312 One-Minute Portraits Of Famous People At Movietonews Potraits

British Movietonews has announced a free Web site of one-minute potraits of famous people divided into categories, including entertainment, personalities, and lifestyle. These portraits go back to 1929 and are available at http://www.movietone-portraits.com . You'll probably need to use Internet Explorer for this site, but once you're there you can use either Windows Media Player or Quicktime, in either broadband or modem speed.

Pick a category and the site presents several links (the "next" button is on the lower right part of the page.) Click on a person and you'll get a preferences page (high or low band, Windows Media Player or QuickTime) and then a one-minute set of clips of that person or topics. The clips are not narrated; instead they each have instrumental soundtracks. For the most part these match up pretty well, but sometimes they don't; the one used for the Skateboarding in Germany, 1976, gave the clips almost a surrealist feel. Here these guys are doing early skateboard tricks and the soundtrack in the background sounds like "A Very Special Waltons," if you know what I mean.

There aren't just people portraits here; there are also event portraits as well. Here you can get one-minute portraits of things like Cowboys in 1930, Woodstock, a wine harvest in France in 1937, and so on. Wonderful stuff, though some of these clips are way too short.

Posted to Entertainment | TrackBack