The Art of Movie Posters: View Online 40,000+ Movie Posters & Learn How They’re Made

in Art, Film | December 15th, 2020

If you can’t judge a movie by its poster, it’s not for the poster design­er’s lack of try­ing. Near­ly as ven­er­a­ble as cin­e­ma itself, the art of the movie poster has evolved to attract the atten­tion and inter­est of gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of film­go­ers — and, safe to say, devel­oped a few best prac­tices along the way. Some exam­ples go beyond effec­tive adver­tise­ment to become icons in and of them­selves: take for exam­ple, the poster for Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Pulp Fic­tion, designed by James Verdes­o­to. In the Van­i­ty Fair video above, Verdes­o­to draws on a vari­ety of “one-sheets” in order to explain a few of the tricks of the trade.


Like any cul­tur­al arti­fact, movie posters are sub­ject to trend and fash­ion. It just hap­pens that trends and fash­ions in movie poster design can last for decades, with each revival bring­ing an under­ly­ing aes­thet­ic con­cept back into the zeit­geist in a new way. Sure­ly you’ll recall a few years, not long ago, when every major com­e­dy seemed to stamp bold red text on a pure white back­ground: Amer­i­can Pie, the remakes of Cheap­er by the Dozen, and The Heart­break Kid, even the likes of Nor­bit.

This has been going on at least since the 1980s, as Verdes­o­to shows by pulling out the poster for John Hugh­es’ beloved Planes, Trains, and Auto­mo­biles, then com­par­ing it to the con­cep­tu­al­ly sim­i­lar one for Meet the Par­ents to note dif­fer­ences in the use of fonts, pho­tographs, and neg­a­tive space.

Since The Firm, thrillers have often been sig­naled with hunt­ed-look­ing men run­ning down blue-toned cor­ri­dors or streets, often in sil­hou­ette; a great many explo­sive action movies since Die Hard have gone in for black-and-white posters that empha­size slash­es of red or orange. Even the non-genre of “inde­pen­dent films,” often mod­est of mar­ket­ing bud­get, have their own col­or: canary yel­low “a cheap way to catch the eye.” Case in point: Vin­cent Gal­lo’s The Brown Bun­ny, a noto­ri­ous film that also hap­pened to come with one of the most mem­o­rable posters of the 2000s, due not just to its yel­low back­ground but because its con­scious ref­er­ence to Euro­pean designs of the 1950s and 60s, such as the one for Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nion­i’s Blow-Up.

You can behold (and in some cas­es even down­load) count­less many works of movie-poster art, from a vari­ety of decades and a vari­ety of nations, at the sites of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter and the New York movie poster gallery Pos­ter­i­tati. Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve also fea­tured Taschen’s book of dynam­ic movie posters of the Russ­ian avant-garde, online archives of the famous­ly artis­tic movie posters of Poland and Czecho­slo­va­kia, not to men­tion com­pelling­ly odd hand-paint­ed movie posters from Ghana. Spend enough time with all of them, and you may find your­self pos­sessed of enough of an intel­lec­tu­al invest­ment in this thor­ough­ly mod­ern art form to start invest­ing in a gen­uine col­lec­tion of your own. But no mat­ter your enthu­si­asm for movie posters, it’ll be a while before you catch up with Mar­tin Scors­ese.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10,000 Clas­sic Movie Posters Get­ting Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin: Free to Browse & Down­load

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

An Archive of 20,000 Movie Posters from Czecho­slo­va­kia (1930–1989)

Graph­ic Design­er Redesigns a Movie Poster Every Day, for One Year: Scar­face, Mul­hol­land Dr., The Grad­u­ate, Ver­ti­go, The Life Aquat­ic and 360 More

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed Exclu­sive­ly to Poster Art Opens Its Doors in the U.S.: Enter the Poster House

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Isaac Newton Theorized That the Egyptian Pyramids Revealed the Timing of the Apocalypse: See His Burnt Manuscript from the 1680s

in History, Religion | December 15th, 2020

Today one can behold the pyra­mids of Giza and feel the temp­ta­tion to believe that the ancient Egyp­tians knew some­thing we mod­erns did­n’t. Just imag­ine, then, what it must have felt like in the 17th cen­tu­ry, when the recov­ery of lost ancient knowl­edge was still very much an active enter­prise. Back then, no less for­mi­da­ble a mind than Sir Isaac New­ton sus­pect­ed that to under­stand the pyra­mids would be to under­stand much else besides, from the nature of grav­i­ty — a sub­ject on which he would become some­thing of an author­i­ty — to Bib­li­cal prophe­cy. The key he reck­oned, lay in an ancient Egypt­ian unit of mea­sure­ment called the roy­al cubit.

“Estab­lish­ing the pre­cise length of the Egypt­ian cubit would allow him to recon­struct in turn oth­er ancient mea­sures, cru­cial­ly the sacred cubit of the Hebrews, and so be able to recon­struct with pre­ci­sion a build­ing that was, to New­ton, of much greater import even than the Great Pyra­mid: the Tem­ple of Solomon,” says Sothe­by’s.

There, a few pages of New­ton’s notes on the sub­ject (burnt at the edges, which leg­end has it hap­pened when his dog knocked over a can­dle) recent­ly sold for £378,000, but you can still view them online. Giv­en that Ezekiel describes the Tem­ple of Solomon as the set­ting of the Apoc­a­lypse — the end of the world being anoth­er sub­ject of New­ton­ian inter­est — “an exact knowl­edge of the Tem­ple’s archi­tec­ture and dimen­sions was there­fore need­ed to cor­rect­ly inter­pret the Bible’s deep and hid­den mean­ings.” It would also reveal the even­tu­al tim­ing of the the Apoc­a­lypse.

New­ton’s belief that “the ancient Egyp­tians pos­sessed knowl­edge that had been lost in the inter­ven­ing cen­turies,” as Smithsonian.com’s Livia Ger­shon puts it, did not set him far apart from main­stream Euro­pean schol­ar­ship at the time. He also thought, Ger­shon writes, “that the ancient Greeks had suc­cess­ful­ly mea­sured Earth’s cir­cum­fer­ence using a unit called the stade, which he believed was bor­rowed from the Egyp­tians. By trans­lat­ing the ancient mea­sure­ment, New­ton hoped to val­i­date his own the­o­ry of grav­i­ty,” as he ulti­mate­ly did, though not, per­haps, in the man­ner he first expect­ed to. We must, it seems, con­sid­er the pyra­mids, along­side the Philoso­pher’s stone, the South Sea Com­pa­ny, and toad-vom­it plague cures, as anoth­er exam­ple of the great genius’ occa­sion­al­ly exces­sive enthu­si­asms — albeit an unusu­al­ly pow­er­ful one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Stag­ger­ing Genius of Isaac New­ton

Isaac New­ton Con­ceived of His Most Ground­break­ing Ideas Dur­ing the Great Plague of 1665

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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How the Garage-Rock Anthem “Louie Louie” Became the Subject of a Lengthy FBI Investigation (1964)

in Music | December 15th, 2020

Rock and roll his­to­ry is built on hap­py acci­dents, moments where enthu­si­asm and raw tal­ent exceed the lim­its of tech­nol­o­gy. Dis­tor­tion, the sine qua non of mod­ern rock, came from bro­ken ampli­fiers and mix­ing boards, and speak­ers slashed to rib­bons. Such excess­es can be threat­en­ing. Link Wray’s grit­ty 1958 instru­men­tal “Rum­ble” earned a ban from the air­waves for its alleged men­ace. Since then, rock has sur­vived one cru­sade after anoth­er, launched by par­ents, church groups, and scare­mon­ger­ing char­la­tans.

One clas­sic case illus­trates the norm: parental over­re­ac­tion to teenage rumors, incom­pe­tent response from author­i­ties, and, as above, a tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tion that led to a styl­is­tic rev­o­lu­tion. The incom­pre­hen­si­ble vocals in the Kingsmen’s 1963 record­ing of “Louie, Louie” are leg­endary, cov­ered and imi­tat­ed by garage bands and rock stars since, and going down “in pop his­to­ry,” Anwen Craw­ford writes at The New York­er, “as one of the medium’s more endear­ing (and endur­ing) moments of ama­teurism.”

The per­for­mance “was a result of acci­dent rather than design.” The Kings­men record­ed the song into a sin­gle micro­phone sus­pend­ed sev­er­al feet above singer Jack Ely and the band. “Ely was wear­ing den­tal braces,” notes Craw­ford, “and his band­mates, who were gath­ered around Ely in a cir­cle, played their instru­ments loud­ly.” The band had learned the song from the Wail­ers, whose 1961 ver­sion cov­ered song­writer Richard Berry’s orig­i­nal, both of which had been region­al hits in the Pacif­ic North­west.

The Kingsman’s “Louie Louie” became an instant garage-rock clas­sic, hit­ting No. 2 on the Bill­board sin­gles charts, despite the fact that no one who had­n’t heard the ear­li­er ver­sions had a clue what it was about. Since the lyrics could have said almost any­thing, it seemed, they pro­voked imme­di­ate spec­u­la­tion about obscen­i­ty. Rock crit­ic Dave Marsh describes the phe­nom­e­non:

Back in 1963, every­body who knew any­thing about rock ‘n’ roll knew that the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” con­cealed dirty words that could be unveiled only by play­ing the 45 rpm sin­gle at 33–1/3. This pre­pos­ter­ous fable bore no scruti­ny even at the time, but kids used to pre­tend it did, in order to pan­ic par­ents, teach­ers, and oth­er author­i­ty fig­ures. Even­tu­al­ly those ulti­mate author­i­tar­i­ans, the FBI got involved, con­duct­ing a thir­ty-month inves­ti­ga­tion that led to “Louie”‘s undy­ing — indeed, unkil­l­able — rep­u­ta­tion as a dirty song.

So “Louie Louie” leaped up the chart on the basis of a myth about its lyrics so con­ta­gious that it swept cross coun­try quick­er than bad weath­er. Nobody — not you, not me, not the G‑men ulti­mate­ly assigned to the case — knows where the sto­ry start­ed. That’s part of the proof that it was a myth, because no folk tales ever have a ver­i­fi­able ori­gin. Instead soci­ety cre­ates them through cul­tur­al spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion.

The FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into “Louie Louie”’s lyrics began when out­raged par­ents wrote let­ters to attor­ney gen­er­al Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover. Off and on, for two years, the Bureau inves­ti­gat­ed the record­ing. They played it “back­wards and for­wards,” says Eric Pre­doehl, direc­tor of a doc­u­men­tary about the song. “They played it at dif­fer­ent speeds, they spent a lot of time on it–but it was inde­ci­pher­able at any speed.” Why they both­ered is real­ly any­one’s guess. Agents final­ly had to give up and close the case, after a mean­ing­less expen­di­ture of gov­ern­ment resources.

They nev­er both­ered, dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion, to lis­ten to the ear­li­er record­ings of the song. (The band swears Ely sung the lyrics as writ­ten ver­ba­tim.)  They nev­er inter­viewed Ely him­self. Nor did any­one have the bright idea to walk down to the Bureau of Copy­right, where they would have found un-sala­cious lyrics to “Louie Louie” on file. Rumor and innu­en­do were as good as evi­dence. Read the Full FBI report at NPR. “Read­er beware,” they cau­tion, “the doc­u­ment describes lis­ten­er the­o­ries that the lyrics of ‘Louie Louie’ were secret­ly vul­gar, and includes the sup­posed vul­gar­i­ties.” 

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear the Only Instru­men­tal Ever Banned from the Radio: Link Wray’s Seduc­tive, Raunchy Song, “Rum­ble” (1958)

A Brief His­to­ry of Gui­tar Dis­tor­tion: From Ear­ly Exper­i­ments to Hap­py Acci­dents to Clas­sic Effects Ped­als

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

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

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MIT’s Introduction to Deep Learning: A Free Online Course

in Computer Science, Online Courses | December 14th, 2020

MIT has post­ed online its intro­duc­to­ry course on deep learn­ing, which cov­ers appli­ca­tions to com­put­er vision, nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing, biol­o­gy, and more. Stu­dents “will gain foun­da­tion­al knowl­edge of deep learn­ing algo­rithms and get prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in build­ing neur­al net­works in Ten­sor­Flow.” Pre­req­ui­sites assume cal­cu­lus (i.e. tak­ing deriv­a­tives) and lin­ear alge­bra (i.e. matrix mul­ti­pli­ca­tion). Expe­ri­ence in Python is help­ful but not nec­es­sary. The first lec­ture appears above. The rest of the course mate­ri­als (videos & slides) can be found here.

Intro­duc­tion to Deep Learn­ing will be added to our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.  You can also find Deep Learn­ing cours­es on Cours­era.

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!

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A Visual History of The Rolling Stones Documented in a Beautiful, 450-Page Photo Book by Taschen

in Books, Music | December 14th, 2020

There is a cer­tain look that screams rock ‘n’ roll—one part out­law bik­er, one part psy­che­del­ic magi­cian, one part pimp, one part cir­cus per­former…. But where did it come from? We could trace it back to Link Wray, Lit­tle Richard, Elvis, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. But the Rolling Stones refined and per­fect­ed the look, as they refined and per­fect­ed the slurred, sham­bling bar­room blues that became a sig­na­ture sound at their peak. Even punks who reject­ed the rock star image couldn’t help look­ing like Kei­th Richards at times. It’s unavoid­able. The Bea­t­les turned rock into immac­u­late cham­ber pop. The Stones turned it into pure, raw, greasy sleaze, and bless them for it.

“Ear­ly on,” says pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ethan Rus­sell, who pho­tographed them dur­ing 1969 and 1972 tours, “the Rolling Stones had this phe­nom­e­nal edgi­ness in their image, and they were able to car­ry it into the age of imagery and stay out in front of it. The way the Stones have inhab­it­ed their images is one rea­son they have been able to stay a rel­e­vant act over all these years.”

For the band’s 50th anniver­sary in 2012, they came up with the idea of a mas­sive pho­to book with Taschen that col­lects hun­dreds of pho­tographs from the span of their career. The pho­tos “range from the Stones’ nascent days as blues-crazed boy musi­cians in hound­stooth jack­ets,” notes The New York Times, “to their most recent years as the leather-faced but styl­ish­ly ven­er­a­ble elders of rock ‘n’ roll.”

The book also charts the band’s line­up changes along the way, cap­tur­ing bril­liant and trag­ic Bri­an Jones, under­rat­ed Mick Tay­lor, and under­stat­ed Bill Wyman, who left in the ear­ly 90s. Over the years, a cou­ple dozen famous pho­tog­ra­phers have immor­tal­ized them: David Bai­ley, Herb Ritts, Peter Beard, Andy Warhol, David LaChapelle, Annie Lei­bovitz, Gered Mankowitz, Cecil Beat­on, Anton Cor­bi­jn, and so many more—all rep­re­sent­ed here in glo­ri­ous full-col­or spreads. The over 500-page book also includes essays from writ­ers like David Dal­ton, Walde­mar Januszczak, and Luc Sante and an appen­dix with a time­line, discog­ra­phy, and bios of the pho­tog­ra­phers.

The Rolling Stones also fea­tures images from the Stones’ archives in New York and Lon­don, adding “an equal­ly extra­or­di­nary, more pri­vate side to their sto­ry,” writes Taschen. First pub­lished in 2012, the book will soon be reis­sued in an updat­ed edi­tion for 2020. Need a gift for the Stones super­fan in your life? Con­sid­er a ring­ing endorse­ment from anoth­er rock star, Antho­ny Bour­dain, who called the book his favorite: “icon­ic then, icon­ic now,” says Bour­dain, “they wrote the book on what it meant to be rock stars: how to look, dress, behave.… They were the first rock and roll aris­to­crats.” Pick up a copy of Taschen’s The Rolling Stones on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

The Rolling Stones Release a Long Lost Track Fea­tur­ing Led Zeppelin’s Jim­my Page

The Rolling Stones Release a Time­ly Track, “Liv­ing in a Ghost Town”: Their First New Music in Eight Years

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

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Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

in Food & Drink, Life, Television | December 14th, 2020

You need nev­er endeav­or to make any of the recipes world renowned chef Jacques Pépin pro­duced on cam­era in his 2008 series More Fast Food My Way.

The help­ful hints he toss­es off dur­ing each half hour episode more than jus­ti­fy a view­ing.

The menu for the episode titled “The Egg First!,” above, includes Red Pep­per Dip, Aspara­gus Fans with Mus­tard Sauce, Scal­lops Grenobloise, Pota­to Gratin with Cream, and Jam Tartines with Fruit Sher­bet so sim­ple, a child could make it (pro­vid­ed they’re set up with good qual­i­ty pound­cake in advance.)

Deli­cious… espe­cial­ly when pre­pared by a culi­nary mas­ter Julia Child laud­ed as “the best chef in Amer­i­ca.”

And he’s def­i­nite­ly not stingy with mat­ter-of-fact advice on how to peel aspara­gus, pota­toes and hard boiled egg, grate fresh nut­meg with a knife, and dress up store bought mayo any num­ber of ways.

His recipes (some avail­able online here) are well suit­ed to the cur­rent moment. The ingre­di­ents aren’t too dif­fi­cult to pro­cure, and each episode begins with a fast, easy dish that can be explained in a minute, such as Mini Cro­ques-Mon­sieur, Asian Chick­en Liv­ers, or Basil Cheese Dip.

Many of the dish­es harken to his child­hood in World War II-era Lyon:

When we were kids, before going to school, my two broth­ers and I would go to the mar­ket with my moth­er in the morn­ing. She had a lit­tle restau­rant… There was no car, so we walked to the market—about half a mile away—and she bought, on the way back, a case of mush­rooms which was get­ting dark so she knew the guy had to sell it, so she’d try to get it for half price… She did­n’t have a refrig­er­a­tor. She had an ice box: that’s a block of ice in a cab­i­net. In there she’d have a cou­ple of chick­ens or meat for the day. It had to be fin­ished at the end of the day because she could­n’t keep it. And the day after we’d go to the mar­ket again. So every­thing was local, every­thing was fresh, every­thing was organ­ic. I always say my moth­er was an organ­ic gar­den­er, but of course, the word ‘organ­ic’ did not exist. But chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­er did not exist either.

If you have been spend­ing a lot of time by your­self, some of the episode themes may leave a lump in your throat—Din­ner Par­ty Spe­cial, Game Day Pres­sure, and Pop Over Any­time, which shows how to draw on pantry sta­ples and con­ve­nience foods to “take the stress out of vis­i­tors pop­ping in.”

The soon to be 85-year-old Pépin (Hap­py Birth­day Decem­ber 18, Chef!) spoke to Zagat ear­li­er about the pandemic’s effect on the restau­rant indus­try, how we can sup­port one anoth­er, and the beau­ty of home cooked meals:

People—good chefs—are won­der­ing how they will pay their rent. It is such a ter­ri­ble feel­ing to have to let your employ­ees go. In a kitchen, or a restau­rant, we are like a fam­i­ly, so it is painful to sep­a­rate or say good­bye. That said, it is impor­tant to be opti­mistic. This is not going to last for­ev­er.

Depend­ing on where you are, per­haps this is a chance to recon­nect with the land, with farm­ers, with the sources of food and cook­ing. This is a good time to plant a gar­den. And gar­den­ing can be very med­i­ta­tive. Grow­ing food is not just for the food, but this process helps us to recon­nect with who we are, why we love food, and why we love cook­ing. With this time, cook at home. Cook for your neigh­bor and drop the food off. Please your fam­i­ly and your friends and your own palate with food, for your­self. This is not always easy for a chef with the pres­sure of run­ning a restau­rant. Cook­ing is ther­a­peu­tic…

Many peo­ple now are begin­ning to suf­fer eco­nom­i­cal­ly. But if you can afford it, order take-out, and buy extra for your neigh­bors. If you can afford it, leave a very large tip. Think about the servers and dish­wash­ers and cooks that may not be able to pay their rent this month. If you can be more gen­er­ous than usu­al, that would be a good idea. We need to do every­thing we can to keep these restau­rants in our com­mu­ni­ties alive.

…this moment is a reassess­ment and re-adjust­ment of our lives. Some good things may come of it. We may have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get clos­er to one anoth­er, to sit as a fam­i­ly togeth­er at the table, not one or two nights a week, but sev­en! We may not see our friends, but we may talk on the phone more than before. Cer­tain­ly, with our wives and chil­dren we will be cre­at­ing new bonds. We will all be cook­ing more, even me. This may be the oppor­tu­ni­ty to extend your palate, and to get your kids excit­ed about cook­ing and cook­ing with you.

Watch a playlist of Jacques Pépin: More Fast Food My Way (they’re all embed­ded below) cour­tesy of KQED Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion, which has also shared a num­ber of free down­load­able recipes from the pro­gram here.

Atten­tion last minute hol­i­day shop­pers: the com­pan­ion cook­book would make a love­ly gift for the chef in your life (pos­si­bly your­self.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Julia Child Marathon: 201 Episodes of “The French Chef” Stream­ing Free (for a Lim­it­ed Time)

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

His­toric Mex­i­can Recipes Are Now Avail­able as Free Dig­i­tal Cook­books: Get Start­ed With Dessert

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Detailed, Track-by-Track Analysis of the Doctor Who Theme Music

in Music | December 14th, 2020

Look­ing for the defin­i­tive guide to the orig­i­nal theme music for the long-run­ning BBC sci­ence fic­tion series Doc­tor Who, com­posed in 1963 by Ron Grain­er and realised by Delia Der­byshire and the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop? Good news, there’s a web­site that pro­vides just that.

Accord­ing to Boing­Bo­ing, the “writ­ers here — Dan­ny Stew­art, Ian Stew­art, and Josef Ken­ny — break down the musi­cal score of each track, point­ing out cool details I’d nev­er noticed (like the fact that there are two sep­a­rate bass tracks that form a nifty coun­ter­point with each oth­er). They include clips of all the indi­vid­ual tracks iso­lat­ed so you can hear exact­ly what they’re describ­ing.” Begin explor­ing here, and find more Doc­tor Who Theme Music posts in the Relat­eds right down below.

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!

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Meet Delia Der­byshire, the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Hear Leg­endary BBC Com­pos­er Delia Derbyshire’s Elec­tron­ic Ver­sion of Bach’s “Air on a G String”

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Study Less, Study Smart: A Longtime Psych Professor Explains How to Study (or Do Any Intellectual Work) Effectively

in Education | December 11th, 2020

If you’ve left for­mal edu­ca­tion, you no doubt retain a few good mem­o­ries from your years as a stu­dent. None of them, safe to say, involve study­ing — assum­ing you man­aged to get any study­ing done in the first place. The unfor­tu­nate fact is that few of us ever real­ly come to grips with what it means to study, apart from sit­ting by one­self with a text­book for hours on end. Despite its obvi­ous inef­fi­cien­cy as a learn­ing method, we’ve all found our­selves doing that kind of “study­ing” at one time or anoth­er. Hav­ing taught psy­chol­o­gy class­es for 40 years, Pierce Col­lege pro­fes­sor Mar­ty Lob­dell has seen thou­sands of stu­dents labor­ing, indeed suf­fer­ing, under sim­i­lar study­ing-relat­ed assump­tions, and in his 8.7‑million-times-viewed talk “Study Less, Study Smart,” he sets out to cor­rect them. He has also dis­pensed his wis­dom in a book by the same title.

Not many of us can get much out of a text­book after a few hours with it, or indeed, after more than about thir­ty min­utes. It’s thus at such an inter­val that Lob­dell sug­gests tak­ing a reg­u­lar five-minute break to lis­ten to music, play a game, talk to a friend, med­i­tate — to do any­thing but study — in order to recharge your abil­i­ty to focus and head off these dimin­ish­ing returns of absorp­tion. At the end of each entire study ses­sion, you’d do well to sched­ule a big­ger reward in order to rein­force the behav­ior of engag­ing in study ses­sions in the first place. Ide­al­ly, you’ll enjoy this reward in a dif­fer­ent place than you do your study­ing, which itself should­n’t be a room that comes with its own dis­tract­ing pri­ma­ry use, like the bed­room, kitchen, or liv­ing room.

Even if you have a ded­i­cat­ed study area (and bet­ter yet, a ded­i­cat­ed study lamp that you turn on only while hit­ting the books), you won’t get much accom­plished there if you rely on sim­ply read­ing texts over and over again in hopes of even­tu­al­ly mem­o­riz­ing their con­tents. Lob­dell rec­om­mends focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on not facts but the broad­er con­cepts that orga­nize those facts. An effec­tive means of check­ing whether you under­stand a con­cept is to try explain­ing it in your own words: Richard Feyn­man premised his “note­book tech­nique” for learn­ing, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, on just such a process. You’ll also want to make use of the notes you take in class, but only if you take them in a use­ful way, which neces­si­tates a process of expan­sion and revi­sion imme­di­ate­ly after each class.

Lob­dell has much more advice to offer through­out the full, hour­long talk. In it he also cov­ers the val­ue of study groups; the more ques­tion­able val­ue of high­light­ing; gen­uine remem­ber­ing ver­sus sim­ple recog­ni­tion; the neces­si­ty of a good night’s sleep; the “sur­vey, ques­tion, read, recite, review” approach to text­books; and the use­ful­ness of mnemon­ics (even, or per­haps espe­cial­ly, sil­ly ones). If you’re a stu­dent, you can make use of Lob­del­l’s tech­niques right away, and if you once were a stu­dent, you may find your­self wish­ing you’d known about them back then. But prop­er­ly adapt­ed, they can ben­e­fit the intel­lec­tu­al work you do at any stage of life. Nev­er, after all, does con­cen­tra­tion become less valu­able, and nev­er can we claim to have learned some­thing unless we can first make it under­stood to oth­ers – or indeed, to our­selves.

If you want the cliff notes ver­sion of the Study Less, Study Smart lec­ture, watch the video below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Craft of Writ­ing Effec­tive­ly: Essen­tial Lessons from the Long­time Direc­tor of UChicago’s Writ­ing Pro­gram

How to Speak: Watch the Lec­ture on Effec­tive Com­mu­ni­ca­tion That Became an MIT Tra­di­tion for Over 40 Years

The Cor­nell Note-Tak­ing Sys­tem: Learn the Method Stu­dents Have Used to Enhance Their Learn­ing Since the 1940s

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

What’s a Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven Way to Improve Your Abil­i­ty to Learn? Get Out and Exer­cise

Wyn­ton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Prac­tice: For Musi­cians, Ath­letes, or Any­one Who Wants to Learn Some­thing New

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Watch the Oscar-Winning “Gerald McBoing-Boing” (1950): It’s Ranked as the 9th Greatest Cartoon of All Time

in Animation | December 11th, 2020

To under­stand how rev­o­lu­tion­ary this short film from 1950 was to con­tem­po­rary view­ers, just con­sid­er the pre­vi­ous four decades (or so) of ani­mat­ed films. There were talk­ing ani­mals, singing ani­mals, bounc­ing ani­mals, and in Dis­ney films humans based on roto­scop­ing live action. From its hum­ble and humor­ous begin­nings, ani­ma­tion was strid­ing towards real­ism as fast as it could. But in the first minute of this adap­ta­tion of a Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel sto­ry, you can see that’s all been tossed out the win­dow, a win­dow shaped like a trape­zoid.

This ani­ma­tion from the rene­gade stu­dio Unit­ed Pro­duc­tions of Amer­i­ca (UPA) ush­ered in the space age look that suit­ed the dynam­ic post-war Amer­i­can econ­o­my. The pace of life was fran­tic, sleek, mod­ern, and the ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters and back­grounds fol­low suit: laws of per­spec­tive are gone. Back­grounds are sug­gest­ed with one or two objects, and col­or is impres­sion­is­tic, not real­is­tic. The char­ac­ters are cute, but drawn with an econ­o­my of line.

Which would all suit a sto­ry by Dr. Seuss that already exist­ed as a children’s record, told in his famil­iar rhyth­mic rhyming style.

The Ger­ald of the title is a young boy who doesn’t speak in words, but in sound effects. His par­ents freak out, a doc­tor can’t help, and his class­mates and school reject him. But like many a Dr. Seuss sto­ry, Gerald’s prob­lem is actu­al­ly a gift, and the film con­cludes in a pos­i­tive way, cel­e­brat­ing dif­fer­ence. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Ani­mat­ed Short that year, beat­ing out the estab­lished stu­dios of Warn­er Bros., MGM, and Dis­ney. It paved the way for the more min­i­mal ani­ma­tion of Han­na-Bar­bera (Gerald’s dad has a pro­to-George Jet­son look) and opened the door for more abstract films from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, and influ­ence the Klasky Csupo stu­dio and oth­ers in the 1990s ani­ma­tion rebirth.

UPA was formed from the exo­dus of sev­er­al top Dis­ney ani­ma­tors after a cre­ators’ strike in 1941. Head among them was John Hub­ley, a lay­out artist who bris­tled against Disney’s real­ism and want­ed to branch out. At first known as Indus­tri­al Film and Poster Ser­vice, the stu­dio made films for the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers and for the Army, mak­ing edu­ca­tion­al films for young pri­vates with the Pri­vate Sna­fu series after Warn­er Bros stepped aside. Chuck Jones helped direct these shorts. Anti-Com­mu­nist sen­ti­ment put an end to gov­ern­ment work, and, so by the late 1940s, UPA decid­ed to take on the big stu­dios with the­atri­cal shorts and after “Ger­ald McBo­ing-Boing” was a hit, they con­tin­ued with the Mr. Magoo series, sev­er­al McBo­ing­Bo­ing sequels, and a TV ver­sion of Dick Tra­cy.

The stu­dio dried up in the 1960s and instead of ani­ma­tion teamed up with Toho Stu­dios in Japan and helped intro­duce a gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can audi­ences to kai­ju (giant mon­ster) films like Godzil­la by re-cut­ting and dis­trib­ut­ing many of their films.

Along with its Oscar, “Ger­ald McBo­ing-Boing” is now part of the Library of Con­gress’ Film Reg­istry as a sig­nif­i­cant Amer­i­can Film and often gets vot­ed as one of the great­est ani­mat­ed films of the 20th Cen­tu­ry. (It was vot­ed the 9th best ani­ma­tion of all time, by 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als.)

Last­ly, Gerald’s last name lives on as the inspi­ra­tion for the “hap­py mutants” zine and web­site, boingboing.net.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Draw­ing Road Run­ner Car­toons, or How to Cre­ate a Min­i­mal­ist Mas­ter­piece

Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones Cre­ates an Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About the Virtues of Uni­ver­sal Health Care (1949)

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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When Italian Futurists Declared War on Pasta (1930)

in Art, Food & Drink, History | December 11th, 2020

We must fight against pud­dles of sauce, dis­or­dered heaps of food, and above all, against flab­by, anti-vir­ile pas­ta­s­ciut­ta. —poet Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti

Odds are Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti, the father of Futur­ism and a ded­i­cat­ed provo­ca­teur, would be crest­fall­en to dis­cov­er how close­ly his most incen­di­ary gas­tro­nom­i­cal pro­nounce­ment aligns with the views of today’s low-carb cru­saders.

In denounc­ing pas­ta, “that absurd Ital­ian gas­tro­nom­ic reli­gion,” his inten­tion was to shock and crit­i­cize the bour­geoisie, not reduce bloat and inflam­ma­tion.

He did, how­ev­er, share the pop­u­lar 21st-cen­tu­ry view that heavy pas­ta meals leave din­ers feel­ing equal­ly heavy and lethar­gic.

As he declared in 1930 in The Futur­ist Cook­book:

Futur­ist cook­ing will be free of the old obses­sions with vol­ume and weight and will have as one of its prin­ci­ples the abo­li­tion of pas­ta­s­ciut­ta. Pas­ta­s­ciut­ta, how­ev­er agree­able to the palate, is a passéist food because it makes peo­ple heavy, brutish, deludes them into think­ing it is nutri­tious, makes them skep­ti­cal, slow, pes­simistic… Any pas­tas­cuit­tist who hon­est­ly exam­ines his con­science at the moment he ingur­gi­tates his biquo­tid­i­an pyra­mid of pas­ta will find with­in the gloomy sat­is­fac­tion of stop­ping up a black hole. This vora­cious hole is an incur­able sad­ness of his. He may delude him­self, but noth­ing can fill it. Only a Futur­ist meal can lift his spir­its. And pas­ta is anti-vir­ile because a heavy, bloat­ed stom­ach does not encour­age phys­i­cal enthu­si­asm for a woman, nor favour the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pos­sess­ing her at any time.

Bom­bast came nat­u­ral­ly to him. While he tru­ly believed in the tenets of Futur­ism—speed, indus­try, tech­nol­o­gy, and the cleans­ing effects of war, at the expense of tra­di­tion and the past—he glo­ried in hyper­bole, absur­di­ty, and showy pranks.

The Futur­ist Cook­book reflects this, although it does con­tain actu­al recipes, with very spe­cif­ic instruc­tions as to how each dish should be served. A sam­ple:

RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS: cut a per­fect cube of beef. Pass an elec­tric cur­rent through it, then mar­i­nate it for twen­ty-four hours in a mix­ture of rum, cognac and white ver­mouth. Remove it from the mix­ture and serve on a bed of red pep­per, black pep­per and snow. Each mouth­ful is to be chewed care­ful­ly for one minute, and each mouth­ful is divid­ed from the next by vehe­ment blasts on the trum­pet blown by the eater him­self.

Intre­pid host Trevor Dun­sei­th doc­u­ments his attempt to stage a faith­ful Futur­ist din­ner par­ty in the above video.

Guests eat sal­ad with their hands for max­i­mum “pre-labi­al tac­tile plea­sure” before bal­anc­ing oranges stuffed with antipas­to on their heads to ran­dom­ize the selec­tion of each mouth­ful. While not all of the fla­vors were a hit, the par­ty agreed that the expe­ri­ence was—as intend­ed—total­ly nov­el (and 100% pas­ta free).

Marinetti’s anti-pas­ta cam­paign chimed with Prime Min­is­ter Ben­i­to Mussolini’s goal of elim­i­nat­ing Italy’s eco­nom­ic depen­dence on for­eign mar­kets—the Bat­tle for Grain. North­ern farm­ers could pro­duce ample sup­plies of rice, but nowhere near the amount of wheat need­ed to sup­port the pop­u­lace’s pas­ta con­sump­tion. If Ital­ians couldn’t grow more wheat, Mus­soli­ni want­ed them to shift from pas­ta to rice.

F.T. Marinet­ti by W. Sel­dow, 1934

Marinet­ti agreed that rice would be the “patri­ot­ic” choice, but his desired ends were root­ed in his own avant-garde art move­ment:

… it is not just a ques­tion of replac­ing pas­ta with rice, or of pre­fer­ring one dish to anoth­er, but of invent­ing new foods. So many mechan­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic changes have come into effect in the prac­ti­cal life of mankind that it is also pos­si­ble to achieve culi­nary per­fec­tion and to orga­nize var­i­ous tastes, smells and func­tions, some­thing which until yes­ter­day would have seemed absurd because the gen­er­al con­di­tions of exis­tence were also dif­fer­ent. We must, by con­tin­u­al­ly vary­ing types of food and their com­bi­na­tions, kill off the old, deeply root­ed habits of the palate, and pre­pare men for future chem­i­cal food­stuffs. We may even pre­pare mankind for the not-too-dis­tant pos­si­bil­i­ty of broad­cast­ing nour­ish­ing waves over the radio.

Futurism’s ties to fas­cism are not a thing to brush off light­ly, but it’s also impor­tant to remem­ber that Marinet­ti believed it was the artist’s duty to put for­ward a bold pub­lic per­son­ae. He lived to ruf­fle feath­ers.

Mis­sion accom­plished. His anti-pas­ta pro­nounce­ments result­ed in a tumult of pub­lic indig­na­tion, both local­ly and in the States.

The Duke of Bovi­no, may­or of Naples, react­ed to Marinetti’s state­ment that pas­ta is “com­plete­ly hos­tile to the viva­cious spir­it and pas­sion­ate, gen­er­ous, intu­itive soul of the Neapoli­tans” by say­ing, “The angels in Heav­en eat noth­ing but ver­mi­cel­li al pomodoro.” Proof, Marinet­ti sniped back, of “the unap­pe­tiz­ing monot­o­ny of Par­adise and of the life of the Angels.”

He agi­tat­ed for a futur­is­tic world in which kitchens would be stocked with ”atmos­pher­ic and vac­u­um stills, cen­trifu­gal auto­claves (and) dia­lyz­ers.”

His recipes, as Trevor Dun­sei­th dis­cov­ered, func­tion bet­ter as one-time per­for­mance art than go-to dish­es to add to one’s culi­nary reper­toire.

There is a rea­son why Julia Child’s Coq a Vin and Tarte Tatin endure while Marinet­ti’s  Excit­ed Pig and Black Shirt Snack have fall­en into dis­use.

Uh… progress?

As Daniel A. Gross writes in the Sci­ence His­to­ry Institute’s Dis­til­la­tions:

Marinet­ti sup­port­ed Fas­cism to the extent that it too advo­cat­ed progress, but his alle­giance even­tu­al­ly wavered. To Marinet­ti, Roman ruins and Renais­sance paint­ings were not only bor­ing but also anti­thet­i­cal to progress. To Mus­soli­ni, by con­trast, they were polit­i­cal­ly use­ful. The dic­ta­tor drew on Ital­ian his­to­ry in his quest to build a new, pow­er­ful nation—which also led to a nation­al cam­paign in food self-suf­fi­cien­cy, encour­ag­ing the grow­ing and con­sump­tion of such tra­di­tion­al foods as wheat, rice, and grapes. The gov­ern­ment even fund­ed research into the nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits of wheat, with one sci­en­tist claim­ing whole-wheat bread boost­ed fer­til­i­ty. In short, the pre­war dream of futur­ist food was tabled yet again.

Get your own copy of Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinetti’s The Futur­ist Cook­book here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. See her as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Art of Traditional Japanese Wood Joinery: A Kyoto Woodworker Shows How Japanese Carpenters Created Wood Structures Without Nails or Glue

in Architecture, Art | December 10th, 2020

Any­one can devel­op basic wood­work­ing skills — and, per the advice of Nick Offer­man, per­haps every­one should. Those who do learn that things of sur­pris­ing func­tion­al­i­ty can be made just by cut­ting pieces of wood and nail­ing or glu­ing them togeth­er. Few­er, how­ev­er, have the patience and ded­i­ca­tion to mas­ter wood­work­ing with­out nails or glue, an art that in Japan has been refined over many gen­er­a­tions. Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­ters put up entire build­ings using wood alone, cut­ting the pieces in such a way that they fit togeth­er as tight­ly as if they’d grown that way in the first place. Such unfor­giv­ing join­ery is sure­ly the truest test of wood­work­ing skill: if you don’t do it per­fect­ly, down comes the tem­ple.

“At the end of the 12th cen­tu­ry, fine wood­work­ing skills and knowl­edge were brought into Japan from Chi­na,” writes Yamanashi-based wood­work­er Dylan Iwaku­ni. “Over time, these join­ery skills were refined and passed down, result­ing in the fine wood joiner­ies Japan is known for.”

As it became a tra­di­tion in Japan, this car­pen­try devel­oped a canon of join­ing meth­ods, sev­er­al of which Iwaku­ni demon­strates in the video at the top of the post. Can it be a coin­ci­dence that these most trust­wor­thy joints — and the oth­ers fea­tured on Iwaku­ni’s join­ery playlist, includ­ing the seem­ing­ly “impos­si­ble” shi­hou kama tsu­gi — are also so aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing, not just in their cre­ation but their fin­ished appear­ance?

In addi­tion to his Youtube chan­nel, Iwaku­ni main­tains an Insta­gram account where he posts pho­tos of join­ery not just in the work­shop but as employed in the con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of real build­ings. “Joiner­ies can be used to replace a dam­aged part,” he writes, “allow­ing the struc­ture to stand for anoth­er hun­dreds of years.” To do it prop­er­ly requires not just a painstak­ing­ly honed set of skills, but a per­pet­u­al­ly sharp­ened set of tools — in Iwaku­ni’s case, the vis­i­ble sharp­ness of which draws aston­ished com­ment from wood­work­ing afi­ciona­dos around the world. “Blimey,” as one Metafil­ter user writes, “it’s hard enough get­ting a knife sharp enough to slice onions.” What an audi­ence Iwaku­ni could com­mand if he expand­ed from wood­work­ing Youtube into cook­ing Youtube, one can only imag­ine.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

Nick Offer­man Explains the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Ben­e­fits of Woodworking–and How It Can Help You Achieve Zen in Oth­er Parts of Your Life

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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