Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Classic Album by The Alan Parsons Project

in Literature, Music | April 21st, 2015

If someone asks whether you like Tales of Mystery and Imagination, you’d better clarify which Tales of Mystery and Imagination they mean: the first complete collection of horror and suspense stories by master of psychological unease Edgar Allan Poe, or the first album by progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project? But if you like one, you might well like the other, given that Parsons based his group’s debut, which contains such tracks as “The Raven,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” directly on Poe’s work.

Not only do Parsons’ compositions use Poe’s themes, they use Poe’s words. “How important the Poe concept is is questionable,” declared the contemporary Billboard review, “but the LP as a whole holds up well as a viable musical work.” It having been 1976, the writer does note its “strong FM potential,” but time has much increased Tales of Mystery and Imagination’s status in rock, progressive or otherwise. All Music Guide’s Mike DeGagne more recently called the album “an extremely mesmerizing aural journey” and “a vivid picture of one of the most alluring literary figures in history.”

Of course, those two reviews don’t evaluate quite the same production, since, in 1987, Parsons, a born studio tinkerer, went back and remixed Tales of Mystery and Imagination. He added a good deal of not just 1980s-style reverb, but new guitar bits and pieces of Poe recital, this time performed by no less an ideal reader than Orson Welles, who’d sent Parsons a tape of his Poe performance shortly after the original album appeared. You can hear his contribution on the tracks “A Dream Within a Dream” and “Fall of the House of Usher.” Both above. The complete album is available below on Spotify.

You might wonder what work of Poe’s, exactly, you hear Welles reading from, since none of it sounds like the writer’s best-known passages. The words spoken in “A Dream Within a Dream” come from a reflection Poe wrote in his Marginalia, and those in “The Fall of the House of Usher” perform something of a remix themselves, combining more nonfiction from the Marginalia with the introduction to his Poems of Youth. Only a dedicated Poe enthusiast indeed would recognize all these passages, but surely such a person would love both Tales of Mystery and Imagination and Tales of Mystery and Imagination. If you, personally, don’t go in for Poe in the prog-rock treatment, might I suggest Parsons’ take on Asimov?

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, Jeff Buckley & Other Celebs Read Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christopher Walken, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee

Watch the 1953 Animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Narrated by James Mason

Download The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Stories as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Colin Marshall writes on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Library of Congress Launches New Online Poetry Archive, Featuring 75 Years of Classic Poetry Readings

in Books, Literature, Museums, Poetry | April 20th, 2015

Image by Fred Palumbo, made available by the Library of Congress.

Put THIS in your pocket. The Library of Congress is celebrating National Poetry Month by launching its new Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. It debuts with 50 choice poetry recordings, spanning 75 years of time. In the past, you’d have had to visit the library in person to listen to these goodies on reel-to-reel tape. Now you can take them to the gym, plug in as you wash dishes, post online links for your minions to enjoy.

Newly ensconced Consultant in Poetry Gwendolyn Brooks (was there ever a more recognizable voice?) prefaces her reading by pledging her intention to register “on the public consciousness and conscience the generally neglected richness of ‘minority poetry.’”

Robert Frost tells Randall Jarrell of his desire to identify American antiquity — to feature in his poetry a woodchopper’s hut that looks “as old as Babylon.”

Paul Muldoon shares the story of how he came to own the eelskin bag that is the star of “The Briefcase.”

Armchair travelers who still yearn to make that trip to DC in their minds will enjoy Elizabeth Bishop’s “View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress” (at the 4:02 mark), read at the Library of Congress’s own Coolidge Auditorium. Visitors can also stream readings by Ray Bradbury (below), Margaret Atwood, and Kurt Vonnegut.

As part of its ongoing commitment to the form, the Library will be adding to the online archive on a monthly basis. Let every month be Poetry Month! You can stream the complete collection here.

Stream Classic Poetry Readings from Harvard’s Rich Audio Archive: From W.H. Auden to Dylan Thomas

Listen to 90 Famous Authors & Celebrities Read Great Stories & Poems

Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Milton Glaser Draws Shakespeare & Explains Why Drawing is the Key to Understanding Life

in Art | April 20th, 2015

In this fascinating over-the-shoulder film of the artist/designer Milton Glaser, we watch as the man behind the “I Heart NY” logo, the Bob Dylan psychedelic silhouette, and the Brooklyn Brewery logo draws Shakespeare and delivers his thoughts about drawing.

He only talks for five minutes–and before you know it, he’s produced a sketch of The Bard. We wish it was more, but his observations make for some good inspirational quotes, whether you dabble in art or not. He critiques art schools for dropping drawing from their curriculums because drawing doesn’t jibe with their computer-based, career focus. “While people have what they need, perhaps, for their professional life, what they don’t have is a fundamental instrument for understanding the reality of that life,” he opines.

Drawing is how Glaser understands the world, and how it keeps him present in reality. It’s the basis for all art that is to come, no matter if the student goes on to abstraction. It’s also essential, he says, for child development, and any child not given the tools to make art is being done a disservice.

For those wondering about that book Glaser mentions writing, Drawing Is Thinking, you can get it here.

And if you’re curious about Frank R. Wilson’s The Hand, which Glaser compliments, it’s here.

And finally, if you need a quick primer on the man, here’s a quick overview of Milton Glaser by the New York Times. “Drawing is my greatest pleasure,” he says, and it shows.

Sketches of Artists by the Late New Media Designer Hillman Curtis

Mickey Mouse In Vietnam: The Lost Anti-War Animation from 1968

Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the FunkZone Podcast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by Ted Mills | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Discover Haruki Murakami’s Advertorial Short Stories: Rare Short-Short Fiction from the 1980s

in Literature | April 20th, 2015

No profile of Haruki Murakami, the most globally popular novelist alive, fails to refer to the high number of languages (as of this writing, the count has reached 50) in which his 14 Japanese-language novels have appeared in translation. But outside Japan, monoglot Murakamists (especially readers of only English) have a problem: they still can’t read a wealth of Murakami’s other, non-novelistic writing, including the full-length, two-volume version of Underground, his study of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack; his Portrait in Jazz books on his favorite music; and most of his many essays and movie reviews.

Even some of Murakami’s fiction has remained more or less off-limits to global readers. I discovered this when I came across a collection of his I’d never even heard of while book-shopping in Seoul. Realizing that of course more Murakami material would find its way into Korean, a grammatically similar language to Japanese, than English, I set about checking every bookstore in the city I knew for other unknown volumes. One book of short stories, titled in Korean 밤의 원숭이 (Spider Monkey of the Night), particularly delighted me with its strange and extremely brief tales, each accompanied by charming illustrations.

But where did these stories, with their titles like “Hotel Lobby Oysters,” “Julio Iglesias,” and “Takayama Noriko and My Libido,” come from? They came, as Neojaponisme’s post on them explains, from the world of advertising, and specifically from a company called “Onward,” which marketed the American Ivy League fashion label J. Press in Japan:

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Onward spent massive sums on advertising J. Press in the print media. The classic ad format, often seen on the back cover of lifestyle magazine Popeye, showed a Japanese or American man telling a colorful story about their favorite trad clothing item. In 1985, as Japanese pop culture went in more avant-garde directions, Onward came up with a new idea — asking up-and-coming novelist Murakami Haruki to write a very short story inside each month’s advertisement for magazines Popeye, Box, and Men’s Club.

“So once a month from April 1985 to February 1987, Murakami wrote a ‘short short’ (短い短編), which was set on its own page with an illustration by famed artist Anzai Mizumaru at the top and a small J. Press logo in the lower left corner.” During that time, out came Murakami’s hit novel Norwegian Wood, which rocketed him to a level of fame that effectively put him in exile from his homeland. But the advertorial short-short form still appealed to him, and in 1993 he got famous penmaker Parker to sponsor 24 new ones.

To give you a flavor of all this, below is one of the English-language translations floating around of “Hotel Lobby Oysters,” Murakami’s first J. Press story. (You can also read “Miss Noriko Takayama and My Libido,” another J. Press story here):

At the time I was sitting on the hotel lobby sofa and vaguely thinking about oysters. Not lemon soufflé, not pencil sharpeners – oysters. I don’t know why. I just suddenly realized that I was thinking about oysters.

The oysters I was thinking about on the hotel lobby sofa were different from oysters thought about anywhere else. They were shaped differently, they smelled differently, and their color was different, too. They weren’t oysters harvested in some cove. They were pure oysters harvested in a hotel lobby.

After thinking about oysters for a while, I went to the sink to wash my face, then retied my tie and returned to the sofa. When I got back, the oysters had already disappeared from inside my head. Again, I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I washed my faced or because I retied my tie. Or maybe the hotel oyster season is extremely short.

When the girl came 17 minutes after our appointed time, I told her about the hotel lobby oysters. The image was so distinct I felt like I had to tell someone about them.

“You want to eat oysters?” she asked.

“No, these oysters, they were purely oysters as a concept, unrelated to my appetite,” I explained. “The oysters came into being as the very essence of oys—“

“But you do want to eat some, right?” she said.

When she mentioned it and I settled down to think about it, I certainly had developed an incredible desire to eat oysters. We went to the hotel restaurant and ate 25 oysters while drinking wine. Sometimes I think my appetite originates from a really strange place.

And, for Parker, Murakami wrote, “Spider Monkey of the Night”:

I was sitting at my desk at 2:00 in the morning and writing. I pushed my window open and a spider monkey came in.

“Oh, hey, who are you?” I asked.

“Oh, hey, who are you,” the spider monkey said.

“Don’t copy me,” I said.

“Don’t copy me,” the monkey said.

“Don’t copy me,” I copied him.

“Don’t copy me,” he copied me in italics.

Man, this is really annoying, I thought. If I get caught up with this copycat-crazed night monkey, who knows when this will end. I’ll just have to trip him up somewhere. I had a job that I had to finish by morning, and I couldn’t very well keep doing this all night.

“Heppoku rakurashi manga totemuya, kurini kamasu tokimi wakoru, pacopaco,” I said quickly.

“Heppoku rakurashi manga totemuya, kurini kamasu tokimi wakoru, pacopaco,” the spider monkey said.

Since I had said something completely random, I couldn’t actually tell if the monkey had copied me correctly or not. Well, that was pointless.

“Leave me alone,” I said.

“Leave me alone,” the monkey said.

“You got it wrong, I didn’t say it in italics that time.”

“You got it wrong, I didn’t say it in ītalics that time.”

“I didn’t put a macron over the i.”

“I didn’t put a macron over the eye.”

I sighed. No matter what I said, the spider monkey wouldn’t understand. I decided to not say anything and just keep doing my work. Still, when I pressed a key on my word processor, the monkey silently pressed the copy key. Click. Still, when I pressed a key on my word processor, the monkey silently pressed the copy key. Click. Leave me alone. Leave me alone.

via Neojaponisme

Read 6 Stories By Haruki Murakami Free Online

Haruki Murakami Reads in English from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in a Rare Public Reading (1998)

Haruki Murakami Lists the Three Essential Qualities For All Serious Novelists (And Runners)

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

Colin Marshall writes on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Henry Miller Makes a List of “The 100 Books That Influenced Me Most”

in Books, Literature | April 20th, 2015

Image licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Take a survey of a hundred writers from the mid- to late-twentieth century about the books that influenced them most and you’re bound to find plenty of Henry Miller tucked in with the Victorians, the Russians, and the Beats. The Brooklyn-raised author of such notoriously banned novels as Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer has long appealed to contemporary writers not only because of his frank explorations of sexuality and other taboo subjects but also because—like so many avant-garde and not so avant-garde writers after him—he had the audacity to present his own life and loves as literary material. Long before the memoir became the dominant force in American letters, with all of the attendant controversies about truth-telling in the form, Miller blended fact and fiction in ways that made it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Miller’s reputation for living his fiction—or fictionalizing his life—may have led many readers with only a passing familiarity with his books to regard him as a kind of shameless self-mythologizer. The characterization isn’t necessarily wrong, but it only captures part of the story. Like every serious writer, Miller was also a serious reader, and his work is as much informed by the books he loved as by the women he loved.

Miller freely acknowledged the literary relationships in his life, the authors who exerted influence on his work and whose styles and ideas he borrowed and made his own. He wrote an entire book on the subject, The Books in My Life, which Maria Popova at Brain Pickings describes as “a singular lens on his approach to reading.” In the book, Miller’s “central concern is a kind of anatomy of influence,” Popova writes, taking a phrase from literary critic Harold Bloom.

In his meditation on “his sources of creative spark,” Miller discusses at length his ideas about education, and its many failings. And in the book’s appendix—as if anticipating our current mania for lists—he makes a comprehensive record of “The 100 Books that Influenced Me Most.” See Miller’s complete list below, and read The Books in My Life free at the Open Library. A fair number of the books on Miller’s list can be found in our collection, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices.

1 Ancient Greek Dramatists
2 Arabian Nights (for children)
3 Elizabethan Playwrights (excepting Shakespeare)
4 European Playwrights of 19th Century
5 Greek Myths and Legends
6 Knights of King Arthur’s Court
7 Abèlard, Pierre, The Story of My Misfortunes
8 Alain-Fournier, The Wanderer
9 Andersen, Hans Christian, Fairy Tales
10 Anonymous, Diary of a Lost One
11 Balzac, Honoré de, Seraphita
12 Balzac, Honoré de, Louis Lambert
13 Bellamy, Edward, Looking Backward
14 Belloc, Hilaire, The Path to Rome
15 Blavatsky, Mme. H. P., The Secret Doctrine
16 Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron
17 Breton, André, Nadja
18 Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights
19 Bulwyer-Lytton, Edward, Last Days of Pompeii
20 Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland
21 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, Journey to the End of the Night
22 Cellini, Benvenuto, Autobiography
23 Cendrars, Blaise, Virtually the complete works
24 Chesterton, G.K., Saint Francis of Assisi
25 Conrad, Joseph, His works in general
26 Cooper James Fenimore, Leatherstocking Tales
27 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe
28 De Nerval, Gérard, His works in general
29 Dostoievsky, Feodor, His works in general
30 Dreiser, Theodore, His works in general
31 Duhamel, Geoges, Salavin Series
32 Du Maurier, George, Trilby
33 Dumas, Alexander, The Three Musketeers
34 Eckermann, Johann, Conversations with Goethe
35 Eltzbacher, Paul, Anarchism
36 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Representative Men
37 Fabre, Henri, His works in general
38 Faure, Elie, The History of Art
39 Fenollosa, Ernest, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry
40 Gide, André, Dostoievski
41 Giono, Jean, Refus d’Obéissance
42 Giono, Jean, Que ma joie domeure
43 Giono, Jean, Jean le Bleu
44 Grimm Brothers, Fairy Tales
45 Gutkind, Erich, The Absolute Collective
46 Haggard, Rider, She
47 Hamsun, Knut, His works in general
48 Henty, G. A., His works in general
49 Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha
50 Hudson, W. H., His works in general
51 Hugo, Victor, Les Misérables
52 Huysmans, Joris Karl, Against the Grain
53 Joyce, James, Ulysses
54 Keyserling, Hermann, South American Meditations
55 Kropotkin, Peter, Mutual Aid
56 Lao-tse, Tao Teh Ch’ing
57 Latzko, Andreas, Men in War
58 Long, Haniel, Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca
59 M, Gospel of Ramakrishna
60 Machen, Arthur, The Hill of Dreams
61 Maeterlinck, Maurice, His works in general
62 Mann, Thomas, The Magic Mountain
63 Mencken, H. L., Prejudices
64 Nietzsche, His works in general
65 Nijinsky, Diary
66 Nordhoff & Hall, Pitcairn Island
67 Nostradamus, The Centuries
68 Peck, George Wilbur, Peck’s Bad Boy
69 Percival, W. O., William Blake’s Circle of Destiny
70 Petronius, The Satyricon
71 Plutarch, Lives
72 Powys, John Cowper, Visions and Revisions
73 Prescott, William H., Conquest of Mexico
74 Prescott, William H., Conquest of Peru
75 Proust, Marcel, Remembrance of Things Past
76 Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
77 Rimbaud, Jean-Arthur, His works in general
78 Rolland, Romain, Jean-Christophe
79 Rolland, Romain, Prophets of the New India
80 Rudhyar, Dane, Astrology of Personality
81 Saltus, Edgar, The Imperial Purple
82 Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe
83 Sienkiewicz, Henry, Quo Vadis
84 Sikelianos, Anghelos, Proanakrousma
85 Sinnett, A. P., Esoteric Buddhism
86 Spencer, Herbert, Autobiography
87 Spengler, Oswald, The Decline of the West
88 Strindberg, August, The Inferno
89 Suarès, Carlo, Krishnamurti
90 Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, Zen Buddhism
91 Swift, Jonathan, Guilliver’s Travels
92 Tennyson, Alfred, Idylls of the King
93 Thoreau, Henry David, Civil Disobedience & Other Essays
94 Twain, Mark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
95 Van Gogh, Vincent, Letters to Theo
96 Wassermann, Jacob, The Maurizius Case (Trilogy)
97 Weigall, Arthur, Akhnaton
98 Welch, Galbraith, The Unveiling of Timbuctoo
99 Werfel, Franz, Star of the Unborn
100 Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Yoda’s Long Lost Twin Found in a 14th Century Illuminated Manuscript

in Art, History, Sci Fi | April 18th, 2015

In a new picture book called Medieval Monsters, published by the British Library, historian Damien Kempf and art historian Maria L. Gilbert have gathered together illustrations that highlight the great monsters of the medieval world. Monsters were everywhere, including “on the edges of manuscript pages” and on “the fringes of maps.” The successor to Medieval Cats and Medieval Dogs, Medieval Monsters contains no shortage of fascinating illustrations, including the one above. It looks remarkably like Yoda, doesn’t it?

A British Library curator told NPR, “The Yoda image comes from a 14th-century manuscript known as the Smithfield Decretals.” “I’d love to say that it really was Yoda, or was drawn by a medieval time traveler.” But “it’s actually an illustration to the biblical story of Samson — the artist clearly had a vivid imagination!”

See more monsters at the British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts blog.

via NPR

Wearable Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Manuscripts & Turned Them into Clothes

Wonderfully Weird & Ingenious Medieval Books

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Making of Star Wars As Told by C‑3PO & R2-D2: The First-Ever Documentary on the Film (1977)

in Film, Sci Fi | April 18th, 2015

The Earth, it seems, has only one truly unlimited resource: enthusiasm for Star Wars. Not even The Phantom Menace, the derision magnet that opened the film series’ newer trilogy, made a serious dent in our reserves. But did everyone who got together in the 1970s to make the very first Star Wars movie, from George Lucas on down the chain of command, understand how deep a vein of fandom they had drilled into? The Making of Star Wars, a 1977 documentary on that beloved space opera-turned-cultural phenomenon, will give you some idea.

Now that Star Wars has generated such a universe, if you like, of supplementary content, one more 50-minute behind-the-scenes special might strike you as no great shakes. But when The Making of Star Wars appeared in ’77, it appeared as the first documentary about Star Wars ever. And it has much higher ambitions than the average promotional short of the day, featuring not only cast and crew interviews but segments on the (decidedly pre-CGI) effects technology employed in the production.

Even the most dedicated Star Wars buffs will still find material of interest here, including footage that never made it into the picture’s theatrical cut, and footage reintroduced into 1997’s revamped “Special Edition” of the original trilogy but altered with CGI (another drain on several generation’s Star Wars love). But many of us will watch The Making of Star Wars on one of its strengths alone: C‑3PO and R2-D2 host the whole thing. Could even those precision-engineered droids have foreseen the thunderous reception that has met this year’s brand new teasers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

The Making of Star Wars is a candidate for our list of Free Online Documentaries, a subset of our collection, 285 Free Documentaries Online.

via Mental Floss

Watch the Very First Trailers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Universal Myth

Hundreds of Fans Collectively Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Fans Reconstruct Authentic Version of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in Theaters in 1977

Colin Marshall writes on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Martin Scorsese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspiring Filmmaker Needs to See

in Film | April 17th, 2015

Martin_Scorsese_Berlinale_2010

Image by “Siebbi,” Wikimedia Commons

Before the rise of institutional film schools—ensconced in university walls with all the formality that entails—those seeking to learn the craft did so by apprenticing themselves to studios and master directors, and by watching lots and lots of movies. If we take the example of some of the most interesting filmmakers working today, this still may be the best way to become a filmmaker. Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School, for example, forgoes the trappings of classrooms for a much more rough-and-tumble approach—and a direct confrontation with the medium. Kevin Smith dropped out of film school, as did Paul Thomas Anderson, spurred on partly by a love of Terminator 2. “My filmmaking education,” revealed Anderson, “consisted of finding out what filmmakers I liked were watching, then seeing those films.” It’s more or less how Quentin Tarantino learned to make movies too.

You could hardly do better—if you’ve decided to take this independent route toward a cinematic education—than apprentice yourself under Martin Scorsese. Or at least find out what films he loves, and watch them all yourself.

Last year, we featured a list of 39 foreign films the estimable director of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Hugo, Goodfellas (etc., etc., etc.) recommended to a young filmmaker. Today, we bring you a list of 85 films Scorsese referenced in the course of a four-hour interview he gave to Fast Company. “Some of the movies he discussed,” writes FastCo, “Others he just mentioned. But the cumulative total reflects a life lived entirely within the confines of movie making.” Shoot on over to Fast Company to read Scorsese’s commentary on each of the films below, and see an aesthetically pleasing version of his list over at MUBI as well.

Like I said, you could hardly do better.

Ace in the Hole
All that Heaven Allows
America, America
An American in Paris
Apocalypse Now
Arsenic and Old Lace
The Bad and the Beautiful
The Band Wagon
Born on the Fourth of July
Cape Fear
Cat People
Caught
Citizen Kane
The Conversation
Dial M for Murder
Do the Right Thing
Duel in the Sun
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Europa ’51
Faces
The Fall of the Roman Empire
The Flowers of St. Francis
Force of Evil
Forty Guns
Germany Year Zero
Gilda
The Godfather
Gun Crazy
Health
Heaven’s Gate
House of Wax
How Green Was My Valley
The Hustler
I Walk Alone
The Infernal Cakewalk
It Happened One Nght
Jason and the Argonauts
Journey to Italy
Julius Caesar
Kansas City
Kiss Me Deadly
Klute
La Terra Trema
The Lady From Shanghai
The Leopard
Macbeth
The Magic Box
M*A*S*H
A Matter of Life and Death
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
The Messiah
Midnight Cowboy
Mishima
Deeds Goes to Town
Smith Goes to Washington
Nashville
Night and the City
One, Two, Three
Othello
Paisa
Peeping Tom
Pickup on South Street
The Player
The Power and the Glory
Stagecoach
Raw Deal
The Red Shoes
The Rise of Louis XIV
The Roaring Twenties
Rocco and his Brothers
Rome, Open City
Secrets of the Soul
Senso
Shadows
Shock Corridor
Some Came Running
Stromboli
Sullivan’s Travels
Sweet Smell of Success
Tales of Hoffman
The Third Man
T‑Men
Touch of Evil
The Trial
Two Weeks in Another Town

via FastCoCreate

Martin Scorsese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preservation)

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films: Moonstruck, Rosemary’s Baby, and Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel

Quentin Tarantino Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

Akira Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 16 ) |

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Classic Album by The Alan Parsons Project

Library of Congress Launches New Online Poetry Archive, Featuring 75 Years of Classic Poetry Readings

Milton Glaser Draws Shakespeare & Explains Why Drawing is the Key to Understanding Life

Discover Haruki Murakami’s Advertorial Short Stories: Rare Short-Short Fiction from the 1980s

Henry Miller Makes a List of “The 100 Books That Influenced Me Most”

Yoda’s Long Lost Twin Found in a 14th Century Illuminated Manuscript

The Making of Star Wars As Told by C‑3PO & R2-D2: The First-Ever Documentary on the Film (1977)

Martin Scorsese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspiring Filmmaker Needs to See

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