Edvard Munch’s Famous Painting The Scream Animated to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Primal Music

in Animation, Art, Music | April 9th, 2015

In this short video, Roman­ian ani­ma­tor Sebas­t­ian Cosor brings togeth­er two haunt­ing works from dif­fer­ent times and dif­fer­ent media: The Scream, by Nor­we­gian Expres­sion­ist painter Edvard Munch, and “The Great Gig in the Sky,” by the British rock band Pink Floyd.

Munch paint­ed the first of four ver­sions of The Scream in 1893. He lat­er wrote a poem describ­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic vision behind it:

I was walk­ing along the road with two Friends
the Sun was set­ting — the Sky turned a bloody red
And I felt a whiff of Melan­choly — I stood
Still, death­ly tired — over the blue-black
Fjord and City hung Blood and Tongues of Fire
My Friends walked on — I remained behind
– shiv­er­ing with anx­i­ety — I felt the Great Scream in Nature

Munch’s hor­rif­ic Great Scream in Nature is com­bined in the video with Floy­d’s oth­er­world­ly “The Great Gig in the Sky,” one of the sig­na­ture pieces from the band’s 1973 mas­ter­piece, Dark Side of the Moon. The vocals on “The Great Gig” were per­formed by an unknown young song­writer and ses­sion singer named Clare Tor­ry.

Tor­ry had been invit­ed by pro­duc­er Alan Par­sons to come to Abbey Road Stu­dios and impro­vise over a haunt­ing piano chord pro­gres­sion by Richard Wright, on a track that was ten­ta­tive­ly called “The Mor­tal­i­ty Sequence.”  The 25-year-old singer was giv­en very lit­tle direc­tion from the band. “Clare came into the stu­dio one day,” said bassist Roger Waters in a 2003 Rolling Stone inter­view, “and we said, ‘There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying — have a bit of a sing on that, girl.’ ”

Forty-two years lat­er, that “bit of a sing” can still send a shiv­er down any­one’s spine. For more on the mak­ing of “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and Tor­ry’s amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tion, see the clip below to hear Tor­ry’s sto­ry in her own words.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969) 

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Edgar Allan Poe Animated: Watch Four Animations of Classic Poe Stories

in Animation, Literature | April 9th, 2015

I can well imag­ine that the inser­tion of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy into many of Edgar Allan Poe’s sto­ries would have a tremen­dous ben­e­fit for those sto­ries’ vic­tims, and a dele­te­ri­ous effect on their mono­ma­ni­a­cal plots. In one of the ironies of cul­tur­al trans­mis­sion, the time­less qual­i­ty of Poe’s work seems to depend upon its use of delib­er­ate­ly ancient meth­ods of sur­veil­lance and tor­ture. In a fur­ther para­dox of sorts, Poe’s work nev­er suf­fers, but only seems to shine, when tech­nol­o­gy is applied to it.

Film­mak­ers as esteemed as Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Fed­eri­co Felli­ni have adapt­ed him; sin­gu­lar dra­mat­ic tal­ents like James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee, and Lou Reed and Willem Dafoe have made fine record­ings of his most famous poem; The Alan Par­sons Project record­ed a pret­ty amaz­ing prog rock ver­sion of “The Raven,” the first rock song to fea­ture a dig­i­tal vocoder.

Poe also appears as an ani­mat­ed pup­pet, along­side Dick­ens and Dos­to­evsky, in a suc­cess­ful Frank Capra-direct­ed sci­ence edu­ca­tion film. This role belongs to a rich tra­di­tion of Poe in ani­mat­ed film. “The Raven” inspired one of Tim Burton’s first ani­mat­ed films, Vin­cent, at the top, about a boy who wants to be Vin­cent Price (nar­rat­ed of course by Vin­cent Price). The poem was also adapt­ed by The Simp­sons (above). South Park has fea­tured the mor­bid 19th cen­tu­ry writer, and Poe’s “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum” birthed an award-win­ning ani­mat­ed short, as well as an inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal com­ic book.

Even before his screen time in Capra’s film, shared with famous actor Eddie Albert, Poe appeared in ani­mat­ed film with movie stars. In the 1953 adap­ta­tion of “The Tell Tale Heart” above, a men­ac­ing­ly suave James Mason nar­rates the sto­ry. This take on Poe’s tale of mad­ness per­fect­ly cap­tures its near­ly gid­dy air of dread. The film, we wrote in 2011, “was giv­en a bizarre recep­tion” upon release, gar­ner­ing an “X” rating—the first ani­mat­ed film to do so—in the UK. The British Board of Film Cen­sors deemed the film “unsuit­able for adult audi­ences.” That said, it was nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film.

Above (with Span­ish sub­ti­tles) in a much lat­er work, a less famous but no less men­ac­ing, actor, Bil­ly Dra­go, nar­rates a stark retelling of “The Raven,” with a cen­tral char­ac­ter drawn like one of the homi­ci­dal creeps Dra­go typ­i­cal­ly plays on screen. Argen­tin­ian film­mak­er Mar­i­ano Cat­ta­neo remarks that he and fel­low direc­tor Nic Loreti focused on the idea that the speaker’s mys­te­ri­ous­ly lost love Lenore “might have been mur­dered and wants to come back,” cit­ing their influ­ences as “Ger­man expres­sion­ist films” and film­mak­ers like “Sam Rai­mi, George A. Romero, Tim Bur­ton, Robert Rodriguez, John Car­pen­ter and even Stephen King.” If not all of these cre­ators’ work is evi­dent, the influ­ence of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist film, par­tic­u­lar­ly The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, cer­tain­ly is.

In anoth­er inter­na­tion­al adap­ta­tion, acclaimed Czech stop-motion ani­ma­tor Jan Svankma­jer uses high-con­trast, dra­mat­ic light­ing to very dif­fer­ent, impres­sion­ist effect to recre­ate the chill­ing despair of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Ush­er.  It is inter­est­ing that Poe’s work—obsessed with iso­la­tion and book­ish­ness and history—should have the effect it has on mod­ern media, par­tic­u­lar­ly on ani­ma­tion. But then again, Poe him­self was a tech­ni­cian, inter­est­ed not in the past for its own sake but in its use­ful­ness in achiev­ing a vivid “uni­ty of effect.” That his almost clock­work tales would make such excel­lent mate­r­i­al for such tech­ni­cal means of sto­ry­telling as ani­mat­ed film makes per­fect sense. But should you wish to return to the source of these humor­ous and grim adap­ta­tions, vis­it our list of the com­plete works of Edgar Allan Poe, in free eBook and audio book form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Sev­en Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Sto­ries and Poems

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

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

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Charles Darwin Creates a Handwritten List of Arguments for and Against Marriage (1838)

in History, Life | April 9th, 2015

Darwin Marriage Arguments

Plen­ty of us strug­gle, in the age when so many tra­di­tions in so many parts of the world now seem per­pet­u­al­ly up for revi­sion, with the choice of whether to get mar­ried. It even con­found­ed no less a mind than that from which On the Ori­gin of Species by Means of Nat­ur­al Selec­tion flowed. This hap­pened back in 1838, over twen­ty years before the pub­li­ca­tion of that most impor­tant book in biol­o­gy. And, for a moment, it must have seemed almost as vex­ing as the ques­tion of how all the species came about.

Lists of Note tells us that the “29-year-old nat­u­ral­ist Charles Dar­win found him­self fac­ing a dif­fi­cult deci­sion: whether or not to pro­pose to the love of his life, Emma Wedg­wood. This was his hand­writ­ten solu­tion — a list of the pros and cons of mar­riage that includes such gems as ‘bet­ter than a dog any­how’ and ‘not forced to vis­it rel­a­tives.’ ” (See orig­i­nal doc­u­ment above. Or click here to view it in a larg­er for­mat, and read a com­plete tran­scrip­tion.)

Of the tan­ta­liz­ing claims of the sin­gle life, Dar­win also includes “free­dom to go where one liked,” “con­ver­sa­tion of clever men at clubs,” free­dom from the “expense & anx­i­ety of chil­dren,” and no risk of the awful pos­si­bil­i­ty that “per­haps my wife won’t like Lon­don.” But mat­ri­mo­ny presents a strong case of its own, in the form of a “con­stant com­pan­ion, (& friend in old age) who will feel inter­est­ed in one,” “some­one to take care of house,” “charms of music & female chit-chat.” (And note his writ­ing of “Chil­dren — (if it Please God)” under the pros, an inter­est­ing phras­ing giv­en the sorts of debates his name gets hauled into today.)

And so Dar­win reach­es his con­clu­sion: “My God, it is intol­er­a­ble to think of spend­ing ones whole life, like a neuter bee, work­ing, work­ing, & noth­ing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imag­ine liv­ing all one’s day soli­tar­i­ly in smoky dirty Lon­don House. — Only pic­ture to your­self a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music per­haps.” He would indeed mar­ry and spend the rest of his life with Wedg­wood, a union that pro­duced ten chil­dren (one of whom, Fran­cis, would go on to infor­mal­ly illus­trate On the Ori­gin of Species man­u­script pages).

You can peruse the full list, even in Dar­win’s own hand­writ­ing (if you can deci­pher it), at Dar­win Online. If he went on to write a list of his secrets of a suc­cess­ful mar­riage, Dar­win schol­ars haven’t yet dis­cov­ered it, but I think we can safe­ly say that it would include at least this rec­om­men­da­tion: think the deci­sion through, but don’t let it keep you from your life’s work.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Darwin’s Son Draws Cute Pic­tures on the Man­u­script of On the Ori­gin of Species

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

Watch Dar­win, a 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

The Genius of Charles Dar­win Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Paper Animation Tells Curious Story of How a Meteorologist Theorized Pangaea & Continental Drift (1910)

in Animation, Science | April 9th, 2015

Over a cen­tu­ry ago, the Ger­man mete­o­rol­o­gist Alfred Wegen­er (1880–1930) put forth a the­o­ry that changed how we look at an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic dis­ci­pline — geol­o­gy. He argued that the con­ti­nents once formed a sin­gle land­mass called “Pan­gaea,” and that con­ti­nen­tal drift moved them apart slow­ly but ever so sure­ly. The sto­ry of how a mete­o­rol­o­gist changed the face of geol­o­gy gets told in a nice paper ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by The New York Times. It comes nar­rat­ed by Mott Greene (author of the forth­com­ing book Alfred Wegen­er: Sci­ence, Explo­ration and the The­o­ry of Con­ti­nen­tal Drift) and Nao­mi Oreskes, Pro­fes­sor of the His­to­ry of Sci­ence at Har­vard. You can read the NYTimes arti­cle asso­ci­at­ed with the edu­ca­tion­al video here. Cours­es on geol­o­gy can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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.

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Notebook on Cities and Culture’s Yearlong Podcast Exploration of Seattle Is Kickstarting Now

in Podcasts, Travel | April 8th, 2015

 

Just about as long as I’ve writ­ten here at Open Cul­ture, I’ve also host­ed and pro­duced Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture, a world-trav­el­ing pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with inter­est­ing peo­ple about the work they do and the world cities they do it in. Over five sea­sons so far, I’ve record­ed each and every inter­view “on loca­tion,” from Los Ange­les to Kyoto to Lon­don to Port­land to Mex­i­co City to Copen­hagen to Van­cou­ver to Seoul. Next comes the show’s sixth and most in-depth sea­son yet: A Year in Seat­tle.

Think of that name, and you think of the city of rain, of grunge, of Microsoft and Ama­zon, of the Space Nee­dle, of Frasi­er Crane, of Bud­dy Bradley, of Archie McPhee, of sleep­less­ness, of Star­bucks. But hav­ing spent my own ado­les­cence hang­ing out there, I know Seat­tle as even more than that, and it’s only grown more inter­est­ing since I’ve grown up. Now to explore the Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture way, through a year of in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with Seattle’s nov­el­ists, jour­nal­ists, com­ic artists, film­mak­ers, broad­cast­ers, explor­ers, gourmets, aca­d­e­mics, archi­tects, plan­ners, cul­tur­al cre­ators, inter­na­tion­al­ists, observers of the urban scene, and more.

ncc-season-six-logo-med

As with every sea­son, I’m rais­ing the bud­get for Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture’s Year in Seat­tle on Kick­starter. If feel so inclined, you can have a look at its Kick­starter page and find out how you can help make it a hap­pen, receive post­cards from Seat­tle, or even get your project or mes­sage men­tioned at the top of every show.

And as a spe­cial pre­view, I’ve just post­ed an inter­view with com­ic artist Peter Bagge, cre­ator of the leg­endary alt-com­ic series Hate, author of the graph­ic nov­els Apoc­a­lypse Nerd, Oth­er Lives, Reset, Woman Rebel: The Mar­garet Sanger Sto­ry, and just about as Seat­tle a fig­ure as they come. There are 51 more where that came from — but only if we can suc­cess­ful­ly Kick­start the sea­son by this Sat­ur­day morn­ing at 10:00, Pacif­ic time.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Artists Illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy Through the Ages: Doré, Blake, Botticelli, Mœbius & More

in Art, Literature | April 8th, 2015

Dore Satan

For a book about medieval the­ol­o­gy and tor­ture, filled with learned clas­si­cal allu­sions and obscure char­ac­ters from 13th cen­tu­ry Flo­ren­tine soci­ety, Dante Alighieri’s Infer­no, first book of three in his Divine Com­e­dy, has had con­sid­er­able stay­ing pow­er, work­ing its way into pop cul­ture with a video game, sev­er­al films, and a bale­ful appear­ance on Mad Men. While the Mad Men ref­er­ence may be the more lit­er­ary, the for­mer two may hint at the more promi­nent rea­son the Infer­no has cap­ti­vat­ed read­ers, play­ers, and view­ers for ages: the lengthy poem’s intense­ly visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of human extrem­i­ty makes for some unfor­get­table images. Like Achilles drag­ging Hec­tor behind his char­i­ot in Homer, who can for­get the lake of ice Dante encoun­ters in the ninth cir­cle of Hell, in which (in John Ciardi’s mod­ern trans­la­tion), he finds “souls of the last class,” which “shone below the ice like straws in glass,” and, frozen to his chest, “the Emper­or of the Uni­verse of Pain,” almost too enor­mous for descrip­tion and as hideous as he once was beau­ti­ful.

Like the rest of us, artists have been drawn to Dante’s extra­or­di­nary images and exten­sive fan­ta­sy geog­ra­phy since the Divine Com­e­dy first appeared (1308–1320). In pro­lif­ic French artist Gus­tave Doré’s ren­der­ing of the ninth cir­cle scene, above, Satan is a huge, beard­ed grump with wings and horns. Doré so des­per­ate­ly want­ed to illus­trate the Divine Com­e­dy (find in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free eBooks) that he financed the first book in 1861 with his own mon­ey.

After­wards, as Mike Springer wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on Dore’s illus­tra­tions, his pub­lish­er Louis Hachette agreed to put out the next two books with the telegram, “Suc­cess! Come quick­ly! I am an ass!” Doré’s eerie, beau­ti­ful draw­ings are just one such set of famous illus­tra­tions we’ve fea­tured on the site pre­vi­ous­ly.

Blake Inferno

Anoth­er artist per­fect­ly suit­ed to the task, William Blake, whose own poet­ry braved sim­i­lar heights and depths as Dante’s, took on the Infer­no at the end of his life. While he didn’t live to com­plete the engrav­ings, his unset­tling, yet high­ly clas­si­cal, ren­der­ings of the poet the Ital­ians call il Som­mo Poeta—“The Supreme Poet”—certainly do jus­tice to the vivid­ness and hor­ror of Dante’s descrip­tions. Above, see Blake’s 1827 inter­pre­ta­tion of the thief Agno­lo Brunelleschi attacked by a six-foot­ed ser­pent in Can­to twen­ty-five, a scene reprint­ed many times in col­or.

 

Boticelli Inferno

Cen­turies ear­li­er, Renais­sance mas­ter San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li made an attempt at all three books, though he fell short of fin­ish­ing them. See his “Pan­der­ers, Flat­ter­ers” above, the only draw­ing he made in col­or, and more black and white illus­tra­tions here.

Moebius-Paradiso

Like the mak­ers of films and video games, artists have main­ly cho­sen to focus on the most bizarre and har­row­ing of the three books, the Infer­no. One mod­ern artist who undoubt­ed­ly would have had a fas­ci­nat­ing take on Dante’s hell instead illus­trat­ed his heav­en, being cho­sen to imag­ine Par­adiso by the Milan’s Nuages Gallery in 1999. I refer to graph­ic artist Jean Giraud, known in the world of fan­ta­sy, sci-fi, and comics as Mœbius. Despite some arguable artis­tic mis­cast­ing (Mœbius did after all make films like Alien and Tron “even weird­er”), the French artist took what may be the least visu­al­ly inter­est­ing of Dante’s three Divine Com­e­dy books and cre­at­ed some incred­i­bly strik­ing images. See one above, and more at our pre­vi­ous post.

Martini Inferno

Oth­er artists, like Alber­to Mar­ti­ni, who worked on his Divine Com­e­dy for over forty years, have pro­duced ter­ri­fy­ing images (above) and high­ly styl­ized ones—like these medieval illu­mi­na­tions from a 1450 man­u­script. The range of inter­pre­ta­tions all have one thing in common—their sub­ject mat­ter seems to allow artists almost unlim­it­ed free­dom to imag­ine Dante’s weird cos­mog­ra­phy. No vision of the Infer­no or the lofti­er realms above it can go too far, it seems, even in the absurd video game finale you real­ly have to see to believe. Some­how, I think Dante would approve… well… most­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

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

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Langston Hughes Reveals the Rhythms in Art & Life in a Wonderful Illustrated Book for Kids (1954)

in Books, Music, Poetry | April 8th, 2015

Rhythms

If you have to ask what jazz is, Louis Arm­strong sup­pos­ed­ly said, you’ll nev­er know. But the poet Langston Hugh­es, who in his 1955 First Book of Jazz reveals him­self as a great enthu­si­ast of Arm­strong indeed, seems to have oper­at­ed on a very dif­fer­ent premise. Hugh­es pitched that book, which we fea­tured last month, toward chil­dren, an audi­ence that, at their best, embod­ies inquis­i­tive­ness: they have to ask what every­thing is. And before Hugh­es could explain jazz to them, he had to explain rhythm.

Rhythm2

“Rhythm is some­thing we share in com­mon, you and I,” Hugh­es writes in 1954’s The First Book of Rhythm, “with all the plants and ani­mals and peo­ple in the world, and with the stars and moon and sun, and all the whole vast won­der­ful uni­verse beyond this won­der­ful earth which is our home.” It does­n’t just belong in music, he says; it belongs pret­ty much every­where, from the realm of nature to those of ath­let­ics, machines, fur­ni­ture — every­thing in “this won­der­ful world,” in his view, has its own rhythm.

Rhythm3

If explain­ing jazz to kids strikes you as a daunt­ing task, then just imag­ine explain­ing this more abstract foun­da­tion­al qual­i­ty of jazz, find­ing it in a host of dif­fer­ent domains, and then lay­ing it all out in terms that will engage an ele­men­tary school­er. But only such a mas­ter of lan­guage and lover of sound like Hugh­es could do it with such over­all vital­i­ty and con­ci­sion, even if the sub­ject, as Ariel S. Win­ter writes at We Too Were Chil­dren, Mr. Bar­rie, moves Hugh­es to get “too lyri­cal, too abstract, caught up in his song of the world,” some­how drift­ing from an obser­va­tion of the rhythm of knit­ting nee­dles to the con­clu­sion that every­one “should arrange her hair to suit the shape of her face.”

Rhythm4

You can read The First Book of Rhythm in its entire­ty, and gaze upon Robin King’s detailed and well-inte­grat­ed illus­tra­tions, in this Flickr pho­to set. (You can also buy old copies on Ama­zon.) Per­haps you once wrote your­self off as hope­less­ly rhythm­less, unable even to say for sure that you know what rhythm is. If so, Langston Hugh­es has writ­ten the book for you — no mat­ter your age, just your curios­i­ty.

Rhythm5

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Langston Hugh­es Presents the His­to­ry of Jazz in an Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book (1955)

Watch Langston Hugh­es Read Poet­ry from His First Col­lec­tion, The Weary Blues (1958)

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Filmmaking Craft of David Fincher Demystified in Two Video Essays

in Film | April 8th, 2015

David Finch­er is an auteur in the same way that Alfred Hitch­cock is — you can tell a Finch­er film from see­ing a sin­gle frame. His shots are col­ored with inky blacks and sick­ly flu­o­res­cent greens and they are always com­po­si­tion­al­ly per­fect. His cam­era moves with an eerie dis­em­bod­ied smooth­ness that makes a Kubrick film seem down right warm and invit­ing. His movies mine the murky recess­es of the human con­di­tion; you are more like­ly to see a gris­ly mur­der in a Finch­er movie than a pas­sion­ate kiss. Even movies that have a rel­a­tive­ly low body count, like The Social Net­work, are imbued with a dis­tinct­ly Finch­er­sque grim­ness.

A grow­ing num­ber of crit­ics are start­ing to pay atten­tion. Above you can see Tony Zhou illus­trate the director’s styl­is­tic restraint in a video essay called “And the Oth­er Way is Wrong.” Finch­er him­self once said, “They know you can do any­thing so the ques­tion is what don’t you do, not what do you do.” And Zhou ele­gant­ly shows what Finch­er does not do, which is such sta­ples of Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ing as hand-held cam­eras and close ups. He likes his cam­era locked down and aloof.

In anoth­er video essay series, Aaron Aradil­las and the great Matt Zoller Seitz focus sim­ply on the open­ings of Fincher’s films. The series starts with Fincher’s first, and most maligned, movie Alien3. Aradil­las and Zoller Seitz argue that the film is dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent from the first two Alien films. Rid­ley Scott, direc­tor of Alien, kept the shots long and the edits large­ly invis­i­ble. Finch­er, in con­trast, used fast and jar­ring edits. He start­ed as a music video direc­tor and was still in MTV mode when he made Alien3.

In a lat­er episode on Zodi­ac, arguably his mas­ter­piece, Aradil­las and Zoller Seitz show that Finch­er bril­liant­ly packed the film’s two open­ing sequences with an impres­sive amount of expo­si­tion, set­ting up not just sto­ry ele­ments but also the film’s com­plex, sub­jec­tive point of view.

There are four videos in total in this series with a promise of a fifth. You can watch them all here.

Ear­li­er this week, we showed you Cameron Beyl’s five-part, three-hour Direc­tors Series study of Stan­ley Kubrick. Who is he tack­ling next? Finch­er, of course.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

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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Watch Four Iconic Live Performances by Billie Holiday

in Music | April 7th, 2015

Bil­lie Holiday’s name has been in the news late­ly for some rea­sons that remind us of the tragedies she sang about and those she endured. First, there was the sto­ry of the rather appalling­ly tone-deaf PR firm who thought one of Holiday’s most well-known record­ings, “Strange Fruit”—a song about lynch­ing—would make a great name for their brand. Then there were the new details in Johann Hari’s book Chas­ing the Scream of how Hol­i­day was hunt­ed, haunt­ed, and pos­si­bly framed by Fed­er­al Bureau of Nar­cotics head Har­ry Anslinger. These sto­ries com­pound the image of Hol­i­day as a trag­ic fig­ure, a casu­al­ty of soci­etal ills and per­son­al demons.

Hol­i­day may have doc­u­ment­ed her trou­bled life in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, but she would have pre­ferred to be remem­bered for her music. Born 100 years ago today, the jazz songstress trans­mut­ed her per­son­al pain into beau­ty; her inter­pre­ta­tions of songs became stan­dards in their own right, and became unique­ly hers.

“God Bless the Child,” above, res­onates with Holiday’s own dif­fi­cult child­hood, shad­owed by neglect and loss, but she deliv­ers it as though all had been for­giv­en and redeemed. She sang through abu­sive rela­tion­ships and addic­tion and some pret­ty shab­by treat­ment by a racist indus­try.

For exam­ple, Bret Pri­mack tells the sto­ry in a Jaz­zTimes arti­cle of the Fox The­atre in Detroit forc­ing Hol­i­day to wear black­face in order to appear on stage with Count Basie’s Orches­tra. As Lady Day her­self remarked of the humil­i­at­ing episode, “There’s no damn busi­ness like show busi­ness. You have to smile to keep from throw­ing up.” Toward the end of her life, in 1956, she gave one of her last of 22 con­certs at Carnegie Hall (see her do her own com­po­si­tion “Fine and Mel­low” above). The rehearsals—wrote New York Times crit­ic Gilbert Mill­stein in the album lin­er notes—“had been desul­to­ry,” her voice “tin­ny and trailed off.” But at show­time, she appeared “poised and smil­ing,” singing “with strength undi­min­ished.” In his lin­er remarks, Nat Hentoff described Holiday’s “assur­ance of phras­ing and into­na­tion” and “an out­go­ing warmth, a pal­pa­ble eager­ness to reach out and touch the audi­ence,” a smile “often light­ly evi­dent on her lips and her eyes.”

In a ret­ro­spec­tive essay, Hentoff refers to the sad fact that “Bil­lie is most remem­bered as a victim—of her­self, of soci­ety” as well as “the myth that, toward the end, Lady invari­ably sound­ed like a cracked husk of what she had been years before.” While it’s cer­tain­ly true that she fell vic­tim to oth­ers’ designs and her own bad judg­ment, she had her share of tri­umphs as well, most of them on the stage. Even in 1959, the year of her death, when her prob­lems with alco­hol had wors­ened to a soon-to-be fatal degree, and her voice had lost some of its vital­i­ty, she per­formed with swag­ger and grace. See her above sing “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” in one of her final live appear­ances. Holiday’s short, trag­ic life may have giv­en us plen­ty to talk about, but her mem­o­ry is best pre­served by lis­ten­ing to her sing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

Bil­lie Hol­i­day — The Life and Artistry of Lady Day: The Com­plete Film

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

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

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Rijksmuseum Digitizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Masterpieces by Rembrandt Included!

in Art | April 7th, 2015

rembrandt-sp-as-apostle-paul

We all found it impres­sive when Ams­ter­dam’s Rijksmu­se­um put up 125,000 Dutch works of art online. “Users can explore the entire col­lec­tion, which is hand­i­ly sort­ed by artist, sub­ject, style and even by events in Dutch his­to­ry,” explained Kate Rix in our first post announc­ing it. ” “Not only can users cre­ate their own online gal­leries from select­ed works in the museum’s col­lec­tion, they can down­load Rijksmu­se­um art­work for free to dec­o­rate new prod­ucts.”

Het straatje

But we post­ed that almost two and a half years ago, and you can hard­ly call the Rijksmu­se­um an insti­tu­tion that sits idly by while time pass­es, or indeed does any­thing at all by half mea­sures: think of their cre­ation of Rem­brandt’s Face­book time­line, their com­mis­sion­ing of late Rem­brandt can­vas­es brought to life, or of their accom­mo­da­tion of ter­mi­nal­ly ill patients vis­it­ing one last time.

And so they’ve kept hard at work adding to their dig­i­tal archive, which, as of this writ­ing, offers near­ly 361,000 works of art. This brings them with­in shout­ing dis­tance of hav­ing dou­bled the col­lec­tion in size since we first wrote about it.

George_Hendrik_Breitner_-_Meisje_in_witte_kimono_(Geesje_Kwak)

You want the Dutch Mas­ters? You got ’em. You want Rem­brandt’s Self-por­trait as the Apos­tle Paul? It’s in the archive, right along­side Night Watch. You want Ver­meer’s View of Hous­es in Delft, bet­ter known as The Lit­tle Street? It’s in there too. But don’t stop now; the Rijksmu­se­um has put up a much greater breadth of Dutch art than that. You’ll also find impor­tant Dutch painters you may not have heard so much about before, such as the impres­sion­ist George Hen­drik Bre­it­ner, whose Girl in a White Kimono appears just above. And it even includes high-res­o­lu­tion images of works of art and design in oth­er media, such as Michel de Klerk’s 1918 suite of fur­ni­ture for ‘t Woon­huys, whose arm­chair you see below. Looks almost good enough to sit in, does­n’t it? You can enter the col­lec­tion here,  or search the col­lec­tion here.

skichair

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

A Final Wish: Ter­mi­nal­ly Ill Patients Vis­it Rembrandt’s Paint­ings in the Rijksmu­se­um One Last Time

Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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The Mad Men Reading List: 25 Revealing Books Read by the Characters on the Show

in Literature, Television | April 7th, 2015

mad men reading list

Image cour­tesy of The New York Pub­lic Library.

The good peo­ple over at the New York Pub­lic Library com­piled a list of books read by the char­ac­ters of Mad Men, which just start­ed the last half of its sev­enth and final sea­son. Over the course of the series, the show’s char­ac­ters drank sev­er­al swim­ming pools worth of cock­tails, engaged in a host of ill-advised illic­it affairs and, on occa­sion, dreamed up a bril­liant adver­tis­ing cam­paign or two. As it turns out, they also read quite a bit.

All the books seem to say some­thing about the inner life of each char­ac­ter. The show’s enig­mat­ic main char­ac­ter, Don Drap­er, favored works like Dante’s Infer­no and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury – books that point towards Draper’s series-long down­ward spi­ral. The whiny, inse­cure Pete Camp­bell read Thomas Pynchon’s para­noid clas­sic The Cry­ing of Lot 49. And Bert Coop­er, the aris­to­crat­ic bow-tie sport­ing patri­arch of Ster­ling Coop­er is appar­ent­ly an Ayn Rand fan; he’s seen read­ing Atlas Shrugged ear­ly in the series. You can see the full read­ing list below or here in a beau­ti­ful PDF designed by the NYPL.

A num­ber of the texts list­ed below also appear in our Free eBooks and Free Audio­Books col­lec­tions.

DON DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • EXODUS by Leon Uris (Episode 106 “Baby­lon”)
  • THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe
  • MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY by Frank O’Hara
  • THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkn­er
  • THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD by Ruth Bene­dict
  • THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD by John Le Carre
  • THE FIXER by Bernard Mala­mud
  • ODDS AGAINST by Dick Fran­cis
  • THE INFERNO by Dante Alighieri
  • THE LAST PICTURE SHOW by Lar­ry McMurtry
  • PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth

ROGER STERLING’S PICK:

  • CONFESSIONS OF AN ADVERTISING MAN by David Ogilvy

JOAN HARRIS’S PICK:

  • LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER by D. H. Lawrence

PETE CAMPBELL’S PICKS:

  • THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pyn­chon
  • GOODNIGHT MOON by Mar­garet Wise Brown

BETTY DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • BABYLON REVISITED AND OTHER STORIES by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
  • THE GROUP by Mary McCarthy

LANE PRYCE’S PICK:

  • THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain

HENRY FRANCIS’S PICK:

  • THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

BERT COOPER’S PICK:

  • ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand

SALLY DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Edward Gib­bon
  • TWENTY ONE BALLOONS by William Pene Du Bois
  • NANCY DREW: THE CLUE OF THE BLACK KEYS by Car­olyn Keene
  • THE BLACK CAULDRON by Lloyd Alexan­der
  • ROSEMARY’S BABY by Ira Levin

via The New York Pub­lic Library

Relat­ed Con­tent:

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Ernest Hemingway’s List for a Young Writer

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

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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