Actors from The Wire Star in a Short Film Adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits” (2001)

in Film, Literature | March 22nd, 2016

After the cult suc­cess of HBO’s grit­ty Bal­ti­more crime dra­ma, The Wire, the obses­sive­ness of the show’s fan­base became a run­ning joke. Devot­ed Wire-lovers brow­beat friends, fam­i­ly, and cowork­ers with the show’s many virtues. Wire fans became emo­tion­al­ly attached not only to the show’s char­ac­ters, but also to the actors who played them. Though I man­aged to shun Wire evan­ge­lists for a time, I too final­ly became a con­vert after its six-year run end­ed in 2008. Like many a fan I was thrilled to see actors Michael K. Williams and Michael B. Jor­dan land juicy post-Wire roles (and sad­dened to see some of the show’s oth­er fine actors seem to dis­ap­pear from view).

And, like many a fan, I also want­ed to know these actors’ back­sto­ries. What had they been up to before The Wire? We get one answer to that ques­tion above, in the adap­ta­tion of Zora Neale Hurston’s 1933 short sto­ry “The Gild­ed Six-Bits.” In the star­ring role, you’ll rec­og­nize The Wire’s (even­tu­al­ly) reformed ex-con Den­nis “Cut­ty” Wise, or Chad Cole­man, in his first star­ring role. Play­ing oppo­site him you’ll be hap­py to see your favorite wiseass, phi­lan­der­ing, cig­ar-chomp­ing detec­tive, Bunk More­land, or Wen­dell Pierce, who has land­ed many juicy roles of his own, both pre- and post-Wire. (Here, play­ing a wiseass, cig­ar-chomp­ing wom­an­iz­er.) Adapt­ed and direct­ed by author and film­mak­er Book­er T. Mat­ti­son, the short film debuted on Show­time in 2001.

The sto­ry is an ear­ly exam­ple of Hurston’s genius, writ­ten four years before the pub­li­ca­tion of her break­out nov­el Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God and two years before her ground­break­ing study of African-Amer­i­can folk­lore, Mules and Men. Pub­lished in the influ­en­tial lit­er­ary mag­a­zine Sto­ry—which also served as an impor­tant venue for writ­ers like J.D. Salinger and Richard Wright—“The Gild­ed Six-Bits” so impressed the magazine’s edi­tor that he asked Hurston if she had a nov­el in progress. She didn’t, but told him she did, and imme­di­ate­ly began work on Jonah’s Gourd Vine, pub­lished the fol­low­ing year. A sto­ry of infi­deli­ty and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, “The Gild­ed Six-Bits” fea­tures char­ac­ters and a set­ting famil­iar to Hurston readers—ordinary African-Amer­i­cans caught up in the tra­vails of rur­al life in the Jim Crow South. But as in all of her work, the seem­ing sim­plic­i­ty of her char­ac­ters and lan­guage slow­ly reveal com­pli­cat­ed truths about the nature of lan­guage, mar­riage, sex­u­al­i­ty, and mon­ey. And few could bring her char­ac­ters to life bet­ter than your favorite Wire actors.

Find more films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing the Bawdy Prison Blues Song “Uncle Bud” (1940)

Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing Tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can Folk Song “Mule on the Mount” (1939)

An Art­ful, Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to The Wire, Cre­at­ed by a Fan of the Crit­i­cal­ly-Acclaimed TV Series

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

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The First Masterpieces of Abstract Film: Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21 (1921) & Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale (1924)

in Film | March 21st, 2016

Paint­ing, as any Art His­to­ry 101 lec­tur­er will tell you, found the moti­va­tion to turn abstract when pho­tog­ra­phy trumped it in the game of life­like rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But what push­es pho­tog­ra­phy, and even motion pic­tures, to give abstrac­tion a try? The vast major­i­ty of films made today still rep­re­sent real­i­ty in some basi­cal­ly direct fash­ion, but almost since the first appear­ance of the medi­um, cer­tain artists have tried to push it in oth­er direc­tions. If you know the work of only one abstract film­mak­er, you prob­a­bly know the work of Stan Brakhage, crafts­man of such vivid and dis­tressed cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ences as Cat’s Cra­dle and Dog Star Man. But who pre­ced­ed him?

The title of the very first abstract film­mak­er has been dis­put­ed, but we at least know who made sev­er­al ear­ly abstract mas­ter­pieces. Today we present two of them, Hans Richter’s Rhyth­mus 21, made in 1921, and from three years lat­er, Viking Eggeling’s Sym­phonie Diag­o­nale. “Clock­ing in at just over three min­utes, it’s a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture from the news­reels, romances, cliff-hang­ers, and pen­ny-dread­fuls that made up the bulk of film pro­duc­tion in the ear­ly 20s,” writes the Get­ty’s Jan­non Stein of Richter’s hyp­not­i­cal­ly geo­met­ric pic­ture, “the first decade in which the film indus­try began to play a major eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al role around the world.”

But Richter, Stein con­tin­ues, “cred­it­ed his friend Viking Eggeling with the idea of explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties for abstract ani­ma­tion. In fact, they’d worked togeth­er on a series of paint­ings on scrolls that pre­ced­ed both of Richter’s first films, as well as Sym­phonie Diag­o­nale,” which you can watch just above. This ver­sion opens with an endorse­ment from no less dar­ing a mind than archi­tect-artist-the­o­reti­cian Fred­er­ick John Kiesler, who describes it as “the best abstract film yet con­ceived” and “an exper­i­ment to dis­cov­er the basic prin­ci­ples of the orga­ni­za­tion of time inter­vals in the film medi­um.” I, per­son­al­ly, would call it some­thing like a pure shot of the art-deco aes­thet­ic which we now know, of course, not from the film it pro­duced in the 20s, but the archi­tec­ture.

That may excite you or it may not, but words have nev­er quite suit­ed the abstract. If Richter, Eggeling, Brakhage, or any who came between them or have come after them share a mis­sion, that mis­sion involves mak­ing movies that no words can real­ly describe. Eggeling would pass on the year after Sym­phonie Diag­o­nale, but Richter would go on to a long life and career that includ­ed oth­er projects meant to take film beyond its con­ven­tion­al uses, such as 1947’s “sto­ry of dreams mixed with real­i­ty,” Dreams that Mon­ey Can Buy. Even now, in the 21st cen­tu­ry, it seems that the medi­um has a long way to go before it makes use of all the cre­ative space avail­able to it — which should only encour­age the next Richters and Eggelings of the world.

Sym­phonie Diag­o­nale and Rhyth­mus 21 will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

CBS Evening News with Wal­ter Cronkite Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Under­ground Films and the Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

Un Chien Andalou: Revis­it­ing Buñuel and Dalí’s Sur­re­al­ist Film

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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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Why Do People Talk Funny in Old Movies?, or The Origin of the Mid-Atlantic Accent

in English Language, Film, History | March 18th, 2016

“The first thing to notice about movies made in the clas­sic Hol­ly­wood stu­dio era,” writes New York­er film crit­ic Richard Brody, “from the twen­ties through the fifties, is the still­ness of the actors — not a sta­t­ic, micro­phone-bound stand-and-deliv­er the­atri­cal­i­ty but a lack of fid­geti­ness even while in motion, a self-mas­tery that pre­cludes uncon­trolled or inci­den­tal ges­tures,” an act­ing style reflec­tive of the fact, Brody sus­pects, that “Amer­i­can peo­ple of the era real­ly were more tight­ly con­trolled, more repressed by the gen­er­al expec­ta­tion of pub­lic deco­rum and expres­sive restraint.”

This has made it tough for film­mak­ers (in the case of Brody’s piece, Paul Thomas Ander­son mak­ing The Mas­ter, who pulled it off more con­vinc­ing­ly than any­one else in recent mem­o­ry) who want to do prop­er peri­od pieces set in those days: “even if styl­ists man­age to get the cloth­ing right, actors today — peo­ple today — have been raised by and large to let their emo­tions gov­ern their behav­ior,” and cur­rent actors “can hard­ly rep­re­sent the past with­out invest­ing it with the atti­tudes of our own day, which is why most new peri­od pieces seem either thin or unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic.”

They’d have an espe­cial­ly for­mi­da­ble task set out for them in speak­ing, with­out any appar­ent irony, in the mid-atlantic accent, just as much a fix­ture of clas­sic Hol­ly­wood act­ing as that phys­i­cal self-mas­tery. Even if you haven’t heard its name, you’ve heard the accent, which gets exam­ined in the How­Stuff­Works video at the top of the post “Why Do Peo­ple in Old Movies Talk Weird?” The “old-timey voice” you hear in news­reels from movies like His Girl Fri­day (watch it online here) and fig­ures like Katharine Hep­burn, Franklin D. Roo­sevelt, George Plimp­ton, and William F. Buck­ley, his­tor­i­cal­ly “the hall­mark of aris­to­crat­ic Amer­i­ca,” acquired, usu­al­ly in New Eng­land board­ing schools, as “an inter­na­tion­al norm for com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

The video points out its sig­nal qual­i­ties, from its “qua­si-British ele­ments” like a soft­en­ing of Rs to its “empha­sis on clipped, sharped Ts,” result­ing in a speech pat­tern that “isn’t com­plete­ly British, not com­plete­ly Amer­i­can” — one we can only place, in oth­er words, some­where in the mid-Atlantic ocean. The accent emerged as an opti­mal man­ner of speak­ing in “the ear­ly days of radio” when speak­ers could­n’t repro­duce bass vary well, and it van­ished not long after the Sec­ond World War, when teach­ers stopped pass­ing it along to their stu­dents. Has the time has come for the true iro­nists among us to bring it back?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Speech Accent Archive: The Eng­lish Accents of Peo­ple Who Speak 341 Dif­fer­ent Lan­guages

The Lin­guis­tics Behind Kevin Spacey’s South­ern Accent in House of Cards: A Quick Primer

Watch Meryl Streep Have Fun with Accents: Bronx, Pol­ish, Irish, Aus­tralian, Yid­dish & More

A Brief Tour of British Accents: 14 Ways to Speak Eng­lish in 84 Sec­onds

Peter Sell­ers Presents The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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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Watch David Bowie Star in His First Film Role, a Short Horror Flick Called The Image (1967)

in Film, Music | March 15th, 2016

Rock stars who became respect­ed actors… the pool is a small one, per­haps out­num­bered by the many musi­cians who have made less suc­cess­ful attempts at movie star­dom. But with­out a doubt, the for­mer cat­e­go­ry includes David Bowie. In his var­i­ous musi­cal guis­es, Bowie the cracked actor put to use the skills he honed for decades on movie after movie. Not every film is worth watch­ing, but near­ly every per­for­mance con­tains seeds of great­ness.

What you may not know is that Bowie the actor and Bowie the musi­cian grew up togeth­er. He had always been both, tak­ing his first film role in a short hor­ror flick, The Image, back in 1967, the same year he released his first, self-titled album. You can be for­giv­en for nev­er hear­ing about either. Nei­ther one made much of an impres­sion (and Bowie more or less dis­avowed the album). But the movie did have the rare dis­tinc­tion at the time of receiv­ing an X rat­ing. “I think it was the first short that got an X‑certificate,” says writer and direc­tor Michael Arm­strong, “for its vio­lence, which in itself was extra­or­di­nary.”

Tame by today’s stan­dards, the movie fea­tures 20-year-old Bowie as a paint­ing come to life. He got the part not because Armstrong—a fan of his first album—considered him “per­fect for the role. It was real­ly to give him a job.” Arm­strong described his star to The Wall Street Jour­nal as “very pret­ty” and “flir­ta­tious” and remem­bers Bowie’s impres­sive Elvis imper­son­ation. Bowie seems to have found the whole thing very fun­ny. On set, there were “a lot of issues with corpsing—bursting into laugh­ter dur­ing a take,” writes Metro.co.uk. When the film appeared in the­aters, view­ers expect­ed to see porn—not only because of its X‑rating but also because, writes Rolling Stone, it “briefly screened between two porn films at a Lon­don the­ater.” (The film’s star saw the movie by him­self in a the­ater filled with lone men in rain­coats.) Bowie, says Arm­strong, “thought it was hilar­i­ous.”

The Image has only recent­ly appeared online thanks to the WSJ, who received per­mis­sion from the David Bowie Archive to show it. You can watch the almost 14-minute film up top. (You can see a Youtube ver­sion below it.) Like Bowie’s first album, it may not her­ald the birth of a new star—his abil­i­ties as an actor may not have been ful­ly evi­dent until his first fea­ture-length star­ring part in The Man Who Fell to Earth. But as with music, so with act­ing: Bowie nev­er stopped work­ing at the craft, and the films that fell flat seemed only to inspire him to work hard­er and cre­ate even more ambi­tious char­ac­ters.

The Image will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The Wall Street Jour­nal/Metro

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

Hear Demo Record­ings of David Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust,” “Space Odd­i­ty” & “Changes”

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

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

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Who the F*@% is Frank Zappa?: Kickstart the Making of the Definitive Frank Zappa Documentary

in Film, Music | March 11th, 2016

You may know Alex Win­ter best for his role as Bill S. Pre­ston, Esq. in the 1989 film Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture. But nowa­days, many years lat­er, he’s mak­ing films. And if we can help out, he’ll soon be mak­ing the defin­i­tive doc­u­men­tary of Frank Zap­pa’s life.

On Kick­starter this week, Win­ter announced:

Frank Zap­pa is one of the strangest, most amaz­ing and influ­en­tial fig­ures of our era, but his defin­i­tive sto­ry has nev­er been told.

Now, for the first time, the Zap­pas have giv­en us com­plete, unre­strict­ed access to the con­tents of Frank’s pri­vate vault, and their full bless­ing and sup­port, to tell his sto­ry.

But before we can fin­ish telling his sto­ry, we have to cat­a­log, save, dig­i­tize, and pre­serve a vast archive of unre­leased audio, video, images, doc­u­ments and more.

Togeth­er we can save Frank’s vault.

And when we do, we’ll have every­thing we need to answer the ques­tion:

Who the F*@% is Frank Zap­pa?

Just a few days into the Kick­starter cam­paign, Win­ter has already raised rough­ly half ($231,000) of the total amount ($500,000) need­ed to move for­ward with the project.

Through con­tri­bu­tions large or small, you can help with the oth­er half, and make sure that the defin­i­tive Zap­pa doc­u­men­tary sees the light of day. Con­tribute here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 82 Hours of Frank Zap­pa Music: Free Playlists of Songs He Com­posed & Per­formed

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

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Charlie Chaplin Gets Strapped into a Dystopian “Rube Goldberg Machine,” a Frightful Commentary on Modern Capitalism

in Comics/Cartoons, Film, Technology | March 7th, 2016

I get into a lot of con­ver­sa­tions these days about how we used to con­sid­er tech­no­log­i­cal progress good by def­i­n­i­tion, but now — despite or maybe because of the far­ther-pro­gressed-than-ever state of our tech­nol­o­gy — we feel a bit wary about it all. We line up for the lat­est smart­phone, but as we do we reflect upon how it increas­ing­ly looks we’ll nev­er line up for the jet­packs, fly­ing cars, and moon colonies we dreamed of in child­hood. We enjoy our phones, but we resent them as well, remem­ber­ing those long-ago assur­ances that tech­nol­o­gy would increase our leisure, not fill it with anx­i­ety about insuf­fi­cient­ly rapid respons­es, nag­ging left­over work, and missed-out-on infor­ma­tion of every kind. When did the trust between our tech and our­selves break down?

Not so recent­ly, it turns out — or rather, not just recent­ly. The human-tech­nol­o­gy rela­tion­ship goes through its good times and its bad patch­es, and at any giv­en time some of us like the direc­tion its progress looks to be mov­ing in more than oth­ers do. You may have heard of one par­tic­u­lar­ly well-known tech­no­log­i­cal crit­ic of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, a car­toon­ist by the name of Rube Gold­berg. More like­ly, you’ve heard of the pre­pos­ter­ous­ly elab­o­rate machines he drew in his car­toons.

One rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ple, an “auto­mat­ic sui­cide device for unlucky stock spec­u­la­tors,” involves the ring of a phone (“prob­a­bly a mes­sage from your bro­ker say­ing you are wiped out”) which wakes up a doz­ing office man­ag­er whose stretch­ing hits a lever which launch­es a toy glid­er which hits a dwarf whose jump­ing up and down in pain works a jack which lifts up a pig to the lev­el of a pota­to, and when he eats the pota­to… well, in any case, the process ends up, some time lat­er, pulling the trig­ger of a gun mount­ed right over the tick­er­tape machine. “If the tele­phone call is not from your bro­ker,” Gold­berg notes, you’ll nev­er find out the mis­take because you’ll be dead any­way.

“The sur­re­al­ism of Goldberg’s car­toon inven­tions,” writes Bren­dan O’Con­nor at The Verge, while meant to enter­tain, “also reveals a dark skep­ti­cism of the era in which they were made. The machines were sym­bols, Gold­berg wrote, of ‘man’s capac­i­ty for exert­ing max­i­mum effort to accom­plish min­i­mal results.’ ” They had a strong appeal in that “era of increas­ing automa­tion, and increas­ing con­cern about automa­tion, exem­pli­fied in Char­lie Chaplin’s 1936 mas­ter­piece Mod­ern Times. One of the film’s dystopi­an curiosi­ties, the Bil­lows Feed­ing Machine, invent­ed by Mr. J. Wid­de­combe Bil­lows, has a dis­tinct­ly Rube Gold­ber­gian qual­i­ty to it — this is like­ly no coin­ci­dence, as Gold­berg and Chap­lin were friends.”

In the clip at the top, we see the Bil­lows Feed­ing Machine in action, not quite ful­fill­ing its promise to “elim­i­nate the lunch hour, increase your pro­duc­tion, and decrease your over­head.” The dis­ap­point­ed high­er-ups ren­der their ver­dict: “It’s no good — it isn’t prac­ti­cal.” A mod­ern-day J. Wid­de­combe Bil­lows would know bet­ter how to respond to them: it’s still in beta.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Falling Water: A Rube Gold­berg Machine That Makes a Fine Cock­tail

Stu­dents Tells the Passover Sto­ry with a Rube Gold­berg Machine

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

Three Great Films Star­ring Char­lie Chap­lin, the True Icon of Silent Com­e­dy

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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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A Complete Collection of Wes Anderson Video Essays

in Film | March 4th, 2016

What with the lav­ish atten­tion he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors pay to art, design, cos­tum­ing, fram­ing, com­po­si­tion, and edit­ing — and espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the pains he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors take to ref­er­ence and adapt pieces of the art of cin­e­ma that came before them — who does it sur­prise that Wes Ander­son become such a fruit­ful sub­ject for video essay­ists? His films, from the hum­ble fea­ture debut Bot­tle Rock­et and sopho­more break­out Rush­more to more recent exten­sions of his project like Moon­rise King­dom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, can seem made espe­cial­ly for cinephiles handy with Final Cut to take apart, and put back togeth­er again.

“I will NOT be doing a Wes Ander­son video essay,” says Tony Zhou, cre­ator of the video essay series Every Frame a Paint­ing. “The mar­ket is sat­u­rat­ed and I have noth­ing to add.” Those who have enjoyed Zhou’s astute break­downs of the work of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, Michael Bay, Edgar Wright, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, David Finch­er, Buster Keaton, and the Coen Broth­ers (as well as the use and abuse of his home­town of Van­cou­ver) pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here might con­sid­er that a shame. But he has put togeth­er a list of all the oth­er video essay­ists’ work on Ander­son, which includes Matt Zoller Seitz’s thir­teen pieces:


Bot­tle Rock­et
Rush­more
The Roy­al Tenen­baums
The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou
The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed
Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox
Moon­rise King­dom
The Grand Budapest Hotel

[Note: All of the videos above are gath­ered here in one place.]

Wes Ander­son: The Sub­stance of Style (five parts)

And Zhou’s list fea­tures video essays from oth­er cre­ators:

Kog­o­na­da

Wes Ander­son // Cen­tered
Wes Ander­son // From Above

Jaume R. Lloret
Wes Ander­son // Vehi­cles

Rishi Kane­r­ia
Red & Yel­low: A Wes Ander­son Super­cut

Paul Waters
Wes Ander­son: A Mini Doc­u­men­tary

Way Too Indie
Mise en Scène & The Visu­al Themes of Wes Ander­son

Zhou also includes three in-depth blog posts by film schol­ar David Bor­d­well on Ander­son­’s shot-con­scious­ness, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Moon­rise King­dom. “Now, nev­er ask me about Wes Ander­son again,” hav­ing already re-empha­sized that he does not, in any case, take video essay requests. But if you’d like to con­tin­ue see­ing him make video essays on whichev­er sub­jects he does choose going for­ward, have a look at Every Frame a Paint­ing’s Patre­on page to find out how you can sup­port his always-stim­u­lat­ing exam­i­na­tions of nev­er-Ander­son auteurs.

(And if you still can’t do with­out more Ander­son, spend some time with the relat­ed con­tent below.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

What’s the Big Deal About Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel? Matt Zoller Seitz’s Video Essay Explains

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

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

Watch a Super Cut of Wes Anderson’s Sig­na­ture Slo-Mo Shots

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

Books in the Films of Wes Ander­son: A Super­cut for Bib­lio­philes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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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American History: An Off-Kilter 1992 Student Film from South Park Creator Trey Parker

in Animation, Film, History, Television | March 4th, 2016

Here’s a lit­tle exer­cise:

Spend five min­utes record­ing your­self recap­ping every­thing you know about Japan­ese his­to­ry.

(Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies majors and Japan­ese cit­i­zens, please sit this one out.)

Most of us will wind up with a pas­tiche that’s heavy on pop cul­ture and rel­a­tive­ly recent events. The aver­age Japan­ese school­child should have no dif­fi­cul­ty iden­ti­fy­ing the glar­ing holes and fac­tu­al errors in our nar­ra­tives.

If this idea amus­es you, you’ll like­ly enjoy Amer­i­can His­to­ry, above, South Park cre­ator Trey Park­er’s ear­ly ani­mat­ed short, a 1993 Stu­dent Acad­e­my Award sil­ver medal­ist.

Parker’s Japan­ese-born Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado class­mate, Junichi Nishimu­ra, pro­vid­ed the nar­ra­tion, begin­ning with Christo­pher Colum­bus in 1492 and end­ing with the “Japan bash­ing” 41st pres­i­dent, George H.W. Bush. High­lights along the way include the Salem Witch Tri­als, the Boston Tea Par­ty, the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dents Lin­coln and Kennedy, Leave It to Beaver, and that time Bush barfed at a state din­ner host­ed by Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Kiichi Miyaza­wa.

He also remem­bers the Alamo, prov­ing one Red­dit wag’s hypoth­e­sis: If there’s one thing peo­ple remem­ber about the Alamo, it is to remem­ber the Alamo…

And then….

Park­er and anoth­er class­mate, Chris Graves, his soon-to-be DP on Can­ni­bal: The Musi­cal, ani­mat­ed the results using the most rudi­men­ta­ry of paper cut outs. It’s easy to spot the fledg­ling South Park style, as well as Python ani­ma­tor Ter­ry Gilliam’s influ­ence. This may be Amer­i­can his­to­ry, but the anony­mous top hat­ted hordes bear an awful­ly close resem­blance to South Park’s res­i­dent Cana­di­ans, Ter­rance and Phillip.

If the pho­net­ic spellings of non-native speak­er Nishimura’s pro­nun­ci­a­tion makes you uncom­fort­able, it’s worth not­ing that he not only worked as an ani­ma­tor on South Park, but also rep­re­sent­ed his coun­try by play­ing “Pres­i­dent” Hiro­hi­to on the extreme­ly fun­ny (and NSFW) “Chin­pokomon” episode.

Amer­i­can His­to­ry will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion,

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Zen Wis­dom of Alan Watts Ani­mat­ed by the Cre­ators of South Park, Trey Park­er and Matt Stone

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Read her most recent dra­ma-in-real com­ic on Nar­ra­tive­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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