Still from Paint Drying via Charlie Lyne There’s a lot of insightful talk about the role film boards play in censorship – why do these unaccountable groups get to decide what can practically be released? – but sometimes it’s more fun just to be a jerk about the whole process. This is one of those […]
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Television directing is still not very diverse
Behind the scenes of Empire, one of the few shows with a strong track record for diversity in directing talent Much ink has been spilled about the changing face of television, with new shows (and their showrunners) finally expanding the diversity of experiences and characters on television. But even at a time with different people […]
Continue readingHow big movie franchises are bypassing the critics
Last year, we mentioned the idea of a post-plot movie, where property-driven movies transcend the need for strong narrative drive. Bryan Bishop at The Verge has noticed an odder, more troubling trend: the post-critic movie. Films have historically depended on advance screenings for critics to generate positive buzz. This is especially true for smaller or […]
Continue readingYour new podcast recommendation: You Must Remember This
Via our collections coordinator Molly Hubbs, we have a podcast recommendation for wonky film history types. You Must Remember This is a weekly hour-long program about secret tales from the classic film era. Every season, host Karina Longworth covers one major topic of Hollywood history across a dozen or so episodes. Earlier this year she […]
Continue readingBrave Wired blogger binges the entire Bond series for your benefit (and amusement)
From Moonraker, one of the Bond movies on the “Nah” list James Bond’s latest adventure, Spectre, hits theaters tomorrow. Reception on this one is decidedly mixed (Daniel Craig’s Bond seems to get it right every other movie), but it will no doubt be a box office sensation here as it has been in the United […]
Continue readingA grueling look at making The Simpsons, start to finish
Digital techniques have greatly sped up the rate at which animation is produced. South Park can turn out a full episode in a week, and some topical YouTube videos can be cranked out even faster. But the producers of The Simpsons have opted to keep things slow, spacing our production over nearly a year to […]
Continue readingHitFix hunts for the top 100 horror movies
What is the greatest horror film of all time? Is that too broad? How about a top 10 or even a top 50? With enough aggregated stats and expert opinion, you can probably make a killer list of the best in the genre. The editors at HitFix have done just that, polling horror directors, writers, […]
Continue readingHelp 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 readingClap 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 readingThe 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 […]
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