Academy Treasures

Tag: Academy Treasures
The Star Wars universe is filled with amazing and varied characters: crazy aliens, rogue pirates, beautiful princesses and dashing heroes. These characters find their full form through dialogue, makeup and costume. Fans have come to love the series because they instantly recognize individual characters and their stories whenever they grace the screen.The Hollywood Costume exhibition provides an exciting and illustrious glimpse into the Star Wars costumers’ minds with Aggie Guerard Rodgers’s Han Solo costume from Return of the Jedi and John Mollo’s Darth...
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 Upon seeing The French Connection for the first time, legendary producer Darryl F. Zanuck proclaimed the chase sequences “the greatest [he had] ever seen.” Although the film won five Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture and Directing, it is the thrilling pursuit through New York City streets that many moviegoers remember most. These excerpts from director William Friedkin’s notes reveal how he conceived each shot of the gripping chase sequences. With the help of cinematographer Owen Roizman and a talented second unit, Friedkin filmed the...
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Theadora Van Runkle began her career as an illustrator of fashion advertisements for department stores in the 1960s.  After meeting the legendary costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, she left her job at the May Company to work with Jeakins on the historical epic Hawaii before the designer recommended her for the low-budget feature Bonnie and Clyde.   The production stood out for a number of reasons: its anti-hero point of view; its mix of sex and violence; its poor initial reception and subsequent success, which included 10 Academy Award nominations and...
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This rarely-seen snipe (a brief promo showcasing theater policies, concession advertisements, drive-in intermission countdowns, etc.) celebrates the year 1959 with a clever twist on Father Time and Baby New Year. See you in 2015!This is one of the many items contained in the Packard Humanities Institute Collection at the Academy Film Archive. The acquisition, which includes an array of theater advisements such as this, was deposited at the Archive by David Packard in 2009. This historically significant collection contains over 60,000 media items and has transformed the Academy...
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Did you know the tradition of the Christmas card dates back to Victorian-era England? Sir Henry Cole commissioned John Calcott Horsley to design a card for the holiday in 1843, and the festive greeting cards were imported to America from England until 1874, when German-born printer Louis Prang produced the first American-made cards.  Nineteenth century designs ranged from depictions of Christmas trees and Nativity scenes to cards shaped like bells and candles, or decorated with silk and satin. By the early twentieth century, sending Christmas cards had become a popular custom in...
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In the Golden Age of Hollywood, studios were fond of unusual promotions to grab the attention of the public. When it came to the holiday season, Paramount Pictures found an especially charming way of spreading the yuletide spirit. In December 1938, Paramount released Little Orphan Annie, the second big screen adaptation of the popular Depression-era comic strip of the same name.
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These photographs from the 1928 French masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc represent a recent donation of over 50 rare original stills from the classic film to the Academy by Miss Diane Lapworth.  The photos were originally a given to her stepfather from the film’s cinematographer, Rudolph Maté; the two had met during the making of the film in France in 1928, and remained close friends for decades after.
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Meghan Trainor landed with a splash on the music scene with her hit song, “All About That Bass,” leaving many curious about the young singer-songwriter’s artistic influences. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, it’s surprising that Trainor calls out not contemporaries like Katy Perry or Adele but the catchy lyrics and melodies sung by one of the world’s most famous crooners of all, Frank Sinatra, as among her inspirations. Discussing the lyric “You may hear angels cheer / ’Cause we’re together,” from the song “Come Fly With Me,” she told the magazine, “No one writes like that anymore, because it’s hard.”
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Recently rediscovered in the Cecil B. DeMille Collection at the Academy Film Archive was roughly 2,400 feet of 16mm Kodachrome footage featuring scouting and costume tests for DeMille’s unrealized feature film Rurales. The footage consists of roughly 90 minutes of silent material shot on location in Mexico. Judging from newspaper accounts of the development of the film, it's possible the footage was shot in 1944 by Arthur Rosson, slated to serve as associate director on the picture. In this exclusive clip from the costume tests, gorgeous color footage shows the unique costume ideas that were being considered.
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In 2007, Joe Dante launched the web series Trailers from Hell, featuring commentary on trailers by filmmakers. In this installment, Dante discusses the fan following of The Night Walker (1964), written by Psycho author Robert Bloch, and the horror film’s role in director William Castle’s prolific career
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