Doodlebug, Christopher Nolan’s First Short: What Came Before The Dark Night, Memento & Inception (1997)

in Film | October 28th, 2013

We know British film­mak­er Christo­pher Nolan best today for direct­ing the lat­est tril­o­gy of Bat­man films, Bat­man Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Ris­es. His recent high-pro­file non-super­hero hit Incep­tion made an impres­sive, if brief, splash as a main­stream brain­ben­der, which, for me, faint­ly echoed the thrill he sent through the world of crossover inde­pen­dent film with 2000’s back­ward-told Memen­to. Yet, if this does­n’t make me too much of an I‑liked-the-ear­ly-stuff-cliché, I still think of him most fond­ly for direct­ing his 1998 fea­ture debut Fol­low­ing, a 16-mil­lime­ter, black-and-white, $6000-bud­get tale of theft, imper­son­ation, and iden­ti­ty shot on the streets of Lon­don. (One of the char­ac­ters breaks into an apart­ment with a now-strik­ing Bat­man logo on its door.) But even a project as small-scale as Fol­low­ing has a pre­de­ces­sor, Doo­dle­bug, which you can watch above.

“The depths of insan­i­ty are explored by a man chas­ing some­thing in his apart­ment with a shoe,” promis­es the video descrip­tion of the three-minute Doo­dle­bug. In the cen­ter of this shad­owy, para­noid tale we have Jere­my Theobald, who would go on to star in Fol­low­ing (and appear as a Gotham Water Board Tech­ni­cian in Bat­man Begins). Nolan shot it back in his days study­ing Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, a school whose film soci­ety he led and which he chose express­ly for the avail­abil­i­ty of its cam­eras and edit­ing gear. His ear­ly, hand­made pic­tures have become even more fas­ci­nat­ing to watch in light of his dec­la­ra­tions in a DGA Quar­ter­ly inter­view that he far prefers shoot­ing in film to shoot­ing dig­i­tal­ly, and that 3D tech­nol­o­gy has­n’t much impressed him. But he hard­ly dis­dains spec­ta­cle, and the arti­cle con­tains a good deal of talk about how he uses CGI and crafts action sequences. Over the years, Nolan’s core enthu­si­asms seem­ing­ly haven’t changed; even Doo­dle­bug, espe­cial­ly by stu­dent-film stan­dards, has some pret­ty cool spe­cial effects.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy Decodes The Dark Knight and They Live

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no & Truf­faut

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Free: Listen to 298 Episodes of the Vintage Crime Radio Series, Dragnet

in Radio | October 28th, 2013

dragnet radio

Before it was a film, and before it became a clas­sic tele­vi­sion series, Drag­net start­ed out as a long-run­ning radio show, air­ing from June 3, 1949, to Feb­ru­ary 26, 1957. One of the most influ­en­tial crime dra­ma shows from the 50s, Drag­net was the brain­child of Jack Webb, the actor, direc­tor and screen­writer who played the lead role of Sergeant Joe Fri­day. We best remem­ber Joe Fri­day implor­ing female infor­mants to pro­vide “Just the facts, ma’am.” But, in actu­al fact, he nev­er uttered pre­cise­ly those words. “All we want are the facts” is what he real­ly said. But I digress. Thanks to Archive.org you can now trav­el back to the 50s and lis­ten to 298 episodes of the show, which was known for its real­is­tic depic­tion of police work — the bore­dom, the drudgery, the dan­ger, the occa­sion­al acts of hero­ism, and every­thing in between.

Note: There were 314 episodes in total. And Archive.org does not house the very first episode called “Rob­bery,” which first aired on June 3, 1949. That’s avail­able here.

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 War of the Worlds: Orson Welles’ 1938 Radio Dra­ma That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

Ray­mond Chan­dler & Ian Flem­ing in Con­ver­sa­tion (1958)

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Free Noir Films

Free Alfred Hitch­cock Films

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Watch Red Shirley, Lou Reed’s Short Documentary on His Fascinating 100-Year-Old Cousin (2010)

in Film, History | October 28th, 2013

From fronting the Vel­vet Under­ground to putting out four sol­id sides of feed­back noise to col­lab­o­rat­ing with Metal­li­ca on a semi-spo­ken word album based on the plays of Frank Wedekind, the late avant-rock­er Lou Reed had a way of nev­er work­ing on quite what you’d expect him to. Eas­i­er said than done, of course, but Reed man­aged to sus­tain a long, always-inter­est­ing career and posi­tion in the cul­ture by exer­cis­ing that strength not just in music but in oth­er forms as well. Above we have Red Shirley, a half-hour doc­u­men­tary film he made with Ralph Gib­son in 2010. (Score pro­vid­ed by “the Met­al Machine Trio”.) We get the premise up front, onscreen: “On the eve of her 100th birth­day, Lou sat down with his cousin Shirley for a tête-à-tête.” Most near­ly-100-year-olds have, pre­sum­ably, seen a lot; Shirley Novick has seen even more.

“Dur­ing World War I she emerged unscathed from Poland after her fam­i­ly’s house was hit by a dud shell,” writes the Wall Street Jour­nal’s Nico­las Rapold in an arti­cle that also includes Reeds own’s reflec­tions on his cousin and her thor­ough­ly his­tor­i­cal life. “At 19, she jour­neyed to Cana­da with­out her par­ents, thus escap­ing the fate of rel­a­tives dur­ing World War II. (‘Hitler took care of them,’ she curt­ly remarks in the film.)

Leav­ing Cana­da, which she deemed ‘too provin­cial,’ Ms. Novick joined thou­sands of immi­grants in New York City’s gar­ment indus­try. There, over the course of 47 years, her debate skills came in handy as an out­spo­ken activist dur­ing union scraps. She would lat­er join the 1963 civ­il rights march on Wash­ing­ton.” Snag­films tags Red Shirley with the apt label “fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple,” but for a sol­id doc­u­men­tary, you also need a fas­ci­nat­ed inter­view­er, and Reed fills that role. “The only oth­er thing I would like to do is make a movie about mar­tial arts,” Reed told Rapold. “Like, trav­el around to dif­fer­ent teach­ers and tour­na­ments, com­pare tech­niques and train­ing.” That we’ll nev­er see it now fills me with regret.

The film should be view­able in most all geo­gra­phies, or so our Twit­ter fol­low­ers tell us. (Our apolo­gies if you’re not in one of them.) You can find Red Shirley per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion of 575 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lou Reed — Vel­vet Under­ground Front­man, Influ­en­tial Solo Musi­cian — Dead at 71

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Lou Reed — Velvet Underground Frontman, Influential Solo Musician — Dead at 71

in Music | October 27th, 2013

Rolling Stone is report­ing that Lou Reed, whose music career began with The Vel­vet Under­ground in the 1960s, before becom­ing an influ­en­tial solo artist in the 70s, has died. He was 71 and had under­gone a liv­er trans­plant back in May. Whether that’s relat­ed to the cause of death remains unknown. We will fol­low up with a length­i­er reflec­tion on the life and times of Lou Reed. But, for now, we want to make you aware of this sad news and present some of our favorites clips of Reed and the VU. We start you off, above, with Reed singing a live funk ver­sion of “Sweet Jane,” a song first released on VU’s 1970 album, Loaded. It was per­formed in Paris in ’74, with Prakash John play­ing bass and Steve Hunter on gui­tar. To delve deep­er into Reed’s career, we sug­gest you watch the 1998 doc­u­men­tary, Rock and Roll Heart. It’s from PBS’s Amer­i­can Mas­ters series and runs 75 min­utes.

More Lou:

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Hear 38 Ver­sions of “Sep­tem­ber Song,” from James Brown, Lou Reed, Sarah Vaugh­an and Oth­ers

Sell­ing Cool: Lou Reed’s Clas­sic Hon­da Scoot­er Com­mer­cial, 1984

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occu­py Lin­coln Cen­ter: An Art­ful View

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Enjoy a Philosophy Brain Teaser; Play the Free Mind Boggler App from the University of Liverpool

in Philosophy | October 27th, 2013

mind boggler

Can you beat the Mind Bog­gler, the world’s “most fiendish philo­soph­i­cal brain-teas­er” brought to you by Phi­los­o­phy in the City, a project cre­at­ed out of the Depart­ment of Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool? Want­i­ng to bring phi­los­o­phy into “the real world,” Phi­los­o­phy in the City cre­at­ed a free app that presents a new puz­zle each week, in the form of a “jum­bled-up philo­soph­i­cal quote.” All you have to do is cor­rect­ly re-order the puz­zle to unlock fur­ther read­ing, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about the philoso­pher in the spot­light that par­tic­u­lar week, plus exclu­sive com­men­tary and analy­sis pro­vid­ed by schol­ars from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool. You can play the game in “easy mode” or “hard mode,” and also against the clock, just to add a bit of pres­sure. Right now, the app is only avail­able on the Apple plat­form. Hope­ful­ly Android is around the cor­ner.

Enjoy the app, and if you find your­self want­i­ng to go deep­er, then check out the almost 100 phi­los­o­phy cours­es in our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Intro­duc­ing Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: An Open Access Phi­los­o­phy Project Cre­at­ed by Yale and MIT

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Lis­ten to the Pod­cast: The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

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An Awkward/NSFW Interview with Nirvana Producer Steve Albini (Plus B‑52 Frontman Fred Schneider)

in Comedy, Music | October 26th, 2013

Record engi­neer Steve Albi­ni got a fair amount of press last month when the music world cel­e­brat­ed the 20th anniver­sary of Nir­vana’s In Utero, an album Albi­ni helped ush­er into the world in 1993. It would be Nir­vana’s last stu­dio record­ing.

In a recent post on Open Cul­ture, Josh Jones described Albi­ni as fol­lows:

Jour­ney­man record pro­duc­er Steve Albi­ni … is per­haps the cranki­est man in rock. This is not an effect of age. He’s always been that way, since the emer­gence of his scary, no-frills post-punk band Big Black and lat­er projects Rape­man and Shel­lac. In his cur­rent role as elder states­man of indie rock and more, Chicago’s Albi­ni has devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion as kind of a hardass. He’s also a con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al who musi­cians want to know and work with.

In the video above cre­at­ed by leg­endary com­ic out­fit Sec­ond City, Albi­ni sits down (lit­er­al­ly) to talk with a stand­ing, awk­ward Tuck­er Wood­ley. It’s amus­ing, cer­tain­ly uncom­fort­able, and occa­sion­al­ly Not Safe for Work. We also have Wood­ley’s inter­view with Fred Schnei­der, of the B‑52s,  below.

Thanks to our read­er Nate D. for send­ing this along.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and make us part of your dai­ly social media diet.

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Watch 8 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums & More

in Film | October 25th, 2013

We Wes Ander­son-watch­ers have only just begun eager­ly antic­i­pat­ing the The Grand Budapest Hotel, the direc­tor’s next live-action film star­ing Ralph Fiennes, F. Mur­ray Abra­ham, and new­com­er Tony Revolori (and fea­tur­ing, need we even add, a cer­tain Bill Mur­ray). But see­ing as it won’t appear in the­aters until March of next year, we’ll for now have to busy our­selves with its trail­er and var­i­ous oth­er pieces of Ander­so­ni­ana. Among the most intrigu­ing new items in this group we have a book called The Wes Ander­son Col­lec­tion, an in-depth exam­i­na­tion of Ander­son­’s fil­mog­ra­phy built around a book-length con­ver­sa­tion (think Hitchcock/Truffaut, albeit pos­sessed of a dif­fer­ent sen­si­b­li­ty, to put it mild­ly) with crit­ic Matt Zoller Seitz. The videos here from his blog on RogerEbert.com adapt cer­tain sec­tions of the book on Ander­son­’s first five pic­tures: Bot­tle Rock­et, Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums, The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou, and The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. 

“The Wes Ander­son Col­lec­tion is a book that was about twen­ty years in the mak­ing,” says Zoller Seitz in the book’s trail­er. “When Wes and Owen Wil­son got their short film Bot­tle Rock­et into the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, I went to meet them at a burg­er joint in Dal­las. We were play­ing pool togeth­er. I’m pret­ty sure Wes won. About three years ago, our paths crossed again, and the result was this book. I love Wes’ style. I think if he were a writer, he’d be some­body like a Hem­ing­way, who does­n’t use a lot of adjec­tives. He takes var­i­ous influ­ences and turns them into some­thing that’s unique­ly his. There’s a charm, and a famil­iar­i­ty, and an easy­go­ing qual­i­ty to all his movies. His movies reward rewatch­ing.”

Some com­plain that Ander­son “just makes the same movie over and over again,” but giv­en what the film­mak­er has demon­strat­ed of his com­mand of cin­e­ma at this point in his career, you almost might as well also accuse Ozu of just mak­ing the same movie over and over again. “I think the detail-obsessed fetishists are real­ly going to dig this book,” Zoller Seitz adds. If Ander­son hap­pens to count any of those among his fans, this book may well have a chance.

… Hold the phones. The final install­ments are now out, and we’ve added them to the post.

The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed

Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox

Moon­rise King­dom

Grand Budapest Hotel

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son from Above. Quentin Taran­ti­no From Below

Bill Mur­ray Intro­duces Wes Anderson’s Moon­rise King­dom (And Plays FDR)

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Learn to Sing the Harmonies of Famous Beatles Songs with Master Harmonist Galeazzo Frudua

in Education, Music | October 25th, 2013

A recent Metafil­ter post intro­duces us to Galeaz­zo Frud­ua, a musi­cian from Bologna, Italy who, “pos­sess­es an uncan­ni­ly good ear for har­mo­ny, and has pro­duced a series of videos that painstak­ing­ly and expert­ly ana­lyze and demon­strate for you the vocal har­monies employed in var­i­ous Bea­t­les songs.” These detailed tuto­ri­als, writes the Metafil­ter poster, are made all the more watch­able by Frud­u­a’s “per­cep­tive com­men­tary, capa­ble singing voice, unas­sum­ing man­ner, impres­sive video edit­ing skills and, hey, his charm­ing Ital­ian accent.”

In his first tuto­r­i­al, for “Nowhere Man” (above), Frud­ua begins by intro­duc­ing “Lennon voice”: “Lennon voice is very sim­ple, and it goes like this.” And, hand­i­ly, flaw­less­ly, it does. Frud­ua, who seems to be record­ing in the back of a restau­rant, match­es the tone of Lennon, McCart­ney, and Harrison’s har­monies sep­a­rate­ly and togeth­er impres­sive­ly. He par­tic­u­lar­ly favors Rub­ber Soul. Hear his “In My Life” below. He calls it “one of the best per­for­mances ever of John Lennon in the Bea­t­les” as well as “a fan­tas­tic cam­pus on learn­ing how to sing.”

Anec­do­tal­ly, hav­ing worked with choir singers, opera singers, and a capel­la singers, I can say that Frudua’s abil­i­ty is not par­tic­u­lar­ly rare but is the effect of con­stant prac­tice. One Metafil­ter poster puts it well: “It’s not hard if you have a bit of an ear, and some expe­ri­ence.… Har­monies are a kind of lan­guage. Spend some time learn­ing the gram­mar and a few phras­es and it can open up quick­ly.” Frudua’s not only a mas­ter of vocal har­mo­ny, he’s also an expert luthi­er and builds cus­tom gui­tars for dozens of Ital­ian artists. In his break­down below of “You Nev­er Give Me Your Mon­ey,” the intro to the Abbey Road med­ley, Frud­ua takes on a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult har­mo­ny, as he explains in great detail in his care­ful intro­duc­tion to the song’s har­mon­ic gram­mar. He tells us we can use this tuto­r­i­al “as a guide for your Bea­t­les’ trib­ute band or repro­duce them in your home record­ing.” You may do those things if you wish. Or you could watch Frud­ua do them bet­ter. See his full series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

Decon­struct­ing The Mas­ter Track of The Bea­t­les’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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