Exquisite Paper Craft Animations Tell the Stories of Words

in Animation, Art | September 19th, 2012

The beau­ti­ful Mys­ter­ies of Ver­nac­u­lar is a word-nerd’s delight, a series of ani­ma­tions delv­ing into the ori­gin of words, using exquis­ite paper craft ani­ma­tion to spin an ety­mo­log­i­cal yarn.

The ani­ma­tions are nar­rat­ed in author­i­ta­tive British, giv­ing each sto­ry the feel of the 1970s show, Con­nec­tions, in which sci­ence his­to­ri­an James Burke unwound the links between small moments in his­to­ry and mod­ern life. In this way, Mys­ter­ies of Ver­nac­u­lar, cre­at­ed by Myr­i­a­pod Pro­duc­tions, lays out the con­nec­tions between an ancient word for wolf, a tri­an­gu­lar rake, a frame that held can­dles in funer­als and, final­ly, a car­riage (or car) that con­veys coffins. All of these things come togeth­er to bring us the mod­ern-day word hearse. Watch above.

The words cov­ered so far are not in alpha­bet­i­cal order: assas­sin, clue, hearse and pants. Click on one of the videos for a beau­ti­ful­ly non-lin­ear sto­ry about how words shift and change as human soci­eties do. There are con­nec­tions, of course, between the ear­ly spelling and mean­ing of a word and its cur­rent use, but the jour­ney from one iter­a­tion to anoth­er is the fun part—dotted with side trips through his­to­ry.

The word clue, for exam­ple, was also spelled clew in ancient times and meant, of all things, a ball of yarn. If you know the sto­ry of The­seus, who was deter­mined to slay the Mino­taur at the cen­ter of the labyrinth, you might be able to fig­ure out how a ball of yarn came to refer, more gen­er­al­ly, to some­thing used to solve a rid­dle or prob­lem.

It may inter­est a few of you that the word ver­nac­u­lar has a shad­owy sto­ry of its own to tell. Com­ing from the Latin word for a house slave born in their house of servi­tude, ver­nac­u­lar has come to mean native espe­cial­ly in the con­text of describ­ing a lan­guage. Lin­guis­tic anthro­pol­o­gists, how­ev­er, find the term offen­sive and pre­fer the phrase dialect. 

Accord­ing to Myr­i­a­pod Pro­duc­tions, the Mys­ter­ies of Ver­nac­u­lar “will [ulti­mate­ly] con­tain 26 ety­mo­log­i­cal install­ments, one for each let­ter of the alpha­bet. Each episode takes more than 80 hours to cre­ate between the research, con­struc­tion of the book, and ani­ma­tion.”

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based writer. See more of her work at .

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A Symphony of Sound (1966): Velvet Underground Improvises, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

in Music | September 18th, 2012

“We’re spon­sor­ing a new band,” announced Andy Warhol at the end of the 1966 doc­u­men­tary post­ed here yes­ter­day. “It’s called the Vel­vet Under­ground.” Bri­an Eno would much lat­er call it the band that inspired every sin­gle one of its lis­ten­ers to start bands of their own, but that same year, Warhol pro­duced The Vel­vet Under­ground: A Sym­pho­ny of Sound. The film shows the group, which fea­tures young but now much-dis­cussed rock icon­o­clasts like John Cale, Lou Reed, and (on tam­bourine) the Ger­man singer Nico, per­form­ing a 67-minute instru­men­tal impro­vi­sa­tion.

Shoot­ing at his New York stu­dio the Fac­to­ry, Warhol and crew intend­ed this not as a con­cert film but as a bit of enter­tain­ment to be screened before actu­al live Vel­vet Under­ground shows. It and oth­er short films could be screened, so the idea devel­oped, their sound­tracks and visu­als inter­min­gling accord­ing to the deci­sions of those at the pro­jec­tors and mix­er.

“I thought of record­ing the Vel­vets just mak­ing up sounds as they went along to have on film so I could turn both sound­tracks up at the same time along with the oth­er three silent films being pro­ject­ed,” said direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy and Fac­to­ry mem­ber Paul Mor­ris­sey, best known as the direc­tor of Flesh, Trash, and Heat.  “The cacoph­o­nous noise added a lot of ener­gy to these bor­ing sec­tions and sound­ed a lot like the group itself. The show put on for the group was cer­tain­ly the first mixed media show of its kind, was extreme­ly effec­tive and I have nev­er since seen such an inter­est­ing one even in this age of super-colos­sal rock con­certs.” Alas, some­one’s noise com­plaint puts an end to the Sym­pho­ny of Sound expe­ri­ence: one police­man arrives to turn down the ampli­fi­er, and Warhol tries to explain the sit­u­a­tion to the oth­ers. But the bus­tle of the Fac­to­ry con­tin­ues apace.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Andy Warhol Quits Paint­ing, Man­ages The Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Martin Scorsese Brings “Lost” Hitchcock Film to Screen in Short Faux Documentary

in Film, Television | September 18th, 2012

Alfred Hitch­cock fans should enjoy this 2007 com­mer­cial by Mar­tin Scors­ese. It was com­mis­sioned by the Cata­lan sparkling wine mak­er Freix­enet for the com­pa­ny’s annu­al Christ­mas cam­paign, with the con­cept of mak­ing a short film that would some­how weave the Freix­enet brand into the plot. Scors­ese respond­ed with a nine-minute homage to the mas­ter of sus­pense.  “Hitch­cock is one of my guid­ing lights,” he told El País at the film’s Decem­ber 2007 pre­mier in Madrid. “It’s a satire of my own movie mania. It has to do with my love of cin­e­ma, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of pos­sess­ing it.”

The com­mer­cial is struc­tured as a faux doc­u­men­tary, with Scors­ese appear­ing as him­self. With amus­ing­ly frac­tured log­ic, he explains to an inter­view­er his dis­cov­ery of a three-and-a-half minute frag­ment from an unpro­duced Hitch­cock script and his obses­sion with bring­ing it to the screen. “It’s one thing to pre­serve a film that has been made,” Scors­ese says. “It’s anoth­er to pre­serve a film that has not been made.”

The “pre­served” frag­ment, The Key to Reser­va, is pre­sent­ed as a film with­in the film. Bernard Her­man­n’s omi­nous music from North By North­west sets the tone. The roman­tic leads look some­thing like Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. Hitch­cock afi­ciana­dos will spot ref­er­ences to a num­ber of the mas­ter’s clas­sic films from the 1950s, includ­ing Rear Win­dow, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Ver­ti­go. The Key to Reser­va was filmed by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Har­ris Savides and edit­ed by Scors­ese’s long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er. The sto­ry is set in Carnegie Hall but the crew was unable to film there, so the his­toric con­cert hall had to be cre­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly from pho­tographs. Ben Gross­mann of The Syn­di­cate won a Gold Clio award for visu­al effects.

If you’re won­der­ing whether Hitch­cock would have been pleased by any of this, be sure to stay with the film until it’s amus­ing con­clu­sion. For more of Scors­ese pok­ing fun at his own movie mania, see our fea­ture from yes­ter­day, “Always the Direc­tor: Mar­tin Scors­ese Spoofs Him­self in Two Com­mer­cials.” And if you want to see some real Hitch­cock films, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 20 Free Alfred Hitch­cock Films Online.

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An Annotated Charlie Chaplin Filmography — 82 Films with Links to Videos

in Film | September 18th, 2012

Last year we pub­lished a handy list of 20 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Avail­able Online. And it looked pret­ty good … until yes­ter­day. That’s when Metafil­ter post­ed an Anno­tat­ed Fil­mog­ra­phy of Char­lie Chap­lin fea­tur­ing a list of Chap­lin’s 82 “offi­cial short and fea­ture films in chrono­log­i­cal order … with links to where you can watch them [online].” Above, we’ll start you off above with a short Char­lie Chap­lin Film Fes­ti­val which includes four works in one col­lec­tion — The Adven­tur­er, The Cure, Easy Street and The Immi­grant.

For a broad­er selec­tion of films, don’t miss our meta list of 700 Free Movies Online, where you’ll find great Hitch­cock films and noir clas­sics; West­ern films, includ­ing many with John Wayne; ani­mat­ed gems; doc­u­men­taries and much more. Or, if you want to nar­row down your list, check out our list of 33 Free Oscar-Win­ning Films on the Web.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

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Thomas Edison’s Boxing Cats (1894), or Where the LOLCats All Began

in Film, Random, Technology | September 18th, 2012

I’m will­ing to bet a lot of some­one else’s mon­ey that there are thou­sands more lol­cat lovers than cat lovers in the world. Since I hap­pen to be unashamed­ly both, I was suck­ered by the lit­tle 1894 film above from Thomas Edison’s Black Maria stu­dios fea­tur­ing “Pro­fes­sor Welton’s Box­ing Cats.” Now, grant­ed, there is no dis­claimer telling us no ani­mals were harmed, but it looks to me like good clean cat-box­ing fun. As the Smith­son­ian page that post­ed this lit­tle gem declares, Edi­son is per­haps the “mogul who start­ed lol­cats.”

Edi­son is giv­en cred­it for invent­ing a lot of things, many of which he sim­ply appro­pri­at­ed, made his own, and mar­ket­ed heav­i­ly. In this way, he exem­pli­fies a par­tic­u­lar brand of Amer­i­can entre­pre­neur skilled not so much in mak­ing things as in patent­ing them. The so-called “Wiz­ard of Men­lo Park” patent­ed 1,093 inven­tions, among them his motion pic­ture cam­era, or “kine­to­graph.” But as the Library of Con­gress reports, it is like­ly that Edison’s awk­ward­ly-named assis­tant William Kennedy Lau­rie Dick­son did the actu­al work of turn­ing Edis­on’s con­cept (which he took from Ead­weard Muy­bridge) into a real­i­ty.

Com­plex­i­ties of due cred­it aside, we can at least thank Edi­son for man­ag­ing an effi­cient oper­a­tion and also, for bet­ter or worse, pio­neer­ing lit­i­ga­tion against his com­peti­tors (putting many of them out of busi­ness). His Black Maria Stu­dios amassed quite an archive of ear­ly “actu­al­i­ty” films and silent fic­tion­al films of the Nick­elodeon era, the most famous of which, The Great Train Rob­bery, you can watch below (with dubbed-in score).

The Library of Congress’s Edi­son page is an excel­lent resource for infor­ma­tion on the his­to­ry of film in gen­er­al and Edison’s con­tri­bu­tions in par­tic­u­lar, and it fea­tures dozens of his short films avail­able for down­load in Real­Me­dia, Quick Time, or as MPEGs.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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53 Years of Nuclear Testing in 14 Minutes: A Time Lapse Film by Japanese Artist Isao Hashimoto

in Art, History, Technology | September 17th, 2012

It’s strange what can make an impact. Some­times a mes­sage needs to be loud and over-the-top to come across, like punk rock or the films of Oliv­er Stone. In oth­er cas­es, cool and qui­et works much bet­ter.

Take the new time lapse map cre­at­ed by Japan­ese artist Isao Hashimo­to. It is beau­ti­ful in a sim­ple way and eerie as it doc­u­ments the 2,053 nuclear explo­sions that took place between 1945 and 1998.

It looks like a war room map of the world, black land­mass­es sur­round­ed by deep blue ocean. It starts out slow, in July of 1945, with a blue blip and an explo­sion sound in the Amer­i­can southwest—the Man­hat­tan Project’s “Trin­i­ty” test near Los Alam­os. Just one month lat­er come the explo­sions at Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki.

From there the months click by—condensed down to seconds—on a dig­i­tal clock. Each nation that has explod­ed a nuclear bomb gets a blip and a flash­ing dot when they det­o­nate a weapon, with a run­ning tal­ly kept on the screen.

Eeri­est of all is that each nation gets its own elec­tron­ic sound pitch: low tones for the Unit­ed States, high­er for the Sovi­et Union—beeping to the metronome of the months tick­ing by.

What starts out slow picks up by 1960 or so, when all the cold neu­tral beeps and flash­es become over­whelm­ing.

If you’re like me, you had no idea just how many det­o­na­tions the Unit­ed States is respon­si­ble for (1,032—more than the rest of the coun­tries put togeth­er). The sequence ends with the Pak­istani nuclear tests of May 1998.

Hashimo­to worked for many years as a for­eign exchange deal­er but is now an art cura­tor. He says the piece express­es “the fear and fol­ly of nuclear weapons.”

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

63 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

Kurt Von­negut Gives a Ser­mon on the Fool­ish­ness of Nuclear Arms: It’s Time­ly Again (Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine, 1982)

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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Always the Director: Martin Scorsese Spoofs Himself in Two Commercials

in Comedy, Film, Television | September 17th, 2012

Over the years, Mar­tin Scors­ese has earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a con­sum­mate film­mak­er, an obses­sive per­fec­tion­ist who lives and breathes cin­e­ma. In these two com­mer­cials the famed direc­tor moves to the front of the cam­era to make fun of his own man­ic per­fec­tion­ism.

In 2003 Scors­ese was asked to play him­self in a com­mer­cial for Amer­i­can Express (see above), which was one of the spon­sors of the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val. In keep­ing with his rep­u­ta­tion for fas­tid­i­ous­ness, Scors­ese demand­ed to see a resume and show reel from vet­er­an com­mer­cial direc­tor Jim Jenk­ins before agree­ing to the shoot. “It’s like Kobe Bryant ask­ing for your bas­ket­ball cre­den­tials,” Jenk­ins told Ste­fano Hat­field at Adver­tis­ing Age. “What are you gonna say? I once direct­ed Tonya Hard­ing in a Fox Sports com­mer­cial?”

Scors­ese appar­ent­ly liked what he saw, because Jenk­ins was hired. The shoot took place in a Los Ange­les drug­store dur­ing a sin­gle day. “The main chal­lenge,” wrote Hat­field in his arti­cle, “was to get Mr. Scors­ese to speak as quick­ly as we all think he does. He actu­al­ly had to be coaxed into that machine-gun deliv­ery we have all come to expect of him. While it is entire­ly cred­i­ble that this per­fec­tion­ist would have his nephew stage a par­ty all over again for a bet­ter shoot, Mr. Scors­ese admit­ted that he had­n’t actu­al­ly col­lect­ed a roll of film from a drug­store for 15 years.”

Jenk­ins and Scors­ese teamed up again for a 2008 AT&T com­mer­cial that was shown in the­aters to encour­age movie-goers to silence their phones. It shows Scors­ese barg­ing into the home of a moth­er and her young son and pro­ceed­ing to direct a pri­vate phone call.  The mes­sage: “We won’t inter­rupt your phone calls. Please don’t inter­rupt our movies.” Scors­ese was orig­i­nal­ly expect­ed to direct the com­mer­cial, accord­ing to Jenk­ins, but decid­ed just to act in it. “Obvi­ous­ly he’s a nat­ur­al actor,” Jenk­ins said of Scors­ese in an inter­view with Cre­ativ­i­ty-online. “But he was ner­vous. He just want­ed it to be fun­ny. He said, ‘I can’t know if it’s fun­ny. Just make it fun­ny.’ ”

You can watch the com­mer­cial below to decide for your­self whether it’s fun­ny. And be sure to come back tomor­row, when we fea­ture an imag­i­na­tive com­mer­cial direct­ed by Scors­ese him­self.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Mar­tin Scors­ese Appears in New Apple Ad, Plays on His Chill­ing Cameo in Taxi Dri­ver

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Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol Demystify Their Pop Art in Vintage 1966 Film

in Art | September 17th, 2012

By the mid-six­ties, Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol had come to define a cer­tain cur­rent of process-inten­sive, only super­fi­cial­ly sim­ple Amer­i­can visu­al art. Licht­en­stein cre­at­ed his work using process­es and mate­ri­als devel­oped for tra­di­tion­al com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion; Warhol devel­oped meth­ods for pro­duc­ing his work as if they were tra­di­tion­al com­mer­cial prod­ucts. This half-hour doc­u­men­tary cap­tures both artists in 1966, dis­cussing their meth­ods in inter­views and exe­cut­ing them in their stu­dios. Licht­en­stein speaks clear­ly and in great detail about how he finds the Amer­i­can land­scape “made up of the desire to sell prod­ucts,” how he decid­ed to por­tray in his paint­ings “an anti-sen­si­bil­i­ty that per­vades the soci­ety” with­in a “struc­ture of half-tone dots and flat print­ed areas,” and his dri­ving notion that “what­ev­er approach one uses, he ought to go as far as he can with it, in order to make as much impact as pos­si­ble.”

Warhol, though, as jour­nal­ists who encoun­tered him will winc­ing­ly remem­ber, was­n’t much for inter­views. Or rather, he grant­ed inter­views, but respond­ed most­ly in ways that rein­forced his per­sona of unknowa­bil­i­ty — indeed, of con­tain­ing noth­ing to be known. “Andy Warhol’s ret­i­cence about him­self masks a unique sen­si­bil­i­ty,” reads the nar­ra­tor. That’s one way of putting it. Here he tells his inter­view­er, who main­tains an admirable equa­nim­i­ty through­out, how nice it would be if he could just be told what sen­tences to answer with, and then repeat them. Yet behind his opaque-look­ing sun­glass­es and inter­cut with footage of his var­i­ous projects, Warhol reveals things, and inter­est­ing ones, about the whats, hows, and whys of his grand enter­prise. He even revealed a detail about his imme­di­ate plans to which audi­ences of 1966 would’ve done par­tic­u­lar­ly well to pay atten­tion: “We’re spon­sor­ing a new band. It’s called the Vel­vet Under­ground.”

Andy Warhol and Roy Licht­en­stein will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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