Watch a Sweet Film Adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Story, “Long Walk to Forever”

in Books, Film | March 27th, 2020

Shame, shame to have lived scenes from a women’s mag­a­zine. —Kurt Von­negut

In his intro­duc­tion to Wel­come to the Mon­key House, a col­lec­tion of his short fic­tion pub­lished in 1968, Kurt Von­negut shows no com­punc­tion about throw­ing its most main­stream entry under the bus:

In hon­or of the mar­riage that worked I include in this col­lec­tion a sick­en­ing­ly slick love sto­ry from The Ladies Home Jour­nal, God help us, enti­tled by them “Long Walk to For­ev­er.” The title I gave it, I think, was “Hell to Get Along With.”

The sim­ple tale, pub­lished, as not­ed, by Ladies Home Jour­nal in 1960, bears a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties to events of Vonnegut’s own life. After WWII, hav­ing sur­vived the bomb­ing of Dres­den as a POW, he made his way back to Indi­anapo­lis, and invit­ed Jane Cox, the friend he’d known since kinder­garten, who was engaged to anoth­er man, to take a walk, dur­ing which he sug­gest­ed she should mar­ry him instead.

Direc­tor Jes­si­ca Hes­ter’s recent, Kurt Von­negut Trust-sanc­tioned adap­ta­tion, above, plays it pret­ty straight, as do sev­er­al oth­er unau­tho­rized ver­sions lurk­ing on the Inter­net.

She ups Newt’s rank to cor­po­ral from pri­vate, and replaces the glossy bridal mag­a­zine Cather­ine is thumb­ing through when Newt knocks with a coterie of atten­tive brides­maids and lit­tle girls, appar­ent­ly get­ting a jump on their nup­tial fuss­ing.

The mag­a­zine’s omis­sion is unfor­tu­nate.

In the sto­ry, Newt asks to see “the pret­ty book,” forc­ing Cather­ine to bring up the impend­ing wed­ding. Its phys­i­cal real­i­ty then offers Newt a handy emo­tion­al refuge, from whence he can crack wise about rosy brides while pre­tend­ing to read an ad for flat­ware.

With­out that prop, he’s preter­nat­u­ral­ly aware of the names of sil­ver pat­terns.

And as an Indi­anapo­lis native who went to school in the orchard where the sto­ry is set, and who can con­firm that it’s in earshot of the bells from the Indi­ana School for the Blind, I found it jar­ring to see the action trans­posed to New York’s Westch­ester Coun­ty. (For those keep­ing score, it was shot on loca­tion in Cro­ton State Park and the Rock­e­feller State Park).

(Break­ing Away’s rock quar­ry aside, the Hoosier State just doesn’t have those sorts of high-up water views.)

Hes­ter hon­ors Vonnegut’s dia­logue—near­ly every­thing that comes out of the char­ac­ters’ mouths orig­i­nat­ed on the page, while pro­vid­ing a young female director’s spin on this mate­r­i­al, half a cen­tu­ry removed from its pub­li­ca­tion.

As she describes it on the sto­ry­telling plat­form Fem­i­nist Wednes­day, the film gen­tly sat­i­rizes the insti­tu­tion of mat­ri­mo­ny and the impor­tance placed upon it. It is also, she says:

…a sto­ry about courage, as the female has to face her­self, her ideas, and her val­ues… Catherine’s jour­ney is so raw, ter­ri­fy­ing in the most hon­est way, and heart­felt yet extreme­ly fun­ny because it is so relat­able. 

Some­thing tells me the author would­n’t have put it that way … his Mon­key House intro, maybe.

But his admi­ra­tion for his less-than-tra­di­tion­al muse, avid read­er and writer Jane Cox, from whom he split after 26 years of mar­riage, was immense.

Gin­ger Strand’s pro­file in The New York­er quotes the house­hold con­sti­tu­tion Cox draft­ed after their 1945 mar­riage:

We can­not and will not live in and be hogtied by a soci­ety which not only has not faith in the things we have faith in, but which reviles and damns that faith with prac­ti­cal­ly every breath it draws.

Hester’s crowd-fund­ed film, which the Kurt Von­negut Muse­um and Library includ­ed as part of a COVID-19 cri­sis Vir­tu­al Von­negut Fun Pack—(“Have a box of Kleenex at the ready!”)—was shot in 2014.

Had pro­duc­tion been delayed by a few years, one won­ders if the film­mak­ers would have come under  intense pres­sure to frame Newt’s refusal to take Catherine’s rejec­tions at face val­ue, his insis­tence that she con­tin­ue the walk, and that unvet­ted kiss as some­thing per­ni­cious and inten­tion­al.

If so, we’re glad the film made it into the can when it did.

And we con­fess, we don’t real­ly share Vonnegut’s avowed dis­taste for the sto­ry, though New York Times crit­ic Mitchel Lev­i­tas did, in an oth­er­wise favor­able review of Wel­come to the Mon­key House:

This Von­negut is obvi­ous­ly a lov­able fel­low. More­over, he’s right about the sto­ry, which is indeed a sick­en­ing and slick lit­tle noth­ing about a sol­dier who goes A.W.O.L. in order—How to say it?—to sweep his girl from the steps of the altar into his strong and lov­ing arms.

Here’s to future adap­ta­tions of this Ladies Home Jour­nal-approved sto­ry by one of our favorite authors. May they cap­ture some­thing of his tart­ness, and for­go a sen­ti­men­tal sound­track in favor of a chick­adee whose cameo appear­ance after the School for the Blind’s bells pre­fig­ures Slaughterhouse-Five’s famous “Poo-tee-weet?”

“*chick-a-dee-dee-dee*,” went a chick­adee.

This adap­ta­tion of  Von­negut’s “Long Walk to For­ev­er” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

The Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Com­ing Out This Year

A New Kurt Von­negut Muse­um Opens in Indi­anapo­lis … Right in Time for Banned Books Week

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain is on COVID-19 hia­tus. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What’s the Function of Criticism? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #36 with Critic Noah Berlatsky

in Film, Literature, Music, Pretty Much Pop | March 26th, 2020

Do we need pro­fes­sion­al crit­ics reg­u­lat­ing our enter­tain­ment intake?  Noah has writ­ten for numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing The Wash­ing­ton Post, The Atlantic, NBC News, The Guardian, Slate, and Vox, and his work has come up for dis­cus­sion in mul­ti­ple past Pret­ty Much Pop episodes.

He was invit­ed to join hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt in spelling out the func­tions of crit­i­cism, the idea of crit­i­cism as art, ide­o­log­i­cal vs. aes­thet­ic cri­tique, and whether there’s any­thing wrong with being neg­a­tive about oth­er peo­ple’s art. While we talk most­ly about film, Noah also writes about TV, comics, music and more.

First, read some arti­cles by Noah about crit­i­cism:

Oth­er authors speak­ing on the util­i­ty of crit­ics:

Here are some exam­ples of Noah’s crit­i­cal work rel­e­vant to what came up in the inter­view and our recent episodes:

Includ­ed here with Noah’s per­mis­sion, here’s some crit­i­cism direct­ed at Noah:

At the end, after Noah leaves, Mark lays out a tax­on­o­my of crit­i­cism: sup­port­er, decoder, taste enforcer, and hater. Noah prac­tices all of these! Fol­low him on Twit­ter @nberlat and get scads of his writ­ing by sup­port­ing him at patreon.com/noahberlatsky.

Watch Mel Brooks’ depic­tion of the very first crit­ic.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Watch Curated Playlists of Experimental Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miranda July, Jan Švankmajer, Guy Maddin & More

in Film | March 25th, 2020

When we get sick, many of us habit­u­al­ly use the time away from work and oth­er oblig­a­tions to do the same thing: watch movies. But old favorites and recent releas­es we’d missed our first chance to catch can only last us so long: now, with so much of the world either sick or at home try­ing not to get sick, a com­bi­na­tion of iso­la­tion and uncer­tain­ty about the state of things push­es us to seek out more cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly dar­ing fare. To sat­is­fy this demand, Los Ange­les film­mak­er Kate Lain has cre­at­ed a col­lec­tion called “CABIN FEVER: Cop­ing with COVID-19 playlist of online exper­i­men­tal films & videos,” all of them free to watch online, begun “as an editable Google sheet on March 13 to gath­er some exper­i­men­tal films togeth­er based on moods one might be expe­ri­enc­ing while being cooped up.”

Since then, Lain writes, “the list has mor­phed some, with some great new cat­e­gories being added to the mix.” The most recent ver­sion of the spread­sheet, avail­able in .XSLX and .PDF for­mats, includes such cat­e­gories as “For when you need to laugh or smile,” “For when you’re stuck inside but want to be out­side,” “Ani­mals,” “Plants,” “Nos­tal­gia,” and “Virus movies cuz why not.” (One such movie, Tuzan Wu’s Dis­ease of Man­i­fes­ta­tion, appears at the top of the post.)

With­in these and oth­ers appears the work of such film­mak­ers as Jan Švankma­jer, Miran­da July, Fer­nand Léger (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), Man Ray, Maya Deren, and Cindy Sher­man. (Avant-garde enthu­si­asts may also rejoice at the sight of names like Hol­lis Framp­ton, James Ben­ning, and Ken­neth Anger.)

Inspired by Lain’s col­lec­tion, Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Dessane Lopez Cas­sell has “reached out to artists, film­mak­ers, and Hyper­al­ler­gic con­trib­u­tors to assem­ble a list of what we’ve been shar­ing and encoun­ter­ing across our net­works.” Their selec­tions include Afro­nauts, “a lumi­nous short which ren­ders the sto­ry of the Zam­bian Space Pro­gram” — at which we looked back ear­li­er this month — “as a dream­like work of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion”; Bassem Saad’s Saint Rise, about the trans­porta­tion of a stat­ue of Saint Char­bel (“now being her­ald­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious media as a heal­er of the Coro­n­avirus,” the film­mak­er adds) to a high moun­tain­top in Faraya, Leba­banon; and Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog (watch in full here and see the trail­er below), described by crit­ic Car­man Tse as “a scene-by-scene recre­ation of Ver­ti­go, made entire­ly of footage from oth­er movies that take place in San Fran­cis­co.”

“There’s an espe­cial­ly fun­ny mon­tage right at the cli­max of the movie that uses Chuck Nor­ris clips,” Tse notes, mak­ing The Green Fog a promis­ing choice for those of us who need to light­en the mood of our iso­la­tion — and who also appre­ci­ate a high den­si­ty of inter-cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ence. Hail­ing as he does from the noto­ri­ous­ly win­try Cana­di­an city of Win­nipeg, Maddin him­self sure­ly knows a thing or two about how best to amuse one­self dur­ing long peri­ods stuck indoors. Indeed, every artist grow­ing up in cir­cum­stances of iso­la­tion, occa­sion­al or fre­quent, devel­ops a strong appre­ci­a­tion and high­ly refined sense of artis­tic dar­ing, one that unfail­ing­ly shows in their work when it debuts in the wider world. If we take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand the depth and breadth of our own view­ing expe­ri­ences, imag­ine how much more astute film­go­ers we’ll be after the pan­dem­ic pass­es.

Find the Cab­in Fever col­lec­tion of exper­i­men­tal videos and films here. It cur­rent­ly has 284 videos on the list. Hyper­all­ger­ic adds yet more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost, Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from Ear­ly Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

Watch “Bells of Atlantis,” an Exper­i­men­tal Film with Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Music Fea­tur­ing Anaïs Nin (1952)

The Exper­i­men­tal Abstract Films of Pio­neer­ing Amer­i­can Ani­ma­tor Mary Ellen Bute (1930s-1950s)

Sigour­ney Weaver Stars in a New Exper­i­men­tal Sci-Fi Film: Watch “Rak­ka” Free Online

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Soothing, Uplifting Resources for Parents & Caregivers Stressed by the COVID-19 Crisis

in Film, Life, Music, Nature | March 20th, 2020

When COVID-19 closed schools and shut­tered the­aters and con­cert venues, response was swift.

Stars rang­ing from the Cincin­nati zoo’s hip­po Fiona to Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miran­da leapt to share free con­tent with sud­den­ly home­bound view­ers.

Coldplay’s front­man, Chris Mar­tin, sep­a­rat­ed from his band­mates by inter­na­tion­al bor­ders, played a mini gig at home, as did coun­try star Kei­th Urban, with his wife, Nicole Kid­man, lurk­ing in the back­ground.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Deb­bie Allen got peo­ple off the couch with free dance class­es on Insta­gram.

Audi­ble pledged to pro­vide free audio­books for lit­tle kids and teens for the dura­tion.

An embar­rass­ment of rich­es for those whose expe­ri­ence of COVID-19 is some­where between extend­ed snow day and stay­ca­tion…

But what about care­givers who sud­den­ly find them­selves pro­vid­ing 24–7 care for elders with demen­tia, or neu­ro-atyp­i­cal adult chil­dren whose upend­ed rou­tine is wreak­ing hav­oc on their emo­tions?

“I know peo­ple are hap­py that the schools have closed but I just lost crit­i­cal work­day hours and if/when day hab clos­es I will have to take low-paid med­ical leave AND we will not have any breaks from care­giv­ing some­one with 24–7 needs and aggres­sive, loud behav­iors. I feel com­plete­ly defeat­ed,” one friend writes.

24 hours lat­er:

We just lost day hab, effec­tive tomor­row. My mes­sages for in-home ser­vices haven’t been returned yet. Full on pan­ic mode.

What can we do to help light­en those loads when we’re barred from phys­i­cal inter­ac­tion, or enter­ing each other’s homes?

We combed through our archive, with an eye toward the most sooth­ing, uplift­ing con­tent, appro­pri­ate for all ages, start­ing with pianist Paul Bar­ton’s clas­si­cal con­certs for ele­phants in Kan­chanaburi, Thai­land, above.

Calm­ing videos:

Hours of sooth­ing  nature footage from the BBC.

Com­muters in New­castle’s Hay­mar­ket Bus Sta­tion Play­ing Beethoven 

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour’s Musi­cal Take on Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Guid­ed Imagery Med­i­ta­tion from Johns Hop­kins All Children’s Hos­pi­tal

Four clas­sic per­for­mances from the “Father of Bossa Nova” João Gilber­to

The Insects’ Christ­mas, a 1913: Stop Motion  Ani­ma­tion

Mul­ti­ple sea­sons of Bob Ross!

60+ Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Home­made Amer­i­can Music, a 1980 doc­u­men­tary on rur­al south­east­ern tra­di­tion­al music and musi­cians

Win­sor McKay’s Ger­tie the Dinosaur

Calm­ing Music and Audio:

Metal­li­ca, REM, Led Zep­pelin & Queen Sung in the Style of Gre­go­ri­an Chant

18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Weight­less, the most relax­ing song ever made

Calm­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release

We’ve also got a trove of free col­or­ing books and pages, though care­givers should vet the con­tent before shar­ing it with some­one who’s like­ly to be dis­turbed by med­ical illus­tra­tion and images of medieval demons…

Read­ers, if you know a resource that might buy care­givers and their agi­tat­ed, house­bound charges a bit of peace, please add it in the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Free Guid­ed Imagery Record­ings Help Kids Cope with Pain, Stress & Anx­i­ety

Chill Out to 70 Hours of Ocean­scape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch AI-Restored Film of Laborers Going Through Life in Victorian England (1901)

in Film, History | March 20th, 2020

In these times, we need to keep at some kind of rou­tine. And so I’d like to doff my cloth worker’s cap to Denis Shiryaev, who once again has returned from the ear­ly days of cin­e­ma with anoth­er AI-restored clip of film from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

Ah, but there’s some­thing amiss this time, a glitch in the matrix of expec­ta­tions. Not all sources can be saved by tech­nol­o­gy. Fans of Shiryaev’s crys­tal clear jour­neys back in time (find them in the Relat­eds below) might find the footage rough. It doesn’t make this film any less fas­ci­nat­ing.

Sagar Mitchell and James Keny­on start­ed their film busi­ness to try to copy the suc­cess of sim­i­lar, ear­li­er film­mak­ers like the Lumiere Broth­ers in Paris. Audi­ences would pay to see short films of how peo­ple lived, worked, walked about, and just exist­ed. It was a win­dow into anoth­er real­i­ty, and by pure chance a hun­dred of Mitchell & Keny­on’s films were found pre­served in a Black­burn, UK base­ment near­ly a cen­tu­ry lat­er. This is a com­pi­la­tion of three of them, scored by Guy Jones with mild atmos­pher­ics.

More than any of the oth­er films that Shiryaev has “restored,” Mitchell & Keny­on don’t try to hide their cam­era or pre­tend it’s not there. Instead, these three films make a point of invit­ing their sub­jects to look direct­ly at us, and because of Shiryaev’s work these dozens and dozens of eyes real­ly seem to be watch­ing us from across time. The young boys are cheeky, the young girls shy, the old­er adults bemused or slight­ly irri­tat­ed. There is no par­tic­u­lar focus here–we can choose who we want to fol­low, which indeed was one of the rea­sons for these films pop­u­lar­i­ty. They were designed for repeat vis­its.

There are two par­tic­u­lar points of inter­est that hap­pen very quick­ly. One is at 1:09–the appear­ance of an Afro-Caribbean man as part of the work­force. Peo­ple of African descent had lived in Britain since the 12th cen­tu­ry, but this might be one of the ear­li­est films of such a per­son. The oth­er is lat­er at 4:24, which might be the first film of a bloke giv­ing the cam­era the rude two-fin­gered salute. This moment is why the British Film Insti­tute dubbed Mitchell & Keny­on “the acci­den­tal anthro­pol­o­gists.”

(You might also watch for the fight that breaks out near the end of the film. Real or not? You be the judge.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (May 1896)

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Watch 85,000 Historic Newsreel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

in Film, History | March 11th, 2020

The “piv­ot-to-video” moment of a few years back dev­as­tat­ed writ­ers every­where with mass lay­offs as com­pa­nies scram­bled to attract pro­ject­ed mil­lions of nonex­is­tent view­ers. It’s a sto­ry about preda­to­ry media monop­o­lies and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of news, doc­u­men­tary, and opin­ion video con­tent online. While the sheer amount of video can feel over­whelm­ing, we might remem­ber that peo­ple have been get­ting their news from screens for well over a hun­dred years.

First came the news­reels. Thou­sands were pro­duced from the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry into the 1960s, when TV became the dom­i­nant screen of choice. These were ephemer­al, often frag­men­tary films, not usu­al­ly pre­served in the way of great cin­e­ma.

But while “the news­reel may be his­to­ry,” notes the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, “vast col­lec­tions of it remain, much of it unseen.” One such col­lec­tion resides at the archives of British Pathé, “a trea­sure trove of 85,000 films unri­valed in their his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.”

British Pathé has dig­i­tized their col­lec­tion and made all of it—including more than 136,000 items from the Reuters his­tor­i­cal collection—freely avail­able online at their web­site and on YouTube. You’ll find there exact­ly the kind of vari­ety Richard Eder described in The New York Times in 1977, a year when peo­ple also felt “flood­ed” by news:

Most of the time [news­reels] were patchy views of a rather scat­ter­brained real­i­ty. Sneez­ing con­tests would alter­nate with politi­cians cut­ting rib­bons and South Amer­i­cans rioting.But once in a while there was some­thing unfor­get­table: the Hin­den­burg float­ed lofti­ly into sight and sud­den­ly set­tled on the ground like burn­ing tin­sel; a mid­dle-aged French­man wept at Toulon when the fleet was scut­tled. The news­reel cam­eras and the big screen pro­vid­ed an author­i­ty to these things that tele­vi­sion equip­ment could­n’t man­age. Also there was the effect of wait­ing a day or two to see a dis­as­ter you had read of. World events were dis­crete, indi­vid­ual, weighty. They did not flood us.

British Pathé pro­duced short doc­u­men­tary films on every pos­si­ble sub­ject around the world from 1910 to 2008 and might lay claim to cap­tur­ing more unfor­get­table his­tor­i­cal moments than most any oth­er news­reel ser­vice of the era. A tiny sam­pling of news­reels in their mas­sive dig­i­tal archive includes the Beat­nik makeover from 1963 at the top; a very brief film on Tol­stoy; a longer fea­turette on the Titan­ic, with inter­views from sur­vivors; and a short on the psy­che­del­ic Mel­lotron.

Among the many “British Pathé Unis­sued” videos, we find the filmed inter­view clip below with H.G. Wells in the 1930s, in which he pro­pos­es dis­ar­ma­ment, inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion, full pub­lic employ­ment, and the nation­al­iza­tion of indus­try as anti­dotes to the ris­ing tides of World War and dev­as­tat­ing social inequal­i­ty. The inter­view was “unused by Pathé edi­tors and not screened in cin­e­mas,” explains a title added at the begin­ning. One sig­nif­i­cant shift from the news­reel to the dig­i­tal age is the unprece­dent­ed abil­i­ty to bypass the cen­sors.

“Before tele­vi­sion” and the inter­net, as the archive descrip­tion points out, “peo­ple came to movie the­atres to watch the news. British Pathé was at the fore­front of cin­e­mat­ic jour­nal­ism, blend­ing infor­ma­tion with enter­tain­ment to pop­u­lar effect.” If this blend sounds some­what akin to the mass media world we inhab­it today—one filled with pro­lif­er­at­ing video explain­ers, short doc­u­men­taries, talk­ing head con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists and every oth­er pos­si­ble use of the form—perhaps it’s use­ful to remem­ber that we’ve been liv­ing in that world a very long time. It has pro­duced many thou­sands of arti­facts that can tell us where we’ve been over the past 120 years or so, if not quite how we got to where we are now.

Enter the British Pathé col­lec­tion on YouTube or their web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000,000 Min­utes of News­reel Footage by AP & British Movi­etone Released on YouTube

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vividly Restored with Artificial Intelligence (May 1896)

in Film, History | March 10th, 2020

In May of 1896, Charles Mois­son and Fran­cis Dou­bli­er trav­eled to Moscow on behalf of the Lumière Broth­ers com­pa­ny, bear­ing with them the new­ly devel­oped Lumière Ciné­mato­gaphe cam­era. Their pur­pose: to doc­u­ment the coro­na­tion of Tsar Nicholas II—the last Emper­or of Rus­sia, though no one would have known that at the time. The coro­na­tion was an extra­or­di­nary event, soon to be over­shad­owed by even more extra­or­di­nary events in the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary years to come. An enor­mous cel­e­bra­tion fol­lowed, with gifts, bread, sausage, pret­zels, beer, and a com­mem­o­ra­tive cup to rev­el­ers. The promise of these gifts led to what was lat­er called the Kho­dyn­ka Tragedy.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands descend­ed on the city. Rumors that food was run­ning short—and that the cups con­tained a gold coin—sent crowds rush­ing for the Kho­dyn­ka Field. Over­com­ing 1,800 police offi­cers, they caused a stam­pede that killed 1,389. That evening, Nicholas and the Empress Alexan­dra attend­ed a ball, then vis­it­ed wound­ed in the hos­pi­tal the fol­low­ing day. One of the Tsar’s valets, Alex­ei Volkov, who sur­vived the Rev­o­lu­tion and lived to write his mem­oirs, described walk­ing “along the Khondin­ka” and meet­ing “many groups of peo­ple com­ing back from that site and car­ry­ing the Tsar’s gifts. The strange thing, though, was that not one per­son men­tioned the cat­a­stro­phe, and I did not hear about it until the next morn­ing.”

The stam­pede seems a tes­ta­ment to the pover­ty and des­per­a­tion among ordi­nary Rus­sians at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry. That his­to­ry does not enter the frame in the minute of footage shot by Mois­son and Dou­bli­er, which you can see recre­at­ed above in stun­ning detail—with both col­or added and in orig­i­nal black and white—by Denis Shiryaev. The footage is sim­ply dat­ed May 1896 and might have been shot either before or after the coro­na­tion. As Peter Jack­son has done with footage from WWI in the fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary They Shall Not Grow Old, Shiryaev makes the grainy, blur­ry past come alive with the help of an “ensem­ble of neur­al net­works,” as he writes on the video’s YouTube page.

The enhance­ments to the video trans­fer of the orig­i­nal film include:

1) FPS boost­ing – to 60 frames per sec­ond

2) Image res­o­lu­tion boost­ed up a bit with ESRGAN (gen­er­al dataset)

3) Resort­ed video sharp­ness, removed blur, removed com­pres­sion “arte­facts”

4) Col­orized (option­al) – due to high request I have decid­ed to include both ver­sions of the processed video: col­orized and black and white.

Boost­ing the frame rate to 60 fps espe­cial­ly gives these bustling and/or saun­ter­ing Moscow denizens of Tver­skaya Street a life­like appear­ance. (See here for a com­par­i­son of var­i­ous frame rates). Whether you pre­fer col­or or black and white, it may be easy to imag­ine strolling down this cob­ble­stone avenue your­self, dodg­ing the dozens of horse drawn car­riages pass­ing by.

It may be hard­er to imag­ine that per­haps days or hours before or after this slice of Moscow city life, the last tsar of Rus­sia was crowned, and a crowd of some­where around half a mil­lion peo­ple rushed through the streets for a glass of beer and a free bite to eat. See more of Shiryaev’s AI-assist­ed film restora­tions at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Updating Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” to Cover Female Action Heroes–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #33

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 5th, 2020

This week’s guest Vi Burlew has arisen, a shin­ing fig­ure clad in mail, car­ry­ing aloft a shim­mer­ing broadsword to bring your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt this top­ic about the hero’s jour­ney.

This gen­er­al plot struc­ture dat­ing back to ancient myth was detailed by Joseph Camp­bell and famous­ly and delib­er­ate­ly plun­dered to cre­ate the plot of the orig­i­nal Star Wars. So how has this evolved with the increas­ing intro­duc­tion of female heroes in recent, large­ly Dis­ney-owned block­busters? We talk Won­der Woman and Cap­tain Mar­vel, antic­i­pate Black Wid­ow and the new Mulan, but also bring in Lord of the Rings, Har­ry Pot­ter, The Wiz­ard of Oz, Lit­tle Women, Jane Eyre, Work­ing Girl, and of course Road House.

What com­pli­cates this issue is that a dis­tinct “hero­ine’s jour­ney” had already been plot­ted in response to Camp­bell by fem­i­nist thinkers at least back to Mau­reen Mur­dock in 1990. The key dif­fer­ence is that while the hero achieves the goal and comes home in tri­umph, the hero­ine then real­izes that there was some­thing self-betray­ing about the tri­umph and requires an addi­tion­al step of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with her ori­gins. This is like if Luke real­ized after destroy­ing the Death Star that he was a mois­ture farmer all along and had to come to terms with that. (Maybe he could actu­al­ly grieve for his dead aunt and uncle and his best friend Big­gs!)

It’s been argued that Har­ry Pot­ter’s jour­ney more close­ly resem­bles that hero­ine’s jour­ney, where­as, say, Eowyn from Lord of the Rings (“I am no man!”) is a more tra­di­tion­al hero. Action films of today may fea­ture female heroes, but when this is done thought­ful­ly (not just by tak­ing an action hero and swap­ping the gen­der with­out fur­ther alter­ation), then film­mak­ers may tweak the struc­ture of the myth to include some gen­der-spe­cif­ic ele­ments and per­haps blend the two types of jour­ney. These new vari­ants that may or may not res­onate in the way that caused the orig­i­nal Star Wars/Campbell for­mu­la to become so pop­u­lar.

Two arti­cles we specif­i­cal­ly cite in our dis­cus­sion are:

For some basics about the jour­neys described by Joseph Camp­bell, Mau­reen Mur­dok, and a dif­fer­ent ver­sion by Vic­to­ria Lynn Schmidt, see the Wikipedia entries on Hero’s Jour­ney and Hero­ine’s Jour­ney.

In addi­tion, The Hero­ine Jour­neys Project web­site fea­tures numer­ous arti­cles about female heroes in media. We also looked at this red­dit thread, which among oth­er things pro­vides some oppos­ing views to those of our guests about the Star Wars fran­chise char­ac­ter Rey.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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