Watch 1970s Animations of Songs by Joni Mitchell, Jim Croce & The Kinks, Aired on The Sonny & Cher Show

in Animation, Music, Television | July 2nd, 2014

The Son­ny and Cher Show aired in the years right before I was born. Not only do I have no mem­o­ry of it, of course, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an entire episode, either in re-runs or on the inter­net. Nev­er­the­less, I imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the style of the show’s ani­ma­tor, Eng­lish artist John David Wil­son, when I encoun­tered these music videos Wil­son made for the singing com­e­dy duo’s vari­ety hour. Though a much less famous name, Wilson’s work seems to have ani­mat­ed the 70s in the way that R. Crumb’s illus­trat­ed the 60s. The open­ing sequences to icon­ic pro­duc­tions Grease and The Car­ol Bur­nett Show are Wilson’s, as are ani­ma­tions for Laugh In and cheesy Sat­ur­day morn­ing kids’ show The Hud­son Broth­ers Raz­zle Daz­zle Show (best known now, per­haps, because of Hud­son broth­er prog­e­ny Kate Hud­son). Though Wilson’s career stretch­es back to the 50s—with work on Mr. Magoo, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp—and into the 90s, with Fer­n­Gul­ly: The Last Rain­for­est, he seems to belong to the decade of “I Got You Babe” more so than any oth­er.

Drawn “in a sim­plis­tic, funky-look­ing style” and with goofy sound effects added (prob­a­bly by the Son­ny and Cher pro­duc­ers), Wilson’s ani­mat­ed films for Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yel­low Taxi” (top), Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” (above), and The Kinks “Demon Alco­hol” (below, sung by Wayne Car­pen­ter) enhance songs already rich with nar­ra­tive. This, the blog Media Fun­house points out, was by design: “Wil­son was wise to con­cen­trate on the ‘sto­ry songs’ of the time, in order to cre­ate repeat­ing char­ac­ters and have the view­er ‘con­nect’ with the piece in a very short span of time.”

In most cas­es, Son­ny and Cher’s vocals were dubbed over the orig­i­nal tracks, but in many of the ani­ma­tions that sur­faced on VHS in the eight­ies and now appear on Youtube, the orig­i­nal songs have been restored, as in the two above. If you grew up with the show, you’ve sure­ly seen at least a cou­ple of these ear­ly music videos, a form Wil­son is wide­ly cred­it­ed with pio­neer­ing. Begin­ning in the sec­ond sea­son, Wilson’s com­pa­ny, Fine Arts Films, pro­duced a total of four­teen ani­mat­ed shorts for the show.

The sto­ry-songs above of envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, tough street char­ac­ters, and the depths of addic­tion seem so very char­ac­ter­is­tic of the peri­od, though Wil­son cer­tain­ly ani­mat­ed more light­heart­ed pop fare, such as Melanie’s “Brand New Key” (sung here by Cher). For more of Wilson’s ani­mat­ed music videos, see Dan­ger­ous Minds or Media Fun­house, and for the full range of Wilson’s long career in ani­ma­tion, check out the web­site of the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny he found­ed, Fine Arts Films.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Joni Mitchell Per­form “Both Sides Now” on the First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show (1969)

Watch the Funky, Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Music of Herb Alpert & the Tijua­na Brass (1966)

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

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

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Wim Wenders Reveals His Rules of Cinema Perfection

in Film | July 2nd, 2014

Does Wim Wen­ders, one of my favorite direc­tors, make per­fect films? Hard­ly — and there­in, at least for me, lies the appeal. Per­fec­tion strikes me as a sin­gu­lar­ly unin­ter­est­ing goal for art, and Wen­ders has made some of the most inter­est­ing pieces of motion pic­ture art going for the past thir­ty years: Wings of Desire; Paris, Texas; Note­book on Cities and Clothes; Tokyo-Ga. Per­haps, it occurs to me, he has achieved his own kind of very spe­cif­ic, inim­itable per­fec­tion. But if you seek to imi­tate it nev­er­the­less, have a look at “Wim Wen­ders’ Rules of Cin­e­ma Per­fec­tion” above. In this video (actu­al­ly a kind of spot for Stel­la Artois, a brand with which the auteur has worked before), we see humor­ous­ly revealed sev­er­al of Wen­ders’ best film­mak­ing prac­tices: “You need a good title from the begin­ning,” “Con­ti­nu­ity is clear­ly over­rat­ed,” “Try to wel­come and incor­po­rate” the unex­pect­ed, and “If you like foot­ball, don’t shoot dur­ing the world cham­pi­onship.”

If you’ve done your read­ing on Wen­ders, you can prob­a­bly tell that the clip draws from a pub­lished list of the direc­tor’s “50 Gold­en Rules of Film­mak­ing.” Oth­er help­ful rec­om­men­da­tions include “Before you say ‘cut,’ wait five more sec­onds,” “A ‘beau­ti­ful image’ can very well be the worst thing that can hap­pen to a scene,” and “There are no rules.” Will fol­low­ing these if-n0t-rules-then-guide­lines turn you into the next Wim Wen­ders? Unlike­ly. Will drink­ing Stel­la Artois do it? Cer­tain­ly not. But it could hurt none of us, what­ev­er our cre­ative endeav­or of choice, to emu­late his will­ing­ness on dis­play here to learn from his mis­takes (based on his list, I’d say he’s tak­en his share of hard knocks hir­ing cou­ples, adapt­ing nov­els, and work­ing with ani­mals); to share his wis­dom; and (maybe most impor­tant­ly of all) to learn not to take our­selves too seri­ous­ly. Sure, his detrac­tors tend to accuse him of pre­ten­tious­ness, but we true fans (who pay close atten­tion even to his com­mer­cial act­ing gigs) know the truth.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Wim Wen­ders and Cel­e­brat­ed Direc­tors Talk About the Future of Cin­e­ma (1982)

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

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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Coudal’s Kubrick Collection: An Online Treasure Trove of Kubrick Ephemera

in Film | July 2nd, 2014

Last year, the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art wrapped up a bril­liant, exhaus­tive exhi­bi­tion about Stan­ley Kubrick. It was a ver­i­ta­ble cor­nu­copia of Kubrick mem­o­ra­bil­ia, rang­ing from grainy black and white pho­tographs he took for Look mag­a­zine as a youth, to a creepy plas­tic Star Child from 2001: A Space Odyssey, to the blood soaked dress­es of those hol­low-eyed twins in The Shin­ing. The exhib­it was a mas­sive suc­cess. It’s hard to imag­ine any oth­er direc­tor, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Alfred Hitch­cock, who would not only get an exhib­it in a major art muse­um but also be able to pack the hall week after week.

Part of his allure, no doubt, is Kubrick’s care­ful­ly-honed pub­lic per­sona – a reclu­sive genius who con­trolled every ele­ment of his movies, from the font on the open­ing titles to the design of the poster. His movies, espe­cial­ly his lat­er ones, are dense, deeply-lay­ered works of such com­plex­i­ty that they con­tin­ue to unpack them­selves after mul­ti­ple view­ings. Heck, there’s an entire doc­u­men­tary, Room 237, that presents nine stark­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of The Shin­ing.

Kubrick’s movies seem designed to appeal to a cer­tain breed of obses­sive film geek. So if you count your­self a mem­ber of this tribe (as I do) and you didn’t hap­pen to catch LACMA’s exhib­it, you’re in luck. The Chica­go design firm Coudal Part­ners has cre­at­ed a whole online trea­sure trove of Kubrick ephemera. We’ve culled a few cool things from their site.

Above is a cheesy, behind-the-scenes movie for 2001. The 20-minute pro­mo sets up the movie as if it were an episode of The Out­er Lim­its. “It is the year 2001, you’re on your way to a space sta­tion for busi­ness,” intones the nar­ra­tor. “This is but one exam­ple of what life would be like in 2001.” What fol­lows is a series of inter­views with the sci­en­tists, experts, and crafts­men involved in cre­at­ing Kubrick’s vision of the future with only fleet­ing footage of the film­mak­er him­self at around the 18-minute mark­er. Though it does give you a lot more infor­ma­tion on the nuts and bolts of the astro­nauts’ space­suits, the short movie, one can’t help but think, is set­ting up the audi­ence for dis­ap­point­ment. It does lit­tle to help view­ers under­stand that the first half of 2001 is about the strug­gles of ape men on the plains of Africa and does even less to address the psy­che­del­ic freak­out of the movie’s last reel.

clockwork-orange-poster-title

shining-poster-title

Also found in Coudal’s col­lec­tion is a site that has com­piled all the fonts that Kubrick, a not­ed typog­ra­phy enthu­si­ast, used in his movies. We’ve post­ed a cou­ple. He liked Futu­ra and Goth­ic a lot, appar­ent­ly. The title card for The Shin­ing was designed by Saul Bass.

237_Cardigan_emma1

And on this site, some genius has cre­at­ed sweaters, ski masks, and door­mats from that odd, geo­met­ric car­pet pat­tern from The Shin­ing. Pre-orders have sad­ly closed, but hope­ful­ly they’ll start sell­ing them again. I want the cardi­gan.

kubrick set

And then there’s this behind-the-scenes shot of the direc­tor and Sue Lyon on the set of Loli­ta accom­pa­nied by a quote from Kubrick about the actress.

“From the first, she was inter­est­ing to watch—even in the way she walked in for her inter­view, casu­al­ly sat down, walked out. She was cool and non-gig­gly. She was enig­mat­ic with­out being dull. She could keep peo­ple guess­ing about how much Loli­ta knew about life.”

kubrick subway

And speak­ing of pho­tos, here’s a few pic­tures Kubrick took of the New York sub­way sys­tem back in 1946 for Look mag­a­zine. Com­pare these pho­tos to his ear­li­est movies like Fear and Desire and Killer’s Kiss. Both his ear­ly flicks and these pic­tures have the same grit­ty imme­di­a­cy.

There is much, much more there at the Coudal Part­ners to keep any film nerd and Kubrick maven occu­pied. Check it out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fear and Desire: Stan­ley Kubrick’s First and Least-Seen Fea­ture Film (1953)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Shares Pho­tos of Her­self Grow­ing Up on Her Father’s Film Sets

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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.

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How J.K. Rowling Plotted Harry Potter with a Hand-Drawn Spreadsheet

in Books, Writing | July 1st, 2014

JK-Rowlings-Phoenix-Plot-Outline

At the height of the Har­ry Pot­ter nov­els’ pop­u­lar­i­ty, I asked a num­ber of peo­ple why those books in par­tic­u­lar enjoyed such a devot­ed read­er­ship. Every­one gave almost the same answer: that author J.K. Rowl­ing “tells a good sto­ry.” The response at once clar­i­fied every­thing and noth­ing; of course a “good sto­ry” can draw a large, enthu­si­as­tic (and, at that time, impa­tient) read­er­ship, but what does it take to actu­al­ly tell a good sto­ry? Peo­ple have prob­a­bly made more mon­ey attempt­ing, ques­tion­ably, to pin down, define, and teach the best prac­tices of sto­ry­telling, but at the top of this post, we have a reveal­ing scrap of Rowl­ing’s own process. And I do, almost lit­er­al­ly, mean a scrap: this piece of lined paper con­tains part of the hand­writ­ten plot spread­sheet she used to write the fifth Har­ry Pot­ter nov­el, Har­ry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix.

This par­tic­u­lar page (click to view it in a larg­er for­mat) cov­ers chap­ters 13 through 24, dur­ing which even more hap­pens than you may now remem­ber. It may have amount­ed to more than Rowl­ing, too, could remem­ber, hence the spread­sheet itself. End­pa­per explains some of her sto­ry notes as fol­lows:

  • “Prophe­cy”: A sub­plot about the prophe­cy Har­ry finds him­self con­cerned about all through the book
  • “Cho/Ginny”: The book’s roman­tic sub­plot
  • “D.A.”: What’s hap­pen­ing with the resis­tance army, or “Dumbledore’s Army”
  • “O of P”: What’s hap­pen­ing with the “Order of the Phoenix” group
  • “Snape/Harry”: What’s hap­pen­ing with Snape and Har­ry
  • “Hagrid and Grawp”: What’s hap­pen­ing with Hagrid and Grawp

“If you think about Har­ry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix, that’s it,” writes /Film’s Ger­main Lussier. “Those columns pret­ty much encom­pass the whole sto­ry.” Rowl­ing, of course, hard­ly counts as the only nov­el­ist to write with such tech­niques, and based on this exam­ple, hers don’t get near­ly as elab­o­rate as some. (I recall once read­ing that Vikram Chan­dra had to bust out Microsoft Project to keep track of the com­pli­ca­tions of Sacred Games, his 900-page nov­el about the Mum­bai under­world.) But Rowl­ing must cer­tain­ly rank as the most famous nov­el­ist to, quite lit­er­al­ly, draw up spread­sheets like this. I sup­pose it does leave her books even more exposed to accu­sa­tions of over­plot­ting than before, but some­thing tells me it won’t both­er her.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Two Har­ry Pot­ter Audio Books for Free (and Get the Rest of the Series for Cheap)

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

The Quan­tum Physics of Har­ry Pot­ter, Bro­ken Down By a Physi­cist and a Magi­cian

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

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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E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth Released as a Free eBook and Free Course on iTunes

in Biology, Books, e-books, Online Courses | July 1st, 2014

Yes­ter­day, E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth was released as a free iBook on iTunes. It fea­tures “state-of-the-art dig­i­tal media ani­ma­tions, video, and inter­ac­tive mod­ules in a com­pre­hen­sive 41-chap­ter text cov­er­ing stan­dards-based biol­o­gy cur­ricu­lum.” Cre­at­ed under the direc­tion of Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author and Har­vard nat­u­ral­ist Edward O.Wilson, Life on Earth can be down­loaded in 7 units on iTunes. The free book also comes with a free iTune­sU course. In addi­tion to read­ing assign­ments, the course “incor­po­rates activ­i­ties such as field obser­va­tions, writ­ing assign­ments, project-based learn­ing exer­cis­es,” using apps and oth­er mate­ri­als. Com­bin­ing infor­ma­tion from the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, and the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life, the course cov­ers a vari­ety of impor­tant themes — cit­i­zen sci­ence, evo­lu­tion, cli­mate change, and pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty. The first nine chap­ters of the iTune­sU course are avail­able now, and the remain­ing mate­ri­als for the 41-chap­ter course will be released through­out 2014.

The book can be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. And the course will be added to our list of Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

h/t @RandyDeutsch

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter E.O. Wilson’s Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life: Free Access to All The World’s Knowl­edge About Life

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Watch the First Animations of Peanuts: Commercials for the Ford Motor Company (1959–1961)

in Animation, Business, Television | July 1st, 2014

Bill Wat­ter­son, cre­ator of arguably the last great com­ic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, wrote the fol­low­ing about per­haps the great­est com­ic strip ever. “Peanuts pret­ty much defines the mod­ern com­ic strip, so even now it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, min­i­mal­ist draw­ings, the sar­cas­tic humor, the unflinch­ing emo­tion­al hon­esty….” Charles Schulz, the artis­tic force behind Peanuts, fun­neled a life­time of lone­li­ness and emo­tion­al pain into these spare lit­tle draw­ings, cre­at­ing a strip that was bleak­ly fun­ny, philo­soph­i­cal and real. Char­ac­ters like the social­ly inept Char­lie Brown or the bossy though odd­ly trag­ic Lucy con­nect­ed with audi­ences in a way that few ever did.

The one way that Wat­ter­son and Schulz dif­fered, and dif­fered great­ly, was in the area of mer­chan­dis­ing. While Wat­ter­son famous­ly refused to license any of his char­ac­ters (those praying/peeing Calvin car decals, it might sur­prise you to learn, are not offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned), Schulz licensed his cre­ations far and wide. For those who grew up in the ‘70s, a Snoopy plush toy was sim­ply de rigueur. The Peanuts char­ac­ters hawked Dol­ly Madi­son snack cakes, MetLife insur­ance, and Wendy’s kids meals. And those spon­sor­ship deals paid spec­tac­u­lar­ly well. By the time that Schulz died in Feb­ru­ary 2000 — the night before the final Peanuts strip was to go to print — he had report­ed­ly earned over the course of his life $1.1 bil­lion dol­lars.

The first instance of Char­lie, Snoopy and the gang being cor­po­rate spokeschar­ac­ters hap­pened to be also the first time they were ani­mat­ed. The Ford Motor Com­pa­ny licensed them in 1959 to do TV com­mer­cials along with intros to the Ten­nessee Ernie Ford Show. You can watch them above. Prob­a­bly the most strik­ing thing about the com­mer­cials is that the adults are intel­li­gi­ble, not the incom­pre­hen­si­ble mut­ed trum­pet bleats of the Peanuts movies.

The spots proved to be such a suc­cess that Schulz and ani­ma­tor Bill Melén­dez were soon pro­duc­ing half-hour long TV spe­cials, includ­ing the Emmy-win­ning A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas in 1965. In a 1984 inter­view, Melén­dez talked about work­ing with Schulz, who went by the nick­name of “Sparky,” for those first Ford spots.

Well, I was doing Ford com­mer­cials at J. Wal­ter Thomp­son when it was decid­ed that Char­lie Brown would be the spokesman for the Ford Fal­con. I was told Charles Schulz was very shy and ret­i­cent about com­mer­cial­iz­ing his strip. So I went to San Fran­cis­co and met Sparky and we hit it off. I told him what we did, and he nod­ded and said, “All right, we’ll try it.” He was very leery of get­ting involved with “Hol­ly­wood types” as he used to call us.

Of course he under­stands that his draw­ings are flat, two-dimen­sion­al designs, and that, for exam­ple, the front view is very dif­fer­ent from the side view. They are not three-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters. You can’t turn them around the way we used to turn the Walt Dis­ney char­ac­ters, who were designed to be round and three-dimen­sion­al. To ani­mate Peanuts char­ac­ters we have to be more inven­tive, because we tend not to be real­is­tic. We don’t try to ape real live action as we did in ani­mat­ing Don­ald Duck and Mick­ey Mouse.

I imag­ine Sparky must have been curi­ous about how we were going to do it, but he nev­er gave us any kind of a hint or any­thing at all about what he want­ed. So we showed him how we thought it should move, how we thought they should turn, how we thought they should walk and he accept­ed every­thing. From then on we hit it off pret­ty well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions and a Google Doo­dle

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons are Made

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.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson, High School Wrestling Team Captain, Invented a Physics-Based Wrestling Move

in Physics, Sports | July 1st, 2014

tyson wrestle

We know that Neil deGrasse Tyson was some­thing of a wun­derkind dur­ing his high school years. If you’re an OC reg­u­lar, you’ve read all about how Carl Sagan per­son­al­ly recruit­ed Tyson to study with him at Cor­nell. Deft­ly, polite­ly, the young Tyson declined and went to Har­vard.

There’s per­haps anoth­er side of the pre­co­cious Tyson you might not know as much about. The ath­let­ic side. While a stu­dent at The Bronx High School of Sci­ence, Tyson (class of 1976) wore bas­ket­ball sneak­ers belong­ing to the Knick­’s Walt “Clyde” Fra­zier. He ran an impres­sive 4:25 mile. And he cap­tained the school’s wrestling team, dur­ing which time he con­jured up a new-fan­gled wrestling move. In pro­fes­sion­al wrestling, Ric Flair had the dread­ed Fig­ure Four Leg Lock, and Jim­my Snu­ka, a dev­as­tat­ing Super­fly Splash. Tyson? He had the feared “Dou­ble Tidal Lock.” He explains and demon­strates the physics-based move in the video below, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­anapo­lis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Samuel Beck­ett Drove Young André the Giant to School: A True Sto­ry

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

The Ulti­mate War­rior, Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestler & Philoso­pher, Cre­at­ed a Glos­sary of World Philoso­phies

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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