See Inside Out tonight in Adams Morgan!

It's been a while since we checked in with all the outdoor movie screenings happening in DC this summer. As it turns out, there's one tonight!

The Adams Morgan BID will be screening Inside Out tonight at the Marie Reed School Soccer Field, just a block or two away from Amsterdam Falafelshop. The movie starts half an hour after sundown – which should be around 8:30 to 9-ish – and the first 50 attendees get free cookies courtesy of Tryst.

If you're still riding the Pixar train after Finding Dory this weekend and need evening plans, why not swing by AdMo for Inside Out? If you leave near AU anyway, it's convenient and, best of all, free!

Media Services at the Movies: Finding Dory

The summer blockbuster season is here! "Media Services at the Movies" will look at what big movie is coming out this week, then offer a few movies like it from our collection.

We can't think of much new to say about Pixar. The studio has some of the best talent in animation – second only to Studio Ghibli and infinitely greater than whoever made Norm of the North. Although the quality of their films has wavered a bit in recent years, you can still depend on Pixar to bring out the heart in their stories.

Pixar sequels in particular can be hit or miss. For every Toy Story 2, they put out a Cars 2. From early impressions, Finding Dory sounds like it lands in the upper levels of Pixar for its poignant take on  disability. Dory will also be beautiful, as Pixar films tend to be. They look even more beautiful in HD; we'd go as far as recommending animation as one of the reasons to make the bump up to Blu-ray.

Don't believe us? We have several of Pixar's movies in Blu-ray (not all, since we bought many before Blu-rays were a thing). If you have a Blu-ray player, check one out and see the quality difference for yourself. It'll definitely encourage you to opt for the Blu-ray of Finding Dory went it comes out.

Ratatouille – HU BLU 3814
Up – HU BLU 6690
Toy Story – HU BLU 7768
Toy Story 2 – HU BLU 7769
Toy Story 3 – HU BLU 7770
Monsters Inc. – HU BLU 8596
Inside Out – HU BLU 12881

Vanity Fair turns blockbuster movie credits into a budget list

A $200 million movie budget almost seems abstract. We can say that a whole bunch of that money went to the effects, but what does that actually mean? How much does the assistant director figure into it? Does Robert Downey Jr. just get $180 million and everyone else splits it up?

Vanity Fair made a mock movie credit roll to break down how much money goes to each crew member, and the numbers are sobering. Pay rates vary wildly from position to position; cat cameos get paid more than some stuntpeople. The most unusual are the positions where people earn different amounts for the same jobs. Set production assistants, for instance, have a $5000 range, maybe because some spend longer or only work with the second unit.

Watching a giant wall of credits can become a little numbing, but you start to get the sense of the scale of film production when you see that $229,000 went into matte painters. And if you feel a little anger at the lead actor being paid about as much as the rest of the cast combined, we don't blame you.

A roundup of Tonys-related films from the Music Library

This Sunday was the 70th Annual Tony Awards, which featured awards for a few adaptations and revivals that have existed on film before. Rather than ramble about it ourselves, we're going to turn things over to the Music Library, which put together a list of all the items in the library collections related to this weekend's big winners.

Of note for us, we have DVDs of The Color Purple, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and You've Got Mail (adapted from the same source material as She Loves Me).

FiveThirtyEight figures out the most and least successful movies based on books

A book is not a film. Each format has strong and weak points, and as common as book-to-movie adaptations are, not every story is well-suited for both. Fans of the original books might bemoan when the movie version misses the point, but sometimes movies end up being the right way to tell a story that started in print.

We were alerted to this quick study from FiveThirtyEight last year that tried to figure out, statistically, what benefited and lost the most in the move to the screen. Using ratings from Metacritic and Goodreads (admittedly not a perfect comparison since Goodreads reviews come from fans), FiveThirtyEight zeroed in on books with the greatest quality disparity from their movies. Many of the most poorly rated movie adaptations are based on young adult or genre novels – which, again, fans may have inflated ratings for.

More interesting are the movies that significantly outperform their books: Up in the Air, Apocalypse Now, The Graduate, and others on the list were either adapted from books with middling ratings or reworked the premise for the zeitgeist (both, in the case of Up in the Air). Metropolis is a particularly interesting case, because the movie brought so much invention to film as a whole that the novel has been almost totally forgotten.

Both versions of Battlefield Earth, meanwhile, continue to be despised about equally.

Media Services at the Movies: Now You See Me 2

The summer blockbuster season is here! "Media Services at the Movies" will look at what big movie is coming out this week, then offer a few movies like it from our collection.

So, we have a weird relationship with Now You See Me. Years ago, we got a publicity package from the film's producers, filled with Now You See Me shirts, hats, flashlights (?), gum (?!), and other strange branded products. Forgive us if we have a soft spot for this deeply silly movie series. It's supposed to be about magic, but it's closer to one of G.O.B.'s illusions.

Instead, let's pivot to actual magic. In particular, let's look at two films about magicians with the same name: The Illusionist. 2006's Illusionist tells a story of romance about magician in 19th century Austria-Hungary; 2010's Illusionist is a melancholy animated film based on a screenplay by late French filmmaker Jacques Tati.

Both are certainly sadder films, but they do a better job capturing the enchantment of illusions compared to... whatever Now You See Me is doing.

The Illusionist (2006) – HU DVD 1779
The Illusionist (2010) – HU DVD 8704

The next time you need a camera, check KitSplit

The AU Library is happy to lend out cameras, tripods, and microphones for students, staff, and faculty working on film projects, and SOC students also have the option to borrow equipment from the Media Production Center.

But what happens if you graduate, or if you need something higher-end or specialized? You'd normally rent from a production house, but honestly, keeping track of private rental services in the city can be difficult.

Enter KitSplit, a new site that aggregates equipment rental spots around the city. They have an extremely broad audience in mind: renters and rentees range from individuals to major corporations, and models range from the simplest up to experimental virtual reality cameras. The low-rent horror movie schlockhouse Troma Entertainment uses the service too, so if you're looking to make a film with a low budget, KitSplit could work for you.

It's great to see more local resources for film alumni folks. Consider swinging by the site if you need some nice and/or inexpensive equipment if the library isn't an option.

Meet the new canon of black film

As much as we enjoy poring over lists of the best films ever made, Aisha Harris and Dan Kois make a good point over at Slate: those lists are overwhelmingly white. And when film buffs follow those recommendations in search of the great art, they'll watch predominantly white movies. We can lose sight of contributions to film from people of color this way.

So Harris and Kois assembled "filmmakers, critics, and scholars" the produce The Black Film Canon, a list of the fifty greatest films by black directors. Notably, this excludes a few prominent films about blackness, like Coming to America, but it reflects the talent of black filmmakers who are often overlooked in the grand assessment of film history. The list spans decades, genres, and countries, including notable African cinema. (Though we do like that Spike Lee warranted his own category.)

We embedded Slate's supercut of The Black Film Canon above. We have most of the movies on their list; a Pinterest board will be coming shortly, so stay tuned!

Media Services at the Movies: Popstar

The summer blockbuster season is here! "Media Services at the Movies" will look at what big movie is coming out this week, then offer a few movies like it from our collection.

Every generation gets the music mockumentary it deserves. This is Spinal Tap remains the definitive send-up of hair metal rockstar excess. Popstar: Never Stop Never Popping, the newest film by The Lonely Island, continues the tradition by skewering Justin Bieber, celebrity ego, and flaming out in the age of social media.

It doesn't start or end there: you can look back to 1978's Beatles parody All You Need is Cash or the 90s hip-hop spoof Fear of a Black Hat. When a new type of pop star emerges, the world of film has been quick to drag music culture through the mud. Popstar's Conner4Real is the parody we need right now, but twenty years ago, it needed Chris Rock's CB4.

This is Spinal Tap – HU DVD 538
CB4 – HU DVD 6717
All You Need is Cash – HU DVD 10187
A Mighty Wind – HU DVD 10218
Fear of a Black Hat – HU DVD 12653

And because sometimes life imitates art, we also recommend Anvil! The Story of Anvil!, a real rock documentary so silly it may as well be a joke too (HU DVD 3461).

New Acquisitions - June 2016

There has been an acquisition.

Have you felt it?

(We have other things this month, too, like Out 1, a twelve-hour odyssey by recently deceased French New Wave director Jacques Rivette. Follow the link to see what else we added.)

Watch AU commencement addresses from years past

AU's commencement ceremonies this year featured addresses from notable speakers like CNN's John King and US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Luckily, since we live in the era of free high-quality web video, you can watch all those on AU's official YouTube channel.

We've had a lot of exciting commencement speeches in the years before that, so what happened to those? AU has taped the ceremonies for years, and now the AU Library is stepping up to make them available.

Our collection coordinator Molly Hubbs has been hard at work digitizing old commencement tapes and putting videos of the big speeches online for anyone to view for free. The collection is still a work in progress (there's 16 video right now), but you can watch commencement addresses from David Gregory, Diane Rehm, Tim Russert, and others. We expect over 50 videos in the collection when it's complete.

These videos are a cool piece of AU history that you previously couldn't see, now available to the whole AU community with the help of the library. Go ahead, spend a lazy summer afternoon diving back through the school's history.

Some of the great, weird things we found while cleaning out our desks

 Now that we're in the slow months of summer, we have a chance to tidy up our department. A big part of that this summer is cleaning out desks that haven't been emptied in decades and finding all sorts of goodies in them.

Most of what we found was old files, but a few wonderful relics from the past stood out. We shared some of the best to Facebook. The catalogs are pretty amazing (look at all that wood paneling!), but the cassette of a 1984 Ted Kennedy speech at the nearby Methodist church has some real historical value. Luckily the University Archives had already backed it up!

You can own a piece of Mad Men history – even just an ashtray

Prop auctions are so irrationally fun. A pen might be worth a few cents, but if that pen appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy, my god, it's worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. The chance to own a small piece of a movie or television show is the chance for a connection to art and characters we love.

Which means that you, too, can buy the box that Peggy's walking with in that GIF.

In commemoration of the year since Mad Men's finale, the show's propmaster Ellen Freund will be auctioning over 1000 props from the show, including typewriters, office decor, and, of course, drink sets. Now you can buy the empty decadence of Sterling Cooper without actually destroying your life and alienating your family!

The auction begins on Wednesday, June 1st, but you can browse the items for sale right now. If you really, really want the model ship on Pete Campbell's desk, it can be yours.

An intro to double Palme d'Or winner Ken Loach

In a choice that shocked many critics, director Ken Loach won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival for I, Daniel Blake, a drama about a carpenter fighting for disability benefits. This is Loach's second Palme d'Or (a rare feat) after his 2006 Irish War of Independence film The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Already, film critics are debating whether his newest work is too "aggressively Loachian."

...but what does that mean? If you aren't familiar with social advocacy British cinema, you may not have encountered the director before. Ken Loach's films tend to address issues like welfare and labor with a focus on the realistic living conditions of the individuals affected. His 1969 film Kes, about a delinquent child with minimal family support who befriends a falcon, has often been considered one of the greatest British films of all time.

By all descriptions, I, Daniel Blake fits that mold for good or for ill; the filmmaker's work has been criticized as maudlin and unsubtle at its worst. We have a bunch of Loach's films in our collection – he's been active for six decades after all – so you can judge for yourself.

Sweet Sixteen – HU DVD 1133
Bread & Roses – HU DVD 2619
The Navigators – HU DVD 2653
The Wind That Shakes the Barley – HU DVD 3374
The Spirit of '45 – HU DVD 7594
Kes – HU DVD 8370
Ae Fond Kiss... – HU DVD 8803
Raining Stones – HU DVD 10683

Great Directors (interview with Loach) – Streaming video

New to the collection: rare car commercials from great filmmakers

Occasionally, we get an unusual item in the collection that we just have to share with everyone. Sometimes it'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 films starring Clive Owen about the driving features of their cars. They were among the earliest successful branded web video content – and make no mistake, they're commercials.

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 González Iñárritu, John Woo, and others all participated; the names BMW attracted were astounding.

The high profile is also one of the reasons you can't watch them anymore: The Hire 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 (DVD 13108), so the AU community will always have access to these lost works by great filmmakers.

Media Services at the Movies: Neighbors 2

The summer blockbuster season is here! "Media Services at the Movies" will look at what big movie is coming out this week, then offer a few movies like it from our collection.

Summer movie season is, at last, finally upon us. Although the likely biggest movie of the year (Captain America: Civil War) is already behind us, there are plenty of interesting movies over the new few months that we're eager to find similar recommendations for.

The big movie this week is Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, the Seth Rogen- and Zac Efron-fronted generational comedy sequel. As before, Rogen and Rose Byrne duel with their Greek life neighbors to keep their lives under control, but there's a bit of melancholy to their rivalry. The Neighbors movies are crazy and violent, but they're also about growing, moving on, and finding yourself being the older voice of reason. In the new film, apparently even Efron's bro character finds himself drifting from his old lifestyle.

This might be an odd and controversial pairing, but to go with that introspection on growing older, we recommend a few coming-of-age films about finding yourself untethered after graduation. (We know that more than a few of our patrons will be feeling this soon, too.)

American Graffiti – HU DVD 93
Ghost World – HU DVD 362
Into the Wild – HU DVD 4130
Kicking and Screaming – HU DVD 4842
Tiny Furniture – HU DVD 9713

Our final count: 672 new DVDs this semester!

As we wrap up the academic year, we want to brag for a second. In a typical semester, we add about 200 or 300 new DVDs. Our collection grew by over 3000 titles in four years, which is a pretty great pace.

According to our stats, during the spring 2016, we added 672 new DVDs to our shelves! That's two-to-three times the normal semester output and almost a full year's worth of additions. Much of this can be chalked up to the huge volume of television we purchased (44 discs of Frasier!).

Our staff worked tirelessly to get these DVDs onto the shelf as quickly as we could, and we're proud of the sheer volume we got through. For television shows, we have to make sure all the episodes play correctly, create cases for each disc so we can circulate them individually, and catalog them so you can find them and check them out. It takes almost everyone in our unit to push these through at the rate we did, so kudos to everyone (especially our student staff, who process the cases) for the job well done.

Every Frame a Painting turns inward with a look at the editing process

Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos's Every Frame a Painting is one of the best film criticism channels on YouTube. The creators are excellent editors, and the attention they put into the pace and structure of the videos shows.

Appropriately, this month, Every Frame a Painting's new video looks at the editing process. Zhou edits films professionally, but when asked, he has trouble figuring out how to describe the logic behind editing film. As the video describes, it's all about reading the emotions of the scene. Stories have rhythms and natural beats, and you can cut earlier or later to get a different reaction from the audience. Where you cut a shot can make moments land differently, and figuring out what each scene needs is sometimes just a feeling.

We can't put it into words much better, so watch the video for some terrific examples of how different editing techniques can change scenes. The examples from From a Few Dollars More, Taxi Driver, and A Brighter Summer Day are particularly interesting and should give you a great idea of the sort of instinctive rhythm that great editors have.

Why do TV characters who love coffee not actually drink coffee?

Want to ruin every television show you'll watch for the next week? Look at the cups people drink coffee from.

Critic Myles McNutt has noticed the prevalence of people drinking coffee on TV. It's an easy way to make characters seem relatable and gives them a reason to stand around or meet together. But something has been bugging him for years: their cups are almost always empty. Actors gesture around with cups that should be splashing around or at least have a little weight.

This is a common production flaw, but rather than mock it, McNutt uses it to make a point about the challenging nature of film production. Filling prop cups with liquid could be a nightmare if they spill, especially if they contain real coffee. In the often tightly budgeted world of television especially, having a realistic Starbucks cup is the lowest priority item.

If you want to play along at home, McNutt started #EmptyCupAwards for people similarly annoyed by this. Just don't get sucked down a black hole of noticing every production shortcut.

What does independent film look like today?

via Maryland Film Festival

The slow roll into summer is the time of year when we start to look at our big-picture tasks, so it seems appropriate to share a big-picture article about the state of film.

For The New Yorker, Richard Brody wrote a lengthy piece about the state of "independent film" and what the term means in 2016. Independent film has always distinguished itself from Hollywood by its open experimentation, as well as by what Brody calls the "perpetual crisis" of needing to find a direction to transform film. In his summary of the Maryland Film Festival, Brody sees the current crisis as a resistance to the entire form of the feature film. Digital distribution and cheap production with phones have outmoded the long-standing system of pitching films at festivals for theatrical release. Can "indie filmmaking" grow past its old habits?

Brody's article profiles a few interesting entries from the Maryland Film Festival, but more importantly, it shows what independent film now looks like from the ground. Filmmakers, producers, and others continue to meet behind closed doors to talk frankly about their industry. There's community, but increasingly, it's one that wants to shake out of its usual structure.