The 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

IFC.com (the web site of the Independent Film Channel) has worked up a list of the all-time best movie trailers — or, as they put it, the films that promote the actual films. The list cuts across different eras and features many older classics (Psycho, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, etc.) as well as more recent films. [...]

Watch “Home” Today

≡ Category: Film |1 Comment

On Friday, we brought you Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s multimedia presentation at the TED conference. Now we bring you his new film, Home, which you can watch until the end of the day on YouTube. The trailer is above, the complete film is here. When you’re done, you won’t look at our planet in the same way. (You [...]

Our Earth Captured in Wide Angle

≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film |1 Comment

Here we have Yann Arthus-Bertrand talking at the TED Conference and displaying his recent photographic and cinematographic work that focuses on humanity and our habitat. The work is as visually stunning as the story it tells is disheartening. Definitely worth giving this one some time. We’ll be following up later today with some more media from Arthus-Bertrand. Stay tuned [...]

Ian McKellen in King Lear

≡ Category: Film, Literature, Theater |1 Comment

Thanks to PBS, you can watch online Ian McKellen starring in King Lear, one of Shakesepeare’s finest tragedies. McKellen performed the play first in England (2007), then on a worldwide tour, before filming the production for public television. You can watch it all right here, and if you want to follow the original text, you [...]

The Art of Trashing the Classics

≡ Category: Books, Film |2 Comments

From the Freakonomics blog:
We’ve written before about the occasional hyper-critical comments on certain blogs, but such comments are like valentines compared to what some Amazon.com customers heap upon The Rolling Stones, The Godfather, The Diary of Anne Frank, and other standards. The Cynical-C blog lists the most caustic of these every day.

Remembrance of German Things Past

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

From Berlin, two initiatives from the Deutsche Kinemathek/Museum for Film and Television.
The first is a collection of private photos and home movies of the Berlin Wall, its eventual collapse, and the reunification that followed. It’s a timely collection, especially given that the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s fall is coming in November. Not only do the images [...]

Who Says Music Doesn’t Make a Difference?

≡ Category: Film, Music |2 Comments

Out in remix culture, one is never sure what one will find. Take this video for example. If you watched American TV during the 1980s, you’re likely to remember Diff’rent Strokes, a sitcom that had a kind of far-fetched premise: a rich white widower adopts two African-American children from Harlem, and they live happily together [...]

The Australian Screen Archive

≡ Category: Film, Television |1 Comment

The Australian National Film and Sound Archive provides free and worldwide access to over 1,000 film and television titles – a treasury of down-under video 100 years in the making. In a partnership with the major networks and other learning organizations, the Archive has commissioned expert curators to annotate the holdings, which provides for a rich [...]

Watch Super Size Me and Other Feature Films on YouTube

≡ Category: Film |3 Comments

Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary, Super Size Me, is available on YouTube for all to watch. Spend 30 days eating nothing but McDonald’s fast food and what happens? It’s not pretty. But you’ll get the picture in an entertaining 100 minutes. Super Size Me was nominated for an Academy Award, and won prizes at Sundance and [...]

J.G.Ballard on Sensation

≡ Category: Books, Film, Literature |1 Comment

J.G. Ballard, the author of Crash and Empire died at 78 this weekend. Here we have a short interview from 1986 where he talks about how violent sensations now lubricate our modern world. It’s this line of thinking that finds its way into Crash, a controversial book that David Cronenberg brought to the big screen in [...]

Women in Film

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

Eggman913 on YouTube has a pretty neat schtick. He takes artistic images, then morphs them together in pretty creative ways.  The piece above plays with images of famous actresses from different moments in American film history. Eggman913 has also created a montage called Women in Art, which we’ve featured here before. (It has only 9.2 million views on YouTube.) [...]

Classic Oscar Moments

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

On the Oscar Channel on YouTube, you can flip through some classic prize-winning moments. Above, we feature Roberto Benigni’s speech upon receiving The Academy Award for best actor (Life is Beautiful) in 1998. You can also see vintage speeches by Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Federico Fellini, and others. Perhaps a questionable call, The Oscar Channel has been added [...]

Orson Welles’ Final Moments

≡ Category: Film, Television |Leave a Comment

Above, you can watch Orson Welles’ last interview and public appearance. The clip brings you back to October 10, 1985, when the great filmmaker, then 70 years old, appeared on the Merv Griffin show and talked a good deal about aging and his aging generation. Just two hours later, Welles would die of a heart [...]

Sita Sings the Blues

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

Nina Paley, a self-taught animator, released in 2008 an 82-minute animated film, Sita Sings the Blues, that mingles the classic Indian myth, The Ramayana, with contemporary autobiographical events, and it’s all set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. The film, which launched the San Francisco International Animation Festival (and was also recently featured [...]

10 Classic Films from the Internet Archive

≡ Category: Film |1 Comment

Our hunt to find universally accessible Hitchcock films brought us back to the Internet Archive yesterday, and it now seems worth highlighting some of the other gems buried in this collection. This archive of feature films contains some important classics from the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s. We’ve featured ten good ones below, and don’t [...]

Hitchcock Round II

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

For those of you who couldn’t see the Hitchcock films posted yesterday (down with Joost for geoblocking!), I’ve hopefully found an alternative resource. The Internet Archive hosts some classic films, and there you’ll find 4 of the 5 Hitchcock films mentioned yesterday. Folks on Twitter have confirmed that the films can be accessed in Mexico, [...]

Five Classic Alfred Hitchcock Films

≡ Category: Film |5 Comments

Definitely worth a mention. Craveonline has pulled together some classic Hitchcock films. The list includes The 39 Steps, The Secret Agent, The Man Who Knew Too Much (above), Young and Innocent, and Blackmail. And from what I can tell, they’re all available in full (surprisingly) and can be watched in full screen format. Also, courtesy [...]

If Life Were Only Like This …

≡ Category: Comedy, Film |Leave a Comment

Somehow my mind turned back today to this classic scene from Annie Hall — Woody Allen’s 1977 Academy Awarding-winning film. The scene features Woody, Diane Keaton, and a cameo by Marshall McLuhan, who gave us media theory and the expression “the medium is the message.” The bit is always good for a laugh.

Talking with Steven Soderbergh

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

Here’s a piece from one of my colleagues, Scott Hutchins. Take it away Scott…
Steven Soderbergh was in San Francisco as part of the roll out for his four-and-a-half-hour, two-part epic Che, about the Argentinian doctor turned revolutionary Che Guevara.  Guevara is no stranger to American screens, especially after the popular film, The Motorcycle Diaries. So [...]

Slacker, the Film, on YouTube

≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture |5 Comments

Slacker was shot in Austin, Texas in 1991. Its budget? A mere $23,000. But that didn’t stop it from becoming a cult hit and an overall important indie film. Here you have it free on YouTube, all 100 minutes of it…
Update: it appears that YouTube has placed some geographical restrictions on who can see this [...]

The 10 Best American Movies (With Videos)

≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture |1 Comment

Over at his Think Again blog, Stanley Fish, the eminent literary critic, has listed his all-time favorite American films. The list is a good one, so we figured why not add some video clips to the mix, and give you a little taste of each classic. See the full list after the jump. And if [...]

David Lynch on His Favorite Movies and Filmmakers

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

In a quick 59 seconds, David Lynch tells you the films and filmmakers that he likes best (see below). In equally succinct videos, though with a bit more salty language (read: language that’s not ideal for work), Lynch also gives you his thoughts on product placement and the whole concept of watching a movie on an [...]

It’s a Wonderful (Scratch That, Miserable) Life

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

About the Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a New York Times op-ed had this to say today:
It “is anything but a cheery holiday tale.” It “is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. [...]

National Lampoon CEO Charged With Securities Fraud

≡ Category: Comedy, Film |Leave a Comment

The business news keeps getting worse. Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme unraveled, defrauding wealthy investors of an estimated $50 billion. Marc Dreier, a big time New York lawyer, got jailed for allegedly bilking sophisticated hedge funds out of millions. Now, we learn that the CEO of National Lampoon is charged with securities fraud.  As you may know, [...]

40 Inspirational Film Speeches in 2 Minutes

≡ Category: Film |4 Comments

Let’s ease into the weekend on a high note:

via Lifehacker via Overthinkingit
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100 Movie Spoilers in 5 Minutes

≡ Category: Film |1 Comment

In case you haven’t seen this yet …

Unlocking the European Film Vault

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

Thanks to Europa Film Treasures, you can spend hours looking back through an archive of European film. Theses films range from “comedy to science fiction, from westerns to animation, from erotic to ethnological movies.” And all films come with a fair amount of background information. And yes, of course, you can stream these films online [...]

Revisiting the Depression in The Grapes of Wrath (The Film)

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

Over at The New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott revisits John Ford’s 1940 film based on John Steinbeck’s classic novel about the Great Depression. Putting foreclosures and economic strain front and center, it’s suddenly a film for our age.  Scott’s video segment runs about three minutes, features footage from the film itself, and takes a look [...]

Joss Whedon: The Death of Orson Welles, The History of Women and Beyond

≡ Category: Film, Television |Leave a Comment

One of my friends from way back, Sheerly Avni, has just posted an interview with Joss Whedon, who has now dominated in four media categories: film (Serenity), television (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), comics (Runaways, The Astonishing X-Men) and finally the internet. (Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog). The interview was conducted for Mother Jones, so there’s a [...]

How Al Pacino Almost Missed The Godfather

≡ Category: Film |Leave a Comment

Imagine The Godfather without Marlin Brando and Al Pacino. Blasphemy! Well, it almost turned out that way. You can watch more here about how Brando almost never made it. Below, we also have a clip that takes you through how Pacino nearly missed out on his career-defining role. It includes original footage from his script reading [...]

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  • About Us

    Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best cultural and educational media. He finds the books you want, the classes you need, and plenty of enlightenment in between.

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