Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 136th installment of Saturday Hot Links.
Today: The 675 Free Movies Online (Great Classics, Indies, Noirs, Westerns, Etc) Edition.
There are a ton of free movies online in the public domain. The link above takes you to an Open Culture post with links to (reportedly) 675 of them. I have included three in today’s SHL including the movie Fear and Desire directed by Stanley Kubrick which he tried to destroy… the first The Fast and the Furious produced by Roger Corman… and the classically awfully science fiction movie by Ed Wood, Plan 9 from Outer Space.
What happened at Marvel Studios last weekend, and why are fans so mad at them?
Bob Dylan on telling a story in song.
Vimeo invests in first original series: The comedy “High Maintenance”.
Emma Watson recently graduated from Brown University and took this selfie.
“True Detective”: Season 2 news including this — show will have three leads.
New ESPN 2014 World Cup commercial [video].
Excellent Vulture interview with Wil Wheaton.
How did the whole students getting summers off thing get started.
The top 10 greatest Godzilla movies.
Perhaps the answer to how flightless birds traveled around the world.
The Power and the Gory: Why women love the new wave of violent TV.
Guess who takes the adage “Writing is Rewriting” seriously: The U.S. Supreme Court… and not in a good way.
17 famous actors in tiny background parts [videos].
Eight literary homes you can buy right now.
Has found footage horror reached a new stage.
Asteroid crash 290 million years ago set Russian meteor on collision course with Earth.
Nice feature on prolific Hollywood movie producer Lauren Shuler Donner.
The history of the ramen noodle.
30 years of Memorial Day blockbuster movies ranked.
Chuck Wendig: Not All Men, But Too Many Men.
The greatest summer camp movie douchebags.
Why does “terrible” mean bad and “terrific” mean good.
The films of Steven Spielberg [10 minute video compilation].
How to Make Love: Secrets of Wooing from the 1930s.
The plot to Pixar’s next movie Inside Out.
11 sounds your kids have probably never heard.
Screenwriter-director Michael Gottlieb (Mannequin, Mr. Nanny) killed in a motorcycle accident at the age of 69.
Want to purchase tapes of historic World Cup matches, this is the place to go.
Fast forward to The Big One [earthquake, that is].
QT’s Hateful Eight back on and set to shoot in November.
Why aren’t bidets common in the United States.
The 7 most exclusive secret societies in history.
Watch the trailer for the last movie River Phoenix made, finally being released [video].
It’s 1981 and a handful of newspapers are using this amazing new technology known as the Internet [video].
The Shawshank Redemption accounted for 151 hours of basic cable airtime in 2013.
Two similar but different items that will blow your mind:
Man catches infant falling from two-story building [video].
Baseball player’s first home run of the season caught by his father [video].
How Louisiana’s film industry is doing better than California.
10 authors who are brilliant at Twitter.
LaVar Burton has a Kickstarter campaign going to bring back “Reading Rainbow”.
Related: See how LaVar Burton responded when the Kickstarter campaign hit its $1M goal… in a single day [video].
Why does bacon smell so good.
Jurassic World director Colin Treverrow talks plot details and recent leaks.
Nailing bike thieves in San Francisco [video].
Hollywood set for a huge June in China.
How do tornadoes form.
James Cameron developing live Avatar show with Cirque du Soleil.
11 workout tips from ancient civilizations.
Fox’s top exec Kevin Reilly departs position.
8 insanely lucky flea market finds.
Where are the Disney villains of yesteryear.
You say you want to read about an insurance scam that involves a police officer, insurance adjuster, a dead deer and blood? Read this.
The cast of “Wonder Years” reunite, take a selfie [photo].
“This American Life” going the way of self-distribution… which means Ira Glass will hand deliver a tape to us each week?
The only 8 western comedies Hollywood has made since 1990.
And Elon Musk keeps forging ahead into the future [video].
The perfect time of day to do everything.
Lionsgate is moving forward with Hunger Games theme park plans.
Related: Indiewire put together a list of 9 indie films they definitely do not want to see as theme parks.
Why is Amazon bullying book publishers.
The highest rated canceled TV shows of 2013–2014.
ESPN’S Host Bob Ley’s 7 tips for watching the World Cup.
Related: Paralyzed teen to kick World Cup’s first ball with mind-controlled exoskeleton
20 wise and witty J.K. Rowling quotes.
15 things you might not know about Caddyshack.
A brief and incomplete history of the swimsuit.
The best fight scenes from “Game of Thrones” [video].
Empire Magazine readers vote Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back as the best movie of all time.
Someone just bought the fancy glass house from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Nice NYT feature on screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber.
The MPAA really has no idea what it’s doing.
Finally poet, author, teacher and civil rights activist Maya Angelou dead at 86.
17 Maya Angelou quotes that will inspire you to be a better person.
Watch Maya Angelou sign “My Name” on Sesame Street [video].
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: Four questions for you.
* Are you prone to starting scripts, but not finishing them?
* Do you get lost when you are writing your script, then lose faith in it — and yourself?
* Have you received feedback that your scripts have thin characters or weak plots?
* Do you have a great concept for a spec script you want to get to market as smartly and quickly as you can?
The Prep: From Concept to Outline class is designed for you.
This 6-week online workshop is unique, offering a professional approach to developing and ‘breaking’ your story. Combining lectures, weekly writing assignments, feedback, and teleconferences, it is a proven approach to take you through the prep-writing process.
Plus if you do the work, you not only end up with an outline (what I call Narrative Throughline), you also learn an approach to prep-writing you can adopt and adapt to fit your own creative needs.
Let’s take those four questions from above one by one:
* The single biggest reason why writers start but fail to finish scripts is because they don’t really know their story. In our 6-week Prep class, the focus is on precisely that: finding your story.
* The best way to avoid getting lost when you type FADE IN is to break your story in prep, like the pros do. If you do the work, at the end of the Prep workshop, you will have a thorough outline of your story, enabling you to power into the page-writing process with confidence.
* The work you do in the Prep course targets both character and plot, so you can end up with well-defined and richly drawn characters, and a solid story structure.
* Breaking your story in prep actually speeds up the scripting process, enabling you to get from concept to market faster than if you try to find your story by writing pages.
Here are some testimonials from writers who have taken the Prep: From Concept to Outline workshop:
“You gave us just the right amount of ideas, encouragement, and support to discover, develop, and design a real workable blueprint to take into the page writing.” — David Broyles
“The Prep class has given me a set of practical tools to use to take the bare glimmer of a concept to outline in six weeks.” — James Tichenor
I honestly can’t wait to get started on this script now, and to use what I’ve learned in Prep to go back and rewrite other scripts.” — Paul Labich
The approach in the Prep class works. I know this not only from working with writers in our online courses, but also through private sessions I have had with professional screenwriters, even playwrights to help them crack their stories.
The upcoming Prep workshop begins June 9 and I’ll be leading that session.
Isn’t it time you learned to approach your screenwriting like most of the pros do — breaking their story in prep? Sign up now for the next session of Prep: From Concept to Outline by going here.
I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!