September 2015 – Media Services News

Help fund an archive of weird, dangerous, rare films

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 reading “Help fund an archive of weird, dangerous, rare films”

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 have been involved with the company. Vraney died in 2014, leaving behind a massive trove of some of the only copies of over 6000 strange films – and your help is needed to preserve them.

The American Genre Film Archive has started a project to preserve and re-release as much of Something Weird’s archive as possible, and they’re looking for $30,000 from a Kickstarter. Something Weird apparently sends out hundreds of prints to film and educational groups every year, and those copies will eventually degrade if not cared for. A proper preservation program like that one AGFA proposes would ensure access to this very odd collection for generations to come.

Consider throwing a few dollars their way. AGFA has chosen the comically ahistorical The Zodiac Killer as its restoration centerpiece, and if you pitch in at least $10, you’ll get a free copy when it’s available!

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 reading “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 trailer and read it descriptions, it sounds like this will offer a touching glimpse of Malala’s family life that we rarely see.

He Named Me Malala opens in limited release next Friday, but we have passes to see the film before it opens on Tuesday, October 6th at 7pm. The screening will take place at the AMC Loews 14 in Georgetown, which is just a quick ride from any number of buses on Wisconsin Avenue.

You can pick up passes online or grab them in person. Please keep in mind that as with all advance screenings, this event will be intentionally overbooked. Show up early to ensure that you get a seat.

Clap 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 reading “Clap 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 for an incidental song (with the bizarre exception of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room), so shows and films have made up their own alternative birthday songs to skirt the copyright.

That era might finally be over, but some of those fake jingles are pretty great. A few years back, the Free Music Archive assembled a collection of some of their favorite royalty-free birthday songs into a video, embedded above. There’s some good choices, especially Police Squad!‘s overdubbed choral replacement and Waiting‘s uncomfortable military chant.

But we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the greatest omission from that video: “Spirit Formation Journey Anniversary” from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The character Master Shake wrote this bizarre metal dirge in an attempt to replace the original birthday song and claim royalties once it becomes popular at restaurants. It’s a spot-on parody of the ridiculous hoops creative media had to jump to sing a song that effectively belonged to the public.

As with so many cultural references, all these substitute songs are now instantly relics and will be confusing for future generations. Or maybe we’ll have moved on to “Spirit Formation Journey Anniversary” by then.

RIP 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 reading “RIP William Becker, the unsung hero of world cinema”

As the co-owner of Janus Films starting in 1965, Becker oversaw the importation of many influential works of world cinema to American shores. He deserves partial credit for the success and influence of directors including Bergman, Kurosawa, and Fellini, filmmakers who might not have come to the United States for some time otherwise. He also co-founded the Criterion Collection, which worked closely with Janus Films to release of hundreds of classic works of cinema and popularized the letterbox film display standard. If you’ve watched The 400 Blows on a television, you can thank William Becker for that.

One person alone is of course not responsible for reshaping the arthouse and international film market in America, but Becker’s transformation of Janus Films significantly helped. Criterion and Janus their exceptional work in distributing high-quality transfers of world cinema, and William Becker silently carved out a spot on the film world for that to happen.

Chinese 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 reading “Chinese 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 United States. You can be one of the first in the country to see it!

It’s unclear when the film will be publicly released in the United States, but we’re giving away passes to see it at a private screening at the National Geographic Society on Thursday, September 24th at 6:30pm. Variety liked the movie and compared it favorably to thematically similar movies like The Fault in Our Stars and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, so why not give it a shot? (Assuming you can get past the papal security downtown.)

You can pick up the passes at the Media Services desk in the AU Library (or grab them online here). Please remember as usual to show up early for this screening: the organizer intentionally overbooked this event, so you’ll need to get in line if you want to see it.

We hope you’ll attend! Again, we have no idea when the movie will actually come out in the United States, so this is your best (and cheapest) chance to watch it.

New 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 reading “New Acquisitions – September 2015 – Part 2”

Our biggest new title for the second half of September is Mad Max: Fury Road, possibly the best post-apocalyptic feminist action epic featuring a guy chained to the front of a truck playing a flamethrower-guitar (pictured). If you don’t want to watch that for the third time, you may want to start a critically acclaimed television show you’ve meant to watch. And we have several: the first seasons The Knick, The Comeback, The Honorable Woman, and Viola Davis’s breakout hit How to Get Away with Murder are now all available from the library. The more politically minded might also want to see a documentary about the life of the late Gore Vidal.

Follow the link for a full list of what we added…

Home Use Collection:

Modern Family, Season 4 – HU DVD 8954
Show Boat – HU DVD 9677
Orphan Black, Season 3 – HU DVD 11474
Broadchurch, Season 2 – HU DVD 11484
Violette – HU DVD 11732
The Honorable Woman – HU DVD 12325
Gia – HU DVD 12381
Song of Youth – HU DVD 12421
The Monuments Men – HU BLU 12424
The Monuments Men – HU DVD 12424
A Stranger Among Us – HU DVD 12427
The Sugarland Express – HU DVD 12436
Inside Daisy Clover – HU DVD 12438
Losing Isaiah – HU DVD 12439
Mi Vida Loca – HU DVD 12440
’71 – HU DVD 12443
The Alamo – HU DVD 12444
What We Do in the Shadows – HU DVD 12447
White God – HU DVD 12448
Clouds of Sils Maria – HU DVD 12449
The Wrecking Crew! – HU DVD 12450
Jauja – HU DVD 12451
Greedy Lying Bastards – HU DVD 12452
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia – HU DVD 12453
Mad Max: Fury Road – HU DVD 12486
Mad Max: Fury Road – HU BLU 12486
A Perfect Murder / Murder By Numbers / Murder in the First – HU DVD 12488
Sucesos Distantes – HU DVD 12489
Night Train to Lisbon – HU DVD 12490
Proof – HU DVD 12491
Company – HU DVD 12492
In Tahrir Square – HU DVD 12502
The Comeback – HU DVD 14149
How to Get Away with Murder, Season 1 – HU DVD 14150
The Knick, Season 1 – HU DVD 14195

In-Library Titles:

A Time for War, A Time for Peace – DVD 6953
This Honorable Court – DVD 12243
Team Building – DVD 12244
Bullied – DVD 12351
Courage & Hope – DVD 12357
U.S. Minorities at the World Bank Group – DVD 12360
The Romantic Era – DVD 12434
Hamlet, North Carolina: Our Jobs, Our Lives? – DVD 12445
Hands That Picked Cotton – DVD 12446
Circles-Cycles: Kathak Dance – DVD 12483

Music Library DVDs:

The Last Five Years – MUSIC LIBRARY DVD 165
Company – MUSIC LIBRARY DVD 166

Thesis DVDs:

Step Up – THESIS BLU 92
Strength, Courage, and Still I Rise – THESIS DVD 93
Losing Focus – THESIS DVD 95
Heroine – THESIS DVD 96
My Boyfriend Got a Beatle Haircut – THESIS DVD 97
Millennial Dating – THESIS DVD 98
Nooshtube – THESIS DVD 99

The 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 reading “The 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 Day. But our most movie-obsessed film president might not have been former actor Reagan: it was Jimmy Carter.

At least according to a list assembled by Gizmodo’s Matt Novak, who dug through presidential records and discovered that Carter watched 400 films over the course of his presidency, everything from All the President’s Men to, for some reason, Blue Lagoon. Carter occupied the White House during the end of the New Hollywood era, so his screenings have a pretty good track record: in his first year alone, he saw The Godfather, Network, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Blazing Saddles. But there’s also the funny mental image of him watching The In-Laws the day before his famous “crisis of confidence” speech.

It sounds like this list took some serious manual compiling, so don’t expect similar lists from other presidencies any time soon. Weirdest of all, we don’t have much anecdotal evidence for why Carter watched so many movies. We’re willing to chalk it up to the stress of the job.

DC 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 reading “DC Shorts is happening… right now!”

Over the course of a week and a half, DC Shorts screens over 100 shorts from local and international, including documentaries, music videos, and animation. The size and quality of the festival is a testament to the strength of the local film scene, and the concurrent screenplay competition shows that you don’t need to know lens focal length to be involved.

Counting today, there are still three days of new films to watch, followed by a Best of Show revue over the weekend. See DC Shorts’s schedule for a listing of what will screen where. All the new screenings are at E Street Cinema, so depending on when you show up, you could have your choice of local shorts, LGBT films, comedy, or a general competition showcase. You can still watch these shorts if you can’t make it out, too. For $30, you can watch nearly all the festival’s shorts online. That’s a great alternative if you want to see quality short films without having to schlep to E Street.

We hope you’ll attend! There’s a few big festivals every year in DC, and this is a favorite.

Remember: 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 reading “Remember: sign up for a DC Library card and stream the Criterion Collection!”

If you have a DC Public Library card (which you can grab at the Tenley-Friendship Library in Tenleytown), you can stream films from the Criterion Collection, one of the greatest assortments of classic films ever assembled. We’re proud of the offerings you can get directly from the AU Library, but free streaming access to the Criterion Collection is hard to beat.

We encourage everyone to get a DC Library card and take advantage of this service. It’s a great convenience if you’re a film student, but anyone who wants to watch the best classic films of all time should take interest too.

(See our full post about this from May for more information.)

Hannibal 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 … Continue reading “Hannibal 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 film analysis exercise here. The first Hannibal story, Red Dragon, has been portrayed in visual media three times – once as Manhunter, then as Red Dragon, and finally in the third season of Hannibal – which offers a unique opportunity to see the same scenes rewritten by three different creative teams from identical scripts.

HitFix’s Drew McWeeny wnalyzed the differences in-depth, including a clip (embedded above) that crosscuts between all three versions while still telling a cohesive story. It’s rare that the same film is filmed so many times outside of experiments and exercises, let alone the same script, so this is an exceptionally valuable opportunity for anyone who wants to dissect different filmmaking styles or how those styles have evolved over time.

We’ll hop on that wagon that laments the end of the series (we hear good things from our staff), but we’re glad it produced at least one terrific teachable moment for film scholars.

If you want to see what else Bryan Fuller did with this famous character, we currently carry season 1 (HU DVD 14307) and season 2 (HU DVD 14308).