Watch The Snowman, the Classic Animated Children’s Tale Introduced by David Bowie

Thir­ty years ago the British tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Chan­nel Four pre­miered this enchant­i­ng, lyri­cal film based on the award-win­ning Ray­mond Brig­gs chil­dren’s book, The Snow­man.

The tale bears some resem­blance to the ear­li­er Amer­i­can sto­ry, “Frosty the Snow­man,” but probes deep­er into the psy­chol­o­gy of chil­dren, con­vey­ing the fear and won­der they feel in a mys­te­ri­ous world, and their long­ing for friend­ship and mag­ic. It’s more ele­gant­ly told, too, using only pic­tures and music to con­vey the sto­ry. And just as Mau­rice Sendak said “I refuse to lie to chil­dren,” Brig­gs refus­es to pro­vide a Hol­ly­wood end­ing.

The orig­i­nal ver­sion of The Snow­man includes an intro­duc­tion by Brig­gs. A lat­er ver­sion (see above) has a sim­i­lar intro­duc­tion by David Bowie, who plays the grownup boy from the sto­ry. As the intro­duc­tion ends, Bowie opens a draw­er and pulls out a scarf that was giv­en to him dur­ing his adven­ture with the snow­man, prov­ing that it was not just a dream.

In 1983, The Snow­man was nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award. It ranks 71st on the British Film Insti­tute’s list of the 100 great­est British tele­vi­sion pro­grams and was vot­ed num­ber four in UKTV Gold’s “Great­est TV Christ­mas Moments.” Watch­ing The Snow­man has become a hol­i­day tra­di­tion in the UK in much the same way that watch­ing A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas has in Amer­i­ca. Tonight in Britain, Chan­nel 4 will pre­miere the long-await­ed sequel, The Snow­man and the Snow­dog, set 30 years lat­er at the same house but with a dif­fer­ent boy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie and Bing Cros­by Sing ‘The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy’ in 1977

Watch Cabbit: A Handmade Animation by Crosshatch Artist, Soogie

Those prone to using “twee” as a pejo­ra­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly in con­nec­tion to the films of Wes Ander­son, should lay in a sup­ply of anti­dote before view­ing the ani­mat­ed short, Cab­bit.

Its cre­ators describe the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter as “a charm­ing lit­tle ani­mal spir­it whom (sic) spends its days tea-danc­ing with kin­dred spir­its and explor­ing the won­ders of the nat­ur­al world.”

As in The Lorax, indus­try and the fool­ish humans in its thrall are major bad­dies. But where­as the apoplec­tic Lorax takes an activist stance, Cab­bit drifts along, serene in its tweeds.

As eco­log­i­cal state­ments go, it’s pret­ty mild stuff.

For this view­er, the more intrigu­ing ele­ment is the back sto­ry. In ani­ma­tion terms, Cab­bit is a throw­back, painstak­ing­ly hand drawn with Sharpie mark­ers by a most­ly house­bound Mis­soula artist, who flies under the code name Soo­gie. His crafts­man­ship caught the atten­tion of sound design­er, John Kassab, who saw punk where oth­ers saw twee. Kassab may not pilot a diri­gi­ble or squash pos­sums with his Mod­el T,  but as humans go, he’s pret­ty up on tech­nol­o­gy. With Kassab as pro­duc­er, Soo­gie waged a Kick­starter cam­paign, suc­cess­ful­ly tea danc­ing with kin­dred spir­its who under­wrote the pur­chase of high end dig­i­tal equip­ment. Kass­ab’s next goal is to ush­er the oth­er­world­ly, anthro­mor­phic Cab­bit onto the film fes­ti­val cir­cuit. Til then, it must abide entire­ly with­in the con­fines of this steam­punk world we refer to as the Inter­net.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is Wes Ander­son­’s #1 Fan.

 

A Selfie That is Out of This World

Tak­en at the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion by astro­naut Aki Hoshide (Japan), this awe-inspir­ing self por­trait brings into one frame “the Sun, the Earth, two por­tions of a robot­ic arm, an astro­naut’s space­suit, the deep dark­ness of space, and the unusu­al cam­era tak­ing the pic­ture.” You’ll want to click the image above (or this link) to view the pic­ture dubbed “Orbit­ing Astro­naut Self-Por­trait” in a wor­thy larg­er for­mat.

Find oth­er self-por­traits tak­en in space here and here. And vis­it NASA’s Astron­o­my Pic­ture of the Day for more strik­ing images each and every day.

via @coudal

Fol­low us on Face­bookTwit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Watch Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Films Woody Allen in 1986 Short Film

It seems that a lim­it­ed num­ber of per­son­al­i­ty types best suit the job of cin­e­mat­ic auteur. A few exam­ples: there’s the reclu­sive per­fec­tion­ist (Kubrick, Mal­ick), the mys­tic poet (Bres­son, Tarkovsky, also Mal­ick), the quirky man­child (Wes Ander­son, Michel Gondry), the brat­ty stu­dent of hip (Godard, Tar­enti­no), the hyper-lit­er­ate, neu­rot­ic Man­hat­tan­ite, jazz-play­ing Jew­ish come­di­an…. Okay, fine, it’s an imper­fect sys­tem. Only one direc­tor fits that last one, but he deserves his own cat­e­go­ry. And when Jean-Luc Godard decid­ed to make a film about an inter­view with Woody Allen in 1986, he seemed to agree. But in real­i­ty, the short piece above is a hybrid; the film begins with Godard’s poet­ic, rumi­na­tive voice-over in French, and as a view of Cen­tral Park comes into focus (from a win­dow in the Plaza, it appears), Gershwin’s “Rhap­sody in Blue” begins to play. The title– Meetin’ WA—is a Godard­ism, appro­pri­at­ing corny Amer­i­can speech pat­terns with its faux-folksy dropped “g.”

But there are plen­ty of Allenisms as well, like the jazz inter­ludes and silent-film title cards announc­ing each top­ic. Ulti­mate­ly, Godard swipes these tropes as fod­der for his own styl­is­tic eccen­tric­i­ties (jar­ring, off­beat cuts, self-ref­er­en­tial­i­ty) as the two dis­cuss styl­is­tic dis­tinc­tions, even as their styles meet, awk­ward­ly, on the screen. For exam­ple, Allen says of the title cards that Godard uses them as a cin­e­mat­ic device, while he thinks of them as lit­er­ary devices. This seems to mark a very impor­tant dif­fer­ence between the two direc­tors: Godard is a rapa­cious read­er and rede­ploy­er of the lan­guage of film, while Allen’s films are more nov­el­is­tic, pri­or­i­tiz­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism and ver­bal humor over manip­u­la­tion of the image.

The inter­view is pri­mar­i­ly in Eng­lish, save cer­tain moments when Godard needs to revert to French to get a point across (he has a trans­la­tor). For lovers of these two direc­tors, or of film in gen­er­al, their con­ver­sa­tion will fas­ci­nate. But it seems fair to say that with­out Godard’s edi­to­r­i­al inter­ven­tions (or inter­rup­tions, as the case may be), it wouldn’t look like much. Allen most­ly sits slumped on a drab hotel couch while the cam­era trains on him from behind Godard’s shoul­der, so that the lat­ter isn’t vis­i­ble at all. Then about halfway through, we cut away: while their con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues, we watch a scene of Godard sit­ting on the floor of a bright blue room, sift­ing through a box of VHS tapes and slam­ming them on a table in seem­ing dis­gust. This scene marks a cen­tral point of their discussion—what to make of the loss of cin­e­ma qua cin­e­ma as TV and video took over.

Now, as screens get even small­er, bud­gets big­ger, and atten­tion spans con­sid­er­ably more reduced, the movies must work hard­er to retain a view­ing audi­ence, and the sit­u­a­tion for artists like these two is even more pre­car­i­ous. In a sweep­ing dra­mat­ic ges­ture, Godard has recent­ly pro­claimed “the death of cin­e­ma”—a very Euro­pean thing to do, it seems, like Barthes’ death of the author or Orte­ga y Gasset’s death of the nov­el. Allen sol­diers on, recent­ly mak­ing what many have called his best film in decades, which may also be his most self-con­scious­ly literary—a film that warns against the dan­gers of nos­tal­gia even as it looks back obses­sive­ly to Allen’s beloved jazz age. Maybe this meet­ing of Godard and Allen rep­re­sents a time-cap­sule curio we look back on, from the oth­er side, after the death of the auteur.

You will find Meetin’ WA list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick (1971)

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

 Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Complete Concert

In late Jan­u­ary and ear­ly Feb­ru­ary of 1982 the Clash played eight shows in Japan. The band was embark­ing on a month-long tour of the Far East that, as fate would have it, would be the last tour with their clas­sic line­up. When it was over, drum­mer Top­per Head­on was kicked out because of his dis­rup­tive drug habit, and the band would nev­er be the same. In this video we roll back the clock to see and hear the Clash in the twi­light of their hey­day.

The con­cert was appar­ent­ly filmed on the fourth night of the tour, at the Nakano Sun Plaza in Tokyo on Jan­u­ary 28, 1982. Accord­ing to music jour­nal­ist Chris Salewicz’s book Redemp­tion Song: The Bal­lad of Joe Stum­mer, the Clash had refused to play in Japan pri­or to this tour because of the Japan­ese cus­tom for­bid­ding audi­ence mem­bers to stand up. They agreed to play after a com­pro­mise was struck: The fans could stand, but only at their seats.

The band had just fin­ished record­ing Com­bat Rock, but none of the songs from the unre­leased record are in the film. At one point, bassist Paul Simonon’s wife Pearl Har­bor (a.k.a. Pearl E. Gates) of the new wave band Pearl Har­bor and the Explo­sions joins the Clash onstage to sing “Fujiya­ma Mama.” Here’s the set list:

  1. Lon­don Call­ing
  2. Safe Euro­pean Home
  3. (White Man) in Ham­mer­smith Palais
  4. Brand New Cadil­lac
  5. Char­lie Don’t Surf
  6. Clam­p­down
  7. This is Radio Clash
  8. Armagideon Time
  9. Jim­my Jazz
  10. Tom­my Gun
  11. Fujiya­ma Mama
  12. Police On My Back
  13. White Riot

The Clash’s charis­mat­ic front­man, Joe Strum­mer, died ten years ago this Sat­ur­day, on Decem­ber 22, 2002. You can read a lit­tle about him in our Aug. 21 post, “Remem­ber­ing the Clash’s Front­man Joe Strum­mer on His 60th Birth­day.” But per­haps a good way to remem­ber him would be to watch this film, a rare visu­al record of a con­cert by the group many called “the only band that mat­ters.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Clash: West­way to the World

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Clash Songs at the Library

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jerry Seinfeld Explains How to Write a Joke

This week The New York Times Mag­a­zine pub­lished a sto­ry titled “Jer­ry Sein­feld Intends to Die Stand­ing Up,” fill­ing us in on what the come­di­an has been up to in the 14 years since Sein­feld, the sit­com that seemed to define the ’90s, went off the air. As Jon­ah Wein­er explains, Sein­feld has been “liv­ing the life of a road com­ic, albeit one who sells out 20,000-seat Lon­don are­nas and schleps to gigs via char­tered planes rather than rent­ed sub­com­pacts.”

Despite his great wealth, Sein­feld has cho­sen to devote part of almost every week since 2000 (two years after the end of the TV show) to doing stand-up com­e­dy. At 58, Sein­feld remains ful­ly com­mit­ted to the craft of telling jokes to a room­ful of strangers. As he tells Wein­er, he sees him­self more as an exact­ing ath­lete than a tor­tured artist. “I’m not fill­ing a deep emo­tion­al hole here,” Sein­feld says. “I’m play­ing a very dif­fi­cult game, and if you’d like to see some­one who’s very good at a dif­fi­cult game, that’s what I do.”

And if you’d like to learn a lit­tle about how the game of stand-up com­e­dy is played, the Times has post­ed this inter­est­ing five-minute video in which Sein­feld explains the evo­lu­tion of a joke, from sim­ple child­hood obser­va­tion to care­ful­ly thought-out gag. “Where­as most come­di­ans are lazy bas­tards,” Sarah Sil­ver­man says of Sein­feld, “he’s the ulti­mate crafts­man.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee: Jer­ry Sein­feld’s New Series Debuts on the Web

Michael Sandel’s Famous Harvard Course on Justice Now Available as a MOOC: Register Today

Back in 2009, Har­vard polit­i­cal philoso­pher Michael Sandel made his course, Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, avail­able on the web for free (YouTube — iTunes — Web). Sud­den­ly life­long learn­ers around the world had access to a pop­u­lar course enjoyed by more than 14,000 Har­vard stu­dents over 30 years. Start­ing on March 12, 2013, Sandel plans to offer Jus­tice as a free course through edX, the provider of MOOCs (or Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) cre­at­ed by Har­vard and MIT. And here’s one thing you can guar­an­tee: In a sin­gle offer­ing, Sandel will bring his course to more stu­dents world­wide than he did through his decades teach­ing at Har­vard.

FYI: edX announced oth­er new spring cours­es. All will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es & MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. They include:

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Peter Gabriel Plays Full Concert in Modena, Italy (1994)

“It’s a rare moment when an artist takes his estab­lished, even icon­ic work and makes it still stronger,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Susan Richard­son in 1994, “but Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live is just such a moment. Record­ed in Mod­e­na, Italy, dur­ing a Jan­u­ary 1994 per­for­mance on his Secret World tour, the album and the con­cur­rent video release bring songs thread­ed togeth­er by the images of earth and water into a cycle that explores rela­tion­ships between men and women. The result is tan­ta­mount to a reli­gious rite, merg­ing grandeur with the inti­ma­cy of feel­ing, the pub­lic with the secret.” Bold words, but then music crit­ics have always enjoyed using them, and Gabriel him­self has spent a career grow­ing known for using bold sounds. If you rec­og­nize him only as the man who sung the song waft­ing from John Cusack­’s held-aloft boom box, watch his entire Secret World Live Mod­e­na con­cert and get a sense of his true cre­ative range.

A hybrid of pop star and musi­cal mag­pie, Gabriel has gone from Gen­e­sis front­man to eight­ies hit­mak­er to world music impre­sario. Today he brings all the influ­ences col­lect­ed along the way to a peri­od of aggres­sive­ly enthu­si­as­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion with a host of play­ers from the leg­endary to the obscure. This 1994 per­for­mance finds him in mid-career, or at least what now looks like the mid­dle-ish por­tion of a very long and very pro­duc­tive run indeed. The set, as Richard­son went on to assess it, “main­tains a pow­er­ful con­ti­nu­ity that los­es nei­ther pace nor momen­tum; more than the stu­dio orig­i­nals, these ver­sions elab­o­rate on the dra­mat­ic poten­tial inher­ent in them — the heat and mag­ni­tude of rhythm, the human/animal ambi­gu­i­ty of an oth­er­world­ly cry. Secret World enters an inner realm that is know­able only through the range of emo­tion it gives rise to, join­ing ecsta­sy and agony into music that avoids being larg­er than life and instead is as large as life itself.” Does the show still mer­it that lofty descrip­tion today? Watch and per­form some music crit­i­cism of your own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.