John Waters: The Point of Contemporary Art

in Art, Film | September 28th, 2010

If con­tem­po­rary art baf­fles you, if you’ve ever looked at con­tem­po­rary art and won­dered “what’s the point?,” then give some­times con­tro­ver­sial film­mak­er John Waters four min­utes of your time. He’ll break it down for you in sim­ple, if not crude, terms: “Con­tem­po­rary art’s job is to wreck what­ev­er came before it. And from the very begin­ning after the Old Mas­ters, from then on, each gen­er­a­tion wrecked that. That some­thing is pret­ty and beau­ti­ful is prob­a­bly the worst thing that you could say today in con­tem­po­rary art about some­thing, unless it’s so pret­ty it’s nau­se­at­ing.”

You can watch more seg­ments of his Big Think inter­view here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth Is Life With­out A*Holes

John Waters Takes You on a Com­i­cal Tour of His Apart­ment (1986)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

 

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David Simon, Creator of The Wire, Named 2010 MacArthur Fellow

in Art, Film, Television | September 27th, 2010

The 2010 MacArthur Fel­lows were named today. The lat­est “genius” grants go to 23 recip­i­ents, includ­ing David Simon, the cre­ator of The Wire, the long run­ning HBO show that was real­ly (Simon once said) “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” Above, Simon talks more about the thread run­ning through his work. The Wire, Treme and Gen­er­a­tion Kill – they’re all ulti­mate­ly about the end of the Amer­i­can Empire, and the cit­i­zens that get left behind. Like the oth­er grant win­ners, Simon will receive $500,000 over the next five years to spend how­ev­er he sees fit …

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Dick Tracy: The Original Film Series Online

in Film | September 27th, 2010

Chester Gould first intro­duced Dick Tra­cy, the leg­endary police detec­tive, to the Amer­i­can pub­lic in 1931, back when he launched his syn­di­cat­ed com­ic strip — a strip that he would con­tin­ue writ­ing until 1977. The char­ac­ter res­onat­ed imme­di­ate­ly, and soon enough, Dick Tra­cy took to the air­waves (lis­ten to radio episodes here) and then even­tu­al­ly the sil­ver screen. In 1937, Repub­lic Pic­tures released a Dick Tra­cy film series com­prised of 15 episodes/chapters, each run­ning about 22 min­utes on aver­age. And, thanks to Film Annex, you can now revis­it them (for free) online at DickTracyTV.com. Above we have fea­tured a video that gives you the entire series in one handy clip. It runs rough­ly 4 and a half hours (got an after­noon to spare?), and, please note, the large file takes some time to load. You can also watch, or even down­load, this file at The Inter­net Archive.

If you’re look­ing for more vin­tage movies, def­i­nite­ly vis­it our big col­lec­tion Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Film Noir, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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The Smallest Stop-Motion Animation Ever

in Art, Film, Science | September 21st, 2010

From the mak­ers of Wal­lace and Gromit comes the small­est stop-motion ani­ma­tion ever. The lil­liput­ian main char­ac­ter, apt­ly named Dot, stands a mere 0.35-inch-tall. Accord­ing to Pop­u­lar Sci­ence, the ani­ma­tors “used a 3D print­er to make 50 dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Dot, because she is too small to manip­u­late or bend like they would oth­er stop-motion ani­ma­tion char­ac­ters.” Then each print-up was hand-paint­ed by artists look­ing through a micro­scope. Once the set and char­ac­ters were ready to go, the direc­tors attached a CellScope (a cell­phone cam­era with a 50x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion micro­scope) to a Nokia N8 and let the cam­eras roll. You can watch the final cut above.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence

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Waiting for Superman (to Fix America’s Broken School System)

in Education, Film | September 20th, 2010

Davis Guggen­heim, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning direc­tor of An Incon­ve­nient Truth, has issued a new clar­i­on call for our times: Wait­ing for Super­man, a new film that takes a hard look at Amer­i­ca’s fail­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem, the chil­dren it’s leav­ing behind, and the reform­ers try­ing to turn things around. Above, you can watch the offi­cial trail­er for the movie being released in select US the­aters. And, right now, if you pledge to pur­chase a tick­et, you can also direct a dona­tion to a class­room of your choice.

Some­where down the line (and ide­al­ly soon­er than lat­er), I hope that Guggen­heim and Para­mount Pic­tures will decide to make this film freely avail­able to the pub­lic. It always struck me that the film­mak­ers lim­it­ed the impact of An Incon­ve­nient Truth by keep­ing it behind a pay wall. Hope­ful­ly, this time, they will recoup their mon­ey and give the film the free­dom to spread an impor­tant mes­sage. There’s gen­er­al­ly not a moral imper­a­tive to make films free. But, in this case, it seems a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.

Note for edu­ca­tion blog­gers: The Huff­in­g­ton Post will be screen­ing the film nation­al­ly, and they invite you to attend. Get details here.

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Free Online: The Original Superman Cartoon Series in Technicolor (1941–1943)

in Art, Film, Television | September 16th, 2010

Ear­li­er this week, we flagged a dig­i­tal archive of com­ic books from the Gold­en Age. Now we stum­ble upon this nugget from the same era: A video archive that show­cas­es the com­plete Super­man ani­mat­ed car­toon series from the ear­ly 40’s, all in Tech­ni­col­or. Based on the orig­i­nal DC Comics char­ac­ter, these 17 episodes appeared on Amer­i­can movie screens (before the show­ing of fea­ture films) between 1941 and 1943. And they were tak­en seri­ous­ly as an art form. The first episode, com­mon­ly known as “The Mad Sci­en­tist” (watch above), was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar in 1942, and, in case you some­how missed it, it spells out the whole premise/backstory of the Super­man saga. These episodes – all now in the pub­lic domain – can be viewed on Youtube. Wikipedia pro­vides some oth­er options for watching/downloading these vin­tage bits of Amer­i­cana media.

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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Paradise Lost

in Film | September 15th, 2010

It’s one part Bam­bi, nine parts Looney Tunes, and runs just under three min­utes. Dil­la, as the film is called, was cre­at­ed by four stu­dents at the Rin­gling Col­lege of Art and Design in Sara­so­ta, Flori­da. It was appar­ent­ly their senior project com­plet­ed ear­li­er this year. Nice work Mike, Stan­ley, Dominic and Mikey …

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Martin Scorsese Picks the Best Gangster Movies

in Film | September 10th, 2010

Yes­ter­day Mar­tin Scors­ese, the leg­endary direc­tor, list­ed the 15 gang­ster films that shaped the way he has por­trayed crime on film (Good­fel­las, Mean Streets, Taxi Dri­ver, etc.). Scors­ese watched these films as a young­ster and young direc­tor, dur­ing his big moment of influ­ence. The first film (The Pub­lic Ene­my) came out in 1931, and the last one (Point Blank) in 1967. Above, you can watch scenes from the orig­i­nal Scar­face (1932), which appears on his list.  The rest of Scors­ese’s picks, along with relat­ed film clips, can be found here.

PS Don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. It now fea­tures 575 qual­i­ty films.

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