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Forget the Film, Watch the Titles from the SubmarineChannel.

On SubmarineChannel, we love a good main title. That's why we started this online collection in 1997 of the most stunning and original film title sequences. Some are engaging and wildly entertaining, some are funny, exhilarating or simply deadly beautiful. Some are oozing with visual treats, while others hit you hard with their bold and audacious style.

Check out the list of new film studies books and dvds acquired at Temple Libraries in March.

Some highlights:

The Paley reference collection is now home to Harrison's Reports and Film Reviews. This 15 volume set reprints the film reviews and some editorials originally published by P.S. Harrison in Harrison's reports, 1919-1962, with some corrections. Harrison's reports was a weekly sent out to independent exhibitors. The reviews and editorials were directed toward independent theater owners to assist them with booking. Articles in Harrison's take positions on a variety of the concerns of cinema distributors and exhibitors ranging from topics such as censorship to the advent of 3D.

A large number of scripts now appear in the library catalog now that we've uploaded records for the scripts that are available in the full text online database American Film Scripts Online. There are currently 823 scripts in the database, ranging from 1903 to 2006.

In a recent post David Bordwell discusses the uses of a cognitive approach to film studies- an approach perhaps codified by the creation of the the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image in 2006. Bordwell is President of the Society. His initial statement about two broad approaches to theorizing about film are good food for thought for new researchers such as undergraduates, and point to the particular interdisciplinarity of film studies.

"There are, roughly, two ways to think about doing film theory. One way is to look at a body of research or reflection in some established area (history, philosophy, psychology, etc.) and ask: What can it tell me about movies? So you might look at Freudian psychoanalysis or Gestalt perceptual psychology as a whole and then home in on ideas that seem to have relevance to cinema.

The other way to do film theory is to look closely at some filmic phenomenon and ask: What’s the best way to understand this aspect of movies? Your reading and thinking might then lead you to adjacent fields of inquiry for help. In the first instance, you start broad and move to particular cases. In the second, you start with particular cases and explore what broader ideas or information can shed light on them."

Bordwell goes on to give examples of how ideas from the cognitive sciences can be used to explain how we understand or engage with motion pictures, and how he has seen it as an alternative to the psychoanalytic approach. I often remind undergraduate students doing library research in cinema studies to look to resources in the social sciences as well as humanities. There's a wealth of information in research tools like PsycInfo to offer inspiration for fresh approaches at every level of scholarship.

Most research databases and online journal subscriptions cover content from the mid nineties to the present, meaning you have to rely on print copies in the library for earlier issues. Good news - with Temple University Libraries recent subscription to PAO Periodicals Archive Online, you now have full text access to pre-1990s issues of the following film/media journals.

Cinema Journal (formerly Journal of the Society of Cinematologists) 1961-1996
Film and History 1971-1995
Film History 1987-1995
Film Quarterly (formerly Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television and Hollywood Quarterly) 1945-1957
Framework 1975-1992
Journal of Popular Culture 1967-1991
Journal of Popular Film (and Television) 1972-1978
Literature/Film Quarterly 1973-1993
Monthly Film Bulletin 1934-1991
Sight and Sound 1932-1995
Velvet Light Trap 1973-1995

Access the PAO database here.
See the full list of journals in this retrospective collection here.
To get access to current and more recent journal issues online, look the journal up using Journal Finder.

In the New York Times online...

Paramount Offers Film Clips on Web By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: March 10, 2008

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom, will become the first major studio to make clips from thousands of its movies available for use on the Internet.

Paramount is teaming with the Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket to introduce the VooZoo application Monday on Facebook.

The service will give Facebook users access to footage from thousands of movies to send to others on the networking site.

The clips last from a few seconds to several minutes and cover the gamut from Eddie Murphy’s guffaw in “Beverly Hills Cop” to Audrey Hepburn’s pleas over her “no-name slob” cat in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The studio will market DVDs of the movies after each clip is played, and hopes to use the service to market new releases.

Temple University Libraries now offer online access! Just visit our list of databases, click on "Hollywood Creative Directory", then log in with your accessnet login. When you enter the HCD online, be sure to then click on the next "login" button that appears in the upper right of the screen.

...Commonly known as "the phone book to Hollywood," the Hollywood Creative Directory offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date information available, listing the names, numbers, addresses and current titles of entertainment professionals from the film, television and music industries. *For twenty years this "insider's guide to the insiders" has been a must-have for anyone seriously considering a career in the entertainment business.