Metropolis Remixed: Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist Sci-Fi Classic Gets Fully Colorized and Dubbed

in Film, Sci Fi | October 2nd, 2019

Those of us who grew up with late-night cable tele­vi­sion will have a few mem­o­ries of hap­pen­ing upon old movies that did­n’t look quite right. Usu­al­ly drawn from the 1940s or 50s, and some­times from the depths of gen­res like sci­ence-fic­tion and hor­ror, these pic­tures had under­gone the process of col­oriza­tion in hopes of increas­ing their appeal to a gen­er­a­tion unused to black-and-white imagery. Alas, even the most high-pro­file col­oriza­tion projects back then tend­ed to look washed-out, with life­less­ly pale faces lost among wash­es of green and brown. On the tech­ni­cal lev­el col­oriza­tion has improved in the decades since, though on the artis­tic lev­el its usage remains, to say the least, a sus­pect endeav­or.

But what if the film cho­sen for col­oriza­tion was, rather than some piece of dri­ve-in schlock, one of the acknowl­edged mas­ter­pieces of ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma? Metrop­o­lis­Remix comes as one espe­cial­ly intrigu­ing (if also star­tling) answer to that ques­tion, bring­ing as it does Fritz Lang’s huge­ly influ­en­tial 1927 work of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist sci-fi from not just the world of black-and-white film into col­or but from that of silent film into sound.

To add col­or its mak­ers used DeOld­ify, “a deep learn­ing-based project for col­oriz­ing and restor­ing old images (and video!)” pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture when we post­ed this col­orized footage of Paris, New York, and Havana from the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. You can get a taste of the Metrop­o­lis­Remix view­ing expe­ri­ence from this trail­er.

In its entire­ty this ver­sion of Metrop­o­lis runs just over two hours, quite a bit short­er than the film’s most recent restora­tion, 2010’s The Com­plete Metrop­o­lis. The dif­fer­ence owes in large part to the lack of dia­logue-con­vey­ing inter­ti­tles, which have been ren­dered unnec­es­sary by a full-cast Eng­lish-lan­guage dub that includes music and sound effects. Not every­one, of course, will approve of this “fan mod­ern­iza­tion,” as its cre­ators describe it. Phil Hall at Cin­e­ma Crazed prefers to call it “the most reck­less­ly bad idea for a film since All This and World War II, the infa­mous 1976 non­sense that unit­ed Sec­ond World War news­reel footage with most­ly unsat­is­fac­to­ry cov­er ver­sions of Bea­t­les music.” But the sheer brazen­ness of Metrop­o­lis­Remix nev­er­the­less impress­es — and some­how, Lang and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ vision of an indus­tri­al art-deco dystopia sur­vives.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

H.G. Wells Pans Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis in a 1927 Movie Review: It’s “the Sil­li­est Film”

10 Great Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Nos­fer­atu to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

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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The First Music Streaming Service Was Invented in 1881: Discover the Théâtrophone

in History, Technology | October 2nd, 2019

Every liv­ing adult has wit­nessed enough tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment in their life­time to mar­vel at just how much has changed, and dig­i­tal stream­ing and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions hap­pen to be areas where the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary change seems to have tak­en place. We take for grant­ed that the present resem­bles the past not at all, and that the future will look unimag­in­ably dif­fer­ent. So the nar­ra­tive of lin­ear progress tells us. But that sto­ry is nev­er as tri­umphant­ly sim­ple as it seems.

In one salient coun­terex­am­ple, we find that not only did livestream­ing music and news exist in the­o­ry long before the inter­net, but it exist­ed in actu­al practice—at the very dawn of record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, tele­pho­ny, and gen­er­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. First devel­oped in France in 1881 by inven­tor Clement Ader, who called his sys­tem the Théâtro­phone, the device allowed users to expe­ri­ence “the trans­mis­sion of music and oth­er enter­tain­ment over a tele­phone line,” notes the site Bob’s Old Phones, “using very sen­si­tive micro­phones of [Ader’s] own inven­tion and his own receivers.”

The pre-radio tech­nol­o­gy was ahead of its time in many ways, as Michael Der­van explains at The Irish Times. The Théâtro­phone “could trans­mit two-chan­nel, mul­ti-micro­phone relays of the­atre and opera over phone lines for lis­ten­ing on head­phones. The use of dif­fer­ent sig­nals for the two ears cre­at­ed a stereo effect.” Users sub­scribed to the ser­vice, and it proved pop­u­lar enough to receive an entry in the 1889 edi­tion of The Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer ref­er­ence guide, which defined it as “a tele­phone by which one can have soupçons of the­atri­cal decla­ma­tion for half a franc.”

In 1896 “the Belle Epoque pop artist Jules Cheret immor­tal­ized the the­at­ro­phone,” writes Tanya Basu at Men­tal Floss, “in a lith­o­graph fea­tur­ing a woman in a yel­low dress, grin­ning as she pre­sum­ably lis­tened to an opera feed.” Vic­tor Hugo got to try it out. “It’s very strange,” he wrote. “It starts with two ear muffs on the wall, and we hear the opera; we change ear­muffs and hear the French The­atre, Coquelin. And we change again and hear the Opera Comique. The chil­dren and I were delight­ed.”

Though The Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer also called it “the lat­est thing to catch [Parisians’] ears and their cen­times,” the inno­va­tion had already by that time spread else­where in Europe. Inven­tor Tivador Puskas cre­at­ed a “stream­ing” sys­tem in Budapest called Tele­fon Her­mon­do (Tele­phone Her­ald), Bob’s Old Phones points out, “which broad­cast news and stock mar­ket infor­ma­tion over tele­phone lines.” Unlike Ader’s sys­tem, sub­scribers could “call in to the tele­phone switch­board and be con­nect­ed to the broad­cast of their choice. The sys­tem was quite suc­cess­ful and was wide­ly report­ed over­seas.”

The mech­a­nism was, of course, quite dif­fer­ent from dig­i­tal stream­ing, and quite lim­it­ed by our stan­dards, but the basic deliv­ery sys­tem was sim­i­lar enough. A third such ser­vice worked a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly. The Elec­tro­phone sys­tem, formed in Lon­don in 1884, com­bined its pre­de­ces­sors’ ideas: broad­cast­ing both news and musi­cal enter­tain­ment. Play­back options were expand­ed, with both head­phones and a speak­er-like mega­phone attach­ment.

Addi­tion­al­ly, users had a micro­phone so that they could “talk to the Cen­tral Office and request dif­fer­ent pro­grams.” The addi­tion of inter­ac­tiv­i­ty came at a pre­mi­um. “The Elec­tro­phone ser­vice was expen­sive,” writes Der­van, “£5 a year at a time when that sum would have cov­ered a cou­ple months rent.” Addi­tion­al­ly, “the expe­ri­ence was com­mu­nal rather than soli­tary.” Sub­scribers would gath­er in groups to lis­ten, and “some of the pho­tographs” of these ses­sions resem­ble “images of addicts in an old-style opi­um den”—or of Vic­to­ri­ans gath­ered at a séance.

The com­pa­ny lat­er gave recu­per­at­ing WWI ser­vice­men access to the ser­vice, which height­ened its pro­file. But these ear­ly livestream­ing services—if we may so call them—were not com­mer­cial­ly viable, and “radio killed the ven­ture off in the 1920s” with its uni­ver­sal acces­si­bil­i­ty and appeal to adver­tis­ers and gov­ern­ments. This seem­ing evo­lu­tion­ary dead end might have been a dis­tant ances­tor of stream­ing live con­certs and events, though no one could have fore­seen it at the time. No one save sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers.

Edward Bellamy’s 1888 utopi­an nov­el Look­ing Back­ward imag­ined a device very like the Théâtro­phone in his vision of the year 2000. And in 1909, E.M. Forster drew on ear­ly stream­ing ser­vices and oth­er ear­ly telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions advances for his vision­ary short sto­ry “The Machine Stops,” which extrap­o­lat­ed the more iso­lat­ing ten­den­cies of the tech­nol­o­gy to pre­dict, as play­wright Neil Duffield remarks, “the inter­net in the days before even radio was a mass medi­um.”

via Ted Gioia/The Irish Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Inter­net in 8 Min­utes

Hear the First Record­ing of the Human Voice (1860)

How an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Monk Invent­ed the First Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment

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

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19th-Century Skeleton Alarm Clock Reminded People Daily of the Shortness of Life: An Introduction to the Memento Mori

in Art, History, Life | October 2nd, 2019

Vic­to­ri­an cul­ture can seem grim and even ghoul­ish to us youth-obsessed, death-deny­ing 21st cen­tu­ry mod­erns. The tra­di­tion of death pho­tog­ra­phy, for exam­ple, both fas­ci­nates and repels us, espe­cial­ly por­trai­ture of deceased chil­dren. But the prac­tice “became increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar,” notes the BBC, as “Vic­to­ri­an nurs­eries were plagued by measles, diph­the­ria, scar­let fever, rubella—all of which could be,” and too often were, “fatal.”

Adults did not fare much bet­ter when it came to the epi­dem­ic spread of killer dis­eases. Sur­round­ed inescapably by death, Vic­to­ri­ans coped by invest­ing their world with totemic sym­bols, cul­tur­al arti­facts known as memen­to mori, mean­ing “remem­ber, you must die.” Tuber­cu­lo­sis, cholera, influen­za… at any moment, one might take ill and waste away, and there would like­ly be lit­tle med­ical sci­ence could do about it.

Per­haps the best approach, then, was an accep­tance of death while in the bloom of health, in order to not waste the moment and to learn to pay atten­tion to what mat­tered while one could. Memen­to mori draw­ings, paint­ings, jew­el­ry, pho­tographs, and trin­kets have pop­u­lat­ed Euro­pean cul­tur­al his­to­ry for cen­turies; death as an ever-present com­pan­ion, not to be hid­den away and feared but solemn­ly, respect­ful­ly giv­en its due.

Or maybe not so respect­ful­ly, as the case may be. Some of these nov­el­ties, like the skele­ton alarm clock at the top, look more like they belong at the bot­tom of a fish tank than a prop­er par­lor man­tle. “Pre­sum­ably when the alarm went off,” writes Alli­son Meier at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “the skele­ton would shake its bones.” Wake up, life is short, you could die at any time. “Part of the col­lec­tions of Sci­ence Muse­um, Lon­don, it’s believed to be of Eng­lish ori­gin and date between 1840 and 1900.”

The Tim Bur­ton-esque tchotchke appeared in a 2014 British Library exhib­it called Ter­ror and Won­der: The Goth­ic Imag­i­na­tion, with many oth­er such objects of vary­ing degrees of artistry: “200 objects from a span of 250 years, all cen­tered on the Goth­ic tra­di­tion in art, lit­er­a­ture, music, fash­ion, and most recent­ly film.” Memen­to mori arti­facts offer vis­cer­al reminders that real, dai­ly con­fronta­tions with dis­ease and death were “at the base of much of Goth­ic lit­er­a­ture and art.”

Where we now tend to read the Goth­ic as pri­mar­i­ly reflec­tive of social, cul­tur­al, and reli­gious anx­i­eties, the preva­lence of memen­to mori in Euro­pean homes both low and high (such as Mary Queen of Scots’ skull watch, in an 1896 illus­tra­tion above) shows us just how much the gloomy strain of think­ing that became the mod­ern hor­ror genre derives from a desire to con­front mor­tal­i­ty head on, so to speak, and find­ing that look­ing death in the face brings on ancient uncan­ny dread as much as healthy gal­lows humor and sto­ic, stiff-upper-lip reck­on­ing with the ulti­mate fact of life.

via Lind­sey Fitzhar­ris

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

Cel­e­brate The Day of the Dead with The Clas­sic Skele­ton Art of José Guadalupe Posa­da

Old Books Bound in Human Skin Found in Har­vard Libraries (and Else­where in Boston)

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

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Watch Queen Rehearse & Meticulously Prepare for Their Legendary 1985 Live Aid Performance

in Music | October 1st, 2019

It seems no small irony that lean, late-sev­en­ties and eight­ies New Wave bands like U2, Depeche Mode, and the Cure, who made lega­cy sta­di­um rock acts like Queen seem out­mod­ed, went on to become mas­sive-sell­ing sta­di­um lega­cy acts them­selves. The musi­cal cri­tique of 70’s rock excess­es found its most pop­u­lar expres­sion in bands that took a lot from Fred­die Mer­cury and com­pa­ny: flam­boy­ant sex­u­al flu­id­i­ty, spec­tac­u­lar light shows, raw emo­tion­al con­fes­sion­al­ism, stri­dent­ly sen­ti­men­tal, fist-pump­ing anthems…

Yet in the eight­ies, a “wide-sweep­ing change in musi­cal tastes” dis­placed Queen’s reign on the charts, writes Les­ley-Ann Jones in Mer­cury: An Inti­mate Biog­ra­phy of Fred­die Mer­cury. They were “con­found­ing­ly on the wane” and “were begin­ning to feel that they’d had their day. A per­ma­nent split was in the cards. They’d talked about it.” But it was not to be, thanks to Live Aid, the near-mytho­log­i­cal July 13, 1985 per­for­mance at Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um. After that gig, remem­bers Queen key­boardist Spike Edney, “Queen found that their whole world had changed.”

Sud­den­ly, after their short, 20-minute day­light set (see the video at the bot­tom), they were again the biggest band on the plan­et. “Queen smoked ‘em,” as Dave Grohl puts it. “They walked away being the great­est band you’d ever seen in your life, and it was unbe­liev­able.” The sen­ti­ment was uni­ver­sal­ly echoed by every­one from Elton John to Bowie to Bono to Paul McCart­ney, all of them upstaged that day. “It has been repeat­ed ad nau­se­am,” writes Jones, “that Queen’s per­for­mance was the most thrilling, the most mov­ing, the most mem­o­rable, the most enduring—surpassing as it did the efforts of their great­est rivals.”

The band, how­ev­er, was “sur­prised that every­one was sur­prised,” says Edney. “They were vet­er­ans at sta­di­um gigs… this was their nat­ur­al habi­tat.” Queen “could prac­ti­cal­ly do this stuff in their sleep.” Mix­ing his metaphors, Edney also reveals just how hard the band worked to remain the con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als they were: “to them, it was anoth­er day at the office.” As such, they put in their time to make absolute­ly cer­tain that they would be in top form. “They booked out the 400-seat Shaw The­atre, near King’s Cross train sta­tion in Lon­don,” notes Mar­tin Chilton at Udis­cov­er­mu­sic, “and spent a week hon­ing their five-song set,” plan­ning every sin­gle part of it to per­fec­tion.

Live Aid orga­niz­er Bob Geld­of had asked bands not to debut new mate­r­i­al but play fan favorites. Edney was “stunned to hear cer­tain artists belt­ing out their lat­est sin­gle.” But Queen took Geldof’s “mes­sage to heart,” putting togeth­er a care­ful­ly curat­ed med­ley of their biggest hits. In the video at the top of the post, see the band dis­cuss this behind-the-scenes process with an inter­view­er before going onstage in front of a crowd of “the 72,000 fans who would be at Wembley—and the esti­mat­ed 1.9 bil­lion peo­ple watch­ing on tele­vi­sion from 130 coun­tries around the world.”

In answer to a ques­tion about going onstage with­out their usu­al spec­tac­u­lar stage and light show, or even time for a sound check before their set, Bri­an May replies, “it all comes down to whether you can play or not, real­ly, which is nice, in a way, because I think there’s prob­a­bly an ele­ment who think that groups like us can’t do it with­out the extrav­a­gant back­drop.” Who­ev­er he might have been refer­ring to, his “We’ll see” sounds supreme­ly con­fi­dent.

The band was metic­u­lous­ly pre­pared. After the inter­view, we see rehearsal footage of near­ly their full set, begin­ning with “Radio Ga Ga,” a song whose cho­rus dur­ing the live event pro­duced what was described as “the note heard around the world.” (See it above.) After their incred­i­ble per­for­mance May sound­ed much more mod­est, even self-effac­ing. “The rest of us played OK, but Fred­die went out there and took it to anoth­er lev­el. It wasn’t just Queen fans. He con­nect­ed with every­one. I’d nev­er seen any­thing like that in my life.”

The per­for­mance is all the more remark­able for the fact that Queen had been shunned just the pre­vi­ous year for break­ing the boy­cott and play­ing in South Africa, for noble but mis­un­der­stood rea­sons at the time. They were con­sid­er­ing call­ing it qui­ets, but the pres­sures they were under seemed only to gal­va­nize them into what every­one remem­bers as their great­est show ever—”Queen’s ulti­mate moment,” writes Jones, “towards which they had been build­ing their entire career.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 13, 1985)

A Stun­ning Live Con­cert Film of Queen Per­form­ing in Mon­tre­al, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored to Per­fec­tion (1981)

Watch Queen’s Drag­tas­tic “I Want to Break Free” Video: It Was More Than Amer­i­ca & MTV Could Han­dle (1984)

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

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A 900-Page Pre-Pantone Guide to Color from 1692: A Complete Digital Scan

in Art, Books | October 1st, 2019

Human beings got along per­fect­ly well for hun­dreds of mil­len­nia with­out stan­dard­ized tax­onomies of col­or, but they didn’t do so in a glob­al­ly con­nect­ed cul­ture full of logos, brands, and 24/7 screens. It’s arguable whether the world as we now see it would have been pos­si­ble with­out monop­o­lis­tic col­or sys­tems like Pan­tone. They may cir­cum­scribe the visu­al world and dic­tate col­or from above. But they also enable inter­na­tion­al design prin­ci­ples and visu­al lan­guages that trans­late eas­i­ly every­where.

These cir­cum­stances did not yet exist in 1692, when Dutch artist A. Boogert cre­at­ed a huge, almost 900-page book on col­or, Traité des couleurs ser­vant à la pein­ture à l’eau. But they were slow­ly com­ing into being, thanks to stud­ies by philoso­pher-sci­en­tists like Isaac New­ton.

Boogert’s book took enlight­en­ment work on optics in a more rig­or­ous design direc­tion than any of his con­tem­po­raries, antic­i­pat­ing a num­ber of influ­en­tial books on col­or to come in the fol­low­ing cen­turies, such as the art his­to­ry-mak­ing stud­ies by Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe and a book on col­or used by Charles Dar­win dur­ing his Bea­gle voy­age.

Boogert’s exhaus­tive study includes hand­writ­ten notes and descrip­tions and hun­dreds of hand-paint­ed col­or swatch­es. This above-and-beyond effort was not, how­ev­er, made for sci­en­tif­ic or indus­tri­al pur­pos­es but as a guide for artists, show­ing how to mix water­col­ors to make every col­or in the spec­trum. The author even includes a com­pre­hen­sive unit on whites, grays, and blacks. How much his­tor­i­cal influ­ence did Boogert’s text have on the devel­op­ment of stan­dard­ized col­or sys­tems, we might won­der? Hard­ly any at all. Its sin­gle copy, notes Colos­sal, “was prob­a­bly seen by very few eyes.”

The obscure book dis­ap­peared in the archives of the Bib­lio­thèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France. That is, until its dis­cov­ery recent­ly by Medieval book his­to­ri­an Erik Kwakkel, who post­ed scans on his Tum­blr and trans­lat­ed some of the intro­duc­tion from the orig­i­nal Dutch. Since then, the com­plete text has come online: 898 pages of high-res­o­lu­tion dig­i­tal scans at the Bib­lio­thèque Méjanes site. (Go to this page, click on the pic­ture, then click on the arrows in the low­er right side of the page to move through the book.)

If you read Dutch, all the bet­ter to appre­ci­ate this rare his­toric arti­fact. But you don’t need to under­stand A. Boogert’s expla­na­tions on water­col­or tech­nique to be stag­gered by the incred­i­ble amount of work that went into this ear­ly, over­looked labor of love for sys­tem­at­ic approach­es to col­or. Enter the full text here.

h/t David Hale

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vision­ary 115-Year-Old Col­or The­o­ry Man­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colour, the 19th-Cen­tu­ry “Col­or Dic­tio­nary” Used by Charles Dar­win (1814)

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

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Quentin Tarantino Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

in Film | October 1st, 2019

When Quentin Taran­ti­no debuted in 1992 with Reser­voir Dogs, and even more so when he fol­lowed it up with the cin­e­mat­ic phe­nom­e­non that was Pulp Fic­tion, the view­ers most dubi­ous about the young auteur’s cul­tur­al stay­ing pow­er dis­missed his movies as ele­va­tions of style over sub­stance. Whether or not Taran­ti­no has con­vert­ed all his ear­ly crit­ics over the past 27 years, he’s cer­tain­ly demon­strat­ed that style can con­sti­tute a sub­stance of its own.

Even many who did­n’t care for his lat­est pic­ture, this year’s Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, nev­er­the­less expressed grat­i­tude at the release of a lav­ish, large-scale film packed full of ideas, ref­er­ences, set pieces, and jokes — an increas­ing­ly rare achieve­ment, or even aspi­ra­tion, among non-Taran­ti­no film­mak­ers. How does he do it? The Direc­tor’s Chair pro­file video above, and the accom­pa­ny­ing Stu­dio Binder essay by Matt Vasil­i­auskas, iden­ti­fies the essen­tial ele­ments that con­sti­tute the Taran­tin­ian style and Taran­tin­ian sub­stance.

In the video Taran­ti­no dis­cuss­es his process: “I was put on Earth to face the blank page,” to bring forth ideas from with­in and place them in new genre con­texts, to write one line of dia­logue after anoth­er and feel the sur­prise as the script takes turns unex­pect­ed even to him. Every­thing, from con­ver­sa­tions to action scenes to expan­sive wide shots, plays out in his head before he shoots the first frame: “Before I make the movie, I watch the movie.” And like all auteurs, he makes the movie he wants to see: “I don’t think the audi­ence is this dumb per­son low­er than me,” he has said. “I am the audi­ence.”

A film­mak­er look­ing to fol­low Taran­ti­no’s exam­ple must do the fol­low­ing: “Keep it per­son­al,” using expe­ri­ences they’ve actu­al­ly had or emo­tions they’ve actu­al­ly felt, even if they present them fil­tered through “crazy genre world.” “Struc­ture like a nov­el,” with the will­ing­ness to break free of chrono­log­i­cal order. “Think like an actor,” since you’ll have to work long and hard with them. Shoot “Hong Kong action sequences,” two or three moves at a time, so that you can organ­i­cal­ly change and incor­po­rate what hap­pens along the way. “Keep music in mind,” whether that means exist­ing songs that evoke cer­tain times, places, and moods, or orig­i­nal scores like that which Taran­ti­no com­mis­sioned for The Hate­ful Eight from Ennio Mor­ri­cone.

Mor­ri­cone is best known for his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Taran­ti­no’s hero Ser­gio Leone, and like Leone and “all direc­tors work­ing at the top of their game,” writes Vasil­i­auskas, Taran­ti­no “uses the cam­era as his most pow­er­ful sto­ry­telling imple­ment,” espe­cial­ly when shoot­ing wide. “Whether it’s the Bride bat­tling the Crazy 88 gang in Kill Bill or Djan­go sur­vey­ing a burned-out home, Taran­ti­no under­stands the pow­er of the wide-shot to not only cre­ate ten­sion, but to uti­lize the envi­ron­ment in reveal­ing the desires of his char­ac­ters.” But he also gets seri­ous aes­thet­ic and emo­tion­al mileage out of extreme close-ups, crash zooms, and point-of-view shots from inside the trunk of a car (or peri­od equiv­a­lents there­of).

Above all, this for­mer Man­hat­tan Beach video-store clerk “absorbs movies,” and has by his own admis­sion stolen from more films than most of us will watch in our lives. But none of this makes pre­dictable what Taran­ti­no will draw from his real-life and film­go­ing expe­ri­ences and put on the screen next: “I should throw them for a loop,” he says in an inter­view clip includ­ed in the video. He means his audi­ence, of course, but before he can throw us for a loop, he has to do it to him­self. And what­ev­er thrills and sur­pris­es Taran­ti­no will, as we’ve seen over the course of ten fea­ture films so far, thrill and sur­prise us even more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Steals from Oth­er Movies: A Video Essay

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Cre­ates Sus­pense in His Favorite Scene, the Ten­sion-Filled Open­ing Moments of Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds

The Films of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Watch Video Essays on Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dogs, Kill Bill & More

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

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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The Japanese Fairy Tale Series: The Illustrated Books That Introduced Western Readers to Japanese Tales (1885–1922)

in Art, Books | September 30th, 2019

Every­one in Japan knows the sto­ry of Momo­taro, the boy born from a peach who goes on to defeat the maraud­ing ogres known as oni. The old­est known writ­ten ver­sions of Momo­taro’s adven­tures date back to the 17th cen­tu­ry, but even then the tale almost cer­tain­ly had a long his­to­ry of pas­sage through oral tra­di­tion. And though Momo­taro may well be the best-known Japan­ese folk hero, his sto­ry is just one in a body of folk­lore vast enough that few, even among avid enthu­si­asts, can claim to have mas­tered it in its entire­ty.

That vast body of Japan­ese folk­lore has pro­vid­ed no small amount of inspi­ra­tion to comics, ani­ma­tion, and the oth­er mod­ern forms of sto­ry­telling that have brought many of these folk­tales to wider audi­ences — even glob­al audi­ences, a project that began in the late 19th cen­tu­ry.

Their West­ern pop­u­lar­iza­tion has no greater fig­ure­head than Laf­ca­dio Hearn. A Greek-British writer who moved to Japan in 1890, Hearn lat­er became a nat­u­ral­ized Japan­ese cit­i­zen and wrote such books as Japan­ese Fairy Tales, Kwaidan: Sto­ries and Stud­ies of Strange Things, and The Boy Who Drew Cats.

That last title, an Eng­lish ver­sion of a Japan­ese folk­tale about a child who van­quish­es a gob­lin rat in a monastery by draw­ing its nat­ur­al ene­mies on the monastery walls, was also adapt­ed in a series of beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed crêpe-paper chil­dren’s books put out by an enter­pris­ing Japan­ese pub­lish­er named Take­jiro Hasegawa. “In twen­ty vol­umes, pub­lished between 1885 and 1922, the Fairy Tale series intro­duced tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese folk tales, first to read­ers of Eng­lish and French, and lat­er to read­ers of Ger­man, Span­ish, Por­tuguese, Dutch, and Russ­ian,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review’s Christo­pher DeCou.

Want­i­ng to mod­el the books on Japan­ese antholo­gies pub­lished in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, Hasegawa hired tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese wood­block print­ers like Kobyashi Eitaku, Suzu­ki Kason, and Chikanobu to illus­trate them. And, for the trans­la­tion work, he drew on the local mis­sion­ary com­mu­ni­ty to which his own Eng­lish edu­ca­tion had put him in con­tact. “The ear­li­est vol­umes in the Japan­ese Fairy Tale Series real­ly were very much a prod­uct of Tokyo’s close-knit expat com­mu­ni­ty,” DeCou writes. A grow­ing West­ern inter­est in Japon­isme, as well as “Hasewaga’s wheel­ing and deal­ing at World’s Fairs” and the good sense to bring the famous Hearn aboard the project, made the Japan­ese Fairy Tale Series into an endur­ing inter­na­tion­al suc­cess.

“At a time when pub­lish­ing hous­es in Lon­don and New York dom­i­nat­ed the mar­ket,” DeCou writes, “Hasegawa’s press in Tokyo was pro­duc­ing equal­ly beau­ti­ful vol­umes using tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese craft­work and broad­cast­ing Japan’s cul­ture to the world.” You can see more pages of the Japan­ese Fairy Tale Books at the Pub­lic Domain Review, and com­plete dig­i­ti­za­tions at the site of book deal­er George Bax­ley as well as at the Pub­lic Library of Cincin­nati and Hamil­ton Coun­ty and the Inter­net Archive. Like Hearn, Hasegawa under­stood that Japan­ese folk­lore had the appeal to cross tem­po­ral and cul­tur­al bound­aries. But could even he have imag­ined that the very books in which he pub­lished them would still draw such fas­ci­na­tion more than a cen­tu­ry lat­er?

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Splen­did Hand-Scroll Illus­tra­tions of The Tale of Gen­jii, The First Nov­el Ever Writ­ten (Cir­ca 1120)

A Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed 1925 Japan­ese Edi­tion of Aesop’s Fables by Leg­endary Children’s Book Illus­tra­tor Takeo Takei

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Japan­ese Folk­lore Mon­sters Is Now Open

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

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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Robert Johnson Finally Gets an Obituary in The New York Times 81 Years After His Death

in Music | September 30th, 2019

Whether you see it as a good faith effort to cor­rect past mis­takes or a bid to dis­tract from more recent fumbles—the New York Times’ “Over­looked” obit­u­ary series has done its read­ers a ser­vice by recov­er­ing the bios of “remark­able peo­ple whose deaths… went unre­port­ed in The Times.” Most of the pro­files are of peo­ple who were pub­lic fig­ures at the time of their death. Some had achieved inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, like Alan Tur­ing, and oth­ers were roy­al­ty, like Rani, queen of the king­dom of Jhan­si in North­ern India and one of the lead­ers of a revolt against the British in 1857.

The lat­est “Over­looked” is an odd­i­ty. Its sub­ject may be the most famous per­son of all to get the belat­ed Times obit since the series began. Robert Johnson’s alleged deal with the dev­il at the cross­roads has become as foun­da­tion­al to U.S. mythol­o­gy as John Henry’s ham­mer or George Washington’s cher­ry tree.

At the very same time, John­son may be the most obscure fig­ure to appear in “Over­looked.” And the per­son about whom the least is known. “What is known” about him, writes the Times, “can be sum­ma­rized on a post­card.”

He is thought to have been born out of wed­lock in May 1911 in Mis­sis­sip­pi and raised there. School and cen­sus records indi­cat­ed he lived for stretch­es in Ten­nessee and Arkansas. He took up gui­tar at a young age and became a trav­el­ing musi­cian, even­tu­al­ly glimps­ing the bus­tle of New York City. But he died in Mis­sis­sip­pi [in 1938], with just over two dozen lit­tle-noticed record­ed songs to his name.

There’s more to the sto­ry, but it gets hard to tell where the his­tor­i­cal record ends and the mythol­o­gy begins. Still, the paper of record can be for­giv­en for over­look­ing John­son the first time around. Aside from a small num­ber of Delta blues fans, most of whom actu­al­ly lived in the Delta, hard­ly any­one knew who Robert John­son was in life. By the time news of his mojo start­ed to spread out­side Mis­sis­sip­pi, it was too late. John Ham­mond sought to bring him Carnegie Hall in 1938, the year of his death. Alan Lomax looked to record him 1941, only to find out he was gone.

His fame spread in the 1960s when British Blues inva­sion­ists picked up on his genius, cit­ed him as a pri­ma­ry influ­ence, and cov­ered and adapt­ed his songs. Bob Dylan wrote in his mem­oir Chron­i­cles: Vol­ume One that “hun­dreds of lines” of his derive from Johnson’s influ­ence. The “advent of rock ’n’ roll would turn John­son into a fig­ure of leg­end,” among blues and rock and roll fans in the know. The leg­end, and recog­ni­tion of John­son’s great­ness, explod­ed in sub­se­quent decades.

John­son was induct­ed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its first cer­e­mo­ny in 1986. His posthu­mous Com­plete Record­ings won a Gram­my in 1991. Many more hon­ors fol­lowed, includ­ing a Gram­my life­time achieve­ment award. By 2003, Rolling Stone could call John­son “the undis­put­ed king of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta blues” and place him at #5 on their list of 100 great­est gui­tarists of all time. How is it pos­si­ble that an obscure­ly minor fig­ure in blues his­to­ry became a found­ing grand­fa­ther of rock and roll?

“The chasm between the man John­son was and the myth he became,” the Times admits “has marooned his­to­ri­ans and con­sci­en­tious lis­ten­ers for more than a half-cen­tu­ry.” John­son’s sto­ry “is no more or less than the hand­i­work of the coun­try in which it was writ­ten; a coun­try where the lega­cy of African-Amer­i­cans has often been shaped by oth­ers.” But those oth­ers have had good rea­son for appro­pri­at­ing John­son’s infer­nal sto­ry and unique musi­cal sig­na­tures.

A new Net­flix doc­u­men­tary ReMas­tered: Dev­il at the Cross­roads (see the trail­er above) explores in inter­views with rock and blues greats how John­son became for­ev­er linked to a myth that stood in for the real cir­cum­stances of his short, dif­fi­cult life. (He can be thought of as the found­ing mem­ber of rock­’s trag­i­cal­ly elite “27 club.”) Actu­al deal with the dev­il or no, “there was cer­tain­ly a lot of dare­dev­il­ry in his flout­ing of stan­dard tem­pos and har­mon­ics,” writes Rolling Stone. “His records are breath­tak­ing dis­plays of melod­ic devel­op­ment and acute brawn.”

While the Times, and most every­one else, passed over him in life, in death, he has more than received his due from musi­cians and fans. John­son has not been over­looked so much as maybe over­rep­re­sent­ed in the his­to­ry of the blues. Find out why in his belat­ed Times obit­u­ary, in the hun­dreds of trib­utes to him writ­ten and record­ed since his death 81 years ago, and by immers­ing your­self in his own haunt­ing record­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

The His­to­ry of the Blues in 50 Riffs: From Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son (1928) to Joe Bona­mas­sa (2009)

The Leg­end of Blues­man Robert John­son Ani­mat­ed

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

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The Beatles Release the First Ever Video for “Here Comes the Sun”

in Music | September 27th, 2019

It took a half cen­tu­ry. But bet­ter late than nev­er. Exact­ly 50 years after the release of Abbey Road, the Bea­t­les have released the first offi­cial video of “Here Comes the Sun.” The clip, writes NME, “set to a new stereo mix of the George Har­ri­son com­po­si­tion, cap­tures a gor­geous sun­rise illu­mi­nat­ing Abbey Road Stu­dios’ Stu­dio Two, where the Fab Four record­ed most of the leg­endary album.” Lat­er today, the Bea­t­les will release the 50th anniver­sary reis­sue of Abbey Road. It comes in CD and CD/Blu Ray ver­sions.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lost Gui­tar Solo for “Here Comes the Sun” by George Har­ri­son, Dis­cov­ered by George Mar­tin

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

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Free: A Professionally-Read Version of the Ukraine Whistleblower Complaint, Released by Penguin Random House Audio

in Audio Books, Current Affairs | September 27th, 2019

Lis­ten to the Whistle­blow­er Com­plaint released by the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, as read by Sask­ia Maar­leveld. Stream or down­load it above. Find more of Maar­leveld’s nar­rat­ed books on Audi­ble.

This record­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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What’s the Key to American Gothic’s Enduring Fame? An Introduction to the Iconic American Painting

in Art | September 27th, 2019

The Last Sup­per…

The Birth of Venus…

The Mona Lisa…

Amer­i­can Goth­ic, Grant Wood’s cel­e­brat­ed depic­tion of two Depres­sion-era Iowa farm­ers, holds its own against those icon­ic Euro­pean works as one of the world’s most par­o­died art­works.

Vox’s Phil Edwards dis­pens­es with that sta­tus quick­ly in the above video for Over­rat­ed, a series that unpacks the rea­sons behind icon­ic works’ last­ing fame.

By his reck­on­ing, Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s suc­cess hinges on the dual nature of its cre­ator, a native Iowan who trav­eled exten­sive­ly in Europe, grav­i­tat­ing to such sophis­ti­cat­ed fare as Impres­sion­ism, Pointil­lism, and the work of Flem­ish mas­ter Jan van Eyck.

While he didn’t express satirist and cul­tur­al crit­ic H. L. Menck­en’s overt dis­dain for his rur­al-dwelling sub­jects, his ren­der­ing sug­gests that he per­ceived them inca­pable of under­stand­ing the appeal of his own rar­i­fied plea­sures.

As Kar­al Ann Mar­ling, pro­fes­sor of art his­to­ry and Amer­i­can stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, writes in The Annals of Iowa:

In the ear­ly 1930s, many Iowa farm­ers sus­pect­ed that Wood was mak­ing fun of them in Amer­i­can Goth­ic, that he was a pic­to­r­i­al H. L. Menck­en cas­ti­gat­ing a Mid­west­ern “booboisie.” (He had, after all, lived in Paris briefly and even grew a beard there!) But by 1933, when Amer­i­can Goth­ic was exhib­it­ed in con­junc­tion with the Chica­go Cen­tu­ry of Progress Fair, the paint­ing had become a beloved nation­al sym­bol, sec­ond only to Whistler’s por­trait of his moth­er in the affec­tions of the pub­lic.

Wood, who staged the paint­ing using his sis­ter, his den­tist and a “card­boardy frame house” typ­i­cal of Iowa farms as mod­els, admit­ted that his inten­tions weren’t entire­ly noble:

There is satire in it, but only as there is satire in any real­is­tic state­ment. These are types of peo­ple I have known all my life. I tried to char­ac­ter­ize them truthfully—to make them more like them­selves than they were in actu­al life.

As the Art Insti­tute of Chicago’s Judith Barter observes in an audio guide accom­pa­ny­ing the paint­ing, the dour, over­all-clad farmer betrays a bit of van­i­ty, gussy­ing up in a dress shirt and Sun­day-Go-To-Meet­ing jack­et while his female companion—Wood nev­er revealed if she was sis­ter, wife, or daughter—accessorizes her tidy apron with a cameo brooch in antic­i­pa­tion of hav­ing their like­ness cap­tured.

Author Christo­pher Mor­ley, who first saw Amer­i­can Goth­ic in 1930, when it won the Nor­man Wait Har­ris Bronze Medal at the forty-third Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Annu­al Exhi­bi­tion of Amer­i­can Paint­ings and Sculp­ture, lat­er wrote:

In those sad and yet fanat­i­cal faces may be read much of what is Right and what is Wrong with Amer­i­ca.

Per­haps we are drawn to the reflec­tion of our own foibles, whether we’re ascetic every­day folks or big-for-our-britch­es coun­try-born city slick­ers…

The paint­ing con­tin­ues to delight the mass­es in the Art Insti­tute of Chicago’s Gallery 263.

And when in Eldon, Iowa be sure to pose in front of the his­toric Amer­i­can Goth­ic House, with props kind­ly sup­plied by the adja­cent Amer­i­can Goth­ic House Cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mod­els for “Amer­i­can Goth­ic” Pose in Front of the Icon­ic Paint­ing (1942)

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Was Jack­son Pol­lock Over­rat­ed? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Crit­ic, and Behind Pol­lock There Was Clement Green­berg

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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