Comedy and gastronomy: recent additions to the Moving Image Gateway
Published: 21 April 2016This Gateway includes over 1,900 websites relating to moving image and sound materials. These have been subdivided into over 40 subject areas. To suggest new entries or amendments, please contact us by email or telephone.
The Black List Table Reads
This podcast is based on the simple idea of taking Hollywood scripts that have not yet been made into films and presenting them as full length radio plays, performed by Hollywood actors. The podcast is hosted by Leonard Franklin’s Black List site, which exists to support screenwriters by recommending their work to industry producers and professionals. Another interesting resources on the Black List site is 500 Feminist Films, a list of films (with links to imdb) based on a simple set of criteria: to qualify as a feminist film the film must have at least one of the following: a female director; a female screenwriter; a female lead; or features strong pro-woman themes. The list could be a good starting point for classroom/semimar discussion on the subject. The Table Reads podcast is also freely available in iTunes.
British Stand-up Comedy Archive
This resource was established at the University of Kent in 2013 to celebrate, preserve, and provide access to the archives and records of British stand-up comedy and comedians. The information on the University of Kent Special Collections page gives details of the available material, which includes stills, posters, production documents and audiovisual content, in the form of off-air recordings and video recordings of live events. A full catalogue will be made available online in 2016 but until then interested researchers can email the Special Collections team (specialcollections@kent.ac.uk) regarding the collections, which can be viewed in the Special Collections & Archives Reading Room in the Templeman Library. The digitisation is ongoing but some audiovisual content is already available on Soundcloud, including material from Attila the Stockbroker, Linda Smith, Mark Thomas and Richard Herring. The project’s excellent and informative blog provides regular updates about new acquisitions as well as interesting thoughts and advice on audiovisual digitisation on a budget in terms of equipment, funding and workflow.
Digital Mechanism and Gear Library (DMG Lib)
This site is home to a wide range of resources about mechanical engineering, including a collection of interactive animationsand thousands of videos depicting mechanisms in motion. The site also features a thesaurus, a collection of images and biographies of significant people in the domain of mechanical engineering from 1500 to the present day.
Gastropod
Gastropod looks at food from the perspective of science and history. The podcast is nicely designed and is produced and presented by Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley, who are both journalists with an academic background in the sciences. Witty and stimulating in equal measure and with an archive going back to 2014, there are two episodes a month, each one a mixture of short items and longer in-depth reports. Episodes have covered caffeine, fungi, alcohol consumption, the calorie as a unit of energy and snails. Each podcast comes with notes, and is often accompanied by stills and short videos. The podcasts are available on Soundcloud, iTunes and as RSS feeds.
Reply All
Ostensibly about how people shape the internet and how the internet shapes people, this popular podcast approaches technology from a human-interest angle. Hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman, the enthusiasm and knowledge of the hosts ensures that this is a very listenable and useful resource for information about internet culture and all aspects of the online world, covering a wide range of topics. Weekly episodes are free and also available on iTunes
Useful Science
This site posts one sentence ‘Tweetable’ summaries of recent scientific research which is relevant in some way to everyday life. The podcast, which began in September 2015, consists of hour long discussions about the research, aiming to explore the summaries in more depth. Each podcast is about an hour long and consists of a rotating panel of experts. Attractively laid out and easy to navigate, users can explore a range of broad subject headings including Health, Nutrition, Creativity, Persuasion, Productivity and Sleep. Users can click through the summary to find the original research (or a detailed summary thereof) as presented in the relevant scientific journal. Scholarly, yet accessible, this resource has potential appeal and use to a general listenership as well as science students, researchers and postgraduates.