Not that you need any kind of mental stress during finals, but our media librarian passed along this mind-blowing update from the world of film preservation. The best-preserved filmstrips and digital backups will still deteriorate overtime, but the folks at Technicolor (yes, the Wizard of Oz Technicolor) think they’ve developed a foolproof technique for keeping […]
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Want to be a media librarian? Kino Lorber’s here to help
Allow us to toot the horn of our own profession for a second. If you’re interested in becoming a librarian who works with film, the American Library Association has a scholarship with your name on it. ALA has partnered with classic and art house film distributor Kino Lorber to offer an annual $1000 award for […]
Continue readingNew infographics break down gender in screenplays… and it’s about what you’d expect
Late last week, Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels released a study on Polygraph breaking down the dialogue of over 2000 major screenplays by the gender and age of the actors. If you’ve followed any of the other news about representation in film for the last few years, the results should come as no surprise: it’s […]
Continue readingA new site can find movies by describing them… for the most part
Every once in a while, we get stumped trying to remember a certain movie starring a certain actor. Usually those questions can be answered with a quick search (or by asking your librarian!), but there are trickier ones too: how do you find a movie by the subject matter? Today, we stumbled across a new […]
Continue readingDocumentarians name their 50 favorite documentaries
We’re suckers for any good, contentious list of best films. Whenever a publication puts together their top 300 films or the best horror movies, it inevitably has a few holes, which is an opportunity to talk about what makes art great. (It also give us justification to argue about movies.) The latest “best of” roundup […]
Continue readingScreening Room wants you to watch new movies at home, and not everyone’s on-board
photo by Mr.TinDC via Flickr Years ago, we mentioned PRIMA Cinema, the absurdly expensive streaming device that requires a home inspection and, for $500 a pop, allows you to watch first-run Hollywood movies. This was mostly intended as a way for the Jay Lenos of the world to see The Force Awakens in the comfort […]
Continue readingA rough early road for the Irish in film
Still from Whom the Gods Destroy via “Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen” While St. Patrick’s Day is now a generally beloved holiday (we’re going to grab Shamrock Shakes in a moment), it’s easy to forget that much of the world was inhospitable to the Irish a century ago. The hostile attitudes toward the Irish […]
Continue readingParamount opens their vault to YouTube. Will other studios follow suit?
(embedded above: all of Masters of the Universe! For free!) Major movie studios are usually extremely protective of their copyrights and lead the charge against video piracy. So it comes as a surprise that Paramount Pictures has opened up a great deal of their film archive for consumption on YouTube. The Paramount Vault channel, which […]
Continue readingRocketJump Film School breaks down film cuts
Our staff will be out for a few days for a library conference, so we want to leave you with something substantive to chew on for the week. Enter RocketJump Film School, a film production education group that has been releasing dense, informative videos about specific aspects of filmmaking. It gets pretty wonky; see their […]
Continue readingSpotlight’s director talks about filmmaking failure
Tom McCarthy won deserved accolades for his directorial and screenwriting work on this year’s Best Picture winner, Spotlight. But only months before, McCarthy also wrote and directed The Cobbler, an Adam Sandler-starring dramedy about a shoemaker who learns life lessons by literally walking in others’ soles. The Cobbler was roundly considered one of the worst […]
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