Ok, it’s not really Werner Herzog. Just a little playful satire. A guess at how the German director might reinterpret/read the children’s classic Curious George. This version is dark and existential.
Validation, or The Magic of Free Parking
Kurt Kuenne’s short film, “Validation,” has played at 34 film festivals and won 17 awards. This 16 minute indie offers a “fable about the magic of free parking” — meaning they’re talking about “validation” in a larger sense than parking per se … We’ve added the clip to our YouTube favorites.
Restored ‘Metropolis’ to Stream Live on Friday
Classic film buffs take note. Roger Ebert writes:
The eagerly awaited restored version of Fritz Lang’s silent classic “Metropolis” will steam live on the internet on Friday Feb. 12. In America, it can be see in the afternoon. It’s said that nearly an hour of footage, long thought to be lost, has been added. The footage was discovered in a film archive in Buenos Aires.… It will be streamed via websites in both German and France. The actual film is scheduled to start playing at 1:40 PM CST, Chicago time.”
The French site streaming the film can be found here, and the German site here.
B- Classic Movies Now Online
If you get your kicks from uber kitschy B- films, then we’ve got a little something for you. AMC has launched a new site called B- Minus Classics, which we have added to our growing collection of Free Movies Online. (Our list now contains 125 free classic movies, and numerous sites where you can watch free movies online). AMC describes its new site as:
Your new go-to site for B‑movies by the likes of John Carpenter (Dark Star) and Roger Corman (Saga of the Viking Women). Now online and in full screen, watch unsung classics like Asylum by Psycho screenwriter Robert Block or Corridors of Blood with the inimitable Christopher Lee. Want to see international icons before they made it big? Check out Raquel Welch in A Swingin’ Summer or kung fu king Sonny Chiba in Terror Beneath the Sea. Looking for the unexpected? How about The Ruthless Four, a spaghetti Western starring Klaus Kinski. Now updated with even more B‑movies featuring femmes fatales (The Cat Girl), jungle adventures (Curse of the Voodoo) and talking ventriloquist’s dummies (Devil Doll). Whatever your B‑movie taste, BMC has got you covered.
Thanks to @brainkpicker for flagging this new collection.
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski
Take the Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult film, The Big Lebowski, and put it in Shakespearean verse, and what do you get? Two Gentlemen of Lebowski as written by Adam Bertocci. It begins:
In wayfarer’s worlds out west was once a man,
A man I come not to bury, but to praise.
His name was Geoffrey Lebowski called, yet
Not called, excepting by his kin.
That which we call a knave by any other name
Might bowl just as sweet. Lebowski, then,
Did call himself ‘the Knave’, a name that I,
Your humble chorus, would not self-apply
In homelands mine; but, then, this Knave was one
From whom sense was a burden to extract,
And of the arid vale in which he dwelt,
Also dislike in sensibility;
Mayhap the very search for sense reveals
The reason that it striketh me as most
Int’resting, yea, inspiring me to odes.
The Wall Street Journal has more on this creative bit that has gone viral during the past week, and will be soon performed on stage in NYC. See Kottke.org for more on that.
Is Anything Real?
Welcome to the new world of digital filmmaking. Give this one a minute to get going.
Thanks Nats and Gary for sending this one along. Have a great link to share with us? (I know you do!) Write us at mail at openculture dot com.
The Kurosawa Digital Archive
Our 
collection of Free Online Movies is the gift that keeps on giving. It led us unexpectedly to discover the wealth of World War II propaganda films made by some of America’s greatest directors. It also turned up (among other things) the Kurosawa Digital Archive. Opened last year by Kyoto’s Ryukoku University, the archive honors Akira Kurosawa, Japan’s celebrated filmmaker who brought us The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ikiru, etc. and won an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1989. What will you find here? A good 20,000 items. Screenplays, manuscripts, photos, sketches, newspaper clippings, notes, etc. You won’t find a larger Kurosawa collection on the web. The one downside is that you’ll need to read Japanese to take full advantage of the archive. But even if you have no Japanese under your belt, you can still surf the site, click on random links, and experience a good deal of what the archive offers.
Yellow Sticky Notes
Animated and directed by Jeff Chiba Stearns. The short film is the winner of the Prix du Public at Clermont-Ferrand.
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