Marilyn Monroe’s Go-Getter List of New Year’s Resolutions (1955)

in Film, Life | January 1st, 2015

The com­mon con­cep­tion of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions frames them as dis­pos­able ideals, not to be tak­en too seri­ous­ly or fol­lowed through past the first few months of win­ter; by spring, we all assume, we’ll be right back to our sloth­ful, glut­to­nous ways. Per­haps the prob­lem lies in the way we approach this year­ly rit­u­al. Lists of the most com­mon res­o­lu­tions tend towards the almost shock­ing­ly banal, such that most people’s desires for change are inter­change­able with their friends and neigh­bors and might as well be script­ed by greet­ing card com­pa­nies. I’d haz­ard it’s impos­si­ble to be pas­sion­ate about half-thoughts and boil­er­plate ambi­tion.

But there are those few peo­ple who real­ly pour their hearts into it, cre­at­ing lists so indi­vid­u­al­ized and authen­tic that the doc­u­ments expose their inner lives, their hopes, fears, loves, strug­gles, and deep, per­son­al yearn­ings and aspi­ra­tions. One such list that cir­cu­lates often, and which we fea­tured last year, is this gem from Woody Guthrie cir­ca 1943. It’s so com­plete­ly him, so much in his voice, that no one else could have writ­ten it, even in par­o­dy. This year, we direct your atten­tion to the list above, from Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, writ­ten at the end of 1955 when the star was 29.

Already well-known for her act­ing in such fine films as All About Eve, Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes, and The Sev­en Year Itch, Mon­roe had recent­ly been accept­ed to Lee Strasberg’s Actors Stu­dio. As Lists of Note puts it, “judg­ing by this list, she was deter­mined to make the most of her oppor­tu­ni­ties.” I’m not sure what to make of the odd use of ran­dom let­ters at the begin­ning of each res­o­lu­tion, but what the list does offer us is a glimpse into Monroe’s deep commitment—despite her feel­ing that her life was “miserable”—to grow­ing and devel­op­ing as an actor and a per­son.

See a full tran­script of her list of res­o­lu­tions below.

Must make effort to do

Must have the dici­pline to do the fol­low­ing –

z – go to class – my own always – with­out fail

x – go as often as pos­si­ble to observe Strass­berg’s oth­er pri­vate class­es

g – nev­er miss actor’s stu­dio ses­sions

v – work when­ev­er pos­si­ble – on class assign­ments – and always keep work­ing on the act­ing exer­cis­es

u – start attend­ing Clur­man lec­tures – also Lee Strass­berg’s direc­tors lec­tures at the­ater wing – enquire about both

l – keep look­ing around me – only much more so – observ­ing – but not only myself but oth­ers and every­thing – take things (it) for what they (it’s) are worth

y – must make strong effort to work on cur­rent prob­lems and pho­bias that out of my past has arisen – mak­ing much much much more more more more more effort in my anal­i­sis. And be there always on time – no excus­es for being ever late.

w – if pos­si­ble – take at least one class at uni­ver­si­ty – in lit­er­a­ture –

o – fol­low RCA thing through.

p – try to find some­one to take danc­ing from – body work (cre­ative)

t – take care of my instru­ment – per­son­al­ly & bod­i­ly (exer­cise)

try to enjoy myself when I can – I’ll be mis­er­able enough as it is.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Woody Guthrie’s Doo­dle-Filled List of 33 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions From 1943

The Sci­ence of Willpow­er: 15 Tips for Mak­ing Your New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Last from Dr. Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

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

Werner Herzog Plays Himself in Cartoon That Satirizes Obama’s 2008 Election & Race in America

in Comics/Cartoons, Current Affairs, Politics | December 29th, 2014

The Unit­ed States has two impor­tant cul­tur­al means of self-examination—the work of for­eign observers and of domes­tic satirists. In the for­mer cat­e­go­ry, we have the long­stand­ing exam­ple of polit­i­cal the­o­rist Alex­is de Toc­queville and the much bleak­er, con­tem­po­rary vision of Wern­er Her­zog. As for the lat­ter, we have ven­er­a­ble lit­er­ary heroes like Mark Twain and more pop­ulist, con­tem­po­rary voic­es like Chris Rock, Stephen Col­bert, and car­toon­ist Aaron McGrud­er, cre­ator of the com­ic strip-turned-ani­mat­ed series The Boon­docks. In 2010, the Sea­son 3 debut episode of the bit­ing Adult Swim show brought these two tra­di­tions togeth­er, as McGrud­er took on the elec­tion of America’s first black pres­i­dent by imag­in­ing a Ger­man documentarian—Herzog—who exam­ines the nation’s response through inter­views with the show’s char­ac­ters.

The clip above will give you an idea of the gen­er­al tone. Her­zog plays an exag­ger­at­ed ver­sion of him­self, com­plete with stereo­typ­i­cal­ly Ger­man expres­sions of exis­ten­tial despair. The Free­man fam­i­ly, the show’s cen­ter, rep­re­sents an also-exag­ger­at­ed range of respons­es from black Amer­i­cans to Obama’s elec­tion. Huey, the young black rad­i­cal (“retired”), express­es a deep, cyn­i­cal skep­ti­cism. His broth­er Riley has a total dis­re­gard for the social and polit­i­cal import of the elec­tion, con­fi­dent instead that a black pres­i­dent will give him a license to do what he wants. And the broth­ers’ grand­fa­ther Robert, a Civ­il Rights vet­er­an, dis­plays an unqual­i­fied opti­mism and nos­tal­gic pride for his activist days. The full episode also sat­i­rizes a cer­tain ill-informed rap­per with a char­ac­ter called Thug­nif­i­cent and cer­tain super­fi­cial white pro­gres­sives (“Oba­ma Guy” and “Oba­ma Girl”). And, of course, bel­liger­ent reac­tionary Uncle Ruckus gets his say.

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!

By the time of its air­ing, the episode was already near­ly two years late in its com­ment on the events, mak­ing it feel, wrote the A.V. Club’s Todd Van­Der­W­erff, “like an instant peri­od piece.” Per­haps now it seems down­right pale­olith­ic in the timescale of polit­i­cal com­men­tary. Mak­ing this kind of cul­tur­al cri­tique seem rel­e­vant out­side of the imme­di­ate moment is a chal­lenge writ­ers on The Dai­ly Show con­front, well, dai­ly. But here, the con­tent holds up, not only because Her­zog has a way of mak­ing every­thing time­less, but also because “the episode takes us back to… the way [Barack Oba­ma] man­aged to make almost every sin­gle one of his sup­port­ers believe that he was going to do what THEY most want­ed him to do and not what he had actu­al­ly promised to do.” In many ways, the coun­try is still recov­er­ing from a bru­tal hang­over after this post-2008 elec­tion high.

Whether the pres­i­dent is ful­ly to blame for encour­ag­ing false hopes—and fears—is high­ly debat­able. In any case, the char­ac­ters’ out­sized expec­ta­tions or expres­sions of apa­thy or vir­u­lent out­rage mir­ror many of the respons­es of both lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives. But it seems that both the left and right shared at least one hope: that the elec­tion of the country’s first black pres­i­dent would put an end to its old­est, deep­est, most per­sis­tent ill. “At the end of the episode,” writes Van­Der­W­erff, “most of the char­ac­ters seem dis­ap­point­ed that Oba­ma didn’t com­plete­ly rewrite the space-time con­tin­u­um, that Amer­i­ca still strug­gles with race.” An under­state­ment per­haps even in 2010, the phrase “still strug­gles with race” is even more so today, for rea­sons both obvi­ous and less so.

That the Unit­ed States—despite the con­tin­ued efforts of a great many activists and some few legislators—is still riv­en with deep racial divides, and that these rep­re­sent the per­sis­tence of a his­tor­i­cal lega­cy, should not be mat­ters in much dis­pute. A mul­ti­tude of aca­d­e­m­ic analy­ses on “stag­ger­ing dis­par­i­ties” in polic­ing prac­tices, imbal­ances in the jus­tice sys­tem, and pro­found wealth inequal­i­ty and dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing and employ­ment bear out the claim. How we talk about these issues, who is autho­rized to do so, and what can be done about it, on the oth­er hand, are mat­ters of con­sid­er­able, seem­ing­ly unend­ing debate. It has always seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic that many comedians—from Richard Pry­or to Chris Rock and Louis CK—have achieved much of their main­stream suc­cess by telling hard truths about the state of race in Amer­i­ca, truths few peo­ple seem to want to hear. When those mes­sages come from non-enter­tain­ers, for exam­ple, the back­lash can be swift and vicious.

But this is noth­ing new. From the can­dor of Shakespeare’s jesters to Swift’s poi­son pen to, yes, The Boon­docks, humor and satire have served as vehi­cles for what we would oth­er­wise sup­press or repress. (No need to be a Freudi­an to acknowl­edge the point). In this episode, the satir­i­cal tar­get isn’t only Obama’s sup­port­ers and detrac­tors at home—though they get their due. Herzog’s edi­to­r­i­al intru­sions also sat­i­rize some woe­ful­ly naïve, ahis­tor­i­cal expec­ta­tions of a glob­al, or at least Euro­pean, com­mu­ni­ty. As the Her­zog char­ac­ter puts it in his sec­ond ques­tion to Huey, “now that it looks like Oba­ma is going to win, as a black African Amer­i­can Negro, are you mere­ly excit­ed, or are you extreme­ly excit­ed that every­thing is going to change for­ev­er.” Van­Der­W­erff reads Huey’s apa­thet­ic response to such grandios­i­ty as an expres­sion of McGruder’s view that ide­al­ism is “both an unsus­tain­able tragedy and the only ratio­nal response to a world that’s hope­less­ly screwed.” But in the face of unbri­dled ide­al­ism, Huey’s hard-bit­ten real­ism is ton­ic: “Hope,” he says, “is irra­tional.” So also, per­haps, is despair.

Watch the full episode here and read a com­plete sum­ma­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Steven Spielberg’s Oba­ma, Star­ring Daniel Day Lewis as the Pres­i­dent

David Rem­nick on Oba­ma

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

How the “Paul McCartney is Dead” Hoax Started at an American College Newspaper and Went Viral (1969)

in Music | December 26th, 2014

Next time you see the still-youth­ful and musi­cal­ly pro­lif­ic Paul McCart­ney, take a good hard look and ask your­self, “is it real­ly him?” Can you be sure? Because maybe, just maybe, the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists are right—maybe Paul did die in a car acci­dent in 1966 and was replaced by a dou­ble who looks, sounds, acts, and writes almost exact­ly like him. Almost. It’s pos­si­ble. Entire­ly implau­si­ble, whol­ly improb­a­ble, but with­in the realm of phys­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty.

In fact, the rumor of Paul’s death and replace­ment by some kind of pod per­son imposter cropped up not once, but twice dur­ing the six­ties. First, in Jan­u­ary, 1967, imme­di­ate­ly after an acci­dent involv­ing McCartney’s Mini Coop­er that month. The car, dri­ven by Moroc­can stu­dent Moham­mad Had­jij, crashed on the M1 after leav­ing McCartney’s house en route to Kei­th Richard’s Sus­sex Man­sion. Had­jij was hos­pi­tal­ized, but not killed, and Paul, rid­ing in Mick Jagger’s car, arrived at the des­ti­na­tion safe­ly.

The fol­low­ing month, the Bea­t­les Book Month­ly mag­a­zine quashed rumors that Paul had been dri­ving the Mini and had died, writ­ing, “there was absolute­ly no truth in it at all, as the Bea­t­les’ Press Offi­cer found out when he tele­phoned Paul’s St. John’s Wood home and was answered by Paul him­self who had been at home all day with his black Mini Coop­er Safe­ly locked up in the garage.” “The mag­a­zine,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible, “down­played the inci­dent, and claimed the car was in McCartney’s pos­ses­sion.”

In 1969, rumors of Paul’s death and a con­spir­a­cy to cov­er it up began cir­cu­lat­ing again, this time with an impres­sive appa­ra­tus that includ­ed pub­li­ca­tions in col­lege and local news­pa­pers, dis­cus­sions on sev­er­al radio shows, a uni­ver­si­ty research team, and enough eso­teric clues to keep high­ly sus­pi­cious, stoned, and/or para­noid, minds guess­ing for decades after­ward. The form­less gos­sip first offi­cial­ly took shape in print in the arti­cle “Is Bea­t­le Paul McCart­ney Dead?” in Iowa’s Drake Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent news­pa­per, the Times-Del­ph­ic. Cat­a­logu­ing “an amaz­ing series of pho­tos and lyrics on the group’s albums” that point­ed to “a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that McCart­ney may indeed be insane, freaked out, even dead,” the piece dives head­first into the kind of bizarre analy­sis of dis­parate sym­bols and ten­u­ous coin­ci­dences wor­thy of the most dogged of today’s con­spir­a­cy-mon­gers.

Invoked are ephemera like “a mys­te­ri­ous hand” raised over Paul’s head on the Sgt. Pepper’s cover—“an ancient death sym­bol of either the Greeks or the Amer­i­can Indians”—and Paul’s bass, lying “on the grave at the group’s feet.” The lyric “blew his mind out in a car” from “A Day in the Life” comes up, and more pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence from the album’s back cov­er and cen­ter­fold pho­to. Evi­dence is pro­duced from Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour and The White Album. Of the lat­ter, you’ve sure­ly heard, or heard of, the voice seem­ing to intone, “Turn me on, dead man,” and “Cher­ish the dead,” when “Rev­o­lu­tion No. 9” is played back­wards. Only a col­lege dorm room could have nur­tured such a dis­cov­ery.

The arti­cle reads like a parody—similar to the sub­ver­sive, half-seri­ous satir­i­cal weird­ness com­mon to the mid-six­ties hip­pie scene. But whether or not its author, Tim Harp­er, meant to pull off a hoax, the Paul is dead meme went viral when it hit the air­waves the fol­low­ing month. First, a caller to Detroit radio sta­tion WKNR trans­mit­ted the the­o­ry to DJ Russ Gibb. Their hour-long con­ver­sa­tion lead to a review of Abbey Road in The Michi­gan Dai­ly titled “McCart­ney Dead; New Evi­dence Brought to Light.” With tongue in cheek, writer Fred LaBour called the death and replace­ment of Paul “the great­est hoax of our time and the sub­se­quent found­ing of a new reli­gion based upon Paul as Mes­si­ah.” In the mode of para­noid con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry so com­mon to the time—a genre mas­tered by Thomas Pyn­chon as a lit­er­ary art—LaBour invent­ed even more clues, inad­ver­tent­ly feed­ing a pub­lic hun­gry for this kind of thing. “Although clear­ly intend­ed as a joke,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible, “it had an impact far wider than the writer and his edi­tor expect­ed.”

Part of the after­math came in two more radio shows that Octo­ber of 1969. First, in two parts at the top, New York City DJ Roby Yonge makes the case for McCartney’s death on radio sta­tion WABC-AM. Recy­cling many of the “clues” from the pre­vi­ous sources, he also con­tends that a research team of 30 stu­dents at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty has been put on the case. Yonge plain­ly states that some of the clues only emerge “if you real­ly get real­ly, real­ly high… on some, you know, like, mind-bend­ing drug,” but this pro­vi­so doesn’t seem to under­mine his con­fi­dence in the shaky web of con­nec­tions.

Was Yonge’s broad­cast just an atten­tion grab­bing act? Maybe. The next Paul is Dead radio show, just above, is most cer­tain­ly an Orson Welles-like pub­lic­i­ty stunt. Broad­cast on Hal­loween night, 1969, on Buf­fa­lo, NY’s WKBW, the show employs sev­er­al of the station’s DJs, who con­struct a detailed and dra­mat­ic nar­ra­tive of Paul’s death. The broad­cast indulges the same album-cov­er and lyric div­ina­tion of the ear­li­er Paul is Dead media, but by this time, it’s grown pret­ty hoary. But for a small con­tin­gent of die-hards, the rumor was most­ly put to rest just a few days lat­er when Life mag­a­zine pub­lished a cov­er pho­to­graph of Paul—who had been out of the pub­lic eye after the Bea­t­les’ breakup—with his wife Lin­da and their kids. Para­phras­ing Mark Twain, McCart­ney famous­ly remarked in the inter­view inside, “Rumors of my death have been great­ly exag­ger­at­ed,” and added, “If I was dead, I’m sure I’d be the last to know.”

In lat­er inter­views, the Bea­t­les denied hav­ing any­thing to do with the hoax. Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970 that the idea of them inten­tion­al­ly plant­i­ng obscure clues in their albums “was bull­shit, the whole thing was made up.” The hoax did make for some inter­est­ing publicity—even fea­tur­ing in the sto­ry­line of a Bat­man comics issue—but the band most­ly found it baf­fling and annoy­ing. Cer­tain fans, how­ev­er, refused to let it die, and there are those who still swear that Paul’s imposter, alleged­ly named Bil­ly Shears and some­times called “Faul,” still walks the earth. Paul is Dead web­sites pro­lif­er­ate on the internet—some more, some less con­vinc­ing; all of them out­landish, and all offer­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing descent into the seem­ing­ly bot­tom­less rab­bit hole of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. If that’s your kind of trip, you can eas­i­ly get lost—as did pop cul­ture briefly in 1969—in end­less “Paul is Dead” spec­u­la­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCartney’s Con­cep­tu­al Draw­ings For the Abbey Road Cov­er and Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour Film

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks From Five Great Rock Bassists: McCart­ney, Sting, Dea­con, Jones & Lee

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

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Identify It’s A Wonderful Life as Communist Propaganda

in Film, History, Politics | December 25th, 2014

If you want­ed to know what life was real­ly like in the Cold War Sovi­et Union, you might take the word of an émi­gré Russ­ian writer. You might even take the word of Ayn Rand, as the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (HUAC) did dur­ing the Red Scare, though Rand had not lived in her native coun­try since 1926. Nonethe­less, as you can see above, she tes­ti­fied with con­fi­dence about the dai­ly lives of post-war Sovi­et cit­i­zens. Rand also tes­ti­fied, with equal con­fi­dence, about the nefar­i­ous influ­ence of Com­mu­nist writ­ers and direc­tors in her adopt­ed home of Hol­ly­wood, where she had more recent expe­ri­ence work­ing in the film indus­try.

The 1947 HUAC hear­ings, writes the blog Aphe­lis, led to “the sys­tem­at­ic black­list­ing of Hol­ly­wood artists.” Among the wit­ness­es deemed “friend­ly” to cap­i­tal­ism were Gary Coop­er, Walt Dis­ney, and Ayn Rand. Pri­or to her tes­ti­mo­ny, the FBI had con­sult­ed Rand for an enor­mous, 13,533-page report enti­tled “Com­mu­nist Infil­tra­tion of the Motion Pic­ture Indus­try” (find it online here), which quot­ed from a pam­phlet pub­lished by her group:

The pur­pose of the Com­mu­nists in Hol­ly­wood is not the pro­duc­tion of polit­i­cal movies open­ly advo­cat­ing Com­mu­nism. Their pur­pose is to cor­rupt non-polit­i­cal movies — by intro­duc­ing small, casu­al bits of pro­pa­gan­da into inno­cent sto­ries and to make peo­ple absorb the basic prin­ci­ples of Col­lec­tivism by indi­rec­tion and impli­ca­tion. Few peo­ple would take Com­mu­nism straight, but a con­stant stream of hints, lines, touch­es and sug­ges­tions bat­ter­ing the pub­lic from the screen will act like drops of water that split a rock if con­tin­ued long enough. The rock that they are try­ing to split is Amer­i­can­ism.

Rand and her asso­ciates helped design a “film regime” that dis­sect­ed oth­er post-war movies like William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives and George Cukor’s Keep­er of the Flame. These McCarthy-era film crit­ics sought to root out “ide­o­log­i­cal ter­mites” in the indus­try; they were espe­cial­ly dis­trust­ful of movies that ele­vat­ed what Rand called, with con­tempt, “the lit­tle man.” One of the films iden­ti­fied as par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ni­cious to the “rock” of Amer­i­can­ism was Frank Capra’s clas­sic It’s a Won­der­ful Life, a movie that today seems built on bedrock U.S. nation­al­ist values—commitment to fam­i­ly, redemp­tion through faith, con­tent­ment with mod­est small-town liv­ing….

Lis­ten­ing to Capra’s moti­va­tion for the film—as quot­ed in The Los Ange­les Times—makes it hard to believe he had any­thing like pro­mot­ing a worker’s par­adise in mind: “There are just two things that are impor­tant,” he said, “One is to strength­en the individual’s belief in him­self, and the oth­er, even more impor­tant right now, is to com­bat a mod­ern trend toward athe­ism.”

But in the FBI’s analysis—and pos­si­bly Rand’s, though it’s not clear how much, if any, of the report she authored directly—the tale of George Bai­ley man­i­fest­ed sev­er­al sub­ver­sive ten­den­cies. Fla­vor­wire sums up the charges suc­cinct­ly: “Writ­ten by Com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­ers,” “Attempt­ing to insti­gate class war­fare,” and “Demo­niz­ing bankers.”

We live in odd times, such that this rhetoric—which seemed so quaint just a cou­ple short decades or so ago—sounds jar­ring­ly con­tem­po­rary again as the pol­i­tics of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry reap­pear every­where. The charges against the seem­ing­ly innocu­ous Capra film hinged in part on the alleged Com­mu­nist ties of its prin­ci­ple screen­writ­ers, Fran­cis Goodrich and Albert Hack­ett. In their report, part of which you can see above, the FBI wrote that the screen writ­ers “prac­ti­cal­ly lived with known Com­mu­nists and were observed eat­ing lun­cheon dai­ly with such Com­mu­nists as Lester Cole, screen writer, and Earl Robin­son.” Palling around, as it were.

In addi­tion to nam­ing the writ­ers’ acquain­tances and lunch bud­dies, the report quotes a redact­ed indi­vid­ual who “stat­ed that, in his opin­ion, this pic­ture delib­er­ate­ly maligned the upper class.” Anoth­er blacked-out source “stat­ed in sub­stance that the film rep­re­sent­ed a rather obvi­ous attempt to dis­cred­it bankers by cast­ing Lionel Bar­ry­more as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hat­ed man in the pic­ture. This, accord­ing to these sources, is a com­mon trick used by Com­mu­nists.” Final­ly, a third redact­ed source com­pares the plot of Capra’s movie with that of a Russ­ian film called The Let­ter, screened in the U.S. fif­teen years ear­li­er.

We can­not say for cer­tain, but it’s rea­son­able to assume that many of these hid­den FBI sources were asso­ciates of Rand. In any case, Rand—in vogue after the suc­cess of her nov­el The Foun­tain­head—appeared before HUAC and re-iter­at­ed many of the gen­er­al claims made in the report. Dur­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny, she focused on a 1944 film called Song of Rus­sia (you can hear her men­tion it briefly in the short clip at the top). She chiefly cri­tiques the film for its ide­al­ized por­trait of life in the Sovi­et Union, hence her enu­mer­a­tion of the many evils of actu­al life there.

Curi­ous­ly, many crit­i­cal treat­ments of It’s A Won­der­ful Life have said more or less the same thing of that work, call­ing the film “sen­ti­men­tal hog­wash,” for exam­ple, and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ist ide­ol­o­gy.” These read­ings seem per­sua­sive to me, but for those like Rand and her fol­low­ers, as well as J. Edgar Hoover and his para­noid under­lings, no film it seems—no mat­ter how cel­e­bra­to­ry of U.S. nation­al­ist mythology—could go far enough in glo­ri­fy­ing hero­ic cap­i­tal­ists, ignor­ing class con­flict, and min­i­miz­ing the strug­gles of “the lit­tle man.”

As Raw Sto­ry notes, tes­ti­mo­ny from oth­ers at the HUAC hear­ings brought “redemp­tion of an odd sort” for Capra’s movie, which “has been more than redeemed as it slow­ly became a sen­ti­men­tal and beloved hol­i­day peren­ni­al.” But even if It’s A Won­der­ful Life may now look like apple pie on cel­lu­loid, Fla­vor­wire points out that it’s still liable to raise sus­pi­cions among cer­tain aggres­sive pun­dits and cul­ture war­riors who push a “war on Christ­mas” nar­ra­tive and see social­ist sub­ver­sion even in acts of char­i­ty, like those dis­played so extrav­a­gant­ly in the film’s mushy end­ing (above).

It’s A Won­der­ful Life “is a hol­i­day movie that doesn’t men­tion Christ­mas until the 99-minute mark…. It takes a most­ly sec­u­lar read­ing of the hol­i­day as a time to take stock of your life, of the true bless­ings of fam­i­ly and friends. To those obsessed with the pre­ferred hol­i­day greet­ing or the col­or of Santa’s skin… this must sound like quite the Com­mu­nist sub­ver­sion indeed.”

Read much more about the HUAC inves­ti­ga­tion of Hol­ly­wood at Aphe­lis, who include links to a redact­ed ver­sion of the FBI “Com­mu­nist Infil­tra­tion” report and many oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­fit Pro­grams

Free Audio: Ayn Rand’s 1938 Dystopi­an Novel­la Anthem

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spy

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

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

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vases Come to Life with 21st Century Animation

in Animation, History | December 24th, 2014

Every stu­dent of his­to­ry sure­ly feels impressed by one achieve­ment or anoth­er of the ancient Greeks, whether in the field of engi­neer­ing, art, or the con­ver­gence of the two. Even a bored col­lege under­grad in a thou­sand-seat lec­ture hall has to admire ancient Greek vas­es when they pop up in the lec­tur­er’s Pow­er­point slides. That much-stud­ied cul­ture’s pen­chant for styl­iz­ing images of their soci­ety on their pot­tery has allowed us to see their world as, in some sense, a liv­ing, breath­ing one — or to see it through the eyes of the arti­sans who lived to see it them­selves. But for all their mas­tery of the art of the vase, they nev­er actu­al­ly got their images to live nor breathe. For that, we must turn to 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy, specif­i­cal­ly as applied by Panoply, a project ani­ma­tor of Steve K. Simons and ancient Greece schol­ar Sonya Nevin, which was designed to bring these vas­es to life.

“Panoply cov­ers a lot of aspects of cul­ture as method tying the arti­facts to infor­ma­tion about Greek life,” writes io9’s Katharine Tren­da­cos­ta. “There are ones on myths, sport, and war­fare,” the last of which, “Hoplites!,” you can watch at the top of the post. Simons and Nevin made this sev­en-minute bat­tle scene out of the foot sol­diers actu­al­ly depict­ed on a vase dat­ing to about 550 BCE cur­rent­ly held by the Ure Muse­um of Greek Archae­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing.

Just above, we have “The Cheat,” a short and humor­ous scene from the ancient Olympics that plays out on the sur­face of a shard. The ani­ma­tion below fea­tures a fig­ure of Greek myth that even the most inat­ten­tive stu­dent will know: a cer­tain Pan­do­ra, and far be it from her to resist the temp­ta­tion to open a cer­tain box. (Actu­al­ly it was a vase/pithos.) You can watch more on Panoply’s Youtube chan­nel. As uncon­ven­tion­al means of visu­al­iz­ing ancient Greece go, it’s got to beat 300 for accu­ra­cy.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mod­ern Artists Show How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Coins, Vas­es & Arti­sanal Glass

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

How the Ancient Greeks Shaped Mod­ern Math­e­mat­ics: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Every Frame a Painting Explains the Filmmaking Techniques of Martin Scorsese, Jackie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

in Film | December 23rd, 2014

How does Mar­tin Scors­ese deliv­er dra­mat­ic moments with such impact? Why do Jack­ie Chan’s kicks and punch­es, even those per­formed in ser­vice of jokes, land with such impact? And why do Michael Bay movies, despite their near-fetishis­tic inclu­sion of things crash­ing into oth­er things, seem to lack any kind of impact at all (apart from that on audi­ence adren­a­line and box office num­bers)? Ques­tions like these keep cinephiles, film­mak­ers, and cinephilic film­mak­ers up at night, and they also appar­ent­ly dri­ve edi­tor and video essay­ist Tony Zhou to make his series Every Frame a Paint­ing. At the top of the post, you can watch his analy­sis of Scors­ese’s use of silence; below, of how Jack­ie Chan does action com­e­dy; and at the bot­tom, how Michael Bay crafts his unique brand of cin­e­mat­ic “Bay­hem.”

Michael Bay, you might incred­u­lous­ly ask — the guy who direct­ed the Trans­form­ers movies? Indeed. But as Zhou puts it, “Even if you dis­like him (as I do), Bay has some­thing valu­able to teach us about visu­al per­cep­tion.” His video essays aim to learn from all films, draw­ing lessons from those that suc­ceed at every lev­el (as some say sev­er­al of Scors­ese’s do) to those that exem­pli­fy a kind of high­ly spe­cial­ized mas­tery (as Jack­ie Chan’s best sure­ly do), to those that fail at even their own aims (as Jack­ie Chan’s Amer­i­can pro­duc­tions tend to do), to those that aggres­sive­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sue ques­tion­able aes­thet­ic ends (as, well… per­haps you can guess).

Hav­ing watched these three videos and thus come to under­stand what sit­u­a­tions bring on a Scors­esean silence, why Hong Kong mon­ey allows Jack­ie Chan to per­fect­ly kick a bad guy down a stair­case, and which tra­di­tions Michael Bay exag­ger­ates to achieve his brand of visu­al max­i­mal­ism, you’ll want to move on to Zhou’s oth­er analy­ses, which break down the tech­niques of direc­tors like Edgar Wright, David Finch­er, and Steven Spiel­berg. Evi­dent­ly a fan of both East Asian cin­e­ma and ani­ma­tion, he also looks hard at what work­ing out­side live real­i­ty allows Japan­ese direc­tor Satoshi Kon to do, and what super­star Kore­an film­mak­er Bong Joon-ho gets out of tele­pho­to pro­file shots in Moth­er. “There’s actu­al­ly a lot of great videos on the inter­net ana­lyz­ing movie con­tent or themes,” he says in the lat­ter essay, “but I think we’re miss­ing stuff about the actu­al form — you know, the pic­tures and the sound.” Every Frame a Paint­ing shows us exact­ly what we’re miss­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Chaos Cin­e­ma: A Break­down of How 21st-Cen­tu­ry Action Films Became Inco­her­ent

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Noam Chomsky Almost Appeared on Saturday Night Live During the 90s

in Comedy, Politics | December 18th, 2014

Image by jean­bap­tis­teparis

There are those guest hosts on Sat­ur­day Night Live who imme­di­ate­ly become exem­plary cast mem­bers they fit in so well. I’m think­ing most­ly of Alec Bald­win. Then there are those—certain pop stars and athletes—who are too awk­ward even to make for unin­ten­tion­al humor. Some­times the show will choose a host for obvi­ous cul­tur­al or polit­i­cal rea­sons, whether or not that per­son has any sense of humor what­so­ev­er. Lorne Michaels even once con­sid­ered ask­ing noto­ri­ous­ly stiff then-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney to host in 2012, a prospect that excit­ed no one except maybe Rom­ney.

Giv­en the show’s many ques­tion­able choic­es, it’s maybe not too sur­pris­ing that it would con­sid­er ask­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic to host. Some extro­vert­ed pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als, like Cor­nell West and Slavoj Zizeck, are nat­ur­al enter­tain­ers. But that they would think of Noam Chom­sky—known for his rum­pled sweaters and inci­sive, unspar­ing geopo­lit­i­cal analy­sis, deliv­ered in the dri­est monot­o­ne this side of Ben Stein’s Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off char­ac­ter—is, well, pret­ty odd.

It does make a lit­tle bit more sense con­sid­er­ing that they only asked Pro­fes­sor Chom­sky to play him­self on the show, not deliv­er a mono­logue or do imper­son­ations. Accord­ing to his assis­tant Bev Stohl, the show called some­time in the late 90s and told her that the “writ­ers had writ­ten a loose script for Noam. The only thing he need­ed to do was show up on the set and play it straight, answer­ing the ques­tions that were put to him. Sort of like, ‘I’m Noam Chom­sky, and I play myself on TV.’” Most­ly, writes Stohl on her blog, “I liked the idea of Noam appear­ing in main­stream media, some­thing that was just begin­ning to hap­pen in small ways in the 1990’s.”

And how did Chom­sky him­self feel about the request? It seems he was vague­ly famil­iar with the show and open to the idea. His wife, on the oth­er hand, was not. “After a brief exchange” with her, writes Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, “he informed Stohl that ‘Car­ol says no.’” We’ll nev­er know if we were “robbed of either the great­est SNL skit ever” or spared “anoth­er ter­ri­bly unfun­ny seg­ment,” but the ques­tion of whether Chom­sky can be fun­ny is still an open one. Matthew Alford at The Guardian writes that dur­ing the Q&A after a lec­ture he attend­ed, “Chom­sky was suc­cess­ful not only at con­vey­ing his rad­i­cal polit­i­cal mes­sage but also at rais­ing bel­ly laughs from the audi­ence with dark-laced, insight­ful humour about his pol­i­tics.” Alford says he mea­sured “a laugh every cou­ple of minutes—very high for a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al but of course not close to the pro­fes­sion­al comic’s bench­mark of one gag every 20 sec­onds.” He offers some typ­i­cal Chom­sky-an one-lin­ers, such as:

“[The Bush administration’s] moral val­ues are very explic­it: shine the boots of the rich and pow­er­ful, kick every­one else in the face, and let your grand­chil­dren pay for it.”

“If you’ve resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to tell the teacher ‘you’re an ass­hole’ which maybe he or she is, and if you don’t say ‘that’s idi­ot­ic’ when you get a stu­pid assign­ment… you will end up at a good col­lege and even­tu­al­ly with a good job.”

And “It’s to the point where Ronald Rea­gan could put on his cow­boy boots and cow­boy hat and declare a nation­al emer­gency because the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States was in dan­ger from the gov­ern­ment of Nicaragua… whose troops were two days from Texas.”

Above, you can catch a glimpse of the lighter side of Chom­sky.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Went Gang­nam Style … Ever So Briefly?

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

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

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

in Film, Music | December 16th, 2014

David Lynch gets sound like few oth­er direc­tors. There’s an unfor­get­table scene in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me where Lau­ra Palmer leads her best friend Don­na Hay­ward into what looks like a den of iniq­ui­ty for lum­ber­jacks. It’s filled with burly men and cheap women grind­ing to music blar­ing from the speak­ers. Lynch lets the music roll right over top the dia­logue. It was a shock­ing choice back in 1992 but it was the right one. The ban­ter was inten­tion­al­ly banal and obscure. The grotesque faces, the omi­nous crim­son light­ing and, most of all, that utter­ly hyp­not­ic music are all you need to tell the sto­ry, cre­at­ing a mood of dread and deca­dence. The scene is a stun­ning fusion of image, sound and edit­ing in an oth­er­wise flawed work.

Since that movie, Lynch became more and more inter­est­ed in the pos­si­bil­i­ties of sound design. He even­tu­al­ly ditched film alto­geth­er for a career in music. So per­haps it shouldn’t come as a sur­prise that, along with cre­at­ing at least three cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces, one of the most influ­en­tial TV series ever made, and a string of tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials, Lynch has also made a hand­ful of music videos. You can watch them above and below.

Lynch’s first music video was for “I Pre­dict” by the band The Sparks. It was made back in 1982 when MTV was still in its infan­cy and Lynch’s career was just tak­ing off. Per­haps for that rea­son, the video has lit­tle of the styl­is­tic obses­sions that mark his lat­er work. No weird flash­ing lights. No smoke or fire. No hol­low-eyed mod­els. Instead Lynch goes for a more direct, if sil­ly, form of sur­re­al­ism – a guy (band mem­ber Ron Mael) with a Hitler mus­tache in drag doing a striptease. Does it feel Lynchi­an? No, not real­ly. But it’s still kind of dis­tress­ing.

There are two videos for Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Games.” One, which was on heavy rota­tion on MTV, was shot by Herb Ritts and fea­tured Isaak and super­mod­el Hele­na Chris­tensen rolling around half-naked in the Hawai­ian surf. And then there is Lynch’s video made as a tie-in to his strange, Wiz­ard of Oz obsessed noir Wild at Heart, which has much less nudi­ty – which is odd con­sid­er­ing the movie is pret­ty much non-stop boink­ing. Instead, the video is pret­ty straight­for­ward – just Isaaks and the band play­ing the tune inter­cut with shots from the flick.

After Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, Lynch turned his back on cel­lu­loid film, pre­fer­ring the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of dig­i­tal. His enthu­si­asm for this new tech­nol­o­gy result­ed in a flur­ry of projects includ­ing Dum­b­land, a crude­ly ani­mat­ed series pre­sent­ed in stark black and white. The video of Moby’s “Shot in the Back of the Head” is a mood­i­er ani­mat­ed work but it is def­i­nite­ly in the same vein. Check it out above.

Lynch’s video for Nine Inch Nail’s “Came Back Haunt­ed” can quite lit­er­al­ly mess with your head. The piece is packed with flash­ing red and white lights and as a result comes with the fol­low­ing warn­ing: “This video has been iden­ti­fied by Epilep­sy Action to poten­tial­ly trig­ger seizures for peo­ple with pho­to­sen­si­tive epilep­sy. View­er dis­cre­tion is advised.” You have been warned.

And final­ly here’s a music video for Lynch’s own song called appro­pri­ate­ly “Crazy Clown Time.” Not only is the video a cat­a­logue Lynch’s obses­sions – Amer­i­cana, naked women, fire – but it also fea­tures Lynch singing, who, after a bunch of effects, sounds like a cas­trat­ed Kee­bler Elf.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List (Circa 1490) Is Much Cooler Than Yours

in Art, History | December 2nd, 2014

Most people’s to-do lists are, almost by def­i­n­i­tion, pret­ty dull, filled with those quo­tid­i­an lit­tle tasks that tend to slip out of our minds. Pick up the laun­dry. Get that thing for the kid. Buy milk, canned yams and kumquats at the local mar­ket.

Leonar­do Da Vin­ci was, how­ev­er, no ordi­nary per­son. And his to-do lists were any­thing but dull.

Da Vin­ci would car­ry around a note­book, where he would write and draw any­thing that moved him. “It is use­ful,” Leonar­do once wrote, to “con­stant­ly observe, note, and con­sid­er.” Buried in one of these books, dat­ing back to around the 1490s, is a to-do list. And what a to-do list.

NPR’s Robert Krul­wich had it direct­ly trans­lat­ed. And while all of the list might not be imme­di­ate­ly clear, remem­ber that Da Vin­ci nev­er intend­ed for it to be read by web surfers 500  years in the future.

[Cal­cu­late] the mea­sure­ment of Milan and Sub­urbs

[Find] a book that treats of Milan and its church­es, which is to be had at the stationer’s on the way to Cor­du­sio

[Dis­cov­er] the mea­sure­ment of Corte Vec­chio (the court­yard in the duke’s palace).

[Dis­cov­er] the mea­sure­ment of the castel­lo (the duke’s palace itself)

Get the mas­ter of arith­metic to show you how to square a tri­an­gle.

Get Mess­er Fazio (a pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine and law in Pavia) to show you about pro­por­tion.

Get the Brera Fri­ar (at the Bene­dic­tine Monastery to Milan) to show you De Pon­deribus (a medieval text on mechan­ics)

[Talk to] Gian­ni­no, the Bom­bardier, re. the means by which the tow­er of Fer­rara is walled with­out loop­holes (no one real­ly knows what Da Vin­ci meant by this)

Ask Benedet­to Poti­nari (A Flo­ren­tine Mer­chant) by what means they go on ice in Flan­ders

Draw Milan

Ask Mae­stro Anto­nio how mor­tars are posi­tioned on bas­tions by day or night.

[Exam­ine] the Cross­bow of Mas­tro Gian­net­to

Find a mas­ter of hydraulics and get him to tell you how to repair a lock, canal and mill in the Lom­bard man­ner

[Ask about] the mea­sure­ment of the sun promised me by Mae­stro Gio­van­ni Francese

Try to get Vitolone (the medieval author of a text on optics), which is in the Library at Pavia, which deals with the math­e­mat­ic.

You can just feel Da Vinci’s vora­cious curios­i­ty and intel­lec­tu­al rest­less­ness. Note how many of the entries are about get­ting an expert to teach him some­thing, be it math­e­mat­ics, physics or astron­o­my. Also who casu­al­ly lists “draw Milan” as an ambi­tion?

Lat­er to-do lists, dat­ing around 1510, seemed to focus on Da Vinci’s grow­ing fas­ci­na­tion with anato­my. In a note­book filled with beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered draw­ings of bones and vis­cera, he rat­tles off more tasks that need to get done. Things like get a skull, describe the jaw of a croc­o­dile and tongue of a wood­peck­er, assess a corpse using his fin­ger as a unit of mea­sure­ment.

On that same page, he lists what he con­sid­ers to be impor­tant qual­i­ties of an anatom­i­cal draughts­man. A firm com­mand of per­spec­tive and a knowl­edge of the inner work­ings of the body are key. So is hav­ing a strong stom­ach.

You can see a page of Da Vinci’s note­book above but be warned. Even if you are con­ver­sant in 16th cen­tu­ry Ital­ian, Da Vin­ci wrote every­thing in mir­ror script.

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:

Thomas Edison’s Huge­ly Ambi­tious “To-Do” List from 1888

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry Of Avi­a­tion: From da Vinci’s Sketch­es to Apol­lo 11

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Criterion Collection

in Film | November 27th, 2014

Some of us get our edu­ca­tion at film school. More of us get it from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, that for­mi­da­bly cinephilic restor­er, cura­tor, and pack­ager of clas­sic motion pic­tures from every era. In addi­tion to their ele­gant, sup­ple­men­tary mate­r­i­al-rich home video releas­es — they’ve put them out on Laserdisc, on DVD, on Blu-ray, stream­ing over the inter­net, and will pre­sum­ably con­tin­ue to do so on whichev­er for­mats come next — they also do intrigu­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with the var­i­ous cul­tur­al fig­ures with whom they’ve worked, such as ask­ing them to name their ten favorite Cri­te­ri­on releas­es. You may recall that, back in June, we fea­tured actor, direc­tor, and 1990s “Indiewood” icon Steve Buscemi’s Cri­te­ri­on top ten list, which includ­ed such choice pieces of film his­to­ry as Gus Van San­t’s My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, Fran­co-Dutch hor­ror clas­sic The Van­ish­ing, and long-unre­leased “faux-doc­u­men­tary” Sym­biopsy­chotax­i­plasm.

Of the many more lists criterion.com offers, you can find this sur­pris­ing­ly clas­sic-ori­ent­ed one from Richard Lin­klater, mak­er of films like Slack­er, the Before Sun­rise/Before Sun­set/Before Mid­night tril­o­gy, and this year’s Boy­hood (and anoth­er archi­tect of Indiewood):

1. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky)
2. Au hasard Balt­haz­ar (Robert Bres­son)
3. The Flow­ers of St. Fran­cis (Rober­to Rosselli­ni)
4. Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Drey­er)
5. Tokyo Sto­ry (Yasu­jiro Ozu)
6. The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ (Mar­tin Scors­ese)
7. Unfaith­ful­ly Yours (Pre­ston Sturges)
8. Fan­ny and Alexan­der — The Tele­vi­sion Ver­sion (Ing­mar Bergman)
9. Pick­pock­et (Robert Bres­son)
10. I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Pow­ell and Emer­ic Press­burg­er)

Or this one by four mem­bers of the New York no-wave rock band Son­ic Youth, who turned the whole top-ten list con­cept up to twelve, giv­ing their props to Ozu like Linkater and The Van­ish­ing like Busce­mi (“It gets veeer­rry weird,” adds gui­tarist Thurston Moore):

1. Float­ing Weeds (Yasu­jiro Ozu)
2. Jeanne Diel­man, 23, quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles (Chan­tal Aker­man)
3. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainier Wern­er Fass­binder)
4. Mas­culin féminin (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. Dou­ble Sui­cide (Masahi­ro Shin­o­da)
6. The Van­ish­ing (George Sluiz­er)
7. Mam­ma Roma (Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni)
8. Black Orpheus (Mar­cel Camus)
9. Ace in the Hole (Bil­ly Wilder)
10. Night on Earth (Jim Jar­musch)
11. Fat Girl (Cather­ine Breil­lat)
12. Days of Heav­en (Ter­rence Mal­ick)

Or lists from vital cre­ators who have more recent­ly arrived on the scene, such as this one from Tiny Fur­ni­ture direc­tor and Girls cre­ator Lena Dun­ham, an invet­er­ate fan of Agnès Var­da (who “man­ages to be both deeply emo­tion­al and utter­ly in con­trol of the tech­ni­cal ele­ments of film­mak­ing [ … ] that had seemed to me to be an impos­si­ble line to strad­dle, and she does it so beau­ti­ful­ly”). She also makes room for Mal­ick­’s Days of Heav­en, (also a pick of Son­ic Youth’s Kim Gor­don), two from Fass­binder (also a direc­tor of choice for Son­ic Youth’s Lee Ranal­do), and one from Bergman (who should make every­one’s favorite-films lists, but also made Lin­klater’s):

1. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
2. Days of Heav­en (Ter­rence Mal­ick)
3. Broad­cast News (James L. Brooks)
4. Week­end (Andrew Haigh)
5. La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, Le bon­heur, and Vagabond (Agnès Var­da)
6. The Mar­riage of Maria Braun and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainier Wern­er Fass­binder)
7. Pic­nic at Hang­ing Rock (Peter Weir)
8. Straw Dogs (Sam Peck­in­pah) and Dead Ringers (David Cro­nen­berg)
9. Through a Glass Dark­ly (Ing­mar Bergman)
10. The War Room (Chris Hege­dus and D. A. Pen­nebak­er)

D.A. Pen­nebak­er, by the way, has his own Cri­te­ri­on top ten list, as do oth­er film­mak­ers named here, like Andrew Haigh and Mar­tin Scors­ese. But this leaves me with one burn­ing ques­tion: if direc­tors like Ozu and Fass­binder had lived to see The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, which vol­umes would they have put on their own DVD shelves?

Enter the com­plete col­lec­tion of Cri­te­ri­on Top Tens here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.