David Lynch Favorite Movies and FilmMakers

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 iPhone.

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McNamara & The Fog of War

Robert McNa­ma­ra, the archi­tect of the failed Viet­nam War, died ear­li­er this week. He was a major force on the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal scene through­out the 1960s. Then, he re-emerged in 2004, when Errol Mor­ris released The Fog of War, an Oscar-win­ning doc­u­men­tary that fea­tures McNa­ma­ra look­ing back on his career and high­light­ing the lessons learned from the Viet­nam expe­ri­ence.  You can watch the film above. (Admit­ted­ly the film qual­i­ty is not the best.) Or you can buy it here.

In the mean­time, a quick fac­toid: After McNa­ma­ra left the John­son admin­is­tra­tion under a fair amount of dis­grace, he was appoint­ed to lead The World Bank. Fast for­ward to 2005, and we have Paul Wol­fowitz, a key archi­tect of the Iraq War, leav­ing the Dept. of Defense also under dis­grace and get­ting to lead The World Bank. Now we know where our next mil­i­tary bun­gler will go and save some face…

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The 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time

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 (Psy­choCit­i­zen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, etc.) as well as more recent films. Above, we’ve includ­ed their num­ber one pick, Rid­ley Scot­t’s Alien. And below, we’ve added IFC’s descrip­tion, which sets the stage for view­ing the trail­er:

Mas­ter­ful­ly cut and art­ful to boot, the first glimpse of Rid­ley Scot­t’s 1979 sci-hor­ror clas­sic fea­tures not a sin­gle word of dia­logue and begins in abstract: a ride through a star field, a hov­er above some sort of moon rock, blocky shapes that slow­ly mate­ri­al­ize into the let­ters of the title, crag­gy land­scape tra­versed with a macro lens before pulling back to clar­i­fy what lies on that cratered sur­face — the egg of an alien life form. It cracks open, releas­ing an ill-omened white light and the high-pitched alarm (an ani­mal­is­tic squeal?) that unnerves through­out the rest of the trail­er.

Watch “Home” Today

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 com­plete film in Eng­lish is above. When you’re done, you won’t look at our plan­et in the same way. (You can also find online ver­sions in French, Ger­man and Span­ish.)

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Our Earth Captured in Wide Angle

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 for more.

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Ian McKellen Stars in King Lear

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 can get it from MIT’s Shake­speare web site, which hous­es Shake­speare’s com­plete works online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like?

Goethe and Shake­speare on Google

Shake­speare and the Uses of Polit­i­cal Pow­er

via Metafil­ter

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The Art of Trashing the Classics

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 God­fa­therThe Diary of Anne Frank, and oth­er stan­dards. The Cynical‑C blog lists the most caus­tic of these every day.

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Remembrance of German Things Past

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 and films encour­age the view­er to reflect on free­dom, but the items found in the col­lec­tion are open to tag­ging, most car­ry Cre­ative Com­mons licens­es, and the online exhib­it is built on inno­v­a­tive open source soft­ware from Col­lec­tive Access. Some of the most pop­u­lar images in the col­lec­tion can be found here.

The sec­ond is a new por­tal that the Kine­math­ek has built with Aus­tri­an, Czech, and French part­ners list­ing infor­ma­tion about more than 3,500 films–including clas­sics from Char­lie Chap­lin and Frank Capra–that were pre­sumed to be lost for­ev­er. The Ger­mans have seed­ed the list with infor­ma­tion about the 37 most sought-after Ger­man films, fea­tur­ing sev­er­al from Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, and F.W. Mur­nau. All that’s miss­ing is a poster with a pic­ture: “Have you seen this film?”

Peter B. Kauf­man comes to us from Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion.

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