Watch Dating Dos and Don’ts: An Old-School Instructional Guide to Teenage Romance (1949)

in Animation, Education, Film, History | September 26th, 2013

From the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, Coro­net Instruc­tion­al Media, that for­mi­da­ble fac­to­ry of class­room edu­ca­tion­al films, taught Amer­i­ca’s school­child­ren how to study, how to land a job, how to per­form their soci­etal and fil­ial duties, how to bathe. Cer­tain gen­er­a­tions no doubt retain vivid mem­o­ries, fond or oth­er­wise, of such 16-mil­lime­ter stand­bys as Good Eat­ing Habits, Joan Avoids a Cold, Are You Pop­u­lar? and Com­mu­nism. In 1949, Coro­net came up with a short sub­ject rather clos­er to the eter­nal inter­ests of the teenag­er: Dat­ing: Do’s and Don’ts. This twelve-minute film, direct­ed Gilbert Altschul with the assis­tance of Reuben Hill, Research Pro­fes­sor of Fam­i­ly Life at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na, nav­i­gates the gar­den of fork­ing paths formed by all the choic­es, from ide­al­ly gen­tle­man-like to poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous, that con­front young Woody on his very first date.

Who, for instance, should Woody ask to join him at Cen­tral High­’s Hi-Teen Car­ni­val? “Whose com­pa­ny would you enjoy?” asks the voice-of-mid­cen­tu­ry-author­i­ty nar­ra­tor.” “Well, one thing you can con­sid­er is looks. Woody thought of Jan­ice, and how good-look­ing she was. He real­ly had to rate to date some­body like her.” Still: “It’s too bad Jan­ice always acts so supe­ri­or and bored. She’d make a fel­low feel awk­ward and infe­ri­or.” Per­haps the more ground­ed Bet­ty? “And yet, it just does­n’t seem as if she’d be much fun. What about Anne? She knows how to have a good time.” Even 64 years on, I dare­say fel­lows would still do well to cleave to the Annes of the world. But giv­en how far the pen­du­lum of sex­u­al pol­i­tics has swung since Coro­net’s hey­day, oth­er pieces of of Dat­ing: Do’s and Don’ts advice seems more quaint than cur­rent. For a more mod­ern per­spec­tive, see also How to Be a “Mr. Good-Date,” a Looney Tunes par­o­dy star­ring Bugs Bun­ny as the hope­ful suit­or Reg­gie Geran­de­vu and Elmer Fudd as the pro­tec­tive home­own­er of whom he runs afoul.

When you’re done watch­ing Dat­ing: Do’s and Don’ts, don’t miss Coro­net’s 1951 sequel of sorts “Going Steady.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Duck and Cov­er, or: How I Learned to Elude the Bomb

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

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

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Watch The Surreal 1960s Films and Commercials of Jim Henson

in Animation, Film | September 24th, 2013

Today marks the 77th anniver­sary of Jim Hen­son’s birth. To cel­e­brate the pup­peteer, film­mak­er, and Mup­pet inven­tor’s life and career, we offer here three of his ear­ly short works. Most of us know only cer­tain high-pro­file pieces of Hen­son’s oeu­vre: The Mup­pet Show, the Mup­pet movies, Sesame Street, or per­haps such pic­tures now much attend­ed on the camp revival cir­cuit as Labyrinth and The Dark Crys­tal. But even by the Mup­pet Show’s 1974 debut, Hen­son (1936–1990) had already put in decades devel­op­ing his dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic of pup­pets and pup­petry. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly vio­lent com­mer­cials he pro­duced for Wilkins Cof­fee between 1957 and 1961 and Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, his sev­en­ties trip of a John­ny Car­son seg­ment. But unless you count your­self as a seri­ous Hen­son, fan, you prob­a­bly haven’t yet seen the likes of Mem­o­ries, The Paper­work Explo­sion, and Rip­ples. Cre­at­ing each of these shorts, the young Hen­son col­lab­o­rat­ed with pianist, jazz com­pos­er, and sound engi­neer Ray­mond Scott, now remem­bered as a pio­neer in mod­ern elec­tron­ic music.

The par­tic­u­lar sound of Scott, no stranger to scor­ing car­toons (we’ve by now heard it in every­thing from Looney Tunes to Ren and Stimpy to The Simp­sons), also suit­ed the sorts of visions Hen­son real­ized for his var­i­ous projects of the six­ties. Mem­o­ries, which plunges into a man’s mind as he remem­bers (with nar­ra­tion by Hen­son him­self) one par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ant after­noon near­ly ruined by a headache, appeared in 1967 as a con­tin­u­a­tion of Hen­son’s com­mer­cial career; the pain reliev­er Bufferin, you see, lit­er­al­ly saved the day. That same year, the com­mer­cial (and in form, almost mini-doc­u­men­tary) The Paper­work Explo­sion illus­trates the time- space‑, and labor-sav­ing advan­tages of IBM’s then-new word-pro­cess­ing sys­tem, the MT/ST. Rip­ples Hen­son and Scott put togeth­er for Mon­tre­al’s Expo 1967. It takes place, like Mem­o­ries and Lim­bo, inside human con­scious­ness: an archi­tect (Sesame Street writer-pro­duc­er Jon Stone) drops a sug­ar cube in his cof­fee, and its rip­ples trig­ger a mem­o­ry of throw­ing peb­bles into a pond, which itself sends rip­ples through a host of his oth­er poten­tial thoughts. You’ve got to watch to under­stand how Hen­son and Scott pulled this off; con­ve­nient­ly, they only take one minute to do it.

For more ear­ly works by Hen­son, see this Metafil­ter post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

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

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Jack Kerouac Reads American Haikus, Backed by Jazz Saxophonists Al Cohn & Zoot Sims (1958)

in Animation, Music, Poetry | September 11th, 2013

In the spring of 1958 Jack Ker­ouac went into the stu­dio with tenor sax­men Al Cohn and Zoot Sims to record his sec­ond album, a mix­ture of jazz and poet­ry called Blues and Haikus. The haiku is a tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese poet­ry form with three unrhyming lines in five, sev­en, and five syl­la­bles. But Ker­ouac took a freer approach. In 1959, the year Blues and Haikus was released, he explained:

The Amer­i­can haiku is not exact­ly the Japan­ese Haiku. The Japan­ese Haiku is strict­ly dis­ci­plined to sev­en­teen syl­la­bles but since the lan­guage struc­ture is dif­fer­ent I don’t think Amer­i­can Haikus (short three-line poems intend­ed to be com­plete­ly packed with Void of Whole) should wor­ry about syl­la­bles because Amer­i­can speech is some­thing again … burst­ing to pop.

Above all, a Haiku must be very sim­ple and free of all poet­ic trick­ery and make a lit­tle pic­ture and yet be as airy and grace­ful as a Vival­di Pas­torel­la.

The open­ing num­ber on Blues and Haikus is a 10-minute piece called “Amer­i­can Haikus.” It fea­tures Ker­ouac’s expres­sive recita­tion of a series of poems punc­tu­at­ed by the impro­vi­sa­tion­al sax­o­phone play­ing of Cohn and Sims. The video above is ani­mat­ed by the artist Peter Gullerud. For more of Ker­ouac’s haikus — some 700 of them — see his Book of Haikus.

via The Allen Gins­berg Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s 30 Beliefs and Tech­niques For Writ­ing Mod­ern Prose

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Watch The Amazing 1912 Animation of Stop-Motion Pioneer Ladislas Starevich, Starring Dead Bugs

in Animation, Film | September 5th, 2013

Last week we fea­tured 1937’s The Tale of the Fox, the crown­ing glo­ry of inven­tive Russ­ian film­mak­er Ladis­las Stare­vich’s work in pup­pet ani­ma­tion. But he did­n’t always shoot pup­pets as we know them; at the dawn of his career — and thus the dawn of Russ­ian ani­ma­tion — he had to make use of what lay close at hand. Today we go back a cou­ple decades fur­ther, to the time when Stare­vich (then known, before his immi­gra­tion to Paris, as Władysław Starewicz) worked not as an ani­ma­tor but as the direc­tor of Kovno, Lithua­ni­a’s Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. Inter­est­ed in film­ing noc­tur­nal stag bee­tles but unable to get a per­for­mance out of them under film lights, he hit upon the idea of shoot­ing not liv­ing insects but dead ones, their legs replaced with wire which he could repo­si­tion frame-by-frame. The result? Stare­vich’s ear­ly, still-enter­tain­ing shorts like 1911’s The Ant and the Grasshop­per (also known as The Drag­on­fly and the Ant) at the top.

But you haven’t tru­ly expe­ri­enced dead-bug ani­ma­tion until you’ve seen The Cam­era­man’s Revenge, just above. Stare­vich made it in 1912, by which time his ani­ma­tion skills had devel­oped to the point that each play­er moves in a man­ner both real­is­ti­cal­ly bug­like (some con­tem­po­rary view­ers mis­took them for trained insects mov­ing in real time) and par­o­d­i­cal­ly evoca­tive of human char­ac­ters. Slate’s Joan New­berg­er describes the plot of this “com­ic melo­dra­ma in metic­u­lous­ly detailed minia­ture sets” as fol­lows: “We meet a bee­tle cou­ple, Mr. and Mrs. Zhukov (zhuk means bee­tle in Russ­ian), both of whom are car­ry­ing on extra­mar­i­tal affairs. Zhukov wins the affec­tions of a drag­on­fly cabaret dancer, but flies into a rage when he comes home to dis­cov­er his wife in the ‘arms’ of an artist (also played by a bee­tle).” But the plot thick­ens, and this seem­ing­ly sim­ple (if obvi­ous­ly com­plex in craft, espe­cial­ly for the time) tale even uses a bit of cin­e­ma-with­in-cin­e­ma at its denoue­ment. Starewicz made ear­ly stop-motion for sure, but he did­n’t make the ear­li­est. Smithsonian.com has a post on that, cit­ing the 1902 Thomas Edi­son-pro­duced Fun in a Bak­ery Shop as the first sur­viv­ing exam­ple — but, alas, a bug­less one.

Stare­vich’s films can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Look under Ani­ma­tion.

via Slate’s Vault Blog

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

The Mas­cot, Pio­neer­ing Stop Ani­ma­tion from Wla­dys­law Starow­icz

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

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Watch Family Planning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Production, Starring Donald Duck

in Animation, History | August 27th, 2013

In 1951, Carl Djeras­si, a chemist work­ing in an obscure lab in Mex­i­co City, cre­at­ed the first prog­es­terone pill. Lit­tle did he know that, a decade lat­er, 1.2 mil­lion women would be “on the Pill” in Amer­i­ca, exer­cis­ing unprece­dent­ed con­trol over their repro­duc­tive rights. By 1967, that num­ber would reach 12.5 mil­lion women world­wide.

It was for­tu­itous tim­ing, see­ing that the post-war glob­al pop­u­la­tion was start­ing to surge. It took 125 years (1800–1925) for the glob­al pop­u­la­tion to move from one bil­lion to two bil­lion (see his­tor­i­cal chart), but only 35 years (1925–1960) for that num­ber to reach three bil­lion. Non-prof­its like the Pop­u­la­tion Coun­cil were found­ed to think through emerg­ing pop­u­la­tion ques­tions, and by the mid-1960s, they began pub­lish­ing a peer-reviewed jour­nal called Stud­ies in Fam­i­ly Plan­ning and also work­ing with Walt Dis­ney to pro­duce a 10-minute edu­ca­tion­al car­toon. You can watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning above.

Even­tu­al­ly trans­lat­ed into 25 lan­guages, the film avoids any­thing sex­u­al­ly explic­it. The fam­i­ly plan­ning advice is vague at best and, per­verse­ly but not sur­pris­ing­ly, only male char­ac­ters get a real voice in the pro­duc­tion. But lest you think that Dis­ney was break­ing any real ground here, let me remind you of its more dar­ing for­ay into sex-ed films two decades pri­or. That’s when it pro­duced The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion (1946), a more sub­stan­tive film shown to 105 mil­lion stu­dents across the US.

You can find Fam­i­ly Plan­ning and The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion housed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era (1957)

 

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The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladislas Starevich’s Animation of Goethe’s Great German Folktale (1937)

in Animation, Film | August 27th, 2013

Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe — the very name bespeaks lit­er­ary mas­tery of the widest range. Not only did this best-known of all eigh­teenth- and — nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ger­man writ­ers reach into poet­ry, the nov­el, the mem­oir, auto­bi­og­ra­phy, crit­i­cism, sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and even pol­i­tics, but he did a bit of inter­pre­ta­tion of clas­sic folk­tales as well. The Faust and Sor­rows of Young Werther author wrote a par­tic­u­lar­ly last­ing ren­di­tion of the adven­tures of Rey­nard the Fox, a trick­ster from medieval Euro­pean myth. Had Goethe him­self lived into the 20th cen­tu­ry to expe­ri­ence the gold­en age of pup­pet ani­ma­tion, I feel cer­tain his artis­tic man­date would have com­pelled him to film a ver­sion of The Tale of the Fox. Alas, the lit­er­ary leg­end passed away in 1832, leav­ing the job, near­ly a cen­tu­ry lat­er, to Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Ladis­las Stare­vich (also spelled Wla­dys­law Starewicz).

Hav­ing pio­neered the form of pup­pet ani­ma­tion with his 1912 film The Beau­ti­ful Lukani­da, Stare­vich remains well-known among ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts for shoot­ing his pic­tures with ani­mals play­ing the pro­tag­o­nists, or bugs, or seem­ing­ly what­ev­er he hap­pened to have at hand. The Tale of the Fox, by con­trast, pre­sent­ed him with a com­par­a­tive­ly vast set of resources. Pro­duced in Paris over eigh­teen months in 1929 and 1930, the 65-minute ani­mat­ed fea­ture, Stare­vich’s first and only the sixth ever made in the world at the time, tells the sto­ry of Rey­nard the Fox’s attempts to live his life of tom­fool­ery even as the lion king of this ani­mal king­dom strug­gles to bring him to jus­tice. When, sev­en years after com­plet­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, the film still lacked music, Ger­many’s Nation­al Social­ist gov­ern­ment, no doubt swollen with their ver­sion of Teu­ton­ic pride at see­ing an adap­ta­tion of an adap­ta­tion penned by a Ger­man icon, pro­vid­ed a score and arranged for a Berlin pre­miere. But try not to think about that. Con­cen­trate instead on the ani­ma­tion style used here by Stare­vich which, though he shot in stop-motion and used pup­pets, sure­ly resem­bles no stop-motion ani­ma­tion or pup­pet show you’ve ever seen.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, Ani­mat­ed in Two Min­utes

The Mas­cot, Pio­neer­ing Stop Ani­ma­tion from Wla­dys­law Starow­icz

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

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Watch an Animation of Shaun Tan’s All-Ages Picture Book The Lost Thing

in Animation, Books, K-12, Life | August 26th, 2013

What would you do if you crossed paths with a jin­gling lost thing whose oven-shaped body, crus­ta­ceous claws, and fleshy ten­ta­cles would seem right at home in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights?

Scream? Run? Release your bow­els?

The anony­mous nar­ra­tor of The Lost Thing, a fif­teen-minute ani­ma­tion born of Shaun Tan’s all-ages pic­ture book, attempts, instead, to iden­ti­fy it empir­i­cal­ly through care­ful obser­va­tion, cal­i­brat­ed mea­sure­ment, and con­trolled exper­i­men­ta­tion. When the sci­en­tif­ic approach fails, he assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for his strange find, lead­ing it through a clank­ing, grimy land­scape where san­i­ta­tion crews deflate beach balls with pointy sticks after the joy­less hol­i­day crowds are dismissed—a vision of steam­punk in defeat.

We’re loathe to hit you with any more spoil­ers. Suf­fice it to say that this is a fine exam­ple of inno­v­a­tive­ly adapt­ed source mate­r­i­al, and that even­tu­al­ly our sto­ic hero—voiced by British-born Aus­tralian com­ic Tim Minchin—and his charge arrive in a land­scape that should cause the inhab­i­tants of the Island of Mis­fit Toys to stop moon­ing over San­ta.

You will find The Lost Thing list­ed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Whim­si­cal Ani­ma­tion of Ita­lo Calvino’s Short Sto­ry “The Dis­tance of the Moon”

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day picks all man­ner of jet­sam off the curbs of her Brook­lyn neigh­bor­hood. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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An Animated History of Physics Introduces the Discoveries of Galileo, Newton, Maxwell & Einstein

in Animation, Physics, Science | August 22nd, 2013

How can you present sci­en­tif­ic ideas to an audi­ence of all ages — sci­en­tists and non-sci­en­tists alike — so that these ideas will stick in peo­ple’s minds? Since 2012, BBC Two has been try­ing to answer this ques­tion with its series “Dara Ó Bri­ain’s Sci­ence Club.” Irish stand-up come­di­an and TV pre­sen­ter Dara Ó Bri­ain invites experts to his show to tack­le the biggest con­cepts in sci­ence in a way that is under­stand­able to non-experts as well. Film clips and ani­ma­tions are used to visu­al­ize the ideas and con­cepts dealt with in the show.

In 2012, Åsa Lucan­der, a Lon­don-based ani­ma­tor orig­i­nal­ly from Fin­land, was approached by the BBC with the task of cre­at­ing an ani­ma­tion about the his­to­ry of physics. The result is as enter­tain­ing as it is instruc­tive. The clip deals with the dis­cov­er­ies of four major sci­en­tists and the impact of their find­ings: Galileo Galilei, Isaac New­ton, James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Ein­stein.

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Leonard Susskind Teach­es You “The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum” for Under­stand­ing Mod­ern Physics

125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics and Psy­chol­o­gy

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