In 1990, a film enthusiast named Mike Vraney founded Something Weird Video, a distributor of hard-to-find, sensationalist movies. This included everything from violent exploitation movies to budget Westerns and found footage. Something Weird became a touchstone for the rougher, risky side of film history, and filmmakers including Paul Thomas Anderson and Drive‘s Nicolas Winding Refn […]
Continue readingMonthly Archives: September 2015
See a documentary about Malala early – and for free!
We continue to get advance screening passes for upcoming films, and we’re very excited about this next one. We suspect the AU community will be interested in seeing He Named Me Malala, a documentary about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education activist and the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate. Based on what we’ve seen in the […]
Continue readingClap in a circle to mourn the end (?) of fake birthday songs
After a court decision last night, movie and television characters might finally be able to sing “Happy Birthday to You.” The Summy Company contested for decades that it owned the copyright to the universally recognized birthday song and charged productions $10,000 to include its melody and lyrics. No one really wanted to pay all that […]
Continue readingRIP William Becker, the unsung hero of world cinema
A week and a half ago, film distributor William Becker died. His name is not a recognizable one, and his quiet work at Janus Films and the Criterion Collection left a massive imprint on how we consume visual media. As the co-owner of Janus Films starting in 1965, Becker oversaw the importation of many influential […]
Continue readingChinese cancer rom-com Go Away Mr. Tumor comes to America – for free!
In 2011, Xiong Dun started an irreverent webcomic about her cancer diagnosis that gained millions of followers before she died a year later. Her comic was adapted into a romantic comedy movie this year, and although it was a success when it was released in China last month, it hasn’t yet come out in the […]
Continue readingNew Acquisitions – September 2015 – Part 2
DC’s 90-degree days are finally behind us. It’s almost time to make cider and curl up under some form of flannel, and we couldn’t be happier. Seems like as good of a time as any to get you caught up on what you can now check out from our collection. Our biggest new title for […]
Continue readingThe insatiable film appetite of Jimmy Carter
Since Woodrow Wilson screened Birth of a Nation, presidents have enjoyed the privilege of watching seemingly any film they wanted at any time. In the century since – and especially since FDR installated of a formal White House movie theater – we’ve heard stories about Eisenhower’s love for Westerns or Clinton’s private screening of Independence […]
Continue readingDC Shorts is happening… right now!
One of DC’s biggest film events has been happening under our noses! DC Shorts, an annual showcase of short films, has been going on since last Thursday, but there’s still a few more days worth of films to catch. Over the course of a week and a half, DC Shorts screens over 100 shorts from […]
Continue readingRemember: sign up for a DC Library card and stream the Criterion Collection!
We try not to re-run content too often here, but now that the semester is settling, we wanted to remind you about the excellent streaming collection that anyone at American University can access through the DC Public Library. If you have a DC Public Library card (which you can grab at the Tenley-Friendship Library in […]
Continue readingHannibal got a rare triple take on the same scene
Media critics widely lamented the cancellation of NBC’s Hannibal this year; the show is considered one of the best adaptations of the iconic serial cannibal series. Non-fans might not understand the appeal since we’ve heard that story several times before, but even for those without an appetite for the antihero doctor might see an exciting […]
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