Portland, the City in Cinema: See the City of Roses as it Appears in 20 Different Films

in Film | November 27th, 2015

Last year, I post­ed about The City in Cin­e­ma, my series of video essays explor­ing cities as revealed and re-imag­ined by the films set in them — or rather, at that time, about one city in par­tic­u­lar: Los Ange­les, birth­place of Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma and end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing urban phe­nom­e­non in its own right. But ever since I first began the project, I knew I’d want to extend it to oth­er cities. When first I stepped beyond Los Ange­les with The City in Cin­e­ma, I stepped into the city I’ve long con­sid­ered my favorite to vis­it in Amer­i­ca.

And what city, exact­ly, would that be? “Port­land, Ore­gon: one of the nation’s most beau­ti­ful cities, with Mount Hood ris­ing in the dis­tance, majes­tic, serene, white with eter­nal snow,” a “city of wide streets, mod­ern build­ings” whose cit­i­zens “attend many fine church­es” and live in “beau­ti­ful homes,” a city where “in the soft cli­mate, gar­dens grow lush and green through­out the year” with ros­es “every­where in pro­fu­sion,” a “fam­i­ly town, a good place to bring up chil­dren.” Or so, in any case, goes the open­ing of Port­land Exposé, a 1957 true-crime moral­i­ty play, one of the very first films to use Port­land as a set­ting, and the one that opens my lat­est long-form video essay, Port­land, the City in Cin­e­ma.

At that time not much more than a small-to-medi­um-sized town in the woods, Port­land claims only a scant cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry up through the 1970s. But every Port­land movie that came out then, such as the CBS nuclear-strike drama­ti­za­tion A Day Called X and the bohemi­an land-use satire Prop­er­ty, boasts its own sort of inter­est. And then, in the 1980s, emerges Gus Van Sant, unques­tion­ably the fore­most Port­land auteur of his gen­er­a­tion. His black-and-white debut fea­ture Mala Noche, which deals humor­ous­ly with themes of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty on Port­land’s for­mer Skid Row (now the thor­ough­ly gen­tri­fied Pearl Dis­trict) drew the Hol­ly­wood atten­tion that would ulti­mate­ly get him mak­ing main­stream fea­tures like Good Will Hunt­ing and Milk.

But Van Sant has, in par­al­lel, led anoth­er career as a thor­ough­ly inde­pen­dent film­mak­er, and one who shoots most of those thor­ough­ly inde­pen­dent films in Port­land. That track of Van San­t’s work has led to such for­mi­da­ble Port­land movies, cen­tral to a project like this, as Drug­store Cow­boy, My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, and Para­noid Park. Dur­ing the 1990s, the time of the “Indiewood” boom in Amer­i­ca, oth­er film­mak­ers dis­cov­ered Port­land’s poten­tial as a rich and under­used urban set­ting: Annette Hay­wood-Carter for her adap­ta­tion of Joyce Car­ol Oates’ nov­el Fox­fire, for instance, or Jake Kas­dan for his uncon­ven­tion­al detec­tive sto­ry and black roman­tic com­e­dy Zero Effect.

Albert Pyun, per­haps the last great B‑movie auteur, also came to Port­land of the 1990s for his Andrew Dice Clay vehi­cle Brain Smash­er… a Love Sto­ry. And not much lat­er, the city host­ed the likes of Body of Evi­dence, a high­ly unerot­ic erot­ic thriller star­ring Willem Dafoe and Madon­na. But it, too, reveals the the city’s poten­tial (or poten­tial for mis­use) as a set­ting, as does the more recent Untrace­able, a bland com­pro­mise between tech­no-thriller and tor­ture hor­ror that at least had the mon­ey to shoot Port­land from some impres­sive angles.

As the city of Port­land has devel­oped in a way appre­ci­at­ed by urban­ists for its com­pact down­town, use­ful tran­sit sys­tem, most­ly well-exe­cut­ed archi­tec­tur­al preser­va­tion, and over­all “smart” growth (by Amer­i­can stan­dards, any­way), the cin­e­ma of Port­land has devel­oped in a way appre­ci­at­ed by crit­ics. The 21st cen­tu­ry has so far seen such well-craft­ed, thought­ful Port­land pic­tures as Kel­ly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, Aaron Katz’s Dance Par­ty USA and Cold Weath­er, and Matt McCormick­’s Some Days Are Bet­ter than Oth­ers. But if Port­land, the City in Cin­e­ma remains, in its cur­rent ver­sion, the defin­i­tive exam­i­na­tion of the cin­e­ma of Port­land, I’ll be ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed. I intend it in part as an appre­ci­a­tion of the Port­land movies already made, cer­tain­ly, but in larg­er part as a call for more Port­land movies in the future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

in Poetry | November 26th, 2015

What work of Amer­i­can poet­ry has proven more irre­sistible than Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven? Cer­tain­ly we can sel­dom refrain our­selves from fea­tur­ing it here on Open Cul­ture. We’ve post­ed illus­tra­tions by Édouard Manet and Gus­tave Doré, read­ings by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, Christo­pher Lee (all avail­able here), James Earl Jones, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed, who offered his own mod­ern­ized take on Poe’s words. Even nota­bles pri­mar­i­ly not­ed for some­thing oth­er than their recita­tion abil­i­ty have got in on The Raven: just above, for instance, you can see a read­ing by none oth­er than Mar­vel Comics mas­ter­mind Stan Lee.

We rec­og­nize Stan Lee, of course, as an icon of Amer­i­can cul­ture for his achieve­ments in the field of comics: doing his part to cre­ate endur­ing char­ac­ters like Spi­der-Man, Iron Man, and the X‑Men, fight­ing cen­sor­ship from the Comics Code Author­i­ty, intro­duc­ing the con­cept of coher­ent — or at least coher­ent-enough — fic­tion­al “uni­vers­es,” and much more besides. But a decent por­tion of Lee’s fame also owes to his seem­ing­ly bot­tom­less well of enthu­si­asm, from which he con­tin­ues to draw, at the age of 92, for every pub­lic address to the “true believ­ers,” and he does­n’t leave that enthu­si­asm behind when it comes time to inter­pret Edgar Allan Poe.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly gone on the record in inter­views nam­ing Poe as one of his favorite authors in child­hood (along­side oth­er such high‑, low‑, and mid­dle-browed lit­er­ary immor­tals as Edgar Rice Bur­roughs, Charles Dick­ens, Mark Twain, O. Hen­ry, and Shake­speare), he makes a cer­tain kind of sense as a Raven-read­er. (And has­n’t, say, Spi­der-Man’s ori­gin sto­ry passed into Amer­i­can myth in much the same way as Poe’s tale of a lament­ing lover tor­ment­ed by a talk­ing bird?) He also sets a high bar with his endear­ing per­for­mance itself, which should get you think­ing: if you, too, one day become an icon of Amer­i­can cul­ture, how will you approach your inevitable Raven-read­ing turn?

You can find Lee’s read­ing in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Poe’s text lives here: 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

7 Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Sto­ries and Poems

Down­load the Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His Birth­day

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Monty Python’s John Cleese Creates Ads for the American Philosophical Association

in Comedy, Education, Philosophy | November 25th, 2015

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Paul Box­ley

John Cleese, you say, a spokesman for the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion? Why would such a seri­ous orga­ni­za­tion, whose stat­ed mis­sion is to fos­ter the “broad­er pres­ence of phi­los­o­phy in pub­lic life,” choose a British come­di­an famous for such char­ac­ters as the over­bear­ing Basil Fawl­ty and ridicu­lous Min­is­ter of Sil­ly Walks as one of their pub­lic faces?

They chose him, I imag­ine, because in his var­i­ous roles—as a one­time prep school teacher and stu­dent of law at Cam­bridge, as a com­e­dy writer and Mon­ty Python star, and as a post-Python come­di­an, author, pub­lic speak­er, and vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at Cor­nell—Cleese has done more than his part to spread phi­los­o­phy in pub­lic life. Mon­ty Python, you’ll remem­ber, aired a num­ber of absurd phi­los­o­phy sketch­es, notable for being as smart as they are fun­ny.

Cleese has pre­sent­ed his per­son­al phi­los­o­phy of cre­ativ­i­ty at the World Cre­ativ­i­ty Forum; he’s explained a com­mon cog­ni­tive bias to which media per­son­al­i­ties and politi­cians seem par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble; and he had his own pod­cast in which, among oth­er things, he explained (wink) how the human brain works.

Giv­en these cre­den­tials, and his abil­i­ty to apply his intel­li­gence, wit, and com­ic tim­ing to sub­jects not often seen as par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing by the gen­er­al pub­lic, Cleese seems like the per­fect per­son for the job, even if he isn’t an Amer­i­can philoso­pher. The APA, found­ed in 1900, has recent­ly host­ed con­fer­ences on reli­gious tol­er­ance and “Cul­ti­vat­ing Cit­i­zen­ship.” In 2000, as part of its cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion had Cleese record 22 very short “Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments” to intro­duce novices to the impor­tant work of phi­los­o­phy. These range from the very gen­er­al “What Philoso­phers Do” at the top of the post to the influ­ence of phi­los­o­phy on social and polit­i­cal reform­ers like Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., Jane Addams, and Simone de Beau­voir (above), show­ing philosophy’s “bear­ing on the real world.”

In this PSA, Cleese makes the con­tro­ver­sial claim that “the 21st cen­tu­ry may belong far more to phi­los­o­phy than to psy­chol­o­gy or even tra­di­tion­al reli­gion.” “What a strange thought,” he goes on, then explains that phi­los­o­phy “works against confusion”—certainly a hall­mark of our age. There’s not much here to argue with—Cleese isn’t for­mu­lat­ing a posi­tion, but giv­ing his lis­ten­ers provoca­tive lit­tle nuts to crack on their own, should they find his PSAs intrigu­ing enough to draw them into fur­ther study. They might as well begin where most of us do, with Socrates, whom Cleese intro­duces below.

Hear the rest of Cleese’s phi­los­o­phy PSAs at the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Association’s web­site. And should you wish to dig deep­er, you’ll find an abun­dance of resources in our archives, which includes big lists of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

John Cleese Explains the Brain — and the Plea­sures of DirecTV

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 197 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

Mark Twain’s Patented Inventions for Bra Straps and Other Everyday Items

in History, Literature | November 24th, 2015

Much has been made of Mark Twain’s finan­cial problems—the impru­dent invest­ments and poor man­age­ment skills that forced him to shut­ter his large Hart­ford estate and move his fam­i­ly to Europe in 1891. An ear­ly adopter of the type­writer and long an enthu­si­ast of new sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, Twain lost the bulk of his for­tune by invest­ing huge sums—roughly eight mil­lion dol­lars total in today’s money—on a type­set­ting machine, buy­ing the rights to the appa­ra­tus out­right in 1889. The ven­ture bank­rupt­ed him. The machine was over­com­pli­cat­ed and fre­quent­ly broke down, and “before it could be made to work con­sis­tent­ly,” writes the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia’s Mark Twain library, “the Lino­type machine swept the mar­ket [Twain] had hoped to cor­ner.”

Twain’s seem­ing­ly blind enthu­si­asm for the ill-fat­ed machine makes him seem like a bun­gler in prac­ti­cal mat­ters. But that impres­sion should be tem­pered by the acknowl­edge­ment that Twain was not only an enthu­si­ast of tech­nol­o­gy, but also a can­ny inven­tor who patent­ed a few tech­nolo­gies, one of which is still high­ly in use today and, indeed, shows no signs of going any­where. I refer to the ubiq­ui­tous elas­tic hook clasp at the back of near­ly every bra, an inven­tion Twain patent­ed in 1871 under his giv­en name Samuel L. Clemens. (View the orig­i­nal patent here.) You can see the dia­gram for his inven­tion above. Call­ing it an “Improve­ment in Adjustable and Detach­able Straps for Gar­ments,” Twain made no men­tion of ladies’ under­gar­ments in his patent appli­ca­tion, refer­ring instead to “the vest, pan­taloons, or oth­er gar­ment upon which my strap is to be used.”

The device, writes the US Patent and Trade­mark Office, “was not only used for shirts, but under­pants and women’s corsets as well. His pur­pose was to do away with sus­penders, which he con­sid­ered uncom­fort­able.” (At the time, belts served a most­ly dec­o­ra­tive func­tion.) Twain’s inven­tions tend­ed to solve prob­lems he encoun­tered in his dai­ly life, and his next patent was for a hob­by­ist set of which he him­self was a mem­ber. After the soon-to-be bra strap, Twain devised a method of improve­ment in scrap­book­ing, an avid pur­suit of his, in 1873.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, scrap­books were assem­bled by hand-glu­ing each item, which Twain seemed to con­sid­er an over­ly labo­ri­ous and messy process. His inven­tion—writes The Atlantic in part of a series they call “Patents of the Rich and Famous”—involved “two pos­si­ble self-adhe­sive sys­tems,” sim­i­lar to self-seal­ing envelopes, in which, as his patent states, “the sur­faces of the leaves where­of are coat­ed with a suit­able adhe­sive sub­stance cov­er­ing the whole or parts of the entire sur­face.” (See the less-than-clear dia­gram for the inven­tion above.) The scrap­book­ing device proved “very pop­u­lar,” writes the US Patent Office, “and sold over 25,000 copies.”

Twain obtained his final patent in 1885 for a “Game Appa­ra­tus” that he called the “Mem­o­ry-Builder” (see it above). The object of the game was pri­mar­i­ly edu­ca­tion­al, help­ing, as he wrote, to “fill the children’s heads with dates with­out study.” As we report­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, “Twain worked out a way to play it on a crib­bage board con­vert­ed into a his­tor­i­cal time­line.” Unlike his first two inven­tions, the game met with no com­mer­cial suc­cess. “Twain sent a few pro­to­types to toy stores in 1891,” writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, “but there wasn’t very much inter­est, so the game nev­er went into pro­duc­tion.” Nonethe­less, we still have Twain to thank, or to damn, for the bra strap, an inven­tion of no small impor­tance.

Twain him­self seems to have had some con­tra­dic­to­ry atti­tudes about his role as an inven­tor, and of the sin­gu­lar recog­ni­tion grant­ed to indi­vid­u­als through patent law. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, the US Patent Office claims that Twain “believed strong­ly in the val­ue of the patent sys­tem” and cites a pas­sage from A Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court in sup­port. But in a let­ter Twain wrote to Helen Keller in 1903, he expressed a very dif­fer­ent view. “It takes a thou­sand men to invent a tele­graph, or a steam engine, or a phono­graph, or a tele­phone or any oth­er impor­tant thing,” Twain wrote, “and the last man gets the cred­it and we for­get the oth­ers. He added his lit­tle mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that nine­ty-nine parts of all things that pro­ceed from the intel­lect are pla­gia­risms, pure and sim­ple.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

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

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

One Man-Band Plays Amazing Covers, Note-for-Note, of Yes, CSNY, Zeppelin & More

in Music | November 24th, 2015

I’ve had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet many incred­i­ble musi­cians in per­son, and I’ve always enjoyed watch­ing them do some­thing bet­ter than I ever could, whether it’s wail­ing away on the drums, gui­tar, key­boards, bass… what­ev­er the instru­ment, it’s great fun to see a mas­ter in action. And I’ve met a few mul­ti­tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als who could do a lit­tle, or a lot, of every­thing. But I’ve nev­er met any­one as tal­ent­ed as Jim, the musi­cian in these videos, who goes by the name of Fri­day Night Lul­la­by, and who recre­ates near­ly every note and nuance in clas­sic rock songs from Yes, Led Zep­pelin, Jethro Tull, the Who, CSNY, and more.

His one-man-band mot­to is “we are one per­son,” and you can see why. With the ben­e­fit of record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, he can turn him­self into an orches­tra. At the top of the post, see a teas­er video in which Jim gives us snip­pets of the 60 songs he’s remade. And above, see his ver­sion of Yes’s “Round­about.”

Now you can argue that no mat­ter how good he is, he could nev­er repro­duce the musi­cal per­son­al­i­ties of, say, Steve Howe or Jon Ander­son, and that’s fair enough, but beside the point, real­ly. The guy is good beyond belief, and I’m cer­tain­ly in awe watch­ing these videos of him at work in his home stu­dio, play­ing all 43 tracks of “Round­about.” Or, if Yes isn’t your bag, let him wow you below with the vocal har­monies in CSNY’s “Car­ry On.”

Still not impressed? Check his ver­sion of Stair­way to Heav­en here, or alter­na­tive­ly A‑Ha’s “Take On Me,” below. It’s a depar­ture from the clas­sic rock mate­r­i­al he’s clear­ly more com­fort­able with, and he han­dles it with the same deft­ness and skill, includ­ing that mid-song high note, show­ing off some pret­ty keen video edit­ing skills to boot. For even more mind blow­ing cov­ers, check out the Fri­day Night Lul­la­by Youtube chan­nel.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four­teen-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

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

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

in Food & Drink, Television | November 20th, 2015

I recent­ly read Mer­ry White’s Cof­fee Life in Japan, a his­to­ry of the west­’s favorite bev­er­age in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun. As with so many cul­tur­al imports, the Japan­ese first enter­tained a fas­ci­na­tion with cof­fee, then got more seri­ous about drink­ing it, then made an offi­cial place for it in their soci­ety, then got even more seri­ous about not just drink­ing it but arti­sanal­ly prepar­ing and serv­ing it, wind­ing up with an orig­i­nal­ly for­eign but now unmis­tak­ably Japan­ese suite of prod­ucts and asso­ci­at­ed expe­ri­ences. Hav­ing spent a fair bit of time in Japan­ese cafés myself, I can tell you that the coun­try has some damn fine cof­fee.

But what about its cher­ry pie? Only one man could take that case: FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er, the main char­ac­ter of David Lynch’s ground­break­ing­ly strange ABC tele­vi­sion dra­ma Twin Peaks. A great many Japan­ese peo­ple love cof­fee, but no small num­ber also love David Lynch.

And so, when the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose to take simul­ta­ne­ous advan­tage of local enthu­si­asm for bev­er­age and film­mak­er alike, Geor­gia Cof­fee seized it, work­ing in the robust tra­di­tion of Japan­ese adver­tise­ments star­ring Amer­i­can celebri­ties to reunite mem­bers of Twin Peaks’ cast, recon­struct the fic­tion­al town of Twin Peaks itself, and have Lynch direct a new mini-mini-mini-sea­son of the show, each episode a forty-sec­ond Geor­gia Cof­fee com­mer­cial.

The first episode, “Mys­tery of G,” finds Coop­er in the Twin Peaks Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment, enlist­ed in the search for a miss­ing Japan­ese woman named Asa­mi. He and Asami’s hus­band exam­ine the first piece of evi­dence: an origa­mi crane with a G on it. The sec­ond, “Lost,” intro­duces two more inscrutable arti­facts: a pho­to of Asa­mi beside a rare road­ster, and a mount­ed deer’s head. The lat­ter leads him to Big Ed’s Gas Farm, where in the third episode, “Cher­ry Pie,” he spots the car and, on its pas­sen­ger seat, a mys­te­ri­ous wedge of red bil­liard balls (which, of course, reminds him of his favorite dessert). The fourth, “The Res­cue,” clos­es the case in the woods, where Coop­er finds Asa­mi, trapped and back­wards-talk­ing, in — where else? — the red-cur­tained room of the extra-dimen­sion­al Black Lodge.

Every step of the solu­tion to this mys­tery requires a cup of Geor­gia Cof­fee — or, rather, a can of Geor­gia Cof­fee, Geor­gia being one of the best-known vari­eties of that vend­ing machine-ready cat­e­go­ry of bev­er­age. The west may nev­er have gone in for canned cof­fee, but Japan drinks it in enor­mous quan­ti­ties. What bet­ter way to adver­tise a Japan­ese inter­pre­ta­tion of cof­fee in the ear­ly 1990s, then, than with a Japan­ese inter­pre­ta­tion of Twin Peaks? Alas, the high­er-ups at Geor­gia Cof­fee did­n’t ulti­mate­ly think that way, giv­ing the axe to the planned sec­ond series of Twin Peaks com­mer­cials. Maybe that’s for the best since, as for the actu­al taste of Geor­gia Cof­fee — well, I’ve had damn fin­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

Cof­fee is for Peo­ple, Not Robots: The New Ad for David Lynch’s Line of Organ­ic Cof­fee

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

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Meet Congo the Chimp, London’s Sensational 1950s Abstract Painter

in Art | November 19th, 2015

A few years ago, I watched and enjoyed My Kid Could Paint That, a doc­u­men­tary about Mar­la Olm­stead, a four-year-old abstract painter who became a brief art-world sen­sa­tion, her can­vas­es (which tow­ered over the tiny artist) at one point sell­ing for thou­sands of dol­lars apiece. Olm­stead raised the bar high indeed for all sub­se­quent preschool-aged art celebri­ties, but the world of unlike­ly painters in gen­er­al has a fuller, stranger his­to­ry. Wit­ness, for instance, Con­go the Chimp, the Lon­don Zoo’s artis­tic sen­sa­tion of the 1950s, a not­ed ani­mal artist who sold work to such not­ed non-ani­mal artists as Picas­so, Miró, and Dalí, the last of whom made a com­par­i­son with one of the best-known abstract painters of the day: “The hand of the chim­panzee is qua­si­hu­man; the hand of Jack­son Pol­lock is total­ly ani­mal!”

Con­go, who began his art career the moment he hap­pened to pick up a pen­cil, went on, writes the Tele­graph’s Nigel Reynolds, to become “a tele­vi­sion celebri­ty in the late 1950s as the star of Zootime, an ani­mal pro­gramme pre­sent­ed from the Lon­don Zoo by Desmond Mor­ris, the zool­o­gist and anthro­pol­o­gist. He became even more of a cause célèbre when the Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Arts mount­ed a large exhi­bi­tion of his work in 1957.

Crit­ics had a field day and debate about the mean­ing of art raged furi­ous­ly.” You can see Mor­ris, a sur­re­al­ist painter him­self, in addi­tion to his zoo­log­i­cal, anthro­po­log­i­cal, and tele­vi­su­al work, inter­act­ing with Con­go in the 1950s and reflect­ing on the place of the chim­panzee artist in his own career in the clip at the top of the post. The news­reel below cov­ers an exhi­bi­tion called The Young Idea, which fea­tured paint­ings not just from Con­go but from such Mar­la Olm­stead pre­de­ces­sors as three-year-old Tim­o­thy Vaughn and eigh­teen-month-old Gra­ham Phillips. One of Con­go’s paint­ings appears above.

And so to the obvi­ous ques­tion: But Is It Art? And assum­ing it is, writes John Valen­tine in The Philoso­pher, “what then fol­lows from such a clas­si­fi­ca­tion? What sort of dif­fer­ence does it or should it make in the way we approach and appre­ci­ate chim­panzee paint­ings? If they are art, what sort of crit­i­cal or inter­pre­tive dis­course about them should we engage in? Do we sim­ply appre­ci­ate the lines, colours, and forms of Con­go’s paint­ings and stop at that? Does it make any dif­fer­ence that the paint­ings were done by a mem­ber of a dif­fer­ent species? Should species dif­fer­ences make any dif­fer­ence in artis­tic val­ue?” It may not, at least com­mer­cial­ly speak­ing: Con­go may have had his moment six decades ago, but don’t think that means his work will come cheap; back in 2005, some of his paint­ings went up on the auc­tion block and fetched more than $25,620.

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Comic Book Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poignant Poem, Annabel Lee

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature | November 19th, 2015

We’ve high­light­ed the com­ic art of Mon­tre­al-based Julian Peters before on Open Cul­ture. He’s the man who under­took a 24-page illus­trat­ed adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and then also deliv­ered a man­ga ver­sion of W. B. Yeats’ “When You Are Old,” recre­at­ing the style of Japan­ese romance comics to a T.

While study­ing in a Mas­ters pro­gram ear­ly exam­ples of lit­er­ary graph­ic nov­els, Peters is also turn­ing into a fine illus­tra­tor of poet­ry whether clas­sic (Rim­baud, Keats) or con­tem­po­rary (team­ing up with John Philip John­son on an upcom­ing book of illus­trat­ed poems, one of which you can find here.)

This adap­ta­tion (above) of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” dates from 2011. Poe’s work gives illus­tra­tors nar­ra­tive aplen­ty, but it also gives them rep­e­ti­tion and ellipses. In his ren­di­tion, Peters gives us two pre-teen sweet­hearts sim­i­lar to Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatch­er, and when Annabel Lee dies from “the wind that came out of the cloud by night,” we get a full pan­el of Annabel’s final healthy moments. Wind is every­where to be found in the com­ic, form­ing white caps on the ocean, and blow­ing Annabel’s pig­tails when we first see her.

Schol­ars tend to agree that “Annabel Lee” was based on Poe’s first cousin and teen bride Vir­ginia Clemm, whom he mar­ried when she was 13 (and Poe was 27), but who passed away from tuber­cu­lo­sis at 24 years of age. The image of the beau­ti­ful corpse con­tin­ues through his work from “The Raven” to “Ligeia”.

You can find the first few pan­els of Peters’ adap­ta­tion above. Read the rest here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Clas­sics Sto­ries by Edgar Allan Poe Nar­rat­ed by James Mason in a 1953 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Ani­ma­tion & 1958 Dec­ca Album

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the 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.

An Interactive Timeline Covering 14 Billion Years of History: From The Big Bang to 2015

in History | November 18th, 2015

For his final project in Beza­lel Acad­e­my of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Matan Stauber cre­at­ed His­tog­ra­phy, an inter­ac­tive time­line that cov­ers 14 bil­lion years of his­to­ry. The time­line, writes Stauber, “draws his­tor­i­cal events from Wikipedia, and it self-updates dai­ly with new record­ed events.” And the inter­face lets users see his­to­ry in small­er chunks (decades at a time) or big­ger ones (mil­lions of years at a time). To get a vague feel for how His­tog­ra­phy works, you can watch the video above. But real­ly the best way to expe­ri­ence things is to dive right in here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6,000 Years of His­to­ry Visu­al­ized in a 23-Foot-Long Time­line of World His­to­ry, Cre­at­ed in 1871

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

The His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art Visu­al­ized in a Mas­sive 130-Foot Time­line

Big His­to­ry: David Chris­t­ian Cov­ers 13.7 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry in 18 Min­utes

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

NASCAR Meets the Paranormal in Terry Gilliam’s Short Film, The Legend of Hallowdega

in Film, Sports | November 13th, 2015

I think we here at Open Cul­ture can freely own up to a defi­cien­cy in our con­tent: despite its out­sized pres­ence in Amer­i­can cul­ture, we’ve real­ly neglect­ed to post much about NASCAR. Luck­i­ly, film direc­tor, ani­ma­tor, and Mon­ty Python mem­ber Ter­ry Gilliam has giv­en us rea­son to change our ways by shoot­ing a short film at Alaba­ma’s Tal­lade­ga Super­speed­way, one of the best-known venues for NASCAR races. But The Leg­end of Hal­lowde­ga, made to pro­mote some­thing called AMP Ener­gy Juice, tells not a straight (or rather, con­stant­ly left-turn­ing) sto­ry about rac­ing, but adds anoth­er lay­er of intrigue: the para­nor­mal.

That might sound like a ran­dom con­cep­tu­al mashup, but a lit­tle bit of research reveals Tal­lade­ga as a reg­u­lar Over­look Hotel, what with its his­to­ry of mys­te­ri­ous com­pul­sions, freak injuries and deaths, and unex­plained acts of sab­o­tage. (Some even chalk all this up to a curse placed on the Tal­lade­ga’s val­ley by its orig­i­nal Native Amer­i­can inhab­i­tants, dri­ven out for their col­lab­o­ra­tion with Andrew Jack­son.) Enter tat­tooed, Fu-Manchu’d, bead-fes­tooned ghost hunter Kiyash Mon­sef, here to answer the ques­tion, “What is the truth? And what is truer that the truth?” — the words of the kha­ki-wrapped host of World of the Unex­plained, the fic­ti­tious, high­ly sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic, and not espe­cial­ly com­pe­tent tele­vi­sion show that frames The Leg­end of Hal­lowde­ga’s sto­ry.

Noth­ing in the first few min­utes of the film gives it away as a Ter­ry Gilliam project, but as soon as it enters Mon­se­f’s elab­o­rate yet makeshift, thor­ough­ly ana­log lair — locat­ed under­neath Tal­lade­ga itself — the famous­ly imag­i­na­tive direc­tor starts mak­ing his touch appar­ent. We could eas­i­ly dis­miss David Arquet­te’s per­for­mance as Mon­sef as over-the-top, but to many of us, he sure­ly comes off as no more unfa­mil­iar than some of the locals pro­vid­ing their own tes­ti­mo­ny about the curse in the inter­view seg­ments. Where has the oft-lament­ed “old, weird Amer­i­ca” gone? In (the Amer­i­can-born but British-nat­u­ral­ized and thus suf­fi­cient­ly dis­tanced) Ter­ry Gilliam’s eyes, it lives on, espe­cial­ly in places like Tal­lade­ga.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Ter­ry Gilliam’s Lost Ani­ma­tions from Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Are Now Online

Watch Ter­ry Gilliam’s Ani­mat­ed Short, The Christ­mas Card (1968)

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

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.