Donald Duck & Friends Star in World War II Propaganda Cartoons

in Film, History | July 25th, 2011

Dur­ing World War II, all hands were on deck, even in Hol­ly­wood. Many of Amer­i­ca and Britain’s finest film­mak­ers, from Hitch­cock to Frank Capra, were recruit­ed to cre­ate pro­pa­gan­da films to sup­port the war effort. (More on that here.) And the same went for Walt Dis­ney, who turned his lov­able car­toon char­ac­ters into good patri­ots.

In 1942, Dis­ney released “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” an anti-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da movie that bol­stered sup­port for the war, and even­tu­al­ly won the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film. Then, a year lat­er, came The Spir­it of ’43, which fea­tures Don­ald Duck help­ing Amer­i­cans to under­stand why they need to pay their tax­es. Oth­er wartime Dis­ney shorts include Don­ald Gets Draft­ed (1942), The Old Army Game (1943), and Com­man­do Duck (1944). Then, com­ing out of this pro­pa­gan­da tra­di­tion, you’ll also find Don­ald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck, a recent spoof by Jonathan McIn­tosh (of Rebel­lious Pix­els). It’s a good bit of fun.

Note: Der Fuehrer’s Face and The Spir­it of ’43 appear in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Disney’s Oscar-Win­ning Adven­tures in Music

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan(1946)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

“You Just Don’t Get It, Do You?” — A Montage of Cinema’s Worst Cliché

in Film, Random | July 22nd, 2011

Jeff Smith, an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er from Indi­anapo­lis, must have spent quite a bit of time going through hun­dreds of movies to come up with his final mon­tage of 120 movies con­tain­ing the line “You just don’t get it, do you?”. If you want to invest some time as well, try to guess the movies first and then com­pare your results with the list of actu­al movies here.

If you enjoy guess­ing movies, you can take a look at Jef­f’s blog post “Name That Film,” in which he shows you tricky movie stills (don’t wor­ry, he also pro­vides the solu­tions).

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Spike Jonze and Beastie Boys, Together Again

in Film, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | July 21st, 2011

Being John Malkovich direc­tor and long­time Beast­ie Boys col­lab­o­ra­tor Spike Jonze has direct­ed yet anoth­er music video for the band: A high-con­cept sci-fi extrav­a­gan­za that fea­tures zom­bies, GI Joe action fig­ures, and, as usu­al, a sound­track with a pret­ty decent hook.

The song is called “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win,” and the ver­sion we’ve post­ed above is the 11-minute direc­tor’s cut.  You can watch a short­er ver­sion here, but why would you ever want to?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

Ful­ly Flared, the 2007 skate­board­ing film direct­ed by Spike Jonze

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Machine: Top Prize Winner at the Robot Film Festival

in Film, Science | July 20th, 2011

 

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/6974132[/vimeo]

Rob Shaw’s dark ani­mat­ed short The Machine was vot­ed Best Film at last week’s Robot Film Fes­ti­val in New York City.  The movie starts on what looks like a stan­dard boy-makes-machine, machine-runs-amok, boy-kills-machine tra­jec­to­ry, but veers nice­ly off-course and ends on a note much more Sartre than Ter­mi­na­tor. (Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca fans will see the twist com­ing from a mile away).

The Machine seems like a good fit for the new fes­ti­val, which founder and Carnegie Mel­lon roboti­cist Heather Knight hopes will fuel inno­va­tion and help improve robots’ image in a post-Cylon world. For more back­sto­ry, check out edi­tor and RFF judge Celeste Biev­er’s fas­ci­nat­ing wrap-up at the New Sci­en­tist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blinky™: A Touch­ing Short Film About A Killer Robot

Robot Con­ducts The Detroit Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Kurt Russell Auditions for Star Wars

in Film | July 19th, 2011

Talk about dodg­ing cin­e­mat­ic bul­lets. Imag­ine The God­fa­ther with­out Mar­lon Bran­do. It almost hap­pened. And then Star Wars with Kurt Rus­sell (play­ing Han Solo). It was a real enough pos­si­bil­i­ty, and here’s the audi­tion tape as proof…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Revisit Havana, the “Paris of the Caribbean,” in the 1930s

in Film, History | July 18th, 2011

This short film show­ing Havana in the 1930s was shot by André de la Varre, the long-time cam­era­man and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er for Amer­i­can trav­el­er, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Bur­ton Holmes. In those days, Havana was a flour­ish­ing and fash­ion­able city dubbed the “Paris of the Caribbean,” attract­ing an ever increas­ing num­ber of tourists. André de la Var­re’s film por­trays Havana as the “exot­ic cap­i­tal of appeal,” which pret­ty much sums up its essence dur­ing those days.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: A list of all the sights shown in this film can be found here; anoth­er short film about Havana in the 1950s here. This video from late 2008 gives an idea of the sor­ry state of Havana’s city cen­ter today. And don’t foget to mar­vel at the won­der­ful col­lec­tion of vin­tage trav­el films at The Trav­el Film Archive.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Darwin: A 1993 Film by Peter Greenaway

in Film, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | July 18th, 2011

Although British direc­tor Peter Green­away is best known for fea­ture films like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Pros­per­o’s Books, and The Pil­low Book, he has also com­plet­ed sev­er­al high­ly respect­ed projects for tele­vi­sion, includ­ing this 53-minute explo­ration of the life and work of Charles Dar­win. Dar­win is struc­tured around 18 sep­a­rate tableaux, each focus­ing on anoth­er chap­ter in the nat­u­ral­ist’s life, and each con­sist­ing of just one long unin­ter­rupt­ed shot. Oth­er than the nar­ra­tor’s voiceover, there is no dia­logue.

As with most Green­away films, the visu­al com­po­si­tion of indi­vid­ual scenes in Dar­win reflects the direc­tor’s fas­ci­na­tion with Renais­sance paint­ing (he was first trained as a mural­ist).  In 2006, Green­away even embarked on an ambi­tious series of video instal­la­tions called Nine Clas­sic Paint­ings Revis­it­ed, in which he applied his often con­tro­ver­sial vision to The Last Sup­per, The Wed­ding at Cana and oth­er famous art­works. You can watch an inter­view with the film­mak­er about The Last Sup­per here. Even bet­ter, watch his 2010 UC-Berke­ley lec­ture on the inspi­ra­tion and phi­los­o­phy behind the entire project, which we’ve includ­ed in our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons. We’ve also added Dar­win to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via Bib­liok­lept

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 13 ) |

David Lynch and Interpol Team Up on Short Film

in Film, Music | July 15th, 2011

Three years ago, the mem­bers of the band Inter­pol sat down with film­mak­er David Lynch. It was a casu­al meet­ing, an “ice break­er,” that paved the way for a future col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Skip ahead to 2010, and the col­lab­o­ra­tion begins. Inter­pol wants to devel­op visu­als to accom­pa­ny their per­for­mance at the 2011 Coachel­la Fes­ti­val, and Lynch agrees to take on the job. The result: “I Touch a Red But­ton Man,” a short ani­mat­ed film that accom­pa­nies Inter­pol’s song “Lights.” The film (orig­i­nal­ly shown at Coachel­la) was offi­cial­ly released online yes­ter­day at Huff­Po, where the band also talked about the gen­e­sis of the project in their own words.

You can find this film list­ed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of 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!

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

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