Search Results for "forma"

Watch Ridley Scott’s Controversial Nissan Sports Car Ad That Aired Only Once, During the Super Bowl (1990)

in Film, Television | October 19th, 2020

Every com­mer­cial is a fan­ta­sy, but car com­mer­cials are more fan­tas­ti­cal than most. Just look at the set­tings, with their roads, whether remote or urban, com­plete­ly emp­ty of not just oth­er cars but obsta­cles of any kind: stop signs, street-crossers, speed traps. This leaves the hero­ic every­man behind the wheel free to take on the straight­aways and curves alike just as he sees fit. But what the stan­dard car com­mer­cial offers in dri­ver wish ful­fill­ment, it lacks in dra­ma: how to tell a sto­ry, after all, about a fea­ture­less char­ac­ter who faces no obsta­cles, sub­ject to no desires beyond those for com­fort and speed? Com­mis­sioned to direct a com­mer­cial for Nis­san’s 300ZX Tur­bo, Rid­ley Scott found a way.

“I’m in a Tur­bo Z,” says the nar­ra­tor of the result­ing spot “Tur­bo Dream,” first broad­cast dur­ing Super Bowl XXIV in 1990. “These guys are after me, but they can’t catch me.” These mys­te­ri­ous pur­suers first chase him on motor­cy­cles, then in an F1 race car, and then in an exper­i­men­tal-look­ing jet. (We’re a long way indeed from Hov­is bread.)

But “just as they’re about to catch me, the twin tur­bos kick in.” Those twin tur­bocharg­ers con­sti­tute only one of the cor­nu­copia of fea­tures avail­able for the 300ZX, then the lat­est mod­el of Nis­san’s “Z‑cars,” a series acclaimed for its com­bi­na­tion of sports-car per­for­mance, lux­u­ry-car fea­tures, and high tech­nol­o­gy. The lin­eage goes all the way back to 1969, when the com­pa­ny intro­duced its Japan­ese Fair­la­dy Z in the U.S. as the 240Z.

For most of the 1960s, “Japan­ese sports car” would have sound­ed like a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. But by the 1990s many once-loy­al Amer­i­can dri­vers had been enticed to defect, not least by the promise of the Z‑car. Tak­en by sur­prise, the colos­sal U.S. auto indus­try did not react char­i­ta­bly to its for­eign com­peti­tors, and the 1980s wave of eco­nom­ic anti-Japan­ese sen­ti­ment swept Amer­i­ca. Hol­ly­wood wast­ed no time cap­i­tal­iz­ing on these feel­ings: count­less action movies began fea­tur­ing cor­po­rate-raid­ing Japan­ese vil­lains, and one of the least shod­dy among them was Black Rain — direct­ed by a cer­tain Rid­ley Scott, who in Blade Run­ner had already real­ized one vision of a thor­ough­ly Japan­i­fied Amer­i­ca.

Black Rain had come out just four months before the broad­cast of “Tur­bo Dream,” and any­one who’d seen the film would sure­ly be remind­ed of its open­ing motor­cy­cle race. The spot did draw a back­lash, but the anger had noth­ing to do with Japan: “The com­mer­cial was protest­ed by groups like the Insur­ance Insti­tute for High­way Safe­ty, the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Gov­er­nors’ High­way Safe­ty Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­ers,” writes Jalop­nik’s Jason Torchin­sky. “The issue was that the ad was thought to glo­ri­fy speed­ing,” and the com­mer­cial nev­er aired again. The 300ZX itself would go on for a few more years, until the Amer­i­can SUV trend and the ris­ing yen-to-dol­lar ratio tem­porar­i­ly retired it in 1997. When they bring the new­ly unveiled Z Pro­to to mar­ket, Nis­san could do worse than enlist­ing Scott to come up with anoth­er tur­bocharged fan­ta­sy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Film­mak­er Cre­ates a Lux­u­ry-Style Car Com­mer­cial to Sell a 21-Year-Old Used Hon­da Accord

Cars: Past, Present & Future (A Free Course from Stan­ford)

Bob Dylan’s Con­tro­ver­sial 2004 Victoria’s Secret Ad: His First & Last Appear­ance in a Com­mer­cial

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

Read More...

The 100 Most Influential Photographs: Watch TIME’s Video Essays on Photos That Changed the World

in Photography | October 19th, 2020

We live in a cul­ture over­sat­u­rat­ed with images. Videos of vio­lence and death cir­cu­late with dis­turb­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty, only rarely ris­ing to the lev­el of mass pub­lic out­rage. Social media and news feeds bom­bard us not only with dis­tress­ing head­lines but with pho­to­graph after photograph–doctored, memed, repeat­ed, then dis­card­ed and for­got­ten. It’s impos­si­ble to do oth­er­wise than to for­get: the sheer vol­ume of visu­al infor­ma­tion most of us take in dai­ly over­whelms the brain’s abil­i­ty to sort and process.

As if insist­ing that we look and real­ly see, the judges of the Pulitzer Prize have giv­en the award for fea­ture pho­tog­ra­phy almost exclu­sive­ly to images of tragedy in recent years. In most cas­es, the con­flicts and dis­as­ters they depict have not gone away, they have only dis­ap­peared from head­line news. Whether we can say that pho­tog­ra­phy is los­ing its pow­er to move and shock us in the over­whelm­ing sea of visu­al noise is a sub­ject for a much longer med­i­ta­tion. But I can think of few recent images com­pa­ra­ble to those in the TIME 100 Pho­tographs series.

Of course the say­ing “time will tell” isn’t just a pun here: we can only know if a pho­to will have his­toric impact in hind­sight, but in near­ly all of the 100 pho­tos featured—which have been giv­en their own mini-doc­u­men­taries—the impact was imme­di­ate and gal­va­niz­ing, inspir­ing action, activism, wide­spread, sor­row, anger, appre­ci­a­tion, or awe. The emo­tion­al res­o­nance, in many cas­es, has only deep­ened over the decades.

The image of Emmett Till’s face, bat­tered into unrec­og­niz­abil­i­ty, has not lost its pow­er to shock and appall one bit. Although the spe­cif­ic con­text may now elude us, its details still mys­te­ri­ous, we can still be moved by Jeff Widener’s pho­to­graph of a defi­ant Chi­nese cit­i­zen fac­ing down the tanks in Tianan­men Square. Alber­to Korda’s 1960 por­trait of Che Gue­var­ra became not only icon­ic but a lit­er­al icon.

What will we see fifty, or 100, years from now, on the oth­er hand, in “Oscars Self­ie” (2014), by Bradley Coop­er? The pho­to seems to me an eeri­ly cheer­ful por­tent from the point-of-view of 2020, just a hand­ful of years lat­er, with its well-groomed, smil­ing, mask-less faces and lack of social dis­tanc­ing. It is an image of a gen­uine­ly sim­pler, or at least a pro­found­ly more obliv­i­ous, time. And it was also just yes­ter­day in the scale of TIME’s list, whose ear­li­est pho­to dates to almost 200 years ago and hap­pens to be the “first known per­ma­nent pho­to­graph.”

TIME itself, once a stan­dard bear­er for pho­to­jour­nal­ism, shows us how much our inter­ac­tion with pho­tog­ra­phy has changed. The so-called “turn to video” may have been most­ly hype—we con­tin­ue to read, lis­ten to pod­casts, and yes, pour over strik­ing pho­tographs obses­sive­ly. But hard­ly any­thing these days, it seems, can pass by with­out a mini-YouTube doc­u­men­tary. We may not need them to be emo­tion­al­ly moved by these pho­tographs, yet tak­en alto­geth­er, these short videos offer “an unprece­dent­ed explo­ration,” writes TIME, of how “each spec­tac­u­lar image… changed the course of his­to­ry.”

Watch all of the 21 short doc­u­men­tary videos cur­rent­ly avail­able at TIME’s YouTube chan­nel, with more, it seems, like­ly to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Pho­to­graph of 11 Con­struc­tion Work­ers Lunch­ing 840 Feet Above New York City (1932)

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

The First Faked Pho­to­graph (1840)

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

Read More...

A Master List of 1,500 Free Courses From Top Universities: 50,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures to Enrich Your Mind

in Online Courses | October 18th, 2020


For the past 14 years, we’ve been busy rum­mag­ing around the inter­net and adding cours­es to an ever-grow­ing list of Free Online Cours­es, which now fea­tures 1,500 cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Let’s give you the quick overview: The list lets you down­load audio & video lec­tures from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and many oth­er insti­tu­tions. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites, and you can lis­ten to the lec­tures any­time, any­where, on your com­put­er or smart phone. We haven’t done a pre­cise cal­cu­la­tion, but there’s about 50,000 hours of free audio & video lec­tures here. Enough to keep you busy for a very long time–something that’s use­ful dur­ing these social­ly dis­tant times.

Right now you’ll find 200 free phi­los­o­phy cours­es, 105 free his­to­ry cours­es, 170 free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es, 85 free physics cours­es and 55 Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es in the col­lec­tion, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. You can peruse sec­tions cov­er­ing Astron­o­my, Biol­o­gy, Busi­ness, Chem­istry, Eco­nom­ics, Engi­neer­ing, Math, Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Psy­chol­o­gy and Reli­gion.

Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list of Free Online Cours­es. We’ve added a few unconventional/vintage cours­es in the mix just to keep things inter­est­ing.

The com­plete list of cours­es can be accessed here: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. For more enrich­ing mate­r­i­al, see our oth­er col­lec­tions below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

 

Read More...

The Dance Theatre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold

in Dance, Life | October 16th, 2020

It’s near­ly impos­si­ble to find an unblem­ished square of pave­ment in New York City.

Unless the con­crete was poured with­in the last day or two, count on each square to boast at least one dark pol­ka dot, an echo of casu­al­ly dis­card­ed gum.

Con­firm for your­self with a quick peek beneath the exu­ber­ant feet of the Dance The­atre of Harlem com­pa­ny mem­bers per­form­ing on the plaza of the Adam Clay­ton Pow­ell Jr. State Office Build­ing dur­ing the 46th annu­al Harlem Week fes­ti­val.

For obvi­ous rea­sons, this year’s fes­ti­val took place entire­ly online, but the Dance The­atre’s offer­ing is a far cry from the gloomy Zoom‑y affair that’s become 2020’s sad norm.

Eight com­pa­ny mem­bers, includ­ing co-pro­duc­ers Derek Brock­ing­ton and Alexan­dra Hutchin­son, hit the streets, to be filmed danc­ing through­out Harlem.

Those who gripe about the dis­com­fort of wear­ing a mask while exert­ing them­selves should shut their traps until they’ve per­formed bal­let on the plat­form of the 145th and St. Nicholas Sub­way Sta­tion, where the dancers’ pris­tine white shoes bring fur­ther buoy­an­cy to the pro­ceed­ings.

The City Col­lege of New York—in-state tuition $7,340—provides the Neo-Goth­ic stage for four bal­leri­nas to per­form en pointe.

The Hud­son Riv­er and the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge serve as back­drop as four young men soar along the prom­e­nade in Den­ny Far­rell River­bank State Park. Their casu­al out­fits are a reminder of how com­pa­ny founder Arthur Mitchell, the New York City Ballet’s first black prin­ci­pal dancer, delib­er­ate­ly relaxed the dress code to accom­mo­date young men who would have resist­ed tights.

The piece is an excerpt of New Bach, part of the com­pa­ny’s reper­toire by res­i­dent chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and for­mer prin­ci­pal dancer, Robert Gar­land, described in an ear­li­er New York Times review as “an author­i­ta­tive and high­ly imag­i­na­tive blend of clas­si­cal vocab­u­lary and funk, laid out in hand­some for­mal pat­terns in a well-plot­ted bal­let.”

The music is by J.S. Bach.

And in these frac­tious times, it’s worth not­ing that only one of the dancers is New York City born and bred. The oth­ers hail from Kansas, Texas, Chica­go, Louisiana, Delaware, Orange Coun­ty, and upstate.

The group seizes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ampli­fy a much need­ed pub­lic health message—wear a mask!—but it’s also a beau­ti­ful trib­ute to the pow­er of the arts and the vibrant neigh­bor­hood where a world-class com­pa­ny was found­ed in a con­vert­ed garage at the height of the civ­il rights move­ment.

Con­tribute to Dance The­ater of Harlem’s COVID-19 Relief Fund here.

via @BalletArchive/@Ted­Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bal­le­ri­na Misty Copeland Recre­ates the Pos­es of Edgar Degas’ Bal­let Dancers

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

Watch the Ser­pen­tine Dance, Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Dancer Loie Fuller, Per­formed in an 1897 Film by the Lumière Broth­ers

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

Read More...

11 Hypnotic, Close-Up Minutes Watching Tool’s Legendary Drummer Danny Carey in Action

in Music | October 15th, 2020

Like the great prog drum­mers of old—Bill Bru­ford, Neil Peart, Phil Collins—Tool’s Dan­ny Carey is an arti­san. They don’t make drum­ming like that any­more. He says so him­self (sort of) in an inter­view with Music Radar about his side project Leg­end of the Seag­ull­men with Mastadon’s Brent Hinds. Remem­ber­ing how Robert Fripp would stand on the edge of the stage, watch­ing Tool play when King Crim­son opened for the mod­ern prog-met­al giants, Carey remarks, “We weren’t sync­ing to some bull­shit like so many oth­er bands. We were actu­al­ly play­ing live. It’s a sad thing when almost every band you see isn’t doing that. It’s the clicks and back­ing tracks that are keep­ing time. I’ve nev­er played to a click on stage in my life.”

A “click track,” for those who don’t know, is exact­ly what it sounds like: a play­back of clicks (or any per­cus­sive sound) to the desired tem­po, pumped into a musician’s ear­piece to keep them play­ing in time. A use­ful tool of the record­ing stu­dio, many musi­cians, as Carey says, now use it on stage, along with vocal pitch cor­rec­tion soft­ware and pre-record­ed back­ing tracks to make sure every­thing sounds exact­ly like it does on record.

All of this tech­nol­o­gy ruins the feel of live per­for­mance, Carey main­tains. He would know. He’s been play­ing live since the 80s and play­ing with Tool since the band formed thir­ty years ago. He also jams every oth­er month, he says, “with these weird dudes who played with Miles Davis or Mahav­ish­nu Orches­tra.” So… yeah. The dude’s got some clas­sic chops.

But tech­nol­o­gy isn’t all bad in live music, far from it. Being a drum­mer used to mean that hard­ly any­one could see you on a big stage. You might be the most tal­ent­ed, best-look­ing mem­ber of the band, but you were hid­den away behind your kit with the singers and gui­tarists soak­ing up the glo­ry. Even when cer­tain celebri­ty rock drum­mers get their own stages (with their own mini-roller coast­ers), it can be impos­si­ble to see what they’re doing up close. No longer. Thanks to unob­tru­sive cam­eras that can stream video from any­where, no cor­ner of the stage need be obscured. We can watch a Tool show from over Carey’s shoul­der, as in the video of “Pneu­ma,” live in con­cert, at the top, pro­duced by drum equip­ment com­pa­ny Vic Firth to demon­strate Carey’s new sig­na­ture sticks.

It’s bet­ter to let Carey’s play­ing speak for itself, but for ref­er­ence, “Pneu­ma” comes from Tool’s very eager­ly-await­ed 2019 album Fear Inocu­lum, just one of many tracks “filled with twist after turn, con­ven­tion­al song struc­ture be damned,” Ilya Stemkovsky writes at Mod­ern Drum­mer, “with Carey at the cen­ter of the storm, pro­vid­ing the heav­i­est, most mas­sive bot­tom pos­si­ble. He even gets his own solo per­cus­sion track, ‘Choco­late Chip Trip,’ on which he incor­po­rates gongs and bells, among oth­er sounds.” Maybe this live view, and Tool’s well-deserved Gram­my Win for Best Met­al Per­for­mance this year for “7empest,” will inspire more drum­mers to drop the click and bring back what Carey calls the “ded­i­ca­tion to your vibe” from the days of arti­sanal drum­ming.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Wit­ness Rush Drum­mer Neil Peart’s (RIP) Finest Moments On Stage and Screen

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

See Why Gin­ger Bak­er (RIP) Was One of the Great­est Drum­mers in Rock & World Music

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

Read More...

Marionette Freddie Mercury Performs on the Streets of Madrid

in Music | October 14th, 2020

When the pan­dem­ic ends and trav­el resumes, you’ll hope­ful­ly find pup­peteers Diana Romero and Andrés Mat­u­rana enter­tain­ing folks, both young and old, on the streets of Madrid. Above, watch them enter­tain passers­by with a mar­i­onette of Fred­die Mer­cury singing the Queen clas­sic, “I Want to Break Free.” Down below, you can see their mar­i­onette take on the Bea­t­les.

Here’s some quick back­sto­ry on their work:

Perip­lo Pup­pets are Diana Romero and Andrés Mat­u­rana: design­ers and mak­ers of pup­pets and sto­ries. We began in 2003 with TitiriBea­t­les at the Ram­blas of Barcelona and study­ing self-taught at Insti­tut del Teatre Library. We trav­eled with our pup­pets through the streets of Europe and Amer­i­ca gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion and expe­ri­ence, until in 2009 we decid­ed to live in Madrid and be a The­atre com­pa­ny. …We focus on audio­vi­su­al per­for­mance mix­ing video map­ping, string pup­pets, and latex pup­pets to make shows that involve the audi­ence.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Make an Adorable Cro­cheted Fred­die Mer­cury; Down­load a Free Cro­chet Pat­tern Online

Meet Fred­die Mer­cury and His Faith­ful Feline Friends

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

Read More...

How Science Fiction Formed Jimi Hendrix

in Music | October 12th, 2020

“Through the entire­ty of his short life Jimi Hen­drix was an avid fan of sci­ence fic­tion. As a young child Hen­drix and his broth­er Leon would escape their trou­bled upbring­ing by dream­ing up sto­ries of far-off plan­ets and fly­ing saucers.” So begins the Poly­phon­ic video above, an explo­ration of how sci-fi informed the apoc­a­lyp­tic images and spaced-out sounds in Hendrix’s songs. His love of sci­ence fic­tion “only inten­si­fied as an adult,” espe­cial­ly when Hen­drix moved in with Chas Chan­dler, who would become his man­ag­er and pro­duc­er, and who owned a large col­lec­tion of sci-fi nov­els.

The books Hen­drix read at the time pro­vid­ed him with the mate­r­i­al he need­ed for a psy­che­del­ic rev­o­lu­tion. He turned the “pur­plish haze” in Philip Jose Farmer’s Night of Light into “Pur­ple Haze.” The song’s lyrics ref­er­ence the dis­ori­ent­ing state of mind char­ac­ters in Farmer’s sto­ry expe­ri­ence from cos­mic radi­a­tion, while they also allude, of course, to oth­er kinds of altered states. Hen­drix didn’t just weave sci-fi themes and ref­er­ences into his songs. He and Chan­dler com­posed space-rock epics that expand­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the elec­tric gui­tar and the record­ing stu­dio.

“Third Stone from the Sun” is writ­ten “from the per­spec­tive of an alien scout who is observ­ing Earth from afar.” Though he deflects with humor and innu­en­do, the alien char­ac­ter in the song express­es com­plete dis­gust with human­i­ty: “Your peo­ple I do not under­stand / So to you I shall put an end.” In “Up from the Skies,” Hen­drix sings from “the per­spec­tive of one who lived on Earth long ago, and is dis­mayed at the state of the plan­et when he comes back to vis­it.” Call­ing the Earth a “peo­ple farm,” he says to the plan­et as a whole, “I heard some of you got your fam­i­lies / Liv­ing in cages.”

The video links Hendrix’s use of sci­ence fic­tion as social com­men­tary to some of the best-known writ­ers of the genre, includ­ing Aldous Hux­ley, Isaac Asi­mov, Stanis­law Lem, and Ursu­la K. LeGuin. These are wor­thy com­par­isons, to be sure, but there is anoth­er tra­di­tion in which to sit­u­ate him, one that had been at work in pop­u­lar music since Sun Ra first stepped onstage and claimed to be from out­er space. Hendrix’s respons­es to the “apoc­a­lyp­tic” images of the Viet­nam War and the mass protest, civ­il unrest, and racial strife in the U.S. draws on an Afro­fu­tur­ist lex­i­con as much as from pre­dom­i­nate­ly white sci-fi.

Coined in 1995 by crit­ic Mark Dery in con­ver­sa­tion with sci­ence fic­tion giant Samuel R. Delany, crit­ic Greg Tate, and Pro­fes­sor Tri­cia Rose, the term “Afro­fu­tur­ism” describes a hybrid sci-fi aes­thet­ic that ties togeth­er past, present, and future Black expe­ri­ences. “From Sun-Ra to Janelle Monáe, the appro­pri­a­tion of oth­er-world­ly and alien iconog­ra­phy estab­lish­es Afro-futur­ists as out­siders,” writes Mawe­na Yehoues­si. Afro­fu­tur­ism is the cre­ative expres­sion of dou­ble con­scious­ness: C. Bran­don Ogbunu traces the genre back to W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1920 short sto­ry “The Comet” and argues that the abil­i­ty of Black artists to view the cul­ture as both insid­ers and out­siders can “help us to con­sid­er uni­vers­es of bet­ter alter­na­tives.”

Hendrix’s nar­ra­tors describe apoc­a­lyp­tic visions, but they do so from the point-of-view of oth­er, bet­ter worlds, or bet­ter times, or, in “A Mer­man I Should Turn to Be”—perhaps one of Hendrix’s most tren­chant critiques—an under­sea refuge.

Well it’s too bad that our friends, can’t be with us today
Well it’s too bad
‘The machine, that we built,
Would nev­er save us’, that’s what they say
(That’s why they ain’t com­ing with us today)
And they also said it’s impos­si­ble for a man to live and breathe under
Water, for­ev­er,
Was their main com­plaint
And they also threw this in my face, they said:
Any­way, you know good and well it would be beyond the will of God,
And the grace of the King (grace of the King)
(Yeah, yeah)

The per­spec­tive seems to antic­i­pate the pes­simistic, post-apoc­a­lyp­tic visions of Octavia But­ler. It’s a view Afro­fu­tur­ist the­o­rist Kod­wo Eshun links to the expe­ri­ences of peo­ple of the African dias­po­ra gen­er­al­ly, who “live the estrange­ment that sci­ence-fic­tion writ­ers envi­sion. Black expe­ri­ence and sci­ence fic­tion are one and the same.” Afro­fu­tur­ism has “always looked for­ward,” Tay­lor Crump­ton writes at Clever, pro­vid­ing a “blue­print for cul­tur­al growth.” In Hendrix’s songs, we feel the urgent ten­sion between a world on fire and a desire to escape, resolv­ing, Poly­phon­ic con­cludes, with “hope in a new way of liv­ing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Rare Footage of Jimi Hen­drix Per­form­ing “Voodoo Child” in Maui, Plus a Trail­er for a New Doc­u­men­tary on Jimi Hendrix’s Leg­endary Maui Per­for­mances (1970)

Behold Moe­bius’ Many Psy­che­del­ic Illus­tra­tions of Jimi Hen­drix

Watch a 5‑Part Ani­mat­ed Primer on Afro­fu­tur­ism, the Black Sci-Fi Phe­nom­e­non Inspired by Sun Ra

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

Read More...

The Great Illustration That Accompanied Eddie Van Halen’s Application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (1987)

in Music, Technology | October 12th, 2020

Through­out the past week, we’ve read many trib­utes to Eddie Van Halen and his end­less capac­i­ty for inno­va­tion. Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, EVH changed the sound of rock with tap­ping, a tech­nique that let him play rapid arpeg­gios with two hands on the gui­tar’s fret­board. (Exhib­it A is here.) Tech­ni­cal­ly, he cre­at­ed a unique sound by fash­ion­ing his own gui­tar, the Franken­strat, which meld­ed the sounds of Gib­son and Fend­er gui­tars. And what’s more, he patent­ed three inven­tions, one of which came with the daz­zling illus­tra­tion above. Edward L. Van Halen’s 1987 patent for a “musi­cal instru­ment sup­port” was described as fol­lows:

A sup­port­ing device for stringed musi­cal instru­ments, for exam­ple, gui­tars, ban­jos, man­dolins and the like… The sup­port­ing device is con­struct­ed and arranged for sup­port­ing the musi­cal instru­ment on the play­er to per­mit total free­dom of the play­er’s hands to play the instru­ment in a com­plete­ly new way, thus allow­ing the play­er to cre­ate new tech­niques and sounds pre­vi­ous­ly unknown to any play­er. The device, when in its oper­a­tional posi­tion, has a plate which rests upon the play­er’s leg leav­ing both hands free to explore the musi­cal instru­ment as nev­er before. Because the musi­cal instru­ment is arranged per­pen­dic­u­lar to the play­er’s body, the play­er has max­i­mum vis­i­bil­i­ty of the instru­men­t’s entire play­ing sur­face.

What would this device look like? The graph­ic above visu­al­izes it all. Find the illus­tra­tion in the patent appli­ca­tion here.

Back in 2015, Van Halen wrote a piece in Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics dis­cussing his patents and oth­er tech­ni­cal work on gui­tars and amps. For those who want to delve deep­er into his tin­ker­ing, read the arti­cle here.

via Brad­ford Peter­son & Boing Boing

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:

Watch Some of Eddie Van Halen’s (RIP) Great­est Per­for­mances: “Shred­ding Was Eddie’s Very Essence”

15-Year-Old French Gui­tar Prodi­gy Flaw­less­ly Rips Through Solos by Eddie Van Halen, David Gilmour, Yng­wie Malm­steen & Steve Vai

Musi­cal Come­di­an Reg­gie Watts Rein­vents Van Halen’s Clas­sic, “Pana­ma”

Read More...

A Virtual Table Read of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Featuring Jennifer Aniston, Morgan Freeman, Shia LaBeouf, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, John Legend & More

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Film | October 12th, 2020

If you will for­give a gross over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, there are two kinds of peo­ple in this world:

Those (like me) who, hav­ing seen Fast Times at Ridge­mont High the night before the first day of their senior year of high school, made sure to pack car­rots in their lunch­box­es, and those who were too young to see it in its orig­i­nal release, pos­si­bly because they hadn’t been born yet.

For those of us in the first group, Feel­in’ A‑Live’s #Fast­Times­Live, a vir­tu­al table read of the script for Cameron Crowe’s 1982 semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal teen sex romp, is a bit of a tough sell, even as a fundrais­er for two good caus­es: the COVID-19 relief orga­ni­za­tion CORE and REFORM Alliance, which is ded­i­cat­ed to crim­i­nal jus­tice reform and staunch­ing COVID-19’s spread with­in the incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tion.

It’s kind of a mess.

Pos­si­bly we’re just crab­by from all the Zoom per­for­mances we’ve watched and tak­en part in over the last 6+ months.

Were we sup­posed to be charmed that this live, unre­hearsed per­for­mance fea­tured A‑list movie stars, bum­bling through like reg­u­lar Joes cir­ca April 2020?

Ray Liot­ta, repris­ing the late Ray Wal­ston’s author­i­ty fig­ure, Mr. Hand, is ham­strung by his old school paper script, ensur­ing that most of his lines will be deliv­ered with down­cast eyes.

Julia Roberts, as 15-year-old hero­ine, Sta­cy, is win­some­ly fresh, but out of focus.

Is it this blur­ri­ness of the tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties that caused the pro­duc­tion, orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of as a fea­ture-length table read, to be re-pack­aged as a sort of high­lights trib­ute?

(Roberts’ com­put­er glitch appears to have been cleared up after orga­niz­er Dane Cook’s first inter­rup­tion to encour­age dona­tions (cur­rent­ly stand­ing at a $2,132, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing giv­en that the film took in $2,545,674 its open­ing week­end, in 1992.))

Jen­nifer Anis­ton, in the role orig­i­nat­ed by Sev­en­teen mod­el, Phoebe Cates, is pre­dictably fun­ny, and also brings pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­ty make up and light­ing to the pro­ceed­ings, but it’s some­how unjust that her celebri­ty sta­tus excus­es her face-obscur­ing hair­do. Actress­es of her gen­er­a­tion, lack­ing her star pow­er, ply­ing their trade on Zoom are invari­ably ordered to bar­rette up.

The tech­ni­cal prob­lems were not enough to spare us from a reen­act­ment of the film’s most noto­ri­ous scene, in which Stacy’s old­er broth­er, orig­i­nal­ly played by Judge Rein­hold, now brought to life by Anniston’s ex, Brad Pitt, fan­ta­sizes about Cates unclasp­ing her biki­ni top, only to be barged in on enjoy­ing an extreme­ly pri­vate moment by the very object of those fan­tasies.

It’s at the 37 minute mark, FYI.

A fit­ting pun­ish­ment for those of us who, remem­ber­ing the tabloid head­lines, eager­ly focused on Aniston’s face as Pitt was being intro­duced.

It wouldn’t hold a can­dle to the now-prob­lem­at­ic orig­i­nal, if Pitt weren’t blush­ing and Mor­gan Free­man weren’t read­ing the stage direc­tions.

(“Do you want me to use my Lorne Greene sonorous voice or just read like I’m not here?”)

Many view­ers picked up on the play­ers’ seem­ing­ly cool recep­tion of their cast­mate, Method actor, Shia LaBeouf, born four years after the orig­i­nal film’s release. In the role of surfin’ ston­er, Jeff Spi­coli, he was tasked with some very big shoes to fill.

It’s a trib­ute to orig­i­nal Spi­coli, activist Sean Penn’s ver­sa­til­i­ty that he wasn’t for­ev­er type­cast as vari­ants on his star mak­ing role. As the only mem­ber of the orig­i­nal cast in atten­dance (as well as the founder of one of the des­ig­nat­ed char­i­ties), he alone seems to be enjoy­ing the hell out of LaBeouf’s scene steal­ing antics.

Writer Crowe and direc­tor Amy Heck­er­ling dish on his audi­tion at the end of the pro­ceed­ings, and in so doing shed some light on LaBeouf’s eccen­tric­i­ties, and the oth­ers’ wari­ness.

Even though the sto­ry con­flicts, some­what, with the cast­ing director’s rec­ol­lec­tion below, we’re will­ing to take it on faith that LaBeouf’s fel­lows’ fail­ure to clap for him is as much a part of the joke as Pitt’s game use of icon­ic head­gear.

Dane Cook hedged his bets in def­er­ence to those who may not have lived through the peri­od par­o­died by the film:

One more thing, before we start, the big dis­claimer with a cap­i­tal D, a whole lot of beliefs and lan­guage have changed since this came out, so don’t @ us, unless it’s to donate. Remem­ber, it was a cer­tain time and place, and the sen­ti­ments in the script do not reflect the peo­ple read­ing it today. They do reflect the fic­tion­al char­ac­ters from an imag­i­nary school in a total­ly make believe sto­ry, got it?

We get it!

The recast­ing with actors the same age as Jen­nifer Jason Leigh (Sta­cy) and Phoebe Cates remains a bit­ter pill, but per­haps it spares us all com­ments fix­at­ing on the rav­ages of time. Instead, we get to hear about the “time­less” beau­ty of Annis­ton and Roberts.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Delet­ed Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stair­way to Heav­en” is Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

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

Read More...

Restored Footage of 1896 Snowball Fight Makes It Seem Like the Fun Happened Yesterday

in Film | October 8th, 2020

Ear­ly cin­e­ma is full of leg­ends, but none as endur­ing as the leg­end of the Lumière Broth­ers’ Arrivée d’un train à la Cio­tat (Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat). The fif­teen-sec­ond reel of a loco­mo­tive so star­tled audi­ences, alleged­ly, they scram­bled from their seats. Ger­man film schol­ar Mar­tin Loiperdinger calls the anec­dote “cinema’s found­ing myth,” a sto­ry repeat­ed over and over, for over 100 years, though there’s no evi­dence it actu­al­ly hap­pened. One film his­to­ry text even titled a chap­ter “Begin­ning with Ter­ror” to under­line the sem­i­nal impor­tance of the event.

If we think about it, the inci­dent, how­ev­er apoc­ryphal, does mark an ori­gin. Con­sid­er how many films after­ward fea­tured trains as a cen­tral scene of the action, from The Great Train Rob­bery to Strangers on a Train to Snow­piercer. There are mag­i­cal trains and train heists in space. Trains are every­where in the movies. If we think about it some more, isn’t cin­e­ma itself some­thing like a train? Even films that play with time still move inex­orably from begin­ning to end, fol­low­ing some sort of dis­cernible through-line from one end to the oth­er.

But, say we were to enter­tain an alter­nate film his­to­ry, a Philip K. Dick-like ver­sion in which, rather than trains, the found­ing myth of cin­e­ma involved snow­balls….


In 1896, the year after the sup­posed pub­lic shock of Arrival of a Train, the Lumières shot Bataille de boules de neige, “Snow­ball Fight,” which you can see in its orig­i­nal black and white, above (with added, faux-vaude­ville music). A group of sol­id cit­i­zens pum­mels each oth­er with snow­balls, then a cyclist, unawares, rides into the fray, gets pelt­ed, and hur­ries off for dear life. It’s a mad­cap ver­ité gem. “The film was shot in Lyon, France using one of the duo’s all-in-one ciné­matographe cre­ations,” notes Petapix­el, “which was part cam­era, part pro­jec­tor, and part devel­op­er.” There were no reports of pan­ics in the the­ater.

At the top of the post, you can expe­ri­ence the short in full col­or and HD, thanks to Joaquim Cam­pa, “who used the AI-pow­ered soft­ware DeOld­ify to upscale the footage to 1080p, inter­po­late addi­tion­al frames for a smoother result, and col­orize the old footage.” Despite appear­ances, it seems the film’s speed remains unchanged. Campa’s star­tling­ly imme­di­ate ver­sion arrives in the midst of a debate over the trendy col­oriza­tion of old films and pho­tos. Rather than bring­ing us clos­er to his­to­ry, the British Library’s Luke McK­er­nan told Wired, dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing “increas­es the gap between now and then.”

Col­orized, cleaned-up, and upscaled images show us the past as it nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed, his­to­ri­ans claim. But isn’t that what film and pho­tog­ra­phy have always done? As media of tech­ni­cal inven­tion and rein­ven­tion, they inevitably shape and alter the scenes they cap­ture, both dur­ing and after shoot­ing. When Georges Méliès saw the Lumière’s films, he was not inter­est­ed in their real­ism but in their poten­tial for cre­at­ing fan­tasies. He went off to make his spe­cial-effects mas­ter­piece, A Trip to the Moon, which screened in both black-and-white and gar­ish­ly hand-col­ored prints in 1902.

“Sure, it can be argued that adding col­or, inter­po­lat­ing frames, and remov­ing scratch­es is cre­at­ing infor­ma­tion that was nev­er there and could ‘obscure the past instead of high­light­ing it,’” writes Petapix­el. “But how many peo­ple (who aren’t film buffs) will have ever heard of ‘Bataille de boules de neige’ before today? And how many might dis­cov­er a pas­sion for film­mak­ing or his­to­ry as a result?” Per­son­al­ly, I’d like to see more films that look like “Snow­ball Fight.”

via Joaquim­Cam­pa

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch the Films of the Lumière Broth­ers & the Birth of Cin­e­ma (1895)

The Ear­li­est Known Motion Pic­ture, 1888’s Round­hay Gar­den Scene, Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

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

Read More...

« Newer Entries | More Search Results »
Quantcast