Every year, the National Film Registry chooses a selection of 25 films to preserve in their archives for all time. With this year's crop bringing their total library up to 700 films, the latest batch of films deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically" worthy of preservation are quite a selection. Some are well known gems, others are obscure classics, but all will be kept safe for posterity. For your reading pleasure, please enjoy the National Film Registry's Class of 2016!
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)
The Atomic Cafe (1982)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Beau Brummels (1928)
The Birds (1963)
Blackboard Jungle (1955)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)
East of Eden (1955)
Funny Girl (1968)
Life of an American Fireman (1903)
The Lion King (1994)
Lost Horizon (1937)
Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
Paris Is Burning (1990)
Point Blank (1967)
The Princess Bride (1987)
Putney Swope (1969)
Rushmore (1998)
Solomon Sir Jones films (1924-28)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
Suzanne, Suzanne (1982)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
A Walk in the Sun (1945)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
The Hollywood Reporter ran the full list, with the official blurbs that the National Film Registry included with their picks explaining their reasoning. With their criteria being the artistic merits mentioned previously, as well as each title being at least 10 years old, every year's choices are interesting to sift through, as the justifications are as interesting as the films themselves. In the case of The Lion King, for example, the entertainment value for children and adults saw that film worthy of inclusion, as well as its top notch voice cast and good old fashioned Disney magic. Meanwhile, Thelma and Louise was included because of two important factors: Ridley Scott's polished storytelling, and the film's landmark themes of friendship and feminism. Special kudos are be in order for Scott, as this film joins Blade Runner and Alien as further entries of his filmography being preserved.
Other highlights from this year's National Film Registry list picks include the oldest and youngest entries into their library (1903's Life of an American Fireman, and 1998's Rushmore), as well as notables like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Funny Girl, and The Birds. As usual, the diverse selection of films not only ensures that no certain genres or eras are being favored, but also that the collection continues to be a proper representation of cinema history. Though in the case of a movie like The Princess Bride, the encapsulation of old school humor and 80's sensibilities makes for one of those features in the collection that is a timeless gem. It is its broad appeal, rather then genre focus, that makes it as popular as it is today, and it is one of the best examples of what the National Film Registry tries to preserve, all in the name of cinema.
by Jennifer Drysdale 12:00 AM PST, December 14, 2016
Meghan Markle's romance with Prince Harry has definitely made headlines, but it's also made her the most searched actress on Google.
The Suits star, alongside Brad Pitt, topped Google's list of 2016's most searched actors. Interestingly, Pitt's ex, Angelina Jolie, did not make the top 10.
2016 was also a great googling year for Beyoncé, who was the most searched musical artist -- "Formation" was also the most-searched song, and Rachel Roy was the most searched fashion designer (see: Becky with the good hair).
Kanye West also made the list -- coming in at the 10th most searched designer and 8th most searched musical artist.
The top searched people, however, were perhaps more fitting for this year's landmarks: the Rio Olympics and the presidential election. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were the first and second most searched people, respectively, while Olympians Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Simone Biles and Usain Bolt all placed in the top 10.
The Olympics was also the top-searched news keyword, with elections coming in second in both news and the "How to..." category. "How to register to vote" came behind "How to play Pokémon Go." The popular app also topped election-related questions in the "What is" category.
Though Kim Kardashian has taken a break from her selfie game since her robbery in Paris, the reality star still topped the list of most searched selfies.
As for the top searches overall, that would be Powerball, Prince and Hurricane Matthew, as the top three, respectively, with the Olympics, David Bowie, Trump, Election and Hillary Clinton all making the top 10.
Worlds -- and search terms – collided recently when Trump and West met up at Trump Tower in New York City on Tuesday.
She’s the Queen of Google! Meghan Markle may have just recently made headlines when news broke in October that she was dating Prince Harry, but that didn’t stop the Suits star from quickly being crowned Google’s most-searched actress in 2016. Google revealed its top searches of the year Wednesday, December 14, officially giving the crown to the actress. Even though Markle entered the spotlight late in the year, she still beat out names like French star Marion Cotillard (who came in at second on the list) and Best Actress Oscar winner Brie Larson (who was cast as Captain Marvel this year and came in fifth) for the top spot.
For actors, Brad Pitt’s shocking divorce from Angelina Jolie helped propel him to the No. 1 spot as the most-searched-for actor on the trending list this year. In September, news broke that Brangelina was no longer, and ever since then, the actor’s name has been making headlines and prompting Google searches. People were likely searching for Cotillard’s name because of her link to Pitt. The second-most-searched actress starred in the film Allied alongside him, fueling affair rumors.
And Queen B ruled the musicians list this year! Beyoncé, who released her album Lemonade this year, was the most-searched-for pop star, with Céline Dion following behind at a close second. Dion was in the spotlight this year due to the death of her longtime love, René Angélil.
As 2016 comes to a close, take a look at the other actors, actresses and musicians who people were Googling this year!
Will Allied be remembered as a war classic – or for the feverish speculation about the relationship between Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard? From Burton and Taylor to Titanic, here’s what happens when Hollywood loses control
The film world approaches its awards season, and is experiencing a recurrent phenomenon concerning the way press promotional comment becomes dangerously unhelpful and unmanaged. The errant publicity takes up as much cultural space as the film, a distracting alternative narrative. It is cognitive hype dissonance.
Robert Zemeckis’s forthcoming Allied is set fair to be a great big blockbuster, a swooning secondworld war romantic drama. Brad Pitt is Max Vatan, a handsome Allied intelligence agent who has a steamy affair with French resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour, played by Marion Cotillard. But then he is told that she is a Nazi spy and he must kill her. It sounds like a gripping tale, full of passion, transgression, suspicion.
The problem is that the public, disobediently giggling over their social media accounts, reckon they’ve already got the scoop without needing to see the film. As reports came in of Brad’s upcoming divorce with Angelina Jolie, fans convinced themselves he had been cheating on Ange with Marion Cotillard while away shooting this very picture. Mischievous bloggers and tweeters are jujitsu-ing the Allied publicity machine with gags about how it’s Ange who is going to come on to whack Marion. Allied might be upstaged by the gossip, and become best known for something other than itself.
And why shouldn’t it happen? Cotillard and Pitt have denied any affair, but the rumours have been fuelled by how Pitt and Jolie first met. When the couple were filming Mr and Mrs Smith a decade ago they were married to other people. The film ignited their romance. The publicity worked in the film’s favour, just about, though with lingering sympathy for Jennifer Aniston. This kind of spontaneous fact-meets-fiction hype mirage is hardly new. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor met while filming Cleopatra in the late 1950s, and both were married. Their affair was considered hardly less sensational and world-historically important than that of the characters they played.
Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard as second world war spies in trailer for Allied
A quite different, more serious sort of publicity dissonance concerns The Birth of a Nation, the forthcoming true-life story of a US slave uprising in 1831, led by Nat Turner, played by the movie’s young director Nate Parker — and of course satirically named after DW Griffith’s notorious silent movie of 1915 praising the Ku Klux Klan.
Before anyone had seen the film, they had read about how it had stunned crowds at Sundance and secured a huge studio deal. In the #blacklivesmatter era, this was a movie the liberal media classes were naturally preparing to get behind, until it became known that Parker had been accused of raping a fellow student while at Pennsylvania State University in 2001; he was acquitted. The complainant later took her own life, in 2012. It should be irrelevant to the question of how good the film is. But it can hardly be set aside, especially for a film with lofty ideals.
The news story looms over the film. How to reconcile the two? Richard Brody in the New Yorker boldly tackled the dissonance head on with his comment about the way Parker shows the rapes in his movie. They are “depicted entirely from their significance to men,” Brody writes. “Parker appallingly shifts the scenes around to the male view of the action, and never shows women in discussion among themselves, never presents how enslaved women endure and confront their own oppression.”
A similar kind of real-life counter-reading has been happening for decades with Roman Polanski’s films, to which the director has long made it silently plain he will not concede an inch. Time will tell if Parker must pursue the same course, although their legal positions are different.
These cases are quite different from the phoney stories planted by studio flacks from time immemorial, dependent on co-operative artists and a complaisant press. Fixers from the Hollywood golden age like MGM’s Howard Strickling and Eddie Mannix and Fox’s Harry Brand were always creating bogus romances, fake intrigues and hokey life-stories to promote movies or distract attention from brewing scandals. The Coens’ Hail Caesar! (2016) and Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success (1957) have scenes about this seedy byproduct of the fantasy-factory.
Press rows sometimes dwarf their films and sometimes they don’t. Before Doctor Strange was released, there was widespread unease about the portrayal of the Ancient One, regendered and reconceived for the movie and played by Tilda Swinton, with a “Celtic” origin. Was the Tibetan identity erased out of deference to the important Chinese market? Very possibly. As things turned out, her weirdness seemed to go beyond national identity.
Or take a movie that was once the most discussed film of its day, a film which the commentariat regarded with saucer-eyed seriousness as a zeitgeist phenomenon: Snakes on a Plane (2006). It is difficult to believe now, but this all-but-forgotten Samuel L Jackson thriller about — well — snakes on a plane, was once feverishly discussed, because of its much-vaunted but wildly exaggerated status as an internet phenomenon. The producers allegedly incorporated online feedback into production with extra shooting days. Pundits believed that this Wiki-ised technique could be used for all films from then on. But it wasn’t. And when the film turned out to be a bit of a dud, this wall of chatter turned to sheepish silence.
The list of dissonant films goes on. The Interview (2014) was a film satirising North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that led to hacking attacks, which in turn led to apparently craven industry moves to re-edit the film and limit its distribution. The resulting hype built the movie up in everyone’s mind as a classic of satire, standing up heroically to both the North Koreans and the cringing producers. When it finally came out, it was clear that it wasn’t that great. It didn’t fit the narrative created for it.
Other films have identities which leaked into the real world of the news: the Watergate mole took his nickname from the title of the porn film Deep Throat (1972). It wasn’t simply arbitrary. In the Watergate era, when cynicism about a dodgy president was becoming widespread, there was a kind of weird karmic alliance between this blase mood and the new porno chic.
Very strangely, in recent times, there has been an attempt to force this kind of branding. In the runup to the Brexit vote, Boris Johnson was bellowing that the referendum would be “independence day” — apparently attempting to coattail the publicity of the sci-fi movie sequel with that name. Brexit was victorious, but no-one remembers Boris’s cheery, lame film-title wheeze.
The strangest example of publicity dissonance was that which accompanied the release of James Cameron’s gigantic blockbuster Titanic (1997). Of course, this is remembered as a colossal triumph, which involves a willed amnesia about the huge groundswell of stories before its release about the impending opposite: how terrifyingly unsafe the production was and how brutally Cameron had been driving his cast. There were stories about how Kate Winslet had chipped a bone in her elbow during filming and how she seriously thought she might drown in the tank in which the “sinking” scenes were filmed. The narrative was clearly all about how the curse of Titanic was about to strike again …. But it all vanished like snow off a ditch when the film emerged and became a hit.
Allied is in cinemas from 23 November
Allied WILL be remembered as a war classic. Brad should get his shit together DO NOT ALLOW/NOT let Angelina and her "TEAM to ruin this masterpiece. and about this "The problem is that the public, disobediently giggling over their social media accounts, reckon they’ve already got the scoop without needing to see the film." the public should grow up stop or vanish all the Stupid Speculations about the co-stars b'oz it's all been done and denied nothing there to gossip. Open your mind that Angelina obviously timed everything in filing the Divorce, she's obviously trying to ruin him and his movie goodluck with that but you know it's up to the public if they will took the stupid bait of LIES of Angelina or be a grown up and see the movie for the movie not for the rumor. focus on the movie not on rumors.appreciate the movie not the rumors.set aside or throw away his divorce and custody issue.don't let a bitter bitch manipulate the public in destroying him.oscar worthy. PLAIN AND SIMPLE "FOCUS ON THE MOVIE"
Adele's performance at the Grammys was married by audio glitches
The singer and others blamed a fallen piano microphone for the problem
(CNN)One of the most anticipated performances of Monday night's Grammy Awards show was by Adele, the beloved, big-throated British singer whose new album, "25," has been shattering sales records.
But early into her live rendition of the ballad "All I Ask," it was clear that something was wrong.
A clanking sound could be heard in the background as she sang, her microphone cut out briefly and Adele's voice didn't have its usual punch. The singer looked distracted, flashing irritated looks as she powered through the song, backed only by a piano and bathed in a lone spotlight.
Fans, who anticipated another killer performance, were confused. Adele, sounding ... flat?
So what happened?
The singer offered an explanation afterward on Twitter, saying, "The piano mics fell on to the piano strings, that's what the guitar sound was. It made it sound out of tune. S--- happens."
Recording Academy President Neil Portnow gave a more detailed explanation to reporters after the show. According to Variety, he said that as the piano was being lifted onto the stage, a microphone in the piano dropped, which caused the audio glitches heard during the broadcast. Technicians tried to correct it by going to a backup system, which caused the feed to be lost for a second, he said.
"To Adele's credit, she killed it, she did a fantastic job, the pro that she is," Portnow said. "That was all an issue on our behalf. Kenny (Ehrlich, the show's producer) asked that we make that really clear to everybody."
Grammy Awards: the winners list
Many fans on Twitter came to the singer's defense.
"Adele's pitch is consistently & historically flawless. FLAWLESS. That was 100% an audio issue & she was fighting hard from go. Hush, ya'll," said one, singer-songwriter Nichole Nordeman.
Don't feel too bad for Adele, though. The singer, who wasn't eligible for Grammys on Monday night because her album came out too late in the year, said the mishap led her to treat herself after the show to In-N-Out Burger, so "maybe it was worth it."
They contributed "Writing's On the Wall" to 'Spectre'
Rachel Brodsky // January 10, 2016
Sam Smith and longtime affiliate Jimmy Napes (née Jimmy Napier) have won the Best Original Song Golden Globe for their work on Spectre’s “Writing’s On the Wall.” Taking place in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton, Sunday night’s awards ceremony welcomed Katy Perry to present the award, which also included nominees like Ellie Goulding for her contribution to the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack, “Love Me Like You Do,” and Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s Furious 7 cut, “See You Again.”
