FilmBlog

Closing credits

I'm no longer posting to this blog. You can find film resources and lots more besides on The English Blog, which was recently selected as number one language blog by Lexiophiles.

MovieWavs

MovieWavs is another site where you can find sound clips from movies.

Movie Sounds Central

Movie Sounds Central is a great website that has an archive of movie quotes that you can view and listen to online. Go to the website and read some of the quotes. Then listen to them, try and repeat the dialogue, copying the pronunciation. You could even try to speak at the same time.

Posterwire.com

Posterwire.com is a movie poster weblog. From images of the latest Hollywood one-sheets to vintage movie posters, this film poster weblog hopes to offer a bit of insight into film key art.

Movie Marketing Madness

Movie Marketing Madness is your home for all the latest movie marketing developments from around the web. Check here for news and opinions on the latest posters, trailers and more.

The Film Programme Interviews

The Film Programme on the BBC Radio 4 website has dozens of interviews with actors and directors going back to 2002.

Challenge Education Movie Guides

Challenge Education design Movie Guides with lesson plans based on sequences of popular movies aimed at optimising learning results and supplement any EFL course. Each Movie Guide has lesson plans created to be used independently of the whole film and designed for one of the following levels: Beginner, Elementary, Pre Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate. All lesson plans include step-by step Teachers' Notes, Answer Key and Students' Handout ready to use. Their web page has a catalogue with all the Movie Guides available:
http://www.challenge-education.com/catalogue.asp

Catalogue your DVDs with Listal

Listal is a new site which allows you to create online catalogues for your DVDs, books and games. There are some really neat features such as tags and Amazon reviews.

TIME's All-Time 100 Top Movies

TIME's movie critics have chosen their list of the 100 most influential movies of the past 82 years. The films span comedy, horror, drama, romance, action and more. Some of the choices are bound to be controversial. For instance, Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo makes the list, but there's no room for Annie Hall or Manhattan. You can comment on their choice via the Talkback feature.

Super Size Me

I used some scenes from Super Size Me with my English for Marketing class. It's a Michael Moore-style documentary about an American, Morgan Spurlock, who eats nothing but McDonald's food for one month to see what effect such a diet will have on his health. No prizes for guessing the outcome! This film is an excellent discussion starter about junk food, obesity and the role of marketing. Who is to blame? What are the limits of personal responsibility? In our next session, we're having a debate on the topic, "Should the government introduce a ban on advertising junk food to children?" The ESC Le Havre is a business school, so I would expect opinions to be divided.

The Corporation

I saw this film at the cinema a few weeks ago and was looking forward to getting my hands on the DVD. It doesn't disappoint. There are over 8 hours of extra material in the form of 165 interview clips. I used Chapter 10 in class today as an introduction to a discussion about ethics in marketing. It's a really good scene as the two opposing points of view are clearly stated. On the one hand, we have the marketer who thinks it's all a game and that manipulating children into nagging their parents is perfectly acceptable. On the other, the Harvard professor of psychiatry who points out that children are not mini-adults and should not be subjected to the same sort of marketing methods.

Google Movie Search

Google have introduced a new movie search operator "movie:" It enables you to find to find movie-related information faster and more easily, whether you're looking for titles or actors, director or genre, famous lines or obscure plot details. For instance, can't remember the name of that film where Tom Hanks made friends with a volleyball? Search for [movie: Tom Hanks talking to a volleyball] and Google will tell you: it was Cast Away.

Matchstick Men

This film tells the story of a neurotic con man and his partner and has several examples of confidence tricks which could be used as a basis for a lesson about ethics in business.

Hidalgo

Hidalgo is based on the 'true story' of Frank Hopkins, an American cowboy who took part in a 3,000 mile desert horse race from Arabia to Iraq. Or did he? There's been some controversy surrounding this film and not only because of its dubious historical claims (see here too). The cultural stereotyping of the Arabs has also been criticised. Several intestesting themes to explore then, with plenty of discussion material available on the Internet.

Useful tools

To record streaming video you can use WMRecorder. Try it for free or buy it for $30. Great for recording movie trailers! To copy an entire DVD film in DivX format without having to rip it first, use Fair Use Wizard. The 'light' version can be downloaded for free. You won't get all the extras but it's extremely simple to use. For extracting clips from movies in DivX format, try XMPEG.

How To Make A Video Clip

There are many ways to make a video clip from a DVD. The best method I've found so far involves using XMPEG to extract the scene from the DVD and Windows Movie Maker to edit the clip. If you've got Windows XP, Movie Maker should already be installed. Look in Programs > Accessories. If anyone has a better method, I'd be interested to hear of it.

Politeness in The Graduate

Here's a lesson plan for teaching polite request forms based on a scenes from The Graduate and here's a quiz based on the same movie.

American Rhetoric: Movie Speeches

"Full text, audio and video database of some 80 Hollywood movie speeches, as selected by audiences of American Rhetoric. A new movie speech is added every 2-3 weeks. Included are military movie speeches, sports-oriented movie speeches, forensic movie speeches, and social-political  movie speeches, among others." Thanks to Lesley Graham for suggesting this site.

Slap Her, She French

This teen revenge comedy is not the greatest film ever made, but there are very few films which can't be exploited in some way for teaching purposes. This one is good for looking at stereotypes. It gives the impression that the typical French girl wears a beret, scarf and frilly blouse. Oh, and speaks English with an excruciating French accent. The bit about the beret might have been true in the 1940s but it's 'un peu passé' now. See Green Card for a more a more 'realistic' French stereotype (played by a real Frenchman, Gérard Depardieu).

Movie Riddles

A activity to get ESL students talking about movies from Boggle's World.