National Film Registry adds 25 films

WASHINGTON -- Films that helped usher in a new era of censorship, changed the way Hollywood thought about its audience, provided a firsthand look at one of the nation's great disasters and introduced the world to the word "gnarly" are among the 25 the Librarian of Congress named to the National Film Registry on Tuesday. Among the films selected by James H. Billington for inclusion in the registry are the Barbara Stanwyck starrer "Baby Face," which helped usher in the Hays Code; "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," which took audience participation to another level; a documentary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which presaged coverage of Hurricane Katrina by a century; and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," which gave the world "gnarly buds." "The films we choose are not necessarily the 'best' American films ever made or the most famous, but they are films that continue to have cultural, historical or aesthetic significance," Billington said. (Brooks Boliek) FULL STORY