The Library of Congress Launches the National Screening Room, Putting Online Hundreds of Historic Films

in Film, History | October 16th, 2018

Pub­lic domain fans, pull your noses out of those musty old books on Project Guten­berg, but keep your eyes glued to the screen!

The Library of Con­gress just cut the rib­bon on the Nation­al Screen­ing Room, an online trove of cin­e­mat­ic good­ies, free for the stream­ing.

Giv­en that the col­lec­tion spans more than 100 years of cin­e­ma his­to­ry, from 1890–1999, not all of the fea­tured films are in the pub­lic domain, but most are, and those are free to down­load as well as watch.

Archivist Mike Mashon, who heads the Library’s Mov­ing Image Sec­tion, iden­ti­fies the project’s goal as pro­vid­ing the pub­lic with a “broad range of his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al audio-visu­al mate­ri­als that will enrich edu­ca­tion, schol­ar­ship and life­long learn­ing.”

Can’t argue with that. Those seek­ing to become bet­ter versed in the art of con­sen­su­al kiss­ing whilst mus­ta­chioed will find sev­er­al valu­able take­aways in the above clip.

Per­son­al expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, com­pels me to expand upon Mashon’s stat­ed goal: artists, the­ater­mak­ers, filmmakers—use those down­load­able pub­lic domain films in your cre­ative projects! (Prop­er­ly attrib­uted, of course.)

You can edu­cate your­self about a par­tic­u­lar clip’s rights and the gen­er­al ins and outs of motion pic­ture copy­rights by scrolling past the clip’s call num­ber to click on “Rights & Access.”

The Library does empha­size that rights assess­ment is the individual’s respon­si­bil­i­ty. Few artists con­ceive of this as the fun part, but do it, or risk the sort of cre­ative heart­break ani­ma­tor Nina Paley set her­self up for when inte­grat­ing inad­e­quate­ly checked out vin­tage record­ings into her fea­ture-length Sita Sings the Blues, hav­ing “decid­ed (she) was just going to use this music, and let the chips fall where they may.”

A hypo­thet­i­cal exam­ple: Liza Min­nel­li’s 2nd or 3rd birth­day par­ty at her god­fa­ther Ira Gershwin’s Bev­er­ly Hills estate?

It’s adorable to the point of irre­sistible, but alas “for edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es only,” a des­ig­na­tion that applies to all the Gersh­win home movies.

(Watch em, any­way! You nev­er know when you may be called upon to throw an opu­lent 1940’s‑style tod­dler par­ty. Fore­warned is fore­armed! Insta­gram’s gonna LOVE you.)

Copy­right-wise, a good way to hedge your bets is to look for mate­r­i­al filmed before 1922, like The New­ly­weds, DW Griffith’s meet-cute silent short, star­ring America’s Sweet­heart, Mary Pick­ford. Look to the lead­ing ladies of that era, if you want to find some wor­thy tales (and footage) to shoe­horn into your #metoo doc­u­men­tary.

Sounds like you’ve got a lot of research ahead of you, friend. But wait, there’s more!

Recharge your bat­ter­ies with a vis­it to Peking’s For­bid­den City cir­ca 1903.

Would­n’t that make a fine back­drop to your band’s next music video!

And dibs on the fabled div­ing horse of Coney Island, whose feats of der­ring-do were filmed by Thomas Edi­son.

I could watch that horse dive all day! And so could the audi­ence of that 8‑hour pup­pet opera I may wind up writ­ing one of these days. It’s set in Coney Island….

Read­ers, have a rum­mage and report back. What’s your favorite find in the Nation­al Screen­ing Room? Any plans for future use, real or imag­i­nary? Let us know.

If you’re not imme­di­ate­ly inspired, don’t despair. Just check back. New con­tent will be uploaded month­ly. There are also plans afoot to cre­ate edu­ca­tor les­son plans on his­tor­i­cal and social top­ics doc­u­ment­ed in the col­lec­tion. Teach­ers, imag­ine what your stu­dents might cre­ate with this class­room tool.…

Begin your vis­it to the Nation­al Screen­ing Room here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

Library of Con­gress Releas­es Audio Archive of Inter­views with Rock ‘n’ Roll Icons

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Learn Anatomy Through a Pictorial History of James Bond 007

in Art, Biology, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Science | October 15th, 2018

Remem­ber the scene in Tomor­row Nev­er Dies when sexy dou­ble agent Wai Lin hand­cuffs James Bond to the show­er and leaves him there?

Alter­nate­ly, remem­ber “Table 9” from anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albi­nus’ 1749 Tab­u­lae sceleti et mus­cu­lo­rum cor­poris humani?

Kri­o­ta Will­berg, an edu­ca­tor, mas­sage ther­a­pist at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, and author of Draw Stronger: Self-Care For Car­toon­ists and Oth­er Visu­al Artists, is suf­fi­cient­ly steeped in both Bond and Albi­nus to iden­ti­fy strik­ing visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties.

That show­er scene is just one icon­ic moment that Will­berg includ­ed in her mini-com­ic, Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007.

Agent Bond’s sar­to­r­i­al sense is a cru­cial aspect of his appeal, but Will­berg, a Bond fan who’s seen every film in the canon at least five times, digs below that cel­e­brat­ed sur­face, peel­ing back skin to expose the struc­tures that lie beneath.

Sean Connery’s Bond exhibits a vet­er­an artist’s mod­el’s still­ness wait­ing for the right time to make his move against Dr. No’s “eight-legged assas­sin.” Even before Will­berg got involved, it was an excel­lent show­case for his pecs, delta, and ster­n­ocleit­o­mas­toid mus­cles.

Leav­ing her flayed Bonds in their cin­e­mat­ic set­tings are a way of pay­ing trib­ute to the antique anatom­i­cal illus­tra­tions Will­berg admires for their dynamism:

…sit­ting in a chair, tak­ing a stroll, hold­ing its skin or organs out of the way so that the read­er can get a bet­ter look at deep­er struc­tures. Some of the cadav­ers are very flir­ty. The pic­tures remind us that we are the organs we see on the page. They do stuff! 

The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine select­ed Will­berg as its first Artist in Res­i­dence, because of the way she explores the inter­sec­tions between body sci­ences and artis­tic prac­tices. (Oth­er projects include an intri­cate needle­point X‑Ray of her own root canal and Stitchin’ Time!, a fic­tion­al encounter in which Aulus Cor­nelius Cel­sus (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE), author of  De Med­i­c­i­na, and sur­geon Aelius Galenus (129  – c. 200 CE) team up to repair a dis­em­bow­eled glad­i­a­tor.

Is there a squea­mish bone in this artist’s body?

All signs point to no.

Asked to pick a favorite Bond movie, she names Goldfin­ger for the mythol­o­gy con­cern­ing the infa­mous scene where­in a beau­ti­ful woman is paint­ed gold, but also 2006’s Casi­no Royale for keep­ing the tor­ture scene from the book:

I didn’t think they’d have the balls! Sor­ry! Poor taste but I couldn’t resist. Although Tim­o­thy Dal­ton phys­i­cal­ly resem­bled Bond as described in the books, most of the movies make Bond out to be smarter than Flem­ing wrote him. I think Judy Dench called Daniel Craig, Casi­no Royale’s Bond, a “blunt instru­ment” which is pret­ty much how he’s writ­ten. He’s tough and lucky and that’s why he’s sur­vived. Plus the machete fight is great. 

Some­times peo­ple get too pris­sy about the body. I am meat and liv­er and sausage and so are you. Your body is inescapable while you live. You should get to know it. Think about it in dif­fer­ent con­texts. It’s fun!

When From Rus­sia With Love’s Rosa Klebb punch­es mas­ter assas­sin, Red Grant, in the stom­ach, she is squish­ing a liv­ing liv­er through liv­ing abdom­i­nal mus­cles.

Hard copies of Kri­o­ta Willberg’s anato­my-based comics, includ­ing Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007, are avail­able from Bird­cage Bot­tom Books.

Lis­ten to an hour-long inter­view with Comics Alter­na­tive in which Will­berg dis­cuss­es her New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine res­i­den­cy, anatom­i­cal research, and the ways in which humor informs her approach here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Spell­bind­ing Art of Human Anato­my: From the Renais­sance to Our Mod­ern Times

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Noam Chomsky Talks About How Kids Acquire Language and Ideas in an Animated Video by Michel Gondry

in Film, Philosophy | October 12th, 2018

These days Noam Chom­sky is prob­a­bly most famous for his con­sis­tent, out­spo­ken crit­i­cism of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy. Yet before the War on Ter­ror and the War on Drugs, Chom­sky became inter­na­tion­al­ly famous for propos­ing a nov­el solu­tion to an age-old ques­tion: what does a baby know?

Pla­to argued that infants retain mem­o­ries of past lives and thus come into this world with a grasp of lan­guage. John Locke coun­tered that a baby’s mind is a blank slate onto which the world etch­es its impres­sion. After years of research, Chom­sky pro­posed that new­borns have a hard-wired abil­i­ty to under­stand gram­mar. Lan­guage acqui­si­tion is as ele­men­tal to being human as, say, dam build­ing is to a beaver. It’s just what we’re pro­grammed to do. Chomsky’s the­o­ries rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we under­stand lin­guis­tics and the mind.

A lit­tle while ago, film direc­tor and music video auteur Michel Gondry inter­viewed Chom­sky and then turned the whole thing into an extend­ed ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary called Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py?.

Above is a clip from the film. In his thick French accent, Gondry asks if there is a cor­re­la­tion between lan­guage acqui­si­tion and ear­ly mem­o­ries. For any­one who’s watched Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind, you know that mem­o­ry is one of the director’s major obses­sions. Over Gondry’s rough-hewn draw­ings, Chom­sky expounds: “Chil­dren know quite a lot of a lan­guage, much more than you would expect, before they can exhib­it that knowl­edge.” He goes on to talk about new tech­niques for teach­ing deaf-blind chil­dren and how a day-old infant inter­prets the world.

As the father of a tod­dler who is at the cusp of learn­ing to form thoughts in words, I found the clip to be fas­ci­nat­ing. Now, if only Chom­sky can explain why my son has tak­en to shout­ing the word “bacon” over and over and over again.

To gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of Chom­sky’s thoughts on lin­guis­tics, see our pre­vi­ous post:  The Ideas of Noam Chom­sky: An Intro­duc­tion to His The­o­ries on Lan­guage & Knowl­edge (1977)

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 and BlueSky.

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March 2015.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Direc­tor Michel Gondry Makes a Charm­ing Film on His iPhone, Prov­ing That We Could Be Mak­ing Movies, Not Tak­ing Self­ies

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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“Lynchian,” “Kubrickian,” “Tarantinoesque” and 100+ Film Words Have Been Added to the Oxford English Dictionary

in English Language, Film | October 5th, 2018

Image via Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary

Get inter­est­ed enough in any­thing, and you soon dis­cov­er its lan­guage. Each sub­ject, pur­suit, and area of cul­ture has its own slang, its own jar­gon, even its own gram­mar: that goes as well for physics and fish­ing as it does for cook­ing and cin­e­ma. Though quite spe­cial­ized, the vast lex­i­con of that last has also con­tributed a great deal to Eng­lish as gen­er­al­ly used. The lat­est update to the ven­er­a­ble Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary has added more than 100 of these terms, from already well-known expres­sions like “edge-of-your-seat,” “not in Kansas any­more,” and “blink and you’ll miss it” to the less-com­mon likes of kai­ju (the Japan­ese bat­tling-mon­ster genre that gave us Godzil­la), and Foley (the art of adding inci­den­tal sounds to movies in post-pro­duc­tion), and gore­hound (an enthu­si­ast of the gorefest, a genre whose sen­si­bil­i­ty you can well imag­ine).

Many of the new entries have to do with par­tic­u­lar direc­tors and their styles. “The list runs through a range of gen­res and loca­tions, from the wide land­scapes of the Amer­i­can West evoked by For­dian to Swedish soul-search­ing with Bergmanesque,” writes the OED’s Craig Ley­land. The old­est, Keatonesque, “dates from 1921, near the start of an extra­or­di­nary run of suc­cess for the com­ic actor and film-mak­er, and typ­i­cal­ly refers to Keaton’s famous dead­pan expres­sion and pen­chant for phys­i­cal com­e­dy. The most recent is Taran­ti­noesque, first seen in 1994 – the year Pulp Fic­tion appeared in cin­e­mas,” which refers to qual­i­ties like “graph­ic and styl­ized vio­lence, cinelit­er­ate ref­er­ences, non-lin­ear sto­ry­lines, sharp dia­logue, and more – and is a reminder of the impact these films had on cin­e­ma in the 1990s.”

Oth­er auteur-spe­cif­ic addi­tions include Spiel­ber­gian (“fan­tas­ti­cal or human­ist themes or a sen­ti­men­tal feel”), Lynchi­an (“not­ed for jux­ta­pos­ing sur­re­al or sin­is­ter ele­ments with mun­dane, every­day envi­ron­ments”), and of course Kubrick­ian (“metic­u­lous per­fec­tion­ism, mas­tery of the tech­ni­cal aspects of film-mak­ing, and atmos­pher­ic visu­al style in films across a range of gen­res”). Sev­er­al terms denot­ing broad­er move­ments and styles have also made it in, includ­ing mum­blecore, “a style of low-bud­get film typ­i­cal­ly char­ac­ter­ized by nat­u­ral­is­tic and (appar­ent­ly) impro­vised per­for­mances and a reliance on dia­logue rather than plot or action” which emerged about a decade ago, and Ham­mer, denot­ing the hor­ror films made from the 1950s to the 70s by British pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny of that name, “still famous and loved for their lurid, melo­dra­mat­ic style.”

Mas­ter these words and you’ll sure­ly hold your own in casu­al cinephile con­ver­sa­tion. But you can only get so deep into talk­ing about movies if you can’t con­fi­dent­ly bring out terms like arc shot, diegetic, and mise-en-scène. As one of the most capa­cious art forms, cin­e­ma brings togeth­er a num­ber of lan­guages all at once, includ­ing the visu­al lan­guage as defined by direc­tors like Sovi­et mon­tage pio­neer Sergei Eisen­stein (he of Eisen­stein­ian) and the lan­guage the screen­play gives its char­ac­ters to speak (an espe­cial­ly dis­tinc­tive ele­ment in the case of film­mak­ers like Taran­ti­no). But those are essen­tial­ly soli­tary plea­sures, enjoyed in a dark­ened the­ater or liv­ing room. Isn’t one of the most endur­ing joys of film­go­ing talk­ing about the movies with oth­er peo­ple lat­er — and to sound as expert as pos­si­ble while doing so?

via OED/Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Real­ly Made: Dis­cov­er the Mag­ic of “Foley Artists”

Colum­bia U. Launch­es a Free Mul­ti­me­dia Glos­sary for Study­ing Cin­e­ma & Film­mak­ing

Vin­tage Film Shows How the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary Was Made in 1925

Ter­ry Gilliam on the Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick & Spiel­berg: Kubrick Makes You Think, Spiel­berg Wraps Every­thing Up with Neat Lit­tle Bows

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 or on Face­book.

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When Andy Warhol Made a Batman Superhero Movie (1964)

in Comics/Cartoons, Film | October 4th, 2018

Each of us has a favorite Bat­man movie. My own alle­giance still lies with the one Tim Bur­ton direct­ed in 1989, a pro­to­type of the mod­ern dark super­hero block­buster in which Jack Nichol­son made quite an impact as the Jok­er. But Heath Ledger made an even big­ger one in The Dark Knight, an espe­cial­ly beloved entry in Christo­pher Nolan’s acclaimed Bat­man pic­tures of the 21st cen­tu­ry. These days, with enough dis­tance, some even admit to enjoy­ing Joel Schu­macher’s ultra-campy takes on Bat­man from the late 1990s, or their spir­i­tu­al pre­de­ces­sor Bat­man: The Movie from 1966, an exten­sion of the self-par­o­dy­ing tele­vi­sion series star­ring Adam West. But before all of them there was Bat­man Drac­u­la, direct­ed by no less a vision­ary — and no less a Bat­man fan — than Andy Warhol.

Star­ring Warhol’s fel­low exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er Jack Smith in both title roles, Bat­man Drac­u­la pits the Caped Cru­sad­er of com­ic-book fame against the vam­pir­ic Tran­syl­van­ian count of leg­end, the mil­lion­aire vig­i­lante who seems to fear noth­ing but bats against the immor­tal recluse who spends much of his time in the form of a bat.

Smith may bear a faint resem­blance to Chris­t­ian Bale, Nolan’s Bat­man, but there all aes­thet­ic resem­blance to the “real” Bat­man movies ends. Shot in black and white on var­i­ous rooftops around New York and Long Island as well as in Warhol’s “Fac­to­ry,” Warhol’s unau­tho­rized approach to the mate­r­i­al seems to get as abstract and spon­ta­neous as most of the cin­e­ma put togeth­er by his coterie — or at least the sur­viv­ing footage makes it look that way. Though Warhol did com­plete Bat­man Drac­u­la, he only showed it at a few of his art shows before DC Comics called and demand­ed an imme­di­ate end to its screen­ings.

Nobody has found a com­plete print since, but you can watch a few min­utes of the sur­viv­ing footage cut to “The Noth­ing Song” by the Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (a much more endur­ing prod­uct of the Fac­to­ry) in the video at the top of the post. Below that we have the LowRes Wün­der­bred video essay “Decon­struct­ing Andy Warhol’s Bat­man Drac­u­la,” which pro­vides more details on the mak­ing of Bat­man Drac­u­la and its con­text in the careers of Warhol and his col­lab­o­ra­tors. The Film His­to­ries video on Bat­man Drac­u­la just above gets into how the movie opened up a “Pan­do­ra’s box” of unau­tho­rized Bat­man and Bat­man-like movies, includ­ing The Wild World of Bat­woman and the Fil­ipino Alyas Bat­man at Robin. So many Bat­man projects, offi­cial and oth­er­wise, now exist, and so many more remain to be made. But will any of the mate­ri­al’s future stew­ards push its artis­tic bound­aries as much as Warhol did?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

City of Scars: The Impres­sive Bat­man Fan Film Made for $27,000 in 21 Days

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Warhol’s Cin­e­ma: A Mir­ror for the Six­ties (1989)

The Uncen­sored Andy Warhol-Direct­ed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hel­lo Again” (NSFW)

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 or on Face­book.

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Jurassic Park Without Dinosaurs: Watch Humans Stare in Amazement at a World Stripped of CGI Creations

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Software, Technology | September 28th, 2018

How many times have you encoun­tered an oth­er­wise per­fect view spoiled by a new­ly erect­ed high rise, a con­struc­tion crane, or a CGI bra­chiosaurus?

Con­stant­ly, right?

Video edi­tor William Hirsch makes light work of Juras­sic Park’s pri­ma­ry attrac­tions’ first appear­ance, lit­er­al­ly eras­ing them from the scene.

Hirsch esti­mat­ed that it took him about a week to get rid of those pesky ‘saurs using noth­ing fanci­er than After Effects’s built in tools, which include the motion track­ing soft­ware Mocha.

It’s equal parts ridicu­lous and love­ly to see humans sud­den­ly thun­der­struck by the unspoiled land­scape they’ve been dri­ving through.

These days, of course, Lau­ra Dern would have to glance up from her phone, not a paper map.

Though it’s not such a stretch to imag­ine Juras­sic Park’s author’s suc­ces­sor, the late Michael Crich­ton’s lit­er­ary heir, hard at work on a dystopi­an nov­el titled Park.

At the time of its release, Juras­sic Park’s dinosaurs were a spe­cial effects game chang­er. Their num­bers were sup­ple­ment­ed by some non-com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed ani­ma­tron­ic mod­els, though no doubt Spiel­berg was appre­hen­sive giv­en the way his robot­ic sharks act­ed up on the set of Jaws. The human play­ers may have had more screen time, but the dinosaurs’ 15 min­utes of footage has result­ed in a last­ing fame, extend­ing decades beyond the expect­ed 15 min­utes.

Unex­pect­ed­ly, Hirsch’s dinosaurs, or rather, lack there­of, have gen­er­at­ed the most excite­ment with regard to his project. But his atten­tion to detail is also laud­able. Above, he reveals how he tweaked the access badge dan­gling from the rear view mir­ror of the park’s all-ter­rain vehi­cle.

Are we wrong to think that John Williams’ swelling orig­i­nal score feels more organ­ic in this dinosaur-free con­text? Rivers, trees, and vast amounts of skies have been known to spur com­posers to such heights.

The poten­tial­ly lethal pre­his­toric beasts are out of the way, but that line “We’re gonna make a for­tune with this place” retains an air of omi­nous fore­shad­ow­ing, giv­en the plen­ti­ful nat­ur­al resources on dis­play. Some­times humans can do more dam­age than dinosaurs.

If that feels too intense, you can also retreat to the escapist plea­sures of the orig­i­nal, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cap­ti­vat­ing GIFs Reveal the Mag­i­cal Spe­cial Effects in Clas­sic Silent Films

Game of Thrones: A Great Behind-the-Scenes Look at The Show’s Visu­al Effects

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests of Three Female Muses: Nico, Edie Sedgwick & Mary Woronov

in Art, Film | September 24th, 2018

Artist Andy Warhol shot over 500 silent, black-and-white screen-tests in his famous Fac­to­ry between 1964 and 1966, doc­u­ment­ing the beau­ti­ful youth who were drawn to the scene. Some­times he would chat with the sub­ject before­hand, offer­ing sug­ges­tions to help them achieve the type of per­for­mance he was look­ing for. More fre­quent­ly he took a pas­sive role, to the point of leav­ing the room dur­ing the film­ing.

The oppo­site of a peo­ple per­son, he pre­ferred to engage with his sub­jects by scru­ti­niz­ing the fin­ished screen tests, pro­ject­ing them in slow motion to imbue them with an added ele­ment of glam­our and ampli­fy every nuance of expres­sion. As Warhol wrote in The Phi­los­o­phy of Andy Warhol:

That screen mag­net­ism is some­thing secret. If you could fig­ure out what it is and how you make it, you’d have a real­ly good prod­uct to sell. But you can’t even tell if some­one has it until you actu­al­ly see them up there on the screen. You have to give screen tests to find out.

The screen tests are less audi­tions for roles in Warhol films than pieces of an ongo­ing project. Warhol played with them, assem­bling and reassem­bling them into col­lec­tions which he screened under such flu­id titles as 13 Most Beau­ti­ful Women and 13 Most Want­ed Men. Some of his test sub­jects went on to achieve real star­dom—Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, and Bob Dylan…

Oth­ers’ fame is for­ev­er tied to the Fac­to­ry.

Edie Sedg­wick, above, one of his best known mus­es, was a trou­bled girl from a wealthy fam­i­ly. Unlike some of the mood­i­er screen tests, Sedgwick’s is ful­ly lit. She dis­plays a gen­uine movie star’s poise, bare­ly mov­ing as the cam­era drinks her in. Her beau­ty appears untouched by the addic­tions and eat­ing dis­or­ders that were already a dri­ving force in her life.

Actress and painter Mary Woronov emerged unscathed from her time at the Fac­to­ry. Like Sedg­wick, she seemed com­fort­able with the idea of being observed doing noth­ing for an extend­ed peri­od. Recall­ing her screen test expe­ri­ence in an inter­view with Bizarre, she made it clear that the sub­jects were far from the cen­ter of atten­tion:

Andy put you on a stool, then puts the cam­era in front of you. There are lots of peo­ple around usu­al­ly. And then he turns the cam­era on, and he walks away, and all the peo­ple walk away too, but you’re stand­ing there in front of this cam­era.

I saw Sal­vador Dali do one, it was real­ly fun­ny. It’s a very inter­est­ing film, because it’s a way of crack­ing open your per­son­al­i­ty and show­ing what’s underneath—only in a visu­al way, because there’s no talk­ing, noth­ing. You just look at the cam­era. Sal­vador made this gigan­tic pose with his mous­tache blar­ing and every­thing, and he could­n’t hold the pose. Not for five min­utes. And so at about minute four, he sud­den­ly start­ed look­ing very, very real.

The cam­era loves still­ness, some­thing mod­el and singer Nico was unable to deliv­er in her screen test. Per­haps not such a prob­lem when the direc­tor has plans to project in slow motion.

As he stat­ed in POP­ism: The Warhol ’60s:

What I liked was chunks of time all togeth­er, every real moment… I only want­ed to find great peo­ple and let them be them­selves… and I’d film them for a cer­tain length of time and that would be the movie.

Fac­to­ry regular/interior decorator/photographer Bil­ly Name told punk his­to­ri­an Legs McNeil in an inter­view that the screen tests served anoth­er pur­pose—to iden­ti­fy the fel­low trav­el­ers from among the poor fits:

… it’s always cool to meet oth­er artists, you know, to see if it’s some­body who’s going to be a peer or a com­pa­tri­ot, who you can play with and hang around with or not. Andy was doing a series of screen tests for his films, and we want­ed every­body to do one: Dylan, Nico, Den­nis Hop­per, Susan Son­tag, Donovan—everyone famous that came up to the Fac­to­ry. We’d just film 16mm black-and-white por­traits of the per­son sit­ting there for a few min­utes. So our pur­pose was to have Dylan come up and do a screen test, so he could be part of the series. That was enough for us. But Dylan did­n’t talk at all when we filmed him. I don’t think he liked us, ha, ha, ha!

Revolver Gallery, devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to Warhol, has a gallery of screen-tests on their YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vel­vet Under­ground & Andy Warhol Stage Pro­to-Punk Per­for­mance Art: Dis­cov­er the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable (1966)

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

The Big Ideas Behind Andy Warhol’s Art, and How They Can Help Us Build a Bet­ter World

Andy Warhol’s ‘Screen Test’ of Bob Dylan: A Clas­sic Meet­ing of Egos

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Get a First Listen to David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti’s Long-Lost Album, Thought Gang

in Film, Music, Television | September 19th, 2018

All of David Lynch’s movies, tele­vi­sion shows, music videos, and com­mer­cials — and also his paint­ings, pho­tographs, and com­ic strips — express a con­sis­tent, and con­sis­tent­ly Lynchi­an, vision. But that vision depends on more than just the visu­al: the son­ic has also played a vital part in its devel­op­ment at least since the night­mar­ish­ly intri­cate sound design of Lynch’s 1977 debut fea­ture Eraser­head. And just imag­ine how much impact lat­er Lynch projects like Blue Vel­vet, Twin Peaks, The Straight Sto­ry, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve would have lost with­out the rich and often haunt­ing scores of Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, a com­pos­er with whom Lynch has worked at seem­ing­ly every oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Lynch made his own offi­cial debut as a record­ing artist sev­en years ago with Crazy Clown Time, and this Novem­ber he and Badala­men­ti will release their first col­lab­o­ra­tive album Thought Gang. Accord­ing to its Band­camp page, this “eso­teric jazz side­ project of David Lynch and Ange­lo Badala­men­ti evolved from the seeds of Twin Peaks’ trade­mark slow cool jazz and blos­somed into more exper­i­men­tal pas­tures: hori­zon­less vis­tas of acid­-soaked free­jazz, laced with spo­ken word nar­ra­tives and sprawl­ing nois­escapes.” If that sounds good to you, you can get a first taste of the album from the track “Wood­cut­ters From Fiery Ships” above.

The Thought Gang ses­sions hap­pened 25 years ago, between the end of Twin Peaks’ sec­ond sea­son and the pro­duc­tion of the Twin Peaks movie Fire Walk with Me. Out of those ses­sions came a quan­ti­ty of music that Lynch describes as “sort of like jet-­fu­eled jazz in a weird way… but it’s all based on sto­ries.” Two of those tracks, “A Real Indi­ca­tion” and “The Black Dog Runs at Night,” appeared on the sound­track of the movie, and two oth­ers, “Frank 2000” and “Sum­mer Night Noise,” (as well as the instru­men­tal mix of anoth­er, “Log­ic and Com­mon Sense”) fea­ture in Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired on Show­time last year. More con­nec­tions to Lynch’s oth­er work sur­face in “Wood­cut­ters From Fiery Ships,” begin­ning with its title, which adorned a Lynch-themed, seem­ing­ly nev­er-devel­oped CD-ROM game twen­ty years ago.

Much of the Lynchi­an imagery that fills the song — talk-sung by Badala­men­ti him­self, who, says the Band­camp page, sum­moned “such a vio­lent laugh­ter­-fueled excite­ment from Lynch that he lit­er­al­ly induced a her­nia” — may also sound famil­iar. A char­ac­ter called Pete “saw the girl next door take off her clothes last night and walk through her house nude.” At a din­er, “he heard a man say that the doc­tors had cut him down his neck and into his chest.” A “grey man with big ears lit a big cig­ar” and “smoke drift­ed over Pete’s apple pie.” Badala­men­ti at one point declares that “things aren’t mak­ing sense. For instance, why is that boy bleed­ing from the mouth?” True fans will rec­og­nize that line as the title of one of Lynch’s paint­ings. And so the grand Lynchi­an project con­tin­ues, some­how get­ting both weird­er and more coher­ent all the time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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