Saul Bass’ Vivid Storyboards for Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960)

in Film | February 6th, 2014

SpartacusStoryboards

Those who know the work of Stan­ley Kubrick know that the longer he made films, the more insis­tent­ly he demand­ed the best: the most flex­i­ble, var­ied mate­r­i­al to adapt to his cin­e­mat­ic meth­ods; the shots with the great­est impact among hun­dreds of takes each; the col­lab­o­ra­tors with the strongest and most use­ful visions, no mat­ter their depart­ment. That very need for high crafts­man­ship would, you’d think, have lead the direc­tor straight to the door of Saul Bass, the graph­ic design­er who lived and rose to emi­nence in his field dur­ing the same era that Kubrick lived and rose to emi­nence in his. They did work togeth­er on 1960’s Spar­ta­cus and 1980’s The Shin­ing, Kubrick­’s fifth and eleventh fea­tures, but as Empire’s fea­ture on Bass’ ear­ly work explains, “it wasn’t Stan­ley Kubrick who recruit­ed him to piece togeth­er Spartacus’s open­ing sequences.” Still, “Kubrick had been an admir­er of his fel­low New York­er from his ear­ly work with Otto Pre­minger,” pre­sum­ably includ­ing work like his still-strik­ing titles for The Man with the Gold­en Arm. 

spartacusstoryboarda

When Kubrick took a first look at Bass’ sto­ry­boards for Spar­ta­cus, as visu­al­ly vivid as any of his movies them­selves, he must have liked what he saw. Now you can exam­ine them too, both at Empire and at Fla­vor­wire’s col­lec­tion of “Awe­some Sto­ry­boards from 15 of Your Favorite Films.” Those of you who have watched Spar­ta­cus over and over again will rec­og­nize the look and feel sketched out (not that sketched sounds quite right for images of such a solid­i­ty unusu­al for sto­ry­boards) by Bass. But when the film and the draw­ing part ways, they do so because the plans actu­al­ly came out less elab­o­rate than the final prod­uct, not more. We see in the sto­ry­boards, as Empire says, “an ellip­ti­cal sequence with the cam­era lin­ger­ing on frag­ments of the fight­ing” with “a row of shields here, a skew­ered legionary there,” “but in those long-dis­tant days when bud­gets went up as well as down, it was scrapped in favor of just recre­at­ing the whole thing lock, stock and flam­ing bar­rel” — very much a Kubrick­ian way of doing things.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Impressions of Upper Mongolia : Salvador Dalí’s Last Film About a Search for a Giant Hallucinogenic Mushroom

in Art, Film, Literature | February 6th, 2014

Sal­vador Dalí and his fel­low sur­re­al­ists owed a great debt to the wealthy, dandy­ish French writer Ray­mond Rous­sel, as much as mod­ernist poets owed the Sym­bol­ist Jules Laforgue. But like Laforgue, Rous­sel is much more often ref­er­enced than read, and he isn’t ref­er­enced often. A her­met­ic, insu­lar writer who seems to belong to a pri­vate world almost entire­ly his own, Rous­sel despaired of his lack of suc­cess and com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1933. His aes­thet­ic prog­e­ny, on the oth­er hand— Dalí, Mar­cel Duchamp, André Bre­ton—were show­men, self-pro­mot­ers and media genius­es. So it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant, in the quirki­est of ways, that Dalí chose for his final film project a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jose Montes Baquer in 1976 called Impres­sions of Upper Mon­go­lia (“Impres­sions de la haute Mongolie”—above with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles), an homage to Roussel’s self-pub­lished 1910 nov­el Impres­sions of Africa.

Rous­sel, who trav­eled wide­ly, nev­er trav­eled to Africa, and his “impres­sions” are whol­ly cre­ations of the kind of word­play that Dalí made visu­al in his paint­ing (includ­ing a can­vas with Rous­sel’s title). Like Roussel’s nov­el, Impres­sions of Upper Mon­go­lia is a sur­re­al­ist fan­ta­sy with only the most ten­u­ous con­nec­tion to its osten­si­ble geo­graph­i­cal sub­ject.

The entire 50-minute adven­ture takes place, MUBI tells us, “in [Dalí’s] stu­dio-muse­um in Cadacès (Spain).” The film opens with an epi­taph for Rous­sel in Ger­man, French, and Eng­lish that lion­izes the pro­to-sur­re­al­ist as “the mon­strous mas­ter of mys­ti­cal lan­guage.” “Mys­ti­cal” is indeed the mot juste for this film. Dalí nar­rates a sto­ry about an expe­di­tion he sup­pos­ed­ly sent to the tit­u­lar region in search of a giant hal­lu­cino­genic mush­room. Fla­vor­wire describes the “qua­si-fake doc­u­men­tary” suc­cinct­ly: “…it’s every bit as trip­py as you would expect it to be. Along the way, there’s a lot of mus­tache-wag­gling, yelling at Hitler, dis­cus­sions about Out­er Mon­go­lia and Ray­mond Rous­sel, intense close-ups of insects, and oth­er eccen­tric addi­tions — like Dalí’s over­act­ing.”

For all his ease with film, and his out­sized rep­u­ta­tion in film his­to­ry, Dali only ever col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­er film­mak­ers, first Luis Buñuel, then Walt Dis­ney, and final­ly Baquer (who called him, approv­ing­ly, “an intel­lec­tu­al vam­pire”). In an inter­view, Baquer reveals that Dali chose the title and the Rous­sel ref­er­ences. He also “com­mis­sioned” the film, in a way, by hand­ing Baquer a pen that he had been uri­nat­ing on for sev­er­al weeks after “observ­ing how the uri­nals in the lux­u­ry restrooms of [the St. Reg­is Hotel] have acquired an entire range of rust colours through the inter­ac­tion of the uric acid on the pre­cious met­als.”

Baquer recounts that Dali cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly told him to “take this mag­i­cal object, work with it, and when you have an inter­est­ing result, come see me. If the result is good, we will make a film togeth­er.” The result is most cer­tain­ly inter­est­ing. A fit­ting trib­ute to Rous­sel, it recalls Trevor Winkfield’s com­ments on the world of the writer, one that “belongs entire­ly to the imag­i­na­tion. Noth­ing real intrudes; it all derives from his head. Like a fairy tale, but a believ­able one.”

Watch Part 1 up top, and the remain­ing parts on YouTube here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

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

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The Greatest Jazz Films Ever Features Classic Performances by Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Billie & More

in Film, Music, Television | February 5th, 2014

Though both have their roots in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, jazz and cin­e­ma came of age as 20th cen­tu­ry art forms, and they very often did so togeth­er (though not always in the most taste­ful ways). Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer intro­duced the world to talkies. Cabaret, Lady Sings the Blues, The Cot­ton Club are all well-known fic­tion­al films that near­ly any­one might name if asked about the sub­ject. And though Ken Burns’ Jazz may seem like a defin­i­tive state­ment in jazz doc­u­men­tary, for decades, film­mak­ers have made jazz musi­cians their cen­tral sub­ject—for exam­ple, in jazz fan-favorites like Min­gus and Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er. Before these excel­lent, if some­times painful, por­traits, there were short films like Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili’s 1944 Jam­min’ the Blues with Lester Young and oth­er bop stal­warts, and 1950’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic, a selec­tion of clips fea­tur­ing Cole­man Hawkins, Char­lie Park­er, Lester Young, Bud­dy Rich, Ella Fitzger­ald, and oth­ers per­form­ing at Nor­man Granz’s leg­endary series of con­certs.

You’ll see excerpts from both Jam­min’ the Blues and Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic above in The Great­est Jazz Films Ever, a two-disc DVD set that appears to be out of print. (New copies cur­rent­ly retail on Ama­zon for any­where from $259.00 to almost $4,000, but you can watch it free online.) This great­est hits col­lec­tion also includes high­lights from sev­er­al tele­vi­sion spe­cials like Be Bop’s Nest—a rare Char­lie Park­er appear­ance with Dizzy Gille­spie on the short-lived vari­ety show Stage Entrance—and “The Sound of Miles Davis,” a 1959 episode of tele­vi­sion show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater that show­cased one of Davis’ most cel­e­brat­ed ensem­bles.

You’ll also see excerpts from The Sound of Jazz, which Fresh Sound Records calls “one of the great glo­ri­ous moments on tele­vi­sion,” and which con­tains per­for­mances from Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lester Young, Thelo­nious Monk, the Count Basie Orches­tra, and more. Final­ly, we get excerpts from a 1959 tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Jazz From Stu­dio 61, fea­tur­ing the orig­i­nal Ahmad Jamal Trio with the Ben Web­ster Quin­tet. The Great­est Jazz Films Ever is an impres­sive and endur­ing col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments from the gold­en age of jazz. While the empha­sis here is gen­er­al­ly on musi­cian­ship, not film­mak­ing, it’s a col­lec­tion that also demon­strates jazz’s close rela­tion­ship to film and tele­vi­sion in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. All­mu­sic has a com­plete track­list of the col­lec­tion. And for a detailed break­down of each clip, you won’t want to pass up a scroll through this help­ful French site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Jam­min’ the Blues,’ by Gjon Mili

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

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

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Stanley Kubrick’s Annotated Copy of Stephen King’s The Shining

in Film | January 30th, 2014

kubrick shining cover

The web site Over­look Hotel has post­ed pic­tures of Stan­ley Kubrick’s per­son­al copy of Stephen King’s nov­el The Shin­ing, which is nor­mal­ly kept at the Stan­ley Kubrick Archive, but has been mak­ing the rounds in a trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion. The book is filled with high­light­ed pas­sages and large­ly illeg­i­ble notes in the margin—tantalizing clues to Kubrick’s inten­tions for the movie.

kubrick shining text 1

The site fea­tures a pic­ture of the book’s care­worn cov­er along with two spreads from the book’s inte­ri­or —pages 8–9, where Jack Tor­rance is being inter­viewed by hotel man­ag­er Mr. Ull­man, and pages 86–87 where hotel cook Dick Hal­lo­rann talks to Jack’s son Dan­ny about the tele­path­ic abil­i­ty called “shin­ing.” (Click on the images to enlarge.)

Much of the mar­gin­a­lia is mad­den­ing­ly hard to deci­pher. One of the notes I could make out reads:

Maybe just like their [sic] are peo­ple who can shine, maybe there are places that are spe­cial. Maybe it has to do with what hap­pened in them or where they were built.

Kubrick is clear­ly work­ing to trans­late King’s book into film. Oth­er notes, how­ev­er, seem whol­ly unre­lat­ed to the movie.

Any prob­lems with the kitchen – you phone me

When The Shin­ing came out, it was greet­ed with tepid and non­plussed reviews. Since then, the film’s rep­u­ta­tion has grown, and now it’s con­sid­ered a hor­ror mas­ter­piece.

kubrick shining text 2

At first view­ing, The Shin­ing over­whelms the view­er with pun­gent images that etch them­selves in the mind—those creepy twins, that rot­ting senior cit­i­zen in the bath­tub, that del­uge of blood from the ele­va­tor. Yet after the fifth or sev­enth view­ing, the film reveals itself to be far weird­er than your aver­age hor­ror flick. For instance, why is Jack Nichol­son read­ing a Play­girl mag­a­zine while wait­ing in the lob­by? What’s the deal with that guy in the bear suit at the end of the movie? Why is Dan­ny wear­ing an Apol­lo 11 sweater?

While Stephen King has had dozens of his books adapt­ed for the screen (many are flat out ter­ri­ble), of all the adap­ta­tions, this is one that King active­ly dis­likes.

“I would do every thing dif­fer­ent,” com­plained King about the movie to Amer­i­can Film Mag­a­zine in 1986. “The real prob­lem is that Kubrick set out to make a hor­ror pic­ture with no appar­ent under­stand­ing of the genre.” King lat­er made his own screen ver­sion of his book. By all accounts, it’s nowhere as good as Kubrick’s.

Per­haps the rea­son King loathed Kubrick’s adap­ta­tion so much is that the famous­ly secre­tive and con­trol­ling direc­tor packed the movie with so many odd signs, like Danny’s Apol­lo sweater, that seem to point to a mean­ing beyond a tale of an alco­holic writer who descends into mad­ness and mur­der. The Shin­ing is a semi­otic puz­zle about …what?

Crit­ic after crit­ic has attempt­ed to crack the film’s hid­den mean­ing. Jour­nal­ist Bill Blake­more argued in his essay “The Fam­i­ly of Man” that The Shin­ing is actu­al­ly about the geno­cide of the Native Amer­i­cans. His­to­ri­an Geof­frey Cocks sug­gests that the movie is about the Holo­caust. And con­spir­a­cy guru Jay Wei­d­ner has argued pas­sion­ate­ly that the movie is in fact Kubrick’s cod­ed con­fes­sion for his role in stag­ing the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing. (On a relat­ed note, see Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax.)

Rod­ney Ascher’s 2012 doc­u­men­tary Room 237 jux­ta­pos­es all of these wild­ly diver­gent read­ings, bril­liant­ly show­ing just how dense and mul­ti­va­lent The Shin­ing is. You can see the trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary above.

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, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mak­ing The Shin­ing

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing (As Told by Those Who Helped Him Make It)

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

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.

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Quentin Tarantino & Steve Buscemi Rehearse Scenes for Reservoir Dogs in 1991 (NSFW)

in Film | January 29th, 2014

Think about the actors and direc­tors who stood as pil­lars of the 1990s “indiewood” move­ment, and the dis­tinc­tive images of Quentin Taran­ti­no and Steve Busce­mi will sure­ly cross your mind. Both deliv­ered much of inter­est in that cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly fruit­ful decade. Busce­mi, whom Roger Ebert deemed “the house act of Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent films,” played high­ly mem­o­rable roles in movies like Alexan­dre Rock­well’s In the Soup, Tom DiCil­lo’s Liv­ing in Obliv­ion, and the Coen broth­ers’ Far­go and The Big Lebows­ki. Taran­ti­no direct­ed three fea­tures that need no intro­duc­tion, the first of which, 1991’s Reser­voir Dogs, brought them togeth­er. In the clip above, you can watch Taran­ti­no and Buscemi’s video­taped rehearsal ses­sions, where­in, among oth­er things, they work out their respec­tive char­ac­ters, the would-be dia­mond thieves Mr. Brown and Mr. Pink.

Before Reser­voir Dogs, Taran­ti­no had attempt­ed only the incom­plete My Best Friend’s Birth­day. Before shoot­ing what would become his first fin­ished movie for real, he put togeth­er mock-ups of these scenes at the Sun­dance Insti­tute Direc­tor’s Work­shop and Lab, which then sub­ject­ed them to frank eval­u­a­tions from a rotat­ing pan­el of vet­er­an film­mak­ers. As much as we enjoy his act­ing, let’s not for­get his own con­tri­bu­tions as a direc­tor; his 1996 debut Trees Lounge, in which he also stars, eas­i­ly ranks among the finest prod­ucts of that era’s inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma. And as for Taran­ti­no’s own sub­se­quent for­ays into act­ing… well, nobody can argue that they don’t enter­tain.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Cel­e­brat­ing the Director’s 50th Birth­day with our Favorite Videos

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

Kansas City Con­fi­den­tial: Did This 1952 Noir Film Inspire Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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David Lynch’s Perfume Ads Based on the Works of Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald & D.H. Lawrence

in Film | January 28th, 2014

As we wrote last week, David Lynch is not only one of the great cin­e­mat­ic spe­lunk­ers of the uncon­scious, cre­at­ing images and sto­ry­lines that have dis­turbed movie­go­ers for almost four decades, but he’s also had a suc­cess­ful run as a com­mer­cial direc­tor, mak­ing ads for among oth­er com­pa­nies Alka-Seltzer, Bar­il­la Pas­ta and Geor­gia Cof­fee.

In 1988, fresh off his suc­cess with Blue Vel­vet and just before he start­ed pro­duc­tion on his land­mark TV series Twin Peaks, he made his first com­mer­cials — a quar­tet of adver­tise­ments for Calvin Klein’s per­fume Obses­sion fea­tur­ing pas­sages from such lit­er­ary titans as F. Scott Fitzger­ald, D.H. Lawrence and Ernest Hem­ing­way. (Lynch’s ad fea­tur­ing Gus­tave Flaubert is mys­te­ri­ous­ly unavail­able on Youtube.)

The com­mer­cials have all the pre­ten­sion, the lus­cious black and white pho­tog­ra­phy and the vacant-eyed beau­ti­ful peo­ple that you might expect from a Calvin Klein ad. Yet they also show glim­mers of Lynch’s aes­thet­ic – a noirish, dream-like tone, an odd­ly framed close up, a fond­ness for flash­ing lights. Lynch dialed down the weird to serve the text. The result is far more roman­tic and beau­ti­ful than you might expect from the direc­tor. If you’re hop­ing to see a David Lynch com­mer­cial that will give night­mares, check this one out instead.

The ad for F. Scott Fitzger­ald, which you can see above, uses one of the more famous pas­sages from The Great Gats­by.

He knew that when he kissed this girl, and for­ev­er wed his unut­ter­able visions to her per­ish­able breath, his mind would nev­er romp again like the mind of God. So he wait­ed, lis­ten­ing for a moment longer to the tun­ing-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blos­somed for him like a flower and the incar­na­tion was com­plete.

Sharp-eyed view­ers might have caught that the ad stars future Oscar-win­ning actor Beni­cio Del Toro and Heather Gra­ham, who would lat­er appear in Twin Peaks. The com­mer­cial dis­solves back and forth between Del Toro and Gra­ham until the inevitable kiss when the ad cuts, with sur­pris­ing­ly lit­er­al­ness, to a bloom­ing flower.

The D.H. Lawrence ad uses a quo­ta­tion from Women in Love:

Her fin­gers went over the mould of his face, over his fea­tures. How per­fect and for­eign he was—ah how dan­ger­ous! Her soul thrilled with com­plete knowl­edge. This was the glis­ten­ing, for­bid­den apple … She kissed him, putting her fin­gers over his face, his eyes, his nos­trils, over his brows and his ears, to his neck, to know him, to gath­er him in by touch.

Lynch shows a blonde in a bro­cade dress loom­ing over her improb­a­bly beau­ti­ful para­mour who is lying on a divan. She paws at his chis­eled fea­tures before lean­ing in for a kiss.

And final­ly, the Ernest Hem­ing­way ad – the spook­i­est and most Lynchi­an of the bunch — fea­tures a pas­sage from The Sun Also Ris­es:

I lay awake think­ing and my mind jump­ing around. Then I could­n’t keep away from it, and I start­ed to think about Brett. I was think­ing about Brett and my mind start­ed to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sud­den I start­ed to cry. After a while it was bet­ter and I lay in bed and lis­tened to the heavy trams go by.. and then I went to sleep.

This ad opens with a half-naked man lying awake in a dark­ened room filled with grotesque shad­ows. He’s haunt­ed by the specter of an androg­y­nous woman in a tank top. There’s a flash of light­en­ing and then the woman kiss­es his cheek. Lynch clos­es up on his eye, which is welling up with a sin­gle tear.

As a side note: the half-naked guy in the ad is James Mar­shall who went on to star in Twin Peaks, as did Lara Fly­nn Boyle who appears in the miss­ing Flaubert com­meri­cial. Lynch has a rep­u­ta­tion of being very loy­al to his actors.

The Obses­sion ads proved to be such a suc­cess that he start­ed get­ting requests to do com­mer­cials for oth­er lux­u­ry per­fume com­pa­nies like Gior­gio Armani’s Gio and Yves Saint Laurent’s Opi­um.

As Lynch told Chris Rod­ley in Lynch on Lynch, he thinks of com­mer­cials as “lit­tle bit­ty films, and I always learn some­thing by doing them.”

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

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“Exceptional, Spooky and Beautiful” Moments With Birds: Dennis Hlynsky’s Creepy Nature Videos

in Biology, Film | January 27th, 2014

If, by some stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, the end timers have it right, I hope artist Den­nis Hlyn­sky will con­sid­er set­ting up his tri­pod as demons spew forth from the earth­’s crust.

His small brains en masse project has me con­vinced that he is the per­fect per­son to cap­ture such an event. Have a look at how he doc­u­ments the com­ings and goings of birds.

I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced a star­ling mur­mu­ra­tion myself, out­side of the famous, shot-on-the-fly footage (right above) of Sophie Wind­sor Clive and Lib­er­ty Smith, indie film­mak­ers who chanced to find them­selves in the right canoe at the right time, ornitho­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing. I admire these young wom­en’s sang-froid. I would’ve been cow­er­ing and slash­ing at the air with my pad­dles. That fun­nel cloud of black wings is unnerv­ing even from the safe remove of my liv­ing room, but a groovy sound­track by Nomad Soul Col­lec­tive encour­ages even the most bird-pho­bic amongst us (me) to see it as some­thing gor­geous and awe-inspir­ing, too.

Hlyn­sky does­n’t attempt to lead the wit­ness with reas­sur­ing sound cues. Instead, he amps up the creepy via “extrud­ed time,” lay­er­ing sequences of frames atop one anoth­er until the dark­est pix­els become trac­ers empha­siz­ing flight paths. The com­bi­na­tion of every­day sound and visu­al por­tent makes it dread­ful­ly easy to imag­ine one’s truck break­ing down at an inter­sec­tion right around the 7 minute mark.

Per­haps I’ve seen too many zom­bie movies.

Or have I?

Hlyn­sky is obvi­ous­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by nature, but he also states that “to some degree these videos are stud­ies of mob behav­ior. Are these deci­sions instinc­tu­al or small thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tions? Does one leader guide the group or is there a com­mon brain? Is a virus a sin­gle crea­ture or a dif­fused body that we inhab­it?”

Put anoth­er way, per­haps there’s a rea­son it’s called a mur­der of crows, as opposed to a brunch, hug or sweat­shirt of crows. Hlyn­sky, who’s the type of guy to seek their com­pa­ny out, describes his time spent film­ing them to be among the most “excep­tion­al, spooky and beau­ti­ful” moments of his life.

As for these New Jer­sey seag­ulls, “throw a french fry in the air and with­in 30 sec­onds the entire screech of birds will come.” Yikes. Here, extrud­ed time con­spires with the ambi­ent sounds of a board­walk amuse­ment park, in a tour-de-force of avian-inspired psy­chic unrest.

Pag­ing Tip­pi  Hedren… I’m out of here!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Para­Hawk­ing in Nepal: What It’s Real­ly Like to Fly with Birds

Ayun Hal­l­i­day wish­es she had a cat instead of a mean, orange-striped owl. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov Trade Letters and Ideas for a Film Collaboration (1964)

in Film, Letters, Literature | January 27th, 2014

alfred_hitchcock_and_vladimir_nabokov_were_pen_pals

Alfred Hitch­cock, writes James A. David­son in Images, “is usu­al­ly men­tioned in the same breath with Cor­nell Wool­rich, the lit­er­ary ‘mas­ter of sus­pense,’ ” not least because he adapt­ed a novel­la of Wool­rich’s into Rear Win­dow (1954).” Yet David­son him­self finds in Hitch­cock “a much greater affin­i­ty with that of the Russ­ian émi­gré writer Vladimir Nabokov, with whom he is not typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed since there is no appar­ent con­nec­tion” like the one between Nabokov and Stan­ley Kubrick, who brought Nabokov’s nov­el Loli­ta to the screen. Hitch­cock and Nabokov nev­er sim­i­lar­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed, but not out of a lack of desire. Close his­tor­i­cal con­tem­po­raries and mutu­al admir­ers, the writer and the direc­tor did once exchange let­ters dis­cussing film ideas they might devel­op togeth­er. You’ll find the full text of both Hitch­cock­’s query and Nabokov’s inter­est­ed response at the Amer­i­can Read­er.

“The first idea I have been think­ing about for some time is based upon a ques­tion that I do not think I have seen dealt with in motion pic­tures or, as far as I know, in lit­er­a­ture,” wrote Hitch­cock to Nabokov on Novem­ber 19, 1964. “It is the prob­lem of the woman who is asso­ci­at­ed, either by mar­riage or engage­ment, to a defec­tor.” After fill­ing out a few details, suit­ing the con­cept per­fect­ly to what he calls “the cus­tom­ary Hitch­cock sus­pense,” he lays out a sec­ond, about a young girl who, “hav­ing spent her life in a con­vent in Switzer­land due to the fact that she had no home to go to and only had a wid­owed father,” sud­den­ly finds her­self released back to the hotel run by her father and his entire fam­i­ly. But ah, “the whole of this fam­i­ly are a gang of crooks, using the hotel as a base of oper­a­tions,” which would lead into the telling of an “extreme­ly col­or­ful sto­ry.” Reply­ing nine days lat­er, Nabokov admits that Hitch­cock­’s first idea, about the defec­tor’s wife, “would present many dif­fi­cul­ties for me” due to his unfa­mil­iar­i­ty with “Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty mat­ters and meth­ods.” The one about the crim­i­nal hotel, how­ev­er, strikes him as “quite accept­able,” and he goes on to make two pitch­es of his own.

Nabokov’s first idea, some­thing of a rever­sal of Hitch­cock­’s first one, involves a defec­tor from the Sovi­et Union in the Unit­ed States. His sec­ond focus­es on a star­let “court­ed by a bud­ding astro­naut.” When this astro­naut returns home famous from a major mis­sion, the actress, whose “star­rise has come to a stop at a mod­er­ate lev­el,” real­izes “that he is not the same as he was before his flight.” Unable to put her fin­ger on it, she “becomes con­cerned, then fright­ened, then pan­icky.” Nabokov tan­ta­liz­ing­ly men­tions hav­ing “more than one inter­est­ing denoue­ment for this plot,” but alas, we’ll nev­er see them cin­e­ma­tized, and cer­tain­ly not by the likes of Hitch­cock. “One can only imag­ine the kind of invo­lut­ed, com­plex, and play­ful work these two men would have pro­duced,” writes David­son. “What is left, in the end, is the work they pro­duced, which can be well sum­ma­rized by a line the fic­tion­al John Shade wrote in Pale Fire: ‘Life is a mes­sage scrib­bled in the dark.’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent Loli­ta Book Cov­ers

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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