And He Blogs

Culpeper, Virginia. The camera slowly pans up exposing a very small man-made body of water and a grid of square and rectangular box-shapes made of concrete. A concave wall of windows is set back within each box. Text fades up on the screen that reads “Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation – Library of Congress” George Willeman is on screen talking about the first films ever made – “all these people who worked on these things are all gone now, but they have left behind these amazing shadows for us to enjoy.”

This is a scene early on in the film “These Amazing Shadows: The Movies That Make America“. Documentarians Paul Mariano and Kurt Norton intersperse film clips and interviews as well as archival footage dating back to the silent era to contextualize the films that were made and why they are important to our culture. Each year 25 films are added to the National Film Registry (part of the Library of Congress) which are deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films”.

The fact that the Packard Campus is just 40 minutes away in Culpeper is a film buffs dream. Each month they put together a film schedule that includes some classic films. Some are on the Registry, some are not. The movies are free, you just need to make a reservation to get a seat. I know, you’re jealous. I understand. What is even better than that is “These Amazing Shadows” in on Netflix instant watch (as well as on DVD), and it’s a great film to watch and get more suggestions of movies to put on your Netflix queue.

The passion with which the archivists do their jobs restoring the films is compelling. The excitement with which the featured actors and directors talk about film discoveries will inspire you to see lots of movies. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress will be your new hero. I can’t recommend “These Amazing Shadows” enough.

I’m writing an article on HDMI cables and I was doing some online research. I wanted to see some examples of relatively expensive cables. I had seen $400 cables hanging in a Best Buy (the Magnolia section). I had no idea that there were these on the Best Buy website . . .

Here’s the link to many of the high priced cables.

There is not enough scorn in existence to be leveled on Best Buy, or for idiots who would buy these, but this is a start . . .

UPDATE! Really you must read the reviews for this cable. Totally entertaining!

Thanks to my good buddy and DTLT’s “big toe” Jim Groom, I finally found a long lost video that has been haunting me for about 22 years. You see back in the late 80′s I used to work at a camera shop (MQ Camera) in downtown Syracuse. At lunch time I would go to the public library and look for videos to watch at home. At the time, checking out VHS tapes and CDs was a new phenomenon. One particular videotape was “Salvador Dali – A Soft Self-Portrait” (1967). I re-discovered it thanks to Jim’s tweet regarding UbuWeb. Follow the links if you want to know what UbuWeb is, or see an FAQ.

There was this one scene in particular that was magic (literally) for me. The simplicity of the “trick” was marvelous. It reminds me of what students are doing in DS106 and in other places. Creating interesting videos as experimentation. No one did this quite like Dali, and the whole video provides many great examples.

My memory of this scene has been altered over a 22 year period. I thought that the delivery of the “metallic paper” and the dancing assistant went on much longer. It is rather fleeting. However, that unique dance and hauntingly jaunty music, was strongly etched into my pre-frontal cortex. Thanks to digital archivists such as UbuWeb, I’ll have this memory forever.