Alfred Molina Plays Merciless Children’s Theatre Critic, Comedy Ensues

in Comedy, Theatre | November 12th, 2012

In 1997 David Sedaris pub­lished a fun­ny sto­ry called “Front Row Cen­ter with Thad­deus Bris­tol,” nar­rat­ed by a mer­ci­less dra­ma crit­ic who takes it upon him­self to expose the appalling­ly low the­atri­cal stan­dards of ele­men­tary and mid­dle school Christ­mas plays. The sto­ry is sub­ti­tled “Trite Christ­mas: Scotts­field­’s young hams offer the bland­est of hol­i­day fare,” and it goes like this:

In the role of Mary, six-year-old Shan­non Burke just bare­ly man­ages to pass her­self off as a vir­gin. A cloy­ing, preen­ing stage pres­ence, her per­for­mance seemed based on noth­ing but an annoy­ing pro­cliv­i­ty toward lift­ing her skirt and, on rare occa­sions, open­ing her eyes. As Joseph, sec­ond-grade stu­dent Dou­glas Traz­zare need­ed to be remind­ed that, although his char­ac­ter did not tech­ni­cal­ly impreg­nate the vir­gin moth­er, he should behave as though he were capa­ble of doing so. Thrown into the mix were a hand­ful of inat­ten­tive shep­herds and a trio of gift-bear­ing sev­en-year-olds who could prob­a­bly give the Three Stooges a run for their mon­ey. As for the light­ing, Sacred Heart Ele­men­tary chose to rely on noth­ing more than the flash­bulbs ignit­ed by the obnox­ious stage moth­ers and fathers who had cre­at­ed those zom­bies stag­ger­ing back and forth across the linoleum-floored din­ing hall. Under cer­tain cir­cum­stances parental pride is under­stand­able but it has no place in the the­ater, where it tends to encour­age a child to believe in a tal­ent that, more often than not, sim­ply fails to exist.

In the same spir­it of uncom­pro­mis­ing ser­vice to the sanc­ti­ty of the dra­mat­ic arts, Fun­ny Or Die intro­duces Arthur H. Cartwright, Chil­dren’s The­atre Crit­ic. (See above.) Alfred Moli­na plays the per­pet­u­al­ly scowl­ing Cartwright, who bul­lies a cast of pre­pu­bes­cent medi­oc­ri­ties. “The direc­tion was staid, the sets ram­shackle and the cos­tumes unremarkable–hardly worth the free admis­sion,” he says. “But we tried hard,” says a cute lit­tle girl. “Try telling that to the spir­its of Ibsen and Brecht,” says Cartwright, “because you’ve just tram­pled all over them!”

Speak­ing of Brecht, don’t miss our post from ear­li­er today: Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

via Gal­l­ey­Cat

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Bertolt Brecht Testifies Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947)

in History, Politics, Theatre | November 12th, 2012

Ger­man poet, play­wright, and the­o­reti­cian, Bertolt Brecht—author of such famous works as The Three­pen­ny Opera (1928) and Moth­er Courage and Her Chil­dren (1938)—was a com­mit­ted Marx­ist who pro­posed a new the­ater to shat­ter what he saw as the com­fort­able mid­dle-class con­ven­tions of both trag­ic and real­ist dra­ma. His the­o­ry of “epic the­ater” under­lay his prac­tice, an attempt to shock audi­ences out of com­pla­cen­cy through what he called Ver­frem­dungsef­fekt (“defa­mil­iar­iza­tion” or “dis­tanc­ing effect”).

Brecht’s enor­mous influ­ence was felt not only through­out Europe, but also in the Unit­ed States, where he set­tled for a short time along with many oth­er Ger­man artists and intel­lec­tu­als flee­ing Nazi per­se­cu­tion. In 1943, Brecht col­lab­o­rat­ed with fel­low exiles Fritz Lang and com­pos­er Hanns Eisler on the film Hang­men Also Die!, his only Hol­ly­wood script, loose­ly based on the assas­si­na­tion of num­ber-two leader of the SS, Rein­hard Hey­drich.

Despite Brecht’s anti-Nazi activ­i­ties, in 1947 he was nonethe­less called before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (HUAC) and accused of writ­ing “a num­ber of very rev­o­lu­tion­ary poems, plays, and oth­er writ­ings.” HUAC, fueled by post­war Com­mu­nist and sub­ver­sive para­noia, inves­ti­gat­ed dozens of artists and pro­vid­ed the mod­el for Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts of the 1950s. Brecht’s friend Eisler was also called to tes­ti­fy, hav­ing been denounced by his own sis­ter. Brecht was crit­i­cized by many for his appear­ance. As part of the “Hol­ly­wood Nine­teen,” a group of screen­writ­ers sub­poe­naed by HUAC, he was one of eleven who actu­al­ly appeared, and the only mem­ber of the group who chose to answer ques­tions. The remain­ing ten, includ­ing even­tu­al­ly black­list­ed writ­ers Dal­ton Trum­bo and Ring Lard­ner, invoked their Fifth Amend­ment rights against self-incrim­i­na­tion. But Brecht was also the only for­eign­er in the group, as he put it, a “guest” in the coun­try, and feared that his return trip to Europe would be delayed if he did­n’t coop­er­ate. After his tes­ti­mo­ny, Brecht wrote in a let­ter to Eisler:

“I see from some news­pa­per clip­pings that cer­tain jour­nal­ists thought I behaved arro­gant­ly in Wash­ing­ton; the truth is that I sim­ply had to obey my six lawyers, who advised me to tell the truth and noth­ing else. Not being a cit­i­zen either, I could no more refuse to tes­ti­fy than you could.”

Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny (excerpt above) has become some­what leg­endary. The man who invent­ed the the­ater of alien­ation turns this hear­ing into some­thing of a piece of the­ater. Brecht did not lie to the com­mit­tee; he denied offi­cial mem­ber­ship of any Com­mu­nist Par­ty, which was true. But his pol­i­tics were decid­ed­ly prob­lem­at­ic for HUAC. Instead of dis­cussing them direct­ly, Brecht gave answers that were often equiv­o­cal, iron­ic, or seem­ing­ly eva­sive, turn­ing (like Bill Clinton’s post-Lewin­sky tes­ti­mo­ny) on small mat­ters of def­i­n­i­tion, or mak­ing use of the ambi­gu­i­ties of trans­la­tion. For exam­ple, Chief Inves­ti­ga­tor Robert Stripling asks Brecht about a song enti­tled “For­ward We’ve Not For­got­ten” (from his play, The Deci­sion) then reads an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the song. Asked if he had writ­ten it, Brecht responds, “No, I wrote a Ger­man poem, but that is very dif­fer­ent from this thing,” pro­vok­ing laugh­ter among the audi­ence. In response to the ques­tion about his “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” writ­ings, Brecht clev­er­ly responds: “I have writ­ten a num­ber of poems and songs and plays in the fight against Hitler, and of course they can be con­sid­ered there­fore as rev­o­lu­tion­ary, ‘cause I of course was for the over­throw of that gov­ern­ment.”

The com­plete tran­script of Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny is avail­able here, and an audio excerpt is online here. Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny is a fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment of a time when cen­sor­ship and polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion were very much Amer­i­can activ­i­ties.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Dan Ariely Presents “A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior” in Upcoming MOOC

in Economics, Online Courses, Psychology | November 12th, 2012

Here’s one thing you can look for­ward to ear­ly next year. Dan Ariely, a well-known pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy and behav­ioral eco­nom­ics at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, will present A Begin­ner’s Guide to Irra­tional Behav­ior as a Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC). If you’ve been with us for a while, you’re already famil­iar with Ariely’s work. You’ve seen his videos explain­ing why well-inten­tioned peo­ple lie, or why CEOs repeat­ed­ly get out­sized bonus­es that defy log­ic. And you know that eco­nom­ics, when looked at close­ly, is a much messier affair than many ratio­nal choice the­o­rists might care to admit.

Now is your chance to delve into Ariely’s research and dis­cov­er pre­cise­ly how emo­tion shapes eco­nom­ic deci­sions in finan­cial and labor mar­kets, and in our every­day lives. The six-week course (described in more detail here) does­n’t begin until March 25th, but you can reserve your seat today. It’s all free. And keep in mind that stu­dents who mas­ter the mate­ri­als cov­ered in the class will receive a cer­tifi­cate at the end of the course.

Oth­er poten­tial­ly inter­est­ing MOOCs com­ing ear­ly next year include:

Our list of 175 Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es has now been updat­ed to include all cours­es start­ing in Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary and March of next year.

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NASA’s “Spot the Station” Will Text or Email You When the Space Station Passes Over Your Home

in Astronomy | November 11th, 2012

NASA writes: “Did you know you can see the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion from your house? As the third bright­est object in the sky, after the sun and moon, the space sta­tion is easy to see if you know where and when to look for it.”

And now, it turns out, there’s a ser­vice that will help you do just that: It’s called Spot the Sta­tion, and it’s pro­vid­ed free by NASA.

Sim­ply head here and pro­vide NASA with your loca­tion and email/text address. They’ll then ping you when the space sta­tion next pass­es over your home.

Hap­pi­ly, NASA will only noti­fy you of “good” sight­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties — that is, “sight­ings that are high enough in the sky (40 degrees or more) and last long enough to give you the best view of the orbit­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry.”

On a relat­ed note, don’t miss our post from Fri­day:

Astro­naut Don Pet­tit Demys­ti­fies the Art of Tak­ing Pho­tographs on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

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Watch Phish Play the Entirety of the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (1996)

in Music | November 9th, 2012

When I encoun­tered the above video of Phish play­ing the entire­ty of the Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light as the sec­ond set of a 1996 Hal­loween show, let’s just say I was skep­ti­cal. How was the ulti­mate jam band going to approx­i­mate the tight­ly wound funk and weird angu­lar­i­ty of the Heads? Or would they turn these songs into mean­der­ing fif­teen-minute improv ses­sions with end­less digres­sions and break­downs? Then again, this all makes a cer­tain amount of sense. The 1980 Bri­an Eno-pro­duced Remain in Light saw the Talk­ing Heads sprawl out in ways they nev­er had before. They took on sev­er­al addi­tion­al musi­cians for the record­ing process, includ­ing one of the gods of prog-rock, King Crim­son gui­tarist Adri­an Belew. They exper­i­ment­ed with African polyrhythms blend­ed with New Wave sounds (decades before Vam­pire Week­end); they worked in a horn sec­tion, and let the art-funk over­pow­er the nerd-punk of their first two records. The songs stretched out in length. On tour, they took on five addi­tion­al play­ers, includ­ing Belew, to form a nine-piece band.

But at the heart of it all was still the incom­pa­ra­ble hus­band-and-wife team of drum­mer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Wey­mouth, the most unlike­ly funk/soul rhythm sec­tion imag­in­able but one that could hang with almost any Stax or Motown crew. And then there’s David Byrne’s para­noid alto bark. So can Phish real­ly bring enough white soul and weird­ness to the table? Well, no; they aren’t the Talk­ing Heads. The per­for­mances are loose and rangy, the rhythms often indis­tinct, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the open­er, “Born Under Punch­es,” a song that needs max­i­mum punch. But they do hit the cho­rus­es of “Crosseyed and Pain­less” and “The Great Curve” nice­ly, even if the album’s big hit “Once in a Life­time” is far too clut­tered. Over­all, even reined in by the tight­ly-arranged com­po­si­tions of Remain, they’re still Phish, not a Talk­ing Heads trib­ute band, but their love for these bril­liant songs comes through in even the nood­liest, tie-dye-frac­tal moments.

For the sake of con­trast, take some time and check out the Heads them­selves below, live in Rome with Adri­an Belew on lead gui­tar. They do two Remain in Light songs: “Born Under Punch­es” and “Hous­es in Motion.” And Belew’s solos blow the roof off.

via Boing Boing

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Watch the Great Russian Composer Sergei Rachmaninoff in Home Movies

in Music | November 9th, 2012

“Who did not know Rach­mani­noff inti­mate­ly, did not know him at all.”  So begins this record­ed remem­brance of the great Russ­ian com­pos­er by Alexan­der “Sascha” Grein­er, who knew him well.

Gre­nier was the man­ag­er of the con­cert and artist depart­ment at Stein­way & Sons from 1928–about a decade after Sergei Rach­mani­nof­f’s emi­gra­tion to Amer­i­ca in the wake of the Russ­ian Revolution–until 1958. As the com­pa­ny’s main liai­son with the major musi­cians who played its pianos, Gre­nier became friends with many of the great pianists of the era. “His friend­ship with the great Russ­ian artists was per­son­al as well as pro­fes­sion­al,” accord­ing to Peo­ple and Pianos: A Pic­to­r­i­al His­to­ry of Stein­way & Sons. “If Rach­mani­noff had a birth­day par­ty, Grein­er would be there. If Hof­mann need­ed him, there woud be a telegram sent instant­ly to soothe him.”

The record­ing was appar­ent­ly made a few years before Gre­nier’s death in 1958. As he speaks, home movie footage reveals Rach­mani­noff, who died in 1943, as an impos­ing yet socia­ble man. “Behind an aus­tere, per­haps even severe, coun­te­nance,” says Gre­nier, “there was a most warm-heart­ed lov­able man with a won­der­ful sense of humor. Yes, a won­der­ful sense of humor. Rach­mani­noff thor­ough­ly enjoyed a good sto­ry, and no one who has­n’t seen him laugh with the tears run­ning down his cheeks would believe it pos­si­ble.”  Just before the two-minute mark, Rach­mani­nof­f’s own voice can be heard very briefly speak­ing in Russ­ian. He is play­ing the pop­u­lar Russ­ian song “Bublich­ki” on the piano as a group of friends sing along. In the end Rach­mani­noff breaks off play­ing and jokes to his com­pan­ions, “Vy ne znaete slo­va” (вы не знаете слова), which trans­lates as: “You don’t know the words!”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)

Rare 1946 Film: Sergei Prokofiev Plays Piano, Dis­cuss­es His Music

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Caught Mapping: A Cinematic Ride Through the Nitty Gritty World of Vintage Cartography

in Business, Film | November 9th, 2012

Long before iPhones, Garmins, and Google Maps con­spired to make car­to­graph­ic sheep of us all, Chevro­let had a vest­ed inter­est in glam­or­iz­ing any­thing to do with four wheels, includ­ing the process that put maps in a sup­pos­ed­ly adven­tur­ous, car-buy­ing pub­lic’s hands. Caught Map­ping (1940), like so many of the short, infor­ma­tive films the auto­mo­tive giant engi­neered with direc­tor Jam Handy and “the coop­er­a­tion of State High­way Depart­ments,” has all the ear­marks of its time:

Gor­geous black and white cin­e­matog­ra­phy? Check.

Fetishis­tic regard for any­thing that might pos­si­bly be described as “the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy” (includ­ing a big sheet of acetate and a real­ly big cam­era)? Check.

Jaun­ty male nar­ra­tor suck­ing all the non­cha­lance out of peri­od slang? Say, fel­la, what are you “dri­ving” at? Check.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to those accus­tomed to nav­i­gat­ing dig­i­tal­ly is the sheer grit­ti­ness of the endeav­or. Com­pare the ear­ly Euro­pean explor­er shown pon­der­ous­ly wield­ing a sex­tant to the per­spir­ing road scouts (or “map detec­tives”) criss­cross­ing Death Val­ley in an un-air­con­di­tioned vehi­cle, chas­ing down the sort of con­struc­tion-relat­ed detours or topo­graph­i­cal devel­op­ments that could ren­der a paper map obso­lete. One steers;  the oth­er updates the most recent­ly pub­lished edi­tion in ink, imper­vi­ous to such haz­ards as car sick­ness and bumps in the road.  Even­tu­al­ly, the eggheads in the lab take over, trans­lat­ing the intre­pid road scouts’ field­work into a series of sym­bols and sig­ni­fiers as mys­te­ri­ous as hiero­glyphs to the mod­ern view­er.

Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments aside, it’s the hands-on aspect that proves most thrilling. Some­one should make a movie about these guys for real.

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An Introduction to Yasujiro Ozu, “the Most Japanese of All Film Directors”

in Film | November 9th, 2012

“Yasu­jiro Ozu, the man whom his kins­men con­sid­er the most Japan­ese of all film direc­tors, had but one major sub­ject, the Japan­ese fam­i­ly, and but one major theme, its dis­so­lu­tion.” So writes Don­ald Richie in Ozu: His Life and His Films, still the defin­i­tive Eng­lish-lan­guage study of this thor­ough­ly Japan­ese film­mak­er. (Richie, per­haps the most astute and expe­ri­enced liv­ing crit­ic of Japan­ese film, tells more of Ozu in the rel­e­vant seg­ment of Mark Cousins’ series The Sto­ry of Film.) Despite his Japan­ese­ness, or indeed because of it, Ozu con­tin­ues, near­ly fifty years after his pass­ing, to enthrall gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of west­ern cinephiles. Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a clip from Tokyo-Ga, the doc­u­men­tary where­in Wim Wen­ders makes a Tokyo jour­ney out of sheer need to seek out the spir­it of Ozu. Crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed French film­mak­er Claire Denis has also paid trib­ute, and above you’ll find a salute to Ozu as inspi­ra­tion from equal­ly laud­ed but res­olute­ly dead­pan Finnish auteur Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki. “Ozu-san, I’m Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki from Fin­land,” the Le Havre direc­tor explains, ready­ing a cig­a­rette. “I’ve made eleven lousy films, and it’s all your fault.”

What is it about Ozu? The dis­ci­plined econ­o­my of his sto­ries, dia­logue and images accounts for some of it. But he also deliv­ers some­thing less obvi­ous. “Just as there are no heroes in Ozu’s pic­tures,” writes Richie, “so there are no vil­lains. [ … ] In basic Zen texts one accepts and tran­scends the world, and in tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese nar­ra­tive art one cel­e­brates and relin­quish­es it. The aes­thet­ic term mono no aware is often used nowa­days to describe this state of mind.” And, whether in those words or not, Ozu’s fol­low­ers savor the expres­sion of mono no aware in his many films, such as An Autumn After­noon, Tokyo Sto­ry, Late Spring, and Good Morn­ing. This sort of thing being bet­ter expe­ri­enced than described, why not watch Ozu’s 1952 pic­ture The Fla­vor of Green Tea Over Rice? (Or 1941’s The Broth­ers and Sis­ters of the Toda Fam­i­ly, 1948’s A Hen in the Wind, 1950’s The Mureka­ta Sis­ters?) To my mind, noth­ing sums up Ozu’s appeal quite so well as his use of “pil­low shots” — sim­ple, sta­t­ic com­po­si­tions placed in his films for pure­ly rhyth­mic, non-nar­ra­tive pur­pos­es — of which you can watch one fan-made com­pi­la­tion below. How many film­mak­ers, Japan­ese or oth­er­wise, could pull those off?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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