Peter Falk made his career playing a quirky detective in the 1960s and 70s television show Columbo. But the art world will remember a moment when Falk played himself in Wim Wenders’ 1987 film, Wings of Desire. In the credits, he was listed simply as ‘Der Filmstar.’ This is our 1:46 tribute to Falk, who passed away Friday at age 83. H/T @SteveSilberman
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In 1982, Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth directed 66 Scenes from America, a film that stitched together a series of lengthy shots, each a visual postcard from a journey across America. And, taken together, you have a tableau of the American experience.
Along the way, the pop artist Andy Warhol makes his appearance. The man who coined the expression “15 Minutes of Fame” takes four minutes to eat a hamburger, mostly without saying a word. And simply because of his fame, we watch … and watch. About this scene Leth gives a few details:
[Warhol] is told that he has to say his name and that he should do so when he has finished performing his action, but what happens is that the action takes a very long time to perform; it’s simply agonizing. I have to admit that I personally adore that, because its a pure homage to Warhol. It couldn’t be more Warholesque. That’s of course why he agreed to do it.
This was presumably not a paid placement by Burger King.
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Before clicking on this extraordinary video — which shows a meeting of civilizations that may never happen again on our planet — be sure to turn the sound off and spare yourself the awful soundtrack. The expressions on the faces of the Toulambi tribesmen are enough anyway, and even though history tells us that these parties end badly for the team with the fewest toys, you can’t help feeling a certain amount of awe and joy while watching the encounter.
This footage was shot in Papua New Guinea by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, a Belgian filmmaker and activist perhaps best known for his Academy Award-nominated 1979 documentary Raoni: The Fight for the Amazon. You can visit Dutilleux’s web site to get more photos and a little more backstory on the Toulambi. Have a good weekend…
via Metafilter
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.
Over at Escape Into Life, Luke Grundy directs us to a marvelous short film that is as deceptively simple as its title would suggest. At first viewing we thought the effect of LA filmmaker Douglas Burgoff’s “Animals” should be credited mostly to the haunting music by famed British composer Michael Nyman. But then we watched it again with the sound off, and we were just as impressed as before, if not more so. Just take a look at the series of close-ups on the monkey’s face between the 1:54 and 2:14 marks.
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.
It’s hard to do cinematic justice to any good novel, let alone the greatest of Russia’s many great novels, Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace. But Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk somehow managed to pull it off. Reviewing Bondarchuk’s film back in 1969, a young Roger Ebert wrote:
“War and Peace” is the definitive epic of all time. It is hard to imagine that circumstances will ever again combine to make a more spectacular, expensive, and — yes — splendid movie. Perhaps that’s just as well; epics seem to be going out of favor, replaced instead by smaller, more personal films. Perhaps this greatest of the epics will be one of the last, bringing the epic form to its ultimate statement and at the same time supplying the epitaph.
No corners were cut, and no expenses spared, in making the film. Indeed, the film (available on DVD here) was made “at a cost of $100,000,000, with a cast of 120,000, all clothed in authentic uniforms, and the Red Army was mobilized to recreate Napoleon’s battles exactly (it is claimed) as they happened.” What’s more, 35,000 costumes were made for the production, and many Soviet museums contributed artifacts for the production design. That’s staggering, even by today’s standards.
Released in four parts between 1965 and 1967, the Academy Award-winning film runs more than seven hours and you can now find it playing on YouTube. You can watch Part 1 here, and here you have Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. And if you need subtitles, click CC at the bottom of the videos. The film is, of course, listed in our collection of Free Movies Online.
Thanks Ammar for the heads up on this film!
The New York Times has posted A.O. Scott’s 3‑minute look back at the 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou. Scott describes the surrealist classic, a collaboration between painter Salvador Dalí and a very young first-time filmmaker Luis Buñuel, as an “old dog with an endless supply of new tricks.” The short’s procession of seemingly absurd, unconnected images, he adds, does not follow the logic of narrative but rather the “logic of dreams.”
Even though its most famous (or infamous) images — a severed hand, a hand covered with ants, and most finally a hand slicing into a woman’s eyeball with a razor blade — seem less shocking now than they did 80 years ago, Un Chien Andalou is still a pleasure. Our reality has changed since the 20s. Our dreams, less so.
You can watch Un Chien Andalou in its entirety, along with L’Âge d’Or, another Buñuel/Dalí production, in our collection of Free Online Movies. But proceed with caution: About 25 years ago, I slipped a copy into the family VCR, expecting a cute cartoon about an Andalusian dog. I’m still recovering.
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Salvador Dali (and Other VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”
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.
Several weeks back, Go the F**k to Sleep, the irreverent new children’s book, gained national attention when pirated PDF copies went viral on the internet. But don’t feel sorry for the author and illustrator. The book is now #1 on the Amazon bestseller list; Samuel Jackson has narrated the official audio book (you can probably snag a free copy through this Audible.com deal); and Werner Herzog delighted fans when he read the (not safe for work) book at the New York Public Library book party held earlier this week. And, yes, this is the real Werner Herzog — not the impersonator who passed around popular readings of Curious George and Twas the Night Before Christmas on YouTube …
Time to roll out a new media collection — a big collection of Cultural Icons. Here you will find great writers, dazzling filmmakers and musicians, brilliant philosophers and scientists — figures who have changed our cultural landscape throughout the years. You’ll see them in video, or hear their voices in audio.
The list currently features 230 icons, all speaking in their own words. The collection will inevitably grow as we add more material, or as you send suggestions our way. For now, how about we whet your appetite with 10 favorites? Then you can rummage through the full collection of Cultural Icons here.
(Note: Down the road, you can access this collection by clicking “Cultural Icons” in the top navigation bar.)
Salvador Dali - Video – Surrealist artist appears on “What’s My Line?” (1952)
Johnny Depp - Video – The versatile actor reads a letter from Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
Anne Frank - Video – It is the only known footage of Anne Frank, author of the world’s most famous diary, and it’s now online.
Patti Smith — Video — The “godmother of punk” recalls her friendship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
Quentin Tarantino - Video – Pulp Fiction director lists his favorites films since 1992.
Leo Tolstoy – Video – Great footage of the last days of the towering Russian novelist. 1910.
Mark Twain – Video – America’s fabled writer captured on film by Thomas Edison in 1909.
Andy Warhol - Video – In 1979, Warhol created public access television programs. In this episode, he chats with Bianca Jagger & Steven Spielberg.
Tom Waits - Video – The raspy singer reads “The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski.
Virginia Woolf — Audio — Recording comes from a 1937 BBC radio broadcast. The talk, entitled “Craftsmanship,” was part of a series called “Words Fail Me.” The only known recording of her voice.
Get the rest here. Don’t miss us on Facebook and Twitter!
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