Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Available as 78-Card Deck

in Art, Television | October 13th, 2016

Through the dark­ness of future’s past, the magi­cian longs to see…

The incan­ta­tion that kicks off Detec­tive Cooper’s dream vision in Twin Peaks is part abstract clue and part div­ina­tion, and occult ele­ments reoc­cur through the David Lynch-Mark Frost cre­at­ed series. So it makes sense that pop artist Ben­jamin Mack­ey would look at com­bin­ing char­ac­ters from the show with the designs of the well known and well loved Rid­er-Waite-Smith Tarot deck from 1910.

Ini­tial­ly, Mack­ey cre­at­ed just the 22 Major Arcana from the deck and sold them as prints. Detec­tive Coop­er is the Magi­cian, Sher­iff Tru­man is Jus­tice, the Log Lady is the High Priest­ess, Ben­jamin Horne is the Emper­or and so on. (Guess who the Dev­il is!)

Not too sur­pris­ing­ly con­sid­er­ing the show’s devot­ed fan-base, the Twin Peaks Tarot was a hit, and Mack­ey focused on com­plet­ing the full deck of 78 tarot cards (view them all here), riff­ing on the Rid­er-Waite-Smith deck’s pen­chant for enig­mat­ic and mys­tic tableaux. And now, 10 months lat­er, he’s offer­ing the entire deck for sale through an Indiegogo cam­paign for what looks like a very afford­able price.

The ini­tial cam­paign ask of $5,000 was reached with­in days, and now is head­ing towards $50,000. There are also extra good­ies too for those who want to give more, includ­ing a book­let and an orig­i­nal sketch.

The Minor Arcana shows Mackey’s deep love for the tele­vi­sion show and film, and gives a chance for even minor char­ac­ters to have their own card, from Lili with the Blue Rose to Don­na Hayward’s sis­ter Har­ri­et.

“The Magi­cian Longs to See” decks are sched­uled to arrive by Decem­ber, just in time to help you tell your friends’ for­tunes while read­ing the upcom­ing Twin Peaks book, wait­ing for the new series, or drink­ing some damn fine cof­fee.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The Night When Charlie Parker Played for Igor Stravinsky (1951)

in Music | October 12th, 2016

Image (left) by William P. Got­tlieb, image (right) by Library of Con­gress, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The his­to­ry of 20th-cen­tu­ry music offers plen­ty of sto­ries of lumi­nar­ies meet­ing, play­ing togeth­er, and some­times even enter­ing into long-term col­lab­o­ra­tion. But it typ­i­cal­ly only hap­pened with­in tra­di­tions: encoun­ters between rock and rock, jazz and jazz, mod­ernism and mod­ernism. And so it still thrills to hear of the time in 1951 when Char­lie Park­er added one more sto­ry to the most sto­ried jazz club of all time by per­form­ing for Igor Stravin­sky at Bird­land. Alfred Appel tells it defin­i­tive­ly in his book Jazz Mod­ernism: From Elling­ton and Arm­strong to Matisse and Joyce:

The house was almost full, even before the open­ing set — Bil­ly Taylor’s piano trio — except for the con­spic­u­ous emp­ty table to my right, which bore a RESERVED sign, unusu­al for Bird­land. After the pianist fin­ished his forty-five-minute set, a par­ty of four men and a woman set­tled in at the table, rather clam­orous­ly, three wait­ers swoop­ing in quick­ly to take their orders as a rip­ple of whis­pers and excla­ma­tions ran through Bird­land at the sight of one of the men, Igor Stravin­sky. He was a celebri­ty, and an icon to jazz fans because he sanc­ti­fied mod­ern jazz by com­pos­ing Ebony Con­cer­to for Woody Her­man and his Orches­tra (1946) — a Covar­ru­bias “Impos­si­ble Inter­view” come true.

As Parker’s quin­tet walked onto the band­stand, trum­peter Red Rod­ney rec­og­nized Stravin­sky, front and almost cen­ter. Rod­ney leaned over and told Park­er, who did not look at Stravin­sky. Park­er imme­di­ate­ly called the first num­ber for his band, and, for­go­ing the cus­tom­ary greet­ing to the crowd, was off like a shot. At the sound of the open­ing notes, played in uni­son by trum­pet and alto, a chill went up and down the back of my neck.

They were play­ing “KoKo,” which, because of its epochal break­neck tem­po — over three hun­dred beats per minute on the metronome — Park­er nev­er assayed before his sec­ond set, when he was suf­fi­cient­ly warmed up. Parker’s phras­es were fly­ing as flu­ent­ly as ever on this par­tic­u­lar daunt­ing “Koko.” At the begin­ning of his sec­ond cho­rus he inter­po­lat­ed the open­ing of Stravinsky’s Fire­bird Suite as though it had always been there, a per­fect fit, and then sailed on with the rest of the num­ber. Stravin­sky roared with delight, pound­ing his glass on the table, the upward arc of the glass send­ing its liquor and ice cubes onto the peo­ple behind him, who threw up their hands or ducked.

Park­er did­n’t just hap­pen to know a few bits of Stravin­sky to whip out as a nov­el­ty; he had, at that point, already deeply inter­nal­ized the work of the man who com­posed The Rite of Spring (1913), the most rhyth­mi­cal­ly com­plex piece of orches­tral music to date.

“Jazz musi­cians sat up in their seats when Stravinsky’s music start­ed play­ing; he was speak­ing some­thing close to their lan­guage,” writes New York­er music crit­ic Alex Ross in his book The Rest Is Noise: Lis­ten­ing to the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. “When Char­lie Park­er came to Paris in 1949, he marked the occa­sion by incor­po­rat­ing the first notes of the Rite into his solo on ‘Salt Peanuts’.”

In a piece on why jazz musi­cians love The Rite of Spring, NPR’s Patrick Jaren­wat­tananon dis­cuss­es oth­er instances where Park­er quot­ed (or paid musi­cal trib­ute to) Stravin­sky: “A per­son­al favorite comes from 1947, when Park­er was a guest soloist on trum­peter and arranger Neal Hefti’s ‘Rep­e­ti­tion,’ as heard on a com­pi­la­tion called The Jazz Scene. Not only does Hefti’s arrange­ment quote the tran­si­tion­al horn motif which sig­nals the sec­ond half of the ‘Augurs of Spring’ move­ment from The Rite, but Park­er riffs on the same motif to start his solo.”

Dylan Thomas: A Cen­te­nary Cel­e­bra­tion con­tains a chap­ter by Daniel G. Williams on Dylan Thomas and Char­lie Park­er, which, in estab­lish­ing Park­er’s engage­ment in “reviv­i­fy­ing the vocab­u­lary of jazz,” gets into how that got him draw­ing from Stravin­sky, whose work Park­er called “music at its best.” Williams quotes Park­er’s trum­peter Howard McGhee as remem­ber­ing that Park­er “knew every­thing, and he hipped me to, like, Stravin­sky and all those guys. I did­n’t know noth­in’ about Stravin­sky.” When Park­er brought The Rite of Spring over to lis­ten to at McGhee’s house, he pref­aced the expe­ri­ence with these words: “Yeah, this cat, he’s kind of cool, you know; he knows what he’s doing.” And the more we learn about what went into Park­er’s music, the more we real­ize that he, too, knew even more thor­ough­ly what he was doing than we’d ever real­ized.

via Jer­ry Jazz Musi­cian/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music of 3 Char­lie Park­er Jazz Clas­sics: “Con­fir­ma­tion,” “Au Pri­vave” & “Bloom­di­do”

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Hear 46 Ver­sions of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 3 Min­utes: A Clas­sic Mashup

Stravinsky’s “Ille­gal” Arrange­ment of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” (1944)

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visu­al­ized in a Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion for Its 100th Anniver­sary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Raise Creative Children Who Can Change the World: 3 Lessons from Wharton Professor Adam Grant

in Creativity, K-12 | October 11th, 2016

Adam Grant, a pro­fes­sor at The Whar­ton School of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, has been “rec­og­nized as Whar­ton’s top-rat­ed teacher for five straight years, and as one of the world’s 25 most influ­en­tial man­age­ment thinkers.” He’s also the author of the best­selling book Orig­i­nals: How Non-Con­formists Move the World, a study that exam­ines “what it takes to be cre­ative and cham­pi­on new ideas.”

Speak­ing at the 2016 Aspen Ideas Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this year, Grant asks the ques­tion: What do Nobel Prize-win­ning sci­en­tists do dif­fer­ent­ly than their more ordi­nary peers? The answer: They’re twice as like­ly to play musi­cal instru­ments. Sev­en times more like­ly to draw or paint. 12 times more like­ly to write fic­tion or poet­ry. And 22 times more like­ly to per­form as dancers, actors or magi­cians.

Case in point Ein­stein, who nev­er trav­eled with­out his beloved vio­lin and saw a direct cor­re­la­tion between his ground­break­ing work in physics and his musi­cal life.

For Grant, it’s nev­er too ear­ly to cul­ti­vate cre­ativ­i­ty. So above, he out­lines three things par­ents can do to encour­age their children’s cre­ative devel­op­ment.

1. Focus on val­ues over rules.
2. Praise their char­ac­ter, not their behav­ior. Get them to see them­selves as cre­ative at heart.
3. Help them draw cre­ative lessons from the books they read.

This all pre­sum­ably gets cov­ered in greater depth in Chap­ter 6 of Orig­i­nals: How Non-Con­formists Move the World. The chap­ter is enti­tled “Rebel with a Cause: How Sib­lings, Par­ents and Men­tors Nur­ture Orig­i­nal­i­ty.”

Below you can watch Grant’s TED Talk, “The sur­pris­ing habits of orig­i­nal thinkers.” The video above was shot by The Atlantic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome: Get a Glimpse from a TED-ED Animation

in History | October 6th, 2016

The more things change, the more they stay the same. That adage often holds true, but not in this his­tor­i­cal case. While your aver­age Amer­i­can teenag­er devotes more than 7 hours a day to imbib­ing media — to watch­ing TV, play­ing video games, hang­ing out on Face­book — the aver­age 17-year-old Roman kid (cir­ca 73 AD) had some more seri­ous busi­ness to deal with. Like mas­ter­ing read­ing and writ­ing in two lan­guages, fight­ing in impe­r­i­al wars, tak­ing care of (obscene­ly young) spous­es and var­i­ous oth­er items. All of this gets con­veyed to us by Ray Lau­rence, a clas­sics pro­fes­sor from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent. The video itself comes from the TED-Ed series that oth­er­wise fea­tures a clip about the his­toric walls of Con­stan­tino­ple, built dur­ing the Byzan­tine peri­od.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

Free Online Cours­es in the Clas­sics

The Rise & Fall of the Romans: Every Year Shown in a Time­lapse Map Ani­ma­tion (753 BC ‑1479 AD)

Hear Sylvia Plath’s Barely-Known Radio Play, Three Women

in Literature, Poetry, Theatre | October 5th, 2016

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Over the years, we’ve let you hear Sylvia Plath read­ing many of her poems, all writ­ten before she took her life at the age of 30. What you like­ly haven’t heard — until today — is Three Women, one of Plath’s less­er-known pieces of writ­ing. “Orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten as a radio verse dra­ma for three voic­es,” notes The Guardian, the play “was broad­cast in 1962 on the BBC Third Pro­gramme and lat­er includ­ed in Win­ter Trees, a poet­ry col­lec­tion first pub­lished in 1971.” “With its themes of preg­nan­cy, birth, mis­car­riage and adop­tion, it per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the expe­ri­ence of becom­ing — or not becom­ing — a moth­er, includ­ing all the ecsta­sy and ter­ror of child­birth.” Below you can hear a record­ing with actress Judith Binder as the wife, Ann Bern­stein as the sec­re­tary, and Rachelle Tow­ers as the girl. The pro­gram is made avail­able on Archive.org by Paci­fi­ca Radio Archives. Find more Sylvia Plath audio in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Com­pelling Poems

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Sylvia Plath, Girl Detec­tive Offers a Hilar­i­ous­ly Cheery Take on the Poet’s Col­lege Years

A Master List of 800 Free Classic eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices

in Books, Education, Literature | October 5th, 2016

Maybe you’re an eBooks hold­out, a late adopter, a dis­dain­er of the book as a brand­ed “device”? I get it. Is there any­thing more ridicu­lous than putting down a book because its bat­ter­ies have run out? No amount of crow­ing about the suprema­cy of tech will make me love the smell and feel of paper less…

And yet…

With­in the charm­ing heft of print­ed books reside their lim­i­ta­tion. Trav­el­ing stu­dents, researchers, or avid read­ers must lug sev­er­al pounds of bound paper along with them on long jour­neys, or to work ses­sions at the local cof­fee shop. An eRead­er or smart­phone can hold an entire library—which one can expand ad infini­tum, it seems, on the fly.

This feature—along with the ease of copy­ing quotes and pas­sages and send­ing them across platforms—eventually sold me on the eBook as a robust sup­ple­ment to print. And if it sounds like I’m mak­ing a sales pitch, I am: for hun­dreds of free books, avail­able to read on the device of your choos­ing. Entry-lev­el Kin­dle, bud­get smart­phone, or lat­est, fan­ci­est iPad—most all will accom­mo­date the range of for­mats avail­able in our col­lec­tion of 800 Free eBooks.

Can you freely down­load the lat­est New York Times best­sellers? Not here, and I’d hope—for the sake of those hard-work­ing writers—that you’d pay to read new releas­es. Can you car­ry along with you on your next busi­ness trip or vaca­tion the works of Aris­to­tle and Freud, sev­er­al nov­els by Jane Austen and Joseph Con­rad, the mas­ter­works of Hegel, Hume, and Kant, the com­plete Shake­speare, and Proust’s mul­ti-vol­ume À la recherche du temps per­du? Quite eas­i­ly. Here’s a small sam­ple of what’s on our list:

• Austen, Jane - Pride & Prej­u­dice
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• Car­roll, Lewis - Through the Look­ing-Glass
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• Con­rad, Joseph - Heart of Dark­ness
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Orig­i­nal Mag­a­zine Ver­sion
• Dos­to­evsky, Fyo­dor - Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• Eliot, George - Mid­dle­march
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott - Tales of the Jazz Age
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• Freud, Sig­mund - Dream Psy­chol­o­gy: Psy­cho­analy­sis for Begin­ners
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now
• Tol­stoy, Leo - Anna Karen­i­na
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• Whit­man, Walt - Leaves of Grass
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now
• Woll­stonecraft, Mary — A Vin­di­ca­tion of the Rights of Women
  • iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now

See the full list of 800 offer­ings here. They may lack the sen­so­ry plea­sure of print, but the abil­i­ty to car­ry an entire library of clas­sic lit­er­a­ture in your pock­et has its advan­tages, to say the least. And if your trav­els include long dri­ves, you’ll also want to check out our mas­ter list of Free Audio Books.

Note: If you need help upload­ing .mobi files to your Kin­dle, you might find it use­ful to watch this video.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Audio Books: Fic­tion & Lit­er­a­ture 

A Mas­ter List of 1,200 Free Cours­es From Top Uni­ver­si­ties: 40,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lec­tures

Book Read­ers Live Longer Lives, Accord­ing to New Study from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

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

Helen Keller Had Impeccable Handwriting: See a Collection of Her Childhood Letters

in Education, History, Letters, Life | October 3rd, 2016

Image by Flickr, cour­tesy of Perkins School for the Blind

The inspi­ra­tional blind and deaf activist and edu­ca­tor Helen Keller learned to speak aloud, but, to her great regret, nev­er clear­ly.

Her care­ful pen­man­ship, above, is anoth­er mat­ter. Her impec­ca­bly ren­dered upright hand puts that of a great many sight­ed peo­ple—not all of them physi­cians—to shame.

Keller learned to write—and read—with the help of embossed books as a stu­dent at Perkins School for the Blind. The Unit­ed States didn’t adopt Stan­dard Braille as its offi­cial sys­tem for blind read­ers and writ­ers until 1918, when Keller was in her late 30’s. Pri­or to that blind read­ers and writ­ers were sub­ject­ed to a num­ber of com­pet­ing sys­tems, a sit­u­a­tion she decried as “absurd.”

Some of these sys­tems had their basis in the Roman alpha­bet, includ­ing Boston Line Type, the brain­child of Perkins’ Found­ing Direc­tor, Samuel Gri­d­ley Howe, an oppo­nent of Braille. Stu­dents may have pre­ferred dot-based sys­tems for tak­ing notes and writ­ing let­ters, but Boston Line Type remained Perkins’ approved print­ing sys­tem until 1908.

There’s more than an echo of Boston Line Type in Keller’s blocky char­ac­ters, as well as her spac­ing. Devi­at­ing from pen­man­ship forms learned at school is a lux­u­ry exclu­sive to the sight­ed. Until for­ma­tion became instinc­tu­al, Keller relied on a grooved board to help her size her char­ac­ters cor­rect­ly, an exhaust­ing process. Small won­der that she end­ed many of her ear­ly let­ters with “I am too tired to write more.”

Perkins has pub­lished a Flickr album of let­ters Keller wrote between the ages of 8 and 11 to then-direc­tor Michael Anag­nos, includ­ing 3 pages in French. Leaf­ing through them, I mar­veled less at her abil­i­ty and deter­mi­na­tion than my (sight­ed) 16-year-old son’s lack of inter­est in devel­op­ing a respectable-look­ing hand.

Keller’s hand­writ­ing is so above reproach that it quick­ly fades to the back­ground, upstaged by her charm­ing man­ners and girl­ish pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. A sam­ple:

If you go to Rou­ma­nia, please ask the good queen Eliz­a­beth about her lit­tle invalid broth­er and tell her that I am very sor­ry that her dar­ling lit­tle girl died. I should like to send a kiss to Vit­to­rio, the lit­tle prince of Naples, but teacher says she is afraid you will not remem­ber so many mes­sages.

Browse Perkins’ col­lec­tion of Keller’s hand­writ­ten let­ters to Michael Anag­nos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and wine­mak­er who played Annie Sul­li­van in her high school’s pro­duc­tion of The Mir­a­cle Work­er. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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

in Film, Sci Fi | October 3rd, 2016

When we watch Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis now, we see an aes­thet­i­cal­ly dar­ing land­mark work of sci­ence-fic­tion cin­e­ma. When H.G. Wells watched Metrop­o­lis back in 1927, the year of its release, he saw some­thing very dif­fer­ent indeed. “I have recent­ly seen the sil­li­est film,” wrote the author of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine as an open­er for his New York Times review. “I do not believe it would be pos­si­ble to make one sil­li­er.”

Despite its giant bud­get, Metrop­o­lis gives “in one eddy­ing con­cen­tra­tion almost every pos­si­ble fool­ish­ness, cliché, plat­i­tude, and mud­dle­ment about mechan­i­cal progress and progress in gen­er­al, served up with a sauce of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty that is all its own.” His­to­ry remem­bers Lang and Wells both as vision­ar­ies who looked, often with lit­tle opti­mism, to the future, but clear­ly they had a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion as to how that future would actu­al­ly play out.

The sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-mind­ed Wells took the impres­sion­is­tic Metrop­o­lis lit­er­al­ly, tak­ing issue with — among oth­er things — how its air­planes “show no advance on con­tem­po­rary types”; its “motor cars are 1926 mod­els or ear­li­er”; its vision of a ver­ti­cal­ly strat­i­fied city look, “to put it mild­ly, high­ly improb­a­ble”; the appar­ent con­di­tion that the city’s “machines are engaged quite furi­ous­ly in the mass pro­duc­tion of noth­ing that is ever used”; and the sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of its mak­ers, “who are all on the side of soul and love and such like.”

Metrop­o­lis opened to mixed reviews at first (some of which you can read here), but no con­tem­po­rary crit­ic could match Wells for sheer dis­dain. “Nev­er for a moment does one believe any of this fool­ish sto­ry; nev­er for a moment is there any­thing amus­ing or con­vinc­ing in its drea­ry series of strained events,” he wrote, steer­ing his point-by-point take­down to its con­clu­sion. “It is immense­ly and strange­ly dull. It is not even to be laughed at.”

Strong stuff, but the high­est form of film crit­i­cism, as the French New Wave would lat­er artic­u­late, is film­mak­ing. And so, in 1936, came Things to Come, anoth­er cin­e­mat­ic spec­ta­cle of the future, this one built to the osten­si­bly more plau­si­ble spec­i­fi­ca­tions Wells laid out as its screen­writer — that film itself just one more pre­de­ces­sor to the unend­ing series of dystopias, utopias, and every kind of future in-between to appear on the screen over the next eight decades.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Things to Come, the 1936 Sci-Fi Film Writ­ten by H.G. Wells, Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts the World’s Very Dark Future

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Complete List of the 533 Movies & TV Shows Watched on the International Space Station

in Film, Television | September 30th, 2016

Image cour­tesy of NASA

To keep some mea­sure of san­i­ty, the astro­nauts liv­ing aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS), some 220 miles above our plan­et Earth, make a point of unwind­ing. Accord­ing to NASA, the astro­nauts get week­ends off. And, “on any giv­en day, crew mem­bers can watch movies, play music, read books, play cards and talk to their fam­i­lies.” Ear­li­er this year, Pale­o­Fu­ture gave us a fur­ther glimpse into what astro­naut down­time looks like, when its edi­tor, Matt Novak, print­ed a Com­plete List of Movies and TV Shows On Board the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. Acquired through a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion request, the list is a cat­a­logue of every film and TV show in the ISS media library. As Matt notes, there are many clas­sics (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock’s North by North­west), “plen­ty of space-themed and dystopi­an sci-fi movies” (2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and Blade Run­ner), and a help­ful serv­ing of com­e­dy (Air­plane). Below, you can find the first 100 items on the list. Get the com­plete list–all 533 movies and TV shows–at Pale­o­fu­ture.

1. 1941
2. 12 Mon­keys
3. 12 Years a Slave
4. 2 Fast 2 Furi­ous
5. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. 21 Jump Street
8. 24 (Sea­sons 1–8)
9. 48 Hours
10. 8 Mile
11. A Christ­mas Car­ol
12. A Christ­mas Sto­ry
13. A Knights Tale
14. A Man and a Woman
15. A Night at the Opera
16. A Night at the Rox­bury
17. A Per­fect Mur­der
18. A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion
19. A Room with a View
20. Absolute­ly Fab­u­lous (Series 1–3)
21. Air Force One
22. Air­plane
23. Alias Sea­son 1
24. Alien
25. Alien 3
26. Alien Res­ur­rec­tion
27. Aliens
28. All Good Things
29. Along Came Pol­ly
30. Always
31. Amer­i­can Gang­ster
32. Amer­i­can Sniper
33. Amer­i­can Wed­ding
34. An Amer­i­can in Paris
35. An Arti­cle of Hope
36. Ana­lyze This
37. Anchor­man
38. Anchor­man 2
39. Ani­mal House (1978)
40. Argo
41. Armaged­don
42. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
43. Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
44. Arrow Sea­son 1
45. Arsenic and Old Lace
46. As Good as it Gets
47. Austin Pow­ers Inter­na­tion­al Man of Mys­tery
48. Austin Pow­ers The Spy Who Shagged Me
49. Aus­tralia
50. Avatar
51. Baby Mama
52. Back to Bataan
53. Back to the Future
54. Back to the Future Part II
55. Back to the Future Part III
56. Back­draft
57. Band of Broth­ers Sea­son 1
58. Bataan
59. Bat­man For­ev­er
60. Bat­man Returns
61. Bat­tle for the Plan­et of the Apes
62. Bat­tle of Britain
63. Bat­tle­ship
64. Beneath the Plan­et of the Apes
65. Ben-Hur
66. Bet­ter Call Saul Sea­son 1
67. Bev­er­ly Hills Cop II
68. Bev­er­ly Hills Cop III
69. Big Bang The­o­ry (Sea­sons 1–8)
70. Big Eyes
71. Big Jake
72. Bil­ly Jack
73. Bird­man, or the Unex­pect­ed Virtue of Igno­rance
74. Black Hawk Down
75. Black Mask
76. Black Swan
77. Blade Run­ner
78. Blaz­ing Sad­dles Blend­ed
79. Blue Plan­et Frozen Seas
80. Blue Plan­et Ocean World
81. Blues Broth­ers
82. Bob Newhart But­ton-Down Con­cert
83. Body of Lies
84. Brave­heart
85. Break­ing Bad Sea­sons 1–6
86. Brides­maids
87. Bull Durham
88. Cad­dyshack
89. Cahill Unit­ed States Mar­shal
90. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: The First Avenger
91. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: The Win­ter Sol­dier Cap­tain Phillips
92. Casablan­ca
93. Cast Away
94. Catch-22
95. Celtic Woman Songs from the Heart
96. Chance Are
97. Char­i­ots of Fire
98. Char­lie St Cloud
99. Chil­dren of Men
100. Chisum

Find the com­plete list of 533 films and TV shows here.

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:

Astro­naut Chris Had­field Sings David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” On Board the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Going to the Bath­room in Space But Were Afraid to Ask

If Astro­nauts Cry in Space, Will Their Tears Fall?

William Shat­ner Puts in a Long Dis­tance Call to Astro­naut Aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

How the Coen Brothers Storyboarded Blood Simple Down to a Tee (1984)

in Film | September 30th, 2016

Sel­dom, in the films of the Joel and Ethan Coen, do char­ac­ters’ schemes go accord­ing to plan. You can watch it hap­pen all across their fil­mog­ra­phy: the baby theft in Rais­ing Ari­zona, the own-wife kid­nap­ping and ran­som in Far­go, the casi­no-vault tun­nel heist in The Ladykillers, the Com­mu­nist con­ver­sion of a screen idol in Hail, Cae­sar! But they’ve earned their enor­mous cin­e­mat­ic rep­u­ta­tion not just for their themes, but for the pre­ci­sion with which they con­struct movies around them; it some­times seems that the more dis­solute the char­ac­ters and ulti­mate­ly dis­as­trous the plot they fall into, the more care­ful­ly-made the pic­ture.

This pat­tern began in 1984 with their first fea­ture, the Texas neo-noir Blood Sim­ple. Despite its rel­a­tive­ly small-scale pro­duc­tion (espe­cial­ly by the stan­dards of their peri­od piece-heavy recent work), it show­cas­es every ele­ment their fans love: the sense of place, the sharp dia­logue, the fas­ci­na­tion with “low” life, the dark humor, the atten­tion to detail.

No won­der, then, that it has now arrived in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, in an edi­tion which includes sup­ple­men­tary mate­ri­als like the com­par­i­son between the sto­ry­board and fin­ished scene above, fea­tur­ing com­men­tary from the Coens Joel and Ethan both, as well as direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Bar­ry Son­nen­feld and actor Frances McDor­mand.

“There are direc­tors who are com­plete­ly com­fort­able extem­po­riz­ing on the set, and oth­ers who are not,” say Joel and Ethan, trad­ing off obser­va­tions. “Some direc­tors want to throw every­thing up in the air and just see where it lands; that’s real­ly how they work, fun­da­men­tal­ly, and get great results. We’re kind of the… oth­er end of the spec­trum. We’re more com­fort­able if we have a plan, even if we stray quite a dis­tance from that plan while we’re shoot­ing.” They seem not to have strayed at all in the par­tic­u­lar scene in this video, but their fil­mog­ra­phy boasts more than enough vital­i­ty to rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­plete, con­trol-freak­ish rigid­i­ty. All of it shows us how the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry — but only because the Coen Broth­ers lay even bet­ter plans first.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Coen Broth­ers Put Their Remark­able Stamp on the “Shot Reverse Shot,” the Fun­da­men­tal Cin­e­mat­ic Tech­nique

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

Tui­leries: A Short, Slight­ly Twist­ed Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

World Cin­e­ma: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Play­ful Homage to Cin­e­ma His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.