Watch the First Episode of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, Of Which Stanley Kubrick Became a Big Fan

in Animation, Film, Television | August 14th, 2014

Osamu Tezu­ka is one of the great cre­ative forces of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Known in his native Japan as the “god of man­ga,” Tezu­ka was mind-bog­gling­ly pro­duc­tive, crank­ing out around 170,000 pages of comics in his 60 years of life. He almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly made man­ga respectable to read for adults, cre­at­ing tales that were both uni­ver­sal and emo­tion­al­ly com­plex. And he worked in pret­ty much every genre you can imag­ine from hor­ror, to girly fan­ta­sy, to an epic series about the life of the Bud­dha. Yet of all of Tezuka’s many vol­umes of comics, his best beloved work was Tet­suwan Ato­mu, oth­er­wise known as Astro Boy.

In 1962, Tezu­ka ful­filled a child­hood dream by open­ing an ani­ma­tion stu­dio. One of his first projects was to adapt was Astro Boy. The tele­vi­sion series pre­miered in 1963 and proved to be huge­ly pop­u­lar in Japan. It wasn’t long before Amer­i­can TV start­ed air­ing dubbed ver­sions of the show. You can see the very first episode, “Birth of Astro Boy,” above.

After his son dies in a freak car acci­dent, sci­en­tist Dr. Astor Boyn­ton is dri­ven mad by grief. He devel­ops an insane laugh and, with it, an equal­ly insane plan to build a robot who looks just like his dead son. After a Franken­stein-esque mon­tage, Astro Boy is born. All seems well for the adorable, sweet-natured robot, until Boyn­ton freaks out over Astro Boy’s lack of  growth. “I’ve been a good father to you, haven’t I?” he whines. “Well then, why can’t you be a good son to me and grow up to be a nor­mal human adult?” How’s that for a parental guilt trip?

astroboy-birth

So Dr. Boyn­ton casts Astro Boy out, sell­ing him into slav­ery to The Great Cac­cia­tore, an evil cir­cus ring­leader who forces him to be the world’s cutest robot glad­i­a­tor. For­tu­nate­ly, Dr. Ele­fun, a col­league of Dr. Boyn­ton, takes pity on Astro Boy and works to free him from his bondage.

The whole sto­ry plays out as if Mary Shel­ley and Fritz Lang col­lab­o­rat­ed to make Dum­bo. Tezu­ka throws in a lot of wacky slap­stick com­e­dy, which just bare­ly takes the edge off the story’s Dick­en­sian melo­dra­ma, which relent­less­ly mines all those pri­mal fears you thought you got over. In short, it’s bril­liant.

The series ran for two years in the States and then con­tin­ued on re-runs though­out the decade. One of the shows fans was appar­ent­ly Stan­ley Kubrick. Dur­ing the mid-60s, Kubrick sent Tezu­ka a let­ter ask­ing if he would be inter­est­ed in help­ing with the art direc­tion and design of his new movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The offer would have required that Tezu­ka spend a year or more in Lon­don. Though great­ly flat­tered, Tezu­ka turned the offer down. The worka­holic artist sim­ply couldn’t spend that much time away from his stu­dio. One has to won­der what Kubrick’s mas­ter­piece would have looked like seen through the prism of Tezu­ka.

In 2001, Steven Spiel­berg pre­miered a movie that was a long ges­tat­ing project of Kubrick’s – the wild­ly under­rat­ed A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence. The par­al­lels between that movie, about a robot child cast out by his par­ents into a cru­el world, and Astro Boy are strik­ing. Kubrick, as it turns out, might have been even a big­ger fan of the God of Man­ga than pre­vi­ous­ly thought.

Here’s the trail­er for A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence.


Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyza­ki

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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The 1985 Soviet TV Adaptation of The Hobbit: Cheap and Yet Strangely Charming

in Film, Literature, Television | August 14th, 2014

If you call your­self a Tolkien fan­boy or fan­girl, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly kept up with the var­i­ous film and tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tions of not just the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, but of its pre­de­ces­sor, The Hob­bit, or There and Back Again. Tolkien’s first chil­dren’s nov­el (or so the lit­er­ary world first received it). The sto­ry it tells of the reluc­tant hero Bil­bo Bag­gins and the band of raff­ish com­pa­tri­ots who drag him out to claim some trea­sure from Smaug the drag­on offers under­stand­ably irre­sistible mate­r­i­al for adap­ta­tion: the rich­ly detailed, often fun­ny high-fan­ta­sy adven­ture has, over the decades, made for numer­ous pro­duc­tions on the stage, radio, and screen.

They’ve ranged from low- to high-pro­file, from Gene Deitch’s loose-as-pos­si­ble 12-minute “ani­mat­ed” adap­ta­tion that came out in 1966 to Peter Jack­son’s tri­par­tite, high-fram­er­ate, nine-hour series of major motion pic­tures, two cur­rent­ly released with one to go. But what to make of the Sovi­et Hob­bit above?

Known in Eng­lish as The Fairy­tale Jour­ney of Mr. Bil­bo Bag­gins, The Hob­bit and in Russ­ian, in full, as Сказочное путешествие мистера Бильбо Бэггинса, Хоббита, через дикий край, чёрный лес, за туманные горы. Туда и обратно. По сказочной повести Джона Толкина “Хоббит,” the hour­long TV movie debuted on the Leningrad TV Chan­nel’s chil­dren’s show Tale After Tale in 1985. This unli­censed adap­ta­tion frames itself with the words of a Tolkien stand-in called “the Pro­fes­sor,” using live actors to play the main char­ac­ters like Bil­bo, Thorin, Gan­dalf, and Gol­lum, por­tray­ing the more exot­ic ones with either pup­pets or, accord­ing to Tolkien Gate­way, dancers from the Leningrad State Aca­d­e­m­ic Opera and Bal­let The­atre. The fact that this ver­sion of The Hob­bit only recent­ly became avail­able with real Eng­lish sub­ti­tles (as opposed to goofy par­o­dy ones) goes to show just how seri­ous­ly the Tolkien fan­dom has tak­en it, but it does retain a kind of hand­craft­ed charm. Plus, it gives the inter­net the chance to indulge in the oblig­a­tory Yakov Smirnoff gag: in Sovi­et Rus­sia, ring finds you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hob­bit: The First Ani­ma­tion & Film Adap­ta­tion of Tolkien’s Clas­sic (1966)

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Illus­tra­tions of The Lord of the Rings in Russ­ian Iconog­ra­phy Style (1993)

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

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

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Read 12 Stories By Haruki Murakami Free Online

in Literature | August 13th, 2014


Image by wakari­m­a­sita, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In her New York Times review of Haru­ki Murakami’s lat­est, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age, Pat­ti Smith writes that the nov­el­ist has two modes, “the sur­re­al, intra-dimen­sion­al side” and the “more min­i­mal­ist, real­ist side.” These two Murakamis often coex­ist with­in the same work of fic­tion, as the fan­tas­tic or the super­nat­ur­al invades the real, or the oth­er way around. Like one of his lit­er­ary heroes, Franz Kaf­ka, Murakami’s work doesn’t so much cre­ate alter­nate real­i­ties as it alters real­i­ty, with all its mun­dane details and hum­drum dai­ly rou­tines. As Ted Gioia put it in a review of Murakami’s Kaf­ka on the Shore, “this abil­i­ty to cap­ture the phan­tas­magor­i­cal in the thick of com­muter traf­fic, broad­band Inter­net con­nec­tions and high-rise archi­tec­ture is the dis­tinc­tive call­ing card of Murakami”—he “mes­mer­izes us by work­ing his leg­erde­main in places where real­i­ty would seem to be rock sol­id.”

In Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki Muraka­mi works this same mag­ic, as you can see in this excerpt pub­lished in Slate last month. Tex­tured with gran­u­lar real­ist details and straight­for­ward nar­ra­tion, the scene slow­ly builds into a cap­ti­vat­ing super­nat­ur­al tale that slides just as eas­i­ly back into the weft and warp of wak­ing life. In one piece of dia­logue, Muraka­mi sums up one way we might read all of his “sur­re­al, intra-dimen­sion­al” flights: “It wasn’t an issue of whether or not he believed it. I think he total­ly accept­ed it as the weird tale it was. Like the way a snake will swal­low its prey and not chew it, but instead let it slow­ly digest.” Giv­en the jit­tery, dis­tract­ed state of most mod­ern read­ers in a tech­no­log­i­cal land­scape that push­es us to make hasty judg­ments and snap­py, ill-con­sid­ered replies, it is sur­pris­ing how many of Murakami’s fans are will­ing to take the time. And it is no sub­set of clois­tered devo­tees either, but, in Pat­ti Smith’s words, “the alien­at­ed, the ath­let­ic, the dis­en­chant­ed and the buoy­ant.”

Muraka­mi finds read­ers across this broad spec­trum for many rea­sons; his prose is acces­si­ble even when his nar­ra­tives are baf­fling. (Gioia notes that “when the Japan­ese pub­lish­er of Kaf­ka on the Shore set up a web­site allow­ing read­ers to ask ques­tions of the author, some 8,000 were sub­mit­ted.”) His peren­ni­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with, and immer­sion in, the worlds of jazz, rock, and clas­si­cal music, base­ball, and run­ning, draw in those who might nor­mal­ly avoid the Kaf­ka-esque. But when we come to Muraka­mi, Kaf­ka-esque is very often what we find, as well as Salinger-esque, Von­negut-esque, Pyn­chon-esque, even Philip K. Dick-esque, as well as the –esque of real­ist mas­ters like Ray­mond Carv­er. Whether you’re new to Muraka­mi or a long­time fan of his work, you’ll find all of these ten­den­cies, and much more to love, in the four short sto­ries we present below, all free to read at The New York­er for a lim­it­ed time (the mag­a­zine will go behind a pay­wall in the fall).

Take advan­tage of this brief reprieve and enjoy the many rich­es of Haru­ki Murakami’s fic­tive worlds, which so decep­tive­ly imper­son­ate the one most of us live in that we feel right at home in his work until it jolts us out of the famil­iar and into a “weird tale.” Whether you believe them or not, they’re sure to stay with you awhile.

“Kino” (Feb­ru­ary 23, 2015)

“A Walk to Kobe” (August 6, 2013)

“Sam­sa in Love” (Octo­ber 28, 2013)

“Yes­ter­day” (June 9, 2014)

“Scheherazade” (Octo­ber 13, 2014)

“Town of Cats,” trans­lat­ed from the Japan­ese by Jay Rubin (Sep­tem­ber 5, 2011)

“U.F.O. in Kushi­ro” (March 28, 2011; orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished March 19, 2001)

“Cream” (Jan­u­ary 28, 2019)

“With the Bea­t­les” (Feb­ru­ary 10, 2020)

“Con­fes­sions of a Shi­na­gawa Mon­key” (June 1, 2020)

“The King­dom That Failed” (August 13, 2020)

And last but sure­ly not least, we bring you “The Folk­lore of Our Times” from The Guardian (pub­lished August 1, 2003), one of Murakami’s involved real­ist com­ing-of-age nar­ra­tives notable for the mature, almost world-weary insights he draws from the seem­ing­ly unex­cep­tion­al fab­ric of ordi­nary expe­ri­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

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

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Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky Demystifies Depression, Which, Like Diabetes, Is Rooted in Biology

in Biology, Life | August 13th, 2014

We know that depres­sion affects peo­ple from all walks of life. Rich. Poor. Celebs. Ordi­nary Joes. Young. Old. But, some­how after the death of Robin Williams, there’s a renewed focus on depres­sion, and my mind turned imme­di­ate­ly to a lec­ture we fea­tured on the site way back in 2009. The lec­ture is by Robert Sapol­sky, a Stan­ford biol­o­gist, who has a tal­ent for mak­ing sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects pub­licly acces­si­ble. A recip­i­ent of the MacArthur genius grant, Sapol­sky notes that depres­sion — cur­rent­ly the 4th great­est cause of dis­abil­i­ty world­wide, and soon the 2nd — is deeply bio­log­i­cal. Depres­sion is root­ed in biol­o­gy, much as is, say, dia­betes. As the lec­ture unfolds, you will see how depres­sion changes the body. When depressed, our brains func­tion dif­fer­ent­ly while sleep­ing, our stress response goes way up 24/7, our bio­chem­istry lev­els change, etc. You will see that biol­o­gy is at work.

Sapol­sky is one com­pelling teacher. So you might not want to miss his Stan­ford course, Intro­duc­tion to Human Biol­o­gy. It’s equal­ly worth your time. You can always find it housed in our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

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Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talking Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dynamite

in Film | August 13th, 2014

Jim Jar­musch is the anti-MTV film­mak­er. Most music videos, from the dawn of MTV in 1981 on, are slick and facile, long on visu­al spec­ta­cle and short on things like depth or, you know, coher­ence. Jar­musch, who start­ed mak­ing movies in the East Vil­lage in the 1970s when the DIY-spir­it of the No Wave move­ment was at its zenith, made movies that were delib­er­ate­ly slow and spare, recall­ing Bertolt Brecht and Yasu­jiro Ozu.

“I don’t gen­er­al­ly like music videos because they pro­vide you images to go with the songs rather than you pro­vid­ing your own,” he said in an inter­view with Film Com­ment back in 1992. “You lose the beau­ty of music by not bring­ing your own men­tal images or rec­ol­lec­tions or asso­ci­a­tions. Music videos oblit­er­ate that.”

Yet he did direct a hand­ful of videos. As much as he dis­likes the medi­um, Jar­musch gets music in a way that few oth­er direc­tors do. It is an inte­gral ele­ment of all Jarmusch’s work. Check out the open­ing to his third fea­ture Down By Law:

He uses Tom Waits’s “Jock­ey Full of Bour­bon” to ani­mate those gor­geous track­ing shots of New Orleans to set up the char­ac­ters and evoke a mood of retro-cool. Jarmusch’s bril­liant edit­ing and cam­era work cre­ate new asso­ci­a­tions with the music. I can’t lis­ten to Tom Waits’ song now with­out think­ing of Down By Law.

The prob­lem that Jar­musch real­ly had with music videos, it seems, is the end pur­pose. The music in Down By Law serves the sto­ry. A music video serves com­merce. Jar­musch admit­ted as much when he butted heads with Waits over mak­ing a video for “It’s All Right By Me,” which you can see above.

“I had a big fight years ago with Tom Waits,” he recalled in an inter­view with The Guardian. “He said: ‘Look, it’s not your film. It’s a pro­mo for my song.’ It was after Down By Law, and it was about the edit­ing. But he was right….I remem­ber I locked him out­side in the park­ing lot, and he’s ham­mer­ing at the door, and he’s shout­ing through ‘Jim! I’m gonna glue your head to the wall!’ He did­n’t glue my head to the wall. But they’re not real­ly films of mine, they’re films for a song. I learned that a long time ago.”

Jarmusch’s first music video was “The Lady Don’t Mind” by the Talk­ing Heads off, of their album Lit­tle Crea­tures. It fea­tures some lone­ly shots of New York City and an emp­ty apart­ment that looks very rem­i­nis­cent of Jarmusch’s ear­ly ‘80s works.

Here’s a music video for Neil Young’s “Dead Man” which is essen­tial­ly a mon­tage of shots from Jarmusch’s same-named 1996 mas­ter­piece. One sus­pects he had less trou­ble with this video than the oth­ers.

Final­ly, over at Dan­ger­ous Minds, you can see a video that Jar­musch shot for Big Audio Dyna­mite’s song “Sight­see M.C.!.” BAD was, of course, the band formed by the gui­tarist and singer of the Clash, Mick Jones.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

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:

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

Tim Bur­ton Shoots Two Music Videos for The Killers

Watch the Uncen­sored Andy Warhol-Direct­ed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hel­lo Again” (NSFW)

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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Jorge Luis Borges, Film Critic, Reviews King Kong (1933)

in Film, Literature | August 13th, 2014

King-Kong-1933-king-kong-2814496-2400-1891

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured Jorge Luis Borges’ review of Cit­i­zen Kane. But as a film crit­ic, the writer of such influ­en­tial short fic­tions as “The Aleph,” “The Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths,” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” did­n’t start there, with per­haps the most influ­en­tial motion pic­ture ever pro­duced. Flick­er has more on the movies that caught Borges’ crit­i­cal eye:

He was a pas­sion­ate admir­er of Char­lie Chap­lin. In a won­der­ful sen­tence that typ­i­fies his writ­ing style, Borges writes, “Would any­one dare ignore that Char­lie Chap­lin is one of the estab­lished gods in the mythol­o­gy of our time, a cohort of de Chirico’s motion­less night­mares, of Scar­face Al’s ardent machine guns, of the finite yet unlim­it­ed uni­verse of Gre­ta Garbo’s lofty shoul­ders, of the gog­gled eyes of Gand­hi?”

Borges’ film reviews were often quite humor­ous. When dis­cussing Josef von Sternberg’s ver­sion of Crime and Pun­ish­ment (1935), he writes, “Indoc­tri­nat­ed by the pop­u­lous mem­o­ry of The Scar­let Empress, I was expect­ing a vast flood of false beards, miters, samovars, masks, surly faces, wrought-iron gates, vine­yards, chess pieces, bal­alaikas, promi­nent cheek­bones, and hors­es. In short, I was expect­ing the usu­al von Stern­berg night­mare, the suf­fo­ca­tion and the mad­ness.”

But the film-review­ing Borges’ mas­ter­piece of dis­missal takes on King Kong, Mer­ian C. Coop­er and Ernest B. Schoed­sack­’s most icon­ic giant-ape dis­as­ter movie of them all:

A mon­key, forty feet tall (some fans say forty-five) may have obvi­ous charms, but those charms have not con­vinced this view­er. King Kong is no full-blood­ed ape but rather a rusty, des­ic­cat­ed machine whose move­ments are down­right clum­sy. His only virtue, his height, did not impress the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, who per­sist­ed in pho­tograph­ing him from above rather than from below —  the wrong angle, as it neu­tral­izes and even dimin­ish­es the ape’s over­praised stature. He is actu­al­ly hunch­backed and bow­legged, attrib­ut­es that serve only to reduce him in the spectator’s eye. To keep him from look­ing the least bit extra­or­di­nary, they make him do bat­tle with far more unusu­al mon­sters and have him reside in caves of false cathe­dral splen­dor, where his infa­mous size again los­es all pro­por­tion. But what final­ly demol­ish­es both the goril­la and the film is his roman­tic love — or lust — for Fay Wray.

As Mour­daunt Hal­l’s con­tem­po­rary New York Times review of this “Fan­tas­tic Film in Which a Mon­strous Ape Uses Auto­mo­biles for Mis­siles and Climbs a Sky­scraper” put it, “Through mul­ti­ple expo­sures, processed ‘shots’ and a vari­ety of angles of cam­era wiz­ardry the pro­duc­ers set forth an ade­quate sto­ry and fur­nish enough thrills for any devo­tee of such tales,” but “it is when the enor­mous ape, called Kong, is brought to this city that the excite­ment reach­es its high­est pitch. Imag­ine a 50-foot beast with a girl in one paw climb­ing up the out­side of the Empire State Build­ing, and after putting the girl on a ledge, clutch­ing at air­planes, the pilots of which are pour­ing bul­lets from machine guns into the mon­ster’s body.” That sight must have struck the (still not over­ly thrilled) Hall as more impres­sive than it did Borges, but then, Borges, that vision­ary of dizzy­ing labyrinths, eter­ni­ties, and infini­tudes, had already seen true visions of enor­mous­ness — and enor­mi­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges, Film Crit­ic, Reviews Cit­i­zen Kane — and Gets a Response from Orson Welles

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

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

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Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) and Humphrey Bogart Pal Around During a 1956 Screen Test

in Film, Life | August 12th, 2014

“With deep sor­row, yet with great grat­i­tude for her amaz­ing life, we con­firm the pass­ing of Lau­ren Bacall.” So tweet­ed The Humphrey Bog­a­rt Estate today, let­ting cinephiles every­where know that Hol­ly­wood lost yet anoth­er great one this week. She was 89.

Bacall, of course, met Humphrey Bog­a­rt on the set of To Have and Have Not in 1943. And they became one of Hol­ly­wood’s leg­endary cou­ples, star­ring togeth­er in The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Pas­sage (1947), and Key Largo (1948). Above you can watch Bogie and Bacall share some light moments togeth­er dur­ing a cos­tume test for Melville Good­win, USA, a film the cou­ple nev­er ulti­mate­ly made. The footage was shot on Feb­ru­ary 20, 1956, just after Bog­a­rt learned that he had esophageal can­cer. He passed away less than a year lat­er, on Jan­u­ary 14, 1957. May Bogie & Bacall rest in peace.

Note: The cos­tume test, like many from the peri­od, does­n’t have sound. As you’ll see, you hard­ly need sound to appre­ci­ate the scene that unfolds. Don’t miss the part where the cam­era zooms in.

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Johnny Cash & Joe Strummer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” (2002)

in Music | August 12th, 2014

In 1958, Mer­le Hag­gard saw John­ny Cash play in San Quentin, and went on to sing hon­est coun­try songs for coun­try out­laws. In 1982, future Rage Against the Machine gui­tarist Tom Morel­lo saw Joe Strum­mer play with The Clash in Chica­go and went on to play angry right­eous rock for angry punks. Both Cash and Strum­mer, who died less than a year apart, were musi­cal prophets in their way, inspir­ing oth­ers to pick up their mes­sage and car­ry it to the com­mon fan. The same, of course, could be said of Bob Mar­ley. And though those three would like­ly have dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions of the word “redemp­tion,” they shared a belief in music as a force for good.

Just above, hear Cash and Strum­mer sing Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song,” with Morel­lo on gui­tar. Record­ed dur­ing the ses­sions for Cash’s last album, the Rick Rubin-pro­duced Amer­i­can IV: The Man Comes Around, the duet hap­pened more or less by chance. Says Rubin, “Joe was com­ing every day, because he loved John­ny Cash, and he just hap­pened to be in L.A. on vaca­tion.

And he actu­al­ly extend­ed his trip a week longer just to come every day and be around John­ny.” Rubin also record­ed a solo take of Strum­mer singing “Redemp­tion Song” (below), which appeared on Strum­mer’s final album, the posthu­mous­ly released Street­core.

“Orig­i­nal­ly, the song was sup­posed to be a duet, and we record­ed it as a duet,” Rubin con­tin­ues, “But, just in case, both John­ny and Joe sang the whole song sev­er­al times” on their own. The duet ver­sion appears on the third disc, titled Redemp­tion Songs, of the posthu­mous­ly released Cash box set Unearthed, which fea­tures out­takes and alter­nates from the Rubin-pro­duced Amer­i­can Record­ings series of Cash cov­er songs. Seems fit­ting some­how that one of the last songs both Strum­mer and Cash would record would be this one, and that they would sing it togeth­er. As one site suc­cinct­ly put it, the record­ing rep­re­sents “the first true punk rock star and the last. Togeth­er for­ev­er.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Video: John­ny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Reli­gious Call­ing

Remem­ber­ing The Clash’s Front­man Joe Strum­mer on His 60th Birth­day

Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” Trav­els Around the World

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

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