Two Scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Recreated in Lego

in Film | July 11th, 2013

Stan­ley Kubrick, among the many oth­er skills that made him per­haps the best-known auteur of the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, could craft an imme­di­ate­ly mem­o­rable scene. More­over, he could con­struct entire films out of noth­ing but imme­di­ate­ly mem­o­rable scenes. This goes espe­cial­ly for his Cold War black com­e­dy Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb, whose fans tend to quote to each oth­er not indi­vid­ual lines but entire five‑, ten‑, fif­teen-minute stretch­es from the movie. One such oft-reen­act­ed scene, the phone con­ver­sa­tion in which Pres­i­dent Merkin Muf­fley warns ine­bri­at­ed Pre­mier Dim­itri Kisov of the U.S. bombers head­ed toward Rus­sia appears at the top of the post, in the orig­i­nal black-and-white, with the orig­i­nal voic­es of Peter Sell­ers, Peter Bull, and George C. Scott, and — with noth­ing in front of the cam­era but Lego bricks and Lego men.

Just above, you can see Sell­ers’ per­for­mance as the tit­u­lar eccen­tric, alien hand-syn­drome-suf­fer­ing doc­tor phys­i­cal­ly ren­dered in Lego. Dr. Strangelove fans know the scene comes late in the film, when a long series of errors and acts of unrea­son on all sides has made immi­nent the moment of mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion. “I had to take out the famous scene of Slim Pick­ens rid­ing the bomb and the nuclear holo­caust cred­its to have this video view­able, because those scenes were tak­en direct­ly from the movie,” explains these videos’ cre­ator, a Youtube user by the name of XXxO­PRIMExXX. “I was hop­ing to have the Slim Pick­ens scene done in Lego by now but I just nev­er had enough time or effort to do it, maybe some time in the future.” Let me say that, if I have con­fi­dence in any­one to get that job done, I have con­fi­dence in some­one with the sta­mi­na to suc­cess­ful­ly build a Lego War Room.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inside Dr. Strangelove: Doc­u­men­tary Reveals How a Cold War Sto­ry Became a Kubrick Clas­sic

Aban­doned Alter­nate Titles for Two Great Films: Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go

Clas­sic Pho­tographs Remade Lego Style

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

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

in Comedy, Film | July 10th, 2013

Writ­ing about the sort of cre­ators and works of art we do here at Open Cul­ture, I con­stant­ly strug­gle not to overuse the word “icon­ic.” But in the case of actor and film­mak­er Char­lie Chap­lin, no oth­er adjec­tive could do. When we call Chap­lin icon­ic, we mean it lit­er­al­ly: not only did he find great suc­cess as a com­ic fig­ure in the silent-film era, he visu­al­ly rep­re­sents the con­cept of a com­ic fig­ure in the silent film era. Yet he did­n’t attain icon sta­tus in just one form, hav­ing con­tin­u­al­ly tweaked, refined, and improved his look and sen­si­bil­i­ty through­out his 75-year career. Now, 35 years after his death, we see all of these per­for­mances as sub­tly dif­fer­ent but still rec­og­nize them as expres­sions of the broad­er Chap­lin per­sona. At the top of the post, you can watch the film that estab­lished his most beloved one, 1915’s The Tramp.

But the Lit­tle Tramp did­n’t emerge ful­ly formed just then and there. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the char­ac­ter debuted in the pre­vi­ous year’s Kid Auto Races at Venice, and even before that, Chap­lin por­trayed a few fel­lows we might call pro­to-Tramps. Just above, you’ll find 1914’s Mak­ing a Liv­ing, a pic­ture that casts the Lon­don-born Chap­lin, with hat, cane, and mus­tache, as flir­ta­tious thief Hen­ry Eng­lish. His crim­i­nal ways lead him into the path of those oth­er silent-com­e­dy stal­warts (if not quite icons), the Key­stone Kops. A decade lat­er, Chap­lin, by that point the quin­tes­sen­tial writ­ing-direct­ing-act­ing auteur, would­n’t need to share the screen. In 1925, he made the Klondike-set The Gold Rush, whose “streaks of poet­ry, pathos, ten­der­ness, linked with brusque­ness and bois­ter­ous­ness” drew spe­cial praise from the New York Times, and for which Chap­lin said he want­ed to be remem­bered. You can watch it below, and then you can browse our col­lec­tion of 25 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films on the web.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

535 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Alfred Hitchcock Explains the Plot Device He Called the ‘MacGuffin’

in Animation, Film | July 9th, 2013

Alfred Hitch­cock liked to call it the “MacGuf­fin” — the mys­te­ri­ous object in a spy thriller that sets the whole chain of events into motion.

But despite the sup­posed cen­tral­i­ty of the MacGuf­fin, a Hitch­cock movie is always about some­thing else. In The 39 Steps, for exam­ple, the MacGuf­fin turns out to be the cov­et­ed plans for an advanced air­plane engine, stored in the mind of a vaude­ville per­former named “Mr. Mem­o­ry.” But real­ly the film is about a wrong­ful­ly accused man’s des­per­ate strug­gle to solve a mys­tery so he can clear his name and live to see anoth­er day.

The MacGuf­fin is always par­tic­u­lar — often to the point of absur­di­ty — while the hero’s moti­va­tion is uni­ver­sal. Some of the char­ac­ters may care about the MacGuf­fin, but the audi­ence cer­tain­ly does not. In his 1962 inter­view with François Truf­faut, Hitch­cock explains:

The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that the MacGuf­fin is noth­ing. I’m con­vinced of this, but I find it very dif­fi­cult to prove it to oth­ers. My best MacGuf­fin, and by that I mean the emp­ti­est, the most nonex­is­tent, and the most absurd, is the one we used in North by North­west. The pic­ture is about espi­onage, and the only ques­tion that’s raised in the sto­ry is to find out what the spies are after. Well, dur­ing the scene at the Chica­go air­port, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence man explains the whole sit­u­a­tion to Cary Grant, and Grant, refer­ring to the James Mason char­ac­ter, asks, “What does he do?”  The coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence man replies, “Let’s just say that he’s an importer and exporter.” “But what does he sell?” “Oh, just gov­ern­ment secrets!” is the answer. Here, you see, the MacGuf­fin has been boiled down to its purest expres­sion: noth­ing at all!

The term “MacGuf­fin” was coined by a screen­writer Hitch­cock worked with named Angus MacPhail, accord­ing to Don­ald Spo­to in The Art of Alfred Hitch­cock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pic­tures. But the prin­ci­ple goes back at least as far as Rud­yard Kipling, as Hitch­cock explains in this whim­si­cal lit­tle film by Isaac Nie­mand with audio from Hitch­cock­’s June 8, 1972 appear­ance on the Dick Cavett Show. Per­haps the most impor­tant thing to remem­ber about the MacGuf­fin is that it con­tains the word “guff,” which means a load of non­sense. “There’s a lot to look for in Hitch­cock­’s films,” writes Spo­to, “but watch out for the MacGuf­fin. It will lead you nowhere.”

NOTE: The 39 Steps and oth­er Hitch­cock thrillers can be found in our col­lec­tion of 16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online, not to men­tion our big col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Alfred Hitch­cock on the Film­mak­er’s Essen­tial Tool: ‘The Kuleshov Effect’

Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Four American Composers: Peter Greenaway on John Cage, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and Robert Ashley (1983)

in Film, Music, Television | July 9th, 2013

Why would a not­ed British film­mak­er want to take as a sub­ject four Amer­i­can com­posers? Per­haps the ques­tion answers itself, in part, when I tell you the iden­ti­ty of the film­mak­er, Peter Green­away, and the com­posers, Philip Glass, Mered­ith Monk, John Cage, and Robert Ash­ley. No won­der this selec­tion of musi­cal per­son­al­i­ties appealed to the direc­tor of The Draughts­man­’s Con­tract;The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover; and Pros­per­o’s Books, whom crit­ics have labeled, at var­i­ous times, a clas­si­cist, an exper­i­menter, a for­mal­ist, and a weirdo. Alas, Green­away’s fans may not know much about Glass, Monk, Cage, and Ash­ley, just as those com­posers’ adher­ents may nev­er have encoun­tered a movie of Green­away’s. To bridge the gap, we give you the doc­u­men­tary series Four Amer­i­can Com­posers, free to watch online. At the top of this post, you’ll find the first episode, on Cage. The sec­ond, below, cov­ers Glass. The third and fourth take on Monk and Ash­ley, respec­tive­ly.

Green­away die-hards such as myself may, watch­ing these doc­u­men­taries the film­mak­er cre­at­ed in 1983, think back to his ear­ly career. At that time, he made pic­tures like The Falls, which rigid­ly fol­lowed the doc­u­men­tary form while com­plete­ly aban­don­ing its aspi­ra­tions to cap­ture the lit­er­al truth. Thor­ough­ly non­fic­tion­al, or at least seem­ing that way, the doc­u­men­taries that make up Four Amer­i­can Com­posers nonethe­less exude the Green­away sen­si­bil­i­ty. “Because he made most­ly mock-doc­u­men­taries in the sev­en­ties,” writes Amy Lawrence in The Films of Peter Green­away, “the ‘real’ doc­u­men­taries are near­ly indis­tin­guish­able from the fakes. Real peo­ple (espe­cial­ly John Cage) tend to become Green­away char­ac­ters.” The project thus slides neat­ly in with his oth­er, more “straight­for­ward” films, all of which take place in a delib­er­ate­ly struc­tured labyrinth of joke and allu­sion peo­pled by archi­tects, inven­tors, aris­to­crats, and artists — obses­sives, all.

You can find two oth­er films by Green­away — Dar­win and Rembrandt’s J’accuse — in our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Peter Green­away Looks at the Day Cin­e­ma Died — and What Comes Next

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Short Film on the Famous Crosswalk From the Beatles’ Abbey Road Album Cover

in Film, Music | July 5th, 2013

It’s one of the most famous images in pop cul­ture: the four mem­bers of the Bea­t­les — John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son — strid­ing sin­gle-file over a zebra-stripe cross­ing on Abbey Road, near EMI Stu­dios in St. John’s Wood, Lon­don.

The pho­to­graph was tak­en on the late morn­ing of August 8, 1969 for the cov­er of the Bea­t­les’ last-record­ed album, Abbey Road. The idea was McCart­ney’s. He made a sketch and hand­ed it to Iain Macmil­lan, a free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was  cho­sen for the shoot by his friends Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Macmil­lan had only ten min­utes to cap­ture the image. A police­man stopped traf­fic while the pho­tog­ra­ph­er set up a lad­der in the mid­dle of the road and framed the image in a Has­sel­blad cam­era. The Bea­t­les were all dressed in suits by Sav­ile Row tai­lor Tom­my Nut­ter — except Har­ri­son, who wore den­im. It was a hot sum­mer day. Mid­way through the shoot, McCart­ney kicked off his san­dals and walked bare­foot. Macmil­lan took a total of only six pho­tos as the musi­cians walked back and forth over the stripes. The fifth shot was the one.

Since then, the cross­ing on Abbey Road has become a pil­grim­age site for music fans from all over the world. Every day, motorists idle their engines for a moment while tourists reen­act the Bea­t­les’ cross­ing. It’s a spe­cial place, and film­mak­er Chris Pur­cell cap­tures the sense of mean­ing it has for peo­ple in his thought­ful 2012 doc­u­men­tary, Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?  The five-minute film, nar­rat­ed by poet Roger McGough, won the 2012 “Best Documentary“award at the UK Film Fes­ti­val and the “Best Super Short” award at the NYC Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val. When you’ve fin­ished watch­ing the film, you can take a live look at the cross­walk on the 24-hour Abbey Road Cross­ing Web­cam.

Abbey Road Album Cover

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

John, Paul and George Per­form Duel­ing Gui­tar Solos on The Bea­t­les’ Farewell Song (1969)

Bob Egan, Detec­tive Extra­or­di­naire, Finds the Real Loca­tions of Icon­ic Album Cov­ers

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Watch Franz Kafka, the Wonderful Animated Film by Piotr Dumala

in Animation, Film, Literature | July 3rd, 2013


Let’s sneak in a quick birth­day cel­e­bra­tion before the 4th. Franz Kaf­ka was born on this day (July 3), a good 130 years ago. To com­mem­o­rate the occa­sion, we’re pre­sent­ing Piotr Dumala’s 1992 short ani­mat­ed film called, quite sim­ply, Franz Kaf­ka. Dumala’s ani­ma­tion tech­nique grew out of his train­ing as a sculp­tor, when he start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with scratch­ing images into paint­ed plas­ter. Lat­er he devel­oped a more full blown method known as “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion,” which is on full dis­play in the film. You can learn more about Dumala and his approach here. The 16-minute film is based on The Diaries of Franz Kaf­ka, and now appears in our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online. Also on our site, you can view Dumala’s adap­ta­tion of Dos­to­evsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment.

Note: This film/post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2010. Still enam­ored by Dumala’s work, we thought it was time to bring it back.

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:

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

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

Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Improve­ments to Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Find works by Kaf­ka in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Watch “The Secret Tournament” & “The Rematch,” Terry Gilliam’s Star-Studded Soccer Ads for Nike

in Film, Sports, Television | July 1st, 2013

We’ve nev­er known footwear giant Nike to spare the adver­tis­ing dol­lars, just as we’ve nev­er known film­mak­er Ter­ry Gilliam to com­pro­mise his vision. Only nat­ur­al, then, that the two would cross cre­ative and finan­cial paths. Shot in late 2001 and ear­ly 2002, the 12 Mon­keys direc­tor’s pair of Nike spots, meant to coin­cide with the 2002 World Cup, brought togeth­er some of the era’s finest foot­ballers for a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly grim, dystopi­an, but visu­al­ly rich and smirk­ing­ly humor­ous tour­na­ment to end all tour­na­ments.  “Hid­den from the world,” announces Nike’s orig­i­nal press release about the first com­mer­cial, “24 elite play­ers hold a secret tour­na­ment, with eight teams, and only one rule… ‘First goal wins!’ ”

“Con­trol­ling the action is Eric Can­tona,” the text con­tin­ues, “who over­sees every three-on-three match noir that takes place in a huge con­tain­er ship docked in an unknown har­bor. With Mon­sieur Can­tona at the helm, you can be assured there will be no whin­ing, no judg­ment calls, and no mer­cy.” The teams assem­bled include “Triple Espres­so” (Francesco Tot­ti, Hidetoshi Naka­ta, and Thier­ry Hen­ry), “Equipo del Fuego” (Her­nan Cre­spo, Clau­dio Lopez, and Gaiz­ka Mendi­eta), and the “Funk Seoul Broth­ers” (Deníl­son de Oliveira Araújo, Ki Hyeon Seol, and Ronald­in­ho). You’ll see quite a lot of action between them on this bro­ken-down futur­is­tic prison of a pitch in the three min­utes of “The Secret Tour­na­ment,” but things inten­si­fy fur­ther in “The Rematch” just above. You can find more behind-the-scenes mate­r­i­al at Dreams: The Ter­ry Gilliam Fanzine.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam’s Debut Ani­mat­ed Film, Sto­ry­time

A Very Ter­ry Gilliam Christ­mas: Season’s Greet­ings, 1968 and 2011

Lost In La Man­cha: Ter­ry Gilliam and the “Curse of Quixote”

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Revealed: The Visual Effects Behind The Great Gatsby

in Film | June 30th, 2013

Sev­er­al days ago, Chris God­frey, the VFX super­vi­sor on the lat­est film adap­ta­tion of The Great Gats­by, post­ed a remark­able “before and after” film on Vimeo.  Run­ning four min­utes, the short com­pi­la­tion reveals the many sets and scenes cre­at­ed with com­put­er gen­er­at­ed images. It’s all pret­ty impres­sive from a tech­ni­cal point of view. No doubt. And yet this wiz­ardry con­tributed to mak­ing what’s wide­ly con­sid­ered a mediocre film. In The New York­er, film crit­ic David Den­by writes:

Luhrmann’s ver­sion is mere­ly a fran­tic jum­ble. The pic­ture is filled with an indis­crim­i­nate swirling motion, a thrash­ing impress of “style” (Art Deco turned to dig­i­tized glitz), thrown at us with whoosh­ing cam­era sweeps and surges and rapid changes of per­spec­tive exag­ger­at­ed by 3‑D.… Luhrmann’s vul­gar­i­ty is designed to win over the young audi­ence, and it sug­gests that he’s less a film­mak­er than a music-video direc­tor with end­less resources and a stun­ning absence of taste.

Some­times, as they say, less is more.…

via Richard Brody

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Known Footage of the 1926 Film Adap­ta­tion of The Great Gats­by (Which F. Scott Fitzger­ald Hat­ed)

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

F. Scott Fitzger­ald in Drag (1916)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.