Our collection has a healthy number of films about music, musicians, and the music industry, so we like to collaborate with our friends over in the Music Library to promote them. Jesse, one of the student workers in the Music Library has been reviewing some of our music DVDs; last week he wrote about our […]
Continue reading“I’ve got good news!” Twin Peaks will triumphantly return in 2016
We usually don’t like to comment on ultra-recent entertainment news, but we make exceptions for stories as big as the return of Twin Peaks. Co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost announced today that the cult classic, which enraptured and infuriated a generation that later tried to warn everyone about Lost, will return in 2016 for […]
Continue readingTiananmen Square documentaries provide context for current Hong Kong protests
If you’ve paid attention to international news recently, you may be aware of the large-scale protests (and subsequent government crackdown) occurring in Hong Kong over proposed election reforms that could prevent opposition candidates from seeking office. To outside observers, the so-called “Umbrella Revolution” is turning out distressingly similarly to the events in Tiananmen Square in […]
Continue readingHave war films outlasted our actual wars? xkcd digs for an answer
Randall Munroe’s What If?, one of the most popular new books of the year, scientifically guesstimates the answers to absurd hypothetical questions. Usually these involve pushing the laws of physics to their breaking point, but once in a while, they just deal with situations of absurd, immeasurable scale. After spending a lazy afternoon browsing the […]
Continue readingSee Men, Women & Children, then grab the T-Shirt!
As we head into October, we’re leaving behind summer blockbusters and heading straight into the prestige season, when award-contenders and major dramas are released for the discerning public. One of the more conspicuous debuts this week is Men, Women & Children, the latest film by director Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno, Young Adult). […]
Continue readingA eulogy for the Saturday morning cartoon
Yesterday marked the largely unheralded end of a television tradition: the Saturday morning cartoon. For nearly fifty years, network channels devoted a significant portion of their Saturday programming to children’s animated programs, but with the end of The CW’s “Vortexx” block, no major broadcast networks is airing cartoons on Saturday anymore. After years of criticism […]
Continue readingNo more lasers? PBS takes on the realism of movie space combat
We might criticize special effects for overstaying their welcome on occasion, but without CGI and crazy miniature work, we wouldn’t have space battles. Watching spaceships shoot lasers and blow up is among the greatest, basest pleasures of movies. Even the Star Wars prequels, superfluous as they may be, have a few entertaining space fights. Color […]
Continue readingNew Acquisitions – September 2014
Everyone settled in for the semester? We haven’t brought you a new batch of titles since July, mostly because we’ve been working through our enormous backlog. By our count, we’ve cataloged over 150 new items since last time, including a good number of new and returning television shows. In the interest in promoting a wide […]
Continue readingDig into television and film corpuses with Bookworm Movies
One handy tool for cultural analysis is to measure how often words are used within a given set of texts, whether that’s transcripts from Congress or every document ever written. It’s much easier to search through the written word for obvious reasons, leaving audio-visual media left out of the content analysis process. Luckily, a very […]
Continue readingTop 10: Scotland, On Screen and Behind the Camera
We’re proud of the variety and depth of the Media Services collection. In the interest of bringing you some highlights and deep cuts from our shelves, we’ll be posting unusual and interesting Top 10 lists of some of our favorite DVDs. Today, Scotland heads to the polls to vote on whether to declare independence. Even […]
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