Watch a Strange Animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” Voted the 24th Best Cartoon of All Time (1953)

in Film, Literature | October 17th, 2023

Ani­ma­tion stu­dio UPA—United Pro­duc­tions of America—is best known these days as the stu­dio that gave us Mr. Magoo and Ger­ald McBo­ing Boing (which inspired a cer­tain web­site). But the stu­dio, orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by three for­mer Dis­ney employ­ees, want­ed to broad­en hori­zons back in the 1950s, and cre­at­ed this quite dis­turb­ing adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by the ven­er­a­ble James Mason.

Due to its adult sub­ject mat­ter, it was the first ani­mat­ed film to receive an “X” rat­ing
(or “suit­able for those aged 16 and over”) in the UK. Though not intend­ed for chil­dren, many undoubt­ed­ly saw the film as kids and were pro­found­ly affect­ed by it. The film, designed by Paul Julian, bor­rows both from Dali-esque sur­re­al­ism and Ger­man expres­sion­ism.

And while it does fea­ture some tra­di­tion­al cell ani­ma­tion, there’s a mix of tech­niques that keep the film in the realm of the dream­like and avant-garde: sud­den zooms, shad­ows that fade in and out, flat­tened per­spec­tives, inven­tive use of chiaroscuro. In this film, one can see both the future careers of Roger Cor­man and Dario Argen­to, both grab­bing influ­ences left and right.

In fact, though design­er Paul Julian is best known for his back­ground work at Warn­er Bros. ani­ma­tion stu­dios (he also is known as the cre­ator of the Road Runner’s beep-beep sound), he wound up pro­vid­ing direc­tor Roger Cor­man with art­work for movies like Demen­tia 13 and The Ter­ror.

UPA con­tin­ued to pro­duce films with its mod­ern and flat space-age aes­thet­ic dur­ing the ‘50s, but it nev­er real­ly hit these adult heights again. The ‘60s how­ev­er, would pick up from where UPA left off.

Julian’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” was vot­ed the 24th great­est car­toon of all time, in a 1994 sur­vey of 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. It was also nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into dis­tur­bia. It will be added to our list of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Lee Reads “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 Clas­sic

Watch Vin­cent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries (1970)

Famous Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Martin Scorsese Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, and More

in Film | September 27th, 2023

“Did Scors­ese make the best movie of each decade since the ’70s?” asks GQ’s Zach Baron in a recent pro­file of that long-lived auteur. “Prob­a­bly not (I think his case is weak­est in the first decade of this cen­tu­ry), but you could argue it, and many peo­ple have.” And indeed, you may well find your­self believ­ing it after watch­ing the video above, also pub­lished by GQ, in which Scors­ese him­self dis­cuss­es a selec­tion of fea­tures from the past half-cen­tu­ry of his career, the ear­li­est of which, Mean Streets, was a break­out project for both its young direc­tor and even younger star, a cer­tain Robert de Niro, in 1973.

Scors­ese’s lat­est, Killers of the Flower Moon, opens next month as not just anoth­er of his many col­lab­o­ra­tions with de Niro, but the first Scors­ese film to fea­ture both de Niro and Leonar­do DiCaprio. “We were acquaint­ed with each oth­er when we were six­teen years old,” the direc­tor says of de Niro in the GQ video. “He expe­ri­enced what I expe­ri­enced grow­ing up” in rough-and-tum­ble New York neigh­bor­hoods like Lit­tle Italy and the Bow­ery, and thus “knows who I am and where I came from.” Hence the trust with which Scors­ese took de Niro’s rec­om­men­da­tion of DiCaprio in the ear­ly nineties: “You got­ta work with him some­day.”

That some­day came in 2002, with Gangs of New York, after which the Scors­ese-diCaprio pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship would mature to bear addi­tion­al cin­e­mat­ic fruit with projects like The Depart­ed and The Wolf of Wall Street. At this point it has become a par­al­lel enter­prise to Scors­ese-de Niro, which can be traced from The Irish­man, which came out in 2019, back through the likes of Good­Fel­las (though it stars the late Ray Liot­ta), Casi­no, The King of Com­e­dy, and Rag­ing Bull — a pic­ture that, along with oth­er brazen­ly ambi­tious Unit­ed Artists releas­es like Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s Apoc­a­lypse Now and Michael Cimi­no’s Heav­en’s Gate, Scors­ese now sees as mark­ing the end of “the pow­er of the direc­tor.”

In “new Hol­ly­wood” era of the nine­teen-sev­en­ties, Scors­ese remem­bers, “things were wide open, and we went in and took it like the bar­bar­ians at the gate, and we trans­formed what­ev­er we could, but they caught us.” Still, since then he’s “nev­er stopped work­ing for any notice­able amount of time,” as Baron puts it, though in recent years he’s been giv­en to rue­ful com­ment about the artis­tic and eco­nom­ic dynam­ics of his indus­try and art form. As for the state of the world in gen­er­al, he makes an equal­ly grim diag­no­sis with ref­er­ence to his and de Niro’s best-known col­lab­o­ra­tion, Taxi Dri­ver: “Every oth­er per­son is like Travis Bick­le now.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Mar­tin Scors­ese Directs a Movie: The Tech­niques Behind Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, and More

The Decay of Cin­e­ma: Susan Son­tag, Mar­tin Scors­ese & Their Lamen­ta­tions on the Decline of Cin­e­ma Explored in a New Video Essay

The Film­mak­ing of Mar­tin Scors­ese Demys­ti­fied in 6 Video Essays

What Makes Taxi Dri­ver So Pow­er­ful? An In-Depth Study of Mar­tin Scorsese’s Exis­ten­tial Film on the Human Con­di­tion

Mar­tin Scors­ese Explains the Dif­fer­ence Between Cin­e­ma and Movies

Scorsese’s The Irish­man in the Con­text of his Oeu­vre – Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #29 Fea­tur­ing Col­in Mar­shall

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Stream Hundreds of Hours of Studio Ghibli Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax: My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away & More

in Animation, Film, Music | September 26th, 2023

The Boy and the Heron, the lat­est fea­ture from mas­ter ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki, opened in Japan this past sum­mer. In that it marks his lat­est emer­gence from his sup­posed “retire­ment,” we could label it not just as late Miyaza­ki, but per­haps even “post-late” Miyaza­ki. But the film nev­er­the­less shares sig­nif­i­cant qual­i­ties with his ear­li­er work, not least a score com­posed by Joe Hisaishi. Since Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind — which opened in 1984, even before the foun­da­tion of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li — Hisaishi’s music has done near­ly as much to estab­lish the sen­si­bil­i­ty of Miyaza­k­i’s films as their lav­ish, imag­i­na­tive ani­ma­tion, and you can stream hun­dreds of hours of it with this Youtube playlist.

Each of the playlist’s 121 two-hour videos offers musi­cal selec­tions from a mix of Ghi­b­li movies, includ­ing Miyaza­ki favorites like My Neigh­bor Totoro, Por­co Rosso, and Spir­it­ed Away, and also the works of oth­er direc­tors: Yoshi­fu­mi Kondō’s Whis­per of the Heart, Hiro­masa Yonebayashi’s Arri­et­ty,  Gorō Miyaza­k­i’s From Up on Pop­py Hill.

If you’ve seen those pic­tures, these qui­et, often min­i­mal ren­di­tions of their music will sure­ly bring their ani­mat­ed fan­tasies right back to mind. Even if you haven’t, they can still ful­fill the func­tion promised by the videos’ titles of set­ting a mood con­ducive to study, work, or sim­ple relax­ation.

So beloved are Hisaishi’s scores, for Miyaza­ki and oth­ers (most notably come­di­an-auteur Takeshi Kitano), that it’s pos­si­ble to know the music long before you’ve seen the movies. And even in per­for­mances con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent from the ver­sions heard on the actu­al sound­tracks, they always sound imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able as Hisaishi’s work. Shaped by an eclec­tic set of influ­ences (born Mamoru Fuji­sawa, he took on his pro­fes­sion­al name as an homage to Quin­cy Jones), he devel­oped a com­po­si­tion­al style nei­ther strict­ly East­ern nor West­ern. The same can be said about Ghi­b­li movies them­selves, which often pos­sess both fairy-tale Euro­pean set­tings and Japan­ese philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings. Wher­ev­er you place your­self on the cul­tur­al map, you’d do well to make their music the sound­track of your own life.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Calm Down & Study with Relax­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

De-Stress with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

The Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Cel­e­brat­ed in a Glo­ri­ous Con­cert Arranged by Film Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The 50 Greatest Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

in Film, Music | September 14th, 2023

It’s not an espe­cial­ly straight­for­ward mat­ter to pin down when music videos first emerged. In a sense, the Bea­t­les were already mak­ing them back in the late six­ties, but then, MTV, where the music video as we know it rapid­ly took shape, did­n’t start broad­cast­ing until 1981. The very first video aired on the chan­nel, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Bug­gles, had actu­al­ly been made almost two years ear­li­er, in 1979. But that did­n’t stop it from doing a good deal to define the form that would, itself, define the pop­u­lar cul­ture of the eight­ies. Nor did it stop it from appear­ing, 40-odd years lat­er, on The AV Club’s list of the 50 great­est music videos of all time. They’re view­able as a Youtube playlist here, or you can stream them all above.

Not that it ranks espe­cial­ly high. In fact, it comes in at num­ber 50, lead­ing into a selec­tion of videos from artists pop­u­lar in a range of sub­se­quent peri­ods: Talk­ing Heads, George Michael, Nir­vana, LL Cool J, Brit­ney Spears, Tay­lor Swift. As the artis­tic ambi­tions of the music video grew, it reflect­ed not just a song’s cul­tur­al moment, but put sev­er­al such moments in play at once.

In Son­ic Youth’s “Teen Age Riot,” “a clip of Elvis Pres­ley is fol­lowed by space-jazz pio­neer Sun Ra; a snatch of under­ground com­ic book auteur Har­vey Pekar on Late Night with David Let­ter­man flits by.” For the “high water mark for kitschy 1990s irony” that is Weez­er’s “Bud­dy Hol­ly,” “Spike Jonze sets the video in the 1950s… but it’s the ’50s as seen on Hap­py Days, a sit­com that paint­ed a rosy pic­ture of the Eisen­how­er years.”

Jonze also draws inspi­ra­tion from sev­en­ties tele­vi­sion for the Beast­ie Boys’ “Sab­o­tage,” a trib­ute to the cop shows of that era that makes up for an appar­ent lack of bud­get with sheer humor and ener­gy (a reminder of the direc­tor’s ori­gin in skate­board­ing videos). I remem­ber my mil­len­ni­al peers get­ting excit­ed about that video in the 90s, as, in the 200s, they’d get excit­ed about Michel Gondry’s all-LEGO ani­ma­tion of the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl.” This was rough­ly when Brit­ney Spears was break­ing through to super­star­dom, thanks not least to videos like “Baby One More Time,” which com­bines the slick­ness of teen pop with the chintz of teen life. “The idea for Britney’s icon­ic school­girl uni­form and pig­tails came from the singer her­self: direc­tor Nigel Dick fol­lowed her lead, then had wardrobe buy every stitch of cloth­ing in the video from Kmart.”

This was also before Youtube, whose ascent made the music video more viable than it had been in years. The AV Club’s list does include a few videos from the past decade and a half— Bey­on­cé’s “Sin­gle Ladies,” Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” — but on the whole, it under­scores that there’s nev­er been anoth­er time like the eight­ies. That decade that went from “Ash­es to Ash­es” to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Relax,” “Mon­ey for Noth­ing,” “Walk This Way,” “Take on Me,” and “Rhythm Nation” — to say noth­ing of insti­tu­tions like Duran Duran, Madon­na, and Michael Jack­son, all of whom make the list more than once, but none of whom take its top spot. That goes to Peter Gabriel, whose stop-motion fan­ta­sia “Sledge­ham­mer” is MTV’s all-time most-played music video. “If any­one wants to try and copy this video, good luck to them,” Gabriel once said. He meant its painstak­ing pro­duc­tion, but he could just as eas­i­ly have been talk­ing about the place it attained in pop cul­ture.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Hans Zim­mer Was in the First-Ever Video Aired on MTV, The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

A Playlist of 45 Shakespeare Film Trailers, from 1935 — 2021

in Film, Literature, Theatre | September 12th, 2023

The Inter­net Movie Data­base cred­its Shake­speare as the writer on 1787 films, 42 of which have yet to be released.

The Shake­speare Net­work has com­piled a chrono­log­i­cal playlist of trail­ers for 45 of them.

First up is 1935’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, fea­tur­ing Olivia de Hav­il­land, Jim­my Cagney, Dick Pow­ell, and, in the role of Puck, a 15-year-old Mick­ey Rooney, hailed by the New York Times as “one of the major delights” of the film, and Vari­ety as “so intent on being cute that he becomes almost annoy­ing.”

Tragedies dom­i­nate, with no few­er than six Ham­lets, Shakespeare’s most filmed work, and “one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and most thank­less tasks in show busi­ness” accord­ing to nov­el­ist and fre­quent film crit­ic James Agee:

There can nev­er be a defin­i­tive pro­duc­tion of a play about which no two peo­ple in the world can agree. There can nev­er be a thor­ough­ly sat­is­fy­ing pro­duc­tion of a play about which so many peo­ple feel so per­son­al­ly and so pas­sion­ate­ly. Very like­ly there will nev­er be a pro­duc­tion good enough to pro­voke less argu­ment than praise.

Lawrence Olivi­er, Nicol Williamson, Mel Gib­son, Ken­neth Branagh, Ethan Hawke, David Ten­nant — take your pick:

Mac­Beth, Richard III, Romeo and Juli­et, and The Tem­pest — a com­e­dy — are oth­er crowd-pleas­ing work­hors­es, chewy assign­ments for actors and direc­tors alike.

Those with a taste for deep­er cuts will appre­ci­ate the inclu­sion of Ralph Fiennes’ Cori­olanus (2011), Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) and Titus, Julie Tay­mor’s 1999 adap­ta­tion of Shakespeare’s most shock­ing blood­bath.

Moviego­ing con­nois­seurs of the Bard may feel moved to stump for films that did­n’t make the playlist. If you can find a trail­er for it, go for it!  Lob­by the Shake­speare Net­work on its behalf, or make your case in the com­ments.

We’ll throw our weight behind Michael Almereyda’s Cym­be­line, fea­tur­ing Ed Har­ris roar­ing down the porch steps of a dilap­i­dat­ed Brook­lyn Vic­to­ri­an on a motor­cy­cle, the bizarre Romeo.Juliet pair­ing A‑list British vocal tal­ent with an all-feline line-up of Capulets and Mon­tagues, and Shake­speare Behind Bars, a 2005 doc­u­men­tary fol­low­ing twen­ty incar­cer­at­ed men who spent nine months delv­ing into The Tem­pest pri­or to a pro­duc­tion for guards, fel­low inmates, and invit­ed guests.

Enjoy the complete playlist of Shake­speare film trail­ers below. They move from 1935 to 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Very First Film Adap­ta­tions of Shakespeare’s Plays: King John, The Tem­pest, Richard III & More (1899–1936)

Young Orson Welles Directs “Voodoo Mac­beth,” the First Shake­speare Pro­duc­tion With An All-Black Cast: Footage from 1936

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

All This and World War II: The Forgotten 1976 Film That Mashed Up WWII Film Clips & Beatles Covers by Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Keith Moon & More

in Film, History, Music | September 6th, 2023

You may not hear the term mash-up very often these days, but the con­cept itself isn’t exact­ly the ear­ly-two-thou­sands fad that it might imply. It seems that, as soon as tech­nol­o­gy made it pos­si­ble for enthu­si­asts to com­bine osten­si­bly unre­lat­ed pieces of media — the more incon­gru­ous, the bet­ter — they start­ed doing so: take the syn­chro­niza­tion of The Wiz­ard of Oz and Pink Floy­d’s The Dark Side of the Moon, known as The Dark Side of the Rain­bow. But even back in the sev­en­ties, the art of the pro­to-mash-up was­n’t prac­ticed only by rogue pro­jec­tion­ists in altered states of mind, as evi­denced by the 1976 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox Release All This and World War II, which assem­bled real and dra­ma­tized footage of that epoch-mak­ing geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict with Bea­t­les cov­ers.

Upon its release, All This and World War II “was received so harsh­ly it was pulled from the­aters after two weeks and nev­er spo­ken of again,” as Kei­th Phipps writes at The Reveal.

Those who actu­al­ly seek it out and watch it today will find that it gets off to an even less aus­pi­cious start than they might imag­ine: “A clip of Char­lie Chan (Sid­ney Tol­er) skep­ti­cal­ly receiv­ing the news of Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace in our time’ dec­la­ra­tion in the 1939 film City in Dark­ness gives way to a cov­er of ‘Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour’ by ’70s soft-rock giants Ambrosia. Accom­pa­ny­ing the song: footage of swasti­ka ban­ners, Ger­man sol­diers march­ing in for­ma­tion, and a cli­mac­tic appear­ance from a smil­ing Adolf Hitler, by impli­ca­tion the orga­niz­er of the ‘mys­tery tour’ that was World War II.”

The oth­er record­ing artists of the sev­en­ties enlist­ed to sup­ply new ver­sions of well-known Bea­t­les num­bers include the Bee Gees, Elton John, the Who’s Kei­th Moon, and Peter Gabriel, names that assured the sound­track album (which you can hear on this Youtube playlist) a much greater suc­cess than the film itself, with its fever-dream mix­ture of news­reels Axis and Allied with 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox war-pic­ture clips.

As for what every­one involved was think­ing in the first place, Phipps quotes an expla­na­tion that sound­track pro­duc­er Lou Reizn­er once pro­vid­ed to UPI: “It would have been easy to take the music of the era and dub it to match the action on screen. But we’d have lost the young audi­ence. We want all age groups to see this pic­ture because we think it makes a state­ment about the absur­di­ty of war. It is the defin­i­tive anti-war film” — or, as Phipps puts it, the defin­i­tive “cult film in search of cult.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear 100 Amaz­ing Cov­er Ver­sions of Bea­t­les Songs

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

The Atom­ic Café: The Cult Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary Made Entire­ly Out of Nuclear Weapons Pro­pa­gan­da from the Cold War (1982)

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

A Mesmerizing Music Video for Brian Eno’s “Emerald and Stone” Made with Paint, Soap & Water

in Film, Music | August 30th, 2023

Bri­an Eno turned 75 years old this past spring, but if he has any thoughts of retire­ment, they haven’t slowed his cre­ation of new art and music. Just last year he put out his lat­est solo album FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE, videos from whose songs we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. How­ev­er com­pelling the offi­cial mate­r­i­al released by Eno, the bod­ies of fan-made work it tends to inspire also mer­its explo­ration. Take French visu­al artist Thomas Blan­chard’s short film “Emer­ald and Stone” above, which visu­al­izes the epony­mous track from Eno’s 2010 album Small Craft on a Milk Sea, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jon Hop­kins and Leo Abra­hams.

“Emer­ald and Stone,” which you’ll want to watch in full-screen mode, con­sists entire­ly of “riv­et­ing imagery built from a sim­ple con­coc­tion of paint, soap and water.” So says Aeon, in praise of the film’s “ephemer­al dream­world of flow­ing music and visu­als that’s easy to sink into.”

Its drift­ing, glit­ter­ing bub­bles have a plan­e­tary look, con­tribut­ing to a visu­al aes­thet­ic that suits the son­ic one. Like many of the oth­er com­po­si­tions on Small Craft on a Milk Sea, “Emer­ald and Stone” will sound on some lev­el famil­iar to lis­ten­ers who only know Eno’s ear­li­er work devel­op­ing the genre of ambi­ent music in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties and eight­ies.

That same era wit­nessed — or rather, heard — the rise of “new age” music, which played up its asso­ci­a­tions with out­er space, seas of tran­quil­i­ty, the move­ment of the heav­en­ly bod­ies, and so on. Eno’s work was, at least in this par­tic­u­lar sense, some­what more down-to-earth: he called his break­out ambi­ent album Music for Air­ports, after all, hav­ing cre­at­ed it with those util­i­tar­i­an spaces in mind. Appro­pri­ate­ly enough, Blan­chard’s short for “Emer­ald and Stone” evokes the cos­mos with­out depart­ing from the fine grain of our own world, and appears abstract while hav­ing been made whol­ly from every­day mate­ri­als. Eno him­self would sure­ly approve, hav­ing premised his own on not escap­ing real­i­ty, but plac­ing it in a more inter­est­ing con­text.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bri­an Eno Discog­ra­phy: Stream 29 Hours of Record­ings by the Mas­ter of Ambi­ent Music

Watch Videos for 10 Songs on Bri­an Eno’s Brand New Album, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE

“Day of Light”: A Crowd­sourced Film by Mul­ti­me­dia Genius Bri­an Eno

Bri­an Eno Explains the Ori­gins of Ambi­ent Music

Watch Bri­an Eno’s Exper­i­men­tal Film “The Ship,” Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Bri­an Eno on the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Alfred Hitchcock’s Strict Rules for Watching Psycho in Theaters (1960)

in Film | August 15th, 2023

Psy­cho, one of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s icon­ic films, did­n’t come togeth­er very eas­i­ly. Hitch­cock­’s stu­dio, Para­mount Pic­tures, did­n’t like any­thing about the film and denied him a prop­er bud­get. So the direc­tor went solo and fund­ed the film through his tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Sham­ley Pro­duc­tions. The bud­get was tight — less than $1,000,000. Costs were firm­ly con­trolled. Hence why, in 1960, the film was shot in black and white.

When Psy­cho hit the­aters, Hitch­cock con­trolled the pro­mo­tion. The stars — Antho­ny Perkins and Janet Leigh — did­n’t make the usu­al rounds in the media. Crit­ics weren’t giv­en pri­vate screen­ings. And Hitch­cock cre­at­ed buzz for the film when he exert­ed direc­to­r­i­al con­trol over the view­ing expe­ri­ence of the audi­ence. Show­ings of the film began on a tight­ly-con­trolled sched­ule in the­aters in New York, Chica­go, Boston, and Philadel­phia. And a firm “no late admis­sion” pol­i­cy was put in place. You either saw the film from the very begin­ning, or you did­n’t see it all. Signs appeared in front of cin­e­mas read­ing:

We won’t allow you to cheat your­self. You must see PSYCHO from the very begin­ning. There­fore, do not expect to be admit­ted into the the­atre after the start of each per­for­mance of the pic­ture. We say no one — and we mean no one — not even the man­ager’s broth­er, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, or the Queen of Eng­land (God bless her)!

The­ater man­agers ini­tial­ly balked at the idea, fear­ing finan­cial loss­es. But Hitch­cock had his way. And he was right. Long lines formed out­side the the­aters. Psy­cho enjoyed crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess, so much so the film was re-released in 1965.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

How Cin­e­mas Taught Ear­ly Movie-Goers the Rules & Eti­quette for Watch­ing Films (1912): No Whistling, Stand­ing or Wear­ing Big Hats

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Watch Alfred Hitch­cock Make Cameo Appear­ances in 37 of His Films

Alfred Hitch­cock Reveals The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast