Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols Creates a Short Film for NASA to Recruit New Astronauts (1977)

in Science, Television | May 10th, 2019

Imagine growing up in the late 1960s, witnessing at an impressionable age the heyday of the original Star Trek followed by the real-life moon landing. (If you actually did grow up in the late 1960s, just remember your childhood.) How could you not have dreamed of working on something to do with outer space, or indeed in outer space itself? It seems that both the promoters of NASA and the creators of Star Trek know that both their projects draw from the same well of wonder about the world beyond our planet. As we’ve previously featured here on Open Culture, William Shatner has narrated a documentary on the space shuttle as well as a Mars landing video, and Leonard Nimoy narrated a short about NASA’s spacecraft Dawn.

Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the original series, also did her NASA-promoting bit — or perhaps more than her bit — by starring in the agency’s 1977 recruitment film. In the years since the end of Star Trek, she had already been volunteering with NASA’s push to recruit more women and minorities.

“I am going to bring you so many qualified women and minority astronaut applicants for this position that if you don’t choose one… everybody in the newspapers across the country will know about it,” she has since remembered telling NASA at the time. In the event, NASA chose more than a few, including astronauts like Sally Ride, Guion Bluford, Judith Resnik, and Ronald McNair.

“I still feel a little bit like Lieutenant Uhura on the starship Enterprise,” Nichols says at the beginning of the film. “You know, now there’s a 20th-century Enterprise, an actual space vehicle built by NASA and designed to put us in the business of space, and not merely space exploration.” NASA’s Enterprise, she explains, is “a space shuttle built to make regularly scheduled runs into space and back, just like a commercial airline,” one that “may even be used to build a space station in orbit around the Earth, and this would require the services of people with a variety of skills and qualifications.” At the very end, she emphasizes a different sense of variety: “I’m speaking to the whole family of humankind, minorities and women alike. If you qualify and would like to be an astronaut, now is the time. This is your NASA, a space agency embarked on a mission to improve the quality of life on planet Earth right now” — an even worthier mission, some might say, than boldly going where no man has gone before.

via Boing Boing

William Shatner Narrates Space Shuttle Documentary

William Shatner Puts in a Long Distance Call to Astronaut Aboard the International Space Station

Leonard Nimoy Narrates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voyage to the Origins of the Solar System

NASA Creates Movie Parody Posters for Its Expedition Flights: Download Parodies of Metropolis, The Matrix, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and 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, on Facebook, or on Instagram.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speaking to Children (1977)

in Education, K-12, Life, Psychology, Television | May 7th, 2019

The maxim “children need rules” does not necessarily describe either a right-wing position or a leftist one; either a political or a religious idea. Ideally, it points to observable facts about the biology of developing brains and psychology of developing personalities. It means creating structures that respect kids’ intellectual capacities and support their physical and emotional growth. Substituting “structure” for rules suggests even more strongly that the “rules” are mainly requirements for adults, those who build and maintain the world in which kids live.

Grown-ups must, to the best of their abilities, try and understand what children need at their stage of development, and try to meet those needs. When Susan Sontag’s son David was 7 years old, for example, the writer and filmmaker made a list of ten rules for herself to follow, touching on concerns about his self-concept, relationship with his father, individual preferences, and need for routine. Her first rule serves as a general heading for the prescriptions in the other nine: “Be consistent.”

Sontag’s rules only emerged from her journals after her death. She did not turn them into public parenting tips. But nearly ten years after she wrote them, a man appeared on television who seemed to embody their exactitude and simplicity. From the very beginning in 1968, Fred Rogers insisted that his show be built on strict rules. “There were no accidents on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” says former producer Arthur Greenwald. Or as Maxwell King, author of a recent biography on Rogers, writes at The Atlantic:

He insisted that every word, whether spoken by a person or a puppet, be scrutinized closely, because he knew that children—the preschool-age boys and girls who made up the core of his audience—tend to hear things literally…. He took great pains not to mislead or confuse children, and his team of writers joked that his on-air manner of speaking amounted to a distinct language they called “Freddish.”

In addition to his consistency, almost to the point of self-parody, Rogers made sure to always be absolutely crystal clear in his speech. He understood that young kids do not understand metaphors, mostly because they haven’t learned the commonly agreed-upon meanings. Preschool-age children also have trouble understanding the same uses of words in different contexts. In one segment on the show, for example, a nurse says to a child wearing a blood-pressure cuff, “I’m going to blow this up.”

Rogers had the crew redub the line with “’I’m going to puff this up with some air.’ ’Blow up’ might sound like there’s an explosion,” Greenwald remembers, “and he didn’t want kids to cover their ears and miss what would happen next.” In another example, Rogers wrote a song called “You Can Never Go Down the Drain,” to assuage a common fear that very young children have. There is a certain logic to the thinking. Drains take things away, why not them?

Rogers “was extraordinarily good at imagining where children’s minds might go,” writes King, explaining to them, for example, that an ophthalmologist could not look into his mind and see his thoughts. His care with language so amused and awed the show’s creative team that in 1977, Greenwald and writer Barry Head created an illustrated satirical manual called “Let’s Talk About Freddish.” Anyone who’s seen the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? knows Rogers could take a good-natured joke at his expense, likely including the imaginative reconstruction of his methods below.

“State the idea you wish to express as clearly as possible, and in terms preschoolers can understand.” Example: It is dangerous to play in the street.
“Rephrase in a positive manner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe.
“Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet make subtle distinctions and need to be redirected to authorities they trust.” As in, “Ask your parents where it is safe to play.”
“Rephrase your idea to eliminate all elements that could be considered prescriptive, directive, or instructive.” In the example, that’d mean getting rid of “ask”: Your parents will tell you where it is safe to play.
“Rephrase any element that suggests certainty.” That’d be “will”: Your parents can tell you where it is safe to play.
“Rephrase your idea to eliminate any element that may not apply to all children.” Not all children know their parents, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play.
“Add a simple motivational idea that gives preschoolers a reason to follow your advice.” Perhaps: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is good to listen to them.
“Rephrase your new statement, repeating the first step.” “Good” represents a value judgment, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them.
“Rephrase your idea a ﬁnal time, relating it to some phase of development a preschooler can understand.” Maybe: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing.

His crew respected him so much that even their parodies serve as slightly exaggerated tributes to his concerns. Rogers adapted his philosophical guidelines from the top psychologists and child-development experts of the time. The 9 Rules (or maybe 9 Stages) of “Freddish” above, as imagined by Greenwald and Head, reflect their work. Maybe implied in the joke is that his meticulous procedure, considering the possible effects of every word, would be impossible to emulate outside of his scripted encounters with children, prepped for by hours of conversation with child-development specialist Margaret McFarland.

Such is the kind of experience parents, teachers, and other caretakers never have. But Rogers understood and acknowledged the unique power and privilege of his role, more so than most every other children’s TV programmer. He made sure to get it right, as best he could, each time, not only so that kids could better take in the information, but so the grown-ups in their lives could make themselves better understood. Rogers wanted us to know, says Greenwald, “that the inner life of children was deadly serious to them,” and thus deserving of care and recognition.

via Mental Floss

Mister Rogers Accepts a Lifetime Achievement Award, and Helps You Thank Everyone Who Has Made a Difference in Your Life

When Fred Rogers and Francois Clemmons Broke Down Race Barriers on a Historic Episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1969)

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Herbie Hancock’s Joyous Soundtrack for the Original Fat Albert TV Special (1969)

in Music, Television | April 30th, 2019

Millions of kids grew up with the groovy yet educational cartoon comedy of Fat Albert, and millions of adults may find it difficult or impossible now to watch the show without thinking of the crimes of its creator. Such is life in the 21st century, but so it was too at the end of the 1960s when the first iteration of Fat Albert debuted. There were plenty of reasons to feel terrible about the culture. Yet the music that came out of the various jazz/funk/fusion/soul scenes seemed like it couldn’t let anyone feel too bad for long.

In 1969, Herbie Hancock had just been let go from the Miles Davis quintet and left historic Blue Note. During this pivotal time, he signed on to compose the soundtrack for the TV special Hey, Hey, Hey, It’s Fat Albert, the precursor to the episodic cartoon Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which ran from 1972 to 1985 and taught serious ethical lessons about such subjects as kindness, respect, stealing, drugs, scams, kidnapping, smoking, racism, and more with original songs.

The later show’s unforgettable theme song (“na, na, na, gonna have a good time!”) was not penned by Hancock, nor were any of its other tunes. Only the original special used his music, which is maybe why the soundtrack is not better known, as well it should be. “It’s a deeply soulful affair,” writes Boing Boing, “that presaged Hancock’s 1973 jazz-funk classic Head Hunters.” The album, Fat Album Rotunda, had gone out of print, but has now been reissued on the label Antarctica Starts Here.

After listening to the tracks (hear samples above and below), you might find it difficult to resist buying a copy. Whether or not you still enjoy the cartoon, the incredible grooves here evoke much more than its adolescent characters and their junkyard mishaps. This is such an expansive, joyous album, one “in which Hancock,” Superior Viaduct writes, “clearly had a great time.” So too did the rest of the band, “which by the time of recording in late 1969 was both razor-sharp and confidently loose from rehearsing and touring.”

The band included three horn players, “Joe Henderson on sax and flute, Garnett Brown on trombone and Johnny Coles on trumpet and flugelhorn.” Hancock’s solos run fluidly through each song, held in place by the rock-solid swing of Albert Heath’s drums. The compositions are complex and catchy, with lilting melodies, mean hooks, and big refrains.

The album is instantly classic, whether you heard it fifty years ago or just now for the first time. Warner Brothers agreed, and gave Hancock and his band a deal on the strength of the album. So did Quincy Jones, who recorded his own version of the track “Tell Me a Bedtime Story,” a mellow, dynamic slow burn that builds to some of the finest Fender Rhodes playing Hancock put to tape. Fat Albert Rotunda was hardly his first or his last soundtrack album, but while it has fallen into obscurity, it should rank as one of his best.

via Boing Boing

Mister Rogers, Sesame Street & Jim Henson Introduce Kids to the Synthesizer with the Help of Herbie Hancock, Thomas Dolby & Bruce Haack

How Innovative Jazz Pianist Vince Guaraldi Became the Composer of Beloved Charlie Brown Music

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch the Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack Released Only in Japan: A New Way to Experience David Lynch’s Classic Show

in Music, Television | April 29th, 2019

Critics describe David Lynch’s most memorable imagery as not just deeply troubling but deeply American. Despite that — or maybe because of it — his films have found enthusiastic audiences all over the world. But does Lynch command quite as fervent a fan base in any country as he does in Japan? Unlikely though the cultural match of creator and viewer may seem, Lynch’s work tends to make big splashes in the Land of the Rising Sun, and Twin Peaks, the groundbreakingly strange television drama Lynch co-created with Mark Frost, made an especially big one. Standing as evidence is the Twin Peaks material made for the Japanese and no one else: the Lynch-directed Twin Peaks Georgia Coffee commercials, for instance, or the Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack on Laserdisc.

“What must the thirty-five million people who tuned in to the pilot episode of Twin Peaks in April 1990 have thought when they first witnessed the show’s opening credits?” writes musician Claire Nina Norelli in her book on Twin Peaks’ soundtrack. “This haunting music, coupled with images of rural terrain and industrialization, must have belied audiences’ expectations.”

That holds as true for audiences outside America as inside it: Norelli, who first saw the show in her “small, isolated hometown” of Perth, Australia, writes that “what really captured my attention during what would be the first of many forays into the world of Twin Peaks was its soundtrack, composed by Angelo Badalamenti.”

The Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack, which you can watch on Youtube, takes Badalamenti’s soundtrack (which Norelli credits with “strengthening the visual language” of the show, no mean feat given the innate strength of Lynch’s visions) and accompanies it with footage of the small town of Twin Peaks and its environs — or rather, footage of the locations around Washington state that Lynch and company used to craft the small town of Twin Peaks and its environs. Matt Humphrey of the Twin Peaks Podcast highlights the track “Laura Palmer’s Theme,” whose video “explores the train graveyard where they filmed the exteriors of Laura’s death location. Now, in the series, the interiors of the train were built on sets. In this video you can see the actual interior of the old trains. It’s pretty cool/gross.”

“From what I can tell,” Humphrey writes, “these Visual Soundtrack videos were taken in maybe 1992 by a Japanese film crew.” In some shots, he adds, “you can see the townsfolk staring.” Other shots bear traces of Twin Peaks’ popularity: “The Double R diner is already sporting the ‘Twin Peaks Cherry Pie’ sign, so I think it’s after the series’ run. However the town of North Bend is still in full Twin Peaks promotional mode as you can see some gift shops in the videos selling all sorts of memorabilia.” But Twin Peaks fans will especially enjoy the opening of the Visual Soundtrack, a CGI fly-through of the eponymous town complete with the aforementioned diner (coffee and cherry pie not included in the rendering), the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, and a logging truck. Seeing how it all compares to Lynch’s hand-drawn map from when he first pitched the show to ABC will be left as an exercise for the true fan.

Angelo Badalamenti Reveals How He and David Lynch Composed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Experimental Post-Punk Band Xiu Xiu Plays the Music from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Season of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japanese Coffee Commercials

Japanese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Cringe-Inducing Humor of The Office Explained with Philosophical Theories of Mind

in Comedy, Neuroscience, Photography, Television | March 8th, 2019

“I’m a friend first and a boss second,” says David Brent, middle manager at the Slough branch of paper company Wernham-Hogg. “Probably an entertainer third.” Those of us who’ve watched the original British run of The Office — and especially those of us who still watch it regularly — will remember that and many other of Brent’s pitiable declarations besides. As portrayed by the show’s co-creator Ricky Gervais, Brent constitutes both The Office’s comedic and emotional core, at once a fully realized character and someone we’ve all known in real life. His distinctive combination of social incompetence and an aggressive desperation to be liked provokes in us not just laughter but a more complex set of emotions as well, resulting in one expression above all others: the cringe.

“In David Brent, we have a character so invested in the performance of himself that he’s blocked his own access to others’ feelings.” So goes the analysis of Evan Puschak, a.k.a. the Nerdwriter, in his video interpreting the humor of The Office through philosophical theories of mind.

The elaborate friend-boss-entertainer song-and-dance Brent constantly puts on for his co-workers so occupies him that he lacks the ability or even the inclination to have any sense of what they’re thinking. “The irony is that Brent can’t see that a weak theory of mind always makes for a weak self-performance. You can’t brute force your preferred personality onto another’s consciousness: it takes two to build an identity.”

Central though Brent is to The Office, we laugh not just at what he says and does, but how the other characters (which Puschak places across a spectrum of ability to understand the minds of others) react — or fail to react — to what he says and does, how he reacts to their reactions, and so on. Mastery of the comedic effects of all this has kept the original Office effective more than fifteen years later, though its effect may not be entirely pleasurable: “A lot of people say that cringe humor like this is hard to watch,” says Puschak, “but in the same way that under our confidence, in theory of mind, lies an anxiety, I think that under our cringing there’s actually a deep feeling of relief.” When Brent and others fail to connect, their “body language speaks in a way that is totally transparent: in that moment the embarrassment is not only palpable, it’s palpably honest.” And it reminds us that — if we’re being honest — none of us are exactly mind-readers ourselves.

You can get the complete British run of The Office on Amazon here.

The Philosophy of Bill Murray: The Intellectual Foundations of His Comedic Persona

A Romp Through the Philosophy of Mind: A Free Online Course from Oxford

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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

When Fred Rogers and Francois Clemmons Broke Down Race Barriers on a Historic Episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1969)

in History, Life, Television | February 15th, 2019

Last year’s Fred Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, propelled François Clemmons—better known to generations of Mister Rogers Neighborhood viewers as Officer Clemmons—back into the international spotlight.

One of the most striking anecdotes in the doc concerns a 1969 episode in which Mister Rogers, who was white, invited Officer Clemmons, who is black, to join him in soaking his bare feet in a backyard baby pool on a hot summer’s day.

It was one of those giant leaps for mankind moments that passes itself off as a homey, fairly unremarkable step, though as Clemmons told his friend Karl Lindholm in a StoryCorps interview, Rogers understood the powerful message this gesture would send.

Likewise, his choice of Clemmons to embody a friendly cop for his television neighborhood, a part Clemmons, who played the role for 30 years, was initially hesitant to accept:

Fred came to me and said, “I have this idea, you could be a police officer.” That kind of stopped me in my tracks. I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers. Policemen were sicking police dogs and water hoses on people. And I really had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excited about being Officer Clemmons at all.

Rogers, who had met Clemmons in a Pittsburgh area church where the trained opera singer was performing, prevailed, stressing the impact such a positive portrayal of a black authority figure could have on the community.

Officer Clemmons, the first recurring black character on a children’s series, paved the way for the multiracial casts of Sesame Street and The Electric Company, also on PBS.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a song can also pack quite a wallop. It’s hard not to get choked up hearing Clemmons sing “There Are Many Ways to Say I Love You,” above, a tune he reprised in 1993, for his final appearance on the show.

Such sentiments are a natural fit in programs aimed at the preschool crowd, whose love of their families is reinforced at every turn, but it’s still unusual to see these feelings articulated so purely when the only people in sight are grown men.

Clemmons learned not to doubt Roger’s sincerity when he said, “I like you just the way you are.”

And Rogers grew to accept his friend’s sexual orientation, though this embrace came a bit less naturally. In an interview with Vanity Fair’s Chris Azzopardi, Clemmons was philosophical, recalling his “surrogate father’s” request to steer clear of gay clubs so as not to endanger the show’s wholesome image:

Sacrifice was a part of my destiny. In other words, I did not want to be a shame to my race. I didn’t want to be a scandal to the show. I didn’t want to hurt the man who was giving me so much, and I also knew the value as a black performer of having this show, this platform. Black actors and actresses—SAG and Equity—90 percent of them are not working. If you know that and here you are, on a national platform you’re gonna sabotage yourself?

I weighed this thing, the pros and the cons. And I thought, I not only have a national platform, I’m getting paid. I was also getting a promotion that I simply could not have afforded to pay for. Every time I did the show, and every time Fred took us across the country to do three, four, five personal appearances, my name was being written into somebody’s heart—some little kid who would grow up and say, “Oh, I remember him, I remember that he could sing, I remember that he was on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” I didn’t have the money to pay for that, but I was getting it free. There were so many things that I got back for that sacrifice that I kept my big mouth shut, kept my head down, kept my shoulder to the plough.

Students at Middlebury College, where Clemmons was a long time faculty presence, were well acquainted with the self-proclaimed “Divaman’s”’ flamboyant side:

Clemmons has added color and soul to the Middlebury College scene for nearly 25 years. As Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence and director of the Martin Luther King Spiritual Choir, he is known by many names: the divo, the maestro, the reverend, doctor-madam-honey-man, sportin’ life, and even black magic. He has played the role of professor, choirmaster, resident vocal soloist, advisor, confidant, and community cheerleader. Yet his purpose is singular: to share hope through song.

Listen to StoryCorps podcast episode #462 about Mister Rogers’ and Francois Clemmons’ famous foot bath, as well as an incident that took place five years prior where protesters staged a “wade in” at the “Whites Only” pool at St. Augustine, Florida’s Monson Motor Lodge.

Mister Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wynton Marsalis and Other Jazz Legends (1986)

Mr. Rogers Takes Breakdancing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. See her onstage in New York City on March 11 as host of Theater of the Apes book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domain. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch the Trailers for Tolkien and Catch-22, Two New Literary Films

in Film, Literature, Television | February 15th, 2019

For decades, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings wondered if the books could ever become a film. The Beatles and John Boorman both tried to get adaptations off the ground in the 1960s and 70s, and animator Ralph Bakshi came up with his own cinematic interpretation, if only a partial one, in 1978. But now we live in a world rich with Lord of the Rings and Lord of the Rings-related material on film, thanks to the efforts of director Peter Jackson and his collaborators on not just the adaptations of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, but three whole feature films bringing the relatively brief tale The Hobbit to the screen.

What remains for the Tolkien-inspired filmmaker today? None, so far, have proven brave enough to take on the likes of The Silmarillion, the forbiddingly mythopoeic work published a few years after the writer’s death. But the Finnish director Dome Karukoski, whose last picture told the story of male-erotica illustrator Tom of Finland, has found material in the writer’s life.

Going by the trailer above, Tolkien deals not just with the writing of The Lord of the Rings, described by star Nicholas Hoult as “a story about journeys, the journeys we take to prove ourselves,” about “adventures” and “potent magic, magic beyond anything anyone has ever felt before.”

It’s also, says Hoult-as-Tolkien, a story about “what it means to love, and to be loved.” That fits with another apparent storyline of Tolkien itself, that of the man who dreamed up Middle-Earth’s relationship with Edith Bratt, the girl he met as a teenager who would become his wife — not long after which he received the letter summoning him to France to fight in the First World War, where he managed to survive the Battle of the Somme. An equally skilled writer of another temperament might have produced an enduring novel of the war, but Tolkien, as his generations of readers know, went in another direction entirely. A generation later, Joseph Heller proved to be that skilled writer of a different temperament, and sixteen years after coming back from the Second World War, he produced Catch-22.

Heller’s novel has also made it to the screen a few times: Mike Nichols directed a feature-film adaptation in 1970, the pilot for a television series aired three years later, and now we await a Catch-22 miniseries that will air on Hulu this May. Christopher Abbott stars as Captain John Yossarian, the hapless bombardier with no aim in the war but to stay out of harm’s way, and George Clooney (also one of the series’ directors) as Lieutenant Scheisskopf, one of the book’s cast of highly memorable minor characters. The series’ six episodes should accommodate more of that cast — and more of the forms Heller’s elaborate satire takes in the novel — than a movie can. If, as a result, you need to consult Heller’s large-format handwritten outline for the book, by all means do — and have a look at Tolkien’s annotated map of Middle-Earth while you’re at it.

Discover J.R.R. Tolkien’s Personal Book Cover Designs for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Map of Middle-Earth Annotated by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read From The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkien Expressed a “Heartfelt Loathing” for Walt Disney and Refused to Let Disney Studios Adapt His Work

Joseph Heller’s Handwritten Outline for Catch-22, One of the Great Novels of the 20th Century

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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch The Journey, the New Ridley Scott Short Film Teased During the Super Bowl

in Film, Television | February 6th, 2019

Established in 1933, Turkish Airlines celebrated its 85th anniversary last year with a higher profile than ever before. Born in 1937, Ridley Scott turned 81 last year and has shown no decline whatsoever in his enthusiasm for filmmaking. This year found those two institutions brought together by another, the Super Bowl, which offered the occasion to air a thirty-second teaser for The Journey, a six-minute film commissioned by Turkish Airlines and directed by Scott. (The same game also, Open Culture readers will have noticed, featured a Burger King commercial with Andy Warhol eating a Whopper.) The visually rich story of one woman pursuing another to and through Istanbul, the short marks the first commercial the Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator director has made in well over a decade.

“I decided to go back and click into advertising,” Scott says in the behind-the-scenes video below. “I love the chase and the speed of the job.” And in this case the job was to show off the luxury of Turkish Airlines’ first-class cabins and also the city of Istanbul itself, which Scott had never visited before.

But on his first trip there, Istanbul impressed him with its harbor, its mosques, and surely many other of the elements of which The Journey makes use, including the airport. “The Istanbul airport was modern and efficient, European, and what first struck me is how foreign it did not feel,” writes American reporter Suzy Hansen in Notes on a Foreign Country of her own first visit to Istanbul, drawing a stark contrast with “the decrepit airport in New York I had just left.”

And Hansen had flown into Istanbul’s old airport, not the new one opened just last year and designed as the largest in the world. Whether The Journey will bring more business to Turkish Airlines’ flights into and out of it (the final shot finds our heroine en route to Bali) remains to be seen, especially since the Super Bowl teaser seemed to cause confusion about what was being sold. It nevertheless fits nicely into Scott’s acclaimed body of advertising work. In its early period came a 1974 bread commercial voted England’s favorite advertisement of all time; in its middle period, of course, came the 1984 Super Bowl spot that introduced the Apple Macintosh to the world. Given the energy Scott’s work in commercials and features still exudes, it feels somehow unsuitable to use the term “late period” at all.

Ridley Scott Demystifies the Art of Storyboarding (and How to Jumpstart Your Creative Project)

See Ridley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Advertisement of All Time

Ridley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Runner

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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols Creates a Short Film for NASA to Recruit New Astronauts (1977)

Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speaking to Children (1977)

Herbie Hancock’s Joyous Soundtrack for the Original Fat Albert TV Special (1969)

Watch the Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack Released Only in Japan: A New Way to Experience David Lynch’s Classic Show

The Cringe-Inducing Humor of The Office Explained with Philosophical Theories of Mind

When Fred Rogers and Francois Clemmons Broke Down Race Barriers on a Historic Episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1969)

Watch the Trailers for Tolkien and Catch-22, Two New Literary Films

Watch The Journey, the New Ridley Scott Short Film Teased During the Super Bowl

Essentials

Support Us

Free Courses

Free Movies

Free Language Lessons

Free eBooks

Free Audio Books

Free Textbooks

K-12 Resources

Free Art & Images

Free Music

Writing Tips

Archive

Personal Finance

Categories

Great Lectures

About Us

Great Recordings

Book Lists By

Syllabi

Favorite Movies

Archives

Search