Watch John Malkovich Portray David Lynch and Lynch’s Famous Characters from Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks & More

in Film | September 29th, 2016

John Malkovich’s filmography includes not Wild at Heart but Places in the Heart, not Inland Empire but Empire of the Sun, not Mulholland Drive but Mulholland Falls. This respected actor, in short, has never appeared in a David Lynch film, but he recently demonstrated that he could have starred in all of them — and can even portray the director himself. In Psychogenic Fugue, Malkovich slips into a variety of Lynchian personas, from heroes like Eraserhead’s iconically pillar-haired Henry Spencer and Twin Peaks’ squarely coffee-loving Special Agent Dale Cooper to villains like Blue Velvet’s Frank Booth and Lost Highway’s Mystery Man, to even the Ladies Log and in the Radiator.

Those names, I assure filmgoers not so up on their Lynch, will mean a great deal to fans, whether of the director or of the actor. Though both are American men of cinema, both of the same generation, Lynch and Malkovich would at first appear to have little in common: the former, who’s made ten features in the past forty years, has spent his career diving deeper and deeper into stranger and more personal (but ultimately, somehow, accessible) psychological waters, while the latter, prolific in his screen acting with almost 100 appearances to his credit, hops between hugely disparate personalities, time periods, and intellectual levels without seeming to break a sweat. But both of them do tend to attract the same descriptor: intense.

The versatile Malkovich also knows what it means to look inside himself, having starred in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, which famously includes a scene where every human being has turned into a version of John Malkovich. This minute-long trailer for Psychogenic Fugue may remind you of that unforgettable viewing experience, but if you want the full, twenty-minute version, it comes with only a ten-dollar donation (accompanied by more goodies at higher donation levels) to the David Lynch Foundation, which you can make at playinglynch.com. The fact that the money won’t go to fund another Lynch feature may disappoint some, but at least if he eventually decides to make a not just psychologically but literally autobiographical film, he’ll know exactly who to cast in the lead.

via Welcome to Twin Peaks

Hear John Malkovich Read From Breakfast of Champions, Then Hear Kurt Vonnegut Do the Same

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Season of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japanese Coffee Commercials

A Young David Lynch Talks About Eraserhead in One of His First Recorded Interviews (1979)

David Lynch’s Surreal Commercials

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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Charlie Chaplin Finds Comedy Even in the Brutality of WWI: A Scene from Shoulder Arms (1918)

in Film, History | September 27th, 2016

A friend of the Roman poet Martial once asked him why he went to watch lions devour slaves at the Coliseum. “These are my times,” replied Martial, “and I must know them.” Not every Roman enjoyed such brutal spectacles, and Martial himself perhaps least of all, but he regarded it as a duty as an observer and interpreter not to spare himself the awful sight that pleased so many of his fellow citizens. Charlie Chaplin, too, knew his times, as evidenced by pictures like 1936’s Modern Times, which made light of industrial capitalism, and The Great Dictator, his sharp 1940 satire of Nazism and fascism.

But the horrors of the previous World War gave him material too, as you can see in this scene from the 1918 silent comedy Shoulder Arms, above: “There have been learned discussions as to whether Chaplin’s comedy is low or high, artistic or crude,” said the contemporary New York Times review of the film, Chaplin’s most popular to date, “but no one can deny that when he impersonates a screen fool he is funny.”

His screen fool, in this case, has enlisted in the “awkward squad,” and though boot camp gives him a hard time, the pratfalls he goes through when sent off to Europe eventually lead him to win the Great War almost singlehandedly. Alas, as with most of Chaplin’s hapless protagonists, his moment of triumph vanishes even more quickly than it came, and at the time of its premiere the real war still had weeks to go.

Before making the movie, Chaplin himself had doubts about the potential for humor in the bloodiest conflict in the history of mankind, but he must have ultimately understood what all the most astute comedians do: that comedy and tragedy have always gone hand-in-hand. “Saying something is too terrible to joke about is like saying a disease is to terrible to try to cure,” as the particularly astute Louis C.K. recently put it — a man of our own comedic and tragic times, and one who certainly knows them as well as Chaplin knew his.

Find 65 Free Charlie Chaplin Films Online in our collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.

via Reddit

Charlie Chaplin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Modern Times (1936)

Chaplin Meets Inception: The Final Speech of The Great Dictator

When Charlie Chaplin Entered a Chaplin Look-Alike Contest and Came in 20th Place

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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

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

in Film, Writing | September 26th, 2016

We should all learn from the best, and in the domain of cinema, that means studying under masters like Akira Kurosawa. Though now nearly twenty years gone, the Japanese filmmaker known as “the Emperor” left behind not just one of the most impressive bodies of directorial work in existence — Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Ran, and much else besides — but a generous quantity of words. In addition to the voluminous materials related to the films themselves, he wrote the book Something Like an Autobiography, gave in-depth interviews, and offered filmmaking advice to established colleagues and young aspirants alike.

“If you genuinely want to make films,” Kurosawa tells the next generation of directors in the clip above, “then write screenplays. All you need to write a script is paper and a pencil. It’s only through writing scripts that you learn specifics about the structure of film and what cinema is.”

This brings to mind the story of how, long unable to find funding for Kagemusha, he wrote and re-wrote its screenplay, then, still unable to go into production, painted the entire film, shot by shot. Such persistence requires no little strength of patience and discipline, the very kind one builds through rigorous writing practice. Kurosawa quotes Balzac: “The most essential and necessary thing is the forbearance to face the dull task of writing one word at a time.”

Take it one word at a time: apparently creators as ostensibly different as Balzac, Kurosawa, and Stephen King agree on how to handle the writing process. And to write, Kurosawa adds, you must read. “Young people today don’t read books,” he says, echoing an oft-heard complaint. “It’s important that they at least do a certain amount of reading. Unless you have a rich reserve within, you can’t create anything. Memory is the source of your creation. Whether it’s from reading or from your own real-life experience, you can’t create unless you have something inside yourself.” Or, as Werner Herzog more recently put it: “Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read… read, read… read.” But per Kurosawa, don’t forget to write — and when the writing gets tough, do anything but give up.

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Akira Kurosawa & Gabriel García Márquez Talk About Filmmaking (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Interview

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

Akira Kurosawa Painted the Storyboards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Compare Canvas to Celluloid

How Akira Kurosawa Used Movement to Tell His Stories: 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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

An Animated David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

in Film, Psychology | September 22nd, 2016

“Where do you get your ideas?” Every artist dreads having to answer that most common of all questions. Well, every artist with the exception of David Lynch. The director of such modern cinematic quasi-nightmares as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive will gladly explain exactly where he gets his ideas: from his own consciousness, “the TV in your mind.”

He’ll also gladly explain how he gets them by, not to mix the metaphor too much, using the folksy terms of fishing: “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.” And to bait the hook with? Why, bits of other ideas. Those words come from his 2006 book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, a slim volume on this and that which gets into some detail about his use of Transcendental Meditation as a kind of fishing pole to reel those especially compelling ideas in from one’s consciousness.

A couple of years after that, Lynch sat down with The Atlantic to talk about his special brand of creativity (as distinct from his special brand of coffee, no doubt also a fuel for thought). They’ve just recently animated his remarks to make the short video above, a visualization of his idea-getting processes, including daydreaming, traveling, and looking into a puddle in the gutter.

“I always say it’s like there’s a man in another room with the whole film together, but they’re in puzzle parts,” says Lynch as hands chop a fish into frames of celluloid. “He’s flipping one piece at a time into me. At first it’s very abstract; I don’t have a clue. More pieces come, more ideas are caught. It starts forming a thing. And then one day, there it is. In a way, there’s no original ideas. It’s just the ideas that you caught.”

The ideas Lynch has caught have become, among other things, some of the most memorable films of the late 20th century — and, according to last month’s BBC poll, the best film of the 21st century so far. What’s more, he claims not to have suffered for them, illustrating his argument of suffering as antithetical to creativity with an imaginary scenario of a diarrhea-afflicted Van Gogh. As for what part of his consciousness he fished that image out of, perhaps we’d rather not know.

Patti Smith and David Lynch Talk About the Source of Their Ideas & Creative Inspiration

David Lynch Explains How Meditation Enhances Our Creativity

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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Build Your Own Miniature Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service & More

in Creativity, Film | September 22nd, 2016

In the Shintoism from which Hayao Miyazaki’s films liberally draw, the worlds of nature and spirit are not mutually exclusive. “Shrine Shinto,” write James Boyd and Tetsuya Nishimura at The Journal of Religion and Film, “understands the whole of life, including both humans and nature, as creative and life giving. A generative, immanent force harmoniously pervades the whole phenomenal world.” But to experience this power “requires an aesthetically pure and cheerful heart/mind, an emotional, mental and volitional condition that is not easily attained.” In My Neighbor Totoro, for example, Miyazaki helps to induce this state in us with long slice-of-life passages that move like gentle breezes through tall grasses and trees. In the apocalyptic sci-fi Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the title character herself takes on the task of harmoniously reconciling man, nature, and mutant insect.

I would argue that Miyazaki’s films are not solely entertainments, but means by which we can experience “an aesthetically pure and cheerful” heart and mind. And although he has retired, we can relive those films “over and over again,” as The Creator’s Project writes, not only by watching them, but by building miniature sets from them, as you see represented here. See My Neighbor Totoro’s old, rustic house in the forest—where Satsuki and Mei come to terms with their mother’s illness while befriending the local nature spirits—get assembled at the top of the post. And just above, see the town of Koriko from Kiki’s Delivery Service take shape, a place that becomes transformed by magic, just as Kiki does by her sorties into the forest.

These kits, made by the Japanese paper craft company Sankei, are “ready to be assembled and glued together, creating your own mini movie set,” The Creator’s Project notes. Previous models include Totoro and his two small companions, above, and the bakery from Kiki; another kit recreates the deserted magical town Chihiro and her parents stumble upon in Spirited Away. The kits don’t come cheap—each one costs around $100—and they take time and skill to assemble, as you see in these videos. But like so many of the important acts in Miyazaki’s films—and like the act of watching those films themselves—we might think of assembling these models as rituals of patience and devotion to aesthetic habits of mind that slow us down and gently nudge us to seek harmony and connection.

via The Creator’s Project

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Characters Reimagined in the Style of 19th-Century Woodblock Prints

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

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

“Evil Mickey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japanese Anime Propaganda Film

in Film | September 22nd, 2016

Before the Japanese fell completely, one-hundred percent in love with anything and everything Disney (I mean, seriously, they love it), Mickey Mouse represented something completely different: Pure American imperialist evil.

At least he does in this 1934 animated propaganda cartoon Omochabako series dai san wa: Ehon senkya-hyakusanja-rokunen (Toybox Series 3: Picture Book 1936) by Komatsuzawa Hajime. It’s a convoluted title, but pretty simple in plot. An island of cute critters (including one Felix the Cat clone) is attacked from the air by an army of Mickey Mouses (Mickey Mice?) riding bats and assisted by crocodiles and snakes that act like machine guns. The frightened creatures call on the heroes of Japanese storybooks and folk legends to help them, from Momotaro (“Peach Boy”) and Kintaro (“Golden Boy”) to Issun-boshi (“One Inch Boy”) and Benkei, a warrior monk, to send Mickey packing. The not-so-subtle message: Mickey Mouse may be your hero, America, but our characters are older, more numerous, and way more beloved. Our pop culture is older than yours!

Ironically, the film is animated in the style of American masters Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks, and Max Fleischer, with its bouncy character loops and elastic metamorphoses.

Though made in 1934, it is set in 1936, which might tie (according to this site) into the expiration of a naval treaty between the United States and Japan on that date. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a full seven years off, but clearly tensions were running high even then, as both the West and Japan had their eyes on Asia and the South Pacific.

Also of note is the trope of characters coming alive from a storybook, as this was a favorite subject in several Warner Bros. cartoons that would come out a few years later (and which we’ve covered.)

And finally to clarify Mickey’s fate at the end of the film: the old man with the box is a Rip Van Winkle character, and in Japanese folklore he is made old by the contents of a box he’s been told not to open. Violence is not vanquished with violence at the end of this cartoon, but with magic and derisive laughter followed by a song. In the real world, things would not end so easily.

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Propaganda Films: Your Job in Germany (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

“The Ducktators”: Loony Tunes Turns Animation into Wartime Propaganda (1942)

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

by Ted Mills | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Watch the Surrealist Glass Harmonica, the Only Animated Film Ever Banned by Soviet Censors (1968)

in Animation, Art, Film | September 21st, 2016

The Soviet Union’s repressive state censorship went to absurd lengths to control what its citizens read, viewed, and listened to, such as the almost comical removal of purged former comrades from photographs during Stalin’s reign. When it came to aesthetics, Stalinism mostly purged more avant-garde tendencies from the arts and literature in favor of didactic Socialist Realism. Even during the relatively loose period of the Khrushchev/Brezhnev Thaw in the 60s, several artists were subject to “severe censorship” by the Party, writes Keti Chukhrov at Red Thread, for their “’abuse’ of modernist, abstract and formalist methods.”

But one oft-experimental art form thrived throughout the existence of the Soviet Union and its varying degrees of state control: animation. “Despite censorship and pressure from the Communist government to adhere to certain Socialist ideals,” writes Polly Dela Rosa in a short history, “Russian animation is incredibly diverse and eloquent.”

Many animated Soviet films were expressly made for propaganda purposes—such as the very first Soviet animation, Dziga Vertov’s Soviet Toys, below, from 1924. But even these display a range of technical virtuosity combined with daring stylistic experiments, as you can see in this io9 compilation. Animated films also served “as a powerful tool for entertainment,” notes film scholar Birgit Beumers, with animators, “largely trained as designers and illustrators… drawn upon to compete with the Disney output.”

Throughout the 20th century, a wide range of films made it past the censors and reached large audiences on cinema and television screens, including many based on Western literature. All of them did so, in fact, but one, the only animated film in Soviet history to face a ban: Andrei Khrzhanovsky’s The Glass Harmonica, at the top, a 1968 “satire on bureaucracy.” At the time of its release, the Thaw had encouraged “a creative renaissance” in Russian animation, writes Dangerous Minds, and the film’s surrealist aesthetic—drawn from the paintings of De Chirico, Magritte, Grosz, Bruegel, and Bosch (and reaching “proto-Python-esque heights towards the end”)—testifies to that.

At first glance, one would think The Glass Harmonica would fit right into the long tradition of Soviet propaganda films begun by Vertov. As the opening titles state, it aims to show the “boundless greed, police terror, [and] the isolation and brutalization of humans in modern bourgeois society.” And yet, the film offended censors due to what the European Film Philharmonic Institute calls “its controversial portrayal of the relationship between governmental authority and the artist.” There’s more than a little irony in the fact that the only fully censored Soviet animation is a film itself about censorship.

The central character is a musician who incurs the displeasure of an expressionless man in black, ruler of the cold, gray world of the film. In addition to its “collage of various styles and a tribute to European painting”—which itself may have irked censors—the score by Alfred Schnittke “pushes sound to disturbing limits, demanding extreme range and technique from the instruments.” (Fans of surrealist animation may be reminded of 1973’s French sci-fi film, Fantastic Planet.) Although Khrzhanovsky’s film represents the effective beginning and end of surrealist animation in the Soviet Union, only released after perestroika, it stands, as you’ll see above, as a brilliantly realized example of the form.

The Glass Harmonica will be added to our list of Animations, a subset of our collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.

Watch Dziga Vertov’s Unsettling Soviet Toys: The First Soviet Animated Movie Ever (1924)

Watch Interplanetary Revolution (1924): The Most Bizarre Soviet Animated Propaganda Film You’ll Ever See

The Bizarre, Surviving Scene from the 1933 Soviet Animation Based on a Pushkin Tale and a Shostakovich Score

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Ukulele Orchestra Performs Ennio Morricone’s Iconic Western Theme Song, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” And It’s Pretty Brilliant.

in Film, Music | September 21st, 2016

Last week, Josh Jones highlighted for you a free five-hour playlist featuring Ennio Morricone’s Scores for Classic Western Films. Even if you’re not deeply familiar with Morricone’s body of work, you’ve almost certainly heard the theme to The Good, the Bad & the Ugly–the iconic 1966 Spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone. Opening with the immediately recognizable two-note melody that sounds like “the howl of a coyote,” the theme was originally recorded with the help of the Unione Musicisti di Roma orchestra.

Above, you can watch another orchestra, The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, pay homage to Morricone’s classic theme. Described by The Guardian as “a cultish British institution” known for its expertly played covers of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the Ukulele Orchestra group scored its biggest hit with this performance. It’s an outtake from the DVD Anarchy in the Ukulele, which you can purchase through The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s website. Enjoy.

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!

George Harrison Explains Why Everyone Should Play the Ukulele, With Words and Music

Jake Shimabukuro Plays “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the Uke

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Watch John Malkovich Portray David Lynch and Lynch’s Famous Characters from Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks & More

Charlie Chaplin Finds Comedy Even in the Brutality of WWI: A Scene from Shoulder Arms (1918)

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

An Animated David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

Build Your Own Miniature Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service & More

“Evil Mickey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japanese Anime Propaganda Film

Watch the Surrealist Glass Harmonica, the Only Animated Film Ever Banned by Soviet Censors (1968)

Ukulele Orchestra Performs Ennio Morricone’s Iconic Western Theme Song, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” And It’s Pretty Brilliant.

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