Radiohead Covers The Smiths & New Order (2007)

in Music | April 28th, 2020

If you grew up at a cer­tain time, with a cer­tain melan­cholic dis­po­si­tion and mor­bid sense of humor, you grew up lis­ten­ing to the music of the Smiths. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, you’re rough­ly around the same age as the mem­bers of Radio­head, who also grew up lis­ten­ing to the Smiths. Ergo, there’s a good chance you’re a fan of Radio­head, a band whose own melan­cholic, mor­bid mood draws from the best Alter­na­tive bands (as they were called once) of the 80s and 90s, while updat­ing the sound of that mood on every suc­ces­sive album.

On the 20th anniver­sary of Radiohead’s mas­sive-sell­ing Ok Com­put­er, gui­tarist Ed O’Brien remem­bered their hum­ble begin­nings in a Rolling Stone oral his­to­ry, invok­ing those bands whose records you like­ly own in hard copy if you fit the pro­file above:

We start­ed off at the time of the Smiths’ The Queen is Dead, that era. By the end of that peri­od, or the mid­dle of that peri­od, there was the Pix­ies, Hap­py Mon­days and Stone Ros­es and all these things. We dipped our toe, not very effec­tive­ly, in each. But in doing so we came out with a sound. We came up with our thing. And that’s how we got signed.

No mat­ter how far they end­ed up stray­ing from gui­tar rock, their ear­ly influ­ences have always been an inte­gral part of their cre­ative DNA. On the 10th anniver­sary of Ok Com­put­er, well into their trans­for­ma­tion from alt-rock super­stars to exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic band, Radio­head filmed a two-and-a-half-hour web­cast, play­ing old and new songs, tak­ing turns DJing, and cov­er­ing one of my favorite Smiths’ songs, “The Head­mas­ter Rit­u­al” from 1985’s Meat is Mur­der.

It’s a track tai­lor-made for them—a song that “express­es fury at a kind of school life that has been for­got­ten,” writes Katharine Vin­er, but which the fierce­ly anti-author­i­tar­i­an Thom Yorke remem­bered well. Years into his suc­cess­ful career, he still smart­ed from his unpleas­ant school years.

In inter­views, writes Will Self at GQ, he’s often “waxed dis­con­so­late­ly about his dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed child­hood, the fre­quent changes of school, and the bul­ly­ing at those schools because of his paral­ysed eye.” If you grew up lis­ten­ing to the Smiths, you too may have a per­son­al affin­i­ty for “The Head­mas­ter Rit­u­al.”

And you prob­a­bly also fre­quent­ly wal­lowed to Joy Division—a band that, like Radio­head, rad­i­cal­ly changed musi­cal direc­tion, albeit for a much more trag­ic rea­son. After the sui­cide of lead singer Ian Cur­tis, Joy Divi­sion reformed as New Order, synth-pop super­stars and prog­en­i­tors of acid house. On their first record, Move­ment, they had a lot of post-punk brood­ing to get out of their sys­tem, with songs like ICB (which stands for “Ian Cur­tis Buried”) and “Cer­e­mo­ny,” orig­i­nal­ly a Joy Divi­sion song.

Fur­ther up, see Radio­head cov­er “Cer­e­mo­ny,” a song that defines an era—one, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, in which Radio­head grew up. And maybe you did, too. But chances are, if you grew up lis­ten­ing to Radio­head, you know their influ­ences no mat­ter when you were born. See the full 2007 web­cast just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Intro­duc­ing The Radio­head Pub­lic Library: Radio­head Makes Their Full Cat­a­logue Avail­able via a Free Online Web Site

Radio­head Puts Every Offi­cial Album on YouTube, Mak­ing Them All Free to Stream

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

When IBM Created a Typewriter to Record Dance Movements (1973)

in Dance, History, Technology | April 28th, 2020

Increas­ing­ly many of us in the 21st cen­tu­ry have nev­er used a type­writer — indeed, have nev­er seen one in real life. But despite being deep into its obso­les­cence, the machine has a long cul­tur­al half-life. See­ing type­writ­ers in clas­sic and peri­od films, for exam­ple, keeps an idea of their look and feel in our minds. Nat­u­ral­ly it gets entan­gled with the romance of the writer, or rather the Writer, whom we imag­ine pound­ing away on a cul­tur­al­ly icon­ic mod­el: an Under­wood, an Olvetti. “If Olivet­tis could talk, you’d get the nov­el­ist naked,” writes Philip Roth in The Anato­my Les­son. From the then-new elec­tric IBM type­writ­ers, how­ev­er, you’d hear “only the smug, puri­tan­i­cal work­man­like hum telling of itself and all its virtues: I am a Cor­rect­ing Selec­tric II. I nev­er do any­thing wrong.”

Yet we under­es­ti­mate the influ­ence of the IBM Selec­tric, on not just writ­ing but late-20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can life in gen­er­al, at our per­il. Intro­duced in 1961, this tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary type­writer replaced the old “type­bars” — those thin met­al arms that whack a let­ter onto the page with each key­stroke — with a “type­ball,” a “com­pact unit con­tain­ing all the let­ters and sym­bols of a key­board, rotat­ed and piv­ot­ed to the cor­rect posi­tion before strik­ing.”

So writes IBM’s Jus­tine Jablon­s­ka in an essay on the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the type­ball, which could be swapped out and mod­i­fied accord­ing to the needs of the user. In 1973, IBM could say even to those users who need­ed to type out not words, sen­tences, and para­graphs but dances that, yes, there’s a type­ball for that.

Devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with New York City’s Dance Nota­tion Bureau, this unusu­al type­ball “had spe­cial Laban­o­ta­tion sym­bols, devel­oped in the 1920s by Hun­gar­i­an dancer/choreographer Rudolf Laban to ana­lyze and record move­ment and dance.” Each sym­bol­’s loca­tion “showed which part of the body — arm, leg, tor­so — was to be used. The symbol’s shape indi­cat­ed direc­tion. The symbol’s shad­ing showed the lev­el of an arm or leg. And its length con­trolled the time val­ue of a move­ment.” In total, writes Karen Hill at Zip­py Facts, Laban­o­ta­tion had “88 dif­fer­ent sym­bols, which could be arranged to form a com­plete vocab­u­lary for record­ing move­ment of any kind, from bal­let and mod­ern to eth­nic, even folk.” Beyond dance, the sys­tem could also record “move­ments in areas like sports, behav­ioral sci­ences, phys­i­cal ther­a­py, and even indus­tri­al oper­a­tions.”

This par­tic­u­lar type­ball show­cased the Selec­tric’s ver­sa­til­i­ty, but some had high­er hopes. In a 1975 paper, dance schol­ar Drid Williams com­pares its poten­tial impact to that of “Guten­berg’s inven­tion sev­er­al cen­turies ago,” sig­nal­ing that “the graph­ic lin­guis­tic sign can now be joined by its obvi­ous coun­ter­part, the print­ed human action sign.” But she also express­es regret that “ ‘the ball’ is being looked on by many as a mere prac­ti­cal aid to record­ing human move­ment and it is being asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cial­ist fields like dance. As usu­al, con­cern with the syn­tag­ma­ta obscures the real issues of the par­a­digms.” Indeed. A more prac­ti­cal-mind­ed assess­ment comes from Charles Ditchen­dorf, employed at the time at IBM’s Office Prod­ucts Divi­sion. “To the best of my knowl­edge,” Jablon­s­ka quotes him as say­ing, I didn’t sell one.” But then, when has dance ever been enslaved to the mar­ket?

via Ted Gioia on Twit­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

Arnold Schoen­berg, Avant-Garde Com­pos­er, Cre­ates a Sys­tem of Sym­bols for Notat­ing Ten­nis Match­es

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Free Plays from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre: Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth & More

in K-12, Life, Literature, Theatre | April 28th, 2020

As depress­ing arti­cles about the upcom­ing Sum­mer of COVID-19 begin to pro­lif­er­ate, our hopes for beach days, con­cert series, and sum­mer camp begin to dim.

Here in New York City, the Pub­lic Theater’s announce­ment that it is can­celling the upcom­ing sea­son of its famed Shake­speare in the Park was met with under­stand­able sad­ness.

You don’t have to like Shake­speare to enjoy the rit­u­al of enter­ing Cen­tral Park short­ly after dawn, pre­pared to sit online for sev­er­al hours await­ing noon’s free tick­et dis­tri­b­u­tion, then return­ing to the Dela­corte lat­er that night with snacks and sweater and wine.

Per­form­ing a quick Inter­net search to brush up on the plot can enhance the expe­ri­ence, but—and I saw this as some­one whose degree includ­ed a met­ric heinieload of The Bard—it can be equal­ly sat­is­fy­ing to spend the final acts enjoy­ing an impromp­tu, al fres­co nap.

Bonus points if a rac­coon runs across the stage at some point.

Alas all this must be denied us in the sum­mer of 2020, but it’s still with­in our pow­er to repli­cate that sum­mer feel­ing in advance of the equinox, using the past pro­duc­tions that London’s Globe The­atre is screen­ing on its YouTube chan­nel as our start­ing place.

First up is Romeo & Juli­et from 2009, star­ring Ellie Kendrick and Adetomi­wa Edun, though accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent’s Michael Coveney, the show belongs to Pen­ny Lay­den as the Nurse:

Far removed from the fuss­ing tra­di­tion of com­ic gar­ruli­ty and the Patri­cia Rout­ledge fac­tor, Lay­den plays her as a scrubbed, mid­dle-aged, sen­si­ble woman car­ry­ing a his­to­ry of sad­ness. The bawdy assault on her by Philip Cum­bus’s melan­choly Mer­cu­tio is both shock­ing and plau­si­ble, and she retains her qui­et dig­ni­ty while at the same time mourn­ing its sac­ri­fice.

Back to New York City…

Pri­or to start­ing your screen­ing, you’ll want to approx­i­mate a seat at the Dela­corte (which, like the Globe, is authen­ti­cal­ly cir­cu­lar in shape). I rec­om­mend a met­al fold­ing chair.

Sprin­kle a table­spoon or so of water onto the seat if you want to pre­tend it rained all after­noon lead­ing up to the per­for­mance.

Def­i­nite­ly have some wine to pour into a plas­tic cup.

Slather your­self in insect repel­lent.

Silence your cell phone.

If your housemate’s cell phone goes off mid-per­for­mance, feel free to tsk and sssh and roll your eyes. Hon­est­ly, how hard is it to com­ply with the famil­iar instruc­tions of the house manager’s speech?

At inter­mis­sion, stand out­side your own bath­room door for at least 15 min­utes before let­ting your­self into a “stall” to use the facil­i­ties.

Doze all you want to…. arrange for your house­mate to tsk and sssh at you from an appro­pri­ate dis­tance, should your snor­ing become audi­ble.

You have until Sun­day, May 3 to stum­ble sleep­i­ly away from the screen, and pre­tend you’re wan­der­ing to the sub­way with 1799 oth­er New York­ers.

Then make plans to wake up at 5:30 and sit on the floor with a ther­mos of cof­fee for sev­er­al hours, hop­ing that they won’t run out of tick­ets for The Two Noble Kins­men before you make it to the top of the line.

(Spoil­er alert: they won’t.)

Oth­ers in the Globe’s free series:

Mac­Beth, May 11 until UK schools reopen

The Winter’s Tale (2018), May 18 — May 31

The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor (2019), June 1 — June 14

A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (2013), June 15 — 28

Click­ing the red “dis­cov­er more” lozenge beneath each show’s pho­to on the Globe Watch’s land­ing page will lead you to a wealth of sup­port­ing mate­ri­als, from pre-show chats with the Globe’s Post-Doc­tor­al Research Fel­low Will Tosh to pho­tos, arti­cles, and a stu­dent chal­lenge specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to the times we find our­selves liv­ing through now.

Sub­scribe to the Globe’s YouTube chan­nel to receive reminders.

Donate to the Globe here.

Amer­i­cans can make a tax-deductible dona­tion to The Pub­lic The­ater here.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Depend­ing on how long this thing goes on, she may look into giv­ing Pen­ny Lay­den a run for the mon­ey by live-stream­ing her solo show, NURSE. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch Picasso Create a Masterpiece in Just Five Minutes (1955)

in Art, Film | April 28th, 2020

“One day in Paris a wealthy woman goes into a café and sees Picas­so,” writes Alas­tair Dry­burgh in Every­thing You Know About Busi­ness Is Wrong.

After a few min­utes, she sum­mons up the courage to approach him. ‘Mon­sieur Picas­so,’ she asks, ‘would you make a por­trait of me? I’ll pay you any­thing you want.’ Picas­so nods, grabs a menu, and in five min­utes has sketched the wom­an’s por­trait on the back of it. He hands it to her.

‘Five thou­sand francs,’ he says.

‘But Mon­sieur Picas­so, it only took you five min­utes.’

‘No, Madam, it took me my whole life.’

This anec­dote has been ele­vat­ed, in books like Dry­burgh’s, to the sta­tus of a “Picas­so Prin­ci­ple.” Indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es alike, this prin­ci­ple states, should price their goods and ser­vices in accor­dance not just with the time and effort required to do the job, but the time and effort required to make doing the job pos­si­ble in the first place.

Whether Picas­so ever actu­al­ly charged a rich lady in a café 5,000 francs for an impromp­tu por­trait, nobody knows. But that he pos­sessed the skills to cre­ate a ful­ly real­ized work of art in five min­utes is a mat­ter of cin­e­mat­ic record, and you can wit­ness such an act in the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts video above.

The video’s source is Le Mys­tère Picas­so, a doc­u­men­tary by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot, the film­mak­er best known for 1950s thrillers like The Wages of Fear and Les Dia­boliques. Offi­cial­ly declared a French nation­al trea­sure and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the film cap­tures Picas­so in action, cre­at­ing orig­i­nal art­works right before the cam­era. “Not many of the works he cre­at­ed for the doc­u­men­tary sur­vive,” say this video’s notes, but three of them were recent­ly dis­played in the Roy­al Acad­e­my’s exhi­bi­tion Picas­so and Paper, a vir­tu­al tour of which appears just above. In Le Mys­tère Picas­so the artist paints 1955’s Vis­age: Head of a Faun in just five min­utes, a severe time con­straint imposed by Clouzot’s sup­ply of film stock.

The direc­tor’s ten­sion comes across as clear­ly as the painter’s con­cen­tra­tion. While Clouzot puffs away on his pipe, Picas­so gets right down to work. “Picas­so plays with the draw­ing,” says the video’s onscreen com­men­tary, “tak­ing it from flower to fish to chick­en to face and builds up from a mono­chrome draw­ing with bright, sat­u­rat­ed col­ors.” As the rolling counter on Clouzot’s cam­era ticks off the final meters of film, Picas­so trans­forms the work-in-progress almost com­plete­ly, con­jur­ing up a wild-eyed fig­ure in sil­hou­ette, nei­ther man nor beast, to dom­i­nate the fore­ground. He exe­cutes every brush­stroke unflinch­ing­ly, filled with the con­fi­dence of a painter long since assured of his mas­tery. In one sense, Vis­age: Head of a Faun took Picas­so five min­utes; more truth­ful­ly, it took him 74 years and five min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Picas­so Makes Won­der­ful Abstract Art

How To Under­stand a Picas­so Paint­ing: A Video Primer

The Mys­tery of Picas­so: Land­mark Film of a Leg­endary Artist at Work, by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Hear Classic Rock Songs Played on a Baroque Lute: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “White Room” & More

in Music | April 27th, 2020

In the 60s and 70s, rock and folk bands intro­duced ear­ly Euro­pean music to the mass­es, with Medieval, Renais­sance, and Baroque strains run­ning through the songs of Simon and Gar­funkel, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Fair­port Con­ven­tion, and even Led Zep­pelin. For the most part, how­ev­er, arrange­ments stayed mod­ern, save the appear­ance of a few, still-rel­e­vant folk instru­ments like man­dolins, dul­cimers, and nylon-string gui­tars.

One can draw many lines in pop­u­lar cul­ture from this development—to prog-rock bal­ladry, goth rock’s dirges, metal’s medieval obses­sions, and what­ev­er that tech­no Gre­go­ri­an chant thing was in the 90s. In so many of these evo­lu­tion­ary moves, the trend has been toward more tech­nol­o­gy and away from acoustic music. So, how can play­ers of old Euro­pean instru­ments inter­est con­tem­po­rary audi­ences in their sound?

One pop­u­lar way they’ve done so is by play­ing hits from bands who drew from the tra­di­tion (and from a few who very much didn’t)—hits like Procul Harum’s Chaucer-ref­er­enc­ing “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

At the top, Baroque lute play­er Daniel Estrem gives a solo instru­men­tal per­for­mance of the soul­ful tune, throw­ing in a sec­tion of Bach’s “Air on the G String,” to which “A Whiter Shade of Pale” alludes. (I wasn’t con­scious­ly com­bin­ing rock with clas­si­cal,” com­pos­er Gary Brook­er lat­er said. “It’s just that Bach’s music was in me.”) The song’s con­tra­pun­tal struc­ture trans­lates beau­ti­ful­ly to the lute, as does the sin­is­ter musi­cal­i­ty of Cream’s “White Room,” above, a song with a vague­ly Medieval-sound­ing descend­ing melody in its clas­sic psych-rock vers­es.

Of course, Euro­pean folk and clas­si­cal informed the increas­ing­ly com­plex com­po­si­tions of the Bea­t­les, includ­ing George Harrison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” (or at least its first fin­ger­picked acoustic gui­tar demo ver­sion). In his take on the clas­sic, above, Estrem recov­ers the song’s folk influ­ence and retains its shifts in mood, from mourn­ful lament to hope­ful melody. Of course, Estrem not only has to trans­late these songs to a dif­fer­ent musi­cal idiom but to a very dif­fer­ent instrument—one with a tun­ing unlike the gui­tar on which so many pop songs are writ­ten.

Com­mon lutes at the end of the Renais­sance had 10 cours­es (a “course” is a set of two strings tuned to the same pitch). These instru­ments used “a more har­mon­i­cal­ly based ‘D minor tun­ing,’ instead of the more ‘gui­tar-like’ tun­ing that con­tin­ued to be used for the viol in the baroque era,” notes Case West­ern Reserve’s Ear­ly Music Instru­ment Data­base. They were suit­ed to a very dif­fer­ent kind of music than, say, the blues. But whether or not we ful­ly under­stand the chal­lenge of arrang­ing “House of the Ris­ing Sun” (called “the first folk rock song” when the Ani­mals record­ed it) for the Baroque lute, we can cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the results. Estrem makes a gen­tly plucked, elo­quent­ly word­less argu­ment for giv­ing the instru­ment a star­ring role in pop­u­lar music again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch 12 Classic Chinese Films Online, Complete with English Subtitles (1920s-1940s)

in Film | April 27th, 2020

The Chi­nese film indus­try began around the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, but unfor­tu­nate­ly noth­ing sur­vives of those first two decades–films lost to fire, to age, and just plain lost. Any per­son want­i­ng to study this his­to­ry must make do with syn­opses, pho­tos, and imag­i­na­tion. How­ev­er, after that? This YouTube playlist curat­ed by the Depart­ment of Asian Stud­ies of the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia fea­tures a dozen notable films and influ­en­tial clas­sics from two and half decades of Chi­nese his­to­ry, some of the most tumul­tuous years for that nation. Chi­na oust­ed the British, fought off the Japan­ese, and began a rev­o­lu­tion under Mao. The print qual­i­ty varies here and there, but all are enter­tain­ing, from musi­cals to hor­ror movies to social dra­mas.

The col­lec­tion begins with the old­est sur­viv­ing film in the series, Labourer’s Love, a two-reel­er from 1922 direct­ed by Zhang Shichuan. Most of the orig­i­nal Chi­nese film­mak­ers were trained by Amer­i­cans, so ear­ly shorts like this tend­ed to be silent come­dies filled with visu­al gags–this one fea­tures a car­pen­ter who opens up a fruit stand to woo a woman, and uses his wood­work­ing skills and tools to increase his busi­ness.

By the late 20s how­ev­er, Chi­na was already devel­op­ing its own gen­res and styles, just as it was devel­op­ing a mod­ern nation­al­ist pride away from colo­nial influ­ence. The first mar­tial arts film would be pro­duced in 1928. Oth­er stu­dios opt­ed for folk­lore tales or fam­i­ly melo­dra­mas.

Trained and edu­cat­ed in the Unit­ed Stat­ed, Sun Yu was one of the major film­mak­ers of the 1930s (a group of direc­tors known as the Sec­ond Gen­er­a­tion film­mak­ers) until the inva­sion of Japan sent him flee­ing Shang­hai for the inte­ri­or. But the films he made for the left­ist film stu­dio Lian­hua are now clas­sics. Three of his are rep­re­sent­ed here: 1933’s Day­break, a tale of a young coun­try cou­ple who get cor­rupt­ed in the big city; Queen of Sports, a 1934 dra­ma of a plucky track star who has to nav­i­gate class stratas as well as com­pe­ti­tions; and maybe Sun Yu’s most famous film The Big Road (above), a sto­ry of six young men build­ing a road for the Chi­nese army to bat­tle the Japan­ese. Yes, it’s wartime pro­pa­gan­da, but Sun Yu was always focused on work­ing men and women. These three films also star Li Lili, con­sid­ered by some to be the “Chi­nese Mae West,” and who lived to a ripe age (as did Sun Yu). She has a role in Stan­ley Kwan’s Cen­ter Stage from 1992, his ode to the movie stars of the 1930s.

China’s first hor­ror film is also in this list: 1937’s Song at Mid­night, Ma-Xu Weibang’s retelling of Phan­tom of the Opera (with a bit of Franken­stein thrown in–the Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios influ­ence is very appar­ent here). It’s also a musi­cal, with karaoke-like subs for you to sing along if you know Can­tonese.

Last­ly, Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town from 1947 is one of the most influ­en­tial on this list. A sick­ly man’s friend vis­its in the after­math of the Sino-Japan­ese war, and the wife rec­og­nizes him as a lover from long ago. Roman­tic ten­sions soon begin to smol­der. Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love bor­rowed its repressed, long­ing mood. And film­mak­er Tian Zhuangzhaung remade it in 2002, keep­ing the orig­i­nal set­ting. Many Chi­nese film­mak­ers and crit­ics con­sid­er it one of the best of all time, China’s Casablan­ca.

Hope­ful­ly this dozen will whet your appetite for more Chi­nese cin­e­ma and pro­vide an alter­na­tive to watch­ing anoth­er binge-wor­thy but shal­low Net­flix series.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Chi­nese Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film, Princess Iron Fan, Made Under the Strains of WWII (1941)

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

An Epic Retelling of the Great Chi­nese Nov­el Romance of the Three King­doms: 110 Free Episodes and Count­ing

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Launch a 24/7 Livestream on YouTube, Featuring Rare Footage from the Band’s Archives

in Music | April 26th, 2020

Last week, Nick Cave announced “It’s 10.30 Wednes­day evening, and if the world wasn’t in lock­down, I’d be onstage in Toulouse, France singing my heart out with The Bad Seeds. But I’m not. I’m doing the next best thing—sitting at home watch­ing Bad Seed TeeVee. Pure non-stop joy!” And you can too. Above, watch a new 24/7 YouTube livestream that will fea­ture, writes NME, “rare and unseen footage from the band’s archives,” includ­ing “pro­mo videos, inter­views, live footage, out­takes and oth­er exclu­sive unseen footage from the band’s archives.” Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nick Cave Cre­ates a List of His Top 10 Love Songs

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

New Hilma af Klint Documentary Explores the Life & Art of the Trailblazing Abstract Artist

in Art, Film, History | April 24th, 2020

It’s not often an entire chap­ter of art his­to­ry text­books needs rewrit­ing, but as fans of Hilma af Klint see it, one such time has come. A Swedish artist and mys­tic who lived from the mid-19th to the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, af Klint left behind a body of work amount­ing to more than 1,200 paint­ings — all of which she insist­ed not be tak­en out of stor­age until 20 years after her death. She sus­pect­ed the pub­lic would­n’t be ready for them before then, and she was more right than she knew: offered the paint­ings as a dona­tion in the 1970s, Stock­holm’s Mod­er­na Museet turned them down. Only in the fol­low­ing decade did the art his­to­ry world begin to under­stand that, far from just a pro­duc­tive ama­teur paint­ing in obscu­ri­ty, af Kint might be the very first abstract artist.

Today af Klin­t’s abstract paint­ings, the first of which she pro­duced in mid­dle-age in 1906, have appre­ci­a­tors all over the world. Some, we’d like to think, came because of all the times we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured her here on Open Cul­ture; oth­ers were brought in by the Guggen­heim’s recent ret­ro­spec­tive Hilma af Klint: Paint­ings for the Future.

These paint­ings, says the muse­um’s web site, “were like lit­tle that had been seen before: bold, col­or­ful, and unteth­ered from any rec­og­niz­able ref­er­ences to the phys­i­cal world. It was years before Vasi­ly Kandin­sky, Kaz­imir Male­vich, Piet Mon­dri­an, and oth­ers would take sim­i­lar strides to rid their own art­work of rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al con­tent.” This year the sto­ry of af Klint and her work is told cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly in Beyond the Vis­i­ble, a new doc­u­men­tary by Ger­man film­mak­er Hali­na Dyrsch­ka whose trail­er appears at the top of the post.

In his review of the film, New York Times crit­ic A.O. Scott briefly recounts af Klin­t’s ear­ly years: “Born in 1862 to an aris­to­crat­ic Swedish fam­i­ly and raised part­ly on the grounds of the mil­i­tary acad­e­my where her father was an instruc­tor, she trained at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Stock­holm, mas­ter­ing the tra­di­tion­al gen­res of por­trait, still life and land­scape. By the late 1880s, her note­books and paint­ings began incor­po­rat­ing forms that, while they some­times evoked nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na (like snail shells, flower petals and insect wings), did not resem­ble any­thing in the vis­i­ble world.” This change in the artist’s aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty came along with her grow­ing inter­est in mys­ti­cism and ways of access­ing a realm beyond human sens­es. (She even offered a paint­ing to the Anthro­po­soph­i­cal Soci­ety founder Rudolf Stein­er, who reject­ed it.)

Scott calls Beyond the Vis­i­ble “a chap­ter in the whole­sale revi­sion of the crit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal record that began only recent­ly, and it enlists a pas­sion­ate and knowl­edge­able cadre of cura­tors, schol­ars, sci­en­tists and artists to press the argu­ment for af Klint’s impor­tance.” But “the paint­ings them­selves are the best evi­dence — even through the medi­a­tion of a home screen, their vibran­cy, wit and for­mal com­mand is thrilling.” With many movie the­aters tem­porar­i­ly shut down by the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic, you can watch the doc­u­men­tary through Kino Mar­quee’s “vir­tu­al cin­e­ma,” a ser­vice that streams over the inter­net but also sup­ports local art hous­es. Most of us may be no clos­er to the unseen world into which af Klint yearned to tap than were any of her every­day com­pa­tri­ots. But as far as his­tor­i­cal moments in which her work and life can find a fas­ci­nat­ed audi­ence, there’s nev­er been a bet­ter one.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Hilma af Klint: Pio­neer­ing Mys­ti­cal Painter and Per­haps the First Abstract Artist

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Hilma af Klint, the Mys­ti­cal Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

Who Paint­ed the First Abstract Paint­ing?: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky? Hilma af Klint? Or Anoth­er Con­tender?

Steve Mar­tin on How to Look at Abstract Art

An Inter­ac­tive Social Net­work of Abstract Artists: Kandin­sky, Picas­so, Bran­cusi & Many More

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast