National Film Board of Canada Releases Huge Film Library for iPhone App

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The NFB (National Film Board of Canada) has just released a new free iPhone app that lets you watch hundreds of their films.  You can use the app even while you’re away from hotspots by downloading films for viewing during a 24-hour period.  The NFB is one of my favorite places on the web for film.  They just do it the right way.  They make it easy.

This is an excellent way to distribute their huge collection of ground-breaking films.

You can get the app at the iTunes store.

Horror Movie: The Road to Moloch

Here’s a horror movie about some U.S. soldiers in Iraq who face an ancient evil in a cave.
This is very mature subject matter with extreme violence and mature language. Not for young viewers.

This is not a very good film. That’s why I posted it. The filmmaking interests me because of its complete lack of vision. It tries to replicate to perfection other films that the director has seen. The director wants to be a professional and get hired somewhere. It shows in his work. Sorry, sir, but you put it out there and I’m calling it like I see it. The problem here is that the film is not frightening. It’s slick and well-shot, like television or feature films, but it spends all its energy that way. You don’t scare people by being professional. You don’t scare them by being violent. You scare them by showing them that you – director – are a little bit off.

That’s how you scare an audience. Not with professionalism. Try again and make it real this time.

Horror Movie: The Curse of Frankenstein

CurseoffrankensteinIn keeping with our horrific new game, Frankenstein – The Creature Must Die!, here’s a 1957 Hammer Film called The Curse of Frankenstein.  It stars Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the monster.

This version of the Frankenstein story caused critical outrage when it was released.  It was ground-breaking in its level of gore and violence and it kicked off a long series of popular horror flicks from Britain’s Hammer Film Productions.

New Film: Lunch With Bardot



My latest little film. It’s actually a cinegram. The subject is trains. Time. Memory. The present doesn’t exist. You can’t find it with measurement. You can’t even define it. The future is not there yet. You cannot see it. The only thing that really exists is the past. I say that because we can all see the past – some more clearly than others. But we can most certainly see it.

A cinegram is a short motion picture that uses images and text that are packed with meaning and suggestion. It’s my new word for things I once referred to as film poems.

Here’s the poem from inside the movie:

Lunch With Bardot

Trains run on time
With passengers asleep
Temporarily forgotten
Between observation points
Colliding lines
Of fictional transport