{"id":210,"date":"2016-05-23T13:32:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T17:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2016\/05\/23\/new-to-the-collection-rare-car-commercials-from-great-filmmakers\/"},"modified":"2016-05-23T13:32:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T17:32:00","slug":"new-to-the-collection-rare-car-commercials-from-great-filmmakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2016\/05\/23\/new-to-the-collection-rare-car-commercials-from-great-filmmakers\/","title":{"rendered":"New to the collection: rare car commercials from great filmmakers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.wrlc.org\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=14212840\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"167\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-_ArNCYUJXg4\/V0M9lzH4kHI\/AAAAAAAACVk\/IIkvgKoXDxQMgGIdVAVNgsDTitd0JwjkQCLcB\/s400\/driver.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Occasionally, we get an unusual item in the collection that we just have to share with everyone. Sometimes it&#8217;s just an oddity like<i> Executive Koala<\/i> (<a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.wrlc.org\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=13202630\">HU DVD 8910<\/a>), but this time we have a special, unusual DVD with a place in film history.<\/p>\n<p>In 2001, BMW commissioned <i>The Hire<\/i>, an anthology of eight 10-minute short films starring Clive Owen about the driving features of their cars. They were among the earliest successful branded web video content \u2013 and make no mistake, they&#8217;re commercials.<\/p>\n<p>What makes them special is that each film was directed by arguably one of the greatest film talents working at the time. Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, John Woo, and others all participated; the names BMW attracted were astounding.<\/p>\n<p>The high profile is also one of the reasons you can&#8217;t watch them anymore: <i>The Hire<\/i> was extremely expensive, and BMW opted not to continue hosting the videos. Very few DVD copies exist, and some versions omit one of the films because of a contract stipulation from Forest Whitaker. We got our hands on one of the complete promotional DVDs (<a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.wrlc.org\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=14212840\">DVD 13108<\/a>), so the AU community will always have access to these lost works by great filmmakers.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Occasionally, we get an unusual item in the collection that we just have to share with everyone. Sometimes it&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-directors","category-new-acquisitions","category-recommendations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}