Johnny Rotten Goes Before TV’s Judge Judy in 1997 … and Wins!

In the clip above, ex-Sex Pis­tols leader John Lydon (aka “John­ny Rot­ten”) goes before TV’s Judge Judy in a 1997 episode of the day­time show. How and why this came about I can­not begin to imag­ine. The case is straight­for­ward enough. Robert Williams, for­mer drum­mer of Lydon’s post-Pis­tols band Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed, brought suit against the punk icon for breach of con­tract and assault and bat­tery. Judy obvi­ous­ly doesn’t care much for Williams and calls him a “nud­nik.” She seems to like Lydon, though, despite hav­ing to shush his snide out­bursts numer­ous times. It’s also clear she has absolute­ly no idea who he is. “I don’t know from this band,” she says, “This last band I heard was Lawrence Welk… Jim­my Dorsey… Tom­my Dorsey… I don’t know. Those are bands!”

Judy ulti­mate­ly calls out Williams for expect­ing so much order amidst the chaos of the music busi­ness, and she dis­miss­es his suit. And as for John­ny Rotten’s odd fif­teen min­utes on day­time tele­vi­sion? “Per­haps this was the moment Lydon’s ambi­tion as a TV pre­sen­ter was born,” mus­es Dan­ger­ous Minds. Who knows? It’s a long way from the famous Bill Grundy inter­view, yet per­haps not so far from his tele­vised con­fronta­tions of the fol­low­ing few decades. But con­sid­er as evi­dence a much ear­li­er Lydon appear­ance on a 1979 TV court show, “Juke Box Jury” (above), where Lydon and a pan­el of celebri­ties pass ver­dicts on the cur­rent pop hits: “It ain’t the Don­na Sum­mers I know. I hate it. It was awful!”

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

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

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket

Vivian Kubrick, daugh­ter of the late, great film­mak­er, shot a behind-the-scenes movie about the mak­ing of The Shin­ing (1980) at the ten­der age of 17. For Full Met­al Jack­et (1987) – Stan­ley Kubrick’s next movie — Vivian not only com­posed the score under the pseu­do­nym Abi­gail Mead but she also shot 18 hours of footage for anoth­er planned doc­u­men­tary. That movie nev­er came to pass and most like­ly nev­er will; Vivian broke off all con­tact with her fam­i­ly in the late ‘90s.

Yet frag­ments of the behind-the-scenes footage have found their way into a cou­ple of doc­u­men­taries – Stan­ley Kubrick: A Life in Pic­tures, direct­ed by Kubrick’s long time pro­duc­er and broth­er-in-law Jan Har­lan and in Jon Ronson’s Stan­ley Kubrick’s Box­es. (Ron­son actu­al­ly dis­cov­ered the footage in a sta­ble house on the Kubrick estate.)

Some­one has help­ful­ly strung togeth­er the footage into a sin­gle video. See above. One of the first things that strike you is just how weird the shoot was. Though the film cli­max­es dur­ing the bat­tle of Hue in trop­i­cal Viet­nam, Kubrick is seen on set bark­ing orders in a win­ter coat. That’s because the movie was shot in Eng­land. An aban­doned gas works fac­to­ry near Lon­don, of all places, served as the war torn city.

Kubrick’s famed per­fec­tion­ism shines through in the video. He labors to get just the right spac­ing between lime-cov­ered actors play­ing corpses in an open grave and he tells his actors just how many groin pulls to do dur­ing the famous “this is my rifle, this is my gun” sequence. “It should be three shakes. This is…my…gun. In time to the thing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing (As Told by Those Who Helped Him Make It)

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essential Characteristics of Noir Films

A Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion list of Roger Ebert’s 141 “Great Movies” includes only two films noirThe Third Man and The Killing—yet the late great crit­ic had quite a lot to say about the genre. In an inter­view with radio show To the Best of Our Knowl­edge, for exam­ple, Ebert described noir films as teach­ing their char­ac­ters a les­son: “that they’re weak­er than they thought they were and they’re capa­ble of evil that they didn’t think they could com­mit.” His deeply philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion will draw you into the nihilis­tic abyss at the heart of noir. And yet many of his reviews of such films com­ment as much on sur­faces as depths. For all their psy­cho­log­i­cal bru­tal­i­ty, noir films were noth­ing if not styl­ish.

Ebert’s enthu­si­as­tic review of 2005 neo-noir Sin City, for exam­ple, calls it a movie “not about nar­ra­tive but about style… a com­ic book brought to life and pumped with steroids.” Ten years ear­li­er, he wrote on the noir explo­sion of the mid-90s: “Not since its hey­day (rough­ly from 1940 to 1955) has film noir been more pop­u­lar than it is right now.” Ebert’s exam­ples are such hyper-styl­ized films as Pulp Fic­tion, Exot­i­ca, Sev­en, and even Bat­man For­ev­er, all of which ges­ture toward clas­si­cal noir loca­tions and cos­tum­ing fetish­es. And in our post yes­ter­day on 25 time­less noir films, we quot­ed from anoth­er 1995 Ebert piece. This time he writes on clas­sic noir char­ac­ter­is­tics, and brings togeth­er much of his think­ing on the grim themes and louche styl­is­tic man­ner­isms of the genre. Below, we have Ebert’s ten essen­tial com­ments, slight­ly abridged, on what “Film noir is…”

1. A French term mean­ing “black film,” or film of the night.
2. A movie which at no time mis­leads you into think­ing there is going to be a hap­py end­ing.
3. Loca­tions that reek of the night, of shad­ows, of alleys, of the back doors of fan­cy places, of apart­ment build­ings with a high turnover rate, of taxi dri­vers and bar­tenders who have seen it all.
4. Cig­a­rettes. Every­body in film noir is always smok­ing, as if to say, “On top of every­thing else, I’ve been assigned to get through three packs today.”
5. Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice ver­sa.
6. For women: low neck­lines, flop­py hats, mas­cara, lip­stick, dress­ing rooms, boudoirs… high heels, red dress­es, elbow length gloves, mix­ing drinks […]
7. For men: fedo­ras, suits and ties, shab­by res­i­den­tial hotels with a neon sign blink­ing through the win­dow, buy­ing your­self a drink out of the office bot­tle, cars with run­ning boards, all-night din­ers […]
8. Movies either shot in black and white, or feel­ing like they were.
9. Rela­tion­ships in which love is only the final flop card in the pok­er game of death.
10. The most Amer­i­can film genre, because no soci­ety could have cre­at­ed a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betray­al, unless it were essen­tial­ly naive and opti­mistic.

Be sure to see Ebert’s full piece here. Ebert loved all things noir, includ­ing com­ic book films like Sin City and Bat­man Begins. One of his favorite neo-noirs was Leav­ing Las Vegas (per­haps in part due to his own acknowl­edged alco­holism). But as he avers in his radio inter­view and in book The Great Movies, per­haps his favorite clas­sic noir film was Detour, “a movie so filled with imper­fec­tions that it would not earn the direc­tor a pass­ing grade in film school.” All the same, he writes, the film “lives on, haunt­ing and creepy, an embod­i­ment of the guilty soul of film noir.” Watch Edgar G. Ulmer’s “ham-hand­ed” yet unfor­get­table 1945 Detour above and learn more about the film in this pre­vi­ous post from Col­in Mar­shall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time: A List by “Noir­chael­o­gist” Eddie Muller

The Third Man: Film Noir Clas­sic on YouTube

Roger Ebert Talks Mov­ing­ly About Los­ing and Re-Find­ing His Voice (TED 2011)

The Two Roger Eberts: Emphat­ic Crit­ic on TV; Inci­sive Review­er in Print

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

The Postcards That Picasso Illustrated and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apollinaire & Gertrude Stein

picasso postcard 1

Pablo Picasso’s coterie of friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors was vast and glam­orous. Fol­low­ing his move to France, Picas­so befriend­ed the flam­boy­ant Russ­ian bal­let impre­sario Serge Diaghilev, whose Bal­lets Russ­es sets he went on to design, and whose pri­ma bal­le­ri­na Picas­so went on to mar­ry. Picas­so also became friends with com­posers (such as Igor Stravin­sky) and emi­nent painters, includ­ing his Cubist broth­er-in-arms Georges Braques, and his com­pa­tri­ot, Juan Gris.

Today, we bring you a num­ber of the post­cards that Picas­so sent to his friends, many of which he per­son­al­ly illus­trat­ed, quick­ly dash­ing off a note or a pic­ture in a loose, wavy script. Above, you can view an image of Picasso’s post­card to his close friend and artist, Jean Cocteau, depict­ing the bal­cony at No. 10, Rue d’Anjou, where Cocteau’s moth­er had an apart­ment.  Below, you can view a sketch Picas­so sent off to the fore­fa­ther of the Sur­re­al­ist move­ment, his rotund friend and poet Guil­laume Apol­li­naire. The mes­sage reads, blunt­ly, “I don’t see you any­more. Are you dead?”

Picasso à Apollinaire

In the length­i­est of the post­cards, dat­ing from 1919 and pro­vid­ed by Some­thing Rich & Strange, Picas­so writes to Gertrude Sein, per­haps describ­ing a hol­i­day:

picasso to stein

“Mais non Gertrude,

il n’y a pas des mouch­es et je n’ai vu encore qu’un mous­tique, que j’ai tué d’ailleurs.  Ecrives si le couer vous dit.  Milles bonnes choses de nous deux a vous [et mlle Tok­las]

votre Picas­so.

-

“No, Gertrude,

there are no flies, and I haven’t seen more than one mos­qui­to, which I killed, any­way.  Write me if the mood strikes. All the best to you and Ms. Tok­las.

Yours, Picas­so”

Inter­est­ed read­ers may pur­chase a col­lec­tion of Picasso’s post­cards on Ama­zon.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Quantum Entanglement Animated

PhD Comics has released the third video in an ani­mat­ed series explain­ing Quan­tum con­cepts and devices. This one focus­es on Quan­tum Entan­gle­ment and fea­tures the work of Cal­tech physi­cists Jeff Kim­ble and Chen-Lung Hung. Mean­while Jorge Cham, cre­ator of PhD Comics, pro­vides the accom­pa­ny­ing ani­ma­tion.

Entire cours­es on Quan­tum Entan­gle­ment can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Physics Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Susskind Teach­es You “The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum” for Under­stand­ing Mod­ern Physics

Quan­tum Physics Made Rel­a­tive­ly Sim­ple: A Mini Course from Nobel Prize-Win­ning Physi­cist Hans Bethe

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

What’s Next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? PhD Comics Intro­duces the Search for Extra Dimen­sions

The Famous Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics: The New Online Edi­tion (in HTML5)

Who Directed the Psycho Shower Scene?: Hitchcock’s Film & Saul Bass’ Storyboards Side by Side

The show­er scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psy­cho (1960) is eas­i­ly one the most viewed, ana­lyzed and parsed lengths of film in cin­e­ma his­to­ry. Con­struct­ed from over 70 shots, the scene shows Mar­i­on Crane (Janet Leigh) – the sup­posed pro­tag­o­nist of the movie – meet­ing a gory end at the hands of a cross-dress­ing Nor­man Bates 30 min­utes into the movie. Hitchcock’s quick edit­ing and his sub­jec­tive cam­era work bril­liant­ly evokes all the scene’s nudi­ty and trans­gres­sive vio­lence with­out actu­al­ly show­ing much of either. The scene freaked out audi­ences when it came out and 54 years lat­er, it still has the pow­er to shock. Crit­ic David Thom­son called it “legit­i­mate­ly among the most vio­lent scenes ever shot for an Amer­i­can film.”

Psy­cho went a long way toward cement­ing Hitchcock’s stand­ing as a cin­e­mat­ic auteur. So in 1970, sem­i­nal graph­ic design­er Saul Bass, who did the title sequence for the movie, made waves when he claimed that he direct­ed the show­er scene. His proof is his sto­ry­board, which shows a sequence of images that are sim­i­lar — though not exact­ly the same — as what end­ed up in the movie. Vashi Nedo­man­sky help­ful­ly placed Bass’s sto­ry­board along­side the actu­al movie. See above.

As you might notice, that eerie motif of the show­er head is not to be found on the sto­ry­boards. Oth­er images – the knife-wield­ing mur­der­er in sil­hou­ette, the blood spi­ral­ing down the drain, the cur­tain get­ting pulled from the rod – look like they came straight from Bass. And some have argued that the scene sim­ply looks more like Bass’s pre­vi­ous work than Hitchcock’s.

Oth­ers, includ­ing many of the peo­ple who were actu­al­ly on set, insist that Hitch­cock was at the helm. Janet Leigh — who, of course, was there for the dura­tion of the scene’s sev­en day shoot, scream­ing her head off – has been unequiv­o­cal about her thoughts on the mat­ter:

Saul Bass was there for the shoot­ing, but he nev­er direct­ed me. Absolute­ly not. Saul Bass is bril­liant, but he could­n’t have done the draw­ings had Mr. Hitch­cock not dis­cussed with him what he want­ed to get. And you could­n’t have filmed the draw­ings. Why does there always have to be con­tro­ver­sy?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Hitch­cock (Antho­ny Hop­kins) Pitch­es Janet Leigh (Scar­lett Johans­son) on the Famous Show­er Scene

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Name Your Price for 200+ Albums from Deep Elm Records: Prices Start at Free

deep-elm-records A quick heads up, cour­tesy of Metafil­ter: Deep Elm Records turns 20 years old next year and announced yes­ter­day that all 200+ of its albums are avail­able on a “name your price, no min­i­mum” basis:

“If you have means please show [the bands] love by nam­ing your price. If you do not have any means, in exchange for each down­load we kind­ly request that you post, share, tag and tweet to tell your friends about each album as our bands depend on your word of mouth.”

The indie record label has released LPs by bands such as Lights & Motion, The Apple­seed Cast, Brandt­son, The White Octave, and Planes Mis­tak­en for Stars, plus a num­ber of com­pi­la­tion albums, includ­ing The Emo Diaries. If you’re look­ing for a place to get start­ed, one read­er on Metafil­ter offers up this list.

* v/a, The Emo Diaries, Vol. 1
* David Singer, The Cost of Liv­ing * Apple­seed Cast, Low Lev­el Owl, Vol. 1 + 2
* Triple­fas­tac­tion, Cat­tle­men Don’t
* Walt Mink, Colos­sus
* Cam­ber, Beau­ti­ful Cha­rade
* Accents, Growth And Squalor
* Paper­moons, New Tales

Relat­ed con­tent:

New Jer­ry Gar­cia Web Site Fea­tures 5,000 Hours of Free Music, Plus Some Fan­tas­tic Archival Mate­r­i­al

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

Scenes from Star Wars, The Godfather, Scarface and Other Classic Movies Adapted Into Ottoman-Style Paintings

STARWARS

Every now and again, we like to bring you a reimag­in­ing of an old clas­sic. Some time ago, for exam­ple, we post­ed about a rein­ven­tion of Star Wars: A New Hope, shot by scores of ardent fans, and spliced togeth­er from 15-sec­ond frag­ments. Today, we’re writ­ing about anoth­er project that grew out of a twist on Star Wars, called Clas­sic Movies in Minia­ture Style. Murat Pal­ta, a Turk­ish illus­tra­tor, decid­ed to com­bine a west­ern film with the intri­cate two-dimen­sion­al motifs found in Ottoman minia­ture paint­ings, and got the sur­re­al result that you see above. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Han Solo’s smug grin, and Darth Vad­er dal­ly­ing to smell the ros­es.

With Ottoman Star Wars hav­ing gar­nered high marks from his pro­fes­sors, and hav­ing enjoyed the project, Pal­ta decid­ed to keep with his theme and illus­trate oth­er icon­ic movies in the same style. Here are a cou­ple of oth­er movie posters he’s pro­duced since:

SCARFACE

GODFATHER-1

As you prob­a­bly guessed, the first depicts the final moments of Scar­face (1983), where a coked-out Tony Mon­tana rains bul­lets on a team of assas­sins who have infil­trat­ed his lav­ish com­pound. In the sec­ond, a com­pendi­um of God­fa­ther scenes, a regal Don Cor­leone lis­tens to sup­pli­cants, as Jack Woltz, in the bot­tom left-hand cor­ner, finds his prized stallion’s sev­ered head in his bed. While the con­cept is clever, what real­ly stands out in Palta’s illus­tra­tions is the lev­el of detail, from Brando’s sour facial expres­sion, to Tony Montana’s fez. The remain­der of the posters on his web­site, which include The Shin­ing, Alien, and a ter­rif­ic ver­sion of A Clock­work Orange, are no less impres­sive.

For more of Murat Palta’s Ottoman movie posters, vis­it his page at Behance.net.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars is a Remix

Star Wars Retold with Paper Ani­ma­tion

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