The ultimate guide to movies with really big worms

There are some recurring hazards in movies that we should be glad not to deal with in real life. Quicksand, for one. Also high on that list are massive, carnivorous worms. For some reason, science fiction and fantasy films love giant worm monsters. We understand that fairly big worms do exist somewhere out in the wild, but we rarely have to deal with ones the size of cruise ships.

Should you ever cross paths with a house-eating annelid, Atlas Obscura has created this handy guide to the most memorable worms in movies. This short videos covers a wide range of sizes, all the way up to the Star Wars space slug so big that it was mistaken for a cave. Tremors is always our first thought when it comes to worms in movies, and this is a bizarre reminder that, for whatever reason, deadly super-worms are more common threats than we remembered.

With the exceptions of Labyrinth and The Liar of the White Worm, all the movies featured in this video are available for checkout at the AU Library.

King Kong – HU DVD 1891
Beetlejuice – HU DVD 9030
Men in Black II – HU DVD 11323
Tremors – HU DVD 2811
Dune – HU DVD 6106
The Empire Strikes Back – HU DVD 1644

HitFix 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, critics, scholars, and superfans to create a ranked list of the 100 greatest horror movies ever.

The upper end of the list is stacked and difficult to argue against: The Exorcist takes the top spot, followed by The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, Alien, and the usual bedfellows. Once you get further down it gets a little odd, as these lists tend to, with rule-skirting oddities like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom showing up or the American remake of The Ring ranking higher than the Japanese original. Part of this might be the fault of the odd methodology, which weights the number of mentions over their relative ranking.

It's still a solid list, though, and its greatest asset might be its interviews with film figures about their favorite horror movies. Clive Barker apparently loves Bride of Frankenstein, and we're better hearing him gush about it than knowing that it's #37 on the list.

Night of the Living Dead is getting longer

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead established many of the zombie tropes we still know and love today, like lumbering speed, the importance of beheading, and parallels to contemporary social issues. Though films before it had undead monsters, Night of the Living Dead might be the first (and arguably still most) culturally significant zombie movie. And shockingly, there's even more of this foundational movie that we've never seen before.

At a screening earlier this month, Romero announced that he had discovered an old reel containing nine additional minutes of zombie chaos. Maybe it had been cut to keep the running time trim, but that's a substantial chunk of one of most influential horror films. Hopefully we'll see it resurface on the restoration that Romeo was working on or the inevitable Blu-ray release

In the meantime, you don't need to wait to watch the current version of Night of the Living Dead. As it turns out, the film was never actually copyrighted; it can be streamed from any number of sites and services. We even embedded it above!

DC rings in the official arrival of The Future

At long last, 26 years after the film's release, today is the day that Marty McFly and Doc Brown arrive in the future in Back to the Future Part II. Despite occupying only a fraction of the running time of the entire trilogy, the futuristic 2015 is one of the most iconic and memorable depictions of the future on film.

Dozens of websites have already covered what BTTFII got right and wrong about the distant future of 2015, so instead, let's round up all the Back to the Future-related happenings in the city today!

Reston, VA is the center of the biggest celebrations: as part of the Washington West International Film Festival, the city has changed its name to Hill Valley and will host a marathon screening of the trilogy at EXACTLY 7pm tonight. On Sunday, WWIFF will also screen a new documentary about the history of the series and a sold-out red carpet celebration featuring Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd.

If you can't make it out to Reston, the Regal 14 in Gallery Place downtown will host a screening of BTTFII at 5pm... which we assume is as close as they could get to the 4:29pm, the exact time Marty and Doc arrive in the future. The Esquire Network will also run a marathon of the series throughout the day. (Our copy of Back to the Future II is already checked out, sorry! The original is still available though.)

And for the 21+ crowd, Fantom Comics in Dupont Circle will hold a Back to the Future celebration party this evening, complete with a costume and impression contest. Hill Valley-themed drinks are promised.

We could join the chorus bemoaning that we didn't get hoverboards or self-drying jackets, but instead, let's celebrate that our 2015 is exciting in different, totally unexpected ways. for instance, you're reading this blog post that I wrote from the basement of a library instead of a newspaper! Take that, USA Today!

Jimmy Stewart takes a detour through Kubricktown

The world has reached peak mashup, with seemingly every television show and movie spliced together with clever editing, so we now only feel compelled to share the really good ones. And one such terrific video has come along featuring a very wary Jimmy Stewart.

"The Red Drum Getaway," published by new film site Gump, features Jimmy Stewart wandering through a ghostly mish-mosh of director Stanley Kubrick's creepiest films. Much of the digital editing involved is extremely obvious and artificial-looking, but Stewart's paranoia and Kubrick's surreal lingering make a great pair. There's a particular inspired combination of the most stylized scenes from Vertigo and 2001: A Space Odyssey that we're surprised no one pieced together earlier.

Now we wish Stewart had starred in a Kubrick film. How surreal would The Shining have been with Mr. Smith as Jack Torrance?

(We should warn that the video includes some footage from the famously explicit Eyes Wide Shut, so use discretion.)

See the acclaimed Room for free on Wednesday!

Although there are some big film-related things afoot on Wednesday, you might be looking towards the future rather than the past. And right now in the movie world, the future looks bright for Room, the claustrophobic Brie Larson-fronted drama that has made waves in limited release. The film currently has a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and has garnered some early Oscar discussion. Room hits more theaters this weekend, but you can see this serious award contender before anyone else in the city on Wednesday!

We have passes to a pre-wide-release screening of Room for Wednesday, October 21st at 7pm at the AMC Mazza Gallerie in Friendship Heights. Visit our page on Gofobo to redeem your pass before they run out (limited quantity this time). As is always the case with pre-release screenings, show up early to ensure that you get a seat; these events are always intentionally overbooked, and your pass only guarantees you a place in line.

Given the extremely positive buzz, we expect this one to be packed, so show up as far in advance as you can. Maybe even at... exactly 4:29 pm! Great Scott! (Sorry, but October 21st is a special day, and we can't get over that. You really should see Room though.)

New Acquisitions - October 2015 - Part 2

We're pickin' up good vibrations this month... or at least because we just added Love & Mercy, the biopic of The Beach Boys singer Brian Wilson.

That's one of our bigger titles for the second half of October. Our other major highlight is Salad Days, a locally produced documentary about the DC punk scene in the 80s and 90s. David Oyelowo's HBO film Nightingale is an exciting option for anyone looking for under-the-radar prestige. And genre TV fans should be ecstatic to learn that, as part of the tail end of our absorption of the CDI collection, we now have Xena: Warrior Princess. Ayiyiyiyiyiyiyi!

There's lots of great documentaries in this latest round... and also Real Genius, the 80s movie where Val Kilmer blows up a house with popcorn. You should probably watch Love & Mercy instead.

Continue on for a full list of what's new...

Take the Media Services Challenge: watch these 100 great documentaries

Congratulations on, presumably, passing mid-terms! Your workload will likely be in a bit of a downswing before we head into final project season, so you might be ready to spend some time chipping away at things you've been meaning to watch. If you're the type that has always wanted to see more documentaries but never knew where to start, we have 100 films for your list.

This summer, we all put our brains together and made a list of the 100 best documentaries available in our collection through streaming. There are a few classics including The Battle of Chile and King Corn, as well as odder ones like The Yes Men Save the World. All of these documentaries are free to watch via your web browser if you sign into your library account, and they're among the best in our collection.

If you're feeling really driven, we're challenging anyone with a hunger for documentaries to watch all 100 on the list before they graduate. No one has yet completed the Media Services Challenge, but if you do, we will enshrine you in a place of glory that we have yet to determine, probably on the wall next to your desk. It's like a Man vs. Food challenge, but with fewer ribs and more social theory.

Arabian Sights Film Festival brings its twentieth year to Friendship Heights

From From A to B

We're close to the start of the unending stream of Halloween-related activities, but the rest of the world doesn't stop in October. There are plenty of film happenings around DC this month, so let's talk about one of the cooler ones, the twentieth anniversary of the Arabian Sights Film Festival.

Sponsored by Filmfest DC and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, Arabian Sights is one of DC's best annual showcases of Arab cinema, and it takes place in our backyard at the AMC Mazza Gallerie in Friendship Heights. From October 16th to October 25th, you can catch ten new films, as well as a discussion panel titled The New Arab Cinema. On the 24th, you are also invited to a free happy hour event celebrating twenty years of the festival.

Each screening costs $13, which is a pretty good price. You can buy tickets in advance from the Filmfest DC website, or you can buy them at the door. Either way, this should all be very tempting for fans of world cinema. If you need to get a little culture in before everything turns to skeletons in a few weeks, Arabian Sights is only a quick walk from AU campus.

Alternative programming: How about a different holiday?

From The Native Americans

We probably don't need to recap the reasons why Columbus Day has lost favor in the past few years. Ask your favorite history professor or the ghost of Howard Zinn.

But, if you're looking for more material about the real history of Columbus's expeditions and the lives of Native Americans we are happy to supply you with a few relevant videos. Many groups are pushing to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day, so we'd like to tear down the old history narrative at the same time as celebrating the people who should really get the credit for being here first.

Rather than listing individual titles this time, we'll point you to our Indigenous Peoples of the Americas filmography. The general filmography list has some stirring videos about historical narrative and revisionism, but you'll most likely want to look at the U.S. / Canada page, which focuses on both the effect of Europe's expeditions and current Native American life and media portrayals.

That list includes many streaming titles, so you can watch them instantly from your device of choice. It's certainly a better way to spend an hour than continuing to observe this very strange holiday.

DC's most genuinely spooky place becomes a landmark

If you're an AU student who has made the trek to Georgetown, you've probably encountered the Exorcist steps, the legendary staircase famously used in a climactic scene from the bone-chillingly terrifying film The Exorcist. It's in an unassuming spot – behind a gas station on M Street – but it has for decades served as a beacon for local horror and movie fans.

At long last, the DC local government has decided to honor the Exorcist steps by making them an official city landmark. The commemoration ceremony will be held on October 30th at 6pm, right in time for Halloween. Public attendees are welcome and are invited to mingle beforehand with writer William Peter Blatty and author William Friedkin. (Bring something for them to autograph!)

American University and the School of Communications appear to be co-sponsoring this event, though we couldn't find anything official about that. Either way, it's still unlikely that you'll be able to go to the invitation-only screening of The Exorcist that follows the ceremony. But certainly head down to see a piece of DC movie trivia become DC history.

Snag an armload of Criterion titles for half-off today!

Like an Arby's selling piles of loose beef, the Criterion Collection has opened the floodgates on their store and is selling their entire DVD and Blu-ray stock for 50% off for the next 24 hours.

This is a fantastic sale that every film buff should consider taking advantage of. The Criterion Collection sells the definitive home video restorations of hundreds of classic films, everything from 20s silents to one of last year's Oscar nominees. They have a formidable storefront, and if you've ever wanted to start your own film library, this is the best place to jump in and pick up a few great titles. DVDs that might normally cost $40 are selling for $20, which is a steal considering the extra content and commentary packed onto each disc.

If you're having trouble figuring out what to buy, check out Criterion's sale dashboard, which tracks the most popular films as well as which ones have almost run out. As of this writing, there's only a few copies of Videodrome left. Go go go!

(To get the 50% discount, use the promo code SUZY when checking out.)

New Acquisitions - October 2015

Spooky season is here – and not just because of Halloween. A hurricane might be hitting us soon, and we're not feeling a weekend of overcast, rain, and wind. As with nearly any other circumstance, we see this as a prime opportunity for movie-watching... at least until the power goes out.

So we present to you another round up of new DVDs from the last few weeks. Our two biggest names are the box office-annihilating Furious 7 and Divergent sequel Insurgent. On the critical acclaim front, you should probably see the devastating, Marion Cotillard-fronted Two Days, One Night and the Oscar-winning Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour. Television fans could consider HBO's stealth hits Hello Ladies and The Jinx. And if none of that strikes you, surely everyone has a soft-spot for I Am Big Bird.

Follow the link for a full list of what we have this month...

Help 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 have been involved with the company. Vraney died in 2014, leaving behind a massive trove of some of the only copies of over 6000 strange films – and your help is needed to preserve them.

The American Genre Film Archive has started a project to preserve and re-release as much of Something Weird's archive as possible, and they're looking for $30,000 from a Kickstarter. Something Weird apparently sends out hundreds of prints to film and educational groups every year, and those copies will eventually degrade if not cared for. A proper preservation program like that one AGFA proposes would ensure access to this very odd collection for generations to come.

Consider throwing a few dollars their way. AGFA has chosen the comically ahistorical The Zodiac Killer as its restoration centerpiece, and if you pitch in at least $10, you'll get a free copy when it's available!

See a documentary about Malala early – and for free!

We continue to get advance screening passes for upcoming films, and we're very excited about this next one. We suspect the AU community will be interested in seeing He Named Me Malala, a documentary about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education activist and the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate. Based on what we've seen in the trailer and read it descriptions, it sounds like this will offer a touching glimpse of Malala's family life that we rarely see.

He Named Me Malala opens in limited release next Friday, but we have passes to see the film before it opens on Tuesday, October 6th at 7pm. The screening will take place at the AMC Loews 14 in Georgetown, which is just a quick ride from any number of buses on Wisconsin Avenue.

You can pick up passes online or grab them in person. Please keep in mind that as with all advance screenings, this event will be intentionally overbooked. Show up early to ensure that you get a seat.

Clap 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 for an incidental song (with the bizarre exception of Tommy Wiseau's The Room), so shows and films have made up their own alternative birthday songs to skirt the copyright.

That era might finally be over, but some of those fake jingles are pretty great. A few years back, the Free Music Archive assembled a collection of some of their favorite royalty-free birthday songs into a video, embedded above. There's some good choices, especially Police Squad!'s overdubbed choral replacement and Waiting's uncomfortable military chant.

But we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the greatest omission from that video: "Spirit Formation Journey Anniversary" from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The character Master Shake wrote this bizarre metal dirge in an attempt to replace the original birthday song and claim royalties once it becomes popular at restaurants. It's a spot-on parody of the ridiculous hoops creative media had to jump to sing a song that effectively belonged to the public.

As with so many cultural references, all these substitute songs are now instantly relics and will be confusing for future generations. Or maybe we'll have moved on to "Spirit Formation Journey Anniversary" by then.

RIP William Becker, the unsung hero of world cinema

A week and a half ago, film distributor William Becker died. His name is not a recognizable one, and his quiet work at Janus Films and the Criterion Collection left a massive imprint on how we consume visual media.

As the co-owner of Janus Films starting in 1965, Becker oversaw the importation of many influential works of world cinema to American shores. He deserves partial credit for the success and influence of directors including Bergman, Kurosawa, and Fellini, filmmakers who might not have come to the United States for some time otherwise. He also co-founded the Criterion Collection, which worked closely with Janus Films to release of hundreds of classic works of cinema and popularized the letterbox film display standard. If you've watched The 400 Blows on a television, you can thank William Becker for that.

One person alone is of course not responsible for reshaping the arthouse and international film market in America, but Becker's transformation of Janus Films significantly helped. Criterion and Janus their exceptional work in distributing high-quality transfers of world cinema, and William Becker silently carved out a spot on the film world for that to happen.

Chinese cancer rom-com Go Away Mr. Tumor comes to America – for free!

In 2011, Xiong Dun started an irreverent webcomic about her cancer diagnosis that gained millions of followers before she died a year later. Her comic was adapted into a romantic comedy movie this year, and although it was a success when it was released in China last month, it hasn't yet come out in the United States. You can be one of the first in the country to see it!

It's unclear when the film will be publicly released in the United States, but we're giving away passes to see it at a private screening at the National Geographic Society on Thursday, September 24th at 6:30pm. Variety liked the movie and compared it favorably to thematically similar movies like The Fault in Our Stars and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, so why not give it a shot? (Assuming you can get past the papal security downtown.)

You can pick up the passes at the Media Services desk in the AU Library (or grab them online here). Please remember as usual to show up early for this screening: the organizer intentionally overbooked this event, so you'll need to get in line if you want to see it.

We hope you'll attend! Again, we have no idea when the movie will actually come out in the United States, so this is your best (and cheapest) chance to watch it.

New Acquisitions - September 2015 - Part 2

DC's 90-degree days are finally behind us. It's almost time to make cider and curl up under some form of flannel, and we couldn't be happier. Seems like as good of a time as any to get you caught up on what you can now check out from our collection.

Our biggest new title for the second half of September is Mad Max: Fury Road, possibly the best post-apocalyptic feminist action epic featuring a guy chained to the front of a truck playing a flamethrower-guitar (pictured). If you don't want to watch that for the third time, you may want to start a critically acclaimed television show you've meant to watch. And we have several: the first seasons The Knick, The Comeback, The Honorable Woman, and Viola Davis's breakout hit How to Get Away with Murder are now all available from the library. The more politically minded might also want to see a documentary about the life of the late Gore Vidal.

Follow the link for a full list of what we added...

The 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 Day. But our most movie-obsessed film president might not have been former actor Reagan: it was Jimmy Carter.

At least according to a list assembled by Gizmodo's Matt Novak, who dug through presidential records and discovered that Carter watched 400 films over the course of his presidency, everything from All the President's Men to, for some reason, Blue Lagoon. Carter occupied the White House during the end of the New Hollywood era, so his screenings have a pretty good track record: in his first year alone, he saw The Godfather, Network, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Blazing Saddles. But there's also the funny mental image of him watching The In-Laws the day before his famous "crisis of confidence" speech.

It sounds like this list took some serious manual compiling, so don't expect similar lists from other presidencies any time soon. Weirdest of all, we don't have much anecdotal evidence for why Carter watched so many movies. We're willing to chalk it up to the stress of the job.

DC Shorts is happening... right now!

One of DC's biggest film events has been happening under our noses! DC Shorts, an annual showcase of short films, has been going on since last Thursday, but there's still a few more days worth of films to catch.

Over the course of a week and a half, DC Shorts screens over 100 shorts from local and international, including documentaries, music videos, and animation. The size and quality of the festival is a testament to the strength of the local film scene, and the concurrent screenplay competition shows that you don't need to know lens focal length to be involved.

Counting today, there are still three days of new films to watch, followed by a Best of Show revue over the weekend. See DC Shorts's schedule for a listing of what will screen where. All the new screenings are at E Street Cinema, so depending on when you show up, you could have your choice of local shorts, LGBT films, comedy, or a general competition showcase. You can still watch these shorts if you can't make it out, too. For $30, you can watch nearly all the festival's shorts online. That's a great alternative if you want to see quality short films without having to schlep to E Street.

We hope you'll attend! There's a few big festivals every year in DC, and this is a favorite.

Remember: sign up for a DC Library card and stream the Criterion Collection!

We try not to re-run content too often here, but now that the semester is settling, we wanted to remind you about the excellent streaming collection that anyone at American University can access through the DC Public Library.

If you have a DC Public Library card (which you can grab at the Tenley-Friendship Library in Tenleytown), you can stream films from the Criterion Collection, one of the greatest assortments of classic films ever assembled. We're proud of the offerings you can get directly from the AU Library, but free streaming access to the Criterion Collection is hard to beat.

We encourage everyone to get a DC Library card and take advantage of this service. It's a great convenience if you're a film student, but anyone who wants to watch the best classic films of all time should take interest too.

(See our full post about this from May for more information.)

Hannibal got a rare triple take on the same scene

Media critics widely lamented the cancellation of NBC's Hannibal this year; the show is considered one of the best adaptations of the iconic serial cannibal series. Non-fans might not understand the appeal since we've heard that story several times before, but even for those without an appetite for the antihero doctor might see an exciting film analysis exercise here. The first Hannibal story, Red Dragon, has been portrayed in visual media three times – once as Manhunter, then as Red Dragon, and finally in the third season of Hannibal – which offers a unique opportunity to see the same scenes rewritten by three different creative teams from identical scripts.

HitFix's Drew McWeeny wnalyzed the differences in-depth, including a clip (embedded above) that crosscuts between all three versions while still telling a cohesive story. It's rare that the same film is filmed so many times outside of experiments and exercises, let alone the same script, so this is an exceptionally valuable opportunity for anyone who wants to dissect different filmmaking styles or how those styles have evolved over time.

We'll hop on that wagon that laments the end of the series (we hear good things from our staff), but we're glad it produced at least one terrific teachable moment for film scholars.

If you want to see what else Bryan Fuller did with this famous character, we currently carry season 1 (HU DVD 14307) and season 2 (HU DVD 14308).

See a free movie in advance on Wednesday and help a Tenleytown charity

We often share free advance movie passes, and we're excited to something a little differently with them this time. We have passes for you to see 99 Homes, an Andrew Garfield-led drama about eviction and homeless – and proceeds from the event are going to a local charity.

To promote 99 Homes, filmmaker Broad Green Pictures started the 99 Good Deeds Program, a charitable effort that holds benefit screenings of the film for small non-profit organizations fighting homelessness. This screening of 99 Homes supports Friendship Place, a homelessness group founded in Tenleytown. (In fact, you've probably walked past one of their locations if you've ever gone north on Wisconsin Avenue near the Safeway.)

The screening will be held this Wednesday, September 9th at 7:30pm at the Mazza Gallerie in Friendship Heights. Passes can theoretically be redeemed online at broadgreen.ticktbox.com, but the link hasn't been working for us. But we do have a bunch of physical passes you can pick up at the Media Services desk in the library.

Remember the usual caveats: this event is intentionally overbooked, and a pass does not guarantee entry. Arrive in advance to ensure you get a seat!

Epix deal (sadly) signals a new phase of streaming fragmentation

Netflix subscribers might have notice their queues empty a little in the coming weeks. Digital film distributor Epix ends its billion-dollar licensing deal with the streaming giant at the end of this month, and many of its biggest films – including the Hunger Games and Transformers franchises – are moving to Hulu. This is a big, risky decision for Netflix, but more troublingly, it's a sign of the growing fragmentation of the streaming marketplace.

Streaming services have long been idealized as a way to cut out DVD purchases and a cable television subscription – especially for people not in a financial position to pay for it all – but that dream rests on streaming options being concentrated and affordable. To watch all the most acclaimed shows on television and the best recent movies, you'll at least need a subscription to Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, Amazon Prime... and the list continues. That could at least $50 per month. Original content like Orange is the New Black will understandably never be on a competing service, but when Catching Fire is only available on tap from specific outlets, instant universal accessibility seems out of reach.

As Bryan Bishop from The Verge puts it, there will never be a Spotify equivalent for video. Netflix and Hulu are fine offering only a limited selection of programming and hoping "the lean-back passivity of television" makes up for the gaps in their libraries. It's unfortunate, but that's how streaming media business works now.

We didn't intend for this post to be a direct promotion for our services, but it does underlie the biggest benefit of library DVD collections: everything will always be in one place – and for free.

Buenos Aires film festival puts decades of Latin American films online for free

Our comfortable routine of watching major blockbusters and idly browsing Netflix often blinds us to titles we wouldn't otherwise seek out, and too often, that includes world cinema. Our usual outlets sometimes either downplay or outright omit films from other countries and in other languages. If you want to watch something from elsewhere on the globe, where can you start?

If you're interested in Latin American films, look no further than Cinemargentino, a streaming website that recently got a big kick from the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema. BAFICI released hundreds of films from the festival's 16-year library to Cinemargentino, which can now be streamed from free via your browser. The library includes shorts and feature-length videos totaling over 15 hours, guaranteeing you, at the very least, one extremely aggressive day of world cinema.

The deal between BAFICI and Cinemargentino seems to be temporary, so you'll want to cram those 15 hours in while you can. The site does have plenty of other exciting Latin American film, so even if you miss this window, you still might've found your favorite new streaming site.

(Thanks to Professor Jeffrey Middents for tipping us off!)

New Acquisitions - September 2015

And thus the school year begins! Welcome to all the returning and new students that we're looking forward to assisting over the semester.

Although we've continued to add new titles throughout the past month, our largest batch of new additions comes from the Center for Diversity and Inclusion Library formerly located in Mary Graydon. The CDI Library unfortunately closed over the summer, but all of their titles have been added to our permanent collection. This includes a large selection of GLBTA films and documentaries and television shows that might be hard to find otherwise. Amazingly, that includes Ellen, as the show is now out-of-print.

Our other most exciting additions are the first seasons of the hit Comedy Central shows Inside Amy Schumer and Key & Peele. Nooice!

Hit the jump for a full list of our new titles from the past month...

RIP Wes Craven, master of horror

We wanted to start this semester off with a list of all the exciting titles we added recently, but we first need to acknowledge the very sad death of Wes Craven, horror director and producer extraordinaire whose slasher films defined and later deconstructed the genre.

Wes Craven is best known, of course, for his creation of A Nightmare on Elm Street and indelible horror movie icon Freddy Krueger. That alone would cement him as one of the most beloved figures in a genre full of cult personalities, but he also directed The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes and served as producer on their remakes. And in a terrific act of self-reflection, Craven also created Scream a series dedicated to dismantling the tropes and structure of the genre he helped popularize.

(He also directed a segment in Paris, je t'aime... which is weird.)

To honor Craven, we want to recommend not just his biggest movies but the love he put into his craft. So in addition to watching Elm Street and Scream, we suggest you watch three documentaries in which he offers a behind-the-scenes peek as his work and offers advice to upcoming filmmakers. Craven treated violent horror with artfulness and skill, and we'll miss his presence in the genre.

Scream – HU DVD 6
Scream 2 – HU DVD 7
A Nightmare on Elm Street – HU DVD 864
Paris, je t'aime – HU DVD 3378

The American Nightmare – HU DVD 998
Getting Started in Tinseltown – Streaming video
Successful Teamwork in Filmmaking – Streaming video

We're back next week

GIF via IWDRM

Hi everyone! We wanted to apologize for the radio silence in the past two weeks. We've been very busy preparing ourselves and our staff for the coming semester.

Look forward to regular posts returning next week. Welcome to all the university's incoming freshmen!

A look back at Hugo Award-winning television and film

Yesterday marked the 73rd WorldCon, an annual assemblage of science fiction and fantasy fans and writers that hosts the prestigious Hugo Awards. Named after science fiction editor Hugo Gernsback, the Hugos are awarded every year to groundbreaking genre fiction and proudly include legends like Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick among their winners. This year's ceremony was steeped in controversy after anti-diversity groups flooded the nomination process to block submissions by and about people of different races and gender identities, and voters responded by, well, just not giving out some of the awards this time. (Probably an appropriate response!)

Among the many awards for short stories and novellas, the Hugos also honor "dramatic presentations," usually films and television shows. This year's crowns went to Guardians of the Galaxy and, for the first time, BBCs Orphan Black. As with the rest of the Hugos, the winners in both the Short Form and Long Form categories have a remarkable pedigree, though we'll quibble with some of the choices over the years. No win for Last Year at Marienbad in 1963?

Below, we've assembled a sample of Hugo-winning titles in our collection. It's not everything, but it's a good representation of what the Hugos tends to honor. There's a lot of obvious major names (of course Star Wars won), which if anything is a great indication of how often they get it right. Congrats to the Hugos on their weird but successful year, and we look forward to seeing what joins these annals in 2016!

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – HU DVD 480
The Lord of the Rings trilogy – HU DVD 808 - 810
Blade Runner – HU DVD 1067
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? – HU DVD 1096
Star Wars original trilogy – HU DVD 1643 - 1646
Pan's Labyrinth – HU DVD 2770
Slaughterhouse-Five – HU DVD 5727
Star Trek: "The Menagerie" – HU DVD 6201, Disc 4
Inception – HU DVD 8000
The Incredible Shrinking Man – HU DVD 8968
Game of Thrones, Season 1 – HU DVD 10021
Doctor Who: "Blink" – HU DVD 10803, Disc 4
A Boy and His Dog – HU DVD 11420
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Conversations with Dead People" – HU DVD 14011, Disc 2
The Twilight Zone (television) – HU DVD 14063 - 14067
Star Trek: The Next Generation: "All Good Things..." – HU DVD 14209, Disc 7

Easily tally up how long you've watched TV and come face-to-face with your mortality

We understand that statistics about how much time we spend watching television tend to be exaggerated, often because we watch it while talking, eating, or working. But it's still shocking to see that our favorite shows run for days if not weeks. How much time have we dedicated to this glowing rectangle?

Rather than parse through episode lists and running times, you can now use tiii.me to add up the numbers. Using info grabbed from TMDb (a more developer-friendly IMDb alternative), tiii.me calculates the running times of TV shows per season and adds them to a dreadful running tally of the total time you've dedicated (or plan to dedicate) to binge-watching.

(As of this posting, the site seems to have some technical glitches that prevent it from displaying the tally in some circumstances. You might need to clear your browser history if things go awry. Try not to enter any stratospherically long-running shows which tend to break it.)

We can couch our shameful time commitments by acknowledging that we aren't actually spending a solid week at a time actively watching television, but the numbers are still startling and eventually numbing. For a real shock, see how long it would take you to catch up on every episode of Jeopardy!. We'll see you next year.

The Flintstones was the ultimate warning about cohesive writing

The second season of HBO's True Detective has not received kind reviews, but in defense of its creative ambition, it is the singular product of creator Nic Pizzolatto. He has almost exclusive writing credit for the series, and for better or worse, it undeniably carries his signature. That's a rarity in commercial film and television production, where rooms of writers edit each other's work down into something slicker. This often results in better scripts, but too many participants can create a tonally confusing work.

That was certainly the case for the John Goodman-fronted The Flintstones, which legendarily had over 35 screenwriters. Den of Geek recently dug into the convoluted history of this committee-driven disaster, and the tale serves as a lesson in terrible writing practices. After roughly a decade with at least six total overhauls and two directors, the final product bore so many contributions that the Writers Guild of America had to rewrite its rules when the studio only credited three names. At least one writer doesn't even recognize their additions anymore.

Though both were disliked, True Detective and The Flintstones may be polar opposites. One failed for indulging a single author; the other floundered from the chaos of dozens. Pick your poison.

We might see The Day the Clown Cried in 2025

A year and a half ago, now-removed footage from Jerry Lewis's The Day the Clown Cried surfaced online for the first time. For those unacquainted with the legend, The Day the Clown Cried was a Holocaust melodrama about a clown sent to a concentration camp. The film was never released and has acquired an apocalyptically poor reputation, described as "beyond normal computation" and "so drastically wrong" by those who have seen it. Lewis refuses to discuss the film at-length and vowed to block its release.

But thanks to the Library of Congress, we might finally get to witness this disastrous movie. According to the Los Angeles Times's report on the Library of Congress's annual Mostly Lost film festival, the institution's film wing recently acquired a copy of The Day the Clown Cried on the ground that it not be shown for ten years. Jerry Lewis will likely be dead by then, and we can only assume he wanted to spare himself the public attention (and probably ridicule) that would result.

We want nothing more than to see this film finally released, both for its historical and possible kitsch value. Based on the interviews linked above, it sounds like an aesthetic marvel too, with major production design errors and filmmaking faux pas. We'll check back in 2025 to see if that print ever sees the light of day.

Four years ago, Scottish environmentalists took on Trump

With all the hot air swirling about Donald Trump in the past week, now because of his debate performance, we often forget that he was a blowhard in business before he was a blowhard in politics. He's received flak for some of his higher-profile real-estate projects, many of which involve taking over historic spaces like his purchase of Old Post Office Pavilion downtown. But once in a while when takes on the little guy, the little guy fights backs.

In the 2012 documentary You've Been Trumped, Trump pressures the Scottish government into loosening environmental regulations so he can construct a golf course on the coastline. Activists didn't take kindly to this, and the film documents their protracted fight to preserve the Scottish coast, as well as looks at the general environmental damage caused by over-development. Trump famously tried to prohibit the release of this documentary and later called it "boring," which to us reads as a glowing endorsement.

AU students, staff, and faculty can watch You've Been Trumped for free as part of our collection from Docuseek2. Log in via the catalog to stream the documentary from your device of choice. We understand if you're sick of the Donald, but this is an excellently made film and a timely opportunity to continue with the pillorying.

See Vulture's 2-minute primer on the bottle episode, then watch a few

Bottle episodes have long served as a staple of nearly every TV production – whether for creative or budgetary reasons – but many television fans might not be familiar with the concept. To avoid stealing their thunder, we'll just recommend that you watch Vulture's terrific, short primer on the history of bottle episodes and why they're all-around positive for a show to sprinkle in.

Once you're caught up, you might want to watch one of the better ones. Below is a list of recommended bottle episodes that show how much you can wring out of one set – many of which appear in that video!

Homicide: Life on the Street: "Three Men and Adena" – HU DVD 2798, Disc 2
Star Trek: "The Naked Time" – HU DVD 6201, Disc 2
Community: "Cooperative Calligraphy" – HU DVD 10002, Disc 2
The Sopranos: "Pine Barrens" – HU DVD 14032, Disc 4
Friends: "The One Where No One's Ready" – HU DVD 14040, Disc 1
Breaking Bad: "Fly" – HU DVD 14050, Disc 3
The West Wing: "17 People" – HU DVD 14087, Disc 5
Seinfeld: "The Chinese Restaurant" – HU DVD 14133, Disc 2 

A tribute to analog computers in film

Continuing this week's accidental theme of production design, we came across a terrific article summarizing the history of analog technology in science fiction films. Minority Report's gesture-controlled holographic interfaces and touchscreens changed the popular idea of a futuristic interface, but before that, the future in film looked a lot like the 70s: toggle switches, dials, and LCD displays. These tactile computers had a unique, lived-in aesthetic that's still fondly remembered.

The authors at Hopes and Fears assembled a great collection of some of film's best physical interfaces, most of which came out before 2000. Among the famous examples including Star Trek and Blade Runner, the article includes interesting tidbits from the designers themselves. The ship from Alien, for instance, was built as a single contiguous set. Many ships in Star Wars were apparently built from airplane scrap for the sake of authenticity.

Film production designers pour clear love into their scenery, and this demonstrates the lengths they go to in order to make such memorable technology. We may have left behind the bulky metal boxes from 80s science fiction for the intuitive shiny floaty boxes of the 21st century, but we miss attention to detail like this.

In honor of Rowdy Roddy Piper, a look back on They Live from Slavoj Zizek

Rowdy Roddy Piper's death last Friday leaves a very unusual hole in the film world. Though he made occasional guest appearances in TV shows and movies – usually either playing himself or a similarly hard-knuckled character – Piper is best known even beyond his wrestling career as the star of They Live (HU DVD 9020), John Carpenter's cult 1988 sci-fi thriller. Piper plays a construction worker who finds mysterious glasses that allow him to see the hidden mind-controlling messages throughout society. It's a bizarre but deeply loved film, and Piper's death has prompted plenty of media retrospectives about it.

Our favorite comes from Slavoj Zizek's documentary A Pervert's Guide to Ideology (available in the collection, HU DVD 11194). Zizek uses the film as a critique of the concept of moving outside ideology. It's complicated, and we'll let him explain it; the video is embedded above. He even discusses the over-extended fist-fight midway into the movie, calling it "the extreme violence of liberation."

They Live's second life in the cult film canon isn't surprising given its total weirdness, and we like that critics are revisiting its ideas with a little more acceptance. And even though Zizek's analysis is a few years old, it speaks to what a special movie Piper contributed to.

Production design in an HD world

For all the brouhaha about greenscreen effects changing filmmaking, props, costumes, and sets still matter. Production design continues to be vital to even the most effects-heavy movies: just ask the craftspeople who hand-made all the chainmail armor for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, embedded above. But as high-definition cameras, Blu-rays, and auto-smoothing televisions produce increasingly higher quality images, this traditional side of the film craft has struggled to keep up with the level of detail needed to keep up the illusion.

A terrific article last week from Bloomberg Business of all publications looks at the new lengths propmasters are taking for the sake of onscreen magic. David Marais mentions that props in wider shots used to need to look realistic within two-inches of detail. Now, detail matters down to an eighth of an inch. Plastic props made to look like wood now look like... well, plastic props made to look like wood. For more detailed props like soda cans, names and branding need to look as close as possible without infringing on the actual designs, something that has raised serious legal dilemmas.

There's plenty of other great anecdotes in there. Give the article a read to get a better appreciation for the work that film crews are putting into keeping the illusion of reality in movies and television. The next time you see a big spender with a briefcase full of money, your television might reveal that they say "In Dog We Trust."

New Acquisitions - July 2015

Last month we promised more regular updates about our new acquisitions, and... well, we didn't have a whole lot coming in for a few weeks. But we do now! We got a motley assortment of new titles in July, and to avoid going for the obvious bigger names (nothing against Thor), let's spotlight a few the great off-the-track DVDs you can get now from the AU Library.

Before anything else, you'll want to check out Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a remake of the first Indiana Jones movie filmed by three childhood friends over the course of several decades on home video cameras. Music fans should tune in for Nas: Time is Illmatic, a documentary about the creation of rapper Nas's groundbreaking debut album. And anyone interested in gaming or diversity in culture should watch GTFO, a primer on harassment and exclusion of women in the video game community and industry.

We also finally got The Wiz. How did we not have The Wiz? Read on for a full list of what's new.

75 years later, celebrating Bugs Bunny – and looking at his contentious history

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros.'s de facto cartoon mascot and a symbol of the golden age of animation (and maybe LeBron James's future co-star?). Though Bugs is an immediately recognizable icon today, it took hundreds of theatrical animated shorts and countless years of Saturday morning television shows to get there. And those decades have left behind countless historical artifacts of the birth of popular animation that Warner has thankfully preserved and shared for future generations – including the unseemly current of prejudice and xenophobia that sadly defined Looney Tunes for years.

This DVD set, the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, remains the best collection of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts available anywhere. Across six volumes, the compilation includes a breathtaking 360 animated shorts, spanning from 1929 (before the Looney Tunes name even existed) up to the 3D, CG-created Road Runner shorts from 2010. Each disc includes audio commentaries for select shorts from famous animators, as well as fascinating Looney Tunes ephemera such as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. If you ever wanted to see Mel Blanc recording the voice of Bugs Bunny, you can find some candid footage on the first disc of Volume 1.

But as mentioned, many of these earlier Bugs Bunny shorts were produced at a time far, far less attune to the hurtfulness of racist and sexist stereotypes. A number of the shorts in this collection traffic in insensitive and damaging racial humor that was unchecked, and Warner Bros. has thankfully included those unedited where possible. Several cartoons known as the Censored Eleven have never been released on home media. Warner Bros. eloquently defends their inclusion in the collection with a message that appears at the top of each DVD:

The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as to claim these prejudices never existed.

That's a powerful statement in defense of artistic history, and with that unfortunate past acknowledged, it's easier to appreciate the wealth of animated joy Bugs Bunny and directors Tex Avery and Chuck Jones helped bring into the world.

The AU Library proudly circulates three volumes of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, as well as a massive collection of Tex Avery's adjacent work from the golden age of animation. Any are suitable viewing for Bugs's big milestone.

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 1 – HU DVD 3231 - 3234
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 2 – HU DVD 3235 - 3238
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 6 – HU DVD 8181 - 8184
The Compleat Tex Avery – DVD 9781 - 9789
Space Jam – HU DVD 7990

Watch the suddenly-very-relevant Soy Cuba on the big screen

The normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba this week opens some obvious doors – some are surely counting down the days until legal cigar imports – but it also offers an appropriate moment to revisit cultural history we may have ignored intentionally or otherwise. Post-revolutionary Cuban films are sometimes left out of world cinema discussions.

A great place to start that discussion is I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba), a visually stunning work depicting pre-revolutionary Cuba and the spirit of its people, including the country's early cultural tensions with the United States. I Am Cuba was nearly forgotten and languished in Soviet archives for decades before its found new popularity for its striking camerawork and themes. In an almost-too-perfect programming coincidence, the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring will be screening I Am Cuba tomorrow, July 24th, at 4:30pm, with repeat screenings on Sunday and Monday.

Historically, culturally, and artistically, this is a tremendous and once-again relevant film. If you can't catch it this weekend, you can always borrow our copy from the AU Library (HU DVD 331)

How Hollywood's color correctors are playing with your emotions

We've talked about the color correction process in the past and how a once-cosmetic technique has become a fundamental part of the film production process. Total control of a film's color range and palette allows filmmakers to tailor create visually resplendent works and sometimes to ignore other steps in the process. But the colors their choose are a separate consideration, one rooted one psychology as much as filmmaking.

A new article from Fast Company dives into how certain color schemes can trigger emotional responses in everything from blockbuster movies to political campaign commercials. Through interviews with colorists, the authors reveal how certain tones can change the mood of scenes for dramatic effect. For instance, greens rarely appear at night in life, so emphasizing those colors in film for an unsettling effect. Or in a case of genuine artistry in Transformers, alien worlds intentionally lack normal white and black light to create the illusion of an unknown space.

This is an interesting insight into why filmmakers employ color correction to suck us into their creations. There's a dark side to these techniques, though: the article also mentions how political campaign ads will play with warm and cool colors to make opponent appear out of touch or distant. We put a lot of stock (no film joke intended) in post-production to sway us emotionally, and like any talent, that can be used for good or ill.

What happened to the makers of Sky Captain?

The 2004 retro sci-fi caper Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was the first major film to shoot entirely on greenscreen. In an era when blockbuster movies eschew physical sets and use CGI wizardry as a crutch rather than a tool, that doesn't seem like a groundbreaking or even welcome accomplishment. But no movie – even the effects-heavy Star Wars prequels – came close to using virtual scenery to Sky Captain's extent. The movie flopped, but it impressed the film world and presaged today's fantasy-soaked cinemas. So what happened to the filmmakers behind this milestone?

The Telegraph released a heartbreaking profile of Sky Captain's creators, Kerry and Kevin Conran, who saw their careers dramatically ascend and collapse in a few years over the anticipation and failure of their only feature film. Sky Captain started as an attempt to prove that independent filmmakers could create exciting blockbusters on small budgets using modern technology, but it ballooned into a massive, Jude Law-fronted boondoggle. Their innovations at one point caught the eyes of James Cameron, George Lucas, and other directors known for their technical wizardry, but they never earned a seat at the table in Hollywood. Kerry Conran continues to be crestfallen over this reversal of fortune and refused to participate in the article.

Given how little the Conran brothers created during their moment in the limelight, we may not know if they're the greatest untapped film talents in a generation or just more indie darlings who didn't work well on a bigger canvas. Their single shot fired, though, was a big one that is largely untold in film history. The next time a movie dramatically alters its setting without needing to reshoot, thank the Conrans for climbing that peak first.

See which rejected films survive an audience gauntlet tonight at Cheers and Sneers

The annual DC Shorts festival showcases some of the best short films from local talent, but not all submissions make the cut. And every so often, presumably and hopefully with their creators' blessings, DC Shorts celebrates these rejections at Cheers and Sneers, an audience-driven showcase of the DC film scene's near misses, secret triumphs, and total failures.

Cheers and Sneers plays closer to a reality show voting round than a film festival. The DC Shorts folks play three minutes of each film on their program, and audience boos or cheers determine whether to advance that short to the next round or eliminate it from the competition. The winner at the end of the evening earns a spot in the upcoming DC Shorts festival (this year in September). Think of it as a roast of aspiring filmmakers; no malice is intended.

Lest this be too rationally critical, Cheers and Sneers is always held at a bar with ample drink specials, so the audience will be buzzed heading into this potentially disastrous lineup. Suffice to say this is a 21+ event.

2015's Cheers and Sneers unfolds tonight at 7:30pm at Penn Social near the Chinatown Metro. If you're looking for a happy hour spot that happens to be the spot of a near-drunken, vindictive film festival, you are in luck!

Coming soon: the most epic slapstick of the silent era

Dr. Strangelove nearly ended with an extended war room pie fight, but Kubrick eventually deemed the idea as too ridiculous for his otherwise subtler satire. The footage was never released, but it might have been one of the greatest on-screen pie fights in history. Pie tossing has been a staple of vaudevillian slapstick since the silent era, and Dr. Strangelove's fight would have topped them all... had Laurel and Hardy not beaten it to the punch forty years earlier.

As The New York Times tells, Laurel and Hardy's short film "The Battle of the Century" features arguably the most epically scaled pie fight in movie history, burning through over 3000 pies in 20 minutes. The second half of the film has been missing for decades, becoming "a holy grail of comedy" as critic Leonard Maltin dubbed it. But just recently, an archivist discovered this missing portion. The existing reel seems to contain most of the pie-throwing, and anecdotes suggest the second reel reveals why the pastry carnage ensued. More pies might not be thrown, but we'll finally hear the setup to the punchline.

We won't get to see the results until it's properly preserved, but soon, we'll get to see the conclusion to arguably the greatest pie fight ever captured on film. Take that, Kubrick!

(The video above is a stitched-up version of "The Battle of the Century" using all currently available footage.)

Why should you care about Ennio Morricone?

San Diego Comic-Con wraps up today, and amid all the Batman and Star Wars news, you might have missed a little announcement that has classic film fans in a tizzy. During a panel on Quentin Tarantino's upcoming The Hateful Eight, the director announced that film composition icon Ennio Morricone would score the movie, his first Western score in forty years. That's a big, big deal.

So why the hubbub? Morricone's work is a cornerstone of the Western genre. Picture a Western movie and the music that pops in your head; it's probably based on something Morricone composed.

Beyond his most recognizable work, the theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (and that film's legendary Ecstasy of Gold, embedded above) Morricone also wrote the music for Once Upon a Time in the West and countless near-anonymous spaghetti Westerns that have been sampled by other films. Bits of his score for Navajo Joe, for instance, was re-used in Election and Tarantino's Kill Bill duology. Morricone's trademark combination of raw guitars, whistling, choral singing, trumpets, and whipcracking have become ingrained in popular film vocabulary often to the point of parody.

A new Morricone Western score is like a new Hitchcock thriller. It's a new work by an artist in a medium they so thoroughly defined that everything afterwards is homage.

Of course, you need to listen to his music for the full effect. Instead of recommending that you watch any of the dozens of films Morricone scored, we'll instead point you to Morricone Conducts Morricone, a streaming video in our catalog of a concert of select notable pieces from his oeuvre. It's a great taste of how he transformed a genre – and what we can expect from him later this year.

A glimpse behind the Library of Congress's film preservation vaults

You may be familiar with the National Film Registry, the Library of Congress group that annually selects significant American films to maintain in perpetuity. That's only a fraction of the over one million video recordings held by the Library of Congress, but all undergo a rigorous preservation process. For the first time that we've seen, WIRED was granted an inside look at the Library of Congress's preservation center in Virginia to show what the nation's film archive looks like. Turns out it's crowded – way more than desirable.

This profile of the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation is packed with interesting peeks behind the scenes, featuring everything from political process of curating their collection to the prison-like storage facilities. But the most fascinating detail comes from curator Rob Stone, who admits that the Packard Campus receives more items than they can handle and sadly reject a significant portion of them. WIRED writer Bryan Gardiner describes the complex in terms usually reserved for hoarders, but such is the nature of any archive flooded with rarities.

We only infrequently deal with film preservation in Media Services, so it's exciting to see the process involved in this whole other world of media in libraries. The Library of Congress is doing excellent, important work, but we'll take the AU Library over a "nuclear bunker" any day.

Filming permit map reveals NYC's hotspots in film

Many of us who do not often visit New York City are still intimately familiar with its iconic buildings and streets mainly because of its over-representation in film and television. Every other sitcom takes place in Manhattan, and aliens have destroyed the New York skylines more times than we can count. This keeps NYC's film office exceptionally busy, issuing thousands of permits every year to large and small productions filming on public property.

New York-focused data visualization group Metrocosm got their hands on over 10,000 filming permits issued from 2011 to 2013 and plotted them on a map, revealing which streets see the most action. Unsurprisingly, Times Square and the classically styled Financial District saw the most play, but you might notice a few other zones of interest. According to Metrocosm's analysis, those correspond to the city's outdoor and non-private film studios, including the massive indoor space at the 47th Regiment Armory.

We've most interested in productions that shot on the side-streets. Magician thriller Now You See Me shot extensively in Long Island City, and that's a little more exciting than seeing the Flatiron Building again.

DC's West End Cinema is back!

Great news, DC film fans! The Washington Post reports that West End Cinema, which shuttered back in March, is reopening later this month!

West End was one of the area's most beloved limited-run independent theaters, and its closure earlier in the year left a hole in the DC film market only partly filled by E Street Cinema, the Avalon, and the AFI Silver. High-end movie-going experiences like the new ArcLight, iPic, and Drafthouse theaters in the area crowded West End out of business. The closure also signaled the symbolic end of DC's neighborhood theaters, which used to be everywhere.

Now, the Landmark Theatres chain has revived West End Cinema, still true to its goal as a small arthouse venue. Only two screens will be ready by the time it open on Friday, July 17th, but that's a good start for getting this theater back off the ground.

The theater might be under new management, but we're glad to see it back and operating!

Root around for something good in this fridge shot supercut

We had been looking for an occasion to post this supercut of refrigerators in films, and the post-Fourth of July leftover glut seems like a good occasion to do so.

The classic point-of-view shot of a character look for food in a fridge has become almost background noise at this point. When previously groundbreaking cinematography turns up in a Sunny D commercial, it's probably passé. This minute-and-a-half-long video from an editor under the pseudonym "Roman Holiday" is startling – not because it assembles so many fridge clips but because of how many notable films use them. Ghostbusters, 127 Hours, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes all appear, and Roman Holiday promises he'll continue to extend the video as he finds more.

The original fridge shot surely originated as a gimmick, but is it so ubiquitous as to be essential? Do all respectable directors need the Sunny D shot in their arsenal?

All we know is it reminds us to finally get rid of that weird jar of peppers that's been in the back of the fridge for a year.

Celebrate 'merica with an irrationally patriotic movie marathon

 Fourth of July falls on a Saturday this year, so many DC businesses are taking Friday off too – including us! The extended weekend gives us an opportunity to cram in a few more patriotic movies. We have fond memories of spending the Fourth lazily watching Independence Day on basic cable, and for America's 239th birthday, we look forward to three days of the same.

When making Fourth of July recommendations, there's a few classics. Lincoln is a powerful portrait of one country's greatest presidents, and 1776 will always be entertaining for making Benjamin Franklin singing about "sexual combustibility." But for a holiday primarily about blowing things up, we also need to recommend the most aggressively, absurdly patriotic movies. There's a danger, especially in military films, of patriotism turning violent or xenophobic, but the best rootin'-tootin' America-worshipping movies love our country to an exaggerated level that's almost harmless in its total silliness.

So, before we close tonight, we recommend swinging by the library for one of these movies that celebrates America – either in serious reverence of its history or in total, deep-fried excess. National Treasure probably falls hallway between those.

1776 – HU DVD 4969
Glory – HU DVD 1171
Independence Day – HU DVD 3111
John Adams (miniseries) – HU DVD 4991 - 4993
Lincoln – HU DVD 6210
National Treasure – HU DVD 11187
The Patriot – HU DVD 347*
Red Dawn – HU DVD 259
Team America: World Police – HU DVD 2089
Top Gun – HU DVD 2959

Documentaries answer: what's happening in Greece?

News broke today that Greece is in serious financial straits, having missed a major loan repayment to the IMF and now teetering on the edge of default. We admit to not following this situation closely and to being less literate in international politics than likely a majority of the AU students. As is our tendency, we're turning to documentaries in our collection to get a better understanding of this situation.

We found three quality streaming videos on the Films in Demand database that explain how Europe's greater currency crisis, Greece's particular situation and its relationship with banking, and how many Greek citizens are reacting to the austerity measures.

• The Great Euro Crash – a BBC documentary about the long history of the Euro, tracing its development from theoretical planning in the mid-20th century to the current dilemma in Greece.
• Greece's New Odyssey – looks at changing rural life in Greece and how agriculture and barter have become an alternative for young people leaving cities
• Goldman Sachs and the Decline of Greece – generally about Greece's crisis but specifically about how American investment bank Goldman Sachs fed its financial collapse

This is of course not a complete picture of what's happening in Greece, but these videos certainly fill in the details better than many articles we've read. Films on Demand regularly updates their collections with quality, timely documentaries like these.