What Makes a Good Horror Movie? The Answer Revealed with a Journey Through Classic Horror Films Clips

in Film | October 31st, 2016

A few min­utes with Lewis Bond’s first video essay, “Let’s Dis­cuss Hor­ror,” above, was all it took to scup­per my care­ful avoid­ance of cer­tain film fran­chis­es—Saw, Hos­tel, The Human Cen­tipede…

Bond’s cin­e­mat­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions usu­al­ly come with far few­er explod­ing heads. Lat­er entries on his Chan­nel Criswell Youtube chan­nel explore such Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion-wor­thy top­ics as “Colour in Sto­ry­telling,” “The French New Wave,” and “Stan­ley Kubrick.”

Clear­ly, he cares about the hor­ror genre, as well as the more rar­i­fied stuff. He opines that hor­ror movies have lost their capac­i­ty to scare. The industry’s quest for ever more trans­gres­sive shocks and gore (many of which are on dis­play above) has left view­ers desen­si­tized. Bond likens the phe­nom­e­non to hit­ting a brick wall and “try­ing to break it down by adding more bricks.”

Part of the prob­lem, Bond sug­gests, is an indus­try onus to deliv­er wall-to-wall deprav­i­ty, the gross­er, the bet­ter. Tor­ture porn may have cor­nered a siz­able piece of the mar­ket, but lack of fore­play is killing the sus­pense. Slow builds such as Dan­ny Torrence’s end­less Big Wheel rides past Room 237 or Rosemary’s uneasy preg­nan­cy are a thing of the past. Today’s film­mak­ers have the meat hooks out from the get go.

When audi­ences become inured to the non-stop buf­fet of burst­ing entrails and the rot­ting zom­bies  who feast on them, film­mak­ers grow even more reliant on jump scares. These pop-go-the-weasel moments invari­ably get a rise out of me, but Bond, like most hor­ror purists, views them with dis­dain. Too easy.

“Let’s Dis­cuss Hor­ror” con­tains a pletho­ra of them, but they seem sil­ly, divorced from the nar­ra­tive and the req­ui­site scary music.

(Speak­ing of which, “Tubu­lar Bells” under­scores a good por­tion of Bond’s breezy nar­ra­tion.)

When­ev­er Bond makes a point with a longer scene from more cel­e­brat­ed fare such as JAWS, Don’t Look Now, or Audi­tion, he includes a click­able link that will deposit view­ers on the oth­er side of spoil­ers. Depend­ing on your sat­u­ra­tion point, you may find your­self wish­ing those links would drop you off in Linus’ pump­kin patch.

Hap­py Hal­loween!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Manor of the Dev­il (1896)

Watch the Cult Clas­sic Hor­ror Film Car­ni­val of Souls (1962)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films: Kubrick, Hitch­cock, Tourneur & More

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pink Floyd, Salvador Dalí, Moebius, Orson Welles & Mick Jagger Never Made

in Film, Sci Fi | October 28th, 2016

Frank Her­bert, David Lynch, and Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky sure­ly all rank among the most imag­i­na­tive cre­ators of the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. It made sense to film pro­duc­ers to turn Her­bert’s Dune into a movie, but they had a dev­il of a time find­ing the right direc­tor to bring that epic nov­el of the feu­dal inter­stel­lar future to the screen. Lynch, as all his fans know and most regret, wound up with the job, and soon after the botched result hit the­aters in 1984, it made his­to­ry as one of the all-time clas­sic mis­match­es between film­mak­er and project, and at $40 mil­lion, one of the most expen­sive. Les­son learned: don’t hire the direc­tor of Eraser­head to helm your big-bud­get sci-fi block­buster.

But what about the direc­tor of the even stranger and more ambi­tious The Holy Moun­tain? In 1975, almost a decade before Lynch’s Dune, Jodor­owsky announced his own adap­ta­tion of Dune, fund­ed by a French con­sor­tium and made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with artists like Chris Foss, H.R. Giger, and Moe­bius, writer and spe­cial effects design­er Dan O’Ban­non (who’d just made the low-bud­get space com­e­dy Dark Star with John Car­pen­ter), and actors like Orson Welles, Glo­ria Swan­son, and David Car­ra­dine.

He also cast such icons not known pri­mar­i­ly for act­ing as Mick Jag­ger and Sal­vador Dalí. “Jodorowsky’s mid­night audi­ences were noto­ri­ous for being high,” writes The Hol­ly­wood Reporter’s Chris O’Falt, “but with Dune the direc­tor set out to make a film that fab­ri­cat­ed the effects of LSD for a sober audi­ence, com­plete with a sound­track by Pink Floyd.”

Or as Dalí once declared, “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.” This cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence of expand­ed con­scious­ness would have run approx­i­mate­ly four­teen hours, as Her­bert dis­cov­ered when he checked in on the pre-pro­duc­tion to find $2 mil­lion of the film’s $9.5 mil­lion bud­get already spent and a script “the size of a phone book.” Unable to find a stu­dio to bankroll the Dune he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors had envi­sioned, Jodor­owsky ulti­mate­ly dropped the project, but its mate­ri­als — and the stag­ger­ing breadth as well as depth of its vision — pro­vid­ed the basis for the 2014 doc­u­men­tary Jodor­owsky’s Dune, whose trail­er you can watch above.

“Almost all the bat­tles were won, but the war was lost,“Jodorowsky writes in an essay on his expe­ri­ence with the project. “The project was sab­o­taged in Hol­ly­wood. It was French and not Amer­i­can. Its mes­sage was not ‘enough Hol­ly­wood.’ There were intrigues, plun­der­ing. The sto­ry-board cir­cu­lat­ed among all the large stu­dios. Lat­er, the visu­al aspect of Star Wars resem­bled our style. To make Alien, they invit­ed Moe­bius, Foss, Giger, O’Ban­non, etc.,” to say noth­ing of its traces vis­i­ble in Blade Run­ner and The Matrix. While the 87-year-old Jodor­owsky has made a return to film­mak­ing in recent years, his Dune will most like­ly remain on the lists of the great­est movies nev­er made. But its influ­ence, if not its scale, will no doubt con­tin­ue to man­i­fest in gen­er­a­tions of sci-fi cin­e­ma to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

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.

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Huge Archive of American Films–From Casablanca to Gigli–Are Protected & Preserved in a Nuclear Bunker

in Film | October 28th, 2016

We’ve been giv­en to under­stand how impor­tant it is that our top elect­ed offi­cials dis­ap­pear into bunkers if the coun­try is attacked. But in the event of a cat­a­stroph­ic nuclear bomb­ing, what hap­pens to the country’s cul­ture, its shared lit­er­ary and artis­tic arti­facts? What hap­pens to nov­els like Rid­dley Walk­er (a favorite of Antho­ny Burgess) or films like the Mad Max series, both of which describe post-apoc­a­lyp­tic land­scapes near­ly wiped clean of the traces of hun­dreds of years of human civ­i­liza­tion? Maybe it’s a depress­ing ques­tion, but in the case of Amer­i­can cinema—as campy as Mad Max Beyond Thun­der­dome or as clas­si­cal­ly smooth as Casablan­ca—learn­ing the answer will not bum you out.

You’ll like­ly find your­self riv­et­ed by the video above from Great Big Sto­ry, a quick tour of the Library of Con­gress’ Packard Cam­pus. The Culpeper, Vir­ginia com­pound, orig­i­nal­ly designed to pre­serve gold and maybe the Pres­i­dent, is now pressed into ser­vice as a bomb-proof film archive.

You may be relieved to learn from film archivist George Wille­man that a post-cat­a­stro­phe U.S. will not have to rebuild with­out clas­sic Bog­a­rt per­for­mances to draw from. Per­haps that new soci­ety could do with­out copies of Gigli or the films of Adam San­dler, but that’s an opin­ion the future is free to dis­re­gard, should such ter­ri­ble things ever come to pass.

But be not bummed, the Packard Cam­pus does much more than pre­pare for the worst. Archivists and tech­ni­cians there spend their days sav­ing the best of film his­to­ry, “pre­serv­ing and restor­ing film reels,” reports Indiewire: “The bunker has a suite where tech­ni­cians do noth­ing but repair films, it also has spe­cial­ized rooms for print­ing, film pro­cess­ing Dat­aCine trans­fers and cylin­der record­ing. There are also video play­ers that can play any sort of for­mat that they need.” The com­pound will also hold par­tic­u­lar appeal for fans of Bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture that appears to be aban­doned to the ele­ments. Hav­ing dri­ven by the bunker many times—and only recent­ly learn­ing what it was—I can tes­ti­fy to the impos­ing bulk and seem­ing ruina­tion of its above-ground floors, which we only get a glimpse of in the first few min­utes of the video. Inside, it’s a film his­to­ri­an and archivist’s dream.

For more films that would hope­ful­ly sur­vive an apoc­a­lypse, see our col­lec­tion: 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Archive Makes Avail­able 800,000 Pages Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of Film, Tele­vi­sion & Radio

The His­to­ry of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Span­ning 116 Years, Revis­it­ed in a 3‑Minute Video

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

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

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Hear Marilyn Monroe’s Acting Teacher, Lee Strasberg, Deliver a Moving Eulogy at Her Funeral (1962)

in Film, Life, Theatre | October 28th, 2016

Good­bye, Nor­ma Jean…

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s star­dom is tru­ly leg­endary. Her image gen­er­ates mil­lions of dol­lars annu­al­ly. From high-end mem­o­ra­bil­ia to lunch­box­es, fridge mag­nets, and oth­er cheap trin­kets, the world still can’t get enough of her, near­ly fifty-five years after her death.

Her act­ing tal­ent was con­sid­er­able, but by and large that is not what she’s cel­e­brat­ed for. Speak­ing at her funer­al, her men­tor Lee Stras­berg, the Artis­tic Direc­tor of the Actors Stu­dio, lament­ed that “the pub­lic who loved her did not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see her as we did, in many of the roles that fore­shad­owed what she would have become.” In his opin­ion, the movie star’s true des­tiny pegged her to become “one of the finest Amer­i­can stage actress­es of all time.”

Actor Mar­tin Lan­dau remem­bered Mon­roe steel­ing her­self to get up in front of her Actors Stu­dio class­mates for the first time, in a scene from Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie with Mau­reen Sta­ple­ton.

Alas, this is not the sort of Mon­roe moment pos­ter­i­ty pre­serves on a beach tote or sequined t‑shirt.

Strasberg’s mov­ing 1962 eulo­gy, above, acknowl­edged both the 31 inti­mates invit­ed to her final send off, and the crowds out­side the gate. Frank Sina­tra, Ella Fitzger­ald, and Sam­my Davis, Jr. were among the lumi­nar­ies denied entry. Monroe’s for­mer hus­band, base­ball great Joe DiMag­gio banned a whole pan­theon of Hol­ly­wood movers and shak­ers, along with the pub­lic.

“If it was­n’t for them, she’d still be here,” he told her lawyer, Mick­ey Rudin.

Stu­dio execs had lit­tle regard for the actress’ well­be­ing, but Stras­berg was both teacher and father fig­ure, allow­ing her beyond the usu­al pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries to become a de fac­to, if prob­lem­at­ic, mem­ber of the fam­i­ly. As his daugh­ter, Monroe’s friend, actress Susan Stras­berg wrote:

Mar­i­lyn broke all the rules I was expect­ed to fol­low. She was unpre­dictable, but he didn’t yell at her. He con­stant­ly val­i­dat­ed her. With her, Pop was vul­ner­a­ble, pater­nal, per­mis­sive. With me he was imper­son­al, crit­i­cal, for­bid­ding. What was I doing wrong? Why didn’t he give me per­mis­sion to be myself as he did her?”

DiMag­gio had orig­i­nal­ly hoped that poet Carl Sand­burg might be avail­able to orate at Monroe’s funer­al. When Sand­burg declined due to ill health, the sad duty fell to Stras­berg, who turned out to be unique­ly pre­pared to ful­fill this role.

The com­plete text of Lee Strasberg’s eulo­gy for Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe is below, as is a short doc­u­men­tary on her involve­ment with the Actors Stu­dio.

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe was a leg­end.

In her own life­time she cre­at­ed a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived back­ground could attain. For the entire world she became a sym­bol of the eter­nal fem­i­nine.

But I have no words to describe the myth and the leg­end. I did not know this Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. We gath­ered here today, knew only Mar­i­lyn – a warm human being, impul­sive and shy, sen­si­tive and in fear of rejec­tion, yet ever avid for life and reach­ing out for ful­fill­ment. I will not insult the pri­va­cy of your mem­o­ry of her – a pri­va­cy she sought and trea­sured – by try­ing to describe her whom you knew to you who knew her. In our mem­o­ries of her she remains alive, not only a shad­ow on the screen or a glam­orous per­son­al­i­ty.

For us Mar­i­lyn was a devot­ed and loy­al friend, a col­league con­stant­ly reach­ing for per­fec­tion. We shared her pain and dif­fi­cul­ties and some of her joys. She was a mem­ber of our fam­i­ly. It is dif­fi­cult to accept the fact that her zest for life has been end­ed by this dread­ful acci­dent.

Despite the heights and bril­liance she attained on the screen, she was plan­ning for the future; she was look­ing for­ward to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the many excit­ing things which she planned. In her eyes and in mine her career was just begin­ning.

The dream of her tal­ent, which she had nur­tured as a child, was not a mirage. When she first came to me I was amazed at the star­tling sen­si­tiv­i­ty which she pos­sessed and which had remained fresh and undimmed, strug­gling to express itself despite the life to which she had been sub­ject­ed.

Oth­ers were as phys­i­cal­ly beau­ti­ful as she was, but there was obvi­ous­ly some­thing more in her, some­thing that peo­ple saw and rec­og­nized in her per­for­mances and with which they iden­ti­fied. She had a lumi­nous qual­i­ty – a com­bi­na­tion of wist­ful­ness, radi­ance, yearn­ing – to set her apart and yet make every­one wish to be a part of it, to share in the child­ish naïveté which was so shy and yet so vibrant.

This qual­i­ty was even more evi­dent when she was in the stage. I am tru­ly sor­ry that the pub­lic who loved her did not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see her as we did, in many of the roles that fore­shad­owed what she would have become. With­out a doubt she would have been one of the real­ly great actress­es of the stage.

Now it is at an end. I hope her death will stir sym­pa­thy and under­stand­ing for a sen­si­tive artist and a woman who brought joy and plea­sure to the world.

I can­not say good­bye. Mar­i­lyn nev­er liked good­byes, but in the pecu­liar way she had of turn­ing things around so that they faced real­i­ty – I will say au revoir. For the coun­try to which she has gone, we must all some­day vis­it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Recounts Her Har­row­ing Expe­ri­ence in a Psy­chi­atric Ward in a 1961 Let­ter

A Look Inside Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al Library

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What Happens When Blade Runner & A Scanner Darkly Get Remade with an Artificial Neural Network

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | October 27th, 2016

Philip K. Dick, titling the 1968 nov­el that would pro­vide the basis for Blade Run­ner, asked whether androids dream of elec­tric sheep. But what goes on in the “mind” of an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence designed specif­i­cal­ly to watch movies? Ter­ence Broad, a com­put­ing researcher at Gold­smiths, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, took on a form of that ques­tion for his mas­ter’s dis­ser­ta­tion, using “arti­fi­cial neur­al net­works to recon­struct films — by train­ing them to recon­struct indi­vid­ual frames from films, and then get­ting them to recon­struct every frame in a giv­en film and rese­quenc­ing it.”

“Neur­al net­works” sounds like a term straight out of one of Dick­’s influ­en­tial sci­ence-fic­tion nov­els, but you’ve almost cer­tain­ly heard quite a bit about them in recent years of real life. A neur­al net­work, in the words of neu­ro­com­put­er pio­neer Dr. Robert Hecht-Nielsen, “is a com­put­ing sys­tem made up of a num­ber of sim­ple, high­ly inter­con­nect­ed pro­cess­ing ele­ments, which process infor­ma­tion by their dynam­ic state response to exter­nal inputs.” These sys­tems, in oth­er words, imi­tate the prob­lem-solv­ing meth­ods of the human brain as we cur­rent­ly under­stand them, and can, when pro­vid­ed with suit­able data, “learn” from it.

One thinks less of the Repli­cants, Blade Run­ner’s lethal­ly engi­neered super­hu­mans, than of Num­ber 5, the arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent robot star of Short Cir­cuit (co-designed, inci­den­tal­ly, by Blade Run­ner’s “visu­al futur­ist” Syd Mead), with his con­stant demands for “input.” When it came out in the mid-1980s, that goofy com­e­dy once looked like by far the more suc­cess­ful film, but over the inter­ven­ing three decades Rid­ley Scot­t’s one-time bomb has become per­haps the most respect­ed work of its kind. “The first ever film remade by a neur­al net­work had to be Blade Run­ner,” Ter­ence Broad told Vox, point­ing in his expla­na­tion of his project to the movie’s pre­scient treat­ment of the theme “that the task of deter­min­ing what is and isn’t human is becom­ing increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult, with the ever-increas­ing tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments.”

Dick, as his gen­er­a­tions of read­ers know, had deep con­cerns about the dif­fer­ence between the real and the unre­al, and how human beings can ever tell one from the oth­er. He tack­led that issue again, from a very dif­fer­ent angle, in his 1977 nov­el A Scan­ner Dark­ly. Richard Lin­klater turned that book into a movie almost thir­ty years lat­er, one which Broad also fed as input into his neur­al net­work, which then attempt­ed to recon­struct it. Though still the­mat­i­cal­ly appro­pri­ate, its col­or­ful roto­scoped ani­ma­tion posed more of a chal­lenge, and “the results are less tem­po­ral­ly coher­ent than the Blade Run­ner mod­el.” But “on the oth­er hand, the images are incred­i­bly unusu­al and com­plex, once again pro­duc­ing video with a rich unpre­dictabil­i­ty.”

At the top of the post, you can watch Broad­’s Blade Run­ner-trained neur­al net­work recon­struct Blade Run­ner’s trail­er, and below that his A Scan­ner Dark­ly-trained neur­al net­work recon­struct A Scan­ner Dark­ly’s trail­er. Curios­i­ty demand­ed, of course, that Broad let a neur­al net­work trained to watch one film have a go at recon­struct­ing the oth­er, and just above we have the A Scan­ner Dark­ly-trained neur­al net­work’s recon­struc­tion of Blade Run­ner. He’s also giv­en Scot­t’s famous 1984-themed Super Bowl Apple ad and God­frey Reg­gio’s Koy­aanisqat­si the neur­al-net­work treat­ment. We read so often, these days, about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence’s grow­ing abil­i­ty to out-think, out-work, and one day even out-cre­ate us. What on Earth, the Philip K. Dicks of our day must won­der, will the neur­al net­works come up with when they can final­ly out-watch us?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

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

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

Watch Sun­spring, the Sci-Fi Film Writ­ten with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Star­ring Thomas Mid­dled­itch (Sil­i­con Val­ley)

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

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.

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How Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai Perfected the Cinematic Action Scene: A New Video Essay

in Film | October 26th, 2016

Jonathan Lethem knows a thing or two about sto­ry­telling as well as about caped com­ic-book char­ac­ters, and on a recent pod­cast appear­ance he accused films about the lat­ter of an inabil­i­ty to do the for­mer: “I think one of the least sat­is­fy­ing film gen­res I’ve ever encoun­tered is the con­tem­po­rary super­hero movie, which just seems to me kind of dead on arrival. I can’t even get into the hair-split­ting about, ‘Oh, but there are three or four good ones.’ I just don’t see any life there.” How can such big pro­duc­tions filled with so much action play out so life­less­ly on the screen? Per­haps the work of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, known in his day as the “Emper­or” of Japan­ese film, can show us the answer.

“Would­n’t scenes that dis­play the pin­na­cle of phys­i­cal­i­ty work bet­ter,” asks video essay­ist Lewis Bond over images of the Avengers bat­tling tow­er­ing mon­sters in the cen­ters of major cities, Spi­der-Man swing­ing huge arcs through some kind of smoke-and-spark fac­to­ry, and Bat­man beat­ing up Super­man, “if they also con­veyed an emo­tion­al inten­si­ty to match this? Action and emo­tion need not be sep­a­rat­ed by a chasm as they so often are, and this is where the great­ness of Sev­en Samu­rai lies.” He shows us in “Dra­ma Through Action,” a study of how Kuro­sawa’s best-known pic­ture deliv­ers its action with impact, which appeared ear­li­er this month on Chan­nel Criswell, pre­vi­ous­ly the source of video essays on such mas­ters of cin­e­ma as Yasu­jirō Ozu and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Bond points to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent fac­tors that make the action in Kuro­sawa’s 1954 epic adven­ture of the Sen­goku era, despite its tech­no­log­i­cal impov­er­ish­ment com­pared to the super­hero block­busters of the 21st cen­tu­ry, feel so much more mean­ing­ful. A focus less on the action itself and the pro­tag­o­nists per­form­ing it than on the con­se­quences of that action mean­ing that “death car­ries sig­nif­i­cance.” A “sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness” and clear por­tray­al of “the char­ac­ters’ short-term objec­tives” means that the audi­ence can fol­low, and thus feel, their suc­cess­es and fail­ures. A clear estab­lish­ment of geog­ra­phy enables view­ers to place the com­bat­ants, and them­selves, on the bat­tle­field. A spar­ing use of cut­ting and slow motion keeps emo­tion­al­ly charged moments charged.

These and oth­er tech­niques skill­ful­ly employed by Kuro­sawa and his col­lab­o­ra­tors ensure that, in Sev­en Samu­rai, “every moment of action com­mu­ni­cates a sense of urgency” — exact­ly the qual­i­ty lacked, in oth­er words, by the expen­sive and furi­ous yet strange­ly dull super­hero spec­ta­cles of today. “To me, Sev­en Samu­rai is still the most for­ward-think­ing piece of cin­e­ma ever cre­at­ed,” says Bond. “What it did for the way action is pho­tographed can still be seen today. And when it isn’t seen, it prob­a­bly should be.” Take heed, young direc­tors slat­ed to take on the next wave of super­hero-fran­chise cin­e­mat­ic reboots: to make your entries stand out, you have only to learn from the Emper­or.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

What Makes Yasu­jirō Ozu a Great Film­mak­er? New Video Essay Explains His Long-Admired Cin­e­mat­ic Style

Watch a Video Essay on the Poet­ic Har­mo­ny of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Film­mak­ing, Then View His Major Films Free Online

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.

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How Movie Studios Rejected Scripts During the Silent-Film Era: A Cold, 17-Point Checklist Circa 1915

in Film | October 20th, 2016

silent-film-rejections

Born dur­ing the era of silent movies, the Essanay Film Man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pa­ny pro­duced a series of Char­lie Chap­lin films in 1915, most notably includ­ing The Tramp. The Essanay doc­u­ment above shows us one thing: It did­n’t take long for the film indus­try to mas­ter the cold rejec­tion let­ter. Film­mak­ers could pour their heart and soul into writ­ing a script. And what did they get in return? A list of 17 pos­si­ble rea­sons to reject a man­u­script, with a deflat­ing check mark next to a par­tic­u­lar item. That’s it. No fur­ther expla­na­tion offered.

Essanay closed in 1925, prob­a­bly to the delight of some. You can still find some of Essanay’s films in our col­lec­tion of 65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online.

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!

via @tedgioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

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

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

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The Best Commercial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

in Film, Food & Drink, Music, Television, Travel | October 14th, 2016

Most stars are under­stand­ably choosy about what prod­ucts, if any, they’re will­ing to endorse. Seri­ous artists are mind­ful about their rep­u­ta­tions.

The late great God­fa­ther of Soul James Brown lent his prodi­gious tal­ents to McDon­alds (for a price), but it’s worth not­ing that most of the heavy lift­ing was done by a cast of unknowns play­ing tick­et hold­ers for­ti­fy­ing them­selves before a hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed con­cert. Brown arrives at the end, to bedaz­zle every­one in the restau­rant with his fan­cy foot­work, sequined suit, and sheer prox­im­i­ty.

Clear­ly, the Hard­est Work­ing Man in Show Busi­ness had stan­dards.

(Since his death in 2006, his hits have been used to sell ath­let­ic wear, gin, beer, and pork ten­der­loin, proof that these things are hard­er to con­trol from beyond the grave.)

Japan­ese tele­vi­sion is one are­na where many West­ern celebri­ties are will­ing to relax their usu­al poli­cies. The prospect of an enor­mous pay­check for so lit­tle work is hard to beat, though in the age of Youtube, there’s a far greater like­li­hood that their core fans will see the results.

Youtube was not a con­cern in 1992, when Brown filmed the above 15-sec­ond spot for Nissin Cup Noo­dles. No one can accuse him of phon­ing it in. He dances, lip synchs soup-cen­tric Japan­ese lyrics to the tune of Sex Machine, and even—in a longer ver­sion on a kitchen set—pours boil­ing water into the cup, just like mil­lions of bud­get-con­scious artists and stu­dents the world over.

What he doesn’t do is “bite and smile,” a sta­ple of com­mer­cial act­ing. He rais­es a fork­ful of prod­uct to his mouth with an oblig­ing grin, but doesn’t ingest so much as a noo­dle.

For that, we must turn to for­mer body­builder and Gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, who sup­ple­ment­ed his movie career as Nissin Cup Noo­dles’ pre­vi­ous Japan­ese TV pitch­man. Not only did he con­sent to fun­ny cos­tumes, he pile dri­ves that ramen like a World Record in Com­pet­i­tive Eat­ing depends on it. None of that clown­ing for Brown!

Read­ers, we invite you to con­tribute to our schol­ar­ship of West­ern celebs’ Japan­ese TV com­mer­cials in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

David Bowie Sells Ice Cream, Sake, Coke & Water: Watch His TV Com­mer­cials from the 1960s Through 2013

Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.