Watch 36 Beastie Boys Videos Now Remastered in HD

in Film, Music | May 21st, 2020

The Beast­ie Boys are still the only group to have their music videos receive a Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion release, hav­ing deliv­ered a steady stream of hilar­i­ous and fun pro­mo spots since “She’s on It” in 1985. As the doc­u­men­tary Beast­ie Boys Sto­ry recent­ly dropped on AppleTV, the remain­ing B‑Boys and their record label remas­tered 36 of their videos, now re-uploaded to YouTube in HD. And now’s as good a time as any to restock and rethink their impact on the art form of music video.

The first videos are sil­ly, car­toon­ish slap­stick, with a frat­boy sense of humor that played bet­ter then than now, espe­cial­ly with sev­er­al ref­er­ences to faux-aphrode­si­ac Span­ish Fly. But the sped up action and cos­tume changes placed them in a lin­eage usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with British acts like The Bea­t­les and Mad­ness.

The Beast­ies always poked fun at them­selves, which oth­er Amer­i­can acts rarely did, espe­cial­ly in the very macho worlds of hip-hop and met­al. Even in their final videos they were slap­ping on wigs and fake mus­tach­es.

But if the Beast­ie Boys real­ly had one main lega­cy it was the use of the fish-eye lens. Used first in the “Hold It Now Hit It” video (an afternoon’s film­ing inter­cut with shots from their Dionysian first world tour), it would return for 1989’s “Shake Your Rump”, where the group have learned exact­ly how to work its dis­tort­ing pow­ers (MCA’s fin­gers feel like they’re going to reach through the screen). This style reach­es its apex in “So What’cha Want” where the dis­tor­tion is matched with a slowed motion (the band mim­ing to a sped up ver­sion, then the video slowed to the cor­rect speed). The music’s THC-laced grind is matched with decayed visu­als. Rap videos ever since have used the imme­di­a­cy of the direct-to-cam­era per­for­mance, and direc­tors like Hype Williams made a career of turn­ing a fish­eye lens onto per­form­ers like Bus­ta Rhymes and Mis­sy Elliot, with even more sur­re­al results.

But the Beast­ie Boys real­ly flour­ished when they teamed up with direc­tor Spike Jonze, who direct­ed the Beast­ie Boys Sto­ry and would direct six of their videos. A ris­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er and direc­tor con­nect­ed with the skate­board­ing scene, his first col­lab­o­ra­tion with the group was 1992’s “Time for Liv­ing,” a punk rock non-sin­gle from Check Your Head. But things real­ly took off with “Sab­o­tage,” one of the band’s best videos, a par­o­dy of 1970s cop shows. Watch­ing the Beast­ies and their friends play dress-up, run ram­pant through the streets of Los Ange­les, jump across rooftops, and toss a dum­my off a bridge is like the pla­ton­ic ide­al of a home movie made with your best friends. Absolute­ly sil­ly and hilar­i­ous, but life-affirm­ing at the same time, a dis­til­la­tion of what made the band great.

You prob­a­bly have your own favorites too, as there’s so many: the Godzil­la trib­ute of “Inter­galac­tic,” the par­o­dy of Dia­bo­lik for “Body Movin’ “, the psy­che­del­ic paint explo­sion of “Shadrach,” the homage to Pink Floyd Live at Pom­peii with “Grat­i­tude”, the celebri­ty love­fest of “Make Some Noise”, and the years-before-their-time ‘70s dis­co-and-poly­ester indul­gence of “Hey Ladies” where Jean Cocteau and Dolemite share a coke­spoon-ful of influ­ences.

The playlist also fea­tures a num­ber of non-album tracks done for the hell of it, some real rar­i­ties even for the fan. Good God y’all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Every Sam­ple on the Beast­ie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Boutique–and Dis­cov­er Where They Came From

The Beast­ie Boys Release a New Free­wheel­ing Mem­oir, and a Star-Stud­ded 13-Hour Audio­book Fea­tur­ing Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costel­lo, Bette Midler, John Stew­art & Dozens More

Look How Young They Are!: The Beast­ie Boys Per­form­ing Live Their Very First Hit, “Cooky Puss” (1983)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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David Lynch Releases an Animated Film Online: Watch Fire (Pozar)

in Animation, Film | May 21st, 2020

David Lynch began his artis­tic career as a painter. Before long his paint­ings became ani­ma­tions, of a kind, as exem­pli­fied by 1967’s Six Men Get­ting Sick (Six Times) and 1968’s The Alpha­bet. By 1977, when the years-in-the-mak­ing Eraser­head final­ly saw the light of day, Lynch’s trans­for­ma­tion into a live-action film­mak­er must have seemed com­plete. But his imag­i­na­tion has nev­er accept­ed con­fine­ment to one medi­um: even while work­ing on ever high­er-pro­file projects — The Ele­phant Man, Blue Vel­vet, Twin Peaks — he con­tin­ued to paint, to draw, to take pho­tographs. Lynch’s com­plete­ly sta­t­ic com­ic strip The Angri­est Dog in the World was a com­pelling fix­ture in the LA Read­er dur­ing the 1980s, but apart from the online series Dum­b­land and the Inter­pol col­lab­o­ra­tion I Touch a Red But­ton Man, lit­tle Lynchi­an in the way of ani­ma­tion has appeared over the past few decades.

This past Mon­day, how­ev­er, Lynch announced the release of one such rar­i­ty free to watch on Youtube. Like I Touch a Red But­ton Man, Fire (Pozar) is a joint effort between film­mak­er and musi­cian, in this case com­pos­er Marek Zebrows­ki. “The whole point of our exper­i­ment was that I would say noth­ing about my inten­tions and Marek would inter­pret the visu­als in his own way,” said Lynch in a USC School of Music inter­view.

As col­lab­o­ra­tors, Lynch and Zebrows­ki go back to Inland Empire, the 2006 fea­ture Lynch shot par­tial­ly in Poland. This neces­si­tat­ed a trans­la­tor, and the Pol­ish-Amer­i­can Zebrows­ki stepped up to the job. In 2007 the two con­tin­ued down that cul­tur­al avenue, record­ing an album called Pol­ish Night Music. Fire (Pozar)‘s bilin­gual title also hon­ors Zebrowski’s ances­tral home­land, though the film itself may lack any direct ref­er­ence to Poland — or to any real place, for that mat­ter.

Lynch is cred­it­ed with hav­ing “writ­ten, drawn, and direct­ed” the short (its ani­ma­tor, Noriko Miyakawa, was an edi­tor on 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return), and on the visu­al lev­el it plays out like a jour­ney through what will feel, to many of us, like the famil­iar realm of the Lynchi­an imag­i­na­tion. The tit­u­lar fire — or rather, pozar — starts ear­ly on. Then we’re trans­port­ed to a sil­hou­ette land­scape that brings to mind David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s descrip­tion of one of Lynch’s paint­ing’s, “the sort of diag­nos­tic House-Tree-Per­son draw­ing that gets a patient insti­tu­tion­al­ized in a hur­ry.” But there are no peo­ple here, or at least no whole peo­ple: the first even faint­ly humanoid fig­ure to emerge brings to mind the men­ac­ing baby in Eraser­head, and by the end the scene will have been over­tak­en by crea­tures nei­ther prop­er­ly ani­mal nor man. Zebrowski’s score gets thor­ough­ly enough into this stark but fre­net­ic spir­it to make Lynch fans believe that fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tions must sure­ly be on the way.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Releas­es a Dis­turb­ing, New Short Film: Watch “Ant Head” Online

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called “Rab­bits”: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

The Paint­ings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Original Star Wars Trilogy Adapted into a 14-Hour Radio Drama by NPR (1981–1996)

in Film, Radio, Sci Fi | May 20th, 2020

When it opened in 1977, Star Wars revived the old-fash­ioned swash­buck­ling adven­ture film. With­in a few years, Nation­al Pub­lic Radio made a bet that it could do the same for the radio dra­ma. Though still well with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry, the “gold­en age of radio” in Amer­i­ca had end­ed decades ear­li­er, and with it the shows that once filled the air­waves with sto­ries of every kind. Radio dra­mas seemed extinct, but then, before George Lucas’ space opera turned block­buster, so had movie seri­als like Flash Gor­don and Buck Rogers. The episod­ic nature of such source mate­r­i­al res­onat­ed with the sim­i­lar­ly episod­ic nature of clas­sic radio dra­ma, and that must have brought with­in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty a bold and near-scan­dalous propo­si­tion: to re-make Star Wars for NPR.

The idea came from a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, who sug­gest­ed it to USC School of the Per­form­ing arts dean and radio-dra­ma enthu­si­ast Richard Toscan. There could have been no insti­tu­tion bet­ter-placed to take on such a project. Since Toscan had already pro­duced dra­mas on the school’s NPR-affil­i­at­ed radio sta­tion KUSC, he made an ide­al col­lab­o­ra­tor in the net­work’s effort to breathe new life into its dra­mat­ic pro­gram­ming. And as Lucas’ alma mater, USC inspired in him a cer­tain gen­eros­i­ty: Lucas sold KUSC Star Wars’ radio rights, along with use of the film’s music and sound effects, for one dol­lar. Found­ed just a decade ear­li­er, NPR still lacked the expe­ri­ence and resources to han­dle such an ambi­tious project itself, and so entered into a co-pro­duc­tion deal with the BBC, which had nev­er let radio dra­ma go into eclipse.

When the Star Wars radio dra­ma was first broad­cast in the spring of 1981, fans of the movie would have heard a mix­ture of the famil­iar (includ­ing the voic­es of Mark Hamill as Luke Sky­walk­er and Antho­ny Daniels as C‑3PO) and the unfa­mil­iar. With sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el­ist Bri­an Daley brought on to add or restore scenes to the script of the orig­i­nal dia­logue-light fea­ture film, the sto­ry stretch­es out to thir­teen episodes for a total run­time of six hours. The series thus stands as an ear­ly exam­ple of the expan­sion of the Star Wars uni­verse that, in all kinds of media, has con­tin­ued apace ever since. An Empire Strikes Back radio dra­ma fol­lowed in 1983, with Return of the Jedi fol­low­ing, after pro­longed devel­op­ment chal­lenges, in 1996.

You can hear all four­teen hours of these orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy radio dra­mas at the Inter­net Archive (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi), or on a Youtube playlist with fan edits com­bin­ing the orig­i­nal­ly dis­crete episodes into con­tin­u­ous lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences. NPR’s gam­ble on adapt­ing a Hol­ly­wood hit paid off: the first Star Wars radio dra­ma drew 750,000 new lis­ten­ers, many from the youth­ful demo­graph­ic the net­work had hoped to cap­ture. It was the biggest sci­ence-fic­tion event on Amer­i­can radio since Orson Welles scared the coun­try with his adap­ta­tion of H.G. Welles’ The War of the Worlds more than 40 years ear­li­er — a broad­cast pro­duced by John House­man, who in his capac­i­ty as USC’s artis­tic direc­to­ry in the 1970s, encour­aged Toscan to bring radio dra­ma back. In recent years, NPR’s audi­ence has con­tin­ued to age while the Star Wars fran­chise has in the­aters, on tele­vi­sion and else­where, gone from strength to strength. Has the time come for radio to use the Force once again?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dra­mas of Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Philip K. Dick, Ursu­la K. LeGuin & More (1989)

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

Hear Five JG Bal­lard Sto­ries Pre­sent­ed as Radio Dra­mas

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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David Lynch Creates Daily Weather Reports for Los Angeles: How the Filmmaker Passes Time in Quarantine

in Current Affairs, Film | May 13th, 2020

David Lynch has­n’t direct­ed a fea­ture film in thir­teen years, but that does­n’t mean he’s been idle. Quite the oppo­site, in fact: in addi­tion to the acclaimed Show­time series Twin Peaks: The Return, he’s record­ed an album, writ­ten a mem­oir, taught a Mas­ter­class, over­seen the devel­op­ment of a Twin Peaks vir­tu­al real­i­ty game, and made a short film about ants devour­ing a piece of cheese. In his home stu­dio, he’s also con­tin­ued the visu­al art prac­tice he start­ed before turn­ing to film­mak­er in the 1970s. We may know Lynch best as the man behind Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, but he seems equal­ly com­fort­able work­ing in whichev­er form or medi­um is at hand. In this time of COVID-19 quar­an­tine, which has sus­pend­ed film­mak­ing, film­go­ing, and oth­er kinds of human activ­i­ty, one such medi­um is the weath­er report.

“Here in L.A.… kind of cloudy… some fog this morn­ing,” says the respect­ed film­mak­er in his weath­er-report video for May 11, 2020. “64 degrees Fahren­heit; around sev­en­teen Cel­sius. This all should burn off pret­ty soon, and we’ll have sun­shine and 70 degrees.” All just what one would expect from the cli­mate of Los Ange­les, the south­ern Cal­i­forn­ian metrop­o­lis where Lynch lives and which he often prais­es — and which, it’s recent­ly been report­ed, will like­ly extend its stay-at-home order for at least three more months.

The sud­den lack of move­ment in this famous­ly mobile city has done won­ders for the air qual­i­ty, but so far that ele­ment has­n’t fig­ured explic­it­ly into Lynch’s reports. “We’ve got clouds and kind of fog­gy weath­er, with some blue shin­ing through,” he says on the morn­ing of May 12th. But just as the day before, that fog “should burn off lat­er, and we’ll have sun­shine.” Long­time fol­low­ers of Lynch’s inter­net projects will rec­og­nize these as a sequel to the dai­ly video weath­er reports he post­ed in 2008:

They’ll also rec­og­nize most of the objects that sur­round Lynch in his office, from his set of draw­ers to his wall-mount­ed phone to his angu­lar-han­dled black cof­fee cup. But the dra­mat­ic increase in the res­o­lu­tion of inter­net video over the past dozen years has made every­thing vis­i­ble in a new­ly crisp detail, right down to the steam ris­ing from Lynch’s hot bev­er­age of choice. More dai­ly weath­er reports will pre­sum­ably appear on the David Lynch The­ater Youtube chan­nel, each one col­ored by his sig­na­ture (and, giv­en the unre­lent­ing­ly dis­turb­ing qual­i­ties of his best-known work, seem­ing­ly incon­gru­ous) opti­mism. “It’s going to be a dif­fer­ent world on the oth­er side,” he told Vice last month. “It’s going to be a much more intel­li­gent world. Solu­tions to these prob­lems are going to come and life’s going to be very good. The movies will come back. Every­thing will spring back and in a much bet­ter way, prob­a­bly.”

Find a playlist of Lynch’s weath­er reports here.

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:

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called Rab­bits: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

How David Lynch Got Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion? By Drink­ing a Milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Sin­gle Day, for Sev­en Straight Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Decoding Korean Cinema: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast (ep. 43)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | May 13th, 2020

We’re see­ing a lot of Kore­an media in Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture nowa­days, what with Par­a­site win­ning the Oscar for best pic­ture and K‑Pop and K‑Dramas find­ing an increas­ing Amer­i­can cult fol­low­ing. This is not an acci­dent: The Kore­an gov­ern­ment has as an explic­it goal the growth of “soft pow­er” through export­ed cul­tur­al prod­ucts. This Kore­an Wave (Hal­lyu) was aimed fore­most at Asia but has reached us as well. Suzie Hyun-jung Oh joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to explore the con­text for this spread and fig­ure out what exact­ly feels for­eign to Amer­i­can audi­ences about Kore­an media.

This is our first attempt to get at the zeit­geist of anoth­er cul­ture to bet­ter under­stand its media, and the pri­ma­ry focus of our immer­sion (the part of the wave that’s not aimed at teens) was film: In addi­tion to the work of Bong Joon-ho, we touch on The Hand­maid­en, A Train to Busan, The Burn­ing, A Taxi Dri­ver, Lucid Dream­ing, Among the Gods, and oth­ers.

We also talk a lit­tle about Kore­an teen cul­tur­al prod­ucts, fam­i­ly life and reli­gion in Korea, the aes­thet­ic of cute­ness, M*A*S*H, and whether Amer­i­cans will read sub­ti­tles.

Some arti­cles and oth­er resources that helped us:

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Radiohead’s “Spectre” Played Against the Title Sequence of the 2015 James Bond Film, Spectre

in Film, Music | May 12th, 2020

Com­man­der James Bond, CMG, RNVR — code name 007 — is both cool and uncool. Though hard­ly a set­ter of youth­ful trends, he has always embod­ied mas­cu­line com­pe­tence and unflap­pa­bil­i­ty of a rel­a­tive­ly time­less and quin­tes­sen­tial­ly British kind. Thanks to the long-run­ning Bond film series’ efforts to grad­u­al­ly increase the char­ac­ter’s com­plex­i­ty, the Bond who first appears in Ian Flem­ing’s 1953 nov­el Casi­no Royale may at first look sim­ple, even car­toon­ish to read­ers of the 21st cen­tu­ry. But despite all the changes of the lead­ing man and the shifts in audi­ence expec­ta­tions over the decades, one of the fran­chise’s tasks has remained con­stant: to exude this Bon­di­an uncool cool, whose dis­tinc­tive tone must be set with just the right theme song.

Sched­uled for release this fall, the 25th Bond film No Time to Die fea­tures a theme song by the teenage singer Bil­lie Eil­ish, whose dark-pop style may neat­ly suit the return per­for­mance by Daniel Craig. As soon as he made his debut as Bond in 2006’s Casi­no Roy­ale, an adap­ta­tion of Flem­ing’ first nov­el, Craig imme­di­ate­ly earned the dis­tinc­tion of the most trou­bled Bond yet.

Three Bond pic­tures lat­er, the pro­duc­ers must have real­ized that a haunt­ed secret needs a haunt­ed theme song, and so com­mis­sioned a piece of the ghost­ly yet huge­ly pop­u­lar, at once cool and uncool work of Radio­head. You can hear Radio­head­’s theme song as it appears in the open­ing of 2015’s Spec­tre (a ref­er­ence, every Bond fan knows, to the glob­al crime syn­di­cate SPECTRE, or Spe­cial Exec­u­tive for Counter-intel­li­gence, Ter­ror­ism, Revenge and Extor­tion) in the video above.

Or rather, the video shows how Radio­head­’s “Spec­tre” might have appeared in the 24th Bond pic­ture. After the band record­ed the song, the film’s pro­duc­tion team reject­ed it as too melan­choly for the title sequence — per­haps inevitably, in ret­ro­spect, giv­en how Radio­head­’s songs lend them­selves to the con­struc­tion of a “gloom index” — and opt­ed instead for a high­er-flown (and ulti­mate­ly Oscar-win­ning) num­ber sung by Sam Smith.  “There have been many reject­ed themes over the years by many notable artists,” writes James Bond Radio’s Jack Lugo. “Some reject­ed themes end up as B‑sides (such as Pulp’s “Tomor­row Nev­er Lies”) or get re-worked with dif­fer­ent lyrics on their albums (see Ace of Base’s “The Juve­nile”).” Nev­er hes­i­tant to put their music online, Radio­head ulti­mate­ly released “Specter” on their Sound­cloud page.

“Reac­tion was under­stand­ably mixed,” writes Lugo. But after watch­ing a few fan assem­blies of the song and Spec­tre’s title sequence, he describes him­self as hav­ing “dis­cov­ered a new­ly found appre­ci­a­tion for the song.” Fol­low­ing along with the lyrics as Thom Yorke sings them made, for him, “a world of a dif­fer­ence.” The words “cap­ture the dark­ness, para­noia, and refusal to trust that’s inher­ent to the Bond char­ac­ter (at least as he’s por­trayed by Daniel Craig),” and as a whole “the song speaks to some­one who wants bad­ly to love and care for some­one but is restrained and restrict­ed by chance, cir­cum­stances, and also just by the nature of his char­ac­ter.” Had it been used in the film, Radio­head­’s song would have cast these themes into stark­er relief, empha­siz­ing the deep­er the­mat­ic inquiry at the core of Spec­tre, a study, as it were, of human bondage.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing The Radio­head Pub­lic Library: Radio­head Makes Their Full Cat­a­logue Avail­able via a Free Online Web Site

James Bond: 50 Years in Film (and a Big Blu-Ray Release)

Autonomous Fly­ing Robots Play the Theme From the James Bond Movies

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Per­forms Songs from His New Sound­track for the Hor­ror Film, Sus­piria

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

The Secret Rhythm Behind Radiohead’s “Video­tape” Now Final­ly Revealed

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Virtual Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli Museum

in Animation, Film, K-12, Museums | May 8th, 2020

Let us pray that orga­ni­za­tion expert Marie Kon­do nev­er comes with­in spit­ting dis­tance of A Boy’s Room, part of the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li muse­um’s Where a Film is Born instal­la­tion.

It’s not like­ly that every sin­gle item in the mas­sive (and no doubt well dust­ed) col­lec­tion of books, post­cards, hand tools, pic­tures, fig­urines, and oth­er assort­ed tchotchkes pic­tured above sparks joy, but the sug­ges­tion is that any one of them might prove the gate­way to a fan­tas­ti­cal tale, such as those spun by the museum’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, mas­ter ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki:

The room seems to belong to some­one who was sketch­ing at the desk just a few min­utes ago. The room is filled with books and toys. The walls are all cov­ered with illus­tra­tions and sketch­es. Hang­ing from the ceil­ing are a mod­el of an air­plane and a mod­el of a Pter­a­n­odon. It’s a place where the own­er of the room has stored his favorite things. This room pro­vides lots of inspi­ra­tion for what will go on to the blank piece of paper on the desk to become the ori­gin of an actu­al film.

The Muse­um, which announced it would delay its reopen­ing out of ongo­ing con­cerns relat­ed to social dis­tanc­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, recent­ly shared some brief video tours of the Miyaza­ki-designed space, per­haps all the more mag­i­cal for being emp­ty.

One lucky view­er, who had trekked to the Tokyo sub­urb of Mita­ka for an in-per­son vis­it, recalled the expe­ri­ence of actu­al­ly being in A Boy’s Room:

Open up the draw­ers in this room, take the books off shelves to look at them, touch things, look through trunks—you might find lit­tle secrets to be dis­cov­ered. One time I took an art book from the shelf and one of the employ­ees came over to me. I was expect­ing to get rep­ri­mand­ed, but instead she kind­ly guid­ed me over to a couch so that I could read the book. Miyaza­ki took care to design the space to be friend­ly to the explorato­ry nature of chil­dren, mak­ing sure that they could play unob­struct­ed. It’s one of the rea­sons why you aren’t allowed to take pho­tos inside—he did­n’t want par­ents inter­rupt­ing their expe­ri­ence to pose for pho­tos they could care less about.

That phi­los­o­phy is enact­ed through­out the muse­um. Kids can climb all over a life-size plush recre­ation of My Neigh­bor Totoro’s cat bus, but would-be Insta­gram­mers are S.O.L.

A peek at the Space of Won­der room reveals Thum­be­li­na-sized char­ac­ters from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice frol­ick­ing in a fres­co of fruit, flow­ers, and vines.

The archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments are a par­tic­u­lar treat, and sug­gest that there’s seri­ous bank to be made, should Miyaza­ki ever con­sid­er extend­ing the brand into a theme park-style hotel. (Some­thing tells us he won’t.)

Once hav­ing seen a pho­to essay fea­tur­ing some of the fan­cy refresh­ments oth­ers have enjoyed there, the tour of the emp­ty Straw Hat Café does under­whelm a bit. Those cute lit­tle plates are just call­ing out for a slice of straw­ber­ry short­cake…

We’re unsure if muse­um staffers will be releas­ing more videos dur­ing their down­time, though we’re hope­ful, espe­cial­ly since sev­er­al in-per­son vis­i­tors have not­ed that the museum’s toi­lets are pret­ty note­wor­thy.

That said we’d hap­pi­ly set­tle for some of the short films that screen in the museum’s Sat­urn The­ater.

You can fol­low the Museum’s YouTube chan­nel just in case.

Mean­while, here is Miyazaki’s man­i­festo detail­ing the kind of muse­um he want­ed to make, right down to the café and the gift shop:

A muse­um that is inter­est­ing and which relax­es the soul
A muse­um where much can be dis­cov­ered
A muse­um based on a clear and con­sis­tent phi­los­o­phy
A muse­um where those seek­ing enjoy­ment can enjoy, those seek­ing to pon­der can pon­der, and those seek­ing to feel can feel
A muse­um that makes you feel more enriched when you leave than when you entered!

To make such a muse­um, the build­ing must be…
Put togeth­er as if it were a film
Not arro­gant, mag­nif­i­cent, flam­boy­ant, or suf­fo­cat­ing
Qual­i­ty space where peo­ple can feel at home, espe­cial­ly when it’s not crowd­ed
A build­ing that has a warm feel and touch
A build­ing where the breeze and sun­light can freely flow through

The muse­um must be run in such a way that…
Small chil­dren are treat­ed as if they were grown-ups
Vis­i­tors with dis­abil­i­ties are accom­mo­dat­ed as much as pos­si­ble
The staff can be con­fi­dent and proud of their work
Vis­i­tors are not con­trolled with pre­de­ter­mined cours­es and fixed direc­tions
It is suf­fused with ideas and new chal­lenges so that the exhibits do not get dusty or old, and that invest­ments are made to real­ize that goal

The dis­plays will be…
Not only for the ben­e­fit of peo­ple who are already fans of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li
Not a pro­ces­sion of art­work from past Ghi­b­li films as if it were “a muse­um of the past”
A place where vis­i­tors can enjoy by just look­ing, can under­stand the artists’ spir­its, and can gain new insights into ani­ma­tion

Orig­i­nal works and pic­tures will be made to be exhib­it­ed at the muse­um
A project room and an exhib­it room will be made, show­ing move­ment and life
(Orig­i­nal short films will be pro­duced to be released in the muse­um!)
Ghi­b­li’s past films will be probed for under­stand­ing at a deep­er lev­el

The café will be…
An impor­tant place for relax­ation and enjoy­ment
A place that does­n’t under­es­ti­mate the dif­fi­cul­ties of run­ning a muse­um café
A good café with a style all its own where run­ning a café is tak­en seri­ous­ly and done right

The muse­um shop will be…
Well-pre­pared and well-pre­sent­ed for the sake of the vis­i­tors and run­ning the muse­um
Not a bar­gain shop that attach­es impor­tance only to the amount of sales
A shop that con­tin­ues to strive to be a bet­ter shop
Where orig­i­nal items made only for the muse­um are found

The muse­um’s rela­tion to the park is…
Not just about car­ing for the plants and sur­round­ing green­ery but also plan­ning for how things can improve ten years into the future
Seek­ing a way of being and run­ning the muse­um so that the sur­round­ing park will become even lush­er and bet­ter, which will in turn make the muse­um bet­ter as well!

This is what I expect the muse­um to be, and there­fore I will find a way to do it.

This is the kind of muse­um I don’t want to make!
A pre­ten­tious muse­um
An arro­gant muse­um
A muse­um that treats its con­tents as if they were more impor­tant than peo­ple
A muse­um that dis­plays unin­ter­est­ing works as if they were sig­nif­i­cant

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

For the First Time, Stu­dio Ghibli’s Entire Cat­a­log Will Soon Be Avail­able for Dig­i­tal Pur­chase

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Earliest Known Motion Picture, 1888’s Roundhay Garden Scene, Restored with Artificial Intelligence

in Film, History, Technology | May 7th, 2020

No image is more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the birth of the motion pic­ture than a train pulling into the French coastal town of La Cio­tat. Cap­tured by cin­e­ma pio­neers Auguste and Louis Lumière, the 50-sec­ond clip fright­ened the audi­ence at its first screen­ing in 1896, who thought a real loco­mo­tive was hurtling toward them — or so the leg­end goes. Those ear­ly view­ers may sim­ply have felt a tech­no­log­i­cal aston­ish­ment we can no longer muster today, and cer­tain­ly not in response to such a mun­dane sight. That goes dou­ble for the slight­ly short­er and old­er Lumière Broth­ers pro­duc­tion La Sor­tie de l’U­sine Lumière a Lyon. Though it depicts noth­ing more than work­ers leav­ing a fac­to­ry at the end of the day, it has long been referred to as “the first real motion pic­ture ever made.”

That qual­i­fi­er “real,” of course, hints at the exis­tence of a pre­de­ces­sor. Where­as La Sor­tie de l’U­sine Lumière a Lyon pre­miered in 1895, Louis Le Prince’s Round­hay Gar­den Scene dates to 1888. With its run­time under two sec­onds, this depic­tion of a moment in the life of four fig­ures, a younger man and woman and an old­er man and woman, would even by the stan­dards of the Lumière Broth­ers’ day bare­ly count as a movie at all.

Equal­ly dis­qual­i­fy­ing is its low frame rate: just sev­en to twelve per sec­ond (which one it is has been a mat­ter of some dis­pute), which strikes our eyes more as a rapid sequence of still pho­tographs than as con­tin­u­ous motion. Even so, it must have been a thrill of a result for Le Prince, an Eng­land-based French artist-inven­tor who had been devel­op­ing his motion-pho­tog­ra­phy sys­tem in secre­cy since ear­ly in the decade.

We now have a clear­er sense of the action cap­tured in Round­hay Gar­den Scene thanks to the efforts Youtube-based film restora­tionist Denis Shiryaev, who’s used neur­al net­works to bring the his­toric film more ful­ly to life. Tak­ing a scan of Le Prince’s orig­i­nal paper film, Shiryaev “man­u­al­ly cut this scan into indi­vid­ual frames and cen­tered each image in the frame,” he says in the video at the top of the post. He then “added a sta­bi­liza­tion algo­rithm and applied an aggres­sive face recog­ni­tion neur­al net­work in order to add more details to the faces.” There fol­lowed adjust­ments for con­sis­ten­cy in bright­ness, dam­age repairs, and the work of “an ensem­ble of neur­al net­works” to upscale the footage to as high a res­o­lu­tion as pos­si­ble, inter­po­lat­ing as many frames as pos­si­ble. We may feel star­tled by the life­like qual­i­ty of the result in much the same way as 19th-cen­tu­ry view­ers by the Lumière Broth­ers’ train — which, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, has also received the Shiryaev treat­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (May 1896)

Watch AI-Restored Film of Labor­ers Going Through Life in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land (1901)

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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