Discover J.R.R. Tolkien’s Personal Book Cover Designs for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

in Art, Books, Design, Literature | February 18th, 2013

The Fellowship Of The Ring Book Cover by JRR Tolkien_1-480

In some rare cas­es, adap­ta­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of a lit­er­ary work can sur­pass the source. Despite hun­dreds of valiant efforts on the part of fans, film­mak­ers, game/toy design­ers, and radio pro­duc­ers, this has nev­er been true of the ful­ly-real­ized fan­ta­sy world in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy. (not that it’s ever been anyone’s intent). As we not­ed in a post last week, Tolkien’s fic­tion­al world is so intri­cate, its sources so vast and var­ied, that Corey Olsen, “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” has made it his entire life’s work to open that world up to stu­dents and curi­ous read­ers, most recent­ly with his eight-part lec­ture series on The Hob­bit.

The Two Towers Book Cover by JRR Tolkien_1-480

One might also add illus­tra­tors to the list of Tolkien inter­preters above who have—in the almost eighty years since The Hobbit’s pub­li­ca­tion and six­ty years since the first appear­ance of The Lord of the Rings trilogy—done their best to visu­al­ize Tolkien’s world. But per­haps no one did so bet­ter than the mas­ter him­self. Long known as a visu­al artist as well as a lit­er­ary one, Tolkien left behind over 100 illus­tra­tions for The Hob­bit, one of which adorns 2011’s Harper­Collins 75th anniver­sary edi­tion of the book. He also cre­at­ed these orig­i­nal cov­er designs for each book in The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy.

The Return Of The King Book Cover by JRR Tolkien_1-480

ring-eye-device

In the long and com­plex pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry of Tolkien’s most famous of works, it’s unclear if these designs ever made it onto books pub­lished dur­ing his life­time, but the sig­il in the cen­ter of The Fel­low­ship of the Ring design (left), with its omi­nous eye of Sauron sur­round­ed by elvish runes and topped by the one ring, did grace the ele­gant, min­i­mal­ist cov­ers of the first edi­tion of the tril­o­gy. Tolkien’s art­work received a thor­ough treat­ment in a 1995 mono­graph J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illus­tra­tor, which cov­ers over 60 years of Tolkien’s life as an artist, and the mag­ic of flickr brings us this com­pendi­um of Tolkien illus­tra­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

The Art of the Book Cov­er Explained at TED

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Cov­er for On the Road

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Simulate the Damage Caused by Comet and Asteroid Collisions with Impact: Earth!

in Astronomy, Technology | February 18th, 2013

impact earthOn Fri­day, the world had its eyes focused on the big aster­oid fly­by. For weeks, we knew it was com­ing, and we watched it buzz by with mild curios­i­ty. But, that same day, we were all caught off guard by a ten-ton mete­orite that blast­ed into the Siber­ian town of Chelyabin­sk, injur­ing 1,200 peo­ple and caus­ing con­sid­er­able struc­tur­al dam­age. (Watch footage here.) This abrupt and unex­pect­ed event has giv­en gov­ern­ments a rea­son to start tak­ing the risk of aster­oid impacts a bit more seri­ous­ly. And it might renew inter­est in a tool cre­at­ed by sci­en­tists at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty and Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don in 2010.

In a nut­shell, Impact: Earth! is an inter­ac­tive tool that lets any­one cal­cu­late the dam­age a comet or aster­oid would cause if it hap­pened to col­lide with our plan­et. You can cus­tomize the size and speed of the incom­ing object, and then find out if mankind sur­vives. (Usu­al­ly it does.) A grainy primer appears below. You can enter the web­site and start run­ning your own sce­nar­ios right here.

via @moseshawk

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The Art of Illustration: Four Illustrators Introduce You to the Awe-Inspiring State of Their Art

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Video - Arts & Culture | February 17th, 2013

Con­tem­pla­tive types used to los­ing them­selves in an image may wish to have a motion sick­ness bag on hand when view­ing The Art of Illus­tra­tion, the lat­est entry in Off Book, a PBS web series explor­ing cut­ting edge art and inter­net cul­ture. The edit­ing seems even more ver­tig­i­nous than in episodes devot­ed to indie video game design­ers and glitch artists. The score recalls R. Crum­b’s exis­ten­tial hor­ror inside a mod­ern night­club.

Watch it any­way, for the inter­vie­wees thoughts on the state of illus­tra­tion.

Pro­fes­sor Steven Guar­nac­cia of the The New School’s Illus­tra­tion Pro­gram describes how illus­tra­tion’s cre­ative poten­tial explod­ed once pho­tog­ra­phy became the prime way of doc­u­ment­ing celebri­ty appear­ances and oth­er such news­wor­thy visu­als.

Edi­to­r­i­al Illus­tra­tor Yuko Shimisu inter­nal­izes those obser­va­tions, throw­ing shade on any idea she feels would look bet­ter in pho­to form. Shimisu, like all of the artists fea­tured in the short video, uses tra­di­tion­al media to make her draw­ings, but col­ors them dig­i­tal­ly. The form may pre­date pho­tog­ra­phy, but Shimisu implies that any prac­ti­tion­er unwill­ing to embrace the trend toward new media will find them­selves going the way of the dodo, as edi­to­r­i­al gigs migrate onto tablets and even small­er dig­i­tal devices.

Mean­while over at DC Comics, Sean Mur­phy has yet to dis­cov­er a super­pow­er capa­ble of speed­ing up the work that goes into ren­der­ing a sto­ry in com­ic book for­mat. The facial expres­sions, grand per­spec­tives, and moody light­ing that are his stock in trade could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly be cap­tured with a shut­ter click, but at what cost to the over­all nar­ra­tive?

And then there’s the inim­itable Mol­ly Crabap­ple, pur­vey­or of Vic­to­ri­an-fla­vored kink and founder of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, whose Occu­py Wall Street posters chal­lenged the visu­al bound­aries of activist art. Find­ing a per­son­al style one can blow up into a brand is not just a choice, she implies. It’s one’s best hope of sur­vival in a sea flood­ed with com­peti­tors.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day pub­lish­es her illus­trat­ed zine, The East Vil­lage Inky the old fash­ioned way, then pro­motes it across all man­ner of dig­i­tal plat­forms, includ­ing @AyunHalliday.

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All Criterion Films Streaming Free on Hulu This Weekend (in the US)

in Film | February 16th, 2013

criterion on hulu

Over this Pres­i­dents’ Day week­end, Hulu is stream­ing all of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion movies for free. That’s right, free! We’re talk­ing hun­dreds of films by the likes of Ing­mar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Char­lie Chap­lin, Jean-Luc Godard, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, David Lynch, Nag­isa Oshi­ma, François Truf­faut, and Orson Welles. So can­cel your week­end plans, wish your friends and fam­i­ly well, and start pack­ing in as many clas­sic films as you can. We rec­om­mend get­ting start­ed with Kuro­sawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai, Godard­’s Breath­less, David Lynch’s Eraser­head or Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this col­lec­tion is only acces­si­ble to view­ers in the Unit­ed States. We usu­al­ly don’t fea­ture geo-restrict­ed mate­r­i­al, but this seemed too good to pass up. In the mean­time, if you live out­side of the U.S., we’d encour­age you to vis­it our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online, where you’re bound to find some­thing you’ll enjoy. Or you can check out our spe­cial­ized film col­lec­tions by Andrei Tarkovsky, Alfred Hitchock, Char­lie Chap­lin and John Wayne, not to men­tion our col­lec­tion of Film Noir Clas­sics.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

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The BBC Presents a New Dramatization of Orwell’s 1984, with Christopher Eccleston as Winston Smith

in Literature, Politics, Radio | February 15th, 2013


Like the idea of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, per­haps best artic­u­lat­ed by Han­nah Arendt in her post-war Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, George Orwell’s post-war scruti­ny of repres­sive gov­ern­ments has become a sta­ple, catch-all ref­er­ence for pun­dits on either side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­cepts of dou­ble­s­peak, dou­ble­think, his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, and the hyper-intru­sive Big Broth­er, all from the 1949 nov­el 1984. In fact, few adjec­tives seem to get deployed with more fre­quen­cy in urgent polit­i­cal dis­course of all kinds than “Orwellian.” But the name George Orwell, pen name of jour­nal­ist Eric Blair, hides an enig­ma: Orwell iden­ti­fied him­self explic­it­ly as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist of a par­tic­u­lar­ly Eng­lish bent (most notably in his essay “The Lion and the Uni­corn”), but his scathing cri­tiques of near­ly every exist­ing insti­tu­tion some­times make it hard to pin him down as a par­ti­san of any­thing but the kind of free­dom and open­ness that every­one vague­ly wants to advo­cate. That ambi­gu­i­ty is a strength; despite his stead­fast left­ist roots, Orwell would not be a par­ti­san hack—where he saw stu­pid­i­ty, avarice, and bru­tal inhu­man­i­ty, he called it out, no mat­ter the source.

The seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions and ironies that per­me­ate Orwell’s thought and fic­tion are also what keep his work peren­ni­al­ly inter­est­ing and worth reread­ing and revis­it­ing. He was a prob­ing and unsen­ti­men­tal crit­ic of the motives of pro­pa­gan­dists of all stripes, both left and right. Begin­ning in late Jan­u­ary, BBC Radio 4 launched a month-long series on Orwell, with the avowed­ly iron­ic name, “The Real George Orwell.” Part of the irony comes from the fact that Orwell (or Blair) once worked as a pro­pa­gan­dist for the BBC dur­ing WWII, and lat­er based the tor­ture area in 1984, Room 101, on a meet­ing room he recalled from his time there. His expe­ri­ences with the state broad­cast­ing net­work were not pleas­ant in his mem­o­ry. Nonethe­less, his for­mer employ­er hon­ors him this month with an exten­sive ret­ro­spec­tive, includ­ing read­ings and drama­ti­za­tions of his essays and jour­nal­ism, his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal accounts Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don and Homage to Cat­alo­nia, and his nov­els Ani­mal Farm and 1984.

In this lat­est drama­ti­za­tion of Orwell’s most famous nov­el, pro­tag­o­nist Win­ston Smith is voiced by actor Christo­pher Eccle­ston, who has inhab­it­ed anoth­er key post-war char­ac­ter in Eng­lish fic­tion, Dr. Who (Pip­pa Nixon voic­es Julia). In a brief dis­cus­sion of what he takes away from the nov­el, Eccle­ston (above) draws out some of the rea­sons that 1984 appeals to so many peo­ple who might agree on almost noth­ing else. At the heart of the nov­el is the kind of human­ist indi­vid­u­al­ism that Orwell nev­er aban­doned and that he cham­pi­oned against Sovi­et-style state com­mu­nism and hard-right impe­ri­al­ist author­i­tar­i­an­ism both. Win­ston Smith is an embod­i­ment of human dig­ni­ty, cel­e­brat­ed for his strug­gle to “love, remem­ber, and enjoy life,” as Eccle­ston says. “It’s the human sto­ry that means that we keep com­ing back to it and that keeps it rel­e­vant.” Lis­ten to a brief clip of the 1984 drama­ti­za­tion at the top of this post, and vis­it BBC Radio 4’s site to hear parts one and two of the full broad­cast, which is avail­able online for the next year. When Europe and Amer­i­ca both seem rent in two by com­pet­ing and incom­pat­i­ble social and polit­i­cal visions, it’s at least some com­fort to know that no one wants to live in the world Orwell fore­saw. Despite his novel’s deeply pes­simistic end­ing, Orwell’s own career of fierce resis­tance to oppres­sive regimes offers a mod­el for action against the dystopi­an future he imag­ined.

For oth­er free, online read­ings of Orwell’s work, you can vis­it our archives of Free Audio Books, where you’ll find

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Also find major works by Orwell in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Live: Watch NASA’s Coverage of Asteroid As It Buzzes By Earth

in Astronomy | February 15th, 2013

Writes NASA:

NASA Tele­vi­sion will pro­vide com­men­tary start­ing at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) on Fri­day, Feb. 15, dur­ing the close, but safe, fly­by of a small near-Earth aster­oid named 2012 DA14. NASA places a high pri­or­i­ty on track­ing aster­oids and pro­tect­ing our home plan­et from them. This fly­by will pro­vide a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close.

The half-hour broad­cast from NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Pasade­na, Calif., will incor­po­rate real-time ani­ma­tion to show the loca­tion of the aster­oid in rela­tion to Earth, along with live or near real-time views of the aster­oid from obser­va­to­ries in Aus­tralia, weath­er per­mit­ting.

At the time of its clos­est approach to Earth at approx­i­mate­ly 11:25 a.m. PST (2:25 p.m. EST / 19:25 UTC), the aster­oid will be about 17,150 miles (27,600 kilo­me­ters) above Earth­’s sur­face.

The com­men­tary will be avail­able via NASA TV and streamed live online at: https://www.nasa.gov/ntv and https://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Or you can just watch above.…

Note: You can also watch footage of the mete­orite hit­ting Siberia this morn­ing here.

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David Lynch Talks About His 99 Favorite Photographs at Paris Photo 2012

in Photography | February 15th, 2013

We don’t need to tell you, an Open Cul­ture read­er, about the rich­ness of David Lynch’s con­tri­bu­tion to motion pic­tures. But the auteur also has an ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with still pho­tog­ra­phy which the past decade has seen emerge into pub­lic light. Years ago, I attend­ed an open­ing in Los Angeles—the city so thor­ough­ly cap­tured by Lynch’s surrealism—of an exhi­bi­tion of his own shots. Now, the Los Ange­les Review of Books presents Lynch’s com­men­tary, in the video above, on 99 pic­tures tak­en by oth­ers. Lis­ten to him describe his view­ing approach—that of a voyeuris­tic, all-feel­ing detective—and you’ll nev­er look the same way at cur­tains, wom­en’s shoes, stone Bud­dhas, and fes­ter­ing sores again.

Lynch select­ed these favorite 99 pho­tos from the thou­sand pre­sent­ed at 2012’s Paris Pho­to, the inter­na­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy fair that hap­pens each Novem­ber dur­ing the Euro­pean Month of Pho­tog­ra­phy. He arrived as the inau­gur­al selec­tion of “Paris Pho­to vu par…,” a new tra­di­tion that will each year com­pile a book of images, their selec­tion “entrust­ed to a dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty each year.” Die-hard fans will sure­ly need to own their idol­’s edi­tion, and in late April they can make a pil­grim­age to Lynch’s town for the launch of Paris Pho­to Los Ange­les. Its loca­tion? The lot of Para­mount Pic­tures, dis­trib­u­tor of Lynch’s pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly strik­ing The Ele­phant Man.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Beat Writer William S. Burroughs Spreads Counterculture Cool on Nike Sneakers, 1994

in Business, Literature, Television | February 14th, 2013

Nike footwear and celebri­ty ath­letes usu­al­ly go hand-in-hand. When you think Nike, you think of Michael Jor­dan, Bo Jack­son and Mia Hamm. And let’s not for­get the now trou­bled duo of Tiger Woods and Lance Arm­strong too. Fit, lithe bod­ies gen­er­al­ly sell sneak­ers, we know that.

But then there’s the bizarre, odd excep­tion. Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1994, when Nike enlist­ed William S. Bur­roughs to sell its Air Max shoes. That’s right a decrepit 79-year-old Beat writer, known for his hero­in addic­tion, manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion and cut up writ­ing. William S. Bur­roughs is pret­ty much the anti-Mia Hamm. And yet the ad works in its own way. Just like the Gap could use Jack Ker­ouac to lend hip­ster cred to its stodgy khakis, so Bur­roughs could bring a main­streamed coun­ter­cul­ture cool to Nike shoes as his head, appear­ing in a TV set pro­claims, “The pur­pose of tech­nol­o­gy is not to con­fuse the brain, but to serve the body, to make life eas­i­er, to make any­thing pos­si­ble. It’s the com­ing of the new tech­nol­o­gy.” That new tech­nol­o­gy being, I guess, the cut­ting edge cush­ions in Nike’s shoes?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky (find it also in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books)

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