July 2015 – Media Services News

New Acquisitions – July 2015

Last month we promised more regular updates about our new acquisitions, and… well, we didn’t have a whole lot coming in for a few weeks. But we do now! We got a motley assortment of new titles in July, and to avoid going for the obvious bigger names (nothing against Thor), let’s spotlight a few … Continue reading “New Acquisitions – July 2015”

Last month we promised more regular updates about our new acquisitions, and… well, we didn’t have a whole lot coming in for a few weeks. But we do now! We got a motley assortment of new titles in July, and to avoid going for the obvious bigger names (nothing against Thor), let’s spotlight a few the great off-the-track DVDs you can get now from the AU Library.

Before anything else, you’ll want to check out Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a remake of the first Indiana Jones movie filmed by three childhood friends over the course of several decades on home video cameras. Music fans should tune in for Nas: Time is Illmatic, a documentary about the creation of rapper Nas’s groundbreaking debut album. And anyone interested in gaming or diversity in culture should watch GTFO, a primer on harassment and exclusion of women in the video game community and industry.

We also finally got The Wiz. How did we not have The Wiz? Read on for a full list of what’s new.

Home Use Collection:

The Merchant of Four Seasons – HU DVD 3555*
Limelight – HU DVD 3798
Ugly Betty, Season 2 – HU DVD 4662
Ugly Betty, Season 3 – HU DVD 4663
The Newsroom, Season 3 – HU DVD 11069
Orange is the New Black, Season 2 – HU DVD 11417
Odd Man Out – HU DVD 12231
American Sniper – HU DVD 12252
Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles – HU DVD 12254
Maps to the Stars – HU DVD 12256
El Santos vs La Tetona Mendoza – HU DVD 12257
Gloria – HU DVD 12258
Leviafan – HU DVD 12259
Another Girl Another Planet – HU DVD 12260
Relatos Salvajes = Wild Tales – HU DVD 12261
State of Siege – HU DVD 12263
Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation – HU DVD 12264
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus – HU DVD 12265
Ashes and Embers – HU DVD 12267
Ganja & Hess – HU DVD 12268
Medicine for Melancholy – HU DVD 12270
Punks – HU DVD 12271
He Got Game – HU DVD 12274
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge – HU DVD 12275
The Wiz – HU DVD 12276
101 Dalmatians – HU BLU 12277
My Breakfast with Blassie – HU DVD 12278
Nas: Time is Illmatic – HU DVD 12281
What’s in a Name – HU DVD 12289
Time of the Gypsies – HU DVD 12290
General Idi Amin Dada – HU DVD 12291
Thor: The Dark World – HU DVD 12292
The Confession – HU DVD 12293
Southern District – HU DVD 12294
It Follows – HU DVD 12295

In-Library Titles:

Nashville – BLU 310
Nashville – DVD 310
Award-Winning American Animation, 1980-1985 – DVD 12166
Barefoot in Athens – DVD 12167
The Disillusionment of David Stockman – DVD 12170
Burden of Innocence – DVD 12171
Heartbreak House – DVD 12174
The Electronic Tribe – DVD 12176
The Sword and the Chrysanthemum – DVD 12177
The Legacy of the Shoguns – DVD 12178
A Proper Place in the World – DVD 12179
Weisse Rose = White Rose – DVD 12183
The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis: A Special Report – DVD 12185
War Without Winners II – DVD 12190
Top Dog = Wodzirej – DVD 12192
Thomas Eakins: A Motion Portrait – DVD 12195
Cyrano de Bergerac – DVD 12201
Hate Crimes in the Heartland – DVD 12251
Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story – DVD 12253
Hue: A Matter of Colour – DVD 12255
One Drop – DVD 12266
Tuberculosis in America: The People’s Plague – DVD 12269
GTFO – DVD 12272

Special Collections:

Desperate Man Blues – MUSIC LIBRARY DVD 144
Restless – THESIS DVD 94

75 years later, celebrating Bugs Bunny – and looking at his contentious history

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros.’s de facto cartoon mascot and a symbol of the golden age of animation (and maybe LeBron James’s future co-star?). Though Bugs is an immediately recognizable icon today, it took hundreds of theatrical animated shorts and countless years of Saturday morning television shows to get there. … Continue reading “75 years later, celebrating Bugs Bunny – and looking at his contentious history”

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros.’s de facto cartoon mascot and a symbol of the golden age of animation (and maybe LeBron James’s future co-star?). Though Bugs is an immediately recognizable icon today, it took hundreds of theatrical animated shorts and countless years of Saturday morning television shows to get there. And those decades have left behind countless historical artifacts of the birth of popular animation that Warner has thankfully preserved and shared for future generations – including the unseemly current of prejudice and xenophobia that sadly defined Looney Tunes for years.

This DVD set, the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, remains the best collection of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts available anywhere. Across six volumes, the compilation includes a breathtaking 360 animated shorts, spanning from 1929 (before the Looney Tunes name even existed) up to the 3D, CG-created Road Runner shorts from 2010. Each disc includes audio commentaries for select shorts from famous animators, as well as fascinating Looney Tunes ephemera such as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. If you ever wanted to see Mel Blanc recording the voice of Bugs Bunny, you can find some candid footage on the first disc of Volume 1.

But as mentioned, many of these earlier Bugs Bunny shorts were produced at a time far, far less attune to the hurtfulness of racist and sexist stereotypes. A number of the shorts in this collection traffic in insensitive and damaging racial humor that was unchecked, and Warner Bros. has thankfully included those unedited where possible. Several cartoons known as the Censored Eleven have never been released on home media. Warner Bros. eloquently defends their inclusion in the collection with a message that appears at the top of each DVD:

The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as to claim these prejudices never existed.

That’s a powerful statement in defense of artistic history, and with that unfortunate past acknowledged, it’s easier to appreciate the wealth of animated joy Bugs Bunny and directors Tex Avery and Chuck Jones helped bring into the world.

The AU Library proudly circulates three volumes of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, as well as a massive collection of Tex Avery’s adjacent work from the golden age of animation. Any are suitable viewing for Bugs’s big milestone.

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 1 – HU DVD 3231 – 3234
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 2 – HU DVD 3235 – 3238
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 6 – HU DVD 8181 – 8184
The Compleat Tex Avery – DVD 9781 – 9789
Space Jam – HU DVD 7990

Watch the suddenly-very-relevant Soy Cuba on the big screen

The normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba this week opens some obvious doors – some are surely counting down the days until legal cigar imports – but it also offers an appropriate moment to revisit cultural history we may have ignored intentionally or otherwise. Post-revolutionary Cuban films are sometimes left out of … Continue reading “Watch the suddenly-very-relevant Soy Cuba on the big screen”

https://silver.afi.com/Browsing/Movies/Details/m-0100000010

A great place to start that discussion is I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba), a visually stunning work depicting pre-revolutionary Cuba and the spirit of its people, including the country’s early cultural tensions with the United States. I Am Cuba was nearly forgotten and languished in Soviet archives for decades before its found new popularity for its striking camerawork and themes. In an almost-too-perfect programming coincidence, the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring will be screening I Am Cuba tomorrow, July 24th, at 4:30pm, with repeat screenings on Sunday and Monday.

Historically, culturally, and artistically, this is a tremendous and once-again relevant film. If you can’t catch it this weekend, you can always borrow our copy from the AU Library (HU DVD 331)

How Hollywood’s color correctors are playing with your emotions

We’ve talked about the color correction process in the past and how a once-cosmetic technique has become a fundamental part of the film production process. Total control of a film’s color range and palette allows filmmakers to tailor create visually resplendent works and sometimes to ignore other steps in the process. But the colors their … Continue reading “How Hollywood’s color correctors are playing with your emotions”

We’ve talked about the color correction process in the past and how a once-cosmetic technique has become a fundamental part of the film production process. Total control of a film’s color range and palette allows filmmakers to tailor create visually resplendent works and sometimes to ignore other steps in the process. But the colors their choose are a separate consideration, one rooted one psychology as much as filmmaking.

A new article from Fast Company dives into how certain color schemes can trigger emotional responses in everything from blockbuster movies to political campaign commercials. Through interviews with colorists, the authors reveal how certain tones can change the mood of scenes for dramatic effect. For instance, greens rarely appear at night in life, so emphasizing those colors in film for an unsettling effect. Or in a case of genuine artistry in Transformers, alien worlds intentionally lack normal white and black light to create the illusion of an unknown space.

This is an interesting insight into why filmmakers employ color correction to suck us into their creations. There’s a dark side to these techniques, though: the article also mentions how political campaign ads will play with warm and cool colors to make opponent appear out of touch or distant. We put a lot of stock (no film joke intended) in post-production to sway us emotionally, and like any talent, that can be used for good or ill.

What happened to the makers of Sky Captain?

The 2004 retro sci-fi caper Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was the first major film to shoot entirely on greenscreen. In an era when blockbuster movies eschew physical sets and use CGI wizardry as a crutch rather than a tool, that doesn’t seem like a groundbreaking or even welcome accomplishment. But no movie … Continue reading “What happened to the makers of Sky Captain?”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/sky-captain-and-the-world-of-tomorrow/kerry-kevin-conran-what-happened/

The 2004 retro sci-fi caper Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was the first major film to shoot entirely on greenscreen. In an era when blockbuster movies eschew physical sets and use CGI wizardry as a crutch rather than a tool, that doesn’t seem like a groundbreaking or even welcome accomplishment. But no movie – even the effects-heavy Star Wars prequels – came close to using virtual scenery to Sky Captain‘s extent. The movie flopped, but it impressed the film world and presaged today’s fantasy-soaked cinemas. So what happened to the filmmakers behind this milestone?

The Telegraph released a heartbreaking profile of Sky Captain‘s creators, Kerry and Kevin Conran, who saw their careers dramatically ascend and collapse in a few years over the anticipation and failure of their only feature film. Sky Captain started as an attempt to prove that independent filmmakers could create exciting blockbusters on small budgets using modern technology, but it ballooned into a massive, Jude Law-fronted boondoggle. Their innovations at one point caught the eyes of James Cameron, George Lucas, and other directors known for their technical wizardry, but they never earned a seat at the table in Hollywood. Kerry Conran continues to be crestfallen over this reversal of fortune and refused to participate in the article.

Given how little the Conran brothers created during their moment in the limelight, we may not know if they’re the greatest untapped film talents in a generation or just more indie darlings who didn’t work well on a bigger canvas. Their single shot fired, though, was a big one that is largely untold in film history. The next time a movie dramatically alters its setting without needing to reshoot, thank the Conrans for climbing that peak first.

See which rejected films survive an audience gauntlet tonight at Cheers and Sneers

The annual DC Shorts festival showcases some of the best short films from local talent, but not all submissions make the cut. And every so often, presumably and hopefully with their creators’ blessings, DC Shorts celebrates these rejections at Cheers and Sneers, an audience-driven showcase of the DC film scene’s near misses, secret triumphs, and … Continue reading “See which rejected films survive an audience gauntlet tonight at Cheers and Sneers”

Cheers and Sneers plays closer to a reality show voting round than a film festival. The DC Shorts folks play three minutes of each film on their program, and audience boos or cheers determine whether to advance that short to the next round or eliminate it from the competition. The winner at the end of the evening earns a spot in the upcoming DC Shorts festival (this year in September). Think of it as a roast of aspiring filmmakers; no malice is intended.

Lest this be too rationally critical, Cheers and Sneers is always held at a bar with ample drink specials, so the audience will be buzzed heading into this potentially disastrous lineup. Suffice to say this is a 21+ event.

2015’s Cheers and Sneers unfolds tonight at 7:30pm at Penn Social near the Chinatown Metro. If you’re looking for a happy hour spot that happens to be the spot of a near-drunken, vindictive film festival, you are in luck!

Coming soon: the most epic slapstick of the silent era

Dr. Strangelove nearly ended with an extended war room pie fight, but Kubrick eventually deemed the idea as too ridiculous for his otherwise subtler satire. The footage was never released, but it might have been one of the greatest on-screen pie fights in history. Pie tossing has been a staple of vaudevillian slapstick since the … Continue reading “Coming soon: the most epic slapstick of the silent era”

Dr. Strangelove nearly ended with an extended war room pie fight, but Kubrick eventually deemed the idea as too ridiculous for his otherwise subtler satire. The footage was never released, but it might have been one of the greatest on-screen pie fights in history. Pie tossing has been a staple of vaudevillian slapstick since the silent era, and Dr. Strangelove‘s fight would have topped them all… had Laurel and Hardy not beaten it to the punch forty years earlier.

As The New York Times tells, Laurel and Hardy’s short film “The Battle of the Century” features arguably the most epically scaled pie fight in movie history, burning through over 3000 pies in 20 minutes. The second half of the film has been missing for decades, becoming “a holy grail of comedy” as critic Leonard Maltin dubbed it. But just recently, an archivist discovered this missing portion. The existing reel seems to contain most of the pie-throwing, and anecdotes suggest the second reel reveals why the pastry carnage ensued. More pies might not be thrown, but we’ll finally hear the setup to the punchline.

We won’t get to see the results until it’s properly preserved, but soon, we’ll get to see the conclusion to arguably the greatest pie fight ever captured on film. Take that, Kubrick!

(The video above is a stitched-up version of “The Battle of the Century” using all currently available footage.)

Why should you care about Ennio Morricone?

San Diego Comic-Con wraps up today, and amid all the Batman and Star Wars news, you might have missed a little announcement that has classic film fans in a tizzy. During a panel on Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming The Hateful Eight, the director announced that film composition icon Ennio Morricone would score the movie, his first … Continue reading “Why should you care about Ennio Morricone?”

San Diego Comic-Con wraps up today, and amid all the Batman and Star Wars news, you might have missed a little announcement that has classic film fans in a tizzy. During a panel on Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming The Hateful Eight, the director announced that film composition icon Ennio Morricone would score the movie, his first Western score in forty years. That’s a big, big deal.

So why the hubbub? Morricone’s work is a cornerstone of the Western genre. Picture a Western movie and the music that pops in your head; it’s probably based on something Morricone composed.

Beyond his most recognizable work, the theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (and that film’s legendary Ecstasy of Gold, embedded above) Morricone also wrote the music for Once Upon a Time in the West and countless near-anonymous spaghetti Westerns that have been sampled by other films. Bits of his score for Navajo Joe, for instance, was re-used in Election and Tarantino’s Kill Bill duology. Morricone’s trademark combination of raw guitars, whistling, choral singing, trumpets, and whipcracking have become ingrained in popular film vocabulary often to the point of parody.

A new Morricone Western score is like a new Hitchcock thriller. It’s a new work by an artist in a medium they so thoroughly defined that everything afterwards is homage.

Of course, you need to listen to his music for the full effect. Instead of recommending that you watch any of the dozens of films Morricone scored, we’ll instead point you to Morricone Conducts Morricone, a streaming video in our catalog of a concert of select notable pieces from his oeuvre. It’s a great taste of how he transformed a genre – and what we can expect from him later this year.

A glimpse behind the Library of Congress’s film preservation vaults

You may be familiar with the National Film Registry, the Library of Congress group that annually selects significant American films to maintain in perpetuity. That’s only a fraction of the over one million video recordings held by the Library of Congress, but all undergo a rigorous preservation process. For the first time that we’ve seen, … Continue reading “A glimpse behind the Library of Congress’s film preservation vaults”

You may be familiar with the National Film Registry, the Library of Congress group that annually selects significant American films to maintain in perpetuity. That’s only a fraction of the over one million video recordings held by the Library of Congress, but all undergo a rigorous preservation process. For the first time that we’ve seen, WIRED was granted an inside look at the Library of Congress’s preservation center in Virginia to show what the nation’s film archive looks like. Turns out it’s crowded – way more than desirable.

This profile of the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation is packed with interesting peeks behind the scenes, featuring everything from political process of curating their collection to the prison-like storage facilities. But the most fascinating detail comes from curator Rob Stone, who admits that the Packard Campus receives more items than they can handle and sadly reject a significant portion of them. WIRED writer Bryan Gardiner describes the complex in terms usually reserved for hoarders, but such is the nature of any archive flooded with rarities.

We only infrequently deal with film preservation in Media Services, so it’s exciting to see the process involved in this whole other world of media in libraries. The Library of Congress is doing excellent, important work, but we’ll take the AU Library over a “nuclear bunker” any day.

Filming permit map reveals NYC’s hotspots in film

Many of us who do not often visit New York City are still intimately familiar with its iconic buildings and streets mainly because of its over-representation in film and television. Every other sitcom takes place in Manhattan, and aliens have destroyed the New York skylines more times than we can count. This keeps NYC’s film … Continue reading “Filming permit map reveals NYC’s hotspots in film”

Many of us who do not often visit New York City are still intimately familiar with its iconic buildings and streets mainly because of its over-representation in film and television. Every other sitcom takes place in Manhattan, and aliens have destroyed the New York skylines more times than we can count. This keeps NYC’s film office exceptionally busy, issuing thousands of permits every year to large and small productions filming on public property.

New York-focused data visualization group Metrocosm got their hands on over 10,000 filming permits issued from 2011 to 2013 and plotted them on a map, revealing which streets see the most action. Unsurprisingly, Times Square and the classically styled Financial District saw the most play, but you might notice a few other zones of interest. According to Metrocosm’s analysis, those correspond to the city’s outdoor and non-private film studios, including the massive indoor space at the 47th Regiment Armory.

We’ve most interested in productions that shot on the side-streets. Magician thriller Now You See Me shot extensively in Long Island City, and that’s a little more exciting than seeing the Flatiron Building again.