The Library of Congress has announced the 25 films they’ll be adding to the National Film Registry.  In short, the films chosen for the registry are deemed so important to American culture that they must be preserved at all costs.  Prints of these films will be kept safe in multiple formats in order to ensure that they shall never vanish from this Earth.  In a way, it’s more prestigious than any other honor because the government is declaring these films to be national treasures.  Every year when I read the inductees, I always have the reaction, “Wait—that’s not already in there?”  I’m not surprised that Pulp Fiction and Roger & Me, two movies from the 1990s, are new additions, but how are Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Judgment at Nuremburg just now getting in?

Hit the jump for the press release, which briefly explains why each film was added to the registry.

As part of AFI’s Night at the Movies, Samuel L. Jackson was on hand to introduce and present a screening of writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 cult classic, Pulp Fiction.  Since I was only about 10 when the movie originally came out, I had never seen it on the big screen before; hard to believe it’s been almost 20 years.  While I cut my teeth into Tarantino’s world with a viewing of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction is easily my most-watched of his movies.  Being able to see it in a real theater with an audience full of fans who appreciate and anticipate every scene was just a pure joy.  Not to mention hearing some behind-the-scenes details about the movie’s production from Jackson himself!  Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

For one night only, Target is sponsoring AFI’s Night at the Movies, a screening of 13 classic films hosted by the stars that helped make them famous.  2012 AFI Life Achievement Award recipient and Oscar^®-winning actress Shirley MacLaine and Oscar^®-winning actress Sally Field will reunite to co-present Steel Magnolias, Harrison Ford will present Blade Runner: The Final Cut and Kevin Spacey will present The Usual Suspects, just to name a few.

Tickets for the Wednesday, April 24th event are available now at the Arclight Hollywood website or box office.  You can head to AFI’s website for more information or hit the jump to read the press release for the event.

I first discovered him in college twenty years ago, getting my first real taste of what cinema was all about. We delved into deep esoteric films, the sort that never showed up at your friendly neighborhood Blockbuster. They were directed by men with complex Eastern European names and featured content designed to alternately expand and confound our expectations. Class after class, semester after semester, we studied them with all the seriousness our young minds could muster. They were Important. They were Art. We needed to understand them if we hoped to grasp the secrets that this medium held.  Then, in the middle of it all, my friend Shanan knock on my door, gripped me by the coat lapels and spoke in the soft, serious tones one normally associates with rooftop snipers. “We went to this movie called Reservoir Dogs. You have to see it. Right. Fucking. Now.”  Hit the jump for my full review.

Director Quentin Tarantino burst onto the scene twenty years ago with the release of the now-classic Reservoir Dogs, and quite the celebration is planned to commemorate two decades of Tarantino.  A rather impressive Blu-ray set deemed Tarantino XX: 8-Film Collection is set for release in late November, but it’s now been announced that two of Tarantino’s most seminal films will also be returning to theaters to mark the director’s anniversary.  The aforementioned Reservoir Dogs will screen in select theaters on Tuesday, December 4th while another QT classic, Pulp Fiction, will return to the big screen on Thursday, December 6th.  Hit the jump for more information.

Quentin Tarantino has been on the block for twenty years now, so Lionsgate has collected all of the director’s films, and thrown them into one giant box set.  Tarantino XX: 8-Film Collection will include Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and Inglourious Basterds as well as True Romance (which Tarantino wrote), and his half of Grindhouse, Death Proof.  The 10-disc box set also includes a critics discussions piece exploring Tarantino’s work, a retrospective of Tarantino’s career, and a tribute to Tarantino’s late editor Sally Menke.

While all of the movie have been released on Blu-ray before and these discs will have all the same special features, it’s still nice to have them all in one place.  Hit the jump for the press release, and to check out the Mondo-designed box art.  Tarantino XX: 8-Film Collection is due out November 20th.  Tarantino’s new film, Django Unchained, is due out December 25th.

By now, most Quentin Tarantino fans are aware of the connections interlaced throughout all of his films.  John Travolta’s Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction is the brother of Michael Madsen’s Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel’s Mr. White worked with Alabama from True Romance, the plot basis for Kill Bill is described as the synopsis for a TV series in Pulp Fiction, etc.

Now the epiphany that Eli Roth’s character of Donny Donowitz aka “The Bear Jew” in Inglourious Basterds is the father of the movie producer Lee Donowitz in True Romance has inspired a truly mind-blowing theory that the rest of the films (chronologically speaking) in Tarantino’s filmography take place in a world where [Inglorious Basterds spoiler] World War II came to an end when Adolf Hitler was brutally murdered in a movie theater by the Basterds.  Hit the jump for more.

What is there to say about Pulp Fiction that hasn’t been said before? Quentin Tarantino’s postmodern masterpiece arrived like a bolt of lightning in 1994 and the cinematic world hasn’t been the same since. It survived a rash of poorly conceived knock-offs, the nearly lethal overexposure of its creator, and a snubbing at the Oscars that ranks among the worst miscarriages of justice ever perpetrated by the Motion Picture Academy. Now, 17 years later, it finally arrives on Blu-ray; time has not tarnished its appeal one iota. Hit the jump for our review of Pulp Fiction on Blu-ray.

Wednesdays suck. We all know it and we all do everything we can to make the day go by as painlessly as possible. Today a nice little video has hit the internet to help the rough midweek marker pass by a little more smoothly. Feeling frustrated today? I guarantee you aren’t nearly as frustrated as anyone in this video. It’s a compilation of the 100 Greatest Movie Threats Of All Time. Like any compilation like this, there’s a good chance one or two of your favorite lines aren’t included, but the video is pretty damn comprehensive. We’re talking about lines from everything from Full Metal Jacket and Goodfellas to Con Air and Home Alone. If you can think of a better video to help blow off some Wednesday steam than this compilation featuring the likes of Schwarzenegger, Pacino, Stallone, Cage, and a puppet from Team America tearing some offscreen a-hole a new one, we’d like to hear it. Hit the jump to see the clip in all of its NSFW glory.

“See what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?”  This is the type of incomprehensible sentence that results when Broadcast Standards and Practices decide that a particular piece of dialogue is too salty for television.  The above example is from the edited-for-TV version of The Big Lebowski, which is included in a clip alongside similar instances from Snakes on a Plane, The Usual Suspects, The Departed, Scarface, Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, Basic Instinct, There’s Something About Mary, Beverly Hills Cop, Casino, Goodfellas, and Wild Things.  Check it out after the jump; be warned of NSFW language.

More homes would have movie posters on their walls if studios made them as eye-catching as what artist Ibraheem Youssef has done with the films of Quentin Tarantino.  They remind me of the “I Can Read Movies” series with their minimal designs that cause fans to grin and make the uninitiated want to get in on the joke.  I’ve seen all of Tarantino’s movies, but I can’t seem to grasp the reference Youssef’s making for Inglourious Basterds even though I’ve seen that movie twice and recently.  Help me out in our comments section.

Check out all the posters after the jump.  You can purchase them as 12×18 prints or 24×36 posters at shop.ibraheemyoussef.com.  All prints and posters are limited editions, hand-signed, and numbered.