Nicolas Cage, Paul Newman & Dennis Hopper Bring Their American Style to Japanese Commercials

in Television | November 7th, 2012

West­ern­ers who grew inter­est­ed in Japan dur­ing the past 30 years will remem­ber one point of ear­ly con­tact with the cul­ture: Japan­ese com­mer­cials. Tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments from the Land of the Ris­ing Sun have long offered the rest of the world a source of uncom­pre­hend­ing aston­ish­ment and mys­ti­fied laugh­ter. What a weird place Japan is, many must think to them­selves as they gaze upon spots involv­ing danc­ing dogs and salty snacks or brush fire and high blood-pres­sure tea. But as for­eign observers tend to dis­cov­er — and as I have had recon­firmed while vis­it­ing the coun­try for the past week — Japan may have many qual­i­ties, but pure weird­ness isn’t among them. Arti­facts that strike the rest of us as weird emerge accord­ing to log­ic, albeit a log­ic of their own. This goes dou­ble for the most prized Japan­ese com­mer­cials of the bunch: those star­ring Amer­i­can celebri­ties.

Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve fea­tured Woody Allen for Seibu and James Brown for Nissin. Please enjoy, at the very top of this post, the eccen­tric Nico­las Cage play­ing his Amer­i­can-ness to the very hilt. When pachinko machine man­u­fac­tur­er Sankyo recruit­ed Cage, they went all-out, get­ting him square-danc­ing in the mid­dle of a lone­ly south­west­ern high­way with a pack of met­al ball-head­ed aliens. Right above, we have Paul New­man flash­ing a smile and point­ing his fin­ger not once, but two times, in a 1980 com­mer­cial for Maxwell House. And speak­ing of eccen­tric­i­ty, below you’ll find per­haps the most oblique exam­ple of the Amer­i­can actor-star­ring Japan­ese com­mer­cial I’ve ever come across: Den­nis Hop­per for Tsumu­ra. Sofia Cop­po­la sat­i­rized all of this, of course, in Lost in Trans­la­tion, but the exchange of Japan­ese cor­po­rate mon­ey for a dose of dev­il-may-care Amer­i­can panache could hard­ly make bet­ter busi­ness sense.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

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

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Classic Charles Mingus Performance on Belgian Television, 1964

in Music | November 6th, 2012

In ear­ly 1964 Charles Min­gus put togeth­er one of the great com­bos in jazz his­to­ry. The sex­tet was com­posed of Min­gus on bass, Dan­nie Rich­mond on drums, Jaki Byard on piano, John­ny Coles on trum­pet, Clif­ford Jor­dan on tenor sax­o­phone and the extra­or­di­nary mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Eric Dol­phy on alto sax­o­phone, flute and bass clar­inet. Min­gus called his exper­i­men­tal group The Jazz Work­shop.

In April of that year Min­gus and his band embarked on a three-week tour of Europe, much of which is record­ed on film and audio­tape. The tour is remem­bered as one of the high-water marks in Min­gus’s career. As Rob Bow­man writes in the lin­er notes to the Jazz Icons DVD Charles Min­gus Live in ’64:

The tour effec­tive­ly intro­duced two new com­po­si­tions, “Med­i­ta­tions On Inte­gra­tion” and “So Long Eric”, while the band walked a fine line between Min­gus’s usu­al amal­gam of bop, swing and New Orleans jazz and the free-jazz lean­ings of the cat­a­clysmic Dol­phy. The result, of course, was some­thing that could only be called Min­gus Music–a gal­va­niz­ing, high-ener­gy son­ic stew that, while the prod­uct of the kinet­ic inter­play of six musi­cians, could only have been con­jured up with Min­gus as the mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

The per­for­mance above is from Charles Min­gus Live in ’64. It was record­ed by Bel­gian tele­vi­sion on Sun­day, April 19, 1964 at the Palais des Con­grés in Liège, Bel­gium. The band had unex­pect­ed­ly been reduced to a quin­tet two nights ear­li­er, when Coles col­lapsed onstage in Paris and was rushed to the hos­pi­tal with what was lat­er diag­nosed as an ulcer. In the Bel­gian TV broad­cast, pianist Byard makes up for the miss­ing trum­pet parts as the band plays three Min­gus com­po­si­tions:

  1. So Long Eric
  2. Peg­gy’s Blue Sky­light
  3. Med­i­ta­tions on Inte­gra­tion

“So Long Eric” was named in hon­or of Dol­phy, who had announced before the band left Amer­i­ca that he would remain in Europe when the tour was over. Sad­ly, Dol­phy fell into a dia­bet­ic coma in Ger­many and died just two months after fin­ish­ing the tour. Min­gus would lat­er call the song “Pray­ing With Eric.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Charles Min­gus and His Evic­tion From His New York City Loft, Cap­tured in Mov­ing 1968 Film

How to Pot­ty Train Your Cat: A Handy Man­u­al by Charles Min­gus

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Nirvana’s Home Videos: Watch Nirvana Rehearse in Krist Novoselic’s Mother’s House (1988)

in Music | November 6th, 2012

When Nir­vana hit it big I was in high school, a punk-rock purist with lit­tle time for their MTV revi­sion­ism or the fact that they inspired teen rebel­lion from peo­ple who’d nev­er heard “Teenage Kicks.” But even though I was trapped in a late-70s time warp, I found myself at home alone when no one else was lis­ten­ing slip­ping in a tape (that’s right, cas­sette) of Nev­er­mind and nod­ding my head. Cause, I had to admit, they were pret­ty damn good. When I got my hands on their debut, Bleach, I dug it even more, espe­cial­ly “About a Girl.” It’s still the tune that comes to mind unbid­den when I drift back to mem­o­ries of the band. And despite the cultish hype sur­round­ing Kurt Cobain’s sad end and his band­mate Dave Grohl’s rise to pop star­dom, I appre­ci­ate them for what they once were—a real­ly excel­lent garage band—talented, unpre­ten­tious, melod­ic, devoid of flash and ego and able to deliv­er the rock in one of the most impres­sive of con­fig­u­ra­tions: the pow­er trio.

Few places are Nirvana’s garage chops more in evi­dence than in home video of their ear­ly days, shot in grimy prac­tice rooms, stages, and the streets of Seat­tle. In the video above from 1988 (record­ed at Krist Novoselic’s moth­er’s house, Aberdeen 1988), the band bangs out a ver­sion of “About a Girl” with mut­ed feroc­i­ty. Strobe lights strobe, some dudes lounge around the door­way, and Cobain shouts the lyrics with his face pressed to the wall. It’s a per­fect lit­tle doc­u­ment of the band, look­ing more or less like they always did, but with­out light­ing banks, TV cam­eras, and scream­ing fans dis­tract­ing from their lo-fi fuzz-rock appeal; all that machin­ery that seemed so ridicu­lous sur­round­ing these guys. But we know that sto­ry.

The setlist of songs per­formed appears below:

0.07 Love Buzz

2:21​ Scoff

3:18​ About A Girl

6:17​ Big Long Now

10:38​ Immi­grant Song

13:17​ Spank Thru

16:19​ Hair­spray Queen

20:07​ School

22:58​ Mr. Mous­tache

 

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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Take First-Class Philosophy Courses Anywhere with Free Oxford Podcasts

in Philosophy | November 6th, 2012

cambridge-philosophy-podcasts

Image by llee wu, via Flickr Com­mons

When some­one devel­ops an inter­est in phi­los­o­phy, good luck try­ing to keep them away from it. They’ll find the stuff any­where. These days, the inter­net makes pos­si­ble such wide and instan­ta­neous dis­sem­i­na­tion of philo­soph­i­cal mate­ri­als that you lit­er­al­ly can find it any­where. (Take for exam­ple our list of 140 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.) With devel­op­ments in inter­net media, even the biggest insti­tu­tion­al play­ers in phi­los­o­phy have joined in. The appear­ance of con­ve­nient­ly pod­cast lec­ture cours­es from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford must count as an on-the-go phi­los­o­phy fan’s dream real­ized. Writ­ing this very post while trav­el­ing through west­ern Japan, I plan to sound­track my jour­ney with the John Locke Lec­tures, which rank “among the world’s most dis­tin­guished lec­ture series in phi­los­o­phy.” (Then again, I do have a strong sense of incon­gruity.) The archive includes David Coop­er’s “Ancient Greek Philoso­phies as a Way of Life,” David Chalmers’ “Con­struct­ing the World,” and Thomas Scan­lon’s “Being Real­is­tic About Rea­sons.”

But maybe you’d pre­fer to start from the begin­ning. Oxford offers phi­los­o­phy pod­casts on all lev­els, allow­ing you to gain a foot­ing on the sub­ject and climb upward. First lis­ten to Mar­i­anne Tal­bot’s “Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners,” which “will test you on some famous thought exper­i­ments and intro­duce you to some cen­tral philo­soph­i­cal issues and to the thoughts of some key philoso­phers.” Then try the same lec­tur­er’s “Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners,” fol­lowed by Peter Mil­li­can’s “Gen­er­al Phi­los­o­phy,” an eight-week course geared toward first-year phi­los­o­phy stu­dents. At that point, you’re not far from the likes of “Niet­zsche on Mind and Nature,” “Kan­t’s Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son,” and “Aes­thet­ics and the Phi­los­o­phy of Art,” all of which you can absorb through head­phones no mat­ter where you’re going or what you’re doing. Whether or not you con­sid­er phi­los­o­phy to be the most inter­est­ing branch of cul­ture, it’s cer­tain­ly the most open.

All cours­es men­tioned above appear in our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

140 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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

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Alfred Hitchcock Tantalizes Audiences with a Playful Trailer for Psycho (1960)

in Film | November 6th, 2012

You can’t say that Hitch­cock did­n’t think through the angles when he released Psy­cho in 1960. As you may recall, Hitch­cock tight­ly con­trolled the pro­mo­tion for the film. The stars of the now clas­sic movie — Antho­ny Perkins and Janet Leigh — did­n’t talk to the media. Crit­ics weren’t giv­en pri­vate screen­ings. And Hitch­cock put a firm “no late admis­sion” pol­i­cy in place. If you did­n’t see the film from the begin­ning, you didn’t see it all. It’s a hard­ball approach that the direc­tor pub­li­cized in a video out­lin­ing The Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho.

But then there was a car­rot to accom­pa­ny the stick — a play­ful trail­er (above) that gave view­ers a light-heart­ed tour of the Psy­cho set. You know, the infa­mous Bates Motel. In the trail­er, Hitch­cock teas­es the audi­ence, almost giv­ing away spoil­er details, but nev­er quite goes that far. The cheer­ful music play­ing in the back­ground comes from Hitch­cock­’s lost mas­ter­piece The Trou­ble with Har­ry. And, it all ends with .… ok we won’t tell … but just keep in mind that what you see is not Janet Leigh. It’s actu­al­ly Vera Miles, who played a sup­port­ing role in the film, sport­ing a blonde wig and look­ing like Janet Leigh.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you can’t watch Psy­cho on the web, but you can catch 22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hitch­cock on Hap­pi­ness

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Go International

in Online Courses | November 5th, 2012

A few quick notes from the MOOC front.…

The first major providers of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs) got their start in Sil­i­con Val­ley, Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts and Cana­da. Now we’re see­ing them sprout up out­side of the Unit­ed States. Take for exam­ple OpenLearning.com, a ven­ture born out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales (UNSW) in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia. Start­ing this week, you can begin tak­ing two of their cours­es (Observ­ing and Analysing Per­for­mance in Sport & Ser­vices Mar­ket­ing – The Next Lev­el). Or you can check into a 12-week course that recent­ly got under­way: UNSW Com­put­ing 1.

Mean­while, if you can exer­cise a lit­tle patience, you can even­tu­al­ly start tak­ing class­es with the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia. By next March, the Perth-based uni­ver­si­ty plans to offer two cours­es (one in soci­ol­o­gy, the oth­er in oceanog­ra­phy) using an adapt­ed ver­sion of Stan­ford’s open source plat­form, Class2Go. The cours­es will be deliv­ered over mobile phones.

Final­ly, if you’re look­ing to learn a new lan­guage, why not try Span­ish­Mooc? It’s billed as “the first open online Span­ish course for every­one.” And it’s seem­ing­ly run as an inde­pen­dent project not asso­ci­at­ed with an exist­ing uni­ver­si­ty. The 12-week course will start on Jan­u­ary 21, 2013.

For a com­plete list of MOOCs, vis­it our col­lec­tion of 130 Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Bruce Springsteen Stumps/Sings for Obama: A Free Six-Song Set

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | November 5th, 2012

Back in 2008, Bruce Spring­steen threw him­self vig­or­ous­ly behind Barack Oba­ma’s cam­paign. He played small con­certs on Oba­ma’s behalf, and then wrote on his per­son­al web site that Oba­ma “speaks to the Amer­i­ca I’ve envi­sioned in my music for the past 35 years, a gen­er­ous nation with a cit­i­zen­ry will­ing to tack­le nuanced and com­plex prob­lems, a coun­try that’s inter­est­ed in its col­lec­tive des­tiny and in the poten­tial of its gath­ered spir­it.” Fast for­ward four years, Spring­steen is back at it again, though per­haps with a few more reser­va­tions. This sum­mer, he told David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, that he admired Oba­ma “for the health-care bill, for res­cu­ing the auto­mo­bile indus­try, for the with­draw­al from Iraq, for killing Osama bin Laden.” But, on the flip side, he’s “dis­ap­point­ed in the fail­ure to close Guan­tá­namo and to appoint more cham­pi­ons of eco­nom­ic fair­ness, and .… an unseem­ly friend­li­ness toward cor­po­ra­tions.” [This is The New York­er para­phras­ing his con­cerns.] Aloud, he won­dered whether he could go out there again:

I did it twice because things were so dire.… It seemed like if I was ever going to spend what­ev­er small polit­i­cal cap­i­tal I had, that was the moment to do so. But that cap­i­tal dimin­ish­es the more often you do it. While I’m not say­ing nev­er, and I still like to sup­port the Pres­i­dent, you know, it’s some­thing I didn’t do for a long time, and I don’t have plans to be out there every time.

That was in July. But, fast for­ward to Octo­ber and Novem­ber, and we find the Boss stump­ing again for the pres­i­dent in swing states. Spring­steen appeared in Madi­son Wis­con­sin today (below) and Char­lottesville, VA on Octo­ber 23. You can watch the six-song acoustic set above, which fea­tures “We Take Care Of Our Own,” “For­ward, “The Riv­er,” “Promised Land,” “No Sur­ren­der” and “Thun­der Road.”

There’s not much that’s pos­i­tive about this cam­paign. Every day when you turn on the TV, we’re remind­ed of how spe­cial inter­ests have cor­rupt­ed our politic process, all with the bless­ing of the Supreme Court. But if there’s a sil­ver lin­ing to be found — a free set by the Boss — we’ll take it. Go out and vote tomor­row, no mat­ter which can­di­date you sup­port. And we’ll see you on the oth­er side.

 

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FolkStreams Presents a Big Film Archive on American Folk Art and Music

in Film, Music | November 5th, 2012

Folk­streams is not just a Wun­derkam­mer of Amer­i­can folk tra­di­tions cap­tured on film. It’s also an online repos­i­to­ry for folk films them­selves, whose weird lengths and non-main­stream obses­sions lim­it­ed their chances of wide­spread dis­tri­b­u­tion, while ensur­ing that the major­i­ty of their mak­ers would toil in obliv­ion.

The archive is exceed­ing­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic. Browse by region or gen­er­al sub­jects such as reli­gion, rur­al life, and custom/dress. House­hold names such as B.B. King and Grand­ma Moses exist along­side snake han­dlers (Gretchen Robin­son and Stan Wood­ward’s Peo­ple Who Take Up Ser­pents) and dis­abled tat­too artist Stoney St. Clair, the sub­ject of Alan Gove­nar’s irre­sistible 1981 Stoney Knows How. Admir­ers of the form will be glad to know that the archive is also search­able by film­mak­er and dis­trib­u­tor.

Any one of these short films could pro­vide a folk rem­e­dy anti­dote to a case of acute dig­i­tal over­load. I’d also sug­gest suc­cumb­ing to the archivist’s Net­flix-style, view­ing-his­to­ry-based rec­om­men­da­tions (“If you liked Paint­ed Bride you may also like Mos­qui­toes and High Water.” Think of it as it is a do-it-your­self doc fest on autopi­lot, the sort of once-in-a-blue-moon pro­gram­ming you’d be lucky to catch, per­pet­u­al­ly play­ing on demand.

The clip above comes from the film Give My Poor Heart Ease: Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta Blues­men. Enter the Folk­streams films archive here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is doing her bit to keep zines alive with­in the realm of Amer­i­can folk cul­ture.

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