Remembering George Whitman, Owner of Famed Bookstore, Shakespeare & Company

in Books, Film | December 15th, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LaM95pBMM&feature=share&list=PL5E409DFE410A41C6

In 2005, the Sun­dance Chan­nel aired Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man, a 52 minute doc­u­men­tary that pays homage to George Whit­man, the Amer­i­can founder of the most famous inde­pen­dent book­store in Paris, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Whit­man died yes­ter­day, at age 98, in his apart­ment above the store.

Sylvia Beach first opened a book­shop named Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny in 1918, and it soon became a home for artists of the “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” (Hem­ing­way, Pound, Fitzger­ald, Stein, etc.). It also famous­ly pub­lished James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. The shop even­tu­al­ly closed dur­ing the Nazi occu­pa­tion of Paris. Yet a good decade lat­er, George Whit­man came along and estab­lished anoth­er Eng­lish-lan­guage book­store on the Left Bank and even­tu­al­ly rechris­tened it Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Whit­man’s shop gave sanc­tu­ary to Beat writ­ers – Allen Gins­berg, William S. Bur­roughs and the rest. And it’s this incar­na­tion of the fabled book­store that the doc­u­men­tary takes as its sub­ject. Give the doc­u­men­tary some time, and be sure to watch the last five min­utes – unless you already know how to cut your hair with fire. It will give you a lit­tle feel for Whit­man and his well-known eccen­tric­i­ties. RIP.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film Set at Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

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David Attenborough Reads “What a Wonderful World” in a Moving Video

in Film, Music | December 14th, 2011

Sir David Atten­bor­ough is Eng­land’s finest nat­ur­al his­to­ry film­mak­er, best known for his Life col­lec­tion, a series of nine nature doc­u­men­taries aired on the BBC between 1979 and 2008. It’s wide­ly con­sid­ered the stan­dard by which all oth­er wildlife pro­grams are mea­sured.

In recent weeks, British and Amer­i­can audi­ences have been treat­ed to Atten­bor­ough’s lat­est pro­duc­tion, Frozen Plan­et (see trail­er below). It’s thought to be his last major pro­gram with the BBC, and to com­mem­o­rate this mile­stone, the ad agency RKCR/Y&R has pro­duced a mov­ing video that fea­tures Atten­bor­ough read­ing lines from “What a Won­der­ful World” — you know, the Louis Arm­strong clas­sic — as scenes from Atten­bor­ough’s doc­u­men­taries fill the screen.

The ad agency intro­duced the video last week with a lit­tle blog post, which con­clud­ed by say­ing: “If you’ve had a shit­ty jour­ney into work today, I promise, this will put your smile back in place.” We could haven’t have said it any worse or bet­ter.

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Spike Jonze’s Imaginative TV Ads

in Film, Television | December 13th, 2011

Spike Jonze has made a name for him­self as a wild­ly inven­tive direc­tor of music videos and fea­ture films, like Being John Malkovich and Adap­ta­tion. He has also cre­at­ed some of the most dis­tinc­tive tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials of the past decade. Today we bring you a few of his great­est hits.

In late 2002 Jonze cre­at­ed a stir with his IKEA com­mer­cial, “Lamp” (above). The 60-sec­ond spot went on to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al Adver­tis­ing Fes­ti­val. Boards mag­a­zine list­ed “Lamp” as one of the top 10 com­mer­cials of the decade, writ­ing:

Spike Jonze’s incred­i­bly human direct­ing touch cre­at­ed a believ­able ten­der­ness between a woman and her new Ikea light­ing, elic­it­ing pure empa­thy for a lone­ly, dis­card­ed object, left to suf­fer curb­side in the rain, and then shat­tered it all with one bril­liant stroke of cast­ing that abrupt­ly and brusque­ly brought us all back to real­i­ty.

Jonze’s star­tling Gap com­mer­cial, “Dust,” (above) became a YouTube sen­sa­tion imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing its release in 2005, but the com­pa­ny pulled the 90-sec­ond ad after test­ing it in only a few cities. Per­haps the spec­ta­cle of a cor­po­rate brand exu­ber­ant­ly doing vio­lence to its image was a bit too much for the boys in the board­room. The deci­sion to shelve the ad made the com­pa­ny look even less hip than before. As Seth Steven­son wrote in Slate, “I just can’t under­stand spend­ing all that mon­ey on a big-name direc­tor, and a big-bud­get shoot, and then frit­ter­ing the results away on such a lim­it­ed pur­pose. Did Gap not see the pos­si­bil­i­ties? Were they too scared to go for broke?”

Anoth­er ground-break­ing Jonze com­mer­cial from 2005, “Hel­lo Tomor­row,” (above) was made to intro­duce a self-adjust­ing, “intel­li­gent” sneak­er from Adi­das. The spot uses spe­cial effects to cre­ate the impres­sion of a lucid dream. The music was cre­at­ed by Jonze’s broth­er, Sam “Squeak E. Clean” Spiegel (Jonze’s birth name is Adam Spiegel) and sung by his girl­friend at the time, Karen O of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The ad received many awards, includ­ing two Gold Lions at Cannes. The sneak­er was dropped by Adi­das in 2006, but the com­mer­cial lives on.

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The Dark Knight: Anatomy of a Flawed Action Scene

in Film | December 8th, 2011

There are many ways to make a movie, says film crit­ic Jim Emer­son, and many ways to make a mess.

The truck chase scene from Christo­pher Nolan’s 2008 film The Dark Knight is frankly a mess, as Emer­son demon­strates in a fas­ci­nat­ing video essay (above) pro­duced as the first in a three-part series on the lan­guage of action sequences for the Indiewire blog Press Play. “We notice laps­es in visu­al log­ic whether our brains reg­is­ter them con­scious­ly or not,” writes Emer­son. “I found this scene utter­ly baf­fling the first time I saw it, and every sub­se­quent time. At last, I now know exact­ly why.”

After study­ing the sequence shot by shot he real­ized that Nolan had vio­lat­ed fun­da­men­tal rules of film gram­mar. You can fol­low along as Emer­son, a Seat­tle-based crit­ic who writes the Scan­ners film blog for the Chica­go Sun-Times, sorts out the con­fu­sion. (There is an accom­pa­ny­ing anno­tat­ed tran­script on Scan­ners.) And be sure to watch Emer­son­’s fol­low-up essays (below) which offer shot-by-shot analy­ses of action scenes that are clear­ly intel­li­gi­ble.

In Part II of his series (above), Emer­son breaks down the high­way chase scene from Phillip Noyce’s 2010 film, Salt. The sequence is easy to fol­low because Noyce is care­ful to estab­lish the spa­tial rela­tion­ships between the var­i­ous ele­ments, both with­in the frame and between shots. Writes Emer­son:

There are cer­tain direc­tors I think of as “one-thing-at-a-time” film­mak­ers. That is, they seem to be inca­pable of com­pos­ing shots that have more than one piece of infor­ma­tion in them at a time. This makes for a very flat, rather plod­ding style. You see what the cam­era is point­ed at in each shot, but you get very lit­tle sense of per­spec­tive when it comes to relat­ing it to oth­er ele­ments in the scene. Noyce’s tech­nique is much more flu­id, organ­ic and sophis­ti­cat­ed. He keeps things from one shot vis­i­ble in the next, even when shift­ing perspective–whether it’s only a few feet or clear across sev­er­al lanes of traf­fic.

In Part III (above), Emer­son revis­its clas­sic chase scenes from three films: Don Siegel’s The Line­up (1958), Peter Yates’s Bul­litt (1968) and William Fried­kin’s The French Con­nec­tion (1971). In each case the direc­tor takes you on a chaot­ic, bumpy ride–but nev­er los­es you.

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Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in a 26 Minute Film

in Film | December 3rd, 2011

The great French New Wave direc­tor, Jean-Luc Godard, turns 81 years old today. And Woody Allen, the leg­endary comedic film­mak­er, turned 76 just two days ago. So what could be more per­fect than to serve up Godard­’s 1986 short film Meetin’ WA? What you get is Godard, one of the dri­ving forces behind La Nou­velle Vague, in con­ver­sa­tion with Woody Allen. Godard­’s trade­mark approach to film­mak­ing, the expect­ed dose of Woody Allen neu­roses — they’re all there, packed into 26 min­utes.

For great films (clas­sics, indies, noir, west­erns, etc.) don’t miss our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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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Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs: Browse Them or Own Them

in Art, Film | December 2nd, 2011

In 1945, a young Stan­ley Kubrick grad­u­at­ed from high school and almost imme­di­ate­ly start­ed work­ing for LOOK Mag­a­zine as a pho­to­jour­nal­ist, becom­ing the youngest staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the magazine’s his­to­ry. It’s dur­ing this peri­od that Kubrick began to mas­ter his visu­al craft and pro­duced some stun­ning images. Now, more than 65 years lat­er, you can pur­chase … or sim­ply browse through … Kubrick­’s pho­to­graph­ic work for the first time.

Work­ing with cura­tors from the Muse­um of the City of New York, VandM.com has select­ed 25 images to show­case (out of a larg­er col­lec­tion of 10,000 images). Pho­tos include prize­fight­er Wal­ter Carti­er in the cor­ner between rounds; the ele­gant actress Bet­sy Von Fursten­berg read­ing in a win­dow; street scenes from New York City; and a young woman walk­ing down a steep set of stairs while car­ry­ing a pile of books, all rather pre­car­i­ous­ly.

You can browse the full col­lec­tion here, or vis­it anoth­er set of Kubrick images, all tak­en in Chica­go, here.

Relat­ed Kubrick Con­tent:

Mak­ing The Shin­ing

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange: Mal­colm McDow­ell Looks Back

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A Brief Visual Introduction to Saul Bass’ Celebrated Title Designs

in Art, Film | December 1st, 2011

Title sequences begin and end every movie. They can be “engag­ing or wild­ly enter­tain­ing … or sim­ply drop dead beau­ti­ful.” They can “ooze with visu­al poet­ry and sophis­ti­cat­ed imagery.” And they can put the audi­ence in the right mood for the movie, or close it in the right way, says the web site For­get the Films, Watch the Titles.

When it comes to title design, no one did it bet­ter than Saul Bass (1920–1996). Dur­ing his long career in Hol­ly­wood, Bass designed sequences for Otto Pre­minger’s The Man with the Gold­en Arm (full movie here), Scors­ese’s Good­fel­las and Cape Fear, Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus, and sev­er­al films by Alfred Hitch­cock. And that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face.

Cre­at­ed by Ian Albinson, the mon­tage above offers a brief visu­al his­to­ry of Bass’s most cel­e­brat­ed work, stitch­ing togeth­er designs from 25 films. (Find the full film list here.)  If this whets your appetite, you’ll want to check out the new­ly-pub­lished book Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design and this web site ded­i­cat­ed to Bass’s title design. And don’t miss our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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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Free Films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Eisenstein & Other Russian Greats

in Film | November 28th, 2011

Dur­ing the past two years, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky have qui­et­ly come online, giv­ing view­ers the chance to encounter the Sovi­et direc­tor’s great body of work. If you’re not famil­iar with Tarkovsky, it’s worth men­tion­ing that Ing­mar Bergman con­sid­ered him his favorite direc­tor, and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa once said, “Every cut from his films is a mar­velous image in itself.” The list of avail­able films now includes:

(Note: If you access the films via YouTube, be sure to click “CC” at the bot­tom of the videos to access the sub­ti­tles.)

You can thank Mos­film, the old­est film stu­dio in Rus­sia, if not Europe, for bring­ing these films to the web. If you head to Mos­film’s YouTube Chan­nel, you can watch more than 50 Russ­ian clas­sics, includ­ing Sergei Bon­darchuk’s 1969 adap­ta­tion of Tol­stoy’s War & Peace, a film that Roger Ebert called “the defin­i­tive epic of all time.” In a con­ces­sion to West­ern cap­i­tal­ism, each film is pre­ced­ed by a short com­mer­cial, prov­ing yet again that there’s no such thing as a tru­ly free lunch.

Final­ly, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Movies Online, which fea­tures six films by Sergei Eisen­stein, Rus­si­a’s pio­neer­ing film­mak­er and film the­o­rist: Strike, Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, Romance Sen­ti­men­tale, Octo­ber: Ten Days That Shook the World, Old and New and Alexan­der Nevsky. They’re all there.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971

The Kuro­sawa Dig­i­tal Archive

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