Hear H.P. Lovecraft Horror Stories Read by Roddy McDowall

in Literature | March 6th, 2020

“Most dae­mo­ni­a­cal of all shocks is that of the abysmal­ly unex­pect­ed and grotesque­ly unbe­liev­able,” goes a typ­i­cal line in the work of H.P. Love­craft. “Noth­ing I had before under­gone could com­pare in ter­ror with what I now saw; with the bizarre mar­vels that sight implied.” As a writer of what he called “weird fic­tion,” Love­craft spe­cial­ized in the nar­ra­tor plunged into a loss for words by the sheer incom­pre­hen­si­bil­i­ty of that which he sees before him. But in the case of this par­tic­u­lar sen­tence, the nar­ra­tor sees not an ancient mon­ster awak­ened from its mil­len­nia of slum­ber but “noth­ing less than the sol­id ground” — or as the read­er put it, noth­ing more than the sol­id ground. But then, most of us haven’t lived our entire lives locked up high in a cas­tle.

The sto­ry is “The Out­sider,” some­thing of an out­lier in the Love­craft canon due to its out­sized pop­u­lar­i­ty as well as its Goth­ic tinge. By the author’s own admis­sion, it owes a debt to his lit­er­ary idol Edgar Allan Poe, and indeed rep­re­sents Love­craft’s “lit­er­al though uncon­scious imi­ta­tion of Poe at its very height.”

In 1926 or today, one could do much worse for a mod­el than Poe, and crit­ics have also detect­ed in “The Out­sider” the pos­si­ble influ­ence of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shel­ley, and Oscar Wilde. Any­one dar­ing to read the sto­ry aloud must thus strike a bal­ance between sev­er­al dif­fer­ent com­pet­ing tones, and few could hope to out­do Rod­dy McDowal­l’s per­for­mance on the 1966 record above. But as Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher notes, that actor, “child star of Lassie Come Home and My Friend Flic­ka,” is “hard­ly a name one would asso­ciate with the mas­ter of the unname­able.”

Though McDowall would lat­er “star in some jol­ly decent hor­ror movies like The Leg­end of Hell House and Fright Night, he was in 1966 best known for the likes of “That Darn Cat! or Lord Love a Duck or the stage musi­cal Camelot.” In the event, McDow­ell proved “almost a per­fect choice to give life to Lovecraft’s words,” deliv­er­ing a “light boy­ish charm” com­bined with an into­na­tion that “caus­es a grow­ing dis­qui­et and a dread­ful sense of unease,” alto­geth­er suit­able for the work of “the weird and reclu­sive Love­craft.” He also brings to the role the kind of faint, unex­pect­ed­ly refined men­ace that would make him famous as Cor­nelius and Cae­sar in the Plan­et of the Apes films. After “The Out­sider” McDowall reads Love­caft’s ear­li­er sto­ry “The Hound,” and sure­ly his voice is just the one in which Love­craft fans would want to hear spo­ken, for the very first time in Love­craft’s oeu­vre, the name of the Necro­nom­i­con.

Be sure to explore out col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

23 Hours of H.P. Love­craft Sto­ries: Hear Read­ings & Drama­ti­za­tions of “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Shad­ow Over Inns­mouth,” & Oth­er Weird Tales

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to H.P. Love­craft and How He Invent­ed a New Goth­ic Hor­ror

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

Mak­ing The Plan­et of the Apes: Rod­dy McDowall’s Home Movies and a 1966 Make­up Test

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.

How African-American Explorer Matthew Henson Became the First Person to Reach the North Pole, Then Was Forgotten for Almost 30 Years

in History | March 5th, 2020

The his­to­ry of explo­ration is replete with famous names every­one knows, like Robert Peary, the man most often cred­it­ed with first reach­ing the North Pole. Those who work along­side the legends—doing the heavy lift­ing, sav­ing lives, mak­ing essen­tial calculations—tend to be for­got­ten or mar­gin­al­ized almost imme­di­ate­ly in the telling of the sto­ry, espe­cial­ly when they don’t fit the pro­file for the kinds of peo­ple allowed to make his­to­ry.

In Peary’s case, it seems that the most impor­tant mem­ber of his team—his assis­tant, African Amer­i­can explor­er Matthew Hen­son—may have actu­al­ly reached the North Pole first, along with four of the team’s Inu­it crew mem­bers.

Hen­son and Per­ry first met in a Wash­ing­ton, DC cloth­ing store where Hen­son worked. When they struck up a con­ver­sa­tion, Peary learned that Hen­son had fled Mary­land “after his par­ents were tar­get­ed by the Ku Klux Klan,” as Messy Nessy writes. He had then signed on as a cab­in boy at 12 and sailed around the world, includ­ing the Russ­ian Arc­tic seas, learn­ing to read and write while aboard ship.

Peary was impressed and “hired him on the spot,” and “from that point for­ward, Hen­son went on every expe­di­tion Peary embarked on; trekking through the jun­gles of Nicaragua and, lat­er, cov­er­ing thou­sands of miles of ice in dog sleds to the North Pole.” Also on their last expe­di­tion were 39 Inu­it men, women, and chil­dren, includ­ing the four Inu­it men— Ootah, Egig­ing­wah, See­gloo, and Oogueah—who accom­pa­nied Hen­son and Peary on the final leg of the 1909 jour­ney, Peary and Henson’s eighth attempt.

As the six men neared the pole, Peary “grew more and more weary, suf­fer­ing from exhaus­tion and frozen toes, unable to leave their camp, set up five miles” away. Hen­son and the oth­ers “scout­ed ahead,” and, accord­ing to Hen­son’s account, actu­al­ly over­shot the pole before dou­bling back. “I could see that my foot­prints were the first at the spot,” he lat­er wrote.

Peary even­tu­al­ly caught up and “the sled-bound Admi­ral alleged­ly trudged up to plant the Amer­i­can flag in the ice—and yet, the only pho­to­graph of the his­toric moment shows a crew of faces that are dis­tinct­ly not white.” Either Peary took the pho­to­graph as a “way of hon­or­ing the crew” or he wasn’t there at all when it was tak­en. The for­mer does­n’t seem like­ly giv­en Peary’s eager­ness to claim full cred­it for the feat.

Peary accept­ed the sole hon­or from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety and an award from Con­gress in 1911, while Henson’s “con­tri­bu­tions were large­ly ignored” at the time and “he returned to a very nor­mal life” in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty, work­ing as a U.S. Cus­toms clerk for 23 years, unable to mar­shal the resources for fur­ther expe­di­tions once Peary retired.

In his writ­ings, Peary char­ac­ter­ized Hen­son accord­ing to his use­ful­ness: “This posi­tion I have giv­en him pri­mar­i­ly because of his adapt­abil­i­ty and fit­ness for the work and sec­ond­ly on account of his loy­al­ty. He is a bet­ter dog dri­ver and can han­dle a sledge bet­ter than any man liv­ing, except some of the best Eski­mo hunters them­selves.” The pas­sage is rem­i­nis­cent of Lewis and Clark’s descrip­tions of Saca­gawea, who nev­er emerges as a full per­son with her own moti­va­tions.

Sad­ly, in his 1912 account, A Negro Explor­er at the North Pole, it seems that Hen­son inter­nal­ized the racism that con­fined him to sec­ond-class sta­tus. “Anoth­er world’s accom­plish­ment was done and fin­ished,” he writes, pas­sive­ly elid­ing the doer of the deed. He then invokes a trope that appears over and over, from Shakespeare’s Tem­pest to Defoe’s Robin­son Cru­soe: “From the begin­ning of his­to­ry, wher­ev­er the world’s work was done by a white man, he had been accom­pa­nied by a col­ored man. From the build­ing of the pyra­mids and the jour­ney to the cross, to the dis­cov­ery of the new world and the dis­cov­ery of the North Pole.”

The kind of his­to­ry Hen­son had learned is obvious—a white­wash­ing on a world-his­tor­i­cal scale. It would take almost 30 years for him to final­ly receive recog­ni­tion, though he lived to become the first black mem­ber of The Explor­ers Club in 1937 and “with some irony,” Messy Nessy writes, he “was award­ed the Peary Polar Expe­di­tion Medal” in 1944. Since then, his name has usu­al­ly been men­tioned with Peary’s in his­to­ries of the expe­di­tion, but rarely as the first per­son to reach the pole. Watch two short pro­files of Hen­son’s accom­plish­ments above, and see many more pho­tos from the expe­di­tion at Messy Nessy.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explor­er David Livingstone’s Diary (Writ­ten in Berry Juice) Now Dig­i­tized with New Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy

Watch the Very First Fea­ture Doc­u­men­tary: Nanook of the North by Robert J. Fla­her­ty (1922)

African Amer­i­can His­to­ry-Eman­ci­pa­tion to the Present: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

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

Mister Rogers Makes a List of His 10 Favorite Books

in Books | March 4th, 2020

In 1991, Fred Rogers received a let­ter from an author work­ing on a book about oth­ers’ favorite books. More than like­ly, it was a book about famous peo­ple’s favorite books. But you wouldn’t know it from Mis­ter Rogers’ char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly gra­cious typed reply, above. He opens by apol­o­giz­ing for his late reply and express­es his hon­or at being includ­ed in a “book about what peo­ple read.” What did the most unas­sum­ing and neigh­bor­ly per­son on tele­vi­sion read?

You can see Rogers’ list of ten books tran­scribed below, though his final two choic­es, the Old and New Tes­ta­ments, might count as either one book or a col­lec­tion of many, depend­ing on one’s views.  Roger’s him­self was very clear about his beliefs when he was­n’t onscreen, The ordained Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter con­cludes by adding, “If you want to know which one book I con­sid­er as the great­est, my answer would be The Bible.”

Rogers didn’t give any­one who knew him rea­son to doubt his sin­cer­i­ty. What becomes evi­dent in both a recent biog­ra­phy, The Good Neigh­bor, and Mor­gan Neville’s doc­u­men­tary film, Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor, is that he “was exact­ly what he appeared to be,” as Anya Kamenetz writes at NPR. “Some­one who devot­ed his life to tak­ing seri­ous­ly and respond­ing to the emo­tions of chil­dren. In a word: to love.”

1. Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
2. Child­hood and Soci­ety by Erik Erik­son
3. The Writ­ings of Hen­ri J.M. Nouwen
4. The Secret Gar­den by Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett
5. The Veg­e­tar­i­an Times Cook­book
6. The Angry Book by T.I. Rubin, M.D.
7. Col­lect­ed Poems of Robert Frost
8. The Works of William Shake­speare
9. The Old Tes­ta­ment of the Bible
10. The New Tes­ta­ment of the Bible

The way he expressed that love, how­ev­er, was quite unusu­al in both reli­gious and sec­u­lar cir­cles. He was, Hei­di Led­ford writer at Nature, “nei­ther zany enter­tain­er nor earnest ped­a­gogue. Rogers was instead a respect­ful men­tor who pro­mot­ed tol­er­ance.” He con­sid­ered the show his God-giv­en mis­sion, but “Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood was reli­gion-free.” Rogers nev­er preached, and nev­er exclud­ed any­one from his neigh­bor­hood.

Anoth­er rea­son his slow, repet­i­tive show had such wide and endur­ing appeal was that Rogers craft­ed each episode to meet preschool­ers’ psy­choso­cial needs, in fre­quent con­sul­ta­tion with his men­tor of 30 years, child psy­chol­o­gist Mar­garet McFar­land. Rogers was well read on the sub­ject and under­stood its crit­i­cal impor­tance to ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion to kids’ emo­tion­al and intel­lec­tu­al devel­op­ment. His ideas “are as rel­e­vant as ever,” writes Kamenetz.

Those ideas include the cen­tral­i­ty of imag­i­na­tive play in ear­ly child­hood, which Rogers offered to many chil­dren who did­n’t get much oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore their cre­ativ­i­ty. His reli­gious faith may have ground­ed his life­long com­mit­ment to mak­ing all kids feel val­ued and under­stood, yet it’s hard not to notice that he lists the two parts of The Bible last on his list.

His first choice is one of the most imag­i­na­tive books ever writ­ten for children—one that doesn’t talk down to them and treats their emo­tions with seri­ous, yet play­ful, respect, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince. He fol­lows up this clas­sic with Child­hood and Soci­ety, Erik Erik­son’s post-Freudi­an explo­ration of child devel­op­ment.

On the whole, Rogers’ read­ing list, just like his show, offers a por­trait of a one-of-a-kind fig­ure: a children’s enter­tain­er with an edu­ca­tion­al style that drew sub­stance from the best lit­er­a­ture, social sci­ence, and psy­chol­o­gy of its time, while tak­ing its char­i­ta­ble spir­it from Rogers’ own per­son­al belief in uni­ver­sal love as the most impor­tant edu­ca­tion­al method­ol­o­gy.

via The Neigh­bor­hood Archive

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The First & Last Time Mis­ter Rogers Sang “Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor” (1968–2001)

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

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

Janis Joplin’s Last TV Performance & Interview: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

in Music, Television | February 26th, 2020

The best celebri­ty inter­view­ers have the abil­i­ty to show us how the stars are not like us at all—not only because of the entourages, wardrobes, and bank accounts, but because of the tal­ent for which we revere them —and also how they’re kind of just like us after all: shar­ing the same inse­cu­ri­ties, fears, doubts, for­get­ful­ness, con­fu­sion, etc. They are, that is to say, real human beings.

Like no oth­er inter­view­er on net­work tele­vi­sion before or since, Dick Cavett could draw all of this out of his guests: both their cre­ativ­i­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. What seemed like sil­ly chit chat was a dis­arm­ing cam­ou­flage for inci­sive ques­tions he let casu­al­ly slip through the ban­ter.

“Cavett’s prime-time show famous­ly fea­tured a who’s who of rock stars that both per­formed and sat for loose, freeform con­ver­sa­tions,” writes Jam­base, “which brought the ethos of the hip­pie gen­er­a­tion to the homes of mil­lions.” Amongst his many rock star guests, he devel­oped a spe­cial bond with Janis Joplin who sat down with him on August 3, 1970 for her appear­ance on his show and what would turn out to be her final tele­vised per­for­mance and inter­view.

Joplin belts out “My Baby” and “Half Moon,” which you can see in her full appear­ance above, with an intro­duc­tion by Cavett. Then after both songs, she walks over the couch to hang out with the host, who greets with her warm­ly with, “Very nice to see you, my lit­tle song­bird.” Cavett poked fun at his guests, but he did­n’t talk down or kiss up. Most every­one who sat down with him found his dry wit and can­dor refresh­ing.

Joplin, who admits she doesn’t like doing inter­views, “seems total­ly at ease dur­ing this con­ver­sa­tion,” Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock points out, “a wide-rang­ing but infor­mal chat that touch­es on every­thing from her feel­ings regard­ing con­cert riots to whether or not she ever water­skis.” She is poised through­out and throws Cavett off-guard with her dead­pan humor.

They play off each oth­er in a charm­ing exchange that doesn’t go near­ly as deep as her final inter­view with the Vil­lage Voice’s Howard Smith four days before her death that Octo­ber, but which cap­tures Joplin’s thought­ful, easy­go­ing per­son­al­i­ty beau­ti­ful­ly. Cavett lat­er cred­it­ed Joplin for send­ing so many oth­er major rock stars his way after her first appear­ance on his show in 1968.

“She had done oth­er tele­vi­sion she didn’t like very much,” he remem­bered in 2016 on PBS’s Amer­i­can Mas­ters. “She told peo­ple, ‘it’s okay to do his show, he’s not a drea­ry fig­ure.’” Nei­ther, despite her trag­ic sto­ry, was Janis Joplin. “At once inse­cure yet full of con­vic­tion, opin­ion­at­ed yet con­cerned about offend­ing, fierce yet ten­der­heart­ed,” writes Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings; she was, as mil­lions of Cavett’s view­ers were delight­ed to dis­cov­er, a “com­plex per­son brim­ming with the sort of inner con­tra­dic­tions that make us human.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Janis Joplin’s Break­through Per­for­mance at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val: “One of the Great Con­cert Per­for­mances of all Time” (1967)

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

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

The Size of Asteroids Compared to New York City

in Astronomy | February 26th, 2020

The small­est aster­oid mea­sures 4.1 meters in diam­e­ter; the largest 939 kilo­me­ters, or 580 miles. Cre­at­ed by 3D ani­ma­tor Alvaro Gra­cia Mon­toya, the data on aster­oid sizes was all gleaned from Wikipedia…

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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Wes Anderson’s Shorts Films & Commercials: A Playlist of 8 Short Andersonian Works

in Film | February 24th, 2020

You may have noticed cer­tain brands, over the past decade or so, going for a “Wes Ander­son aes­thet­ic” in their adver­tise­ments. But as all the younger film­mak­ers Ander­son inspires inevitably find out, repli­cat­ing the direc­tor’s sig­na­ture mise-en-scène — the dis­tinc­tive col­or palettes, the rig­or­ous geom­e­try, the care­ful­ly curat­ed objects — is no easy task. To achieve the cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Ander­son­ian, it seems you real­ly need Ander­son him­self. For­tu­nate­ly for cer­tain mar­ket­ing depart­ments, the auteur of Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and oth­er pic­tures (includ­ing the upcom­ing The French Dis­patch) has occa­sion­al­ly made him­self avail­able for com­mer­cial work.

But as any­one who has seen one or two of Ander­son­’s movies might expect, the man appears to have lit­tle inter­est in mak­ing straight­for­ward com­mer­cials. Even when direct­ing short spots for the likes of Amer­i­can Express or Stel­la Artois, Ander­son brings us into his very own aes­thet­ic and cul­tur­al realm: in the for­mer he sat­i­rizes a cer­tain idea of his own process on set, and in the lat­ter he cre­ates com­e­dy from his pen­chant for (and mas­tery of) ear­ly-1960s Euro­pean design. In oth­er instances he’s tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to indulge his cinephil­ia more direct­ly than usu­al, as in his Jacques Tati-inspired com­mer­cial for Japan­ese cell­phone ser­vice provider Soft­Bank. You can see all these and more on our Youtube playlist of eight of Ander­son­’s short films.

Com­mer­cial direc­tors often dis­cuss their projects in the same terms they would use to dis­cuss short films. But it seems that every time Ander­son makes a com­mer­cial, he real­ly does make a short film. Some­times he makes both: after he direct­ed a 44-sec­ond ad for Pra­da, he went on with the fash­ion house­’s spon­sor­ship to direct the sev­en-minute Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti. But ever since mak­ing the thir­teen-minute black-and-white short that would become his debut fea­ture Bot­tle Rock­et, Ander­son has also used short films in ser­vice of his long ones. Cousin Ben’s Troop Screen­ing makes for a fun intro­duc­tion to Moon­rise King­dom; Hotel Cheva­lier is prac­ti­cal­ly required view­ing before The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. Both remind us that, how­ev­er sol­id the work a brand can get out of him, Wes Ander­son pro­motes noth­ing quite as delight­ful­ly as he pro­motes Wes Ander­son. Watch the playlist of 8 com­mer­cials and short films here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

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

Watch the Coen Broth­ers’ TV Com­mer­cials: Swiss Cig­a­rettes, Gap Jeans, Tax­es & Clean Coal

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Fellini’s Three Bank of Rome Com­mer­cials, the Last Thing He Did Behind a Cam­era (1992)

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.

Watch More Than 400 Classic Korean Films Free Online Thanks to the Korean Film Archive

in Archives, Film | February 18th, 2020

Even if you don’t know much about Korea, or indeed about film, it’s safe to say that you know at least one Kore­an film: Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site, which has cir­cled the world gath­er­ing acclaim and awards since its release last spring. First it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, becom­ing the first Kore­an pro­duc­tion to do so; more recent­ly, it made film his­to­ry even more dra­mat­i­cal­ly at the Acad­e­my Awards. There it won Oscars not just for Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film, Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play, and Best Direc­tor, but also Best Pic­ture, becom­ing the first non-Eng­lish-lan­guage film to do so. For many view­ers, Par­a­site and its direc­tor seem to have come out of nowhere, but lovers of Kore­an cin­e­ma know full well that they come out of a rich tra­di­tion — and a robust indus­try.

Maybe you thrilled to Bong’s sus­pense­ful, fun­ny, and vio­lent tale of class war­fare as much as the Acad­e­my did. Maybe you’ve even seen the work of Bong’s con­tem­po­raries: Park Chan-wook, he of the con­tro­ver­sial hit Old­boy; the even more trans­gres­sive Kim Ki-duk; the pro­lif­ic Hong Sang­soo, with his Woody Allen-meets-Éric Rohmer sen­si­bil­i­ty.

But do you know their son­saeng­n­im, the gen­er­a­tions of Kore­an film­mak­ers who went before them? Now you can, no mat­ter where in the world you are, on the Kore­an Film Archive’s Youtube chan­nel. There, at no charge, you can expe­ri­ence decades of Kore­an cin­e­ma and hun­dreds of works of Kore­an cin­e­mat­ic art, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to those of mid-20th-cen­tu­ry mas­ters like Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, and my per­son­al favorite Kim Soo-yong, direc­tor of haunt­ing, even brazen pic­tures of the 1960s and 70s like Mist and Night Jour­ney.

I actu­al­ly met the then-octo­ge­nar­i­an Kim Soo-yong a few years ago, when he called me over to his table out of curios­i­ty about what a for­eign­er was doing at a screen­ing of Mist. It hap­pened at the Kore­an Film Archive’s cin­e­math­eque (known as Cin­e­math­eque KOFA) here in Seoul, where I’ve lived for the past few years. Dur­ing that time I’ve also been writ­ing a Korea Blog for the Los Ange­les Review of Books, which occa­sion­al­ly fea­tures essays on the clas­sic Kore­an films made avail­able online by the Kore­an Film Archive. I began the series with Night Jour­ney, and more recent­ly have writ­ten up pic­tures like the 1960s neo­re­al­ist cry of agony Aim­less Bul­let, the 1970s col­lege-under-dic­ta­tor­ship com­e­dy The March of Fools, the 1980s West­ern­iza­tion com­e­dy Chil-su and Man-su, the 1990s food-sex-hor­ror satir­i­cal mix­ture 301, 302, and oth­ers.

If you need more sug­ges­tions as to where to start with the KOFA’s more than 400 free films online, pay a vis­it to the Kore­an Movie Data­base (KMDb), where KOFA reg­u­lar­ly post selec­tions from their cat­a­log. This mon­th’s picks are “spy thriller films from the 1950s to 1970s infused with the anti-com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy dur­ing the time.” Pre­vi­ous months have round­ed up “melo­dra­mas that are filled with women’s desire and crav­ing for love,” films about “indi­vid­ual or fam­i­ly tragedies lead­ing to his­tor­i­cal tragedies,” and “heart-warm­ing clas­si­cal movies all the fam­i­ly mem­bers can enjoy togeth­er.” You can watch all these films either on the KMDb (which requires free reg­is­tra­tion) or on KOFA’s ever-grow­ing Youtube chan­nel. Either way, as we say here in Korea, 재미있게 보세요.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret of the “Per­fect Mon­tage” at the Heart of Par­a­site, the Kore­an Film Now Sweep­ing World Cin­e­ma

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Film­mak­er Hong Sang­soo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

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.

Scientist Creates a Working Rotary Cellphone

in Technology | February 17th, 2020

In pop­u­lar his­to­ries of the mobile phone, and of the smart­phone in par­tic­u­lar, you will rarely see men­tion of IBM’s 1992 Simon, a smart­phone invent­ed before the word “smart­phone.” “You could… use the Simon to send and receive emails, fax­es, and pages,” writes Busi­ness Insid­er. “There were also a suite of built-in fea­tures includ­ing a notes col­lec­tion you could write in [with a sty­lus], an address book that looked like a file fold­er, cal­en­dar, world clock, and a way to sched­ule appoint­ments.”

Nifty, eh? But the Simon was born too soon, it seems, and its unsexy design—like a cord­less hand­set with a long, rec­tan­gu­lar screen where the num­ber pad would be—proved less than entic­ing. “IBM did man­age to sell approx­i­mate­ly 50,000 units,” a piti­ful num­ber next to the iPhone’s first year sales of 6.1 mil­lion. The Simon was an evo­lu­tion­ary dead end, while the iPhone and its imi­ta­tors changed the def­i­n­i­tion of the word “phone.”

No longer is it nec­es­sary even to spec­i­fy that one’s tele­phone is of the “smart” vari­ety. We can spend all day on our devices with­out ever mak­ing or answer­ing a call. Is this devel­op­ment a good thing? No mat­ter how we ask or answer the ques­tion, it may do lit­tle to change the course of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment or our depen­dence on the touch­screen com­put­ers in our pock­ets.

That is, unless we have the abil­i­ty to redesign our mobile phone our­selves, as Jus­tine Haupt—a sci­en­tist in the Instru­men­ta­tion Divi­sion at the Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry—has done. You’ll find no men­tion of any­thing like her rotary cell­phone in any his­to­ry of mobile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. No one would have seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered build­ing such a thing, except as an anachro­nis­tic nov­el­ty.

But Haupt’s rotary cell­phone is not a visu­al gag or piece of con­cep­tu­al art. It’s a work­ing device she built, osten­si­bly, for seri­ous rea­sons. “In a finicky, annoy­ing, touch­screen world of hyper­con­nect­ed peo­ple using phones they have no con­trol over or under­stand­ing of,” she writes, “I want­ed some­thing that would be entire­ly mine, per­son­al, and absolute­ly tac­tile, while also giv­ing me an excuse for not tex­ting.”

Haup­t’s rea­son­ing calls to mind J.G. Bal­lard’s com­ments on the car as “the last machine whose basic tech­nol­o­gy and func­tion we can all under­stand.” She lays out the rotary cellphone’s impres­sive fea­tures in the bul­let­ed list below:

• Real, remov­able anten­na with an SMA con­nec­tor. Recep­tions is excel­lent, and if I real­ly want to I could always attach a direc­tion­al anten­na.
• When I want a phone I don’t have to nav­i­gate through menus to get to the phone “appli­ca­tion.” That’s bull­shit.
• If I want to call my hus­band, I can do so by press­ing a sin­gle ded­i­cat­ed phys­i­cal key which is ded­i­cat­ed to him. No menus. The point isn’t to use the rotary dial every sin­gle time I want to make a call, which would get tire­some for dai­ly use. The peo­ple I call most often are stored, and if I have to dial a new num­ber or do some­thing like set the vol­ume, then I can use the fun and sat­is­fy­ing-to-use rotary dial.
• Near­ly instan­ta­neous, high res­o­lu­tion dis­play of sig­nal strength and bat­tery lev­el. No sig­nal meter­ing lag, and my LED bar­graph gives 10 incre­ments of res­o­lu­tion instead of just 4.
• The ePa­per dis­play is bista­t­ic, mean­ing it does­n’t take any ener­gy to dis­play a fixed mes­sage.
• When I want to change some­thing about the phone’s behav­ior, I just do it.
• The pow­er switch is an actu­al slide switch. No hold­ing down a stu­pid but­ton to make it turn off and not being sure it real­ly is turn­ing off or what.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for a pro­duc­tion run, but “it’s not just a show-and-tell piece,” Haupt insists. “It fits in a pock­et; it’s rea­son­ably com­pact; call­ing the peo­ple I most often call if faster than with my old phone, and the bat­tery lasts almost 24 hours.” For the rest of us, it’s a con­ver­sa­tion starter: in less obvi­ous­ly quirky, retro ways, how could we reimag­ine mobile phones to make them less “smart” (i.e. less dis­tract­ing and inva­sive) and more per­son­al and cus­tomiz­able, while also enhanc­ing their core func­tion­al­i­ty as devices that keep us con­nect­ed to impor­tant peo­ple in our lives?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vin­tage Film

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

Discover the Artist Who Mentored Edward Hopper & Inspired “Nighthawks”

in Art | February 14th, 2020

Every good teacher must be pre­pared for the stu­dents who sur­pass them. Such was the case with Mar­tin Lewis, Edward Hop­per’s one­time teacher, an Aus­tralian-born print­mak­er who left rur­al Vic­to­ria at age 15 and trav­eled the world before set­tling in New York City in 1900 to make his fame and for­tune. By the 1910s, Lewis had become a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful illus­tra­tor, well-known for his etch­ing skill. It was then that he took on Hop­per as an appren­tice.

“Hop­per asked that he might study along­side him,” writes DC Pae at Review 31, “and Lewis there­after became his men­tor in the dis­ci­pline.” The future painter of Nighthawks even “cit­ed his appren­tice­ship with the print­mak­er as inspi­ra­tion for his lat­er paint­ing, the con­sol­i­da­tion of his indi­vid­ual style.” Messy Nessy quotes Hopper’s own words: “after I took up my etch­ing, my paint­ing seemed to crys­tal­lize.” Hop­per, she writes, “learned the fin­er points of etch­ing and both artists used the great Amer­i­can metrop­o­lis at night as their muse.”

Though he is not pop­u­lar­ly known for the art, Hop­per him­self became an accom­plished print­mak­er, cre­at­ing a series of around 70 works in the 1920s that drew from both Edgar Degas and his etch­ing teacher, Lewis.

“Hop­per eas­i­ly took to etch­ing and dry­point,” writes the Seat­tle Artist League. “He had a pref­er­ence for a deeply etched plate, and very black ink on very white paper, so the prints were high con­trast, sim­i­lar to Mar­tin Lewis…, Hopper’s pri­ma­ry influ­ence in print­mak­ing.”

A sim­i­lar series by Lewis in the 1920s, which includes the strik­ing prints you see here, shows a far stronger hand in the art, though also, per­haps, some mutu­al influ­ence between the two friends, who exhib­it­ed togeth­er dur­ing the peri­od. But there’s no doubt Lewis’s long shad­ows, for­lorn street-lit cor­ners, and cin­e­mat­ic scenes left their mark on Hopper’s famous lat­er paint­ings.

It was to paint­ing, after the mas­sive pop­u­lar­i­ty of print­mak­ing, that the art world turned when the Depres­sion hit. Lewis found him­self out of date. Hop­per left off etch­ing in 1928 to focus on his pri­ma­ry medi­um. In many ways, Pae points out, Lewis served as a bridge between the doc­u­men­tary Ash­can School and the more psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism of Hop­per and his con­tem­po­raries. Yet he “died in obscu­ri­ty in 1962, large­ly for­got­ten” notes Messy Nessy (see much more of Lewis’s work there). “His­to­ry chose Edward Hop­per but Mar­tin Lewis was his men­tor,” and a fig­ure well worth cel­e­brat­ing on his own for his tech­ni­cal mas­tery and orig­i­nal­i­ty.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Paint­ings by Edward Hop­per, the Most Cin­e­mat­ic Amer­i­can Painter of All, Turned into Ani­mat­ed GIFs

Sev­en Videos Explain How Edward Hopper’s Paint­ings Expressed Amer­i­can Lone­li­ness and Alien­ation

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

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

Wes Anderson Releases the Official Trailer for His New Film, The French Dispatch: Watch It Online

in Film | February 13th, 2020

James Pogue in the Baf­fler recent­ly lament­ed the rise of “share­able writ­ing,” man­i­fest in a now-com­mon breed of arti­cle both “easy for pub­lish­ers to repro­duce” and for read­ers to absorb. Share­abil­i­ty requires, above all, that pieces “be sim­ple to describe and pack­age online.” This in con­trast to the writ­ing pub­lished by, say, The New York­er in decades past. “Every time I have a rea­son to pull up a piece from the archives, I am shocked at how strange and out­ré the old­er pieces read — less like work from a dif­fer­ent mag­a­zine than doc­u­ments from an alien soci­ety.” That alien soci­ety pro­vides the back­drop for Wes Ander­son­’s next fea­ture film The French Dis­patch, whose trail­er has just come out.

Any­one who watch­es one of Ander­son­’s films will sus­pect him of lov­ing all things mid-cen­tu­ry — that is to say, the arti­facts of life as it was lived in the decades fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War, espe­cial­ly in west­ern Europe. This love comes through in the look and feel of even Ander­son­’s ear­li­er pic­tures, like Rush­more and The Roy­al Tenen­baums, whose sto­ries osten­si­bly take place in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca. But in recent years Ander­son has gone in for increas­ing­ly intri­cate peri­od pieces, set­ting Moon­rise King­dom in mid-1960s New Eng­land and The Grand Budapest Hotel in the years 1932, 1968, and 1985, all in the imag­ined Euro­pean coun­try of Zubrowka. The French Dis­patch takes place in the 1960s in the very real Euro­pean coun­try of France, but a fic­tion­al town called “Ennui-sur-Blasé” that allows Ander­son to con­jure up a mid-20th-cen­tu­ry France of the mind.

The mid-cen­tu­ry objects of Ander­son­’s love include The New York­er, a mag­a­zine he’s read and col­lect­ed since his teen years. The influ­ence of that love on The French Dis­patch has not gone unno­ticed at the cur­rent New York­er. A piece pub­lished there offer­ing stills of Ander­son­’s new film describes it as “about the doings of a fic­tion­al week­ly mag­a­zine that looks an awful lot like — and was, in fact, inspired by — The New York­er. The edi­tor and writ­ers of this fic­tion­al mag­a­zine, and the sto­ries it publishes—three of which are dra­ma­tized in the film — are also loose­ly inspired by The New York­er.” Head­ing the tit­u­lar dis­patch is Arthur How­itzer, Jr., played (nat­u­ral­ly) by Bill Mur­ray and inspired by New York­er found­ing edi­tor Harold Ross. Owen Wilson’s Herb­saint Saz­er­ac is “a writer whose low-life beat mir­rors Joseph Mitchell’s.” Jef­frey Wright as Roe­buck Wright, “a mashup of James Bald­win and A. J. Liebling, is a jour­nal­ist from the Amer­i­can South who writes about food.”

Oth­er reg­u­lar Ander­son play­ers include Adrien Brody’s Julian Cadazio, an art deal­er “mod­elled on Lord Duveen, who was the sub­ject of a six-part New York­er Pro­file by S. N. Behrman, in 1951.” Con­sid­er, for a moment, that there was a time when a major mag­a­zine would pub­lish a six-part pro­file of a British art deal­er who had died more than a decade before — and when such a piece of writ­ing would draw both con­sid­er­able atten­tion and acclaim. There are those who crit­i­cize as mis­placed Ander­son­’s appar­ent nos­tal­gia for times, places, and cul­tures like the one The French Dis­patch will bring to the screen this sum­mer. But here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, inun­dat­ed as we are by what Pogue calls the “large­ly voice­less and pre­cise­ly for­mu­la­ic” writ­ing of even respectable pub­li­ca­tions, can we begrudge the film­mak­er his yearn­ing for those bygone days? The only thing miss­ing back then, it might seem to us fans, was Wes Ander­son movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Watch the New Trail­er for Wes Anderson’s Stop Motion Film, Isle of Dogs, Inspired by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

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.