Blade Runner 2049’s New Making-Of Featurette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Awaited Sequel

in Film, Sci Fi | June 22nd, 2017

All of us who excit­ed­ly write about Blade Run­ner 2049, the upcom­ing sequel to Blade Run­ner, have at some point described the film as “long-await­ed.” Since the orig­i­nal came out in 1982, that makes a cer­tain lit­er­al sense, but the wait has­n’t stretched to 35 years with­out cause. As Blade Run­ner rose high­er and high­er in stature, fol­low­ing it up prop­er­ly grew into a more and more daunt­ing chal­lenge. But now, as Blade Run­ner 2049 approach­es its Octo­ber release, the prospect that this most respect­ed of all sci­ence-fic­tion movies will have its con­tin­u­a­tion feels more real than ever — and it will feel even more real than that after you watch the short mak­ing-of fea­turette above.

Philip K. Dick, the pro­lif­ic author of Blade Run­ner’s source mate­r­i­al, a nov­el called Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, rec­og­nized imme­di­ate­ly how impor­tant the film would become. But its direc­tor Rid­ley Scott admits that he “could nev­er have imag­ined how icon­ic it would still be” today.

Though he did­n’t return to direct Blade Run­ner 2049, ced­ing the chair to Sicario and Arrival direc­tor Denis Vil­leneuve and tak­ing on the role of pro­duc­er instead, he does make quite a few appear­ances in this fea­turette as a kind of pre­sid­ing spir­it. “Blade Run­ner rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we view sci­ence fic­tion,” says Vil­leneuve. “I’ve nev­er felt that much pres­sure on my shoul­ders — think­ing that Rid­ley Scott will see this movie.”

But more than any­thing the cast and film­mak­ers have to say, Blade Run­ner fans will savor the video’s glimpses of the new pic­ture’s aes­thet­ic, clear­ly both mod­eled after and delib­er­ate­ly made dif­fer­ent from that of the orig­i­nal. As the title makes obvi­ous, the sto­ry takes place thir­ty years after Blade Run­ner’s 2019, and just as things have changed in our world, so they’ve changed in its world — not least in the form of a Kore­an influ­ence that has its found its way in with the Japan­ese and Chi­nese ones that so char­ac­ter­ized Blade Run­ner’s future Los Ange­les. “Defin­ing this was like walk­ing on a knife’s edge,” says pro­duc­tion design­er Den­nis Gassner, “rid­ing the line between the orig­i­nal film and what we’re doing now.”

If you’d like to com­pare the build-up to Blade Run­ner 2049 with the build-up to Blade Run­ner, have a look at its own thir­teen-minute pro­mo­tion­al fea­turette above. Made well before the time of the mod­ern inter­net, let alone mod­ern inter­net videos, this 16-mil­lime­ter film pro­duc­tion, which fea­tured Scott, “visu­al futur­ist” Syd Mead, and spe­cial effects artist Dou­glas Trum­bull, cir­cu­lat­ed by mak­ing the screen­ing rounds sci-fi, fan­ta­sy, and even hor­ror con­ven­tions all across Amer­i­ca. Few movies, let alone sequels, have built up as much antic­i­pa­tion as Blade Run­ner 2049 has, and even few­er have such a lega­cy to live up to. At least the film­mak­ers can rest assured that, if the crit­ics don’t hap­pen to like it, well, they did­n’t like the first one either.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Offi­cial Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Long-Await­ed Blade Run­ner Sequel Is Final­ly Out

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

How Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Illu­mi­nates the Cen­tral Prob­lem of Moder­ni­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Crash Course on Soviet Montage, the Russian Approach to Filmmaking That Revolutionized Cinema

in Film | June 20th, 2017

It would have scan­dal­ized many an Amer­i­can film­go­er of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry to learn that the movies they watched — even the most whole­some Hol­ly­wood fare of the era — made exten­sive use of a Sovi­et inven­tion. What’s more, that inven­tion came out of the very rev­o­lu­tion that put the Com­mu­nists in pow­er, after which the Sovi­et gov­ern­ment “took a strong inter­est in film, because it rec­og­nized cin­e­ma for what it was — a pow­er­ful tool for social and polit­i­cal influ­ence.” So says Craig Ben­zine, host of Crash Course Film His­to­ry, in the series’ eighth self-con­tained episode, “Sovi­et Mon­tage,” which tells the sto­ry of that cin­e­ma-chang­ing edit­ing tech­nique.

The gov­ern­ment under­stood, in oth­er words, the pow­er of cin­e­ma as pro­pa­gan­da, and swift­ly cen­tral­ized the film indus­try. But after the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, which put an end to the impor­ta­tion of film stock, Russ­ian film­mak­ers could­n’t shoot a frame. So while the nation built up the indus­tri­al capac­i­ty to pro­duce film stock domes­ti­cal­ly, these film­mak­ers — much like the video essay­ists on the inter­net today — stud­ied exist­ing films, break­ing them down, reassem­bling them, and fig­ur­ing out how they worked.

In this way, film­mak­er Lev Kuleshov defined the “Kuleshov effect,” explained by Ben­zine as the phe­nom­e­non where­by “view­ers draw more mean­ing from two shots cut togeth­er than either shot on its own,” and dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of shots pro­duce vast­ly dif­fer­ent intel­lec­tu­al and emo­tion­al effects in those view­ers.

When they final­ly got some film stock, Sovi­et mon­tage film­mak­ers, who had come to believe that “for film to reach its true poten­tial, the cuts them­selves should be vis­i­ble, the audi­ence should be aware of them, the illu­sion should be obvi­ous­ly con­struct­ed and not hid­den,” got to work mak­ing movies that demon­strat­ed their ideas. They saw them­selves as engi­neers, “join­ing shots the way a brick­lay­er builds a wall or a fac­to­ry work­er assem­bles a vehicle,“and Ben­zine exam­ines sequences from two of the best-known fruits of these labors, Sergei Eisen­stein’s Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era (both of which you can watch free online by fol­low­ing those links).

Ben­zine also looks to more recent exam­ples of Sovi­et mon­tage the­o­ry in prac­tice in every­thing from Dum­b­le­dore’s death in the Har­ry Pot­ter movies to the show­er scene in Psy­cho (a film by an avowed fan of the Kuleshov effect) to the final stand­off in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. For more on the mechan­ics of Sovi­et mon­tage, have a look at the fif­teen-minute explain­er from Film­mak­er IQ above — or pay close atten­tion to most any movie or tele­vi­sion show or music video made over the past eighty years. The ide­o­log­i­cal cli­mate that gave rise to Sovi­et mon­tage the­o­ry may have changed, but the artis­tic prin­ci­ples its film­mak­ers dis­cov­ered will, for the fore­see­able future, hold true, under­scor­ing the reli­able effec­tive­ness and sur­pris­ing pow­er of the sim­ple cut.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sovi­et Mon­tage The­o­ry: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Film­mak­ing

Hitch­cock on the Filmmaker’s Essen­tial Tool: The Kuleshov Effect

Watch Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Oth­er Free Sergei Eisen­stein Films

Free: Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Take a 16-Week Crash Course on the His­to­ry of Movies: From the First Mov­ing Pic­tures to the Rise of Mul­ti­plex­es & Net­flix

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Akira Kurosawa Names His 21 Favorite Art Films in the Criterion Collection

in Film | June 12th, 2017

The high­ly auteur-respect­ing Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion has, as you might expect, done quite well by the work of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, direc­tor of Rashomon, Sev­en Samu­rai, Ikiru, and Ran — to name just a few out of his many films in their cat­a­log. Giv­en all the time and atten­tion Cri­te­ri­on puts into not just the pic­tures them­selves but the wealth of sup­ple­men­tal mate­r­i­al that goes with them, you could poten­tial­ly become a Kuro­sawa expert from only what you can learn through Cri­te­ri­on releas­es. That includes an under­stand­ing of the 21 Cri­te­ri­on films that Kuro­sawa includ­ed on his list of favorite movies. Find them list­ed right below.

You’ll notice that Kuro­sawa’s Cri­te­ri­on selec­tions, a sub­set of his list of 100 favorite movies we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture a few years ago, include more than just pic­tures to which he would have thrilled dur­ing his for­ma­tive years in Japan in the 1920s and 30s. In fact, it skews toward much more recent and inter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tions, right up to Paris, Texas (1984) by Ger­man New Wave star Wim Wen­ders, who once inter­viewed Kuro­sawa for a mag­a­zine. The younger film­mak­er asked the elder only tech­ni­cal ques­tions such as “ ‘Mr. Kuro­sawa, you let it rain real­ly beau­ti­ful­ly. How do you shoot it?” “To be hon­est,” Kuro­sawa admit­ted, “for me also such top­ics are more wel­come, and we dis­cussed it fur­ther. But the edi­tors were pret­ty embar­rassed.”

Through­out his long life and career, Kuro­sawa enjoyed oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet more than a few of the oth­er film­mak­ers whose work he admired as well. Last year we fea­tured the sto­ry of his first meet­ing with Andrei Tarkovsky, at a screen­ing of the lat­ter’s Solaris. “We were very good friends. He was like a lit­tle broth­er for me,” Kuro­sawa remem­bered, recall­ing in par­tic­u­lar one inci­dent when the two of them got drunk togeth­er and end­ed up singing the Sev­en Samu­rai theme. His oth­er Cri­te­ri­on selec­tions reveal a love for the work of oth­ers in what we might call the Tarkovsky class of late 20th-cen­tu­ry auteurs as well, from François Truf­faut and Jean-Luc Godard to Ing­mar Bergman and Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni.

At the top of the post you can watch the first film on Kuro­sawa’s Cri­te­ri­on list, Char­lie Chap­lin’s 1925 The Gold Rush, free online. (The ver­sion up top, we should note, is not the Cri­te­ri­on release itself. It’s anoth­er ver­sion.) “Chap­lin was very tal­ent­ed as an actor as well,” said Kuro­sawa. “Do you know, come­dies are most dif­fi­cult to make. It’s much eas­i­er to jerk tears from the audi­ence. He, of course, was gift­ed as a direc­tor as well, well-versed in music. I think he was so gift­ed that he him­self did­n’t know what he should do with his own tal­ents.” But Kuro­sawa, gift­ed as he was, could­n’t say the same of him­self, know­ing as he always did exact­ly what movie he want­ed to make next, even in peri­ods when he could­n’t shoot a sin­gle frame, work­ing right up until the end of his days. Even the title of his final film express­es that sen­si­bil­i­ty, one that sure­ly res­onates with every lover or mak­er of film who knows how much of cin­e­ma always remains to explore: Mada­dayo, or “Not yet!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

When Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Watched Solaris with Andrei Tarkovsky: I Was “Very Hap­py to Find Myself Liv­ing on Earth”

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

Watch Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la in Japan­ese Whiskey Ads from 1979: The Inspi­ra­tion for Lost in Trans­la­tion

Hayao Miyaza­ki Meets Aki­ra Kuro­sawa: Watch the Titans of Japan­ese Film in Con­ver­sa­tion (1993)

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

What Is German Expressionism? A Crash Course on the Cinematic Tradition That Gave Us Metropolis, Nosferatu & More

in Art, Film | June 9th, 2017

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism: we’ve all heard of it, and though only some would even try to define it, we all, like old Pot­ter Stew­art, know it when we see it. Or do we? The move­ments under the umbrel­la of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism bore vivid and influ­en­tial fruits in archi­tec­ture, paint­ing, sculp­ture and espe­cial­ly film — The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, Nos­fer­atu, and Metrop­o­lis, to say noth­ing of their count­less descen­dants, will come right to the minds of most movie-lovers — but the cir­cum­stance from which it first arose remain not par­tic­u­lar­ly well-under­stood by the pub­lic, or at least those of the pub­lic who haven’t seen the brief Crash Course video on Ger­man Expres­sion­ism above (and the even short­er No Film School explain­er below).

Though it also stands per­fect­ly well alone, this primer comes as the sev­enth chap­ter of the six­teen-part Crash Course Film His­to­ry, which we first fea­tured back in April. Here host Craig Ben­zine address­es the ques­tion of just what makes The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, Nos­fer­atu, and Metrop­o­lis in par­tic­u­lar so mem­o­rable by exam­in­ing each film and its auteur direc­tor — Robert Wiene, F.W. Mur­nau, and Fritz Lang, respec­tive­ly  — in turn.

The cre­ativ­i­ty of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist film, like so much cre­ativ­i­ty, arose from lim­i­ta­tions: Ger­many had just lost World War I, most of its film indus­try had under­gone state-spon­sored con­sol­i­da­tion, and inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers who did­n’t want to make large-scale cos­tume dra­mas (the genre of choice to dis­tract the pub­lic from the coun­try’s pover­ty and dis­or­der) had to find a new way not just to get their movies made, but to give audi­ences a rea­son to watch them. With 1920’s The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari (which you can watch below along with Nos­fer­atu), a small stu­dio named Decla led the way.

“Writ­ten by Hans Janowitz and Carl May­er,” says Ben­zine, “this film was the­mat­i­cal­ly based on their expe­ri­ences as sol­diers in World War I and their dis­trust of author­i­tar­i­an lead­er­ship.” It inno­vat­ed by pre­sent­ing its sto­ry “expres­sion­is­ti­cal­ly, rather than real­is­ti­cal­ly. That is, instead of mak­ing things like the sets, cos­tumes, and props as real­is­tic as pos­si­ble,” the film­mak­ers “delib­er­ate­ly dis­tort­ed every­thing with­in the frame,” all “designed to look delib­er­ate­ly arti­fi­cial and throw you off bal­ance.” This “high­ly sub­jec­tive” cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty, devel­oped in Ger­many and then else­where (espe­cial­ly the coun­tries to which Ger­man artists moved in flight from fas­cism) through­out the 1920s, still appears in mod­ern film, well beyond the work of avowed fan Tim Bur­ton: Ben­zine finds that, “from Silence of the Lambs to Don’t Breathe to any­thing M. Night Shya­malan has ever put on film, the tech­niques of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism are creep­ing us out to this very day.”

You can see 10 clas­sic films from this tra­di­tion in our post: Watch 10 Clas­sic Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Nos­fer­atu to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 16-Week Crash Course on the His­to­ry of Movies: From the First Mov­ing Pic­tures to the Rise of Mul­ti­plex­es & Net­flix

From Cali­gari to Hitler: A Look at How Cin­e­ma Laid the Foun­da­tion for Tyran­ny in Weimar Ger­many

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life” Is the Perfect Song to End Any Movie: The Graduate, Psycho, Easy Rider & 50+ Other Films

in Comedy, Film, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | June 9th, 2017

It’s hard to con­ceive of direc­tor Stan­ley Kubrick choos­ing a more per­fect song for Dr. Strangelove’s final mush­room cloud mon­tage than Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again.”

Dit­to Mike Nichols’ The Grad­u­ate. Can you imag­ine Ben and Elaine mak­ing their exis­ten­tial get­away to the tune of any­thing oth­er than “The Sound of Silence”?

Free­lance video edi­tor Peter Salomone can (see above). If he had his druthers, all films would end with Dire Straits’ 1985 hit, ”Walk of Life” a tune Rolling Stone described upon its release as a “boun­cy Fifties rock & roll song about cool Fifties rock & roll songs,” not­ing its “cheesy organ sound.”

More recent­ly, the New Zealand-based music blog Off the Tracks pro­claimed it “god-awful,” sug­gest­ing that the CIA could sur­gi­cal­ly implant its “obnox­ious” key­board riff to trig­ger assas­sins, and assert­ing that it (“and those fuck­ing sweat­bands”) were the demise of Dire Straits.

Such crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tions are imma­te­r­i­al where Salomone’s The Walk of Life Project is con­cerned. Over the course of a cou­ple months, he has glee­ful­ly applied it to the final min­utes of over five dozen films, leav­ing the visu­als unmo­lest­ed.

There are no sacred cows in this realm. Casablan­ca and The God­fa­ther are sub­ject­ed to this aur­al exper­i­ment, as, some­what mys­ti­fy­ing­ly, are Nanook of the North and Chaplin’s City Lights. Hor­ror, Dis­ney, musicals…Salomone dab­bles in a wide vari­ety of gen­res.

For my mon­ey, the most suc­cess­ful out­comes are the ones that impose a com­mer­cial send-em-up-the-aisles-smil­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty on delib­er­ate­ly bleak end­ings.

Direc­tor Dan­ny Boyle may have allowed audi­ences to decom­press a bit with heart­warm­ing footage of the real life Aron Ral­ston, whose auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal account of a life-chang­ing acci­dent inspired the film 127 Hours, but Salomone’s choice to move the play­head to the moment shocked hik­ers encounter a dazed and dehy­drat­ed James Fran­co clutch­ing his muti­lat­ed arm is sub­lime. That heli­copter could not be more per­fect­ly timed:

Some oth­er dark gems:

Easy Rid­er:

Plan­et of the Apes

Psy­cho

Salomone told Giz­mo­do that he’s tak­ing a break from the project, so if there’s a film you think would ben­e­fit from the Walk of Life treat­ment, you’ll have to do it your­self, with his bless­ing. Fan stabs at Scar­face, The Silence of the Lambs and Gone with the Wind sug­gest that the trick is not quite as easy to pull off as one might think.

You can view the com­plete col­lec­tion on The Walk of Life Project’s web­site or YouTube chan­nel.

via Giz­mo­do

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Film and TV Title Design

Watch Steven Soderbergh’s Cre­ative Mashup of Hitch­cock and Gus Van Sant’s Psy­cho Films

Hear 4+ Hours of Jazz Noir: A Sound­track for Strolling Under Street Lights on Fog­gy Nights

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll is cur­rent­ly appear­ing as one of the clowns in Paul David Young’s Faust 3, open­ing this week­end in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A New Theme Park Based on Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro Set to Open in 2020

in Animation, Film, Travel | June 5th, 2017

Is a frame of ref­er­ence nec­es­sary to appre­ci­ate Dis­ney World? Can you enjoy a ride in a spin­ning teacup if you have no work­ing knowl­edge of Alice in Won­der­land? What sort of mag­ic might the Mag­ic King­dom hold for those who’ve nev­er heard of Cin­derel­la or Peter Pan?

Now imag­ine if the theme park’s scope was nar­rowed to a sin­gle film.

You’ve got until 2020 to sneak in a view­ing of the Hayao Miyaza­ki film, My Neigh­bor Totoro, before Ghi­b­li Park, a 500-acre amuse­ment park on the grounds of Japan’s 2005 World’s Fair site, opens.

To date, Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li has pro­duced more than a dozen fea­ture-length ani­mat­ed films. That’s a lot of raw mate­r­i­al for attrac­tions.

Por­co Rosso’s 1930s sea­planes have ride writ­ten all over them, and think of the Haunt­ed Man­sion-esque thrills that could be wrung from Spir­it­ed Away’s bath­house.

How about a Jun­gle Cruise-style ram­ble through the coun­try­side in Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle?

An under­wa­ter adven­ture with gold­fish princess Ponyo?

Pre­pare for a very long wait if you’re join­ing the queue for those. It’s being report­ed that Ghi­b­li Park will focus exclu­sive­ly on a sin­gle film, 1988’s My Neigh­bor Totoro.

(Care to take a guess what its Mouse Ears will look like?)

The film’s theme of respect for the nat­ur­al world is good news for the area’s exist­ing flo­ra. The gov­er­nor of Japan’s Aichi Pre­fec­ture, where Ghi­b­li Park is to be sit­u­at­ed, has announced that it will be laid out in such a way as to pre­serve the trees.

Pre­sum­ably the film’s icon­ic cat bus and fast grow­ing cam­phor tree, above, will be pow­ered by the green­est of ener­gies.

Pre­view the sort of won­ders in store by tour­ing the life­size house of My Neigh­bor Totoro’s human char­ac­ters, Sat­su­ki and Mei, below.

via NPR

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mas­ter­pieces Spir­it­ed Away and Princess Mononoke Imag­ined as 8‑Bit Video Games

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll be appear­ing onstage in New York City in Paul David Young’s Faust 3, open­ing lat­er this week. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Long Strange Trip, the New 4‑Hour Documentary on the Grateful Dead, Is Now Streaming Free on Amazon Prime

in Film, Music | June 3rd, 2017

FYI: Long Strange Trip, the first com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­men­tary to tell the sto­ry of the Grate­ful Dead, is steam­ing free right now on Ama­zon Prime. Exec­u­tive pro­duced by Mar­tin Scors­ese, and direct­ed by Amir Bar-Lev, the four-hour film can be streamed right here if already have a Prime account. If you don’t, you can sign up for a 30-day free tri­al, watch the doc, and then decide whether to remain a sub­scriber or not. It’s your call. (Note: they also offer a sim­i­lar deal for audio­books from Audi­ble.)

By the way, if you can watch the film with a good sound sys­tem, I’d rec­om­mend it!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan & The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Jer­ry Gar­cia Talks About the Birth of the Grate­ful Dead & Play­ing Kesey’s Acid Tests in New Ani­mat­ed Video

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Relax with 8 Hours of Classical Space Music: From Richard Strauss & Haydn, to Brian Eno, Philip Glass & Beyond

in Film, Music | May 30th, 2017

If I had one piece of advice to pass on to a younger gen­er­a­tion it would be this: lis­ten to more space rock. The 60s/70s sub­genre of progressive/psychedelic rock gets its name as much from its sub­ject mat­ter as from its loose, hyp­not­ic, futur­is­tic son­ic character—“Third Stone from the Sun,” “Space Odd­i­ty,” “Inter­stel­lar Over­drive,” “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Sil­ver Machine”… you know…. It mel­lows you out, man, some­thing every­one could use right now, and inspires visions of a groovi­er future, though not with­out the occa­sion­al dystopic edge.

Alter­nate­ly, I would rec­om­mend that every­one acquire a col­lec­tion of cos­mic jazz, the Afro­fu­tur­ist genre pio­neered by Sun Ra and John and Alice Coltrane. But maybe you don’t like space rock or free jazz, yet you still dream about space? Maybe you pre­fer more clas­si­cal, min­i­mal­ist, or ambi­ent fare? Nev­er fear, we’ve got a sound­track for you—one sure to mel­low you out and inspire you, who­ev­er you are.

Cre­at­ed to cel­e­brate Stephen Hawking’s 75th birth­day this past Jan­u­ary, the “Space-Themed Clas­si­cal Music” Playlist below draws togeth­er pieces you’ll rec­og­nize from clas­sic sci-fi films, like Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathus­tra; pieces writ­ten espe­cial­ly for such films—such as John Williams’ E.T. score and Jer­ry Goldsmith’s main title for Alien; and music inspired by space themes, such as Bri­an Eno’s “Under Stars” and Judith Lang Zaimont’s Jupiter’s Moons. The Spo­ti­fy playlist con­tains a total of 75 tracks of space-themed or inspired clas­si­cal works. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware down­load it here.) The YouTube ver­sion at the top only has 62 of those tracks.

The com­pi­la­tion does give a lit­tle nod to space rock with the inclu­sion, at the very end, of Pink Floyd’s “Keep Talk­ing” from The Divi­sion Bell. And the penul­ti­mate track nods to the very space-inspired genre of trip-hop, with John D. Boswell’s Carl Sagan- and Stephen Hawk­ing-sam­pling “A Glo­ri­ous Dawn.” I don’t know about you, but Sagan’s mel­liflu­ous voice—autotuned or no—never fails to bright­en my mood and make me more curi­ous about what’s out there.

Of course, apart from sci-fi sound­tracks, there is a long tra­di­tion of com­posers writ­ing space-inspired music, stretch­ing back before sci­en­tists like Sagan and his Russ­ian coun­ter­parts helped send astro­nauts and satel­lites into orbit. Clas­si­cal sta­tion WQXR has put togeth­er a list of 11 such com­posers: from the 18th cen­tu­ry Franz Joseph Haydn to the 20th cen­tu­ry Karl­heinz Stock­hausen.

Then there’s Gus­tav Holst, who wrote a suite about all 8 plan­ets between 1914 and 1916—before Pluto’s dis­cov­ery (and lat­er dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion). I’ve always been par­tial to the bom­bas­tic “Jupiter,” above. Even if you haven’t heard it, Holst’s suite will sound very famil­iar, hav­ing inspired every­thing from video game music, to the Rug­by World Cup theme, to the score for Brave­heart. It has also—showing that clas­si­cal space music is a bona fide sub­genre in con­ver­sa­tion with itself—directly influ­enced John Williams’ Star Wars music and the main theme of Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca. In what­ev­er form it takes, I think we could all do with a lot more space music in our lives. Lis­ten, for exam­ple, to the excerpt from Alan Sil­vestri’s score for the 2014 Cos­mos reboot, below, and tell me oth­er­wise. For anoth­er fla­vor of a space­man’s sound­track, check out Space.com’s “Astro­naut’s Playlist” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Pro­vides a Sound­track for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.