The Miracle of Flight, the Classic Early Animation by Terry Gilliam

in Animation, Comedy, Film | May 18th, 2012

As Michael Palin once put it, “there’s no get­ting away from the wit, won­der and wiz­ardry of the man Cahiers du Ciné­ma once described as Ter­ry Gilliam.”

Those qual­i­ties are clear­ly vis­i­ble in this very fun­ny ear­ly film by Gilliam called The Mir­a­cle of Flight. The film was made in 1971 for the Amer­i­can-British TV show The Mar­ty Feld­man Com­e­dy Machine. Mon­ty Python was on hia­tus that year, so Gilliam went to work for the short-lived Com­e­dy Machine, cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­it sequence and var­i­ous ani­mat­ed fea­tures using his trade­mark air­brush and paper cutout tech­niques. (Watch his primer on doing your own cutout ani­ma­tion here.) The mate­r­i­al for The Mir­a­cle of Flight was appar­ent­ly pack­aged as a stand-alone film in 1974, right after Gilliam’s first film, Sto­ry­time.  It was lat­er used as a bonus fea­ture before the­atri­cal screen­ings of Gilliam movies, and dur­ing live Python per­for­mances. The film ver­sion is slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the one aired on the Com­e­dy Machine. Accord­ing to Smarter Than The Aver­age, “for the the­atri­cal ver­sion it lost a griz­zly punch­line where a man who had failed at his attempt to fly by emu­lat­ing the ergonom­ics of a bird takes his revenge by rip­ping the bird to pieces.” The writer then goes on to describe details only a Python fanat­ic could notice:

The Mir­a­cle of Flight in par­tic­u­lar is a cor­nu­copia of odd­i­ties for the Python con­nois­seur, con­tain­ing as it does one line record­ed by Ter­ry Jones, the tarred-and-feath­ered char­ac­ter who appears in Ani­ma­tions of Mor­tal­i­ty, the moun­tain in the finale of the Mean­ing of Life com­put­er game and the ani­mat­ed woman from Python who says “Turn that tele­vi­sion off–you know it’s bad for your eyes”. Most baf­fling of all is the muzak in the air­port ter­mi­nal, which is the same as used in the Den­tal sequence of the Mean­ing of Life CD-Rom near­ly thir­ty years lat­er. For sheer num­bers of Python iconog­ra­phy appear­ing in a non-Python pro­duc­tion, The Mir­a­cle of Flight’s only rival is Eric Idle’s music video for George Har­rison’s Cracker­box Palace. But I digress.

Indeed. But we enjoyed it. And you’ll enjoy The Mir­a­cle of Flight, which might more accu­rate­ly be called The Tri­umph of Grav­i­ty.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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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True Story: The Time Pixar Almost Deleted Toy Story 2

in Animation, Film | May 15th, 2012

Dur­ing the late 1980s, two short films — Luxo Jr. and Tin Toy — saved Pixar from bank­rupt­cy. Dur­ing the late 1990s, anoth­er film, Toy Sto­ry 2, almost cre­at­ed a finan­cial cat­a­stro­phe for the com­pa­ny. In this clip excerpt­ed from the Blu-ray ver­sion of the film, Oren Jacob (for­mer CTO of Pixar) and Galyn Sus­man (Pixar pro­duc­er) remem­ber the time when Toy Sto­ry 2 near­ly became the vic­tim of the com­put­ers that gen­er­at­ed it. One com­mand — RM* — almost delet­ed an award-win­ning film that went on to make $485 mil­lion at the box office.

via Kot­tke

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Watch the Animation of Maurice Sendak’s Surreal and Controversial Story, In the Night Kitchen

in Animation, Books, Film, K-12 | May 9th, 2012

By now you’ve heard the sad news. The beloved chil­dren’s author Mau­rice Sendak died yes­ter­day at the age of 83. Of course, he’s best remem­bered for his clas­sic tale, Where the Wild Things Are (1963). But some read­ers may hold a spe­cial place in their hearts for his 1970 pic­ture book, In the Night Kitchen. It’s a sur­re­al sto­ry that was named one of the Out­stand­ing Chil­dren’s Books of 1970 by The New York Times. It’s also a sto­ry that stirred up some con­tro­ver­sy. At points in the illus­trat­ed book, the three year old pro­tag­o­nist appears naked, shock­ing some crit­ics and read­ers. These days, you’ll find the book rank­ing 25th on the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion’s list of the 100 Most Fre­quent­ly Chal­lenged Books of 1990–2000.

In 1980, illus­tra­tor Gene Deitch got beyond the con­tro­ver­sy and pro­duced a five minute, faith­ful adap­ta­tion of In the Night Kitchen. It appears above, and it’s now right­ful­ly added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of 475 Free Movies Online.

Bonus Mate­r­i­al:

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Shel Silverstein Reads His Poem ‘Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too’ in Animated Video

in Animation, Books, K-12 | May 1st, 2012

You know Shel Sil­ver­stein as the author of the beloved chil­dren’s book, The Giv­ing Tree, which he even­tu­al­ly turned into an ani­mat­ed film in 1973. Sil­ver­stein nar­rat­ed the film him­self and played the accom­pa­ny­ing har­mon­i­ca too. You can watch it online right here.

Now, almost four decades lat­er, comes anoth­er ani­mat­ed video. This time we have the voice of Sil­ver­stein (1930–1999) read­ing his poem, ‘Ick­le Me, Pick­le Me, Tick­le Me Too,’ which orig­i­nal­ly appeared in anoth­er famous col­lec­tion, Where the Side­walk Ends. The ani­ma­tion, you’ll notice right away, uses the same aes­thet­ic as the 1974 book. Hope you enjoy. And props go to Media Bistro for bring­ing it to light.

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Neuroscience and Propaganda Come Together in Disney’s World War II Film, Reason and Emotion

in Animation, History, Psychology | April 30th, 2012

Last Fri­day, we post­ed Saul Bass’ Why Man Cre­ates. For anoth­er short film which drew Acad­e­my recog­ni­tion by using ani­ma­tion to illu­mi­nate basic human impuls­es, you could do worse than Dis­ney’s Rea­son and Emo­tion. Just as Bass’ pic­ture, a prod­uct of 1968, bears the mark of that era’s ascen­dant free-your-mind coun­ter­cul­ture, Dis­ney’s pic­ture reflects the con­cerns of 1943 Amer­i­ca. Mankind has always and prob­a­bly will always strug­gle with the con­flicts between what we con­sid­er our ratio­nal minds and what we con­sid­er our emo­tion­al impuls­es, but at that par­tic­u­lar time and in that par­tic­u­lar nation, mankind found itself even more con­cerned with the con­flict between the Axis and the Allies. Under­stand­ing how per­sua­sive a mes­sage they could send by unit­ing the cur­rent with the eter­nal, Dis­ney’s wartime pro­pa­gan­da came up with this eight-minute comedic illus­tra­tion of how our rea­son and emo­tion coex­ist, what an ide­al bal­ance between them looks like, and why you, a good Amer­i­can, should hold your emo­tion in check. “That’s right, emo­tion,” insists the nar­ra­tor, “go ahead, put rea­son out of the way. That’s great, fine — for Hitler.”

Enlight­ened 21st-cen­tu­ry view­ers will find plen­ty of the stiff, the square, and the stereo­typ­i­cal to object to here. Ven­tur­ing inside the head of an aver­age Amer­i­can man, the film sees a sober, bespec­ta­cled embod­i­ment of Rea­son at the steer­ing wheel. Behind him sits the jit­tery, club-swing­ing cave­man Emo­tion. When our man spies a “classy dish” on the side­walk, Emo­tion wrests con­trol from Rea­son, but suc­ceeds only in get­ting their humanoid vehi­cle slapped.

We then enter the mind of the slap­per to find Rea­son’s female equiv­a­lent, a syn­the­sis of all char­ac­ters ever named “Pru­dence,” at the wheel. Back-seat dri­ving is a rotund, excitable, (rel­a­tive­ly) skimpi­ly dressed Emo­tion. Rea­son believes she has done jus­tice with the slap, but Emo­tion argues, “He was cute! You wan­na be an old maid?” She then pro­pos­es an eat­ing binge, while Rea­son looks on in hor­ror at their con­trol room’s rapid­ly bal­loon­ing, sag­ging, “CHIN,” PROFILE,” and “FIGURE” charts.

Yet in its old-fash­ioned, super­cil­ious, and sim­plis­tic way, Rea­son and Emo­tion looks frankly at the chal­lenges we all face on a reg­u­lar basis when decid­ing, whether we be male or female, what to do, which foods to eat, and whom to try to meet. Research on what our cen­ters of rea­son and emo­tion actu­al­ly are and how they deter­mine our choic­es has risen to the height of neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic fash­ion, and as for the film’s indict­ment of the Third Reich as a vast emo­tion-manip­u­la­tion machine, the unset­tling but sub­stan­tial field of dic­ta­to­r­i­al mind con­trol in all its forms has accu­mu­lat­ed its own enor­mous body of aca­d­e­m­ic study. We’ve grown just a lit­tle smarter about rea­son and emo­tion, war and peace, and men and women in the past 69 years, which makes Rea­son and Emo­tion a rich­er and more fas­ci­nat­ing watch now than it would have been then. The film has been added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Find more Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Films Here:

The Mak­ing of a Nazi: Disney’s 1943 Ani­mat­ed Short

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream (1942)

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

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

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The Higgs Boson, AKA the God Particle, Explained with Animation

in Animation, Physics | April 27th, 2012

Ever since the Large Hadron Col­lid­er (LHC) went online in 2008, physi­cists have been con­duct­ing exper­i­ments, hop­ing to final­ly prove or dis­prove the exis­tence of The God Par­ti­cle, oth­er­wise known as the Hig­gs Boson. CERN (which oper­ates the LHC) gives this basic intro­duc­tion to the the­o­rized par­ti­cle:

A major break­through in par­ti­cle physics came in the 1970s when physi­cists real­ized that there are very close ties between two of the four fun­da­men­tal forces – name­ly, the weak force and the elec­tro­mag­net­ic force. The two forces can be described with­in the same the­o­ry, which forms the basis of the Stan­dard Mod­el. This ‘uni­fi­ca­tion’ implies that elec­tric­i­ty, mag­net­ism, light and some types of radioac­tiv­i­ty are all man­i­fes­ta­tions of a sin­gle under­ly­ing force called, unsur­pris­ing­ly, the elec­troweak force. But in order for this uni­fi­ca­tion to work math­e­mat­i­cal­ly, it requires that the force-car­ry­ing par­ti­cles have no mass. We know from exper­i­ments that this is not true, so physi­cists Peter Hig­gs, Robert Brout and François Englert came up with a solu­tion to solve this conun­drum.

They sug­gest­ed that all par­ti­cles had no mass just after the Big Bang. As the Uni­verse cooled and the tem­per­a­ture fell below a crit­i­cal val­ue, an invis­i­ble force field called the ‘Hig­gs field’ was formed togeth­er with the asso­ci­at­ed ‘Hig­gs boson’. The field pre­vails through­out the cos­mos: any par­ti­cles that inter­act with it are giv­en a mass via the Hig­gs boson. The more they inter­act, the heav­ier they become, where­as par­ti­cles that nev­er inter­act are left with no mass at all.

That quick state­ment sets the stage for watch­ing the video above. Here we have Daniel White­son, a physics pro­fes­sor at UC Irvine, giv­ing us a fuller expla­na­tion of the Hig­gs Boson, mer­ci­ful­ly using ani­ma­tion to demys­ti­fy the the­o­ry and the LHC exper­i­ments that may con­firm it soon­er or lat­er. H/T Metafil­ter

Look­ing to bone up on physics? Find 31 Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es Online. They’re all from top uni­ver­si­ties — MIT, Stan­ford, Yale and the rest.

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

in Animation, K-12, Literature | April 24th, 2012


Yes­ter­day we gave you a fine BBC adap­ta­tion of Ham­let star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who), not real­iz­ing that it hap­pened to be Shake­speare’s death­day — the day when the Bard died in 1616. The pass­ing of that anniver­sary calls for some­thing a lit­tle spe­cial. So, here we have it: The Ani­mat­ed Shake­speare.

Aired between 1992 and 1994 on the BBC and HBO, The Ani­mat­ed Shake­speare brings to life 12 famous Shake­speare plays. Leon Garfield, a well-known British chil­dren’s author, wrote the scripts, main­ly using Shake­spear­i­an lan­guage. And some tal­ent­ed Russ­ian artists did the ani­ma­tion. Above, we give you the ani­mat­ed Mac­beth.

Below you will find com­pan­ion ver­sions of Julius Cae­sar and Romeo & Juli­et, plus links to nine oth­er plays. The full set can be pur­chased on DVD in high­er res­o­lu­tion right here.

Oth­er Plays:

  • Julius Cae­sar — Watch
  • A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream — Watch
  • Ham­let - Watch
  • King Richard III - Watch
  • Oth­el­lo — Watch
  • The Tem­pest - Watch

 

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Orson Whales!: Welles Meets Led Zeppelin Meets Melville in Mashup Animation

in Animation, Books | April 12th, 2012


Last week we gave you “ein Stop-Motion” ani­ma­tion of Ernest Hem­ing­way’s lit­tle clas­sic, The Old Man and the Sea, set to “Sail” by AWOLNATION. How can we pos­si­bly con­nect the dots and give you anoth­er mar­itime mashup this week? Easy-peasy. Today, we’re serv­ing up Alex Itin’s ani­ma­tion of Orson Welles read­ing Moby Dick, with images being drawn in the pages of Her­man Melville’s clas­sic, and with Led Zep pro­vid­ing the sound­track and play­ing their ver­sion of “Moby Dick.” Mis­sion accom­plished!

Free copies of Moby Dick can be found in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions. And you can watch orig­i­nal footage of the great Orson Welles read­ing Moby Dick right here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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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