AU’s commencement ceremonies this year featured addresses from notable speakers like CNN’s John King and US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Luckily, since we live in the era of free high-quality web video, you can watch all those on AU’s official YouTube channel. We’ve had a lot of exciting commencement speeches in the years before that, […]
Continue readingMonthly Archives: May 2016
Some of the great, weird things we found while cleaning out our desks
Now that we’re in the slow months of summer, we have a chance to tidy up our department. A big part of that this summer is cleaning out desks that haven’t been emptied in decades and finding all sorts of goodies in them. Most of what we found was old files, but a few wonderful […]
Continue readingYou can own a piece of Mad Men history – even just an ashtray
Prop auctions are so irrationally fun. A pen might be worth a few cents, but if that pen appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy, my god, it’s worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. The chance to own a small piece of a movie or television show is the chance for a connection to art and […]
Continue readingAn intro to double Palme d’Or winner Ken Loach
In a choice that shocked many critics, director Ken Loach won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for I, Daniel Blake, a drama about a carpenter fighting for disability benefits. This is Loach’s second Palme d’Or (a rare feat) after his 2006 Irish War of Independence film The Wind That Shakes the […]
Continue readingNew to the collection: rare car commercials from great filmmakers
Occasionally, we get an unusual item in the collection that we just have to share with everyone. Sometimes it’s just an oddity like Executive Koala (HU DVD 8910), but this time we have a special, unusual DVD with a place in film history. In 2001, BMW commissioned The Hire, an anthology of eight 10-minute short […]
Continue readingMedia Services at the Movies: Neighbors 2
The summer blockbuster season is here! “Media Services at the Movies” will look at what big movie is coming out this week, then offer a few movies like it from our collection. Summer movie season is, at last, finally upon us. Although the likely biggest movie of the year (Captain America: Civil War) is already […]
Continue readingOur final count: 672 new DVDs this semester!
As we wrap up the academic year, we want to brag for a second. In a typical semester, we add about 200 or 300 new DVDs. Our collection grew by over 3000 titles in four years, which is a pretty great pace. According to our stats, during the spring 2016, we added 672 new DVDs […]
Continue readingEvery Frame a Painting turns inward with a look at the editing process
Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos’s Every Frame a Painting is one of the best film criticism channels on YouTube. The creators are excellent editors, and the attention they put into the pace and structure of the videos shows. Appropriately, this month, Every Frame a Painting’s new video looks at the editing process. Zhou edits films […]
Continue readingWhy do TV characters who love coffee not actually drink coffee?
Want to ruin every television show you’ll watch for the next week? Look at the cups people drink coffee from. Critic Myles McNutt has noticed the prevalence of people drinking coffee on TV. It’s an easy way to make characters seem relatable and gives them a reason to stand around or meet together. But something […]
Continue readingWhat does independent film look like today?
via Maryland Film Festival The slow roll into summer is the time of year when we start to look at our big-picture tasks, so it seems appropriate to share a big-picture article about the state of film. For The New Yorker, Richard Brody wrote a lengthy piece about the state of “independent film” and what […]
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