pointing out one of the bigger festivals happening in the city, Crystal City’s […]

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How did movie trailers evolve into tiny blockbusters?

Internet nerd-dom had an outrage flashpoint recently when trailers for the upcoming movie Terminator: Genisys revealed multiple major plot twists, effectively spoiling what may have been the most interesting (or only interesting?) parts of the movie. Contrast that with the ominous trailer for the first Terminator movie. How did we go from brief teasers to […]

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New Acquisitions – June 2015 – Part 2

As promised, here’s our second batch of new titles from June. The most obvious major acquisitions are the remaining seasons of the first decade of The Simpsons that we didn’t already own. Woop-woop-woop! Artsier types might enjoy our additions from The Journal of Short film or Goodbye to Language, Jean-Luc Godard’s first film in 3D. […]

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RIP James Horner

We’re shocked and saddened by news of the untimely death of James Horner, Academy Award-winning composer of classic soundtracks for films including Apollo 13, Titanic, Braveheart, The New World, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Horner was a world-class composer whose works are among the best in film; he was still an active […]

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AFIDOCS is underway!

Time for a quick PSA: the annual AFIDOCS documentary film festival kicked off yesterday! AFIDOCS is a terrific, half-week-long, city-spanning event that showcases new documentary features and shorts from around the world. Visit the AFIDOCS website for a list of where and when everything will be playing. Many of these documentaries will screen at the […]

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Even in booming China, independent filmmakers struggle for funding and attention

Last month, we posted about the iffy state of film and television production credits in the United States. You might assume that the recent boom of China’s film industry has created a new market for incentives overseas, but evidently, the purse strings are tight there as well. Although major Hollywood “co-productions” like Iron Man 3 […]

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What do we lose when we revive a TV series?

The next year will see new seasons of Heroes, The X-Files, Coach, Twin Peaks, Prison Break, Full House, and possibly Arrested Development or 24. Television shows long since canceled have found a second life in the increasingly diversified, well-funded world of digital programming. Surely TV fans of a certain generation looks forward to catching up […]

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New Acquisitions – June 2015 – Part 1

As promised, we’re going to start updating you about our new acquisitions every two weeks. We just resumed purchasing for the summer, and the latest wave of titles has begun to pour in. For this most recent batch, our biggest acquisition is the complete run of the Helen Mirren-fronted British crime procedural Prime Supsect. You […]

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