The Greatest Jazz Films Ever Features Classic Performances by Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Billie & More

in Film, Music, Television | February 5th, 2014

Though both have their roots in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, jazz and cin­e­ma came of age as 20th cen­tu­ry art forms, and they very often did so togeth­er (though not always in the most taste­ful ways). Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer intro­duced the world to talkies. Cabaret, Lady Sings the Blues, The Cot­ton Club are all well-known fic­tion­al films that near­ly any­one might name if asked about the sub­ject. And though Ken Burns’ Jazz may seem like a defin­i­tive state­ment in jazz doc­u­men­tary, for decades, film­mak­ers have made jazz musi­cians their cen­tral sub­ject—for exam­ple, in jazz fan-favorites like Min­gus and Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er. Before these excel­lent, if some­times painful, por­traits, there were short films like Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili’s 1944 Jam­min’ the Blues with Lester Young and oth­er bop stal­warts, and 1950’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic, a selec­tion of clips fea­tur­ing Cole­man Hawkins, Char­lie Park­er, Lester Young, Bud­dy Rich, Ella Fitzger­ald, and oth­ers per­form­ing at Nor­man Granz’s leg­endary series of con­certs.

You’ll see excerpts from both Jam­min’ the Blues and Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic above in The Great­est Jazz Films Ever, a two-disc DVD set that appears to be out of print. (New copies cur­rent­ly retail on Ama­zon for any­where from $259.00 to almost $4,000, but you can watch it free online.) This great­est hits col­lec­tion also includes high­lights from sev­er­al tele­vi­sion spe­cials like Be Bop’s Nest—a rare Char­lie Park­er appear­ance with Dizzy Gille­spie on the short-lived vari­ety show Stage Entrance—and “The Sound of Miles Davis,” a 1959 episode of tele­vi­sion show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater that show­cased one of Davis’ most cel­e­brat­ed ensem­bles.

You’ll also see excerpts from The Sound of Jazz, which Fresh Sound Records calls “one of the great glo­ri­ous moments on tele­vi­sion,” and which con­tains per­for­mances from Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lester Young, Thelo­nious Monk, the Count Basie Orches­tra, and more. Final­ly, we get excerpts from a 1959 tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Jazz From Stu­dio 61, fea­tur­ing the orig­i­nal Ahmad Jamal Trio with the Ben Web­ster Quin­tet. The Great­est Jazz Films Ever is an impres­sive and endur­ing col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments from the gold­en age of jazz. While the empha­sis here is gen­er­al­ly on musi­cian­ship, not film­mak­ing, it’s a col­lec­tion that also demon­strates jazz’s close rela­tion­ship to film and tele­vi­sion in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. All­mu­sic has a com­plete track­list of the col­lec­tion. And for a detailed break­down of each clip, you won’t want to pass up a scroll through this help­ful French site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Jam­min’ the Blues,’ by Gjon Mili

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

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

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Quentin Tarantino & Steve Buscemi Rehearse Scenes for Reservoir Dogs in 1991 (NSFW)

in Film | January 29th, 2014

Think about the actors and direc­tors who stood as pil­lars of the 1990s “indiewood” move­ment, and the dis­tinc­tive images of Quentin Taran­ti­no and Steve Busce­mi will sure­ly cross your mind. Both deliv­ered much of inter­est in that cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly fruit­ful decade. Busce­mi, whom Roger Ebert deemed “the house act of Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent films,” played high­ly mem­o­rable roles in movies like Alexan­dre Rock­well’s In the Soup, Tom DiCil­lo’s Liv­ing in Obliv­ion, and the Coen broth­ers’ Far­go and The Big Lebows­ki. Taran­ti­no direct­ed three fea­tures that need no intro­duc­tion, the first of which, 1991’s Reser­voir Dogs, brought them togeth­er. In the clip above, you can watch Taran­ti­no and Buscemi’s video­taped rehearsal ses­sions, where­in, among oth­er things, they work out their respec­tive char­ac­ters, the would-be dia­mond thieves Mr. Brown and Mr. Pink.

Before Reser­voir Dogs, Taran­ti­no had attempt­ed only the incom­plete My Best Friend’s Birth­day. Before shoot­ing what would become his first fin­ished movie for real, he put togeth­er mock-ups of these scenes at the Sun­dance Insti­tute Direc­tor’s Work­shop and Lab, which then sub­ject­ed them to frank eval­u­a­tions from a rotat­ing pan­el of vet­er­an film­mak­ers. As much as we enjoy his act­ing, let’s not for­get his own con­tri­bu­tions as a direc­tor; his 1996 debut Trees Lounge, in which he also stars, eas­i­ly ranks among the finest prod­ucts of that era’s inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma. And as for Taran­ti­no’s own sub­se­quent for­ays into act­ing… well, nobody can argue that they don’t enter­tain.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Kansas City Con­fi­den­tial: Did This 1952 Noir Film Inspire Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs?

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

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David Lynch’s Perfume Ads Based on the Works of Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald & D.H. Lawrence

in Film | January 28th, 2014

As we wrote last week, David Lynch is not only one of the great cin­e­mat­ic spe­lunk­ers of the uncon­scious, cre­at­ing images and sto­ry­lines that have dis­turbed movie­go­ers for almost four decades, but he’s also had a suc­cess­ful run as a com­mer­cial direc­tor, mak­ing ads for among oth­er com­pa­nies Alka-Seltzer, Bar­il­la Pas­ta and Geor­gia Cof­fee.

In 1988, fresh off his suc­cess with Blue Vel­vet and just before he start­ed pro­duc­tion on his land­mark TV series Twin Peaks, he made his first com­mer­cials — a quar­tet of adver­tise­ments for Calvin Klein’s per­fume Obses­sion fea­tur­ing pas­sages from such lit­er­ary titans as F. Scott Fitzger­ald, D.H. Lawrence and Ernest Hem­ing­way. (Lynch’s ad fea­tur­ing Gus­tave Flaubert is mys­te­ri­ous­ly unavail­able on Youtube.)

The com­mer­cials have all the pre­ten­sion, the lus­cious black and white pho­tog­ra­phy and the vacant-eyed beau­ti­ful peo­ple that you might expect from a Calvin Klein ad. Yet they also show glim­mers of Lynch’s aes­thet­ic – a noirish, dream-like tone, an odd­ly framed close up, a fond­ness for flash­ing lights. Lynch dialed down the weird to serve the text. The result is far more roman­tic and beau­ti­ful than you might expect from the direc­tor. If you’re hop­ing to see a David Lynch com­mer­cial that will give night­mares, check this one out instead.

The ad for F. Scott Fitzger­ald, which you can see above, uses one of the more famous pas­sages from The Great Gats­by.

He knew that when he kissed this girl, and for­ev­er wed his unut­ter­able visions to her per­ish­able breath, his mind would nev­er romp again like the mind of God. So he wait­ed, lis­ten­ing for a moment longer to the tun­ing-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blos­somed for him like a flower and the incar­na­tion was com­plete.

Sharp-eyed view­ers might have caught that the ad stars future Oscar-win­ning actor Beni­cio Del Toro and Heather Gra­ham, who would lat­er appear in Twin Peaks. The com­mer­cial dis­solves back and forth between Del Toro and Gra­ham until the inevitable kiss when the ad cuts, with sur­pris­ing­ly lit­er­al­ness, to a bloom­ing flower.

The D.H. Lawrence ad uses a quo­ta­tion from Women in Love:

Her fin­gers went over the mould of his face, over his fea­tures. How per­fect and for­eign he was—ah how dan­ger­ous! Her soul thrilled with com­plete knowl­edge. This was the glis­ten­ing, for­bid­den apple … She kissed him, putting her fin­gers over his face, his eyes, his nos­trils, over his brows and his ears, to his neck, to know him, to gath­er him in by touch.

Lynch shows a blonde in a bro­cade dress loom­ing over her improb­a­bly beau­ti­ful para­mour who is lying on a divan. She paws at his chis­eled fea­tures before lean­ing in for a kiss.

And final­ly, the Ernest Hem­ing­way ad – the spook­i­est and most Lynchi­an of the bunch — fea­tures a pas­sage from The Sun Also Ris­es:

I lay awake think­ing and my mind jump­ing around. Then I could­n’t keep away from it, and I start­ed to think about Brett. I was think­ing about Brett and my mind start­ed to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sud­den I start­ed to cry. After a while it was bet­ter and I lay in bed and lis­tened to the heavy trams go by.. and then I went to sleep.

This ad opens with a half-naked man lying awake in a dark­ened room filled with grotesque shad­ows. He’s haunt­ed by the specter of an androg­y­nous woman in a tank top. There’s a flash of light­en­ing and then the woman kiss­es his cheek. Lynch clos­es up on his eye, which is welling up with a sin­gle tear.

As a side note: the half-naked guy in the ad is James Mar­shall who went on to star in Twin Peaks, as did Lara Fly­nn Boyle who appears in the miss­ing Flaubert com­meri­cial. Lynch has a rep­u­ta­tion of being very loy­al to his actors.

The Obses­sion ads proved to be such a suc­cess that he start­ed get­ting requests to do com­mer­cials for oth­er lux­u­ry per­fume com­pa­nies like Gior­gio Armani’s Gio and Yves Saint Laurent’s Opi­um.

As Lynch told Chris Rod­ley in Lynch on Lynch, he thinks of com­mer­cials as “lit­tle bit­ty films, and I always learn some­thing by doing them.”

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

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

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“Exceptional, Spooky and Beautiful” Moments With Birds: Dennis Hlynsky’s Creepy Nature Videos

in Biology, Film | January 27th, 2014

If, by some stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, the end timers have it right, I hope artist Den­nis Hlyn­sky will con­sid­er set­ting up his tri­pod as demons spew forth from the earth­’s crust.

His small brains en masse project has me con­vinced that he is the per­fect per­son to cap­ture such an event. Have a look at how he doc­u­ments the com­ings and goings of birds.

I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced a star­ling mur­mu­ra­tion myself, out­side of the famous, shot-on-the-fly footage (right above) of Sophie Wind­sor Clive and Lib­er­ty Smith, indie film­mak­ers who chanced to find them­selves in the right canoe at the right time, ornitho­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing. I admire these young wom­en’s sang-froid. I would’ve been cow­er­ing and slash­ing at the air with my pad­dles. That fun­nel cloud of black wings is unnerv­ing even from the safe remove of my liv­ing room, but a groovy sound­track by Nomad Soul Col­lec­tive encour­ages even the most bird-pho­bic amongst us (me) to see it as some­thing gor­geous and awe-inspir­ing, too.

Hlyn­sky does­n’t attempt to lead the wit­ness with reas­sur­ing sound cues. Instead, he amps up the creepy via “extrud­ed time,” lay­er­ing sequences of frames atop one anoth­er until the dark­est pix­els become trac­ers empha­siz­ing flight paths. The com­bi­na­tion of every­day sound and visu­al por­tent makes it dread­ful­ly easy to imag­ine one’s truck break­ing down at an inter­sec­tion right around the 7 minute mark.

Per­haps I’ve seen too many zom­bie movies.

Or have I?

Hlyn­sky is obvi­ous­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by nature, but he also states that “to some degree these videos are stud­ies of mob behav­ior. Are these deci­sions instinc­tu­al or small thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tions? Does one leader guide the group or is there a com­mon brain? Is a virus a sin­gle crea­ture or a dif­fused body that we inhab­it?”

Put anoth­er way, per­haps there’s a rea­son it’s called a mur­der of crows, as opposed to a brunch, hug or sweat­shirt of crows. Hlyn­sky, who’s the type of guy to seek their com­pa­ny out, describes his time spent film­ing them to be among the most “excep­tion­al, spooky and beau­ti­ful” moments of his life.

As for these New Jer­sey seag­ulls, “throw a french fry in the air and with­in 30 sec­onds the entire screech of birds will come.” Yikes. Here, extrud­ed time con­spires with the ambi­ent sounds of a board­walk amuse­ment park, in a tour-de-force of avian-inspired psy­chic unrest.

Pag­ing Tip­pi  Hedren… I’m out of here!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Para­Hawk­ing in Nepal: What It’s Real­ly Like to Fly with Birds

Ayun Hal­l­i­day wish­es she had a cat instead of a mean, orange-striped owl. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov Trade Letters and Ideas for a Film Collaboration (1964)

in Film, Letters, Literature | January 27th, 2014

alfred_hitchcock_and_vladimir_nabokov_were_pen_pals

Alfred Hitch­cock, writes James A. David­son in Images, “is usu­al­ly men­tioned in the same breath with Cor­nell Wool­rich, the lit­er­ary ‘mas­ter of sus­pense,’ ” not least because he adapt­ed a novel­la of Wool­rich’s into Rear Win­dow (1954).” Yet David­son him­self finds in Hitch­cock “a much greater affin­i­ty with that of the Russ­ian émi­gré writer Vladimir Nabokov, with whom he is not typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed since there is no appar­ent con­nec­tion” like the one between Nabokov and Stan­ley Kubrick, who brought Nabokov’s nov­el Loli­ta to the screen. Hitch­cock and Nabokov nev­er sim­i­lar­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed, but not out of a lack of desire. Close his­tor­i­cal con­tem­po­raries and mutu­al admir­ers, the writer and the direc­tor did once exchange let­ters dis­cussing film ideas they might devel­op togeth­er. You’ll find the full text of both Hitch­cock­’s query and Nabokov’s inter­est­ed response at the Amer­i­can Read­er.

“The first idea I have been think­ing about for some time is based upon a ques­tion that I do not think I have seen dealt with in motion pic­tures or, as far as I know, in lit­er­a­ture,” wrote Hitch­cock to Nabokov on Novem­ber 19, 1964. “It is the prob­lem of the woman who is asso­ci­at­ed, either by mar­riage or engage­ment, to a defec­tor.” After fill­ing out a few details, suit­ing the con­cept per­fect­ly to what he calls “the cus­tom­ary Hitch­cock sus­pense,” he lays out a sec­ond, about a young girl who, “hav­ing spent her life in a con­vent in Switzer­land due to the fact that she had no home to go to and only had a wid­owed father,” sud­den­ly finds her­self released back to the hotel run by her father and his entire fam­i­ly. But ah, “the whole of this fam­i­ly are a gang of crooks, using the hotel as a base of oper­a­tions,” which would lead into the telling of an “extreme­ly col­or­ful sto­ry.” Reply­ing nine days lat­er, Nabokov admits that Hitch­cock­’s first idea, about the defec­tor’s wife, “would present many dif­fi­cul­ties for me” due to his unfa­mil­iar­i­ty with “Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty mat­ters and meth­ods.” The one about the crim­i­nal hotel, how­ev­er, strikes him as “quite accept­able,” and he goes on to make two pitch­es of his own.

Nabokov’s first idea, some­thing of a rever­sal of Hitch­cock­’s first one, involves a defec­tor from the Sovi­et Union in the Unit­ed States. His sec­ond focus­es on a star­let “court­ed by a bud­ding astro­naut.” When this astro­naut returns home famous from a major mis­sion, the actress, whose “star­rise has come to a stop at a mod­er­ate lev­el,” real­izes “that he is not the same as he was before his flight.” Unable to put her fin­ger on it, she “becomes con­cerned, then fright­ened, then pan­icky.” Nabokov tan­ta­liz­ing­ly men­tions hav­ing “more than one inter­est­ing denoue­ment for this plot,” but alas, we’ll nev­er see them cin­e­ma­tized, and cer­tain­ly not by the likes of Hitch­cock. “One can only imag­ine the kind of invo­lut­ed, com­plex, and play­ful work these two men would have pro­duced,” writes David­son. “What is left, in the end, is the work they pro­duced, which can be well sum­ma­rized by a line the fic­tion­al John Shade wrote in Pale Fire: ‘Life is a mes­sage scrib­bled in the dark.’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent Loli­ta Book Cov­ers

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

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

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Nietzsche Dispenses Dating Advice in a Short Screwball Film, My Friend Friedrich

in Comedy, Film, Philosophy | January 27th, 2014

My Friend Friedrich opens on awk­ward, bespec­ta­cled Colum­bia stu­dent Nate hav­ing a heart to heart on the phone with his moth­er. Then, in a phi­los­o­phy class, he almost suc­ceeds in land­ing a date by lob­bing an illus­trat­ed invi­ta­tion at his love inter­est, Emma. All goes awry when a taller, more con­fi­dent, bespec­ta­cled Colum­bia stu­dent cuts him off at the knees. So far, so very New York stu­dent film, but a con­ceit arrives to dis­tin­guish this sto­ry of Ivy League dat­ing woes: the ghost of Friedrich Niet­zsche appears before Nate to guide him towards self-actu­al­iza­tion.

In what “seems to have been a senior project at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts,” accord­ing to Crit­i­cal The­o­ry (a Vimeo upload dates the film as “cir­ca 2003), My Friend Friedrich gives us the typ­i­cal under­grad­u­ate expe­ri­ence of the philosopher’s voice. Niet­zsche instructs our young friend to regard the flash­ing lights, tall build­ings, and “horse­less car­riages” of Times Square as mean­ing­less. “Nihilism cares about noth­ing” he says and urges his pupil to will him­self to pow­er. It’s not too pro­found a por­tray­al of Nietzsche—though of course it’s only played for laughs—and seems to come main­ly from a sur­face read­ing of his Will to Pow­er, an unfin­ished man­u­script pub­lished after the philosopher’s death. (His sis­ter fraud­u­lent­ly pitched a man­gled edi­tion to the Nazis as Nietzsche’s under­writ­ing of their ide­ol­o­gy, cut­ting out all of her brother’s strong remarks against anti-Semi­tism.)

One could argue, if it’s worth explain­ing the humor, that this super­fi­cial take on Niet­zsche is pre­cise­ly the point, since it’s the dif­fi­dent Nate’s slight read­ing of Will to Pow­er at the out­set that pro­duces his hal­lu­ci­na­tion-slash-vis­i­ta­tion. Niet­zsche helps Nate win an intel­lec­tu­al piss­ing con­test by quot­ing Beyond Good and Evil chap­ter and verse, then goads him into some awk­ward out­bursts and even­tu­al­ly over­stays his wel­come. The screw­ball con­clu­sion is ripped right out of Wes Ander­son.

It’s all in good fun, but if you find your­self eager for some more sub­stan­tial Niet­zsche resources, we’ve got them aplen­ty. You might begin with emi­nent Niet­zsche schol­ar and Will to Pow­er trans­la­tor Wal­ter Kaufmann’s lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre. In our list of free phi­los­o­phy cours­es you’ll find Niet­zsche cours­es by Leo Strauss, Rick Rod­er­ick, and oth­ers. Alain de Bot­ton offers an intro­duc­tion on Niet­zsche as part of his Guide to Hap­pi­ness, and BBC pro­gram Human, All Too Human presents Niet­zsche’s life in a doc­u­men­tary series that also includes Sartre and Hei­deg­ger. Many works by Niet­zsche can also be found in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tion.

And if it’s more Niet­zsche humor you’re after, see this failed attempt to explain the philoso­pher to a group of 5‑year-olds.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball”

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

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

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The Big Lebowski Reimagined as a Classic 8‑Bit Video Game

in Film, Video Games, Web/Tech | January 25th, 2014

The above video brings togeth­er two things that few peo­ple of my gen­er­a­tion can resist. The first hard­ly needs an intro­duc­tion: at the risk of anger­ing Coen Broth­ers fans with the com­par­i­son, their 1998 cult hit The Big Lebows­ki has gen­er­at­ed at least as many end­less­ly quotable lines as Cad­dyshack did almost 20 years ear­li­er, and it appeals to a sim­i­lar con­tin­gent of slack­er wiseass­es. The movie gave Jeff Bridges—son of Lloyd, broth­er of Beau, and cer­tain­ly a star in his own right before he played The Dude—the kind of cachet most actors only dream of. I’m not say­ing he wouldn’t have won his 2009 best actor Oscar for Crazy Heart with­out Lebows­ki, but I’m not say­ing that he would have either. And then, of course, there was the renewed inter­est in the “sport” of bowl­ing, Hol­ly­wood weirdo and self-iden­ti­fied gun nut John Mil­ius (who inspired John Goodman’s char­ac­ter), and the creamy vod­ka cock­tail.

The sec­ond thing: the 8‑bit video games that, believe it or not, rep­re­sent­ed a rev­o­lu­tion in home gam­ing, and gave us the first Nin­ten­do and Sega sys­tems and games that, true con­fes­sion, used to keep me up all night, like the var­i­ous ver­sions of Mega­man (which you can play online here). The games now have leg­endary sta­tus and their defin­i­tive­ly col­or­ful, blocky aes­thet­ic has been—or was at least a few years ago—the ulti­mate in geek nos­tal­gia chic, along with a new wave of “chip­tune” music made with, or inspired by, the 8‑bit chips of the games of our youth. So what, I ask, could be more fun than bring­ing Lebows­ki and 8‑bit gam­ing togeth­er for a 3‑minute bowl­ing game? Very lit­tle. As C‑Net describes the video above, it’s “an expe­ri­ence we only wish we’d had back in the 90’s.” Made by Cine­Fix, who have pre­vi­ous­ly ani­mat­ed Pulp Fic­tion, The Hunger Games, Blade Run­ner and a string of oth­er hits as 8‑bit shorts, the 8‑Bit Cin­e­ma Big Lebows­ki isn’t actu­al­ly playable, but it should be. Regard­less, it’s as fun to watch as you might imag­ine a mash-up of the Coen Broth­ers and Super Mario World would be. Get your nos­tal­gia on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

Free Fun: Play Don­key Kong, Pac Man, Frog­ger & Oth­er Gold­en Age Video Games In Your Web Brows­er

Down­load a Pro­to­type of Ever, Jane, a Video Game That Takes You Inside the Vir­tu­al World of Jane Austen

Long Live Glitch! The Art & Code from the Game Now Released into the Pub­lic Domain

Want  to learn about Video Game Law? It’s cov­ered in our list of Free Online Cours­es

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

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David Lynch’s Unlikely Commercial for a Home Pregnancy Test (1997)

in Film | January 24th, 2014

Vision­ary direc­tor David Lynch has cre­at­ed some of the most ter­ri­fy­ing, sur­re­al images in cin­e­ma, from a danc­ing dream dwarf in Twin Peaks to that sev­ered ear in a field in Blue Vel­vet. So he might seem like an unlike­ly choice to direct a series of com­mer­cials for Clear Blue Easy One Minute home preg­nan­cy tests, but that’s exact­ly what he did in 1997.

The moody, black and white ad shows a ner­vous-look­ing woman wait­ing for the results of the test. In those ago­niz­ing moments, the face of her watch reads ‘yes’ and ‘no’ instead of num­bers – reflect­ing her anx­i­ety.

While this com­mer­cial might seem tame for Lynch, it is the­mat­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar to his oth­er work. His ear­ly mas­ter­piece Eraser­head is a biz­zaro fever dream about the abject ter­ror of par­ent­hood.

“The client was a lit­tle ner­vous that the spot would be eerie and scary,” David Cohen, exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the ad, said to Enter­tain­ment Weekly’s A.J. Jacob. “But on the set, Lynch was con­stant­ly mak­ing sure the client was hap­py.”

In fact, Lynch has had a whole sec­ond career as a com­mer­cial direc­tor, mak­ing ads for Nis­san, PlaySta­tion and one incred­i­bly freaky PSA about the evils of lit­ter­ing. He also direct­ed a sur­pris­ing­ly lit­er­ary series of com­mer­cials for Calvin Klein using text penned by such lumi­nar­ies as F. Scott Fitzger­ald and D.H. Lawrence. We’ll post some­thing about those next week.

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

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

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