Friday, August 31, 2007

Selected New Acquisitions This Week

The pursuit of happyness - DVD 3075
Bigger than life - DVD 3074 (PAL Region 2 DVD)
Night on Earth - DVD 3073
Playtime - DVD 3072
Das leben der anderen = The lives of others - DVD 3070
Lola la trailera = Lola the truck driver - DVD 3069

More Cool Streaming Video: This from the Paley Center for Media

They have clips of events they've hosted in their New York and Los Angeles locations. Fun stuff like panel discussions with: the "whacked Sopranos"; the writing staff for "Late Night with Conan O'Brian"; the cast of "30 Rock". Take a look.

link

Mind Online: Streaming video of lectures at the University of Chicago

Errol Morris is among the few Film Studies lecturers in this rich electronic archive of video and audio recordings. In their words, this is "a collection of thought-provoking samples from the University's intellectual life, both past and present."

link

Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life

Gorgeously presented by the British Film Institute, Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life has just arrived on region 2 DVD and is now available in Media Services.

HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3074

Released in 1956, less than a year after Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger Than Life
stands next to Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1955) as monumental Technicolor/CinemaScope American suburban melodrama with a subversive twist, including the most awkward PTA meeting ever projected on the screen!

http://www.bfi.org.uk/booksvideo/video/details/biggerthanlife/

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Guilty Pleasures - 100 Best Directors Ever lists - this one according to UK film rag Total Film

These are fun to read, mostly for the surprises in the countdown, but ultimately don't mean anything. I know you're curious so I won't spoil it.

link

Friday, August 24, 2007

Selected New Acquisitions This Week

Undeclared: the complete series - DVD 3065-3068
The Killers (1946, 1964) - DVD 3064
Das Fräulein - DVD 3058
Viva Cuba - DVD 3055
Madeinusa - DVD 3052
Iraq in fragments - DVD 3049

Selected New Acquisitions This Week

Lung fu fong wan - City on fire - DVD 3045
The films of Alejandro Jodrowsky (La cravate, Fando y Lis, El topo, and La montaña sagrada) - DVD 3041-3044
America at a crossroads PBS series - DVD 3021-3033
God grew tired of us - DVD 3020

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Streaming video find: The Charlie Rose Archive

Over 4000 hours of interviews. Searchable and categorized for browsing too. This is an amazing archive of contemporary culture covering some of the most remarkable people from the arts and sciences as well as business, government, sports, and journalism.

link

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Cool find: Animator Sally Cruikshank's films on YouTube

I'd seen a few of these, Quasi at the Quackadero and Face like a frog, and didn't realize she done so many others. Cruikshank made her name in the late seventies with an animation style that was heavily influenced by early animation pioneers Max and Dave Fleischer. I'd wondered what became of her and am glad to see she's alive and well. She even has a blog, fun on mars. Credit BoingBoing for uncovering the YouTube page.

link

Friday, August 10, 2007

Selected New Acquisitions This Week

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? - DVD 3017
Coeurs = Private fears in public places - DVD 3016
Leonard Berstein's young people's concerts - DVD 3001-3009
Performance - DVD 3000

Friday, August 03, 2007

Selected New Acquisitions This Week

Sílení = Lunacy - DVD 2999
Amarcord - DVD 2996
Extras: season 2 - DVD 2992
Extras: season 1 - DVD 2991
Jackie Brown - DVD2988
Renaissance: Paris 2054 - DVD 2986
Shakespeare retold - DVD 2985

Watch Pull My Daisy (1959) on google video...

Robert Frank's half-hour, black-and-white short film, Pull my daisy can be seen here. Featuring narration written and performed by author Jack Kerouac, the film presents an affectionate portrait of beat culture at its height through the jazzy retelling of a long, rambling evening filled with literary improvisation, philosophical discussions, and playfully foolish behavior. The fun begins when poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, who portray themselves, converge on the apartment of one of their friends for a day of beer drinking and poetic discourse. They soon learn that their friend and his wife are planning to host a young bishop and his family for dinner and decide to stay around until evening. As the day continues, a number of other colorful characters also drop in; when the bishop arrives, and the poets begin to goad him with their loopy yet earnest questioning of religion and other institutions, things take on the flavor of an impromptu party. The film was shot on a minimal budget and without sync sound, which serves to further place the emphasis on the film's true star, the rhythmic prose of narrator Jack Kerouac.

synopsis taken from http://www.allmovie.com