Photos of Hiroshima by Hiroshima Mon Amour Star Emmanuelle Riva (1958)

in Film, History, Photography | October 14th, 2014

hiroshima mon amour pix

Hiroshi­ma Mon Amour, Alain Resnais’s land­mark 1960 med­i­ta­tion on war and mem­o­ry, was Emmanuelle Riva’s first star­ring role. She plays a mar­ried actress (catch a scene here) who, while mak­ing a movie in Japan, has an affair with a Japan­ese archi­tect played by Eiji Oka­da. Screen­writer Mar­guerite Duras chis­els away at the actress’s Gal­lic reserve over the course of the film as mem­o­ries of the war, not to men­tion guilt over the affair, over­whelm her. Resnais lingers on Riva’s face as she comes apart. Her per­for­mance is as brave as it is exact. French film crit­ic Jean Domarchi once stat­ed, “Hiroshi­ma is a doc­u­men­tary on Emmanuelle Riva.”

HMA 2

As it turns out, Riva was doc­u­ment­ing Hiroshi­ma too. While film­ing on loca­tion, she took a series of pho­tographs of every­day life of a city still recov­er­ing from the war. They are a fas­ci­nat­ing slice of life from a Japan that has long dis­ap­peared. The Hiroshi­ma Riva cap­tured was still dom­i­nat­ed by dirt roads and wood­en build­ings. Peo­ple still reg­u­lar­ly wore tra­di­tion­al geta wood­en shoes.

hma 3

Chil­dren seemed to be a favorite sub­ject for Riva. She pho­tographs a flock of ele­men­tary school stu­dents walk­ing to school; a pair of boys fish­ing before the gen­baku dome – ground zero for the bomb; and a gag­gle of kids star­ing agog into the lens, no doubt curi­ous at the sight of a styl­ish French woman with an expen­sive cam­era.

hma 4

Years lat­er, Riva’s pic­tures were col­lect­ed into a book called Hiroshi­ma 1958, which, sad­ly, seems to be avail­able only in Japan. Riva, of course, went on to a cel­e­brat­ed act­ing career, includ­ing an Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed turn in Michael Haneke’s har­row­ing love sto­ry Amour.

hma 5via RocketNews24

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Alain Resnais’ Short, Evoca­tive Film Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

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

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Quentin Tarantino Directs a 1995 Episode of ER: Brings Cinematic Virtuosity to TV

in Film, Television | October 13th, 2014

Just as no list of the most 1990s-defin­ing film­mak­ers could do with­out Quentin Taran­ti­no, no list of the most 1990s-defin­ing tele­vi­sion shows could do with­out ER. The long-run­ning, award-laden med­ical dra­ma made more than a few dar­ing moves over its fif­teen years, not least its choic­es of guest direc­tors. Ear­ly in its very first sea­son (which pre­miered a month before the release of Pulp Fic­tion), ER snagged Taran­ti­no to direct the episode “Moth­er­hood,” which aired on May 11, 1995 — three days before Moth­er’s Day. “The rat­ings for ER, which are usu­al­ly through the roof, should be through the moon tonight,” wrote the Bal­ti­more Sun’s David Zurawik, “And there is enough Taran­ti­no to war­rant a bit of a buzz. One weird scene involv­ing a fight between female gang mem­bers as they are being wheeled into the emer­gency room might even be con­sid­ered inspired when judged against the usu­al stan­dards of doc­tor dra­ma. But be warned: It’s ultra-bloody.”

That quote comes from a roundup of con­tem­po­rary write-ups of the episode at Chrono­log­i­cal Snob­bery, which gets into impres­sive detail on the sto­ry behind, the plot of, the hype sur­round­ing, and the Taran­tin­ian imagery in “Moth­er­hood,” and it also offers a brief inter­view with for­mer child actor Abra­ham Ver­duz­co, who “played Palmer, one of the eight Ranger Scouts with diar­rhea.” Taran­ti­no fans of the type who would fre­quent the Quentin Taran­ti­no Archive will have rec­og­nized Ver­duz­co from his ear­li­er appear­ance in Robert Rodriguez’s Taran­ti­no-fea­tur­ing Des­per­a­do. “The episode boasts the usu­al inter­twined sto­ries of bleed­ing gang­sters, rela­tion­ship trou­ble, fam­i­ly dra­ma, preg­nan­cies, drug abuse and for­bid­den love,” says the QTA. “What makes this episode so inter­est­ing to Taran­ti­no fans are all the QT trade­marks that one can spot through the episode.” Some of these, aside from a pen­chant for vin­tage shades (“Quentin picked out the sun­glass­es and was adamant we wear them,” said actress Julian­na Mar­guiles), include:

  • Dr. Lewis wears a Yosemite Sam t‑shirt
  • Pulp Fic­tion’s Angela Jones appears as Michelle
  • A Bea­t­les song (“Black­bird”) accom­pa­nies a birth
  • The Ranger Scouts act like the Three Stooges, and Dr. Carter calls the con­stel­la­tion of the stars by the names Moe, Lar­ry, and Curly
  • A girl cuts anoth­er girl’s ear off

And a more than bit of cin­e­mat­ic vir­tu­os­i­ty comes right up front in the form of the episode’s much-dis­cussed (as recent­ly as last week, on Metafil­ter) sin­gle-take open­ing. You can see a cou­ple seg­ments of the episode right here, and for the whole thing — not to men­tion video qual­i­ty supe­ri­or to that which you get above, and for which we apol­o­gize — you need only to find disc four of the ER sea­son one DVD col­lec­tion. It makes me wish 1990s tele­vi­sion had done as much to bring auteurs into the fold at 21st-cen­tu­ry tele­vi­sion has; what I would­n’t give for a Hal Hart­ley-direct­ed episode of Sein­feld, say, or a Kevin Smith X‑Files.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

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

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The Empire Strikes Back Uncut: A New Fan-Made, Shot-for-Shot Remake of the 1980 Sci-Fi Classic

in Film, Sci Fi | October 11th, 2014

In 2010, devot­ed Star Wars fans released Star Wars Uncut, a mashup, scene-by-scene remake of the very first Star Wars movie.

Now comes The Empire Strikes Back Uncut. Here’s the gist:

With more than 480 fan-made seg­ments culled from over 1,500 sub­mis­sions, The Empire Strikes Back Uncut (also known as ESB Uncut) fea­tures a stun­ning mash-up of styles and film­mak­ing tech­niques, includ­ing live action, ani­ma­tion, and stop-motion. The project launched in 2013, with fans claim­ing 15-sec­ond scenes to reimag­ine as they saw fit – result­ing in sequences cre­at­ed with every­thing from action fig­ures to card­board props to stun­ning visu­al effects. Helmed by Casey Pugh, who over­saw 2010’s Emmy-win­ning Star Wars Uncut, the new film has a won­der­ful home­made charm, stands as an affec­tion­ate trib­ute to The Empire Strikes Back, and is a tes­ta­ment to the tal­ent, imag­i­na­tion, and ded­i­ca­tion of Star Wars fans.

ESB Uncut was just released yes­tery, right in time for the week­end. Below we have some more cre­ative takes on the Star Wars films to keep you enter­tained.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars Gets Dubbed into Nava­jo: a Fun Way to Pre­serve and Teach a Fad­ing Lan­guage

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1000 Frames of Hitchcock: See Each of Alfred Hitchcock’s 52 Films Reduced to 1,000 Artistic Frames

in Film | October 9th, 2014

psycho frames

Some direc­tors like John Cas­savetes and Wong Kar-wai like to dis­cov­er the movie as they are mak­ing it. Oth­ers film­mak­ers have a very clear con­cep­tion of the movie right from the begin­ning. Alfred Hitch­cock was very much in that lat­ter cat­e­go­ry. “Once the screen­play is fin­ished, I’d just as soon not make the film at all,” he once told Roger Ebert. “I have a strong­ly visu­al mind. I visu­alise a pic­ture right down to the final cuts.” And that is very much evi­dent in the final prod­uct. From the famous Psy­cho show­er scene to a wild-eyed Jim­my Stew­art dan­gling from a ledge in Ver­ti­go to Cary Grant being men­aced by a crop duster in North By North­west, Hitch­cock has pro­duced some of the most mem­o­rable, arrest­ing images of the 20th Cen­tu­ry.

British artist Dave Pat­tern set out to high­light Hitch’s visu­al genius with his 1000 Frames of Hitch­cock series, which com­press­es each of Hitchcock’s 52 major movies down to a mere 1000 frames. That’s about six sec­onds of run­ning time.

“It all start­ed when in 2003 I made a web­site that tries to gath­er infor­ma­tion about Hitch­cock DVD releas­es over the world,” Pat­tern told Dan­ish movie mag­a­zine Echo. “The qual­i­ty of the pub­li­ca­tions are very dif­fer­ent from coun­try to coun­try. It sort of snow­balled from there.”

the birds

What’s amaz­ing about this project is just how much of the movie comes through in this great­ly abbre­vi­at­ed, sound­less ver­sion. You com­plete­ly under­stand that Tip­pi Hedren is get­ting ter­ror­ized by an implaca­ble ene­my in The Birds. You don’t even need to see that malev­o­lent mur­der of crows. You can see it just in her face. At the begin­ning of the movie, she’s ele­gant, aloof and per­fect­ly com­posed. At the end of the film, she’s unkempt, bloody and bro­ken. Hitchcock’s creepy sex­u­al pol­i­tics and his famous­ly unwhole­some obses­sion with blondes shines through here.

north by northwest frames

What is utter­ly appar­ent in this project – and some­thing you might miss while watch­ing the movie — is Hitchcock’s com­plete con­trol of col­or. The palette of The Birds (mid­dle image) is dom­i­nat­ed by the col­or green, from Hedren’s out­fit to the col­or of a pick­up truck to the hue of the hills. North By North­west (bot­tom), by con­trast, is com­posed most­ly of beige and slate blue. Click on the images to view them in a larg­er for­mat.

Below, you can check out all the movies, each dis­tilled down to 1,000 frames. And, if you’re inspired to dive deep into the works of the Mas­ter of Sus­pense, you can watch 23 of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s movies for free here.

 

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Wes Anderson’s Animated Books

in Film | October 8th, 2014

It was 2012, and Focus Fea­tures flew me and about three dozen oth­er jour­nal­ists to inter­view Wes Ander­son for his lat­est movie Moon­rise King­dom right on the beach at Cannes. Though the day was hot enough to pro­duce more than a few leath­ery top­less sun­bathers, Ander­son wore the exact ‘80s-style beige cor­duroy suit you might expect him to wear. Just like his eccen­tric, iron­ic — and giv­en the set­ting, uncom­fort­able — sar­to­r­i­al choic­es, Anderson’s movies are dis­tinc­tive from frame one. He is Hollywood’s cur­rent reign­ing for­mal­ist.

Moon­rise King­dom is prob­a­bly his most suc­cess­ful recent movie. Though the film is filled with his trade­mark sym­met­ri­cal fram­ing, dead­pan set design and off-kil­ter jux­ta­po­si­tions, the film nev­er feels like self-par­o­dy, unlike some of his pre­vi­ous movies — think Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. Set on the remote New Pen­zance Island in 1965, Moon­rise is about a star-crossed pre-teen love affair between Sam, a pre­co­cious bespec­ta­cled boy scout in a coon­skin cap, and Suzy, a trou­bled teen who favors sad­dle shoes, rac­coon-like eye make­up and above all books. Before she steals away into the woods with Sam, she stuffs her suit­case with six of her favorite (fic­ti­tious) books, all swiped from the local library.

Ander­son fea­tures the books promi­nent­ly in the movie, giv­ing them titles like The Girl from Jupiter or Dis­ap­pear­ance of the 6th Grade. Each book was designed by artists that Ander­son per­son­al­ly com­mis­sioned. Though Suzy reads parts from three of the books in the film, Ander­son orig­i­nal­ly had a much grander vision: “At one point in the process, when she’s read­ing these pas­sages from these books,” he told Enter­tain­ment Week­ly. “I’d thought about going into ani­ma­tion.” The film­mak­er had just com­plet­ed his stop­mo­tion movie The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox; clear­ly, ani­ma­tion was on Anderson’s mind.

Ulti­mate­ly, Ander­son decid­ed against this approach, but the idea still appar­ent­ly intrigued him. So here it is as a pro­mo­tion­al piece for Moon­rise. In the span of six weeks, blind­ing­ly fast for ani­ma­tion, Ander­son and his pro­duc­er Jere­my Daw­son man­aged to ani­mate pas­sages from all six books – writ­ten by the film­mak­er – in the style of the book cov­ers. The video is host­ed by Bob Bal­a­ban who played the Moon­rise King­dom’s tuque-sport­ing nar­ra­tor.

“I think we all just pitched in and we pulled a lot of favors because it was not like we spent a ton of mon­ey doing it,” said Daw­son to EW. “Peo­ple got excit­ed about it because it was a cre­ative thing rather than if they were mak­ing a Snick­ers ad or some­thing.”

You can see the results above.

Via Enter­tain­ment Week­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films: Moon­struck, Rosemary’s Baby, and Luis Buñuel’s The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

in Education, Film, Literature, Poetry | October 6th, 2014

marilyn reading

If you’re a read­er and user of social media, you’ve like­ly test­ed your life­time read­ing list against the BBC Book Quiz.

Or per­haps you’ve allowed your worth as a read­er to be deter­mined by the num­ber of Pulitzer Prize win­ners you’ve made it through.

The Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts’ Big Read, any­one?

The 142 Books that Every Stu­dent of Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture Should Read?

The 50 Best Dystopi­an Nov­els?

Being young is no excuse! Not when the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion pub­lish­es an annu­al list of Out­stand­ing Books for the Col­lege Bound and Life­long Learn­ers.

So… how’d you do? Or should I say how’d you do in com­par­i­son to Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe? The online Mon­roe fan club Ever­last­ing Star used pho­tographs, inter­views, and a Christie’s auc­tion cat­a­logue to come up with a list of more than 400 books in her pos­ses­sion.

Did she read them all? I don’t know. Have you read every sin­gle title on your shelves? (There’s a Japan­ese word for those books. It’s Tsun­doku.)

Fem­i­nist biog­ra­ph­er Oline Eaton has a great rant on her Find­ing Jack­ie blog about the phrase “Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing,” and the 5,610,000 search engine results it yields when typed into Google:

There is, with­in Monroe’s image, a deeply root­ed assump­tion that she was an idiot, a vul­ner­a­ble and kind and lov­ing and ter­ri­bly sweet idiot, but an idiot nonethe­less. That is the assump­tion in which ‘Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing’ is entan­gled.

The pow­er of the phrase Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing’ lies in its appli­ca­tion to Mon­roe and in our assump­tion that she wouldn’t know how.

Would that every­one search­ing that phrase did so in the belief that her pas­sion for the print­ed word rivaled their own. Imag­ine legions of geeks lov­ing her for her brain, bypass­ing Sam Shaw’s icon­ic sub­way grate pho­to in favor of home print­ed pin ups depict­ing her with book in hand.

Com­mem­o­ra­tive postage stamps are nice, but per­haps a more fit­ting trib­ute would be an ALA poster. Like Eaton, when I look at that image of Mar­i­lyn hunched over James Joyce’s Ulysses (or kick­ing back read­ing Walt Whit­man’s Leaves of Grass), I don’t see some­one try­ing to pass her­self off as some­thing she’s not. I see a high school dropout caught in the act of edu­cat­ing her­self. If I saw it taped to a library shelf embla­zoned with the word “READ,” I might just sum­mon the resolve to take a stab at Ulysses myself. (I know how it ends, but that’s about it.)

See below, dear read­ers. Apolo­gies that we’re not set up to keep track of your score for you, but please let us know in the com­ments sec­tion if you’d hearti­ly sec­ond any of Mar­i­lyn’s titles, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are less­er known or have fad­ed from the pub­lic view.

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Read­ing Chal­lenge

(Thanks to Book Tryst for com­pil­ing Ever­last­ing Star’s find­ings)

1) Let’s Make Love by Matthew Andrews (nov­el­iza­tion of the movie)

2) How To Trav­el Incog­ni­to by Lud­wig Bemel­mans

3) To The One I Love Best by Lud­wig Bemel­mans

4) Thurber Coun­try by James Thurber

5) The Fall by Albert Camus

6) Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe by George Car­pozi

7) Camille by Alexan­der Dumas

8) Invis­i­ble Man by Ralph Elli­son

9) The Boston Cook­ing-School Cook Book by Fan­nie Mer­ritt-Farmer

10) The Great Gats­by by F Scott Fitzger­ald

11) From Rus­sia With Love by Ian Flem­ing

12) The Art Of Lov­ing by Erich Fromm

13) The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran

14) Ulysses by James Joyce

15) Stoned Like A Stat­ue: A Com­plete Sur­vey Of Drink­ing Clich­es, Prim­i­tive, Clas­si­cal & Mod­ern by Howard Kan­del & Don Safran, with an intro by Dean Mar­tin (a man who knew how to drink!)

16) The Last Temp­ta­tion Of Christ by Nikos Kazantza­kis

17) On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac

18) Select­ed Poems by DH Lawrence

19 and 20) Sons And Lovers by DH Lawrence (2 edi­tions)

21) The Portable DH Lawrence (more…)

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Open Culture Picks Our 10 Avant-Garde Favorites on Ubuweb: Joyce, Borges, Sontag, Wittgenstein & More

in Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy | October 2nd, 2014

samuelbeckett-ubuweb

If you know about Open Cul­ture, sure­ly you know about Ubuweb. If you don’t, its slo­gan says almost every­thing you need to know about it: “All Avant-Garde. All the Time.” This vast online repos­i­to­ry of cut­ting-edge cul­tur­al arti­facts from a vari­ety of eras also adheres stead­fast­ly to the prin­ci­ple of keep­ing all of its mate­r­i­al free: free in the sense of charg­ing you noth­ing to read, hear or view it, and free in the sense that you can do what­ev­er you want with it. Need­less to say, the site, found­ed by poet Ken­neth Gold­smith in 1996, has made many fans, and Ubuweb itself has tapped quite a few of the high­er-pro­file ones to curate top ten lists. Assem­bled by peo­ple like New York­er music crit­ic Alex Ross, nov­el­ists Hari Kun­zru and Rick Moody, alter­na-pop star Nick “Momus” Cur­rie, these help the poten­tial­ly (and under­stand­ably) bewil­dered find their way through the trove of Ubuwe­b’s media, which is uni­ver­sal­ly influ­en­tial and van­ish­ing­ly obscure, vis­cer­al­ly trans­gres­sive and ver­tig­i­nous­ly intel­lec­tu­al, eter­nal­ly excit­ing and delib­er­ate­ly bor­ing.

This month, Ubuweb called upon our fear­less edi­tor here at Open Cul­ture for a top ten list. Most of the picks have been pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on OC. The list runs as fol­lows:

1. Finnegans Wake (1939), Read by Patrick Healy
Open Cul­ture: Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Read­ing

“The sheer plea­sure one can derive — con­ven­tion­al expec­ta­tions duly set aside — from the almost tac­tile qual­i­ty of Joyce’s prose, its earthy, ancient, elven sounds, seems more to the point of appre­ci­at­ing this odd, frus­trat­ing work. Per­haps, like any well-writ­ten poem, one sim­ply needs to hear it read aloud. Joyce him­self said so, and so you can.”

2. The Craft of Verse: Jorge Luis Borges’ Nor­ton Lec­tures, 1967–68
Open Cul­ture: Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

“Near­ing both 70 years of age and total blind­ness, Borges nonethe­less gives a vir­tu­osi­cal­ly wide-rang­ing series of talks, freely reach­ing across forms, coun­tries, eras, and lan­guages with­out the aid of notes. Enti­tled ‘This Craft of Verse,’ these lec­tures osten­si­bly deal with poet­ry. Alas, like many lit­er­ary geeks, I know too lit­tle of poet­ry, but if Borges can’t moti­vate you to learn more, who can?”

3. Three Rare Films by Susan Son­tag
Open Cul­ture: The Film­mak­ing of Susan Son­tag & Her 50 Favorite Films (1977)

“Son­tag, they say, ‘sought to lib­er­ate art from inter­pre­ta­tion (which is a bit iron­ic, of course, for some­one who was essen­tial­ly an exalt­ed crit­ic). When it came to her own film, she made some­thing that intend­ed to delib­er­ate­ly con­found the notion that there was any sort of under­ly­ing mean­ing beyond exact­ly what the audi­ence was see­ing on the screen direct­ly in front of them.’ ”

4.  M.A. Num­mi­nen Sings Wittgen­stein (1983 / 1989)
Open Cul­ture: Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus Gets Adapt­ed Into an Avant-Garde Com­ic Opera

“Giv­en the Trac­ta­tus’s fire­bomb­ing of an entire area of human endeav­or, it’s no sur­prise it hasn’t fared well in many tra­di­tion­al depart­ments, but that hasn’t stopped Wittgenstein’s work from find­ing pur­chase else­where, influ­enc­ing mod­ern artists like Jasper Johns, the Coen Broth­ers, and, not least sure­ly, Finnish avant garde com­pos­er and musi­cian M.A. Num­mi­nen. This odd char­ac­ter, who caused a stir in the 60s by set­ting sex guides to music, took it upon him­self to do the same for many of the Trac­ta­tus’s propo­si­tions, and the results are, well…. Lis­ten for your­self.”

5. Aldous Huxley’s Vision­ary Expe­ri­ence
Open Cul­ture: Aldous Hux­ley, Psy­che­delics Enthu­si­ast, Lec­tures About “the Vision­ary Expe­ri­ence” at MIT (1962)

“Hux­ley had already gained world­wide fame for his views on bet­ter liv­ing, which was some­times achieved, he believed, through psy­che­del­ic drugs. This might have already sound­ed like old hat in, say, the San Fran­cis­co of the late 1960s, let alone the 70s and onward, but in these record­ings Hux­ley says his piece in — I still can’t quite believe it — the MIT of the ear­ly 1960s. But diag­nosed a cou­ple years before with the can­cer that would claim his life the next, he had noth­ing to lose by spread­ing the word of his sub­stance-induced dis­cov­er­ies.”

6. Jacques Derrida’s Inter­view with Ornette Cole­man [PDF]
Open Cul­ture: Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

“Trans­lat­ing Coleman’s tech­nique into ‘a domain that I know bet­ter, that of writ­ten lan­guage,’ Der­ri­da ven­tures to com­pare impro­vi­sa­tion to read­ing, since it ‘doesn’t exclude the pre-writ­ten frame­work that makes it pos­si­ble.’ For him, the exis­tence of a framework—a writ­ten composition—even if only loose­ly ref­er­enced in a jazz per­for­mance, ‘com­pro­mis­es or com­pli­cates the con­cept of impro­vi­sa­tion.’ ”

7. Joey Ramone Sings a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “The Won­der­ful Wid­ow of Eigh­teen Springs,”
Open Cul­ture: Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

“Ramone’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the piece is enthralling sim­ply as a piece of record­ed music.  But it’s also a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of cul­tur­al his­to­ry, rep­re­sent­ing a con­flu­ence of the fore­most fig­ures in ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry mod­ernist lit­er­a­ture, mid-cen­tu­ry avant-garde music, and late cen­tu­ry punk rock.”

8. The Avant-Garde Project
Open Cul­ture: The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More

“Every sphere of record­ed music has its crate-dig­gers, those hap­py to flip through hun­dreds — nay, hun­dreds of thou­sands — of obscure, for­got­ten vinyl albums in search of their subgenre’s even obscur­er, more for­got­ten gems. This holds espe­cial­ly true, if not in num­ber than in avid­i­ty, for enthu­si­asts of the 20th-cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal-exper­i­men­tal-elec­troa­coustic tra­di­tion that The Avant-Garde Project takes as its preser­va­tion man­date.”

9. Alice Tok­las Reads Her Hashish Fudge Recipe
Open Cul­ture: Alice B. Tok­las Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

“In this 1963 record­ing from Paci­fi­ca Radio, Tok­las reads her noto­ri­ous recipe. The snack ‘might pro­vide an enter­tain­ing refresh­ment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chap­ter meet­ing of the DAR,’ Tok­las notes in her reedy, dig­ni­fied voice.”

10. Jean Bau­drillard Sings!
Open Cul­ture: Jean Bau­drillard Reads His Poet­ry, Backed By All-Star Arts Band (1996)

“Known to hip aca­d­e­m­ic types and avant-garde-ists, Bau­drillard’s maybe the kind of thinker who gets name-dropped more than read (and he’s no easy read). But in the audio clip above, he reads to us, from his poet­ry no less, while backed by the swirling abstract sounds of The Chance Band. It’s an odd, one-time, assem­blage of artists and thinkers Ubuweb describes as ‘unbe­liev­able but true!’ ”

If you’ve already seen every­thing on it, con­grat­u­la­tions: you can con­sid­er your­self a true, shall we say, OC OG.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Avant-Garde Media: The UbuWeb Col­lec­tion

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the 1913 Exhi­bi­tion That Intro­duced Avant-Garde Art to Amer­i­ca

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

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The Eyes of Hitchcock: A Mesmerizing Video Essay on the Expressive Power of Eyes in Hitchcock’s Films

in Film | October 1st, 2014

Kog­o­na­da has made a career of pro­duc­ing ele­gant­ly con­ceived video essays that dis­sect the styl­is­tic eccen­tric­i­ties of cinema’s great­est for­mal­ists. In one video, he neat­ly illus­trat­ed Wes Anderson’s love of sym­met­ri­cal com­po­si­tions. In anoth­er, he observed how fre­quent­ly Japan­ese mas­ter Yasu­jiro Ozu, a direc­tor with more styl­is­tic quirks than just about any­one else, pop­u­lat­ed his movies with shots of cor­ri­dors and door­ways. And, in per­haps his best, Kog­o­na­da shows just how often Stan­ley Kubrick relies on one-point per­spec­tive. Kogonada’s lat­est video, called The Eyes of Hitch­cock, explores how the direc­tor used facial expres­sions to con­vey sus­pense and fear. You can watch it above.

Alfred Hitch­cock once said, “There is no ter­ror in the bang, only in the antic­i­pa­tion of it.” This is a guy who direct­ed the great­est slash­er scene in movie his­to­ry – the show­er scene in Psy­cho — but famous­ly nev­er showed Nor­man Bates’s knife actu­al­ly stab­bing his vic­tim, Mar­i­on Crane. The hor­ror of the scene was con­veyed through actress Janet Leigh’s shocked expres­sion. Though direc­tors have always under­stood the pow­er of the face, Hitch­cock con­sis­tent­ly used facial expres­sions to car­ry a movie’s sus­pense. A person’s face relates pri­mal emo­tions much more effi­cient­ly than shots just of knives, guns or explo­sions. (Michael Bay, take note.)

For this video, Kog­o­na­da strings togeth­er expres­sions from Hitchcock’s vast oeu­vre, from Jim­my Stewart’s wild-eyed baby blues wak­ing up from a night­mare in Ver­ti­go, to Ingrid Bergman’s tear­ful, anx­ious look in Noto­ri­ous, to Nor­man Bates’s bat shit crazy death stare in Psy­cho. Hitch tend­ed to frame these moments in extreme close up with the eyes right in the mid­dle of the frame. Kog­o­na­da rolls back and forth on a cou­ple frames of these moments, giv­ing the video an oth­er­world­ly shim­mer, timed per­fect­ly with the music. It’s com­plete­ly mes­mer­iz­ing.

If you have a han­ker­ing to watch com­plete movies by the mas­ter, check out Open Culture’s list of 23 Hitch­cock Films. You can watch them right now, online, for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Lis­ten to François Truffaut’s Big, 12-Hour Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (1962)

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.