Akira Kurosawa’s 100 Favorite Movies

in Film | October 26th, 2018

In movies like Sev­en Samu­rai and High and Low, direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa took the cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage of Hol­ly­wood and improved on it, cre­at­ing a vig­or­ous, mus­cu­lar method of visu­al sto­ry­telling that became a styl­is­tic play­book for the likes of Mar­tin Scors­ese, George Lucas and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. In movies like Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well and The Low­er Depths, Kuro­sawa relent­less­ly strug­gled to find the rays of light among the shad­ows of the human soul. This philo­soph­i­cal urgency com­bined with his visu­al bril­liance is what gives his work, espe­cial­ly his ear­ly films, such vital­i­ty.

“One thing that dis­tin­guish­es Aki­ra Kuro­sawa is that he didn’t just make a mas­ter­piece or two mas­ter­pieces,” Cop­po­la said dur­ing an inter­view. “He made eight mas­ter­pieces.”

So when Kuro­sawa comes out with a rec­om­mend­ed view­ing list, movie mavens every­where should take note. Such a list was pub­lished in his posthu­mous­ly pub­lished book Yume wa ten­sai de aru (A Dream is a Genius). His daugh­ter Kazuko Kuro­sawa described the list’s selec­tion process:

My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank. That explains why you can­not find in this list many of the titles of the films he regard­ed as won­der­ful. The prin­ci­ple of the choice is: one film for one direc­tor, entry of the unfor­get­table films about which I and my father had a love­ly talk, and of some ideas on cin­e­ma that he had cher­ished but did not express in pub­lic. This is the way I made a list of 100 films of Kurosawa’s choice.

Orga­nized chrono­log­i­cal­ly, the list starts with D.W. Griffith’s Bro­ken Blos­soms and ends with Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-Bi. In between is a remark­ably thor­ough and diverse col­lec­tion of films, mix­ing in equal parts Hol­ly­wood, art house and Japan­ese clas­sics. Many of the movies are exact­ly the ones you would see on any Film Stud­ies 101 syl­labus — Truffaut’s 400 Blows, Car­ol Reed’s The Third Man and DeSica’s Bicy­cle Thieves. Oth­er films are less expect­ed. Hayao Miyazaki’s utter­ly won­der­ful My Neigh­bor Totoro makes the cut, as does Ishi­ro Hon­da’s Goji­ra and Peter Weir’s Wit­ness. His pol­i­cy of one film per direc­tor yields some sur­pris­ing, almost will­ful­ly per­verse results. The God­fa­ther, Part 2 over The God­fa­ther? The King of Com­e­dy over Good­fel­las? Ivan the Ter­ri­ble over Bat­tle­ship Potemkin? The Birds over Ver­ti­go? Bar­ry Lyn­don over pret­ty much any­thing else that Stan­ley Kubrick did? And while I am pleased that Mikio Naruse gets a nod for Ukigu­mo – in a just world, Naruse would be as read­i­ly praised and cel­e­brat­ed as his con­tem­po­raries Yasu­jiro Ozu and Ken­ji Mizoguchi – I am also struck by the list’s most glar­ing, and curi­ous, omis­sion. There’s no Orson Welles.

You can see his 100 essen­tial movies below. Above we have the sec­ond film on the list, The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, which you can oth­er­wise find in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

1. Bro­ken Blos­soms or The Yel­low Man and the Girl (Grif­fith, 1919) USA
2. Das Cab­i­net des Dr. Cali­gari [The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari] (Wiene, 1920) Ger­many
3. Dr. Mabuse, der Spiel­er – Ein Bild der Zeit (Part 1 — Part 2) [Dr. Mabuse, the Gam­bler] (Lang, 1922) Ger­many
4. The Gold Rush (Chap­lin, 1925) USA
5. La Chute de la Mai­son Ush­er [The Fall of the House of Ush­er] (Jean Epstein, 1928) France
6. Un Chien Andalou [An Andalu­sian Dog] (Bunuel, 1928) France
7. Moroc­co (von Stern­berg, 1930) USA
8. Der Kongress Tanzt (Charell, 1931) Ger­many
9. Die 3groschenoper [The Three­pen­ny Opera] (Pab­st, 1931) Ger­many
10. Leise Fle­hen Meine Lieder [Lover Divine] (Forst, 1933) Austria/Germany
11. The Thin Man (Dyke, 1934) USA
12. Tonari no Yae-chan [My Lit­tle Neigh­bour, Yae] (Shi­mazu, 1934) Japan
13. Tange Sazen yowa: Hyaku­man ryo no tsubo [Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Mil­lion Ryo] (Yamana­ka, 1935) Japan
14. Akan­ishi Kaki­ta [Capri­cious Young Men] (Ita­mi, 1936) Japan
15. La Grande Illu­sion [The Grand Illu­sion] (Renoir, 1937) France
16. Stel­la Dal­las (Vidor, 1937) USA
17. Tsuzurika­ta Kyoshit­su [Lessons in Essay] (Yamamo­to, 1938) Japan
18. Tsuchi [Earth] (Uchi­da, 1939) Japan
19. Ninotch­ka (Lubitsch, 1939) USA
20. Ivan Groznyy I, Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky Zagov­or [Ivan the Ter­ri­ble Parts I and II] (Eisen­stein, 1944–46) Sovi­et Union
21. My Dar­ling Clemen­tine (Ford, 1946) USA
22. It’s a Won­der­ful Life (Capra, 1946) USA
23. The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) USA
24. Ladri di Bici­clette [The Bicy­cle Thief] [Bicy­cle Thieves] (De Sica, 1948) Italy
25. Aoi san­myaku [The Green Moun­tains] (Imai, 1949) Japan
26. The Third Man (Reed, 1949) UK
27. Ban­shun [Late Spring] (Ozu, 1949) Japan
28. Orpheus (Cocteau, 1949) France
29. Karu­men kokyo ni kaeru [Car­men Comes Home] (Kinoshi­ta, 1951) Japan
30. A Street­car Named Desire (Kazan, 1951) USA
31. Thérèse Raquin [The Adul­tress] (Carne 1953) France
32. Saikaku ichidai onna [The Life of Oharu] (Mizoguchi, 1952) Japan
33. Viag­gio in Italia [Jour­ney to Italy] (Rosselli­ni, 1953) Italy
34. Goji­ra [Godzil­la] (Hon­da, 1954) Japan
35. La Stra­da (Felli­ni, 1954) Italy
36. Ukigu­mo [Float­ing Clouds] (Naruse, 1955) Japan
37. Pather Pan­chali [Song of the Road] (Ray, 1955) India
38. Dad­dy Long Legs (Neg­ule­sco, 1955) USA
39. The Proud Ones (Webb, 1956) USA
40. Baku­mat­su taiy­o­den [Sun in the Last Days of the Shogu­nate] (Kawashima, 1957) Japan
41. The Young Lions (Dmytryk, 1957) USA
42. Les Cousins [The Cousins] (Chabrol, 1959) France
43. Les Quarte Cents Coups [The 400 Blows] (Truf­faut, 1959) France
44. A bout de Souf­fle [Breath­less] (Godard, 1959) France
45. Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959) USA
46. Oto­to [Her Broth­er] (Ichikawa, 1960) Japan
47. Une aus­si longue absence [The Long Absence] (Colpi, 1960) France/Italy
48. Le Voy­age en Bal­lon [Stow­away in the Sky] (Lam­or­isse, 1960) France
49. Plein Soleil [Pur­ple Noon] (Clement, 1960) France/Italy
50. Zazie dans le métro [Zazie on the Subway](Malle, 1960) France/Italy
51. L’Annee derniere a Marien­bad [Last Year in Marien­bad] (Resnais, 1960) France/Italy
52. What Ever Hap­pened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962) USA
53. Lawrence of Ara­bia (Lean, 1962) UK
54. Melodie en sous-sol [Any Num­ber Can Win] (Verneuil, 1963) France/Italy
55. The Birds (Hitch­cock, 1963) USA
56. Il Deser­to Rosso [The Red Desert](Antonioni, 1964) Italy/France
57. Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf? (Nichols, 1966) USA
58. Bon­nie and Clyde (Penn, 1967) USA
59. In the Heat of the Night (Jew­i­son, 1967) USA
60. The Charge of the Light Brigade (Richard­son, 1968) UK
61. Mid­night Cow­boy (Schlesinger, 1969) USA
62. MASH (Alt­man, 1970) USA
63. John­ny Got His Gun (Trum­bo, 1971) USA
64. The French Con­nec­tion (Fried­kin, 1971) USA
65. El espíritu de la col­me­na [Spir­it of the Bee­hive] (Erice, 1973) Spain
66. Sol­yaris [Solaris] (Tarkovsky, 1972) Sovi­et Union
67. The Day of the Jack­al (Zin­ne­man, 1973) UK/France
68. Grup­po di famiglia in un inter­no [Con­ver­sa­tion Piece] (Vis­con­ti, 1974) Italy/France
69. The God­fa­ther Part II (Cop­po­la, 1974) USA
70. San­dakan hachiban­shokan bohkyo [San­dakan 8] (Kumai, 1974) Japan
71. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (For­man, 1975) USA
72. O, Thi­as­sos [The Trav­el­ling Play­ers] (Angelopou­los, 1975) Greece
73. Bar­ry Lyn­don (Kubrick, 1975) UK
74. Daichi no komo­ri­u­ta [Lul­la­by of the Earth] (Masumu­ra, 1976) Japan
75. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977) USA
76. Neokonchen­naya pye­sa dlya mekhanich­esko­go piani­no [Unfin­ished Piece for Mechan­i­cal Piano] (Mikhalkov, 1977) Sovi­et Union
77. Padre Padrone [My Father My Mas­ter] (P. & V. Taviani, 1977) Italy
78. Glo­ria (Cas­savetes, 1980) USA
79. Haruka­naru yama no yobi­goe [A Dis­tant Cry From Spring] (Yama­da, 1980) Japan
80. La Travi­a­ta (Zef­firelli, 1982) Italy
81. Fan­ny och Alexan­der [Fan­ny and Alexan­der] (Bergman, 1982) Sweden/France/West Ger­many
82. Fitz­car­ral­do (Her­zog, 1982) Peru/West Ger­many
83. The King of Com­e­dy (Scors­ese, 1983) USA
84. Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr. Lawrence (Oshi­ma, 1983) UK/Japan/New Zealand
85. The Killing Fields (Joffe 1984) UK
86. Stranger Than Par­adise (Jar­musch, 1984) USA/ West Ger­many
87. Dong­dong de Jiaqi [A Sum­mer at Grand­pa’s] (Hou, 1984) Tai­wan
88. Paris, Texas (Wen­ders, 1984) France/ West Ger­many
89. Wit­ness (Weir, 1985) USA
90. The Trip to Boun­ti­ful (Mas­ter­son, 1985) USA
91. Otac na sluzbenom putu [When Father was Away on Busi­ness] (Kus­turi­ca, 1985) Yugoslavia
92. The Dead (Hus­ton, 1987) UK/Ireland/USA
93. Khane-ye doust kod­jast? [Where is the Friend’s Home] (Kiarosta­mi, 1987) Iran
94. Bagh­dad Cafe [Out of Rosen­heim] (Adlon, 1987) West Germany/USA
95. The Whales of August (Ander­son, 1987) USA
96. Run­ning on Emp­ty (Lumet, 1988) USA
97. Tonari no totoro [My Neigh­bour Totoro] (Miyaza­ki, 1988) Japan
98. A un [Bud­dies] (Furuha­ta, 1989) Japan
99. La Belle Noiseuse [The Beau­ti­ful Trou­ble­mak­er] (Riv­ette, 1991) France/Switzerland
100. Hana-bi [Fire­works] (Kitano, 1997) Japan

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary, 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa to Ing­mar Bergman: “A Human Is Not Real­ly Capa­ble of Cre­at­ing Real­ly Good Works Until He Reach­es 80”

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 lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The Ancient Egyptians Wore Fashionable Striped Socks, New Pioneering Imaging Technology Imaging Reveals

in Fashion, History | October 26th, 2018

If you grew up in cer­tain decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry, you almost cer­tain­ly spent your child­hood wear­ing striped socks, and you may even have returned to the prac­tice in recent years as they’ve regained their sar­to­r­i­al respectabil­i­ty. But new research has revealed that this sort of mul­ti­col­ored hosiery has a more dis­tant his­tor­i­cal prece­dent than we may imag­ine, one going all the way back to ancient Egypt. The sub­ject of that research, the small sock pic­tured above, evi­dences the fash­ion­abil­i­ty of striped socks among the Egypt­ian youth of more than 1700 years ago, though its own stripes have only recent­ly been revealed by the most mod­ern imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

“Sci­en­tists at the British Muse­um have devel­oped pio­neer­ing imag­ing to dis­cov­er how enter­pris­ing Egyp­tians used dyes on a child’s sock, recov­ered from a rub­bish dump in ancient Anti­noupo­lis in Roman Egypt, and dat­ing from 300AD,” writes The Guardian’s Car­o­line Davies. “New mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing can estab­lish which dyes were used – mad­der (red), woad (blue) and weld (yel­low) – but also how peo­ple of the late antiq­ui­ty peri­od used dou­ble and sequen­tial dying and weav­ing, and twist­ing fibers to cre­ate myr­i­ad col­ors from their scarce resources.”

This and oth­er sim­i­lar­ly advanced research, such as the use of ultra­vi­o­let light and infrared and x‑ray spec­troscopy that found the bright col­ors of ancient Greek sculp­ture, no doubt has us all rethink­ing the broad­ly mono­chro­mat­ic fash­ion in which we’ve long envi­sioned the ancient world.

We may also have to start imag­in­ing it a lit­tle less ele­gant­ly than we have been. “The ancient Egyp­tians employed a sin­gle-nee­dle loop­ing tech­nique, often referred to as nål­bind­ning, to cre­ate their socks,” writes Smith­son­ian’s Kather­ine J. Wu. “Notably, the approach could be used to sep­a­rate the big toe and four oth­er toes in the sock — which just may have giv­en life to the ever-con­tro­ver­sial socks-and-san­dals trend.” It brings to mind the archae­o­log­i­cal research that came out a few years ago sug­gest­ing that the Romans in Britain two mil­len­nia ago may have worn socks with their san­dals as well. That infor­ma­tion has made it to the Wikipedia page specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to socks and san­dals; an enter­pris­ing read­er might have a look at the British Muse­um sci­en­tists’ paper, “A mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing approach inte­grat­ed into the study of Late Antique tex­tiles from Egypt,” and add in a bit about the ancient wear­ing of striped socks with san­dals as well.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did the Egyp­tians Make Mum­mies? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Art of Mum­mi­fi­ca­tion

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Try the Old­est Known Recipe For Tooth­paste: From Ancient Egypt, Cir­ca the 4th Cen­tu­ry BC

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The CIA’s Former Chief of Disguise Show How Spies Use Costumes in Undercover Operations

in Life, Politics, Theatre, Wikipedia | October 26th, 2018

Think on this as you ready your Hal­loween fin­ery. Some­times it’s not a case of win­ning a cos­tume con­test, or impress­ing your friends with your wit­ty take on cur­rent events or pop cul­ture.

Some­times, mas­quer­ade is a thin line between life and death.

The CIA’s for­mer Chief of Dis­guise, Jon­na Mendez, rose up through the ranks, hav­ing signed on as recep­tion­ist short­ly after her fiancé revealed—three days before the wedding—that he was actu­al­ly an under­cov­er agent.

As Chief of Dis­guise, her mis­sion was to pro­tect case offi­cers in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, as well as for­eign sources who rou­tine­ly put their lives at risk by meet­ing with Amer­i­can oper­a­tives.

Trans­form­ing their appear­ance was an addi­tive proposition—while it’s dif­fi­cult to make some­one short­er, slim­mer, or younger, it’s not dif­fi­cult to ren­der them taller, heav­ier, old­er…

In her expe­ri­ence, women are eas­i­ly dis­guised as men. (She shared with The New York Times’ Matthew Rosen­berg how she her­self passed unde­tect­ed in male mufti, thanks pri­mar­i­ly to a lit cig­ar.)

Men have a tougher time pass­ing as women. Fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race might take excep­tion to this posi­tion, were it not for the asser­tion that blend­ing in is key.

The goal is to be for­get­table, not fab­u­lous.

For Amer­i­cans abroad, this pos­es cer­tain cul­tur­al chal­lenges.

Mendez stress­es that dis­guise is much more than a sim­ple facial trans­for­ma­tion, involv­ing make­up, false hair, and pros­thet­ics.

It’s dress, car­riage, gait, jew­el­ry, scent…

The biggest Amer­i­can give­away is our shoes. An Ital­ian civil­ian can peg ‘em with one swift glance.

Pass­ing requires fur­ther behav­ioral mod­i­fi­ca­tions in the realms of table man­ners, gait, and even hang­ing out. (Euro­peans dis­trib­ute their weight even­ly, where­as Amer­i­cans lean.)

To fly beneath the radar, the dis­guised oper­a­tive must shoot to trans­form every aspect of their appear­ance. Imag­ine a sur­vey where­in the par­tic­i­pant recalls every phys­i­cal aspect of some­one they’ve just encoun­tered. The goal is to nudge that par­tic­i­pant into answer­ing every ques­tion incor­rect­ly.

What col­or are your eyes? Your hair? How much do you weigh? How tall are you? How old?  How would you describe your nose? Your voice? Your cloth­ing?

Change it.

Change it all.

You can do so by low tech meth­ods, using what­ev­er is on hand. Mendez once maneu­vered an agent out of a tight spot on the Sub-Con­ti­nent, by impro­vis­ing a quick change with Dr. Scholl’s pow­der and cos­met­ics col­lect­ed from local CIA wives.

She cred­its her own sec­ond hus­band, CIA “mas­ter of dis­guise” Tony Mendez (the inspi­ra­tion for Ben Affleck’s char­ac­ter in Argo) with many trade secrets she put into reg­u­lar prac­tice: den­tal facades, speech-alter­ing arti­fi­cial palettes, pros­thet­ics…

At the high end is the mask she wore to brief for­mer CIA Chief, Pres­i­dent George HW Bush, on devel­op­ments with­in the dis­guise pro­gram. The Pres­i­dent was none the wis­er.

Mean­while, a masked Amer­i­can agent chucked his mask under a Moscow rock when dan­ger com­pelled him to scup­per his mis­sion mid­way through. That mask now resides in the KGB muse­um where Mendez can­not vis­it it.

Check out the Mendezes’ book Spy­dust for more infor­ma­tion on their adven­tures in the field.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

The CIA Assess­es the Pow­er of French Post-Mod­ern Philoso­phers: Read a New­ly Declas­si­fied CIA Report from 1985

Declas­si­fied CIA Doc­u­ment Reveals That Ben Franklin (and His Big Ego) Put U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty at Risk

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Lynch Is Creating a Virtual Reality Experience for Twin Peaks

in Video Games | October 25th, 2018

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Black Lodge/Red Room, the extra-dimen­sion­al space that is both an inte­gral part of Twin Peaks and icon­ic in its set design, is a place most of us would not want to vis­it. Detec­tive Dale Coop­er got trapped there for 25 years and it was not pleas­ant. But that hasn’t stopped fans from want­i­ng to cre­ate that space any chance they get, whether as a bar or place to sing karaoke. And when the final episode of the sec­ond sea­son showed the lodge was an end­less series of rooms con­nect­ed by hall­ways, it wasn’t long until the video game ver­sions start­ed appear­ing.

Well, now you can real­ly get lost in the Black Lodge with the slow unveil­ing of Twin Peaks VR, which AdWeek says will be avail­able “some­time in 2019” on Steam for HTC Vive and Ocu­lus Rift.

Fans who fol­low the Wel­come to Twin Peaks blog have been hear­ing about this game/not game since the begin­ning of the year, but it seems that the footage out there was only proof of con­cept graph­ics or some such attempt.

The first video dropped in Jan­u­ary of 2018, and it’s er, some­thing:

No doubt made by fans, this gives us a brief vis­it to the Red Room; a very strange and not par­tic­u­lar­ly flat­ter­ing por­tray­al of the Man from Anoth­er Place; a trip to the RR Din­er fea­tur­ing what I assume is Major Brig­gs; and a return to the fright­en­ing glass box some­where in New York City first seen in The Return. The man play­ing the VR seems appro­pri­ate­ly con­fused. “Is it future or past?” It’s your liv­ing room, man!

This sec­ond clip gives us a bit more of the Red Room and a dubi­ous look­ing Audrey Horne. The Con­ve­nience Store, how­ev­er, is well done.

But this is, we stress, nowhere near a fin­ished ver­sion. It’s not even clear if any of this will make it into the final ver­sion.

A beta ver­sion pre­miered two weeks ago at Lynch’s Fes­ti­val of Dis­rup­tion in Los Ange­les. AdWeek had the only real descrip­tion of the five minute demo, which starts near the ring of saplings in Glas­ton­bury Grove:

Imme­di­ate­ly after the pool turns to blood, view­ers are trans­port­ed to the Red Room, an extra-dimen­sion­al space that’s been a key fea­ture of Twin Peaks in both the orig­i­nal series from the 1990s and the mod­ern revival that aired last year. (It’s also a loca­tion fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed by the show’s main char­ac­ter, FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er.) Inside the room, view­ers aren’t able to walk like they can in some VR expe­ri­ences, but they’re able to tele­port with­in the room as it rapid­ly changes in ways sim­i­lar to what hap­pens in the show itself. (One moment, a stat­ue falls over before run­ning around as a shad­ow on the oth­er side of a cur­tain. In anoth­er, users can pick up a cof­fee mug that won’t emp­ty until the sec­ond time it’s picked up.) The demo ends as a white horse appears in the room in the dis­tance, sur­round­ed in dark­ness but unreach­able.

The best news is that the com­pa­ny devel­op­ing the game, Col­lid­er Games, is giv­ing cre­ative con­trol to Lynch, so hope­ful­ly the game won’t be like those ter­ri­ble non-Lynch episodes in Sea­son Two. Says AdWeek:

“[T]he more we show, and the more we progress with this devel­op­ment, hope­ful­ly the more [Lynch] will want to be involved,” Ras­sool said. “And the more we can do with maybe even some new narrative—because I’m not going to write new nar­ra­tive for this. I’m only ever going to let David Lynch [write].”

Here’s to hop­ing Lynch doesn’t just give us a cheap VR ver­sion of what we’ve already seen. Instead, let’s hope he gives us some­thing that blows our minds (and a rea­son to final­ly buy a VR head­set).

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Avail­able as 78-Card Deck

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Yale Professor Jason Stanley Identifies 3 Essential Features of Fascism: Invoking a Mythic Past, Sowing Division & Attacking Truth

in Politics | October 25th, 2018

New books on fas­cism are pop­ping up every­where, from inde­pen­dent press­es, for­mer world lead­ers like Madeleine Albright, and aca­d­e­mics like Jason Stan­ley, Jacob Urowsky Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. Stanley’s lat­est book, How Fas­cism Works: The Pol­i­tics of Us and Them, has been described as a “vital read for a nation under Trump.” And yet, as The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy writes, one of the ironies Stan­ley points out is that—despite the wide­spread cur­ren­cy of the term these days—fascism suc­ceeds by mak­ing “talk of fas­cism… seem out­landish.”

Is it?

The word has cer­tain­ly been dilut­ed by years of mis­use. Umber­to Eco wrote in his 1995 essay “Ur-Fas­cism” that “fas­cist” as an epi­thet was casu­al­ly thrown around “by Amer­i­can rad­i­cals… to refer to a cop who did not approve of their smok­ing habits.” When every author­i­ty fig­ure who seems to abuse pow­er gets labeled a fas­cist, the word los­es its explana­to­ry pow­er and its his­to­ry dis­ap­pears. But Eco, who grew up under Mus­soli­ni and under­stood fas­cist Europe, insist­ed that fas­cism has clear­ly rec­og­niz­able, and portable, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly coher­ent, fea­tures.

“The fas­cist game can be played in many forms,” Eco wrote, depend­ing on the nation­al mytholo­gies and cul­tur­al his­to­ry of the coun­try in which it takes root. Rather than a sin­gle polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, Eco argued, fas­cism is “a col­lage… a bee­hive of con­tra­dic­tions.” He enu­mer­at­ed four­teen fea­tures that delin­eate it from oth­er forms of pol­i­tics. Like Eco, Stan­ley also iden­ti­fies some core traits of fas­cism, such as “pub­li­ciz­ing false charges of cor­rup­tion,” as he writes in his book, “while engag­ing in cor­rupt prac­tice.”

In the short New York Times opin­ion video above, Stan­ley sum­ma­rizes his “for­mu­la for fascism”—a “sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple” pat­tern now repeat­ing in Europe, South Amer­i­ca, India, Myan­mar, Turkey, the Philip­pines, and “right here in the Unit­ed States.” No mat­ter where they appear, “fas­cist politi­cians are cut from the same cloth,” he says. The ele­ments of his for­mu­la are:

1. Con­jur­ing a “myth­ic past” that has sup­pos­ed­ly been destroyed (“by lib­er­als, fem­i­nists, and immi­grants”). Mus­soli­ni had Rome, Turkey’s Erdoğan has the Ottoman Empire, and Hungary’s Vik­tor Orban rewrote the country’s con­sti­tu­tion with the aim of “mak­ing Hun­gary great again.” These myths rely on an “over­whelm­ing sense of nos­tal­gia for a past that is racial­ly pure, tra­di­tion­al, and patri­ar­chal.” Fas­cist lead­ers “posi­tion them­selves as father fig­ures and strong­men” who alone can restore lost great­ness. And yes, the fas­cist leader is “always a ‘he.’”

2. Fas­cist lead­ers sow divi­sion; they suc­ceed by “turn­ing groups against each oth­er,” inflam­ing his­tor­i­cal antag­o­nisms and ancient hatreds for their own advan­tage. Social divi­sions in themselves—between class­es, reli­gions, eth­nic groups and so on—are what we might call pre-exist­ing con­di­tions. Fas­cists may not invent the hate, but they cyn­i­cal­ly instru­men­tal­ize it: demo­niz­ing out­groups, nor­mal­iz­ing and nat­u­ral­iz­ing big­otry, stok­ing vio­lence to jus­ti­fy repres­sive “law and order” poli­cies, the cur­tail­ing of civ­il rights and due process, and the mass impris­on­ment and killing of man­u­fac­tured ene­mies.

3. Fas­cists “attack the truth” with pro­pa­gan­da, in par­tic­u­lar “a kind of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism” that “cre­ates a petri dish for con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.” (Stanley’s fourth book, pub­lished by Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press, is titled How Pro­pa­gan­da Works.) We would have to be extra­or­di­nar­i­ly naïve to think that only fas­cist politi­cians lie, but we should focus here on the ques­tion of degree. For fas­cists, truth doesn’t mat­ter at all. (As Rudy Giu­liani says, “truth isn’t truth.”) Han­nah Arendt wrote that fas­cism relies on “a con­sis­tent and total sub­sti­tu­tion of lies for fac­tu­al truth.” She described the phe­nom­e­non as destroy­ing “the sense by which we take our bear­ings in the real world.… [T]he cat­e­go­ry of truth vers­es false­hood [being] among the men­tal means to this end.” In such an atmos­phere, any­thing is pos­si­ble, no mat­ter how pre­vi­ous­ly unthink­able.

Using this rubric, Stan­ley links the tac­tics and state­ments of fas­cist lead­ers around the world with those of the cur­rent U.S. pres­i­dent. It’s a per­sua­sive case that would prob­a­bly sway ear­li­er the­o­rists of fas­cism like Eco and Arendt. Whether he can con­vince Amer­i­cans who find talk of fas­cism “outlandish”—or who loose­ly use the word to describe any politi­cian or group they don’t like—is anoth­er ques­tion entire­ly.

FYI: You can down­load Stan­ley’s new book How Fas­cism Works, as a free audio­book if you want to try out Audible.com’s no-risk, 30-day free tri­al pro­gram. Find details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

George Orwell Tries to Iden­ti­fy Who Is Real­ly a “Fas­cist” and Define the Mean­ing of This “Much-Abused Word” (1944)

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

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

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The Art Institute of Chicago Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Resolution

in Art, Education, How to Learn for Free, Museums, Technology | October 25th, 2018

After the fire that total­ly destroyed Brazil’s Museu Nacional in Rio, many peo­ple lament­ed that the muse­um had not dig­i­tal­ly backed up its col­lec­tion and point­ed to the event as a trag­ic exam­ple of why such dig­i­ti­za­tion is so nec­es­sary. Just a cou­ple decades ago, stor­ing and dis­play­ing this much infor­ma­tion was impos­si­ble, so it may seem like a strange demand to make. And in any case, two-dimen­sion­al images stored on servers—or even 3D print­ed copies—cannot replace or sub­sti­tute for orig­i­nal, price­less arti­facts or works of art.

But muse­ums around the world that have dig­i­tized most–or all–of their col­lec­tions don’t claim to have repli­cat­ed or replaced the expe­ri­ence of an in-per­son vis­it, or to have ren­dered phys­i­cal media obso­lete.

Dig­i­tal col­lec­tions pro­vide access to mil­lions of peo­ple who can­not, or will not, ever trav­el to the major cities in which fine art resides, and they give mil­lions of schol­ars, teach­ers, and stu­dents resources once avail­able only to a select few.

We can’t all take the day off like Fer­ris Bueller and stand in front of Georges Seurat’s Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te. But thanks to the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, we can all view and down­load the 1884 pointil­list paint­ing in high res­o­lu­tion, zoom in close­ly like the trou­bled Cameron to spe­cif­ic details, share the dig­i­tal image under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, and sim­i­lar­ly inter­act with an oil sketch for the final paint­ing and sev­er­al con­té cray­on stud­ies.

And if that weren’t enough, the muse­um also includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy, exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry, notes on prove­nance, audio and video his­to­ries and descrip­tions, and edu­ca­tion­al resources like teacher man­u­als, les­son plans, and exams. This goes for many of the 44,312—with more to come—digital images online, includ­ing such famous works of art as Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1889 The Bed­room, Grant Wood’s 1930 Amer­i­can Goth­ic, Pablo Picasso’s 1903–4 blue peri­od paint­ing The Old Gui­tarist, Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks, Mary Cassatt’s 1893 The Child’s Bath, and so many more that it bog­gles the mind.

Browse Impres­sion­ism, Pop Art, works from the African Dias­po­ra, Cityscapes, Fash­ion, Mytho­log­i­cal Works, and oth­er gen­res and cat­e­gories. Search artists, dates, styles, media, depart­ments, places, and more.

A per­son­al vis­it to the Art Insti­tute is an awe-inspir­ing, and some­what over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence, if you can get the day to go. You can vis­it the web­site, with full unre­strict­ed access, and gath­er infor­ma­tion, study, mar­vel, and casu­al­ly browse, at any time of day—every day if you like. No, it’s not the same, but as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, in some ways, it’s even bet­ter. And if, by some awful chance, any­thing should hap­pen to this art, we won’t have to rely on user-sub­mit­ted pho­tos to recon­struct the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry.

The launch of this col­lec­tion comes as part of the museum’s web­site redesign, and it is an exten­sive, and expen­sive, endeav­or. The Art Insti­tute, which charges for entry, can afford to make its col­lec­tions free online. Some oth­er muse­ums charge image fees to sup­port their online work. Ide­al­ly, as art his­to­ri­an Ben­dor Grosvenor writes at Art His­to­ry News, muse­ums should offer free and open access to both phys­i­cal and online col­lec­tions, and some insti­tu­tions, like Sweden’s National­mu­se­um, have shown that this is pos­si­ble.

And, as Grosvenor shows, the suc­cess of open access online col­lec­tions has yield­ed anoth­er ben­e­fit, for both view­ers and muse­ums alike. The more peo­ple are exposed to art online, the more like­ly they are to vis­it muse­ums in per­son. Chica­go awaits you. Until then, vir­tu­al­ly immerse your­self in the Art Institute’s many thou­sands of trea­sures here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

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

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The Golden Age of Ancient Greece Gets Faithfully Recreated in the New Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

in History, Video Games | October 25th, 2018

If you haven’t played video games in a long time, you might feel a cer­tain trep­i­da­tion at the idea of pick­ing them up again. So rapid­ly have they evolved in the 21st cen­tu­ry that they now resem­ble less the elec­tron­ic enter­tain­ments we once knew than full-fledged alter­nate real­i­ties. The sud­den rise of the word immer­sive to describe the very kind of expe­ri­ences they con­sti­tute says it all. If you enter one of the elab­o­rate worlds built by mod­ern video game devel­op­ers, how do you extract your­self again — espe­cial­ly if the world is one as fas­ci­nat­ing as ancient Greece, recre­at­ed elab­o­rate­ly and to great acclaim in this year’s Assas­s­in’s Creed: Odyssey?

Even non-gamers will have heard of the Assas­s­in’s Creed series, which began in 2007 and has had a major release (in addi­tion to as many minor ones, as well as ven­tures into oth­er media) each and every year since. It has pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en as its set­tings such chap­ters of human his­to­ry as Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, the Ital­ian Renais­sance, and Ptole­ma­ic Egypt, but its lat­est install­ment goes far­ther back in time than any oth­er. Play­ers will find them­selves dropped “into 431 BCE in Ancient Greece, at the start of the Pelo­pon­nesian War pre­dom­i­nant­ly fought between Athens and Spar­ta,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Zachary Small. “For a video game that includes bloody mer­ce­nar­ies, extrater­res­tri­al beings, and time trav­el, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is shock­ing­ly faith­ful to our con­tem­po­rary his­tor­i­cal under­stand­ing of what Ancient Greece looked like dur­ing its gold­en age.”

The very idea might star­tle those of us who remem­ber the set­tings of video games as per­func­to­ry at best, mere back­grounds to run past while we blast­ed ene­mies, jumped from plat­form to plat­form, and col­lect­ed pow­er-ups. Assas­s­in’s Creed takes its his­tor­i­cal world-build­ing so seri­ous­ly that the pre­vi­ous game in the series, Assas­s­in’s Creed: Ori­gins, even came with an “edu­ca­tion­al mode” that allowed play­ers to freely explore ancient Egypt — a far cry indeed from the dull, pur­pose-built edu­ca­tion­al games of yore. But Assas­s­in’s Creed: Odyssey takes it to anoth­er lev­el, incor­po­rat­ing seem­ing­ly every­thing known about ancient Greece at the time of its devel­op­ment. “The Ubisoft devel­op­ment team behind the game even hired a his­tor­i­cal advi­sor to help them recre­ate a metic­u­lous ver­sion of the Ancient World,” writes Small, “one that includes hun­dreds of poly­chro­mat­ic stat­ues, tem­ples, and tombs.”

Yes, that means the game’s vision of ancient Greece includes plen­ty of sculp­ture made, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, with not just with raw mar­ble but bright­ly col­ored paint as well. The sheer amount of his­to­ry and lore incor­po­rat­ed into the Assas­s­in’s Creed: Odyssey expe­ri­ence has even inspired a dis­cus­sion among experts on Twit­ter using the hash­tag #ACa­d­e­mi­cOdyssey.

Though nobody claims that the game recre­ates ancient Greece per­fect­ly in every detail — even apart from the gaps in human knowl­edge of the peri­od, the devel­op­ers seem to have had to cut a cor­ner here and there to meet the series’ famous­ly demand­ing release sched­ule — it suc­ceeds in ways that no one Hel­leni­cal­ly inclined, pro­fes­sion­al­ly or oth­er­wise, had dared hope before. “I have played about 5 min­utes of the game and I’m ready to cry from joy,” tweet­ed clas­si­cist Chris­tine Plas­tow, a sen­ti­ment one can hard­ly imag­ine any aca­d­e­m­ic express­ing about, say, Gold­en Axe.

via Ars Tech­ni­ca/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Leonardo da Vinci Saw the World Differently… Thanks to an Eye Disorder, Says a New Scientific Study

in Art | October 24th, 2018

Leonar­do da Vin­ci was a man of many abil­i­ties, so many that he has defined the very image of the man of many abil­i­ties for more than 500 years now. His­to­ry remem­bers him for his impres­sive intel­lec­tu­al feats of sci­ence and engi­neer­ing (as well as the ambi­tion of his to-do lists), but even more so for his works of visu­al art. Most of us get our intro­duc­tion to Leonar­do through images like the Mona Lisa, The Last Sup­per, and Vit­ru­vian Man, not least because they’ve long since become too cul­tur­al­ly promi­nent to avoid. The ques­tion of how on earth he did it nat­u­ral­ly springs from con­tem­pla­tion of Leonar­do’s whole body of work, but also from con­tem­pla­tion of many of the indi­vid­ual pieces that con­sti­tute it. A part of the answer, recent research sug­gests, may well have to do with a dis­abil­i­ty.

“There is now evi­dence that da Vin­ci’s renowned capac­i­ty to repro­duce the three-dimen­sion­al world in paint­ings may have been aid­ed by an eye dis­or­der that allowed him to see in both 2‑D and 3‑D, accord­ing to a study pub­lished Thurs­day in JAMA Opthal­mol­o­gy, a peer-reviewed jour­nal,” writes The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Allyson Chiu.

“Da Vin­ci is believed to have had a con­di­tion called inter­mit­tent exotropia, a form of stra­bis­mus, com­mon­ly referred to as being ‘walleyed’,” a form of an eye mis­align­ment. If he did, it would have ham­pered his depth per­cep­tion enough for him to see a flat­ter world than the one most every­one else does, and thus a world more suit­ed to faith­ful repli­ca­tion on the page or the can­vas.

But the fact Leonar­do that could some­times con­trol his eyes enough to get them into prop­er align­ment, says the study’s author Christo­pher Tyler, would make him “very aware of the 3‑D and 2‑D depth cues and the dif­fer­ence between them.” He came to sus­pect that Leonar­do suf­fered from exotropia — if “suf­fered” is quite the right word here — after notic­ing the align­ment of the eyes in both images con­sid­ered por­traits of the man him­self as well as the por­traits Leonar­do made of oth­ers (on the the­o­ry that the work of an artist will, to an extent, reflect his own char­ac­ter­is­tics). The oph­thal­mo­log­i­cal­ly inclined can judge for them­selves by read­ing Tyler’s paper online. And if oth­er, sim­i­lar stud­ies done in the past also hold up, Leonar­do isn’t alone in art his­to­ry: such fig­ures as Rem­brandt, Picas­so, and Degas have also left behind evi­dence of their pos­si­bly stra­bis­mic vision. We some­times say that artists see the world dif­fer­ent­ly; the great­est artists may take that say­ing to a new lev­el of lit­er­al­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

What Leonar­do da Vin­ci Real­ly Looked Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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