Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel features many notable players: Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, and presiding above all, Ralph Fiennes as celebrated concierge Monsieur Gustave H. But it is Gustave’s domain, the titular alpine health resort, that figures most prominently in the film, transcending place, time, and political regime. Such an establishment could only exist within Anderson’s cinematic imagination, which dictates the manner in which he introduces it to his viewers. “It’s obviously a model,” says architect Michael Wyetzner in the video above. “It’s fake” — an adjective that, when applied to a Wes Anderson production, can only be a compliment.

Wyetzner surely means it that way, given how much interest he shows through the video in the details of the Grand Budapest Hotel as constructed and revealed, one set at a time, by Anderson and his collaborators. Envisioned as a kind of “French chateau growing out of the mountain,” the building incorporates a mansard roof, a “rusticated base” with the look of an ancient aqueduct, and Art Nouveau canopies of the kind still seen at the entrances of […]

My Name is called Disturbance…. — “Street Fighting Man”

More than two decades before German band the Scorpions blew their allegedly CIA-penned “Wind of Change” over the end of the Cold War; before the “hard rock Woodstock” in Moscow; before Bruce Springsteen rocked East Berlin and rang the “Chimes of Freedom,” another band took the stage behind the Iron Curtain: one not particularly well-known at the time for making geopolitical statements.

In 1967, the Rolling Stones recorded and released Between the Buttons and major hits “Ruby Tuesday” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” They tried to compete with the Beatles with stabs at psychedelia on Their Satanic Majesties Request. They didn’t record what is sometimes considered their most political song, “Street Fighting Man,” for another two years, and that song — with its options of street fighting or singing for a rock and roll band — has never been mistaken for a peace anthem.

It wasn’t peace the band courted in their original plan to play Moscow. “They started toying with the idea of performing in Moscow and becoming the most controversial rock […]

Though it may not be for everyone, the job of President of the United States of America does have its perks. Take, for example, the ability to screen any film you like at the White House: here on Open Culture, we’ve previously featured lists of movies watched by Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. But for Carter in particular, music seems to have been even more important than cinema. So explains John Chuldenko, stepson of that former president’s son Jack, in the episode of The 1600 Sessions above. In it, he tells of his rediscovery of an institution created under Nixon, greatly expanded under Carter, and packed away under Reagan: the White House Record Library.

“The Library, begun by First Lady Pat Nixon, was curated by a volunteer commission of noted music journalists, scholars, and other experts,” says the White House Historical Association. When it came time to update it at the end of the nineteen-seventies, writes Washingtonian’s Rob Brunner, “the selection process would be headed by John Hammond, a hugely influential figure who had signed Bob Dylan, […]

We expect that histories of famous figures will prune their lives, sand down rough edges, rewrite and revise awkward and inconvenient facts. What we may not expect – at least in the U.S. – is that decades of a famous person’s life will be redacted from the record. This is essentially what happened, however, to the biography of Helen Keller even before her death in 1968. Perhaps the main offender remains playwright William Gibson’s 1957 The Miracle Worker, adapted from the 1903 autobiography she wrote at 23. Ostensibly about Keller, the story centers instead, beginning with its title, on her teacher, Anne Sullivan.

The play (and 1962 film with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke reprising their stage parts), portrays Keller as a child, a role she was perpetually assigned by her critics throughout her adult life. She authored and published 14 books and dozens of essays during her 87 years, delivered hundreds of speeches, and maintained a friendship and correspondence with many important figures of the day. But in addition to the usual sexism, she had to contend with those who […]

Many emotional moments were made at this year’s big awards shows. The Slap, amidst so many historic wins; poignant tributes and criminal omissions; former actor-turned-wartime-hero-president Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech, the return of Louis C.K…. Everybody’s got a lot to process. Pop culture can feel like a St. Vitus dance. One half-expects celebrities to start dropping from exhaustion. But then there’s Hans Zimmer’s Oscar acceptance speech, delivered in a white terry bathrobe, a miniature Oscar statuette in his pocket, a big goofy, 2 a.m. grin on his face. The man could not have looked more relaxed, winning his second Oscar 30 years after The Lion King.

Was he still in lockdown? No. On the night in question, Zimmer was in a hotel in Amsterdam, on tour with his band. “His category was among the eight that were handed out before the televised broadcast began,” Yahoo reports, “but he made sure his fans knew just how thrilled he was.” Zimmer posted a mini-acceptance speech to social media. “Who else has pajamas like this?” he joked to the other musicians gathered in […]