The Only Known Footage of the 1926 Film Adaptation of The Great Gatsby (Which F. Scott Fitzgerald Hated)

in Film, Literature | April 9th, 2013

Every­one’s get­ting ready for the release of The Great Gats­by, the new film adap­ta­tion of F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s 1925 clas­sic nov­el. Direct­ed by Baz Luhrmann, this ver­sion stars Leonar­do DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mul­li­gan, Isla Fish­er and oth­ers. It has been shot in 3D.

Undoubt­ed­ly, crit­ics will be quick to com­pare the 2013 adap­ta­tion to the 1974 pro­duc­tion, which had its own strengths — a screen­play writ­ten by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and Vladimir Nabokov for starters. And then a cast with Robert Red­ford, Mia Far­row, and Sam Water­ston in star­ring roles. See the orig­i­nal trail­er above.

Few­er com­par­isons will be made to the less star-stud­ded adap­ta­tion of 1949, which came into the­aters and then fell into deep obscu­ri­ty. And nary a word will be said about how Luhrman­n’s film stacks up against the first appear­ance of The Great Gats­by on cel­lu­loid. That’s because the 1926 silent film has­n’t been seen in decades. It’s sim­ply lost. All that remains of the orig­i­nal 80 minute film is the one minute trail­er above. And the ghost of F. Scott Fitzger­ald isn’t com­plain­ing. Accord­ing to Anne Mar­garet Daniel’s post in Huff­Po, when Scott and Zel­da saw the film in Hol­ly­wood, they gave the Para­mount pro­duc­tion one big thumbs down. (That’s for you Roger.) Zel­da wrote in a let­ter: “We saw ‘The Great Gats­by’ in the movies. It’s ROTTEN and awful and ter­ri­ble and we left.” Hem­ing­way could­n’t have said it bet­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

F. Scott Fitzger­ald in Drag (1916)

Find The Great Gats­by in our Free eBooks Col­lec­tion

90 Silent Films in Col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online

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The World According to John Coltrane: His Life & Music Revealed in Heartfelt 1990 Documentary

in Film, Music | April 8th, 2013

In his short life, John Coltrane con­tin­u­al­ly pushed the bound­aries of music. From swing to bebop to hard bop to free jazz, Coltrane was a rest­less seek­er of new sounds. Inspired by the hyp­not­ic, trance-induc­ing tra­di­tion­al music of North Africa and Asia, Coltrane cre­at­ed a new kind of music that fused jazz and East­ern spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane tells the sto­ry of Coltrane’s quest, from his child­hood in a deeply reli­gious house­hold in North Car­oli­na to his ear­ly days play­ing sax­o­phone in the Navy, to his appren­tice­ship with Miles Davis in the 1950s and his emer­gence as a band­leader and inno­va­tor in the 1960s. Most of the one-hour film is devot­ed to Coltrane’s lat­er peri­od, when he came into his own. The film is not a biog­ra­phy, in the tra­di­tion­al sense. There is very lit­tle about Coltrane’s per­son­al life — his mar­riages, chil­dren, drug prob­lems and declin­ing health. Direc­tor Robert Palmer focus­es instead on Coltrane’s jour­ney as a musi­cian.

The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane was made in 1990, and includes inter­views with Coltrane’s sec­ond wife, pianist Alice Coltrane, and a num­ber of oth­er musi­cians who knew Coltrane and played with him, includ­ing sax­o­phon­ist Wayne Short­er, drum­mer Rashied Ali and Pianist Tom­my Flana­gan. It pro­vides some excel­lent insights into one of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s great­est musi­cians.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot (1945)

John Coltrane Plays Only Live Per­for­mance of A Love Supreme

John Coltrane: Three Great Euro­pean Per­for­mances, 1960, 1961 and 1965

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Daniel Dennett and Cornel West Decode the Philosophy of The Matrix

in Film, Philosophy | April 5th, 2013

Apoth­e­o­sis of cyber­punk cul­ture, 1999’s The Matrix and its less-suc­cess­ful sequels intro­duced a gen­er­a­tion of fan­boys and girls to the most styl­ish expres­sion of some age-old ide­al­ist thought exper­i­ments: the Hin­du con­cept of Maya, Plato’s cave, Descartes’ evil demon, Hilary Putnam’s Brain in a Vat—all notions about the nature of real­i­ty that ask whether what we expe­ri­ence isn’t instead an elab­o­rate illu­sion, con­ceal­ing a “real” world out­side of our per­cep­tu­al grasp. In some versions—such as those of cer­tain Bud­dhists and Chris­t­ian Gnos­tics, whose ideas The Matrix direc­tors bor­rowed liberally—one can awak­en from the dream. In oth­ers, such as Kant’s or Jacques Lacan’s, that prospect is unlike­ly, if impos­si­ble. These ques­tions about the nature of real­i­ty ver­sus appear­ance are main­stays of intro phi­los­o­phy cours­es and stereo­typ­i­cal ston­er ses­sions. But they’re also peren­ni­al­ly rel­e­vant to philoso­phers and neu­ro­sci­en­tists, which is why such aca­d­e­m­ic lumi­nar­ies as Daniel Den­nett and David Chalmers con­tin­ue to address them in their work on the nature and prob­lem of con­scious­ness.

Den­nett, Chalmers, the always cap­ti­vat­ing scholar/theologian/activist Cor­nel West, and a host of oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic thinkers, appear in the doc­u­men­tary above, Phi­los­o­phy and the Matrix: Return to the Source. Part of the sprawl­ing box-set The Ulti­mate Matrix Col­lec­tion, the film com­ments on how The Matrix does much more than dra­ma­tize an under­grad­u­ate the­sis; it takes on ques­tions about reli­gious rev­e­la­tion and author­i­ty, para­psy­chol­o­gy, free will and deter­min­ism, and the nature of per­son­al iden­ti­ty in ways that no dry philo­soph­i­cal text or arcane mys­ti­cal sys­tem has before, thanks to its hip veneer and pio­neer­ing use of CGI. While some of the thinkers above might see more pro­fun­di­ty than the movies seem to war­rant, it’s still inter­est­ing to note how each film gloss­es the great meta­phys­i­cal ques­tions that intrigue us pre­cise­ly because the answers seem for­ev­er out of reach.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Matrix: What Went Into The Mix

Daniel Den­nett (a la Jeff Fox­wor­thy) Does the Rou­tine, “You Might be an Athe­ist If…”

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

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The Two Roger Eberts: Emphatic Critic on TV; Incisive Reviewer in Print

in Film, Television | April 5th, 2013


“It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.” Words of writer­ly wis­dom from the late Roger Ebert, whom sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans came to rec­og­nize not just as a film crit­ic, but as the very per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of film crit­i­cism. He earned this place in the coun­try’s zeit­geist by mas­ter­ing two stark­ly dis­parate types of media: the medi­um-length but always sub­stan­tial review writ­ten for news­pa­pers, and the short con­ver­sa­tion­al review broad­cast on tele­vi­sion. The for­mer we read in the form of his syn­di­cat­ed film pieces for the Chica­go Sun-Times; the lat­ter we watched on Siskel and Ebert at the Movies. After his co-host Gene Siskel’s pass­ing in 1999, Ebert con­tin­ued with Roger Ebert and the Movies, fol­lowed by Ebert and Roeper and the Movies. But long­time fans of his film crit­i­cism on tele­vi­sion, and new fans dis­cov­er­ing the show’s old episodes on the inter­net, will always look back to Ebert’s on-air debates — which some­times devolved, sim­ply, into fights — as the peak of the form, at least in terms of enter­tain­ment val­ue. Above you’ll find a clas­sic exam­ple in Siskel and Ebert’s tiff over the fire­fight in Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Full Met­al Jack­et. “I have nev­er felt a kill in a movie quite like that,” insists Siskel. “Not in Apoc­a­lypse Now? Not in The Deer Hunter? Not in Pla­toon?” Ebert asks before his riposte: “In that case, you’re going to love the late show, because they have kills like that every night in black and white star­ring John Wayne.” (BTW, we have a col­lec­tion of John Wayne films here.)

Ebert knew how to deliv­er that metaphor­i­cal punch (and, when nec­es­sar­i­ly, to approach the edge of actu­al fisticuffs) on tele­vi­sion. In print, he knew how to remain curi­ous and thought­ful even when served each week’s heap­ing help­ing of stu­dio medi­oc­rity. This milder, more com­pli­cat­ed, vast­ly knowl­edge­able crit­i­cal per­sona comes through in his 1996 con­ver­sa­tion with Char­lie Rose (part one, part two) just above. Though he could cel­e­brate and dis­miss with the utmost con­vic­tion, he also under­stood that the film crit­ic has high­er duties than eval­u­a­tion. He demon­strates this under­stand­ing all through­out his review archive, which, embrac­ing the web before most crit­ics of his gen­er­a­tion, he’d put online by the mid-nineties. Back then, I spent an hour or two every day after school in the library, plow­ing through his back pages. I thought I was learn­ing about the movies, as indeed I was, and I was cer­tain­ly learn­ing a thing or two about review­ing the movies, but I was above all learn­ing about the whole craft of writ­ing, and thus about approach­ing the world, cin­e­mat­ic and oth­er­wise. We won’t remem­ber Roger Ebert for the stars he doled out and with­held, nor for the angle of his thumbs; we’ll remem­ber him for his abil­i­ty to, through the lens of the movies, con­sid­er life itself. 

Relat­ed con­tent:

Roger Ebert Talks Mov­ing­ly About Los­ing and Re-Find­ing His Voice (TED 2011)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

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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Roger Ebert Talks Movingly About Losing and Re-Finding His Voice (TED 2011)

in Film, Life, Technology, TED Talks | April 4th, 2013

Film crit­ic Roger Ebert, like Pauline Kael before him, leaves behind a great tor­rent of words. Those of us accus­tomed to seek­ing out his opin­ion can com­fort our­selves on the Inter­net, where his thoughts on the great (and not-so-great) films of the last four decades live in per­pe­tu­ity.

After a rup­tured carotid artery robbed him of the pow­er of speech, words assumed an even greater impor­tance for Ebert. Even though he felt lucky to be alive in an age when most home com­put­ers come equipped with a text-to-speech option, he mourned the loss of inflec­tion, tim­ing, and spon­tane­ity. Cere­Proc, a Scot­tish firm spe­cial­iz­ing in per­son­al­ized com­put­er voic­es, cre­at­ed a cus­tom ver­sion he breezi­ly referred to as Roger Junior or Roger 2.0, a Franken­stein’s mon­ster assem­bled from hours of tele­vi­sion appear­ances. A noble, but flawed attempt. Despite his Mid­west­ern attrac­tion to Apple’s com­put­er­ized British accent, Ebert returned to its Amer­i­can male voice, “Alex”, as the most expres­sive option.

In 2011, the speech­less Ebert gave a TED Talk on the sub­ject. “Alex” was giv­en his moment to shine, but there’s no way the tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle can com­pete with the human spec­ta­cle onstage.

Rather than rely on the rel­a­tive­ly autonomous voice sub­sti­tute, Ebert arranged for his wife, Chaz Ham­mel­smith, and friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, to read his words from pre­pared scripts.

For­get W.C. Fields’ caveat about per­form­ing with chil­dren and dogs. Ebert stole his own show, shame­less­ly upstag­ing his loved ones with jol­ly pan­tomimed thumbs ups and oth­er antics. When he’s on cam­era, you can’t take your eyes off him…as he clear­ly knew. A 2010 Esquire arti­cle by Chica­go-based the­ater crit­ic, Chris Jones, described how the removal of Ebert’s low­er jaw gave him the aspect of a per­ma­nent smile. The dis­fig­ure­ment was shock­ing, but espe­cial­ly so on one whose face was so famil­iar. It led to fre­quent mis­as­sump­tions that he had been men­tal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed as well. Ham­mel­smith’s tears when she gets to this part of her hus­band’s elo­quent TED Talk speak vol­umes as well. His will­ing­ness to place him­self front and cen­ter, where peo­ple who might think it impo­lite to stare could not help but see and hear him as a whole per­son, was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary act.

“With­out intel­li­gence and mem­o­ry, there is no his­to­ry.”  — Roger Ebert, 1942 — 2013

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a writer in the Big Apple.

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50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

in Film | April 4th, 2013

Raidersofthelostark9

We do not, alas, live in the gold­en age of Amer­i­can movie poster design. Some Unit­ed States inde­pen­dent films (and espe­cial­ly their Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion DVD releas­es, if they get them) still fly under the ban­ner of strik­ing imagery designed by dar­ing artists and graph­ic design­ers, but for main­stream Hol­ly­wood pic­tures, the thrill has def­i­nite­ly gone. Even when their most icon­ic posters of decades past show­case admirable crafts­man­ship, they often lack a cer­tain artis­tic zing. Every Indi­ana Jones fan, for instance, has a spe­cial place in their heart for Raiders of the Lost Ark’s clas­sic poster, but even the sternest Indy purist would have to admit that one of the film’s Pol­ish posters, shown above, imme­di­ate­ly com­mu­ni­cates some­thing the orig­i­nal, near-pho­to­re­al­is­tic image does­n’t. You can see anoth­er Pol­ish ren­di­tion of Raiders, one that con­veys even more ful­ly the unex­pect­ed inten­si­ty of Har­ri­son Ford’s all-Amer­i­can hero archae­ol­o­gist, in this col­lec­tion fifty Pol­ish film posters from wellmed­icat­ed.

herzog polish

Fol­low­ers of many vari­eties of visu­al art, espe­cial­ly ani­ma­tion, know that Poland has a rich visu­al tra­di­tion indeed. Exe­cut­ed by the hand of a Pol­ish artist, ideas that would seem non­sen­si­cal or ridicu­lous any­where else in the world sud­den­ly make sense. Just above we have the Pol­ish poster adver­tis­ing Stroszek by Wern­er Her­zog, whose movies, based on his own inex­plic­a­ble but some­how sat­is­fy­ing ideas of “ecsta­t­ic truth,” per­haps mer­it Pol­ish posters more than any­one else’s. Just below, we see what Pol­ish view­ers saw when they lined up to buy tick­ets for Star Wars’ sequel The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe it strikes you as heresy to accept any­thing but Drew Struzan’s hardy, Darth Vad­er-cen­tric, explo­sion-laden orig­i­nal, but this one urges me to think about the entire­ty of Star Wars’ project in a whole new — or at least new­ly askew — way. The oth­er coun­try which has long led the way with inter­est­ing home­grown posters for Amer­i­can movies? Ghana.

via @sheerly

Polish-Movie-Posters-The-Empire-Strikes-Back

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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Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

in Film, Music | April 2nd, 2013

Ah, the Hotel Chelsea: home, in its hey­day, to all man­ner of New York City writ­ers, artists, rock­ers, and rogues. You can’t move in anymore—the man­age­ment insti­tut­ed a short stay-only pol­i­cy even before clos­ing for ren­o­va­tions in 2011—but even if you could, sure­ly the lega­cy of so many 20th-cen­tu­ry artis­tic lumi­nar­ies would weigh heav­i­ly indeed. Read up on Bob Dylan, Charles Bukows­ki, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Iggy Pop, Dylan Thomas, or Arthur C. Clarke, and you’ll find out about their extend­ed stays at the Chelsea. Read Pat­ti Smith’s mem­oir Just Kids, and you’ll learn even more about the place from Smith’s remem­brance of her days there with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe. Watch Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls and you’ll glimpse the lives of the askew ingénues Warhol housed at the hotel, includ­ing Vel­vet Under­ground singer Nico.

Dig into Nico’s solo career, and you’ll soon hear her album Chelsea Girl. The clip above comes from a doc­u­men­tary includ­ing Warhol’s Chelsea Girls, and fea­tures Nico singing the almost-title track “Chelsea Girls” from that album. The film, Nico’s record, and the sem­i­nal Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico all appeared in the coun­ter­cul­tur­al­ly pro­duc­tive year of 1967. Rid­ing the wave of fame gen­er­at­ed by her time as a Warhol “Super­star,” Nico would spend the next twen­ty years record­ing five more solo albums, act­ing in sev­en pic­tures by film­mak­er Philippe Gar­rel, mak­ing her musi­cal come­back onstage at CBGB, and get­ting hooked on and sub­se­quent­ly kick­ing hero­in before pass­ing away in 1988. A bit lat­er in the video, an inter­view­er asks if she con­sid­ers her­self the one who made the Hotel Chelsea famous. “I am one of the per­sons,” replies the Ger­man-born Nico. “Aside from the peo­ple that are now in heav­en… or in hell, or… not stay­ing here.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Andy Warhol Quits Paint­ing, Man­ages The Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

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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Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks Sing “Sweet Georgia Brown” Live…and in Polish

in Comedy, Film, Music | April 2nd, 2013

The Cap­tain and Tenille. 

Son­ny and Cher.

Shields and Yarnell.

Ban­croft and Brooks?

Not exact­ly, but one thing’s cer­tain. Had mar­ried cou­ple Anne Ban­croft and Mel Brooks under­tak­en to co-host a tele­vi­sion vari­ety show in the 70’s or 80’s, they would’ve mopped up the era’s com­pe­ti­tion faster than you can say Mr Clean Sun­shine Fresh.

Our best evi­dence is this clip from the 1983 Brooks-host­ed episode of the BBC vari­ety hour, An Audi­ence with…  All the tropes of the once pop­u­lar form—the celebri­ty ‘as audi­ence plant, the staged spon­tane­ity, the audi­ence eager­ly fol­low­ing direction—are on dis­play in the lead up to the big pay off, a light-foot­ed live ren­di­tion of Sweet Geor­gia Brown…in heav­i­ly accent­ed Pol­ish.

It def­i­nite­ly leaves one want­i­ng more. (In which case, you could try your luck with Brooks’ remake of To Be or Not to Be, in which he and Ban­croft play roles orig­i­nat­ed by Jack Ben­ny and Car­ole Lom­bard).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Crit­ic: Hilar­i­ous Oscar-Win­ning Film Nar­rat­ed by Mel Brooks (1963)

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1966

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s will be per­form­ing live in Brook­lyn Brain Frame lat­er this month.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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