Watch Them Watch Us: A History of Breaking the “Fourth Wall” in Film

in Comedy, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | April 23rd, 2013

Remem­ber that scene in Nashville, when Kei­th Car­ra­dine sings “I’m Easy,” and every woman in the club thinks he’s speak­ing direct­ly to her?

Break­ing the fourth wall—also known as direct address—can have the same effect on a film­go­ing audi­ence. The com­pi­la­tion video above makes it clear that actors love it too. Break­ing from con­ven­tion can tele­graph an unim­peach­able cool, à la John Cusack in High Fideli­ty, or afford a vet­er­an scenery chew­er like Samuel L. Jack­son the oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn the hog loose. It’s most often deployed in the ser­vice of com­e­dy, but a stone-cold killer can make the audi­ence com­plic­it with a wink.

Screen­writer and jour­nal­ist Leigh Singer pulled footage from 54 films for this mash up, and freely admits that time con­straints left some favorites on the cut­ting room floor. What would you add, if you hap­pened to have Mar­shall McLuhan right here?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Rob­bie Cooper’s Video Project Immer­sion Stares Back at Gamers and YouTu­bers

The Film Before the Film: An Intro­duc­tion to the His­to­ry of Title Sequences in 10 Min­utes

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is that rare Gen­er­a­tion X‑er who did­n’t see Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off until 2013. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Power of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

in Film | April 23rd, 2013

Few liv­ing film­mak­ers have proven as able to spin their obses­sions into cin­e­mat­ic gold as Quentin Taran­ti­no. The most obvi­ous of these spring from film­go­ing itself — he’s rein­vent­ed and con­tin­ues to rein­vent so many of his favorite tech­niques from genre pic­tures of all eras and nations — but it does­n’t take an obses­sion with Taran­ti­no to find oth­ers. His sweep­ing, often motor­mouthed­ly expressed ideas about vio­lence in mod­ern soci­ety will give film schol­ars plen­ty to write about for decades to come; those of baser inter­ests might find some sat­is­fac­tion track­ing the direc­tor’s pen­chant for shots of wom­en’s feet. And any­one who thrilled, ear­ly in Pulp Fic­tion, to John Tra­vol­ta and Samuel Jack­son’s con­ver­sa­tion about what the French call a Quar­ter Pounder with cheese knows that he also must main­tain a deep per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al inter­est in food.

Fur­ther­ing this very spe­cif­ic sub­field of Quentin Taran­ti­no Stud­ies, Dan Good­baum has edit­ed togeth­er the video above, which com­piles images from notable food scenes in Taran­ti­no’s work. (Grant­land’s Zach Dionne cat­a­logued twen­ty of them here.) Over it, we hear a seg­ment from Elvis Mitchell inter­view­ing Taran­ti­no on his radio show, The Treat­ment. Mitchell, ace noticer of his film­mak­ing guests’ themes, tricks, and tics, men­tions to Taran­ti­no “how food is used for pow­er in your movies.” We then see and hear about the mean­ing of, among oth­er comestibles, the burg­er in Pulp Fic­tion, the nachos in Death Proof, the rice in Kill Bill Vol­ume 2 , the strudel in Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, and all the sweets (tak­en from Leonar­do DiCapri­o’s real eat­ing habits) in Djan­go Unchained. “When you watch Jack­ie Brown,” Taran­ti­no says, “you want a screw­driv­er.” We see a shot of the drink, albeit dom­i­nat­ed by Patri­cia Arquet­te’s feet. But that’s anoth­er video.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son from Above. Quentin Taran­ti­no from Below

The Best of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Cel­e­brat­ing the Director’s 50th Birth­day with our Favorite Videos

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

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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Richard Feynman Introduces the World to Nanotechnology with Two Seminal Lectures (1959 & 1984)

in Physics, Technology | April 23rd, 2013

In Decem­ber of 1959, Richard Feyn­man gave a talk called “There’s Plen­ty of Room at the Bot­tom” at an annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety at Cal­tech. In this famous lec­ture, Feyn­man laid the con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tions for the field now called nan­otech­nol­o­gy when he imag­ined a day when things could be minia­tur­ized — when huge amounts of infor­ma­tion could be encod­ed onto increas­ing­ly small spaces, and when machin­ery could be made con­sid­er­ably small­er and more com­pact. He asked his audi­ence:

I don’t know how to do this on a small scale in a prac­ti­cal way, but I do know that com­put­ing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can’t we make them very small, make them of lit­tle wires, lit­tle ele­ments, and by lit­tle, I mean lit­tle?

Although some have ques­tioned the degree to which Feyn­man influ­enced the rise of nan­otech­nol­o­gy, his lec­ture is still seen as a sem­i­nal event in the short his­to­ry of the nano field. It’s impor­tant enough that, 25 years lat­er, Feyn­man was invit­ed to give an updat­ed ver­sion of “There’s Plen­ty of Room at the Bot­tom” at a week­long sem­i­nar held at the Esalen Insti­tute in Octo­ber, 1984.

This time around, he called his talk “Tiny Machines.” And while stick­ing close to the 1959 script, Feyn­man’s revised lec­ture shows what tech­no­log­i­cal advances had been made since he first out­lined his vision for a nano world. You can watch the full 79 minute talk above.

Final­ly, since we’re talk­ing about things nano, let me leave you with this — Stephen Fry’s 2010 primer on nanoscience. Pro­duced in part­ner­ship with Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, NANO YOU was named the best short film at the Scin­e­ma Sci­ence Film Fes­ti­val and it does a pret­ty good job of explain­ing the nano world in 17 short min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Course from Cor­nell (1964)

Richard Feynman’s Ode to a Flower: A Short Ani­ma­tion

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A Cult Classic: William Shatner Sings Elton John’s “Rocket Man” at 1978 SciFi Awards Show

in Music, Sci Fi | April 22nd, 2013

Start­ing in the 1960s, William Shat­ner, rid­ing high on his Star Trek fame, began his idio­syn­crat­ic musi­cal career. With his 1968 con­cept album, The Trans­formed Man, the actor gave us the first taste of his musi­cal schtick. He would­n’t sing songs. He would speak them, often in a melo­dra­mat­ic, exag­ger­at­ed fash­ion. Just lis­ten to his ver­sions of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” and “Mr. Tam­bourine Man” to see what I mean.

Four decades lat­er, the Shat has­n’t changed his style. In 2011, he released a pop­u­lar ver­sion of Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” (watch below) on his space-themed album, Seek­ing Major Tom. But real­ly, if you want to expe­ri­ence the high water­mark of Shat­ner’s musi­cal work, you need to beam your­self back to 1978. That’s when the actor host­ed The Sat­urn Awards (essen­tial­ly the Oscars for sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy & hor­ror films) and “sang” a ver­sion of “Rock­et Man,” the 1972 song co-writ­ten by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. It’s Taupin who intro­duces Shat­ner, and Karen Black who intro­duces Taupin.

As you will see (above), the broad­cast used chro­ma key video tech­niques to por­tray three dif­fer­ent images of Shat­ner, each of which rep­re­sent­ed a dif­fer­ent part of the Rock­et Man’s char­ac­ter. Now a cult clas­sic, Shat­ner’s per­for­mance has been par­o­died over the years by Beck, Fam­i­ly Guy, and Chris Elliot on a 1992 episode of Late Night with David Let­ter­man, among oth­ers. You can find a new record­ing of “Rock­et Man” on Seek­ing Major Tom.

Final­ly, if you’re won­der­ing who brought home the hard­ware from the ’78 Sat­urn Awards, it was George Burns, Jodie Fos­ter, Star Wars and Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind.

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Two Beautifully-Crafted Russian Animations of Chekhov’s Classic Children’s Story “Kashtanka”

in Animation, Literature | April 22nd, 2013

Long before mas­ters of the short sto­ry like Ray­mond Carv­er and Flan­nery O’Connor com­mand­ed the respect of cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers every­where, Anton Chekhov’s spare, man­nered sto­ries set the stan­dard for the form. Known for their sub­tle­ty and keen obser­va­tions of human weak­ness and social ills, the typ­i­cal Chekhov sto­ry nev­er boils over into melo­dra­ma but sim­mers, slow­ly push­ing ten­sions close to the sur­face of rou­tine inter­ac­tions with­out let­ting them break through and explode.

The sto­ry ani­mat­ed above, how­ev­er, is some­thing of an excep­tion to Chekhov’s domes­tic human dra­mas. “Kash­tan­ka” is a about a dog, and a good bit of it is told from her per­spec­tive. First pub­lished in 1884 as “In Bad Times,” the sto­ry was alleged­ly inspired by Chekhov’s love of the cir­cus. Chekhov wrote the sto­ry for chil­dren, so it’s fit­ting that it receive this Dis­ney-esque treat­ment (the open­ing scene remind­ed me of Gep­pet­to’s work­shop).

Russ­ian poster design­er and children’s book illus­tra­tor Mikhail Tsekhanovsky made the film in 1952, when car­toons were painstak­ing­ly hand-drawn cel by cel. Anoth­er Russ­ian ani­ma­tor, Natalia Orlo­va, takes advan­tage of 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy in her 2004 ren­der­ing of “Kash­tan­ka” below, but she does so in a unique way that inte­grates hand-paint­ed images; the flick­er­ing stop-motion resem­bles children’s book illus­tra­tions come to life. Along with the excel­lent sound design, her cap­ti­vat­ing style makes for a very dif­fer­ent visu­al­iza­tion of the sto­ry.


Note: You will need to click CC at the bot­tom of the video to launch the sub­ti­tles.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

12 Ani­mat­ed Plays by William Shake­speare: Mac­beth, Oth­el­lo and Oth­er Great Tales Brought to Life

“The Me Bird” by Pablo Neru­da: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­pre­ta­tion

Three Inter­pre­ta­tions of Charles Bukowski’s Melan­choly Poem “Nir­vana”

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

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Salvador Dalí Creates a Dream Sequence for Spellbound, Hitchcock’s Psychoanalytic Thriller

in Film | April 22nd, 2013

Alfred Hitch­cock made so many time­less films, but Spell­bound, alas, has­n’t held up quite so com­fort­ably. Most of the prob­lem has to do with its theme: psy­cho­analy­sis, which enjoyed a trendy moment in the mid-for­ties and may have attained enough rel­e­vance at the time to dri­ve a plot, but now seems a rather weak engine. That era’s ther­a­py craze swept up pic­ture’s pro­duc­er, old-Hol­ly­wood titan David O. Selznick, with such force that he per­son­al­ly asked the direc­tor to take it on as a sub­ject. Hitch­cock grudg­ing­ly agreed, set­ting the pro­duc­tion gears turn­ing on Spell­bound. Selznick arranged for his own ther­a­pist to both act as the movie’s tech­ni­cal advis­er and to cause Hitch­cock a num­ber of on-set headaches. So if Spell­bound seems faint­ly un-Hitch­cock­ian, we can chalk it up part­ly to Selznick­’s psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic zeal, but some of the cred­it must also go to Sal­vador Dalí.

Hired to craft a dream sequence, the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist painter and film­mak­er report­ed­ly pro­duced over twen­ty min­utes of footage, four and a half min­utes of which appear in the clip above. “I can’t make out just what sort of a place it was,” Gre­go­ry Peck mut­ters, reclined on the ther­a­pist’s couch, as the shot dis­solves into his mind and into Dalí’s imagery. “It seemed to be a gam­bling house, but there weren’t any walls, just a lot of cur­tains with eyes paint­ed on them. A man was walk­ing around with a large pair of scis­sors, cut­ting all the drapes in half. And then a girl came in with hard­ly any­thing on and start­ed walk­ing around the gam­bling room, kiss­ing every­body.” Sure­ly those days offered no more ide­al can­di­date for the job of real­iz­ing such a vision than Dalí. The light­ly theremin-ed score comes from Mik­lós Rózsa, but Hitch­cock did­n’t like that either. Though the famous­ly con­trol­ling auteur may have found his pow­er com­pro­mised in its pro­duc­tion, Spell­bound does end up being a rare thing indeed in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma: dream sequences com­pelling enough not to put you to sleep.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 20 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

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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Amazing Flipbook Animation Shows Off the Skills of Ronaldinho

in Animation, Sports | April 21st, 2013

Ronal­do de Assis Mor­eira, oth­er­wise sim­ply known as Ronald­in­ho, plays football/soccer for Atléti­co Mineiro and cur­rent­ly cap­tains the Brazil­ian nation­al team. And the artist ‘Etoilec1,’ whose real name remains obscure to us, cre­ates some amaz­ing flip­books, includ­ing this one that ani­mates Ronald­in­ho’s finest moments on the pitch. You can watch real high­lights of Ronald­in­ho’s foot­work here, and find more care­ful­ly wrought flip­books by Etoilec1 here.

via mefi

Find us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and we’ll make it easy to share intel­li­gent media with your friends! 

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Read the First Page of Thomas Pynchon’s New Novel, Bleeding Edge

in Books, Literature | April 21st, 2013

Pynchon first page

Click the image for a larg­er view. And if it does­n’t get large enough, click it again…

Pyn­chon. What to say? An all-night marathon read­ing of Gravity’s Rain­bow changed my brain chem­istry. A cou­ple days locked in a room with V altered my real­i­ty for­ev­er. I read the first chap­ter of Mason & Dixon. Bought and for­got a copy of Against the Day. Scanned a review of Inher­ent Vice.

So maybe the lat­er Pyn­chon hasn’t grabbed me, or my leisure read­ing time has just evap­o­rat­ed. Or both. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. But now we’ve got anoth­er chance to gape at the reclu­sive paranoiac’s labyrinthine prose, since his new nov­el Bleed­ing Edge comes out Sep­tem­ber 17th. And pub­lish­er Pen­guin has thrown us a morsel—you can read the first page of Bleed­ing Edge (above), from Penguin’s Fall 2013 cat­a­log.

Described as a “his­tor­i­cal romance on New York in the ear­ly days of the inter­net,” Bleed­ing Edge takes place in a pre-lapser­ian 2001, “in the lull between the col­lapse of the dot-com boom and the ter­ri­ble events of Sep­tem­ber 11th.” The nov­el promis­es plen­ty of intrigue, dark humor, lay­ers of occult fore­bod­ing, “lamen­ta­tions about the ’60s coun­ter­cul­ture,” and “shady fascis­tic orga­ni­za­tions with futur­is­tic names.”

Read the full descrip­tion of Bleed­ing Edge at Gothamist.

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

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