LikeTelevision’s Samurai Library

As you may have heard, a new movie is coming called The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise. Now before you go and check that film out, you might want to get a better appreciation of the Samurai films from the glory days of the 1950s and 1960s. For most, the greatest Samurai film of all time is Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, a 3 1/2 hour epic tale of how a loose band of Ronin (Samurai warriors who are no longer working for a Warlord) defend a village of farmers from marauding bandits. The film is listed at imdb as a top 10 film of all time, and also listed in the latest British Film Institute latest poll as a top 10, by both critics and directors. Watch PREVIEW. Another terrific Kurosawa film you might have missed is called Throne of Blood, a loose rendering of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in feudal Japan. I will never forget the final scene where Toshiro Mifune gets attacked by a few thousand arrows whizzing through the air. WOW -what a scene! There’s several more Kurosawa films that are Msut see, especially the film Rashomon, which examines a crime through the eyes of the people involved. Another great Kurosawa film is called Yojimbo, or The Bodyguard - which was the inspiration for Clint Eastwood’s classic - A Fist Full of Dollars

Another brilliant film, or in this case a series of three films - comes from Hiroshi Inagaki with the Samurai Trilogy about Japan’s greatest Samurai warrior - Takeszo, who later became known as Musashi Miyamoto. Check out all 3 films - Samurai One - Musashi Miyamoto, Samurai Two - Duel at Ichijoji Temple, Watch PREVIEW and Samurai Three - Duel at Ganryu Island. Watch PREVIEW.

Another interesting tale about Samurai history can be viewed in part 3 of a movie called Kwaidan called Hoichi The Earless. Watch a PREVIEW of Kwaidan to learn more. And one more clip of interest - check out the Kendo expert in episode seven of You asked For It. Phew… that’s a lot of Samurai related films, huh?

Happy Thanksgiving from LikeTelevision!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING from LikeTelevision! We would like to suggest some fun Thanksgiving related entertainment - our favorite is Turkey Day with the Beverly Hillbilies. Granny is ready to kill and cook the turkey… who is now Elly’s good friend. Poor Jed has trouble dropping the ax on the turkey’s head… especially when he looks at him kind of funny. It’s a really great episode - as the Clampetts celebrate the Thanksgiving feast, on their pool table, in the Billiard Room. Another cool cartoon comes from one of the masters - Tex Avery in Jerky Turkey. Yep… you can watch the Pilgrims line up for cigarrettes at Ye Old Cigarette store. (I bet the kid’s loved it - HA!). Finally - you might want to check out a Lenny Federal music video filmed the day before Thanksgiving a few years back… called Chicken Pie.

And in case you missed the link above - here’s a special thanksgiving video clip from LikeTelevision wishing all our friends a wonderful and safe holiday.

Search for The Trial

On November 20, 1945 - the Nurenburg trial begins. Check out the archive footage. So… it seemed like a good day to search LikeTelevision for The Trial. A very cool list to say the least. Fritz Lang’s M, Franz Kafka’s The Trial with Anthony Perkins, and the 3 stooges with Curly in Disorder in the Court. & More.

I would also suggest you check out the wild previews for Night Court posted in the blog a few weeks ago.

Bye, Bye, MP3.com

From time to time, folks have asked us for a little history about LikeTelevision - and we never said much about it. Well, in case you’re interested in some background …. read on. But first, something to consider….

MP3.com goes back a way in internet history. I checked Network Solutions, and did a whois, and saw MP3.com was registered as a domain in Dec. 1997. At that time, the big boy on the street for Independent Music was an internet site called IUMA, which stands for Internet Underground Music Archive. But for the most part, IUMA only offered web pages for emerging bands… it didn’t really offer much media. Well… in came mp3.com… that allowed bands to post mp3 files of their songs…. and tons of bands said, yeah - cool… then the internet boom and IPOs… and before you know it, mp3.com was publicly traded and had a market cap of 7 billion plus in 1999. In 2001, Vinvendi bought mp3 for about 372 million (nice haircut - ouch)…. on Nov. 14, 2003 - the company was acquired by CNET, presumably for a lot less than 372 million. To top if off - the 250,000 artist who sell their stuff through mp3.com - have till Dec. 2 to get it, cause after that it is going to the shredder.

So what does that have to do with LikeTelevision. you ask. Well back in the day… years before LikeTelevision was a company, the founders of LT were hard at work on a site called CDArt. Way back in the Jurassic period, on May 12, 1997 -7 months before mp3 started offering audio media - CDArt arrived, and created a place for bands to get their music videos encoded for free, and broadcast those videos from the site. All for free. Our thinking was - if a band had a music video, they propably were pretty decent, so the video would act as a quality barrier. (Sites with 100,000 bands, where all the music was lame… were lame sites for music lovers). And then we started recording live bands at the studio, got a keg of Heineken for the video shoots, and created an absoulte ton of cool independent music videos. We also released sampler CDs - called CDXAs (a mixed mode, audio and computer disc) of the top bands. We even had some TV commercials - here’s my favorite 30 sec. spot. (here’s a long form one that’s cool). Then in 1999 - we saw the growth of Napster and the ability to get copyrighted material for nothing… and we saw the writing on the wall for that niche of the entertainment industry. So we decided it was time to move on - and created LikeTelevision from scratch, having learned a lot of lessons from our experience with cdart.com. Anyway - cdart.com is still alive, still free, and run by computers as an online application. We haven’t done one edit ourselves since 1999… it is run by the artists and music lovers who use the site. Bands from all around the world can load their videos, mp3 files, create and manage their web pages - all for the same low price - free. Anyway… I hadn’t thought about the cdart days for a long time - but the news about mp3 made me think about it. We had a lot of fun back in our musical heyday… but since then, we got rid of the Heineken keg, went lean (literally… lost 30 pounds myself :o) and got down to some serious work creating the coolest library of digital entertainment for internet network broadcast and download - here at LikeTelevision. And no my friends, we didn’t abandon our musical past - check out some Zim Zum shows, and watch this medley of our house band - the LTi Allstars and some other cool stuff.

Well - that’s the story and I’m sticking to it.

Ozzie & Harriet - New Mpegs

The Nelson Family is always a hoot - and offers quite a different perspective on life than what is served up today. Sure - there’s sugar candy coated lollipops applied, but hey, who cares - it tastes good. This episode is a classic - No News For Harriet - a funny look at the troubles men have “communicating” with women, ummmm such as - husband Ozzie to wife, Harriet.

In case you missed the big news - we just opened Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai to the download area. Perhaps a top 10 movie of all time, you need to check out this film. A story as good as any Speilberg or George Lucas movie, combined with the cinematography of Orson Welles or John Ford - all rolled in one elegant epic package - 3 & 1/2 hours of movie excellence. Seven Samurai. Highly recommended. Speaking of highly recommended - try Hoichi the Earless. WHOA!

More MPEGS -Son of Godzilla

As promised more fat mpegs are on the way…. hooray… it’s Son of Godzilla - a cult classic with some of the best insect type monsters of the 60s. What a silly, fun movie… knock yourselves out. And you might wanto to check out King Zor in the toy library just to get in the mood.

More new mpeg downloads on the way… come back.

Massive Download -Seven Samurai

WOW - Akira Kurosawa’s 3 1/2 hour epic film, Seven Samurai is ready for download - over 3 gigs of Kurosawa genius. A group of farmers hire seven samurai to protect them from a band of evil bandits. After careful preparation, a series of smaller skirmishs lead up to the final assault at the finish. This is a great film - absolutely a top 10, all time. (see IMDB - at number 7, Shichinin no samurai, or Seven Samurai). Or how about the British Film Institute. Director’s Top 10, … if you checked that link out, you rpobably noticed another Kurosawa film in the top 10, Rashomon. And yes… we are offer Battleship Potemkin, Rules of the Game.

Seven Samurai is a massive download, over 3 gigs (ouch). The film is broken into 13 chapters for download and also comes with the preview. In a previous entry - we suggested that users get some download software to make the process easier via scheduling and resume broken download features, etc etc. For most systems, you are limited to just 2 downloads at a time, so making a queue list makes sense when you need to get 13 chapters. Yikes.

New Popeye - I’m in the Army

Here’s another great Popeye cartoon - I’m in the Army Now. Basically, Olive tells Popeye and Bluto that she justs melts for a man in uniform… so both guys feel compelled to enlist. Trouble is, there’s only ONE spot open - so they each try and out do each other with heroic tales. Popeye is very hungry for spinach in this cartoon - he is eating some spinach many times… count ‘em.

New Downloads & Rotations

It’s time to do some rotation in the video download library… pulling some content down, and adding new mpegs or dvd iso files. Here’s what’s up… coming down, Brigitte Bardot And God Created Woman, bye bye DVD iso, mpegs are still up. Same with Get Christie Love and a Bucket of Blood… mpegs remain, dvd iso files are history. Also took away 2 cartoon DVD iso files… but the mpegs remain. Finally, we pulled the mpegs from Throne of Blood. Ok… so what’s new… coming up, and ready in a day or 2, is one of the greatest films of all time! Yep, coming shortly, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, a movie so good it is rated in most film critics top ten of all time! The mpegs take up over 3 gig of space… so it will take a while to get the whole movie. We have lots more going in the download library… check back in the blog to see when it is available. We expect Seven Samurai to be ready to download by the weekend. Have fun - and come back to see the list of new mpeg downloads. And in case you missed it…. we just added a new DVD iso download last week for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

War Toys Back in The Day

Drum roll please… a boogie woogie bugle boy too while you are at it. Here’s a wild and crazy collection of war toys for boys. First off - how about 4 G.I. Joe classics, including Mummy’s Tomb, Stolen Idol, and The Helicopter. And Big Men need Big Guns - like Tiger Joe, USS Battlewagon, Johnny Reb’s Cannon, or Big Shot by Marx. Hunker down now… we got more. Try Robot Commando, Twirlybirds, Battleship, or if pneumatic strategy is what you seek, try Battleboard. Out further, with ancient cultural gender bias and expections… way out there, Pow and Wow. The guys shot cannonballs… while the girls shoot pillows. Yikes!