Just in time for The Film Preservation Blogathon, Deadline reveals that award-winning film historian Cari Beauchamp has been appointed Resident Scholar of the Mary Pickford Foundation effective immediately. She will work alongside Elaina Archer, the recently named Director of Archive and Legacy, to "assist the Foundation in creating an online clearing house and research center that will feature access to the vast collections of original videos and writings as well as photograph collections, film clips and historical material on Mary Pickford." The pair will also work on "developing a wide range of projects to educate current and future generations through public lectures, screenings, community education programs and more."

Beauchamp is a fantastic pick for the job, as the historian and author is one of most well-regarded specialists on the topic women in silent films. In 2011, she was honored with an unprecedented second Film Scholarship by the Academy for her work on Gloria Swanson. Aside from penning four books, she also writes and produces documentaries, writes for "Vanity Fair," serves as a judge for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, and is considered an expert historian on the topic of documentaries.

Per their website, "the Mary Pickford Institute is a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles and dedicated to cultivating awareness of film pioneer Mary Pickford’s life, preserving her work, furthering her philanthropic legacy and honoring her creativity. MPI actively serves the community through our public research library, legacy programs and community projects. Our educational outreach projects are designed to empower students, build a sense of accomplishment and self-esteem, and ignite an excitement for learning." Beyond special programs, the MPI is also open to the public.

Read more about Pickford and her incredible legacy after the break!

"Being John Malkovich" (Criterion), a devastatingly funny portrait of unhappiness, desperation, desire, and the vicious things we do for love, catapulted Spike Jonze from music video wunderkind to visionary director and Charlie Kaufman from sitcom scribe to brilliant screenwriter. In 1999 it was fresh and daring and inventive, and more than ten years later, in the age of reality TV and celebrity obsession gone viral, it is as timely and topical as ever, and just as inventive, surprising, devastating, and compassionate.

John Cusack stars as a shaggy, self-important only marionette artist who takes a  break from the angst-ridden wish fulfillment fantasies of his puppet theater to get a paying job and becomes obsessed with an acerbic woman (Catherin Keener) in the office next door. The fact that he's married (to an improbably dowdy Cameron Diaz in a dowdy frizz) doesn't phase his flailing attempts at seduction.

The mundane and the miraculous exist side by side in "Being John Malkovich." The half-scale size of the 7 ½ floor is groaner of a pun ("low overhead," get it?) turned deadpan surreal sight gag, and when Cusack stumbles into the weirdly organic portal that sends him into the mind of John Malkovich (played with exceedingly good humor by John Malkovich), the metaphysical implication pale beside the business opportunities.

It has been called quirky, clever, funny, and satirical, and it is all that, but behind all of the madcap invention and creative playfulness is a terrible sadness, a portrait of people so miserable in their own skins that they will do almost anything to become someone else. Jonze really gets Kaufman's multi-layered vision of anxiety and unhappiness and desperation for love and affirmation and success, bringing a compassion to the players and as he celebrates the dark humor, the painful comedy, the neediness, and the cruelty of it all with creative invention and cinematic delights. What better way to explore the vicious things we do for love than through laughter?

Continue reading at Videodrone

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs, Blu-rays and streaming video for May 15

For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon III, which runs from Sunday, May 13 through Friday, May 18, 2012, is dedicated to helping the National Film Preservation Foundation raise money to score and stream the recently unearthed reels of The White Shadow, a silent film from director Graham Cutts that young Alfred Hitchcock worked on as screenwriter, production designer, editor, and assistant director, for all to enjoy. The blogathon is hosted by Ferdy on Films, Self-Styled Siren, and This Island Rod, and you can make your donations to that effort at the NFPF website here.

Film historian, critic, and film collector Fernando Martín Peña spent twenty years tracking down the holy grail that was the complete, long though lost "Metropolis."

Fritz Lang's 1927 epic is a landmark science fiction filmmaking, a masterpiece of silent film and a visionary work of cinema, and its reputation has been based on an incomplete version of his original film. After its premiere in Berlin, UFA (which produced the film) cut it down for general release, and it was often cut further for export (the American release was cut by more than a third). But there rumors that an uncut print that had found its way to Argentina, thanks to an ambitious distributor who saw the film in its first run in Berlin, and Peña had heard stories of a private print in the possession of a Buenos Aries film critic and historian, a 16mm reduction of a 35mm print imported before any of the cuts had been made (Peña tells the entire fascinating story here). He spent decades trying to follow the leads to a public archive, where he was met with bureaucratic wall.

In collaboration with Paula Felix Didier, director of Museo del Cine, Buenos Aires, he finally found it print. They confirmed its authenticity and contacted the Murnau Foundation, which had undertaken the task to reconstructing the original version. It was only one of many elements that went into the definitive version that has since screened around the world in digital prints and is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Kino -- lost footage was also recently discovered in a New Zealand archive, and in better condition than the Argentinean print -- but it was the essential missing link. Not only did it contribute footage unavailable in any form elsewhere, it provided an visual invaluable guide to the artists, historians and technicians doing the physical work of restoring and reconstructing the definitive version.

The Murnau Institute first embarked on a major restoration about a decade ago with the materials they had on hand and it revealed just how much footage -- including significant sequences and entire subplots -- was missing. Title cards sketched out subplots lost when the film was edited down by UFA (against the wishes of Lang), in particular the stories of The Thin Man (Fritz Rasp), who in previous editions is sent by Joh Frederson on a clandestine mission and then all but disappears; Joh Frederson's assistant Josaphat (Theodor Loos), who is fired by Frederson and taken in by Freder; and the worker 11811, who Freder relieves from the exhausting duty of working the hands of the clock-like device. and his adventures in the world above ground where he becomes intoxicated on the decadence. Those stories, suggested in the earlier reconstruction, are played out here, and there are further additions, from an additional action scene in the escape from the flooding underwater city to shots trimmed from within scenes. The restoration of even these brief shots fills out the rhythmic qualities of Lang's editing and adds detail to the montage, and in a few significant scenes it adds to the scope and intricacy of the drama.

"Chronicle" (Fox) brings the "found footage" aesthetic to the superhero / coming of age drama to observe that with great power sometimes comes great irresponsibility. In this low-budget twist on the genre, three high school buddies -- a cross-section of familiar types -- are the recipients of enormous telekinetic powers bestowed by close encounter with an extraterrestrial crystal, and then proceed to record their experiments for posterity.

"[T]he movie, directed by Josh Trank from a script by Trank and Max Landis (son of director and genre sponge John Landis, and it shows), finds a multiplicity of perspectives from which to cheat," confesses MSN film critic Glenn Kenny, in its approach to the spectacle of their antics.

Michael B. Jordan, Alex Russell, and Dane DeHaan play the three students -- the popular kid, the smart kid, and the angry outcast kid, respectively -- and their response to sudden power follows accordingly.

"The "your near-supernatural powers are lots of fun, until they're not!" theme heralds back to the B classic "X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes," in which the hero enjoys seeing through women's blouses and beating the house in Vegas until he begins to see too much; at which point the movie begins to take on more of a resemblance to the grade-Z obscurity "Horror High," in which the unpleasant high school nerd becomes more unpleasant via chemicals and offs his classmates."

Kenny confirms that "Chronicle" is "quite a bit more inventive in its mayhem depictions than that picture was," Kenny continues, affirming that it is "a reasonably engrossing and occasionally inventive piece of sci-fi schlock."

Continue reading at Videodrone

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs, Blu-rays and streaming video for May 15 

I’m thrilled that the Hitlist is participating in For the Love of Film: The Third Annual Film Preservation Blogathon. Running from May 13 to May 18, this year’s blogathon is raising money to help the National Film Preservation Foundation restore and stream some recently discovered reels of “The White Shadow,” the earliest known film that young Alfred Hitchcock worked on (as screenwriter, production designer, editor, and assistant director!). “The White Shadow” is a silent film from 1924 directed by Graham Cutts. The film stars Betty Compson (Fatty Arbuckle's frequent leading lady) in the dual role of twin sisters—one as pure as the driven snow and the other “without a soul.” The first three reels of the film were found last year among a group of rare American nitrate prints at the New Zealand Film Archive. It is the only known copy of the film. You can help in the efforts to bring this unique film back into public view by clicking here.

As most movie lovers know, America’s rich film history is an endangered species. Countless films have been lost forever and many more are incomplete or deterioriating rapidly. The National Film Preservation Foundation is a nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America’s film heritage. Since opening its doors in 1997, the NFPF has supported film preservation in all 50 states and has helped save more than 1,900 films.

When I was a kid, the only prints of many great films I was able to see were of vastly inferior quality and tended to be butchered by local TV stations eager to plop in as many commercials as they could. Once crisp black-and-white films were fuzzy and dull and formerly vibrant color spectacles were horribly faded. In recent years there has been a concerted effort by film preservation organizations to preserve at-risk classic films for future generations. I’ll never forget the first time I got to see, in a theater, the restored versions of “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Gone With the Wind.” The pristine prints simply took my breath away.

There’s a name in the credits of all three of those films and over 350 other titles that is largely forgotten today. Can you guess who I’m talking about? The name also appears on superb films such as the 1937 version of “A Star Is Born,” Marlene Dietrich’s campy “Garden of Allah,” Shirley Temple’s “The Little Princess,” “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, John Ford’s “Drums Along the Mohawk,” “Northwest Passage” with Spencer Tracy, Vincente Minnelli’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” starring Judy Garland, “National Velvet” with Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney, and the June Allyson/Margaret O’Brien version of “Little Women.” What do all these movies have in common besides stellar casts and gifted direction? I’ll give you one last hint—this person also worked on “The Red Shoes,” “The Boy with Green Hair,” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.” That’s right. These were all movies made in brilliant three-strip Technicolor. And the credited guardian of this fabulous process was a woman named Natalie Kalmus.