The Filmmaking Craft of David Fincher Demystified in Two Video Essays

in Film | April 8th, 2015

David Finch­er is an auteur in the same way that Alfred Hitch­cock is — you can tell a Finch­er film from see­ing a sin­gle frame. His shots are col­ored with inky blacks and sick­ly flu­o­res­cent greens and they are always com­po­si­tion­al­ly per­fect. His cam­era moves with an eerie dis­em­bod­ied smooth­ness that makes a Kubrick film seem down right warm and invit­ing. His movies mine the murky recess­es of the human con­di­tion; you are more like­ly to see a gris­ly mur­der in a Finch­er movie than a pas­sion­ate kiss. Even movies that have a rel­a­tive­ly low body count, like The Social Net­work, are imbued with a dis­tinct­ly Finch­er­sque grim­ness.

A grow­ing num­ber of crit­ics are start­ing to pay atten­tion. Above you can see Tony Zhou illus­trate the director’s styl­is­tic restraint in a video essay called “And the Oth­er Way is Wrong.” Finch­er him­self once said, “They know you can do any­thing so the ques­tion is what don’t you do, not what do you do.” And Zhou ele­gant­ly shows what Finch­er does not do, which is such sta­ples of Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ing as hand-held cam­eras and close ups. He likes his cam­era locked down and aloof.

In anoth­er video essay series, Aaron Aradil­las and the great Matt Zoller Seitz focus sim­ply on the open­ings of Fincher’s films. The series starts with Fincher’s first, and most maligned, movie Alien3. Aradil­las and Zoller Seitz argue that the film is dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent from the first two Alien films. Rid­ley Scott, direc­tor of Alien, kept the shots long and the edits large­ly invis­i­ble. Finch­er, in con­trast, used fast and jar­ring edits. He start­ed as a music video direc­tor and was still in MTV mode when he made Alien3.

In a lat­er episode on Zodi­ac, arguably his mas­ter­piece, Aradil­las and Zoller Seitz show that Finch­er bril­liant­ly packed the film’s two open­ing sequences with an impres­sive amount of expo­si­tion, set­ting up not just sto­ry ele­ments but also the film’s com­plex, sub­jec­tive point of view.

There are four videos in total in this series with a promise of a fifth. You can watch them all here.

Ear­li­er this week, we showed you Cameron Beyl’s five-part, three-hour Direc­tors Series study of Stan­ley Kubrick. Who is he tack­ling next? Finch­er, of course.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

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

The Mad Men Reading List: 25 Revealing Books Read by the Characters on the Show

in Literature, Television | April 7th, 2015

Image cour­tesy of The New York Pub­lic Library.

The good peo­ple over at the New York Pub­lic Library com­piled a list of books read by the char­ac­ters of Mad Men, which just start­ed the last half of its sev­enth and final sea­son. Over the course of the series, the show’s char­ac­ters drank sev­er­al swim­ming pools worth of cock­tails, engaged in a host of ill-advised illic­it affairs and, on occa­sion, dreamed up a bril­liant adver­tis­ing cam­paign or two. As it turns out, they also read quite a bit.

All the books seem to say some­thing about the inner life of each char­ac­ter. The show’s enig­mat­ic main char­ac­ter, Don Drap­er, favored works like Dante’s Infer­no and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury – books that point towards Draper’s series-long down­ward spi­ral. The whiny, inse­cure Pete Camp­bell read Thomas Pynchon’s para­noid clas­sic The Cry­ing of Lot 49. And Bert Coop­er, the aris­to­crat­ic bow-tie sport­ing patri­arch of Ster­ling Coop­er is appar­ent­ly an Ayn Rand fan; he’s seen read­ing Atlas Shrugged ear­ly in the series. You can see the full read­ing list below or here in a beau­ti­ful PDF designed by the NYPL.

A num­ber of the texts list­ed below also appear in our Free eBooks and Free Audio­Books col­lec­tions.

DON DRAPER’S PICKS:

• EXODUS by Leon Uris (Episode 106 “Baby­lon”)
• THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe
• MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY by Frank O’Hara
• THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkn­er
• THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD by Ruth Bene­dict
• THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD by John Le Carre
• THE FIXER by Bernard Mala­mud
• ODDS AGAINST by Dick Fran­cis
• THE INFERNO by Dante Alighieri
• THE LAST PICTURE SHOW by Lar­ry McMurtry
• PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth

ROGER STERLING’S PICK:

• CONFESSIONS OF AN ADVERTISING MAN by David Ogilvy

JOAN HARRIS’S PICK:

• LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER by D. H. Lawrence

PETE CAMPBELL’S PICKS:

• THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pyn­chon
• GOODNIGHT MOON by Mar­garet Wise Brown

BETTY DRAPER’S PICKS:

• BABYLON REVISITED AND OTHER STORIES by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
• THE GROUP by Mary McCarthy

LANE PRYCE’S PICK:

• THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain

HENRY FRANCIS’S PICK:

• THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

BERT COOPER’S PICK:

• ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand

SALLY DRAPER’S PICKS:

• THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Edward Gib­bon
• TWENTY ONE BALLOONS by William Pene Du Bois
• NANCY DREW: THE CLUE OF THE BLACK KEYS by Car­olyn Keene
• THE BLACK CAULDRON by Lloyd Alexan­der
• ROSEMARY’S BABY by Ira Levin

via The New York Pub­lic Library

Relat­ed Con­tent:

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Ernest Hemingway’s List for a Young Writer

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

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

What It’s Like to Be Color Blind and See Art in Color for the First Time

in Art, Biology, Museums, Science, Technology | April 7th, 2015

We all know that say­ing about walk­ing in anoth­er’s shoes, but what about see­ing through anoth­er’s eye­balls? I’m not talk­ing about per­spec­tive. I’m talk­ing about col­or. As in I see it, and my hus­band does­n’t. At least not the way I do.

His cop­ing mech­a­nism is to chal­lenge me when­ev­er I refer to some­thing as “blue.” To him, it’s grey, or brown, or some oth­er non-blue shade. He wants me to see it that way too. To admit that I am wrong. For my part, I feel it’s impor­tant that the per­son to whom I’m mar­ried acknowl­edge that there’s no way my favorite bowl can be the col­or of cement, no mat­ter what his cone cell recep­tors are telling him.

Per­haps he’d have bet­ter luck ask­ing patient strangers to describe col­or to him, as blind-from-birth film crit­ic Tom­my Edi­son does below. Hmm. Col­or may be more sub­jec­tive than my hus­band’s and my spec­tral stand-offs would sug­gest.

Accord­ing to EnChro­ma, the com­pa­ny that designed and sells the col­or-cor­rect­ing lens­es the onscreen guinea pigs are seen wear­ing in the video up top, an esti­mat­ed 300 mil­lion peo­ple suf­fer from some form of col­or blind­ness. Their glass­es offer some of those three mil­lion a chance at see­ing red in the lit­er­al sense. The video par­tic­i­pants are, not sur­pris­ing­ly, blown away by their first encounter with a Cray­ola-col­ored world.

Hav­ing refreshed myself on the struc­tures of the eye, I took the col­or blind­ness test on EnChro­ma’s web­site. I test­ed nor­mal, hav­ing iden­ti­fied the hid­den (or in my case not-so-hid­den) num­bers in a vari­ety of vir­tu­al mosaics.

My col­or blind friend, Bob, agreed to take it too, pro­vid­ed I muz­zle myself from offer­ing the sort of com­men­tary to which hus­bands are sub­ject­ed. (Whad­daya mean you can’t see it!? It’s bright fuch­sia!!!) He pulled a pret­ty heavy duty protan defi­cien­cy, oth­er­wise known as red-green col­or blind­ness.

Accord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er, EnChro­ma glass­es are unlike­ly to col­or his world. The best he could hope for is a slight improve­ment after weeks of wear­ing.

Bum­mer, except that he lives in Chica­go, where the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art offers EnChro­ma Cx loan­ers at the recep­tion desk. Like many such insti­tu­tions, the MCA is active­ly seek­ing ways to improve acces­si­bil­i­ty. (The museum’s col­or blind direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions rec­om­mends hav­ing a look at Mar­tin Creed’s Work No. 1351, a col­or­ful lat­tice in the cafe. See right below.)

Per­haps Bob will get a peek at some­thing he has­n’t seen before. Like red. Oth­ers will expe­ri­ence a rev­e­la­tion. Mean­while, an insuf­fer­able non-col­or­blind indi­vid­ual such as myself might get an effect akin to an Insta­gram fil­ter. My col­ors will pop.

“Unfair,” say Bob and my hus­band. I have to agree. Should the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art offer col­or-leech­ing glass­es, I will wear them, even if the frames are real­ly ugly. Until then, the video below pro­vides some sense of what those of us who see the full range of col­or aren’t miss­ing.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pra­do Muse­um Cre­ates the First Art Exhi­bi­tion for the Visu­al­ly Impaired, Using 3D Print­ing

Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Por­trait

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

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

What Ignited Richard Feynman’s Love of Science Revealed in an Animated Video

in Animation, Science | April 6th, 2015

The Exper­i­menters, a three-episode series that ani­mates the words of sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tors, con­cludes with the reflec­tions of Richard Feyn­man, the charis­mat­ic, Nobel-Prize win­ning physi­cist who did so much to make sci­ence engag­ing to a broad­er pub­lic. Feyn­man knew how to pop­u­lar­ize sci­ence — to make the process of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and explo­ration so con­ta­gious — because he learned from a good teacher: his father. You can learn more about that by watch­ing the ani­mat­ed video above. And don’t miss the pre­vi­ous two episodes in The Exper­i­menters series. They touched on the life and thought of Buck­min­ster Fuller and Jane Goodall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Richard Feyn­man Presents Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics for the Non­Sci­en­tist

Watch Stars Read Classic Children’s Books: Betty White, James Earl Jones, Rita Moreno & Many More

in Books, Education, English Language, K-12 | April 3rd, 2015

As if we need­ed the competition—am I right, parents?—of some very excel­lent children’s books read by some beloved stars of stage and screen, and even a for­mer vice pres­i­dent. With Sto­ry­line Online, the SAG Foun­da­tion, char­i­ta­ble arm of the Screen Actor’s Guild, has brought togeth­er top tal­ent for enthu­si­as­tic read­ings of books like William Steig’s Brave Irene, read by Al Gore, Satoshi Kitamura’s Me and My Cat, read by Eli­jah Wood, and Patri­cia Polacco’s Thank You, Mr. Falk­er, read by the fan­tas­tic Jane Kacz­marek. There are so many read­ings (28 total), I could go on… so I will. How about Bet­ty White’s irre­sistible read­ing of Har­ry the Dirty Dog, just above? Or Rita Moreno read­ing of I Need My Mon­ster, below, a light­heart­ed sto­ry about our need for dark­ness? Or James Earl Jones, who touch­ing­ly dis­cuss­es his own child­hood strug­gles with read­ing aloud, and tells the sto­ry of To Be a Drum, fur­ther down?

I won’t be able to resist show­ing these to my three-year-old, and if she prefers the read­ings of high­ly acclaimed actors over mine, well, I can’t say I blame her. Each video fea­tures not only the faces and voic­es of the actors, but also some fine ani­ma­tion of each storybook’s art. The pur­pose of the project, writes the SAG Foun­da­tion, is to “strength­en com­pre­hen­sion and ver­bal and writ­ten skills for Eng­lish-lan­guage learn­ers world­wide.” To that end, “Sto­ry­line Online is avail­able online 24 hours a day for chil­dren, par­ents, and edu­ca­tors” with “sup­ple­men­tal cur­ricu­lum devel­oped by a lit­er­a­cy spe­cial­ist.” The phrase “Eng­lish-lan­guage learn­ers” should not make you think this pro­gram is only geared toward non-native speak­ers. Young chil­dren in Eng­lish speak­ing coun­tries are still only learn­ing the lan­guage, and there’s no bet­ter way for them than to read and be read to.

As a mat­ter of fact, we’re all still learning—as James Earl Jones says, we need to prac­tice, no mat­ter how old we are: prac­tice tun­ing our ears to the sounds of well-turned phras­es and appre­ci­at­ing the delight of a story—about a dirty dog, a mon­ster, cat, cow, or lion—unfolding. So go on, don’t wor­ry if you don’t have chil­dren, or if they hap­pen to be else­where at the moment. Don’t deny your­self the plea­sure of hear­ing Robert Guil­laume read Chih-Yuan Chen’s Guji Guji, or Annette Ben­ing read Avi Slodovnick’s The Tooth, or… alright, just go see the full list of books and read­ers here… or see Sto­ry­time Online’s Youtube page for access to the full archive of videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­na­tion­al Children’s Dig­i­tal Library Offers Free eBooks for Kids in Over 40 Lan­guages

Stephen Fry Reads You Have To F**king Eat, the New Mock Children’s Book by Adam Mans­bach

Rolling Stones Drum­mer Char­lie Watts Writes a Children’s Book Cel­e­brat­ing Char­lie Park­er (1964)

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

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Philosophy Animations on Ethics Narrated by Harry Shearer

in Animation, Philosophy | March 30th, 2015

The his­to­ry of moral phi­los­o­phy in the West hinges prin­ci­pal­ly on a hand­ful of ques­tions: Is there a God of some sort? An after­life? Free will? And, per­haps most press­ing­ly for human­ists, what exact­ly is the nature of our oblig­a­tions to oth­ers? The lat­ter ques­tion has long occu­pied philoso­phers like Immanuel Kant, whose extreme formulation—the “cat­e­gor­i­cal imperative”—flatly rules out mak­ing eth­i­cal deci­sions depen­dent upon par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tions. Kant’s famous exam­ple, one that gen­er­al­ly gets repeat­ed with a nod to God­win, involves an axe mur­der­er show­ing up at your door and ask­ing for the where­abouts of a vis­it­ing friend. In Kant’s esti­ma­tion, telling a lie in this case jus­ti­fies telling a lie at any time, for any rea­son. There­fore, it is uneth­i­cal.

In the video at the top of the post, Har­ry Shear­er nar­rates a script about Kant’s max­im writ­ten by philoso­pher Nigel War­bur­ton, with whim­si­cal illus­tra­tions pro­vid­ed by Cog­ni­tive. Part of the BBC and Open University’s “A His­to­ry of Ideas” series, the video—one of four deal­ing with moral philosophy—also explains how Kant’s approach to ethics dif­fers from those of util­i­tar­i­an­ism.

In the video above, Shear­er describes that most util­i­tar­i­an of thought exper­i­ments, the “Trol­ley Prob­lem.” As described by philoso­pher Philip­pa Foot, this sce­nario imag­ines hav­ing to sac­ri­fice the life of one for those of many. But there is a twist—the sec­ond ver­sion, which involves the added crime of phys­i­cal­ly mur­der­ing one per­son, up close and per­son­al, to save sev­er­al. An anal­o­gous but con­verse the­o­ry is that of Prince­ton philoso­pher Peter Singer (below) who pro­pos­es that our oblig­a­tions to peo­ple in per­il right in front of us equal our oblig­a­tions to those on the oth­er side of the world.

Final­ly, the last video sur­veys one of the thorni­est issues in moral philo­soph­i­cal history—the “is/ought” divide, as prob­lem­at­ic as the ancient Euthy­phro dilem­ma. How, asked David Hume, are we to deduce moral prin­ci­ples from facts about the world that have no moral dimen­sion? Par­tic­u­lar­ly when those facts are nev­er con­clu­sive, are sub­ject to revi­sion, and when new ones get uncov­ered all the time? The ques­tion intro­duces a seem­ing­ly unbridge­able chasm between facts and val­ues. Moral judg­ments found­ed on what is or isn’t “nat­ur­al” floun­der before our ter­ror of much of what nature does, and the very par­tial and fal­li­ble nature of our knowl­edge of it.

The prob­lem is as star­tling as Hume’s cri­tique of causal­i­ty, and in part caused Kant to remark that Hume had awak­ened him from a “dog­mat­ic slum­ber.” What may strike view­ers of the series is just how abstract these ques­tions and exam­ples are—how divorced from the messi­ness of real world pol­i­tics, with the excep­tion, per­haps, of Peter Singer. It may be instruc­tive that polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy forms a sep­a­rate branch in the West. While these prob­lems are cer­tain­ly dif­fi­cult enough to trou­ble the sleep of just about any thought­ful per­son, in our day-to-day lives, our deci­sion mak­ing process seems to be much messier, and much more sit­u­a­tion­al, than we’re prob­a­bly ever aware of.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

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

A Short Animated History of Daylight Saving Time, Narrated by Stephen Fry

in Animation, Economics, History | March 29th, 2015

Sev­er­al weeks back, we con­tem­plat­ed how, in the 1650s, the eco­nom­ic his­to­ry of the West changed irrev­o­ca­bly when Chris­ti­aan Huy­gens invent­ed the pen­du­lum clock  — a time­piece that enabled us to mea­sure time in accu­rate, uni­form ways, mak­ing us atten­tive to the pas­sage of time and focus on things like pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and per­for­mance. Watch “A Briefer His­to­ry of Time” to get more on that.

By the 18th cen­tu­ry, Ben Franklin, Amer­i­ca’s great Enlight­en­ment fig­ure, thought of anoth­er way to dis­ci­pline time and squeeze more pro­duc­tiv­i­ty out of us. While an envoy in France, Franklin sug­gest­ed that Parisians save mon­ey on can­dles by get­ting out of bed ear­li­er and prof­it from the morn­ing sun­light. Not a sur­pris­ing sug­ges­tion from the man who famous­ly said: “Ear­ly to bed, and ear­ly to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” In the video above, Stephen Fry tells you the rest of the Day­light Sav­ing sto­ry. And just a reminder, Europe springs its time for­ward tonight.

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:

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Stephen Fry Explains Human­ism in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos: Hap­pi­ness, Truth and the Mean­ing of Life & Death

Stephen Fry Explains the Rules of Crick­et in 10 Ani­mat­ed Videos

The Talking Heads’ First TV Appearance Was on American Bandstand, and It Was a Little Awkward (1979)

in Music | March 26th, 2015

“I guess he’s…organically shy.”–Tina Wey­mouth

As Talk­ing Heads went from CBG­Bs (see some vin­tage video) to col­lege radio to a Euro­pean tour open­ing for The Ramones in 1977, the band was slow­ly mak­ing its way out of New York City pover­ty while their art school rock was seep­ing into Amer­i­can cul­ture at large. When “Take Me To the Riv­er,” their airy, ner­vous but still funky Eno-pro­duced cov­er of the Al Green song became their first Bill­board Top 30 hit, the band took a step towards nation­al recog­ni­tion.

And that leads us to this awk­ward March 17, 1979 appear­ance of the band on ABC’s Amer­i­can Band­stand, their first on Amer­i­can TV. Long­time host Dick Clark was pret­ty square–rock crit­ic Nik Cohn described him as “a disc jock­ey who looked like an all-Amer­i­can choirboy”–but Amer­i­can Band­stand was a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty. In 1979, the New Wave and Post-Punk scenes were rag­ing at the show’s doors. Talk­ing Heads were one of the few acts that year from NYC’s cre­ative caul­dron of a music scene, apart from Blondie and Grace Jones, to make it onto Band­stand.

In the above clip, Clark apol­o­gizes for get­ting Tina Weymouth’s name wrong, then jumps in to inter­view David Byrne, who responds to Clark’s ques­tions by shut­ting them down with embar­rassed looks and mat­ter-of-fact answers. Clark then turns back to Tina for some psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic help. “Is he always this enthu­si­as­tic?” he asks. It crum­bles from there.
Wey­mouth remem­bered it slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly in this recent (2014) inter­view in New York Mag­a­zine:

I couldn’t explain to the record-label peo­ple why David’s behav­ior could be so incred­i­bly odd. He had a freak-out on our first tele­vi­sion appear­ance, on Dick Clark, on Amer­i­can Band­stand. David sort of froze, and Dick Clark sort of whirled around, and hands the micro­phone to me. And there were oth­er things going on, too. I don’t think any per­son is one thing, or defined by a con­di­tion that they might have.

It’s not exact­ly freez­ing, but it is odd…for rock front­men. And ask­ing Byrne “Do you flog your­self into this?” tells you a bit more about Clark’s state of mind than any­thing else.

You can see the mimed per­for­mance of their hit here:

The oth­er song they per­formed on the broad­cast “Thank You for Send­ing Me an Angel” has not popped up on YouTube…yet.

Part­ing note: The oth­er guest that night on Band­stand was twee, blue-eyed dis­co act Brook­lyn Dreams with their sin­gle Make It Last.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

Animated: The Inspirational Story of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Bigfoot

in Animation, Science | March 26th, 2015

Now out. The sec­ond video in The Exper­i­menters, a short series of ani­ma­tions high­light­ing three “icons of sci­ence” and “what spurred their cre­ativ­i­ty.” Episode 1 brought us into “the Geo­des­ic Life” of Buck­min­ster Fuller. This new install­ment gives us an ani­mat­ed look at Jane Goodall, the pri­ma­tol­o­gist who has done such inspi­ra­tional work with chim­panzees. (Don’t miss last week’s fea­ture on her in The Times.) Draw­ing on a 2002 inter­view that aired on NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day, this clip fea­tures Goodall recount­ing her life sto­ry — includ­ing how she got a PhD at Cam­bridge before get­ting an under­grad­u­ate degree — and it also veers into some fun ter­rain. Does Goodall believe in Big­foot? You bet she does.

The next video in The Exper­i­menters series will focus on Richard Feyn­man. Stay tuned.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures from Cor­nell (1964)

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

Watch a New Star Wars Animation, Drawn in a Classic 80s Japanese Anime Style

in Animation, Sci Fi | March 25th, 2015

It did­n’t take long for Star Wars (1977) to start spin­ning off fan films. Just a year after the space opera hit Amer­i­can cin­e­mas, Jonathan Crow tells us, “San Fran­cis­co film­mak­er Ernie Fos­selius had the brain­wave to make a spoof.” And, as it turns out, the 13-minute film, made for $8,000, “became a pre-inter­net viral hit and a sta­ple on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, ulti­mate­ly earn­ing over $1,000,000 – an unheard of haul for a short film.” It’s called Hard­ware Wars, and you can find it in our archive.

Star Wars fan films have kept com­ing ever since. Right through today. The lat­est is TIE Fight­er (above). Drawn by Paul John­son over a four-year peri­od, the video adopts an ani­me style, made famous by the Japan­ese dur­ing the 1980s, and it tells the Star Wars sto­ry (or at least part of it), from the per­spec­tive of the Empire. A PDF of the sto­ry can be read online here. Find the offi­cial poster here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Comes Soft Rain’