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Posted by: Mike Mashon
So let’s do the math. If a picture is worth a thousand words and a 100 minute film, at 24 frames-per-second, has 144,000 pictures, that means a movie is worth 144 million words, or more than 26 copies of War and Peace. Ah, the joys of false equivalency. Literary adaptations have been on my mind …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures, National Film Registry
Posted by: Karen Fishman
In the United States, the first Monday of September is the holiday celebrating American workers. Labor Day became a legal holiday in 1894 and while it has morphed into a day of shopping, picnics, speeches and sadly, summer’s farewell, the true meaning of the day, celebrating the American worker, should not be forgotten. In its …
Posted in: National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Radio, Recorded Sound
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Cary O’Dell, Assistant to the National Recording Preservation Board. You might never have heard of her, but Martha Rountree is one of the most important women in the history of American broadcasting. The longevity of her “product” rivals Lucille Ball’s. Her importance and influence is as esteemed as …
Posted in: Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
When it comes to programming the Packard Campus Theater, we have two very distinct differences with other archival venues: 1. We can program almost exclusively from our collection of literally hundreds of thousands of titles. Rarely do we borrow a print for a screening; there’s typically no need for it. 2. Since we don’t charge …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, Packard Campus Theater
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
Kachank? That’s the sound that signals summer’s end as returning students slam locker doors while swarming high school corridors, yelling, jostling and creating general chaos. Nevertheless, in the windy, rainy and icy days ahead, the Library of Congress National Jukebox can provide you many songs that evoke summers past and prepare you to face the coming school (or …
Posted in: Uncategorized
Posted by: Mike Mashon
WESTERN SWING: LIVE AND ON FILM A combining of traditional western music and hot jazz with a little bit of bluegrass and gospel mixed in, western swing quickly gained acceptance and became very popular in the 1930s. Thursday, August 21 (7:30 p.m.) Rockin’ in the Rockies (Columbia, 1945) The Hoosier Hot Shots–creators of madcap “rural …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, Packard Campus Theater
Posted by: Karen Fishman
Listen! What do you hear? Walking around the streets of a city, if you aren’t listening to music or talking on the phone, you can hear the city speak – snippets of conversations, traffic, planes, sirens – familiar sounds of work and play, or the “voice” of the city. Tony Schwartz, born August 19, 1923, …
Posted in: Uncategorized
Posted by: Mike Mashon
There’s lots of reminiscing in the Moving Image Section today about Robin Williams. My younger colleagues first remember him from Aladdin (1992) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), for others it was his Eighties films Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) and Dead Poets Society (1989), and for folks of my generation, he’ll always be a little bit Mork. …
Posted in: Copyright, Motion Pictures, Television
Posted by: Mike Mashon
PRELUDE TO WAR: ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR II The films presented this week explore the mindset of the various world leaders and the global circumstances that led to World War II, which ravaged the globe only a few short years after the “the war to end all wars.” Thursday, Aug. 14 (7:30 p.m.) …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, National Film Registry, Packard Campus Theater