Listen to Eight Interviews of Orson Welles by Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich (RIP)

in Film | January 7th, 2014

orson welles broadcast

Image by Carl Van Vecht­en, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Orson Welles nev­er wrote a prop­er auto­bi­og­ra­phy, but we have a book that comes close: This is Orson Welles, assem­bled by crit­ic Jonathan Rosen­baum and film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (Tar­gets, The Last Pic­ture Show, Paper Moon) out of a series of in-depth record­ed con­ver­sa­tions between Bog­danovich and Welles. That vol­ume has giv­en the younger film­mak­er some­thing of a sub-career as the old­er one’s Boswell, which has led to a cer­tain degree of rib­bing about his will­ing­ness to trot out an Orson Welles anec­dote for every con­text. Though I’ve always enjoyed hear­ing Bog­danovich’s inter­pre­ta­tions of Welles, they always get me curi­ous to hear the sto­ries of the life and career of the man who made The War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and (my per­son­al favorite) F for Fake straight from, well, the man who made The War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and F for Fake. You can do just that at the Inter­net Archive, which offers near­ly four hours of audio of the very inter­views that gave This is Orson Welles its source mate­r­i­al. (Audio starts at the 12 sec­ond mark.)

“I first met Orson Welles toward the end of 1968,” says Bog­danovich in his intro­duc­tion, “and not long after we began tap­ing our con­ver­sa­tions for a book about his career that he hoped would ‘set the record straight.’ We start­ed in his bun­ga­low at the Bev­er­ly Hills Hotel, and then resumed a cou­ple of weeks lat­er in Guay­mas, Mex­i­co, where Orson was act­ing in the movie of Catch-22.” Their talks con­tin­ued in places from New York’s Plaza Hotel and Rome’s Hotel Eden to, for what­ev­er rea­son, Care­free, Ari­zona, explor­ing not just the well-known chap­ters of Welles’ career, but his expe­ri­ences with now-over­looked or nev­er-com­plet­ed projects like most of his count­less radio dra­mas, his ear­ly adap­ta­tion of Cecil Day-Lewis’ Smil­er with a Knife, and his lat­er adap­ta­tion of Kafka’s The Tri­al. Some may accuse Bog­danovich of over-milk­ing his asso­ci­a­tion with Welles, but if I had con­ver­sa­tions this fas­ci­nat­ing with per­haps the most respect­ed auteur in Amer­i­can film his­to­ry, I’d prob­a­bly talk about them all the time too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Remem­bers his Stormy Friend­ship with Ernest Hem­ing­way

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Revis­it Orson Welles’ Icon­ic ‘War of the Worlds’ Broad­cast That Aired 75 Years Ago Today

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

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

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Designers Charles & Ray Eames Create a Promotional Film for the Groundbreaking Polaroid SX-70 Instant Camera (1972)

in Photography | January 6th, 2014

For sev­er­al decades of its his­to­ry, the Polaroid was called a “Land Cam­era” after the company’s founder Edwin Land, and the prod­uct line includ­ed not only con­sumer devices but also high-end machines like the SX-70, a fold­ing SLR cam­era intro­duced in 1972. The SX-70 boast­ed a host of impres­sive fea­tures that allowed pho­tog­ra­phers to achieve the effects of non-instant SLRs such as “changes in depth of field, dou­ble expo­sure, fixed-point focus­ing, and close­up pho­tog­ra­phy.” The SX-70 made a con­sid­er­able impres­sion on famed hus­band and wife design team Charles and Ray Eames, so much so that they pro­duced the 11-minute adver­tise­ment above describ­ing in detail the SX-70’s high­ly com­plex oper­a­tions. In his intro­duc­tion, Charles Eames tells us that no less an author­i­ty than Alfred Stieglitz “favored any means that might free the photographer’s whole ener­gies so that they could be chan­neled in the direc­tion of the deci­sion, the pic­ture itself.” Thus, Edwin Land’s inven­tions are giv­en the impri­matur of the father of fine art pho­tog­ra­phy him­self, and in 1972, the SX-70 was Land’s high­est achieve­ment to date.

The Polaroid instant cam­era seems to have come full cir­cle from con­sumer toy to util­i­tar­i­an snap­shot-mak­er to artists’ exper­i­men­tal tool to instru­ment of retro-hip­ster­ism to con­sumer toy again. But the phys­i­cal, real-world Polaroid aes­thet­ic almost met its end in 2008 when the com­pa­ny dis­con­tin­ued pro­duc­tion of its instant film, prompt­ing the cre­ators of the Impos­si­ble Project to “[save] ana­log instant pho­tog­ra­phy from extinc­tion by releas­ing var­i­ous, brand new and unique instant films.” VP Dave Bias demon­strates the project’s device, which allows smart­phone pho­togs to print images on Polaroid-style film. Respond­ing to the mas­sive demands of 21st cen­tu­ry détourned nos­tal­gia, Polaroid has intro­duced new lines of instant cam­eras, and Fuji is also bridg­ing the Instagram/Polaroid divide with a portable print­er this spring. But what the Impos­si­ble Project highlights—as the Eames did in ‘72—is just how much the Polaroid became a means of mak­ing fine art as well as kitsch, a too often unre­marked upon appli­ca­tion of the famous instant cam­era and the visu­al aes­thet­ics it bequeathed the dig­i­tal age.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lau­rence Olivi­er, Liv Ull­mann and Christo­pher Plummer’s Clas­sic Polaroid Ads

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Ital­ian Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mau­r­izio Gal­im­ber­ti Cre­ates Cubist Polaroid Col­lages of Artists & Celebri­ties

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

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Sir Patrick Stewart Demonstrates How Cows Moo in Different English Accents

in Comedy, Politics, Radio, Theatre | January 6th, 2014

cow stewart

Hav­ing spent the fall loung­ing in the bath dressed as a lob­ster, and gam­bol­ing around New York City with Wait­ing for Godot cast mate Ian McK­ellen, the irre­press­ible Patrick Stew­art brought 2013 to a close by indulging a curi­ous fan of NPR’s How To Do Every­thing pod­cast.

Her ques­tion? What do Eng­lish cows sound like when they moo.

The knight­ed star does not skimp on his answer, even if, as he repeat­ed­ly sug­gests, one can­not do the sub­ject jus­tice in less than an entire after­noon. The dialects of British cows, like those of their human coun­ter­parts, under­score that theirs is a soci­ety “dom­i­nat­ed by class, social sta­tus and loca­tion.”

The moo of a cow from West Oxford­shire, home to Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron, is quite con­ser­v­a­tive com­pared to the lusty bel­low of a spec­i­men from West York­shire, where Stew­art grew up. (The lat­ter is so aston­ish­ing, he imme­di­ate­ly offers to pro­duce it twice.)

Cock­ney cows, a breed whose ranks have thinned con­sid­er­ably since Shake­speare’s day, sound like sheep.

May­fair cows sound like for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Sir Alec Dou­glas-Home.

As an extra treat, Stew­art gen­er­ous­ly agrees to the host’s request for an Amer­i­can cow, imper­son­at­ing a Neva­da-dweller, a geo­graph­ic homage to the orig­i­nal ques­tion­er as well as his bride, jazz singer Sun­ny Ozell.

Is there any­thing this man can’t — or won’t — do?

via Laugh­ing Squid

Ayun Hal­l­i­day wish­es her favorite play­wright a very hap­py birth­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

Patrick Stew­art Talks Can­did­ly About Domes­tic Vio­lence in a Poignant Q&A Ses­sion at Comic­palooza

Acclaimed BBC Pro­duc­tion of Ham­let, Star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who) and Patrick Stew­art (Star Trek)

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The Ten-Year Lunch: Watch the Award-Winning Documentary About the Great Writers Who Sat at the Algonquin Round Table

in Film, History | January 6th, 2014

After reach­ing the rank of Sergeant dur­ing World War I, Alexan­der Wooll­cott returned to New York to become a dra­ma crit­ic for the New York Times. Wooll­cott was a man of large bulk and out­sized per­son­al­i­ty, whose sharp, acer­bic wit made him pop­u­lar with his read­ers. Accord­ing to The Ten-Year Lunch, an Oscar-win­ning doc­u­men­tary about the New York group of writ­ers and jour­nal­ists known as the Algo­nquin Round Table, Woollcott’s quick tongue made his bom­bas­tic pres­ence near­ly unbear­able to his friends:

When he returned from the war, Wooll­cott boast­ed of his mil­i­tary adven­tures so often and so loud­ly that his friends grew tired of lis­ten­ing. He began every sen­tence with “When I was in the the­atre of war…” Irri­tat­ed by his pom­pos­i­ty, press agent Mur­doch Pem­ber­ton lured Wooll­cott [to the Algo­nquin Hotel] with the promise of an ace pas­try chef. The idea was to hold a sort of roast, at which a num­ber of crit­ics and jour­nal­ists from around town would come and poke fun at him.

For bet­ter or worse, the attempt to punc­ture Woollcott’s ego at the Algo­nquin Hotel was unsuc­cess­ful. Rather than take offence, Wooll­cott was flat­tered by the atten­tion, and the var­i­ous fig­ures in atten­dance also thor­ough­ly enjoyed them­selves. Serendip­i­tous­ly, the leg­endary lun­cheons of the Algo­nquin Round Table were born.

Algonquin_Round_Table
Most of the Table’s mem­bers had tak­en part in the war, to one degree or anoth­er: jour­nal­ist Ruth Hale and her syn­di­cat­ed-colum­nist hus­band Hey­wood Broun had been war cor­re­spon­dents; New York­er founder Harold Ross had edit­ed the mil­i­tary news­pa­per Stars & Stripes; acclaimed colum­nist Franklin Pierce Adams had made Cap­tain. Oth­er mem­bers includ­ed poet and crit­ic Dorothy Park­er, a trag­ic roman­tic who had become the city’s most quotable woman. (Parker’s inex­haustible sup­ply of wit­ti­cisms still feels fresh today: when asked to use the word hor­ti­cul­ture in a sen­tence, Park­er replied, “You can lead a whore to cul­ture, but you can’t make her think.”) Parker’s best friend was humorist and essay­ist Robert Bench­ley, who had once writ­ten an essay explor­ing New­found­land fish­ing rights for his Inter­na­tion­al Law class at Har­vard from the unortho­dox per­spec­tive of the fish. Fre­quent­ly join­ing them was Neysa McNein, a sought-after illus­tra­tor who host­ed the Table’s after­noon gath­er­ings in her stu­dio, where Irv­ing Berlin could occa­sion­al­ly be found play­ing the piano.

The near-dai­ly meet­ings at the Algo­nquin Hotel fos­tered a close-knit cul­tur­al fra­ter­ni­ty of New York’s best writ­ers, illus­tra­tors, and artists. The group vaca­tioned togeth­er at their joint­ly-owned Ver­mont island, played games of pok­er wager­ing hous­es and hon­ey­moons, and crit­i­cized each other’s work. When­ev­er a mem­ber of the Round Table would make a con­ceit­ed remark, every­one would imme­di­ate­ly rise and bow, hon­or­ing their friend’s regal affec­ta­tions. The only excep­tion to the rule was Wooll­cott, whose bread and but­ter pom­pos­i­ty was tol­er­at­ed by virtue of its reg­u­lar­i­ty.

With its inter­views of orig­i­nal Table mem­bers, the doc­u­men­tary is a tan­ta­liz­ing look at the lives of the men and women who ruled New York’s cul­tur­al milieu dur­ing the hey­day of the print­ed word. Equal parts wish for the idyl­lic past and his­to­ry of New York’s biggest cul­tur­al play­ers, The Ten-Year Lunch leaves one with a pang of odd­ly potent nos­tal­gia. We can’t rec­om­mend it enough.

In the image above, see Art Samuels, Char­lie MacArthur, Har­po Marx, Dorothy Park­er and Alexan­der Wooll­cott

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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The Beatles Perform a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1964)

in Music, Television | January 6th, 2014

Before Bri­an Epstein dis­cov­ered The Bea­t­les in 1961, they looked noth­ing like the British mop-top mods of their ear­ly six­ties pop phase. As the Quar­ry­men, they aped the looks of Amer­i­can fifties rock­ers (see a slideshow in this fan-made video of “In Spite of All the Dan­ger”): Some­times they dressed like folk revival­ists in check­ered shirts and jeans, some­times like a Carl Perkins rock­a­bil­ly band in match­ing suits and skin­ny ties, and some­times like pom­padoured greasers straight out of West Side Sto­ry.

But even after the band acquired its dis­tinc­tive look and wrote a cache of orig­i­nal songs, they were still “com­pet­ing for increased expo­sure just like every­body else.” This meant numer­ous goofy pub­lic­i­ty stunts, every one of which they seemed to thor­ough­ly love. In one such affair, the four­some taped a tele­vi­sion spe­cial called “Around the Bea­t­les,” a ref­er­ence to the the­ater-in-the-round stu­dio set­up. In the first part of the pro­gram, they donned yet anoth­er cos­tume, Shake­speare­an dress, and staged a spoof of Act V, Scene I of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream in hon­or of Shakespeare’s 400th anniver­sary. (See the orig­i­nal black-and-white BBC broad­cast from April 28, 1964 above. The show was broad­cast in Amer­i­ca on ABC that Novem­ber, in col­or.)

After some fan­fare, “Around the Bea­t­les” opens on Ringo, in hose and dou­blet, fir­ing a can­non. Then we get the oblig­a­tory hoard of scream­ing teenage fans singing the prais­es of each Bea­t­le and march­ing into the stu­dio with signs and ban­ners. After anoth­er trum­pet fan­fare, the play begins, and we’re off into slap­stick British com­e­dy, with a mug­ging Paul as Pyra­mus, sneer­ing John as This­be, smirk­ing George as Moon­shine, and a scene-chew­ing Ringo as Lion. The heck­lers in the box seats were script­ed, most­ly (one yells “go back to Liverpool!”—probably not a plant). Over­all the sil­ly skit con­firms what I’ve always main­tained: if the Bea­t­les’ hadn’t made it as musi­cians, they’d have done well to stay togeth­er as a com­e­dy troupe.

The sec­ond part of the spe­cial fea­tured musi­cal per­for­mances from sev­er­al oth­er acts and, of course, from the Bea­t­les them­selves. See the band bop along to a med­ley of “Love Me Do”/ “Please Please Me”/ “From Me to You”/ “She Loves You”/ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” above. They pre­re­cord­ed the music on April 19th and mimed the per­for­mances, as you can sure­ly tell from the total lack of ampli­fiers onstage. This was, as it is again, the way of things in pop music on tele­vi­sion. But if you are one of those who think The Bea­t­les didn’t put on a good live show, Col­in Flem­ing at The Atlantic begs to dif­fer, with a thor­ough expli­ca­tion of rare record­ings from an Octo­ber 1963 per­for­mance in Stock­holm.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Mode

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Find Shakespeare’s Col­lect­ed Works in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books Col­lec­tions

Down­load Shake­speare Cours­es from our Col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es

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

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Lego Video Shows How David Bowie Almost Became “Cobbler Bob,” Not “Aladdin Sane”

in Comedy, Music | January 5th, 2014

In Octo­ber, 1973, David Bowie made his last live appear­ance as Zig­gy Star­dust. (Watch it here.) Pret­ty soon, Bowie would morph into a new per­sona Aladdin Sane and lat­er The Thin White Duke. But, for a moment there, he almost went with anoth­er unlike­ly char­ac­ter, “Cob­bler Bob.” Or so that’s the play­ful sce­nario that Eng­lish come­di­an and actor Adam Bux­ton imag­ines in this short lego video. Enjoy.

When you’re done hav­ing a laugh and ready for some­thing more seri­ous, we’d encour­age you to see these relat­ed posts:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

via Metafil­ter

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The Science of Willpower: 15 Tips for Making Your New Year’s Resolutions Last from Dr. Kelly McGonigal

in Life, Psychology | January 5th, 2014

At the stroke of mid­night, mil­lions of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions went into effect, with the most com­mon ones being lose weight, get fit, quit drink­ing and smok­ing, save mon­ey, and learn some­thing new. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, 33% of these res­o­lu­tions will be aban­doned by Jan­u­ary’s end. And upwards of 80% will even­tu­al­ly fall by the way­side. Mak­ing res­o­lu­tions stick is tricky busi­ness. But it’s pos­si­ble, and Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gist Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal has a few sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-proven sug­ges­tions for you.

For years, McGo­ni­gal has taught a very pop­u­lar course called The Sci­ence of Willpow­er in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, where she intro­duces stu­dents to the idea that willpow­er is not an innate trait. Rather it’s a “com­plex mind-body response that can be com­pro­mised by stress, sleep depri­va­tion and nutri­tion and that can be strength­ened through cer­tain prac­tices.” For those of you who don’t live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you can also find McGo­ni­gal’s ideas pre­sent­ed in a recent book, The Willpow­er Instinct: How Self-Con­trol Works, Why It Mat­ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It, which just came out in paper­back yes­ter­day. Below, we have high­light­ed 15 of Dr. McGo­ni­gal’s strate­gies for increas­ing your willpow­er reserves and mak­ing your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion endure.

  1. Will pow­er is like a mus­cle. The more you work on devel­op­ing it, the more you can incor­po­rate it into your life. It helps, McGo­ni­gal says in this pod­cast, to start with small feats of willpow­er before try­ing to tack­le more dif­fi­cult feats. Ide­al­ly, find the small­est change that’s con­sis­tent with your larg­er goal, and start there.
  2. Choose a goal or res­o­lu­tion that you real­ly want, not a goal that some­one else desires for you, or a goal that you think you should want. Choose a pos­i­tive goal that tru­ly comes from with­in and that con­tributes to some­thing impor­tant in life.
  3. Willpow­er is con­ta­gious. Find a willpow­er role mod­el — some­one who has accom­plished what you want to do. Also try to sur­round your­self with fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends or groups who can sup­port you. Change is often not made alone.
  4. Know that peo­ple have more willpow­er when they wake up, and then willpow­er steadi­ly declines through­out the day as peo­ple fatigue. So try to accom­plish what you need to — for exam­ple, exer­cise — ear­li­er in the day. Then watch out for the evenings, when bad habits can return.
  5. Under­stand that stress and willpow­er are incom­pat­i­ble. Any time we’re under stress it’s hard­er to find our willpow­er. Accord­ing to McGo­ni­gal, “the fight-or-flight response floods the body with ener­gy to act instinc­tive­ly and steals it from the areas of the brain need­ed for wise deci­sion-mak­ing. Stress also encour­ages you to focus on imme­di­ate, short-term goals and out­comes, but self-con­trol requires keep­ing the big pic­ture in mind.” The upshot? “Learn­ing how to bet­ter man­age your stress is one of the most impor­tant things you can do to improve your willpow­er.” When you get stressed out, go for a walk. Even a five minute walk out­side can reduce your stress lev­els, boost your mood, and help you replen­ish your willpow­er reserves.
  6. Sleep depri­va­tion (less than six hours a night) makes it so that the pre­frontal cor­tex los­es con­trol over the regions of the brain that cre­ate crav­ings. Sci­ence shows that get­ting just one more hour of sleep each night (eight hours is ide­al) helps recov­er­ing drug addicts avoid a relapse. So it can cer­tain­ly help you resist a dough­nut or a cig­a­rette.
  7. Also remem­ber that nutri­tion plays a key role. “Eat­ing a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes ener­gy more avail­able to the brain and can improve every aspect of willpow­er from over­com­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion to stick­ing to a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion,” McGo­ni­gal says.
  8. Don’t think it will be dif­fer­ent tomor­row. McGo­ni­gal notes that we have a ten­den­cy to think that we will have more willpow­er, ener­gy, time, and moti­va­tion tomor­row. The prob­lem is that “if we think we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a dif­fer­ent choice tomor­row, we almost always ‘give in’ to temp­ta­tion or habit today.”
  9. Acknowl­edge and under­stand your crav­ings rather than deny­ing them. That will take you fur­ther in the end. The video above has more on that.
  10. Imag­ine the things that could get in the way of achiev­ing your goal. Under­stand the ten­den­cies you have that could lead you to break your res­o­lu­tion. Don’t be over­ly opti­mistic and assume the road will be easy.
  11. Know your lim­its, and plan for them. Says McGo­ni­gal, “Peo­ple who think they have the most self-con­trol are the most like­ly to fail at their res­o­lu­tions; they put them­selves in tempt­ing sit­u­a­tions, don’t get help, give up at set­backs. You need to know how you fail; how you are tempt­ed; how you pro­cras­ti­nate.”
  12. Pay atten­tion to small choic­es that add up. “One study found that the aver­age per­son thinks they make 14 food choic­es a day; they actu­al­ly make over 200. When you aren’t aware that you’re mak­ing a choice, you’ll almost always default to habit/temptation.” It’s impor­tant to fig­ure out when you have oppor­tu­ni­ties to make a choice con­sis­tent with your goals.
  13. Be spe­cif­ic but flex­i­ble. It’s good to know your goal and how you’ll get there. But, she cau­tions, “you should leave room to revise these steps if they turn out to be unsus­tain­able or don’t lead to the ben­e­fits you expect­ed.”
  14. Give your­self small, healthy rewards along the way. Research shows that the mind responds well to it. (If you’re try­ing to quite smok­ing, the reward should­n’t be a cig­a­rette, by the way.)
  15. Final­ly, if you expe­ri­ence a set­back, don’t be hard on your­self. Although it seems counter-intu­itive, stud­ies show that peo­ple who expe­ri­ence shame/guilt are much more like­ly to break their res­o­lu­tions than ones who cut them­selves some slack. In a nut­shell, you should “Give up guilt.”

To put all of these tips into a big­ger frame­work, you can get a copy of Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal’s book, The Willpow­er Instinct: How Self-Con­trol Works, Why It Mat­ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Or you can get The WillPow­er Instinct, as a free audio book, if you care to try out Audible.com’s free tri­al pro­gram.

If you live in the SF Bay Area, you can take Kel­ly’s The Sci­ence of Willpow­er course that begins on Jan­u­ary 13. (Any­one can enroll, and yes, I know that because I help run the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram at Stan­ford.)

Final­ly you might also want to peruse How to Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist (iTunes Video), a free online course led by Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal. It appears in our col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es (Part of our list of 800 Free Online Cours­es)

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Watch Laurence Olivier, Liv Ullmann and Christopher Plummer’s Classic Polaroid Ads

in Film, Photography, Technology, Television, Theatre | January 5th, 2014

Before Urban Out­fit­ters and Project Impos­si­ble, before the adorable bick­er­ing ubiq­ui­ty of spokes­peo­ple James Gar­ner and Mari­ette Hart­ley, Polaroid kept things classy by entrust­ing its rep­u­ta­tion to the most seri­ous of seri­ous actors.

Take Lau­rence Olivi­er. Who else could have made the phrase “Polaroid SX-70 Land Cam­era” sound like Shake­speare? Seri­ous­ly. He could’ve tacked the string of superla­tives he unleash­es against a black back­ground above onto the end of Hen­ry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech and I would have been none the wis­er.

(And gen­tle­men in Eng­land now a‑bed

Shall think them­selves accursed they were not here,

And hold their man­hoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day -

Pock­et sized, fold­ing, elec­tron­i­cal­ly con­trolled, motor dri­ven…)

Accord­ing to the late Peter Wens­berg, a for­mer Polaroid exec and author of Land’s Polaroid, A Com­pa­ny and the Man Who Invent­ed It, Sir Lau­rence agreed to the 1972 spot on the con­di­tion that it would­n’t be shown in Eng­land. (YouTube would­n’t be found­ed for anoth­er thir­ty years.)

Sir Lar­ry was fol­lowed in 1979 by actress Liv Ull­mann, solemn­ly prais­ing the  SX70 Sonar OneStep’s moment-cap­tur­ing abil­i­ties. Is there a Polaroid some­where in the Ing­mar Bergman Archive of his and Ull­man­n’s 12-year-old daugh­ter Linn, stand­ing at the sink, wash­ing dish­es? Or has YouTube become the sole reli­quary for these pre­cious moments?

Christo­pher Plum­mer’s 1980 spot seems down­right loose by con­trast, as he kicks back on a beach, aim­ing his SX70 Sonar OneStep at a Gold­en Retriev­er and a canoe’s worth of kids. (Sir Lar­ry’s sub­ject was a rather fussy porce­lain clock.)

Giv­en their his­to­ry, it’s easy to think of Polaroid’s instant cam­eras as a gim­mick or a fad, but such not­ed pho­tog­ra­phers as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Hel­mut New­ton, and Walk­er Evans were fans of the SX-70.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Amer­i­can Film­mak­ers in Japan­ese Ads: Quentin Taran­ti­no Sells Cell Phones, Orson Welles Hawks Whisky

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has the sort of vision that screams out for an unlim­it­ed sup­ply of free dig­i­tal shots. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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