If you’re interested in keeping up on everything related to Japanese cinema, be sure and check out MidnightEye.com. This website contains a wealth of information from interviews with contemporary directors, to thoughtful book and movie reviews, to in-depth feature articles. For example, the latest Round-Up covers four of Akira Kurosawa’s early social drama films. Japanese […]
Continue readingMedia Services Forms Online
Did you know that you can submit a video purchase recommendation online? In fact, all media services paper forms now have electronic versions. They cover: Videotape Rental/Borrowing Requests, Media Purchase Recommendations, Media Reserves Materials Deposit Forms, Restrict media from outside use forms (for AU Faculty), Student Check Out Authorizations, and proxy authorizations.link
Continue readingObit: Dennis Weaver, 81
Most widely known for television roles on Gunsmoke, Gentle Ben, and McCloud, Weaver also delivered riveting performances in two extraordinary films. In Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958, DVD 163), he is unforgettable as the quaking-in-his-boots night manager of the desert motel where Janet Leigh is being held captive by Mercedes McCambridge and her gang. […]
Continue readingForgotten classic: A Day with Timmy Page
Aspiring filmmakers can probably learn a thing or two from young auteur Timmy Page. From the paneled basement of his home in Connecticut, he explains how he came to be a movie producer/director, his philosophy of film making, his view of other more established film makers (Charlie Chaplin, etc.), and the art of plot development. […]
Continue readingInterested in finding film reviews online?
There are two free film-review databases you’ll want to know about, Movie Review Query Engine and Metacritic. MRQE is the more undisciplined of the two, including a wide variety of sources from the credible to the somewhat bizarre. It also includes several precomputed lists of films, the most interesting of which are the listings of […]
Continue readingMust-see video: Punishment Park
Peter Watkins’s Punishment Park was made and released in 1970. Watkins had set out to make a film about the Chicago Seven but instead wound up making a fictional film about a civilian tribunal hearing the cases and passing sentences on anti-war protesters. In lieu of long prison sentences, those found guilty are given the […]
Continue readingThe 1000 greatest films
A site that you will want to browse at least once is They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? if for no other reason than to marvel at their 1000 greatest films project. The list has been compiled by using the lists of over 1,000 individual critics’ and filmmakers’ top-tens from numerous film polls conducted by many […]
Continue readingOpen Campus Screenings and Copyright
There is a common misconception of permissible uses of copyrighted videos on campus that I thought should be mentioned. On a fairly regular basis a student group or academic department asks for permission to use a library copy of a feature film for an open screening, believing they are permitted to without acquiring public performance […]
Continue readingA visit from Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagon will be speaking this week at a screening of Sweet Honey In the Rock: Raise Your Voice, a documentary by filmmaker Stanley Nelson. The event, presented by the Center for Social Media and the American University Honors Program, will be at 6:30pm on Thursday, Feb. 23, in the Wechsler Theater in Mary […]
Continue readingA visit from filmmaker Adrian Cowell
One of AU’s treasures that everyone should know about is the The Center for Social Media. The Center champions films and filmmakers that bring to light issues of injustice and inequality in society. It’s a project of the School of Communication and is directed by faculty member Pat Aufderheide. Among the events on their current […]
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