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Home Archives for Movie Resources

July 25, 2009 By idawson Leave a Comment

Films currently in the public domain

Admit one to your computer screen!
Admit one to your computer screen!

One of the fantastic things about the internet is the availability of streaming videos out there. Any film scholar can tell you that issues of copyright and ownership often got confusing at times. For example, many of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Vertigo, were in the courts for years as the legal system was asked to determine ownership. The result was an unfortunate one; one in which we the viewing public were not able to enjoy these films. Another consequence was that the prints were at times left to deteriorate due to neglect. Fortunately for us, many of these treasures have been identified and properly preserved or are in the process of being so.

Another fate suffered by older films is that motion picture companies who own these films hold the films in their vault and debate whether to release them for sale or distribution.

Thankfully, many groups holding these films in either case have come up with a solution to satisfy film fans everywhere – make these films available in the public domain. Take hulu.com, for instance. A click on their Movies (Full Length), will display a plentiful supply of classic titles, enough to whet any movie lovers’ appetite. There is some Hitchcock (39 Steps, Lady Vanishes); His Girl Friday; Orson Welles’ The Stranger and more recent films such as Broken Flowers, The Last Days of Disco, Your Friends and Neighbors, etc. You can spend some time looking at the feature films and documentaries.

The one suggestion I have is to check the offering often. A couple of months ago I watched Otto Preminger’s Where the Sidewalk Ends. When I recently checked the movie list, it was not there.

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Filed Under: Essays, Movie Resources Tagged With: feature films on the internet, hulu, streaming video

July 23, 2009 By idawson 1 Comment

3D: Old/new Wave of Future?

In the film community there has been a lot of talk surrounding the future of 3D in cinemas. A favorite film critic of mine, BBC’s Mark Kermode, has talked at great length about 3D and the issue of piracy. I have embedded one of his video blogs that discusses that very problem:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/2009/04/piracy_240409.html

Meanwhile I had the pleasure last weekend of seeing the sixth installment of the Harry Potter film series (Half Blood Prince or HBP) in IMAX 3D. The Lincoln Center cinema was one of a handful of theatres nationwide showing HBP in IMAX ahead of the July 29th nationwide release in this format (click here to find out why).

I will spare you an actual review of HBP since I am an unapologetic devotee of both the books and the movies. I will however comment on the “IMAX 3-D” experience. Simply stated the best experience for me was watching the trailer for the Disney IMAX 3D version of A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey.

As far as the feature presentation goes, the 3D was reserved for the first twenty minutes. Wow! There was a lot of deatheater flying, and swooping down alleys, across bridges and in narrow alleyways. The result left me a little light headed. For my movie-going companions, the experience was a bit more extreme; the experience bordered on nausea. At first, I thought it was just me but was I glad to find out I was not the only one.

At the end of the twenty minutes, I was more than happy to take off my 3D glasses at the prompting of the flashing of the red glasses on the cinema screen. The whole process of being instructed to do something in a movie theatre was a little disconcerting.

Another observation is that in a few scenes there was a weird ghostly/shadowy thing going on. Maybe it was just the print (hmm?).

My conclusion? Just give the IMAX experience if you want to get me excited about going to the movies – 3D is for the birds.

Filed Under: Essays, Movie Resources Tagged With: 3d, harry potter and the half blood prince, imax, imax 3d, mark kermode

July 23, 2009 By idawson Leave a Comment

Criterion Collection Blow-Out at Barnes and Noble!!!!!

Criterion Titles
Criterion Titles

Check out this limited time offer! Usually these disks run in the forty dollar range, so being able to get them at 20 bucks is a fantastic opportunity! I have already indulged and may go back for more ….

Click here for more on the Criterion Collection.

You may be wondering why film fans are clamoring for such a special deal. Criterion DVDs and Blu Rays go beyond the standard issue disks not only in the quality of the digital transfer, but also in the meticulous detail that goes into developing the special features. Not only do the folks at Criterion get noted film scholars and filmmakers  to provide commentary and/or essays, but their producers have apparently scoured the world to get any existing information out there in the public domain pertaining to a particular title.

Take my Criterion Blu Ray version of “The Third Man;” Here are just a few of the listed Special Edition Features:

– Two audio commentaries (by Steven Soderbergh and Tony Gilroy) and one by film scholar Dana Polan

– Abridged recording of Graham Greene’s treatment, read by Richard Clarke

– A 2005 documentary on the making of the film

– Joseph Cotten (Holly Martins’) alternate opening voice-over narration for the U.S. version of the film

– Booklet featuring an essay by critic Luc Sante

…. and much much more!

As you can see, if you are a particular fan of a title that Criterion offers, owning one of these disks is like having a master class in that movie. I cannot recommend them enough.

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Filed Under: dvd, Fun Stuff, Movie Resources Tagged With: barnes and noble, blu ray, criterion collection, dvd, sale

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