MetaFilter posts tagged with BBC and film

"The phrase 'intergalactically stupid' appeared... and he responded."

Kattullus — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 07:46:08 -0800

The Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Review YouTube channel has a lot of videos of film reviews from the livestream of their BBC radio show and podcast, going back about five years. They are sorted by genre, film rating, geographic origin and one special category, Classic Kermodean Rants, which includes his reviews of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Sex and the City 2, in which he ends up sing-shouting The Internationale, and Angels and Demons, which woke a man from a coma (mp3, story starts at 5:10, and it is followed up here, beginning at 5:30).

An introduction to cult movies

Artw — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 23:40:56 -0800

"What is a cult film? A cult film is one that has a passionate following, but does not appeal to everyone. James Bond movies are not cult films, but chainsaw movies are. Just because a film has become a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some are very bad; others are very, very good. Some make an awful lot of money at the box office; others make no money at all. Some are considered quality films; others are exploitation movies. One thing cult movies do have in common is that they are all genre films - for example gangster films or westerns. They also have a tendency to slosh over from one genre into another, so that a science fiction film might also be a detective movie, or vice versa. They share common themes as well, themes that are found in all drama: love, murder and greed." - of the British TV film slots accompanied by an introduction perhaps the most celebrated is Moviedrome, running between 1988 and 2000 and presented first by Repo Man director Alex Cox and then film critic Mark Cousins. Alex Cox introduces... The Wicker Man The Parallax View Jabberwocky Stardust Memories Brazil An American Werewolf in London Knightriders What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Rabid Cry Baby Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Django Face to Face Requiescant The Andromeda Strain Coogan's Bluff The People Under The Stairs Halloween Psychomania Race the Devil Excalibur Nothing Lasts Forever Mark Cousins introduces... The Fly Society The Warriors The Fog Carlitos Way Don't Look Now ALSO ON BBC 2: The Forbidden Season... Alex Cox presents Django Kill Empire of the Censors Doing Rude Things 1, 2 ON BBC 4: Alex Cox presents... Five Westerns Part 1 Five Westerns Part 2 Moviedrome Guides part 1 & 2 in the free stuff section Alex Cox's website. Moviedrome archive. Previous Alex Cox. Previous Repo Man. Bonus insanity: Alex Cox interviews Sam Cohen, inventor of the neuron bomb

Well, I never hated you.

shakespeherian — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 07:05:37 -0800

Jake Cole of the film blog Not Just Movies discusses the semi-legendary hour-long debate about Monty Python's Life of Brian on the BBC Four program Friday Night, Saturday Morning. The debate features Pythons John Cleese and Michael Palin on one side and opposite them broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark.

EXTERMINATE

gerryblog — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:38:29 -0800

Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch. Variety reports Harry Potter director David Yates wants to reboot Doctor Who. Topless Robot reacts.

Before Doctor Who, there was Professor Quartermass

filthy light thief — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:01:49 -0800

British manned space flights; an insidious threat from outer space; a man mutating into an evil alien, his human consciousness being eaten away; and a scientist - utterly anti-Establishment, courageous and cerebral - the only man who can fight it. No, not Doctor Who, but his highly distinguished predecessor, Prof Bernard Quatermass. A decade before Doctor Who first aired, the The Quartermass Experiment was the first science-fiction TV serial produced for adults, and a live-to-viewers BBC production, to boot. The show ran for six episodes in 1953, of which only the first two episodes are known survive. The short sci-fi series spun off three original sequels and a radio drama-documentary, along with movie re-makes of the first three series by Hammer Films. BBC brought back live TV with a 2005 adaptation of the original 1953 series. You can watch the various series on online (in parts on Daily Motion), thanks to fans of The British Rocket Group. Even though you can only watch the first two episodes of The Quartermass Experiment, you can read summaries of the remaining four episodes (ep 3, ep 4, ep 5, and ep 6). The Quartermass Conclusion blog has more summaries of and information on the other series, too. The Quartermass 2 fansite has gobs of information, specifically on Quartermass II / 2 (series / film), including differences between the serial and the film. Note that it may be easier to read if you block scripts for the site, as the text is rendered differently with scripts and flash enabled. Previously: We owe our human condition here to the intervention of insects? -- insight into the mind of Nigel Kneale, writer of The Quatermass Experiment, following the 2005 adaptation of The Quartermass Experiment.

The best of Google Video on MetaFilter

Rhaomi — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:32:18 -0800

As discussed over the weekend, in less than two weeks the millions of videos uploaded to six-year-old erstwhile YouTube competitor Google Video will no longer be viewable. Though a download button has been added to each video page for easy back-up, that will only be available though May 13th, and the company will not be offering transfer service for users with YouTube accounts. The search giant has been slowly winding down the service over the years since their billion-dollar buyout of YouTube, controversially revoking purchased content (with a refund) in 2007 and disabling new uploads in 2009. The shutdown is a big blow to the web video ecosystem, as Google Video was one of the few major services to allow free hosting of long-form video, including the content for many popular MetaFilter posts. But all is not lost! Reddit users have organized a virtual potluck to share the most interesting and unique videos not available anywhere else, and the Archive Team, preserver of doomed web properties like Geocities (previously), is partnering with Archive.org to back up as much content as possible. In that spirit, click inside for a list of some of the most popular Google Video-centric content posted here over the years. [Note: Oodles of kudos to Mefi's Own FishBike for helping to prepare this post, by scraping the database for all posts linking to video.google.com and sorting by favorites. The list includes some content from before favorites were around, but I surely would have missed lots of good stuff without his handy (meta)filtered list!] Single links are in the title where available, see the (via) for multi-link content on the original post page. Lots of posts were skipped where the video wasn't available, so all of these should work. 2005 * The original Family Guy (via) * Conan's Walker Texas Ranger lever (via) * First-person view of a 14-minute high-speed car chase (via) * Panama Canal time-lapse video (via) 2006 * "Physics for Future Presidents" lecture series (via) * Threads, a horrifying nuclear war drama (via) * A BBC documentary on Texas Christians converting to Islam (via) * Cool guitar solo by Stanley Jordan (via) * Fear of Girls, a 10-minute mockumentary about stereotypical RPG players (via) * Riding a maglev train in Japan (via) * An hour-long documentary on one man's walking tour of Japanese history (via) * The original half-hour demo for Spore that wowed just about everybody (via) * "Flickr: The Musical" by Johnathan Coulton (via) * Footage of Tsar Bomba, the world's largest nuclear bomb test (via) * Don't copy that floppy! (via) * Little Things that Jiggle: Richard Feynman and Atomic Physics (via) * Back to the Future I & II synched (via) * Hundreds of students impersonate molecular motion (via) * WWII aerial footage (via) * The finest tap dancing ever filmed (via) * Tons of UC Berkeley college lectures (via) * Alive in Joburg, the original short film prequel to District 9 (via) * 1955 footage of the star-studded Rhythm and Blues Revue (via) * £10,000 dominoes (via) * Radiohead Live - OK Computer Tour (via) 2007 * Lots of MST3K episodes in this megapost * Tons of George Carlin specials (via) * Classic Marx Brothers (via) * Nosferatu, The Immigrant, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (via) * Richard Feynman - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (via) * Documenting the history of atheism (via) * Tons of random Christmas special episodes (via) * Chomsky vs. Buckley (via) * Creepy TV hacking incidents (via) * Hilarious Windows 386 promotional video (via) * Google Research's Videos of the Year (via) 2008 * "The Return of Clockwork Orange" discussing Kubrick's classic film (via) * aubilenon's homemade Rube Goldberg machine (via) * A pair of popular lectures explaining why you shouldn't talk to the police (via) * Classic Abbot & Costello (via) * Four hours of MTV's Sifl & Olly (via) * A collection of full-length film noir classics (via) * "How Buildings Learn," a six-part BBC documentary on architecture (via) * "The Trap," a three-episode documentary on the development of the concept of individual freedom (via) * Super amusing playthroughs of the sadistically hard Kaizo Mario game mod (semi-via) (speaking of which, the Let's Play Archive contains significant Google Video content of narrated classic video game walkthroughs for all systems, which it's likewise racing to preserve before it's too late.) 2009 * "Inside the Chernobyl Sarcophagus," a gripping documentary on the suicidal attempts to contain the nuclear disaster (via) * The Cowboy Bebop movie "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (via) * An anthropological documentary look at "the human animal" in six parts (via) * Multiple gay history documentaries from Stonewall to the present (via) * High Tech Soul and Pump Up the Volume, electronic music documentaries (via) 2010 * Jim Henson's hour-long film "The Cube" (via) * Videotaped US sea burial of lost Soviet submariners (via) * A lengthy talk from Buckminster Fuller (via) * "The Plague Dogs," a harrowing animated film about escaped research animals (via) * Several links to English anime dubs in this megapost from filthy light thief * The Space Ghost Christmas Special (via) * A multi-part narrated playthrough of Douglas Adams's cult classic video game Starship Titanic (via) 2011 * The complete first season of machinima comedy hit Red vs. Blue (via) * A 42-minute documentary on a survivor's escape from Auschwitz in his own words (via) * From Friday's thread: National Collegiate Debate Championship, Douglas Hofstadter docudrama, 1989 global warming documentary, Kubrick's "Fear and Desire", Parisian bookstore documentary, Douglas Adams interview, BBC on worker co-ops, Adam Curtis's documentaries, a look at humanity's dependence on animals, Joel Bauer describes the contents of his suitcase, David Attenborough on uncontacted New Guinea tribes, 1980s children's puppetry TV, Superman: The Musical! See also: Authors@Google, Tech Talks, and other Google-produced video

The Definitive Look at the Diversity of Our Planet

Rhaomi — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 11:15:16 -0800

Five years ago this week, the BBC started broadcasting one of the most extraordinary documentaries ever to grace television: Planet Earth. The culmination of five years of field work, it employed the most cutting-edge of techniques in order to capture life in all its forms, from sweeping spaceborne vistas to shockingly intimate close-ups -- including many sights rarely glimpsed by human eyes. Visually spectacular, it showcased footage shot in 204 locations in 62 countries, thoroughly documenting every biome from the snowy peaks of the Himalayas to the lifegiving waters of the Okavango Delta, a rich narrative tapestry backed by a stirring orchestral score from the BBC Concert Orchestra. Unfortunately, the series underwent some editorial changes for rebroadcast overseas. But now fans outside the UK can rejoice -- all eleven chapters of this epic story are available on YouTube in their original form: uncut, in glorious 1080p HD, and with the original narration by renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Click inside for the full listing (and kiss the rest of your week goodbye). For reference: A detailed episode guide from Wikipedia [Note: Be sure to select "1080p" in the video window manually if you have to, since the player sometimes defaults to 720p or even standard definition. The extra crispness significantly improves the experience.] 1 | Pole to Pole — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Eye in the Sky

The sunward tilt of Earth's orbit dictates all our lives, creating the seasons that trigger one of the greatest spectacles in the world -- the mass migration of animals. As spring arrives in the Arctic, a mother polar bear emerges from her den with two tiny cubs. At the other end of the planet, winter arrives and emperor penguins are plunged into darkness for four months.

2 | Mountains — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Snow Leopard Quest

This episode tours the mightiest of mountain ranges and introduces a few of its extreme animal mountaineers -- the mountain lion, snow leopard and puma, all rarely filmed creatures. CGI time-lapse footage brings the mysterious geological history of mountains to life, while flying alongside bar-headed geese provides a spectacular view of the Himalayas.

3 | Freshwater — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Diving with Piranhas

Just 3 percent of the planet's water is fresh and it is our most precious resource. Rivers and lakes have shaped the earth, carving out the world's most impressive gorges, valleys and waterfalls. Unique behavior takes place in the presence of this life force, such as dueling otters and crocodiles and diving macaques.

4 | Caves — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Into the Abyss

Caves are one of the only habitats not directly driven by sunlight, but this doesn't mean there's no wildlife living in their confines. Descend into darkness to witness the unseen behaviors of bizarre creatures like cave angel fish that attach themselves to walls and swiftlets that build nests from saliva.

5 | Deserts — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Wild Camel Chase

Deserts are united by their lack of rain, yet they are the most varied of our planet's ecosystems. Go where freshwater is really precious and meet animals that have learned to survive with small amounts of it, such as the wild Bactrian camel of Mongolia's Gobi Desert that eats snow instead of drinking water or Chile's guanacos that lick dew from cactus spines.

6 | Ice Worlds — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Alive in the Freezer

Freshwater is frozen and out of reach, and coupled with numbing temperatures, this makes life hard in frozen climes from the top to the bottom of the world. CGI time-lapse and elapsed-time filming techniques show Arctic ice coming and going over the centuries, and emperor penguins settling in to breed in Antarctica.

7 | Great Plains — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Shot in the Dark

A quarter of the earth's surface is covered with grass, and the world's plains are home to massive herds of animals. This episode traverses the grasslands of Mongolia and the flooding plains of Papua New Guinea, and finds great gatherings of creatures, such as East Africa's wildebeest and clusters of rare grazers like Mongolian gazelles.

8 | Jungles — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Trouble in Paradise

Beautiful floating aerial shots introduce the world's most spectacular forest vistas and high-definition cameras enable unprecedented views of the species that live on the dark jungle floor. Enter a world of mood and menace, and witness intense competition on a macro and micro scale as jaguars track prey and fungi infiltrate insect hosts.

9 | Shallow Seas — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Shark Quest

Follow a humpback whale mother and her calf on their epic journey to the most prolific feeding grounds that fringe the coasts. The shallow seas that lie above the continental shelf are the richest in the ocean. It is here that you find the coral reefs and, in colder waters, the fishing grounds. Massive shoals of fish act like magnets for predators. Spectacular storm footage, above and below the water, reveals extraordinary events in this tropical paradise.

10 | Forests — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Forest Fliers

Forests cover vast expanses from Siberia to Tasmania and still remain largely unexplored. Infrared and low-light cameras peek into the lives of elusive woodland inhabitants, such as snub-nosed monkeys, Amur leopards and Siberian tigers.

11 | Ocean Deep — One - Two - Three - Four - Tech Diary: Ocean Wanderers

The ocean is by far the largest habitat on our planet and it remains almost entirely unexplored. This episode scans the ocean's vast surface and trolls its depths, revealing daytime hunters and night feeders, from dolphins to manta rays, and life among hot vents and underwater massifs, following the energy source between oceanic white tips, myctopids, tuna, whale sharks and petrels.

Bonus: The similarly grand documentary HOME, a globetrotting film that examines humanity's impact on the environment. It's available for free in its entirety on the project's official YouTube account.

In the beginning was the Word

Rhaomi — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:47:24 -0800

Canadian horror flick Pontypool (trailer) is a modern zombie tale quite unlike any other. Loosely based on a dense, complicated novel by Tony Burgess and inspired by Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, it tells the story of Grant Mazzy, a grumbling yet likable radio host (played by veteran character actor Stephen McHattie) whose penchant for philosophical ramblings gets him booted from Toronto to the sleepy winter pastures of Pontypool, Ontario. One bleak morning, as the outspoken Mazzy chafes against no-nonsense producer Sydney Briar, disturbing news begins rolling in of a series of bizarre and violent incidents sweeping the town. Trapped in their church basement broadcasting booth, Mazzy, Briar, and intern Laurel-Ann Drummond struggle to understand the odd nature of the crisis and warn the wider world before it's too late. But this is no ordinary virus, and they find their efforts may be causing far more harm than good. You can watch the film on YouTube horror channel Dead By Dawn (1 2 3 4 5 6 7), but if you're pressed for time you can also experience it in its more logical form: as a one-hour BBC radio drama voiced by the original cast. And after the credits, make sure not to miss the film's playful non-sequitur coda.

1984 in 1954 (Watch the 1954 BBC adaptation of Nineteen Eighty Four)

Effigy2000 — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 04:00:31 -0800

Nigel Kneale's adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four was one of the most controversial television programmes of its time. Broadcast live, it made "unusually extensive and imaginative use of filmed inserts (14 in total). These sequences bought time for the more elaborate costume changes or scene set-ups, but also served to 'open out' the action." And now you can watch it too! The full version is currently on Youtube. Short of the John Hurt film released in 1984 being posted online, the 1954 BBC TV adaptation is about as doubleplusgood as it gets for now. Further reading; Some background (PDF) on its production and a review, for those who need to be told what to think about things they saw. While we're on the subject, you may also be interested to learn Nineteen Eighty Four has also been adapted into a comic book (free to read), an Opera and an MP3 recording of a radio play done by NBC University Theater. But failing all of that, you can always just read the text of the original book over at Project Gutenberg.

"Because I'm worth it."

zarq — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:43:05 -0800

From the BBC blog of documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis: Experiments in the Laboratory of Consumerism 1959-67: "I have quite a lot of film from the archives that was shot in the Madison Avenue agencies in the mid 1960s, and I thought I would put some sections up. It is great because it shows some of the major advertising men and women of the time, many of whom are the real-life models for characters in Mad Men." Includes a 9-minute video interview with the late Herta Herzog. The first link in this post is a gateway to view much of Curtis' work for free online. Additional material can be seen at Thought Maybe, Archive.org and his BBC blog. (Curtis: Previously on Metafilter)

1991 BBC Omnibus documentary on Peter Greenaway

colinmarshall — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:53:36 -0800

Some kind soul recently uploaded, in five parts, a 1991 BBC Omnibus television documentary about Peter Greenaway, who never ceases to inspire me in his dedication to push film into new, richly interesting places, to liberate it from its addiction to stale 19th-century psychological narrative and to open it up to accept and incorporate all manner of artistic information it's usually denied. Cleverly titled Anatomy of a Filmmaker — Greenaway is an enthusiast of the nude human figure, which he sees as the single constant of art — it covers the filmmaker's career from his earliest shorts up through Prospero's Books. There are bits about the time he spent honing his skills cutting together British propaganda, his experience with painting and his longtime collaboration with Sacha Vierny. It also presents subsections on Greenaway's own inspirational creators, including John Cage and the increasingly-intriguing-to-me R.B. Kitaj.

One Pair of Eyes

miss lynnster — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:31:58 -0800

Architectural critic and writer Reyner Banham loved Los Angeles. (Last link is a BBC documentary, circa 1972, 52 minutes -- NSFW at 47 minute mark) Surprisingly, some parts of LA seemed much more run down 30 years ago than now. Most shocking to me was being reminded of how horrific the Santa Monica Pier looked back when it was slated for destruction (appx. 32 minute mark). And no, the pre-GPS Baede Kar system wasn't real, they made it up.

Dufaycolour, Technicolor and Kodachrome

chuckdarwin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:25:10 -0800

The Thirties in Colour is a four-part series using rare colour film and photographs to give poignant and surprising insights into the 1930s. [Previously] Wright Around the World: Together with his younger brother Bolling, the American industrialist Harry Wright was wealthy enough to indulge his twin passions for travel and filmmaking. Both siblings collected and shot films that captured the world at a pivotal time in history. They captured astonishing images acquired and filmed in the islands of the South Pacific, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, as well as South Africa, Morocco, Palestine, and several countries in Europe, including Britain. These destinations were visited during the golden age of ocean travel, when the well-off could escape the Great Depression and travel the world on luxury cruise ships. *Other episodes include A World Away, Adventures in the Americas and End of an Era.

Trouble at' Mill

chuckdarwin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:44:39 -0800

A Matter of Loaf and Death is the new BBC Christmas short from Nick Park and Aardman. In the mock murder mystery, Wallace and Gromit start a new bakery business, Top Bun. The short, Park's first since 1995, will introduce a new love interest for Wallace, Piella Bakewell, a bread enthusiast.

Crack, baby, crack, show me you're real.

miss lynnster — Fri, 04 May 2007 23:01:23 -0800

David Bowie: Cracked Actor – a BBC documentary circa 1974. One|Two|Three|Four|Five (53 minutes)

The future of slow motion porn has arrived

phaedon — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 23:30:58 -0800

The mother of all Mother Nature programs premiered in the US this weekend on the Discovery Channel. The 11-part series makes the most of three remarkable camera technologies: shooting in total darkness, counter-vibration stabilizers, and 1000 fps sequences. Here are some clips of: penguins sliding, baboons swimming, and birds of paradise mating. Finally, here's footage from the original BBC version (with the much preferred David Attenborough narrating) that shows, for the first time,a snow leopard hunting in the wild.

Threads

schoolgirl report — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:59:01 -0800

Threads (Google Video, 1hr 50min). Classic Reagan/Thatcher era nuclear war film that scared the bejeezus out of everyone in 1984 (including my 14-year-old self). [good background previously]

"Einsteinbrain!"

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 09:59:59 -0800

Japanese professor Kenji Sugimoto has a long-standing fascination with the brain of Albert Einstein. In the early nineties he travelled to the United States in search of it. This bizarre 1994 documentary (YouTube, multiple parts) by Kevin Hull (UK) chronicles his quest. Fake or real? [more inside]