New Video Essay Celebrates HBO’s Deadwood, One of the Greatest Dramas in American TV History

in Television | March 13th, 2014

We live in a gold­en age of tele­vi­sion, not just because tech­nol­o­gy lets us watch shows when­ev­er we like, how­ev­er we like — thus free­ing shows from the tedious need to repeat past events every episode, or worse, to forego the idea of an over­ar­ch­ing sto­ry entire­ly — but because tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides us so many ways to talk about the shows as well. When else, for exam­ple, could a crit­ic like Matt Zoller Seitz make the kind of thought­ful video essays he does for so wide an audi­ence? He does­n’t even labor under the oblig­a­tion to write only about cur­rent pro­grams, and you can see the fruits of that free­dom in his new video essay above. “A Lie Agreed Upon,” pro­duced for the tenth anniver­sary of the debut of HBO’s Dead­wood, exam­ines the still-res­o­nant neo-West­ern series cre­at­ed by tele­vi­sion auteur David Milch, its gen­e­sis, its artis­tic accom­plish­ments, and what it still has to say about soci­ety. “If you’ve read my work,” writes Zoller-Seitz on his blog at RogerEbert.com, “you know I nev­er miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to work Dead­wood into the con­ver­sa­tion, as a legit­i­mate point of com­par­i­son with oth­er shows or films or because I just love talk­ing about it.”

Zoller-Seitz chan­nels this crit­i­cal com­pul­sion into “a stand-alone, near­ly half-hour-long piece, co-pro­duced with Hit­Fix, that looks at the show’s style and major themes, as well as its roots in dif­fer­ent gen­res, includ­ing the West­ern and the gang­ster pic­ture.” On that  page, you can even read the essay’s anno­tat­ed script, which gives you a look at the thought behind this short but rich exe­ge­sis on “one of the great­est dra­mas in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry,” a show that, though orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived for an ancient Roman set­ting, flaw­less­ly made the tran­si­tion to a sto­ry of “the found­ing of civ­i­liza­tion” in post-Civ­il War South Dako­ta. Going from “lewd farce” to “com­e­dy of man­ners” to “polit­i­cal dra­ma,” Dead­wood holds fast to the theme of the basic truths, real or imag­ined, around which soci­ety coheres. After run­ning down the series’ rough-and-tum­ble cast of char­ac­ters, most of them addict­ed to one prim­i­tive Old West drug or anoth­er — booze, lau­danum, hope — Zoller-Seitz para­phras­es Milch’s own thoughts on the sub­ject: “A com­mu­ni­ty’s col­lec­tive agree­ment on cer­tain prin­ci­ples can be yet anoth­er kind of intox­i­cant — per­haps the most pow­er­ful one of all.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Wayne: 26 Free West­ern Films Online

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

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Orson Welles Reads From America’s Greatest Poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1953)

in Literature, Poetry | March 13th, 2014

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass often makes its way into the hands of over­sized Amer­i­can char­ac­ters of, shall we say, uncer­tain repute. We learned, for exam­ple, under scan­dalous cir­cum­stances, of Bill Clin­ton’s admi­ra­tion for the book, and we’ll nev­er for­get the role it played in the rise and fall of sim­i­lar­ly allit­er­a­tive­ly named, pow­er-mad Wal­ter White.

Anoth­er fic­tion­al mastermind—Sideshow Bob—quotes glee­ful­ly from Leaves of Grass in a recent Simp­sons episode. And per­haps the most out­ré char­ac­ter of them all—the florid speech of the rogue and pimp Al Swearen­gen in HBO’s Dead­wood—derives in part from the “bar­bar­ic yawp” Whit­man describes as his native tongue in the poem from which the book’s title comes, “Song of Myself.”

One of the many rea­sons this par­tic­u­lar poem from Leaves of Grass cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion of out­law intel­lec­tu­als (and nar­cis­sists) may be Whitman’s inven­tion of a new Amer­i­can poet­ic idiom for the elo­quent asser­tion of stri­dent­ly defi­ant per­son­al iden­ti­ties. (As Ezra Pound put it, Whit­man “broke the new wood.”) The Guardian placed “Song of Myself” at the top of a 10 best Amer­i­can poems list for the “peer­less self-per­for­mance” of the poem’s hyp­not­ic cadences. Who bet­ter to inter­pret those lines than anoth­er self-invent­ed Amer­i­can con­trar­i­an, Orson Welles?

Dur­ing some dif­fi­cult times in the fifties—in part due to Welles’ IRS trouble—the great actor/di­rec­tor/­mul­ti-media impre­sario found work on radio plays in Eng­land, includ­ing The Lives of Har­ry Lime (based on his char­ac­ter in The Third Man) and The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes (as Mori­ar­ty). In 1953, the BBC con­tract­ed with Welles to record an hour of read­ings from “Song of Myself.” BBC 3 broad­cast the ses­sion, and it lat­er saw release as an LP, now sad­ly out of print. For­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, much of this record­ing has been dig­i­tal­ly pre­served. At the top, hear Welles read sec­tion VI of the poem, and direct­ly above, hear him read the hereti­cal sec­tion XLVIII. The Mick­le Street Review, an online jour­nal of Whit­man stud­ies, hosts a small part of Side 1 and, it appears, all of Side 2 of the record, below. The text of the poem was too long for a full treat­ment, and Welles, it seems, abridged and adapt­ed some of the work him­self. His read­ing was appar­ent­ly very well received by the UK press.

Side 1:

Side 2:

While the BBC com­mis­sioned the recordings—and Welles no doubt need­ed the money—he already had an affin­i­ty for Whit­man. In the same year he com­plete­ly re-invent­ed Amer­i­can film with Cit­i­zen Kane, he also began broad­cast­ing the Orson Welles Show on CBS Radio, on which he and his guests gave dra­mat­ic read­ings from dra­ma, poet­ry, and fic­tion. Welles pro­duced 19 episodes, though only 8 have sur­vived. One of the lost episodes, from Decem­ber 1, 1941, fea­tured Welles read­ing from Leaves of Grass. As fur­ther evi­dence, we have this pho­to­graph of Welles read­ing Gay Wil­son Allen’s The Soli­tary Singer, a crit­i­cal biog­ra­phy of the poet.

What draws Welles, and rest­less per­son­al­i­ties like him, to Whit­man, and espe­cial­ly to Leaves of Grass? One answer lies in Whit­man’s own life. Ear­ly on, PBS’s Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence tells us, Whit­man staked out “rad­i­cal posi­tions… putting him in near con­stant oppo­si­tion to soci­ety’s pre­vail­ing sen­ti­ments.” He nev­er mod­er­at­ed his views or his voice, though faced with charges of blas­phe­my, obscen­i­ty, bad writ­ing, and var­i­ous oth­er pub­lic vices at the time. Whit­man’s stead­fast com­mit­ment to his polit­i­cal and artis­tic vision brought him world­wide acclaim, as well as cen­sure, in his life­time. A par­tic­u­lar­ly scathing 1882 Atlantic review of the sec­ond print­ing of Leaves of Grass cat­a­logues Whit­man’s lit­er­ary abus­es and con­cludes that “the book can­not attain to any very wide influ­ence.” Despite this ter­ri­bly wrong­head­ed pre­dic­tion, the review­er at least rec­og­nizes Whit­man’s “gen­er­ous aspi­ra­tion,” a qual­i­ty held in com­mon by all of Whit­man’s admir­ers, be they heroes, vil­lains, or just aver­age peo­ple respond­ing to the poet­’s raw self-asser­tion and capa­cious, grandiose, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can, form of long­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Reads Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in a 1977 Exper­i­men­tal Film

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Hear Walt Whit­man (Maybe) Read­ing the First Four Lines of His Poem, “Amer­i­ca” (1890)

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

Watch Stephen Sondheim (RIP) Teach a Kid How to Sing “Send In the Clowns”

in Music, Theatre | March 12th, 2014

Stephen Son­deim’s  “Send in the Clowns,” like the much man­gled “Mem­o­ry” from the much maligned musi­cal CATS, has weath­ered any num­ber of ill-advised inter­pre­ta­tions.

The show-stop­ping solo from 1973’s A Lit­tle Night Music’s ref­er­ence to clowns is not meant to be lit­er­al, but that did­n’t stop the Mup­pet Show from send­ing a trio of them in to back Judy Collins. Frank Sina­tra peeked around on every cho­rus, as if he’d yet to come to grips with the fact that Bozo would­n’t be pop­ping up on cue.

It’s mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions like these that set com­posers spin­ning in their graves, but Sond­heim is still very much in the game. His approach to musi­cal the­ater con­tin­ues to be exact­ing, no doubt nerve wrack­ing, though the Guild­hall School of Music and Dra­ma stu­dent he’s fine-tun­ing in the video above bears up brave­ly.

She’s a cou­ple of decades too young to play Desiree, whose unsuc­cess­ful attempt to woo an old lover away from his teenage bride occa­sions the song, but no mat­ter. Her adjust­ments show the div­i­dends a close read­ing of the text can pay.

See what you can do with Sond­heim’s advice next time you’re singing in the show­er, the only place pri­vate enough for me to believe I’m doing cred­it to his oeu­vre. Those of us who can’t sing can take heart know­ing that the orig­i­nal Desiree, Gly­nis Johns, could­n’t either, at least by the mas­ter’s usu­al stan­dards. The song’s unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly short phras­ing allowed her to shine as an actress, and deflect­ed from any vocal short­com­ings.

Here are the lyrics. If you need fur­ther inspi­ra­tion, watch Ing­mar Bergman’s Smiles of a Sum­mer Night, on which A Lit­tle Night Music is based.

Those who are more direc­tor than diva may pre­fer to eval­u­ate the per­for­mances below. In my opin­ion, at least one of them mer­its a firm rap on the knuck­les from Mae­stro Sond­heim for exces­sive wal­low­ing. (Hint for those whose time is short: we’ve saved the best for last.)

Judi Dench, Desiree in the 1995 Roy­al Nation­al The­atre revival, per­form­ing at the BBC Proms 2010, in hon­or of Sond­heim’s 80th birth­day.

Glenn Close, anoth­er Night Music vet at Carnegie Hall.

Car­ol Bur­nett stuck close to the spir­it of the orig­i­nal in a non-com­ic sketch for her 1970’s vari­ety show, costar­ring the late Har­vey Kor­man.

Bernadette Peters, the 2010 Broad­way revival’s Desiree, at South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­si­ty. Her accom­pa­nist seems pret­ty hap­py with this per­for­mance. 

Dame Judi again, show­ing us how it’s done, in cos­tume on the edge of a giant red bed, with Lau­rence Gui­t­tard as Fred­erik. Have a han­kie ready at the 3:10 mark.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Tay­lor Teach­es You to Play “Car­oli­na in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” & Oth­er Clas­sics on the Gui­tar

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

What Books, Movies, Songs & Paint­ings Could Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain on Jan­u­ary 1, 2014?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the musi­cal­ly ungift­ed Bride of Urine­town. Fol­low her  @AyunHalliday

Stephen King Creates a List of 96 Books for Aspiring Writers to Read

in Books, Writing | March 10th, 2014

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

I first dis­cov­ered Stephen King at age 11, indi­rect­ly through a babysit­ter who would plop me down in front of day­time soaps and dis­ap­pear. Bored with One Life to Live, I read the stacks of mass-mar­ket paper­backs my absen­tee guardian left around—romances, mys­ter­ies, thrillers, and yes, hor­ror. It all seemed of a piece. King’s nov­els sure looked like those oth­er lurid, pulpy books, and at least his ear­ly works most­ly fit a cer­tain for­mu­la, mak­ing them per­fect­ly adapt­able to Hol­ly­wood films. Yet for many years now, as he’s ranged from hor­ror to broad­er sub­jects, King’s cul­tur­al stock has risen far above his genre peers. He’s become a “seri­ous” writer and even, with his 2000 book On Writ­ing—part mem­oir, part “textbook”—something of a writer’s writer, mov­ing from the super­mar­ket rack to the pages of The Paris Review. 

Few con­tem­po­rary writ­ers have chal­lenged the some­what arbi­trary divi­sion between lit­er­ary and so-called genre fic­tion so much as Stephen King, whose sta­tus pro­vokes word wars like this recent debate at the Los Ange­les Review of Books. What­ev­er adjec­tives crit­ics throw at him, King plows ahead, turn­ing out book after book, refin­ing his craft, hap­pi­ly shar­ing his insights, and read­ing what­ev­er he likes. As evi­dence of his dis­re­gard for aca­d­e­m­ic canons, we have his read­ing list for writ­ers, which he attached as an appen­dix to On Writ­ing. Best-sell­ing genre writ­ers like Nel­son DeMille, Thomas Har­ris, and needs-no-intro­duc­tion J.K. Rowl­ing sit com­fort­ably next to lit-class sta­ples like Dick­ens, Faulkn­er, and Con­rad. King rec­om­mends con­tem­po­rary real­ist writ­ers like Richard Bausch, John Irv­ing, and Annie Proulx along­side the occa­sion­al post­mod­ernist or “dif­fi­cult” writer like Don DeLil­lo or Cor­mac McCarthy. He includes sev­er­al non-fic­tion books as well.

King pref­aces the list with a dis­claimer: “I’m not Oprah and this isn’t my book club. These are the ones that worked for me, that’s all.” Below, we’ve excerpt­ed twen­ty good reads he rec­om­mends for bud­ding writ­ers. These are books, King writes, that direct­ly inspired him: “In some way or oth­er, I sus­pect each book in the list had an influ­ence on the books I wrote.” To the writer, he says, “a good many of these might show you some new ways of  doing your work.” And for the read­er? “They’re apt to enter­tain you. They cer­tain­ly enter­tained me.”

10. Richard Bausch, In the Night Sea­son
12. Paul Bowles, The Shel­ter­ing Sky
13. T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle, The Tor­tilla Cur­tain
17. Michael Chabon, Were­wolves in Their Youth
28. Rod­dy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors
31. Alex Gar­land, The Beach
42. Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
49. Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club
53. Bar­bara King­solver, The Poi­son­wood Bible
54. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
58. Nor­man Maclean, A Riv­er Runs Through It and Oth­er Sto­ries
62. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ash­es
66. Ian McE­wan, The Cement Gar­den
67. Lar­ry McMurtry, Dead Man’s Walk
70. Joyce Car­ol Oates, Zom­bie
71. Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
73. Michael Ondaat­je, The Eng­lish Patient
84. Richard Rus­so, Mohawk
86. Vikram Seth, A Suit­able Boy
93. Anne Tyler, A Patch­work Plan­et

Like much of King’s own work, many of these books sug­gest a spec­trum, not a chasm, between the lit­er­ary and the com­mer­cial, and many of their writ­ers have found suc­cess with screen adap­ta­tions and Barnes & Noble dis­plays as well as wide­spread crit­i­cal acclaim. For the full range of King’s selec­tions, see the entire list of 96 books at Aero­gramme Writ­ers’ Stu­dio.

via Gal­l­ey­cat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Turns Short Sto­ry into a Free Web­com­ic

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Stephen King Reads from His Upcom­ing Sequel to The Shin­ing

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

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

Watch Alain Resnais’ Short, Evocative Film on the National Library of France (1956)

in Film | March 7th, 2014

French New Wave film­mak­er Alain Resnais, who died at the age of 91 last week, changed cin­e­ma for­ev­er with a string of intel­lec­tu­al­ly rig­or­ous, non­lin­ear mas­ter­pieces like Hiroshi­ma Mon Amour (1959) and Last Year at Marien­bad (1961). Both films are about Resnais’s two obses­sions – time and mem­o­ry. Hiroshi­ma is about a doomed rela­tion­ship between a French actress and a Japan­ese archi­tect who are both haunt­ed by the war. Marien­bad is an enig­mat­ic puz­zle of a movie that sharply divid­ed audi­ences – either you were mes­mer­ized by the movie or you were bored and infu­ri­at­ed by it. For bet­ter or worse, Marien­bad influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phers; Calvin Klein’s Obses­sion ads were direct­ly influ­enced by the film.

Resnais got his start just after the war mak­ing short doc­u­men­taries. His best known is Night and Fog (1955), a med­i­ta­tion on both the Holo­caust and the mem­o­ry of the Holo­caust. And above you can see anoth­er one of his doc­u­men­taries – his 1956 short Toute la mémoire du monde (All the World’s Mem­o­ries). It was put online by Cri­te­ri­on.

While the movie beau­ti­ful­ly shows off the labyrinthine expanse of the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France – its vast col­lec­tion of books, man­u­scripts and doc­u­ments along with her­culean efforts to com­pile and orga­nize all of its infor­ma­tion – the film becomes a rumi­na­tion on the lengths that human­i­ty will go to keep from for­get­ting. The film fea­tures some gor­geous cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Ghis­lain Clo­quet and a sound­track by Mau­rice Jarre. Check it out.

Toute la mémoire du monde will appear in our col­lec­tion of 200 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in 26 Minute Film

The Film­mak­ing of Susan Son­tag & Her 50 Favorite Films (1977)

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.

New Google-Powered Site Tracks Global Deforestation in ‘Near-Real-Time’

in Current Affairs, Environment, Google, Maps | March 5th, 2014

In Sep­tem­ber we told you about tril­lions of satel­lite images of Earth, gen­er­at­ed by the Land­sat, that are now avail­able to the pub­lic.

Now we can share an inter­ac­tive tool that is using some of those Land­sat images to stop ille­gal defor­esta­tion.

With help from Google Earth Engine, the World Resources Insti­tute launched Glob­al For­est Watch, an online for­est mon­i­tor­ing and alert sys­tem that allows indi­vid­ual com­put­er users to watch forests around the world change in an almost real-time stream of imagery.

Whis­tle blow­ers are mak­ing pow­er­ful use of the Glob­al For­est Watch tool. Using spa­tial data streams avail­able on the site to observe for­est changes in south­east­ern Peru, a num­ber of users sub­mit­ted alerts about rapid­ly esca­lat­ing defor­esta­tion near a gold mine and riv­er val­ley. In anoth­er case, observers sub­mit­ted an alert about ille­gal log­ging in the Repub­lic of the Con­go.

Five years ago, NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey lift­ed pro­to­cols that kept Land­sat images pro­pri­etary. Now, agen­cies like the World Resources Institute—and even tiny cit­i­zen watch­dog groups around the world—have access to incred­i­bly rich tools and data. Some of the imagery is hard to inter­pret. Glob­al For­est Watch devel­oped a num­ber of dif­fer­ent data lay­ers for users to apply, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor for­est areas for trends or ille­gal log­ging. The video at the top of this page gives a good overview of how the site works. This one gives more detail about how to use the maps on the Glob­al For­est Watch site.

Select an area of the world and then select a data set that inter­ests you. Choose to look at ter­rain, satel­lite, road, tree height, or com­pos­ite images of a par­tic­u­lar region. Data lay­ers can be lay­ered on top of one anoth­er to show trends in for­est man­age­ment. In Indone­sia, for exam­ple, you can use the FORMA alerts but­ton to see what has already been report­ed in that area of the humid trop­ics.

How can you tell if for­est change is due to ille­gal log­ging? Turn on the For­est Use fil­ters to see which areas are autho­rized for log­ging and min­ing and which are pro­tect­ed. In Indone­sia, many areas are des­ig­nat­ed for oil palm pro­duc­tion, but expan­sion of those crops are often asso­ci­at­ed with loss of nat­ur­al for­est.

Do your own sleuthing. The site is designed to har­ness data from gov­ern­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic sci­en­tists, along with obser­va­tion from indi­vid­u­als (us). There is even infor­ma­tion about com­pa­nies that are grow­ing oil palm trees, so it’s pos­si­ble that a dili­gent user could catch an over-aggres­sive grow­er step­ping over the for­est bound­ary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

Trace Darwin’s Foot­steps with Google’s New Vir­tu­al Tour of the Gala­pa­gos Islands

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films

in Film | March 5th, 2014

Wes Anderson’s lat­est, The Grand Budapest Hotel, opens this week and next in select­ed the­aters, and reviews of the film seem to fol­low what at this point in the director’s career almost feels like a tem­plate: dis­cuss the odd­i­ties and per­fec­tions of Anderson’s stal­wart band of actors (always Bill Mur­ray, natch, and often a stand­out young new­com­er); dis­sect the use of music as a kind of mood ring for the dead­pan dia­logue; mar­vel at the intri­cate scenery and cos­tum­ing; frost with a thesaurus’s worth of vari­a­tions on the word “quirky.”

The Guardian gives us descrip­tors like “nos­tal­gia-tint­ed” and “gen­tly charm­ing.” NPR writes “weird and won­der­ful,” “a tum­ble down a rab­bit hole,” and “like a trio of Russ­ian nest­ing dolls.” And Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times refers to the film’s “pas­tel col­or schemes, baroque cos­tumes and del­i­cate pas­tries.” Itzkoff goes fur­ther and won­ders what we might find if we opened up Anderson’s head. Among oth­er options, he imag­ines “a junk draw­er crammed with kite string, Swiss Army knives, and remote-con­trolled toys” and “a well-orga­nized tack­le box.”

The Times review comes clos­est to evok­ing the tac­tile and hyper-spe­cif­ic Ander­son­ian mise-en-scène, but few of his review­ers, it seems, dare attempt the dif­fi­cult task of fit­ting the film­mak­er into cin­e­ma his­to­ry. Were we to chart the aes­thet­ic inter­con­nec­tions of a few-hun­dred well-known auteurs, just where, exact­ly, would we put Wes Ander­son? It’s a lit­tle hard to say—the worlds he cre­ates feel sui gener­is, sprung ful­ly formed from his “junk draw­er, tack­le box” of a mind. While his work has cer­tain affini­ties with con­tem­po­rary styl­ists like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, it also seems to emerge, like an iso­lat­ed only child, from (writes Itzkoff) “a mem­o­ry palace assem­bled ad hoc from brown­stone apart­ments, under­ground caves and sub­ma­rine com­part­ments.”

But of course, like every artist, Ander­son has many con­nec­tions to his­to­ry and tra­di­tion, and works through his influ­ences to make them his own. And he hasn’t been shy about nam­ing his favorite films and direc­tors. In fact, the Texas-born film­mak­er has com­piled sev­er­al lists of favorites in the past cou­ple years. Below, find excerpts culled from three such lists.

From Rot­ten Toma­toes’ “Five Favorite Films with Wes Ander­son.”

Asked about his five favorite movies, Ander­son quipped, “you may have to call it ‘The five movies that I just say, for what­ev­er rea­son’… the five I man­age to think up right now.” Here are the “top three” of that arbi­trary list:

Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polan­s­ki, 1968): “This has always been a big influ­ence on me, or a source of ideas; and it’s always been one of my favorites.”

A Clock­work Orange (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1971): “It’s a movie that’s very par­tic­u­lar­ly designed and, you know, con­jures up this world that you’ve nev­er seen quite this way in a movie before.”

Trou­ble in Par­adise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932): “I don’t know if any­body can make a movie like that anymore—that per­fect tone, like a “soufflé”-type of move. A con­fec­tion, I guess.”

From the New York Dai­ly News’ “Wes Anderson’s 10 Favorite New York Movies.”

Ander­son, says the Dai­ly News, “always fan­cied him­self a New York­er” even before he’d set foot in Man­hat­tan. Below are a few of his top films set in his adopt­ed city (Rosemary’s Baby is num­ber 7).

4. Moon­struck (Nor­man Jew­i­son, 1987): “I’ve always loved this script. It’s a very well-done Hol­ly­wood take on New York.”

6. Sweet Smell of Suc­cess (Alexan­der Mack­endrick, 1957): “Here’s a clas­sic sta­ple of New York movies. The look of it is this dis­tilled black-and-white New York and Clif­ford Odets writes great dia­logue.”

8. Next Stop, Green­wich Vil­lage (Paul Mazursky, 1976): “I saw the movie many years ago and I don’t real­ly remem­ber much oth­er than lov­ing it. I love Paul Mazursky’s films. He’s a New York­er who is a great writer-direc­tor.”

From the Cri­te­ri­on Collection’s “Wes Anderson’s Top 10.”

Ander­son pref­aces this list with: “I thought my take on a top-ten list might be to sim­ply quote myself from the brief fan let­ters I peri­od­i­cal­ly write to the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion team.” Here are a few of his picks:

1. The Ear­rings of Madame de… (Max Ophuls, 1953): “Max Ophuls made a per­fect film.”

4. The Tak­ing of Pow­er by Louis XIV (Rober­to Rosselli­ni, 1966): “The man who plays Louis can­not give a con­vinc­ing line read­ing, even to the ears of some­one who can’t speak French—and yet he is fas­ci­nat­ing…. What does good act­ing actu­al­ly mean? Who is this Tag Gal­lagher?”

7. Classe tous risques (Claude Sautet, 1960): “I am a great fan of Claude Sautet, espe­cial­ly Un coeur en hiv­er.”

10. The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962): “He is my hero. Mike Nichols said in the news­pa­per he thinks of Buñuel every day, which I believe I do, too, or at least every oth­er.”

So there you have… at least some of it (I am sur­prised to find no Georges Méliès). Depend­ing on your famil­iar­i­ty with Anderson’s choic­es, a perusal of his favorites’ lists may give you some spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Then again, it may just be the case that the only real con­text for any Wes Ander­son film is oth­er Wes Ander­son films.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Bill Mur­ray Intro­duces Wes Anderson’s Moon­rise King­dom (And Plays FDR In Decem­ber)

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

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

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

Download a Free Copy of Danah Boyd’s Book, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

in e-books | March 4th, 2014

danah boyd (she does­n’t cap­i­tal­ize her name) is a Prin­ci­pal Researcher at Microsoft Research and a Fel­low at Har­vard’s Berk­man Cen­ter, where she looks at how young peo­ple use social media as part of their every­day lives. She has a new book out called It’s Com­pli­cat­ed: The Social Lives of Net­worked Teens, and she’s made it avail­able as a free PDF. On her web­site she writes, “I didn’t write this book to make mon­ey. I wrote this book to reach as wide of an audi­ence as I pos­si­bly could.  This desire to get as many peo­ple as engaged as pos­si­ble drove every deci­sion I made through­out this process. One of the things that drew me to Yale [the pub­lish­er] was their will­ing­ness to let me put a freely down­load­able CC-licensed copy of the book online on the day the book came out.” But she also asks that you pur­chase a copy of the book if you find it use­ful. “Your pur­chas­ing deci­sions help me sig­nal to the pow­ers that be that this book is impor­tant, that the mes­sage in the book is valu­able.” Find the PDF here, or in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. Buy the book online here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

100 Books to Read in a Lifetime

in Books | March 3rd, 2014

Ama­zon’s Books edi­tors set out to com­pile a list of 100 Books to Read in a Life­time, with a few goals in mind:

We want­ed the list to cov­er all stages of a life (which is why you’ll find chil­dren’s books in here), and we did­n’t want the list to feel like home­work. Of course, no such list can be com­pre­hen­sive – our lives, we hope, are long and var­ied – but we talked and argued and sift­ed and argued some more and came up with a list, our list, of favorites. What do you think? How did we do?

Over­all pret­ty well. That’s how I’d answer the edi­tors’ rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. The list does­n’t pan­der to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor of read­ing tastes. It fea­tures sub­stan­tive works by Albert Camus, Alice Munro (see our col­lec­tion of free Munro sto­ries), Ralph Elli­son, Robert A. Caro, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Rebec­ca Skloot and many oth­ers. It’s a hearty list, so far as these lists go, offer­ing plen­ty of good selec­tions for some­one seek­ing a new read. But let me add this one caveat. If the Ama­zon edi­tors did­n’t sell out, they did intend to sell. Or so it seems to skep­ti­cal me. Of the 100 books on the list, only a hand­ful are old­er works in the pub­lic domain and thus free. Maybe the Ama­zon edi­tors would claim that read­ing books writ­ten a cen­tu­ry ago is tan­ta­mount to home­work. But that seems fair­ly short-sight­ed. All of this reminds me of a post we wrote last year called The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors. Here we looked back at a 2007 book called The Top Ten: Writ­ers Pick Their Favorite Books where edi­tor J. Ped­er Zane asked 125 top writ­ers to name their favorite books — writ­ers like Nor­man Mail­er, Annie Proulx, Stephen King, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Mes­sud, and Michael Chabon. The lists were all com­piled in an edit­ed col­lec­tion, and then pref­aced by one uber list, “The Top Top Ten.” All but one book in the top 10 was writ­ten before 1931 (which means they’re almost entire­ly free and avail­able in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions). It just goes to show, I sup­pose, that one per­son­’s home­work is anoth­er per­son­’s read of a life­time. Feel free to sift through both lists (here & here) and see which texts belong on your per­son­al buck­et list.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

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

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

Watch Oscar-Winning Films Free Online

in Film | March 2nd, 2014

To warm you up for tonight’s Oscars, we “pinned” our col­lec­tion of 34 Free Oscar Win­ning Films to the top of our home­page ear­li­er today. If you did­n’t get a chance to peruse the list, you can always find it here: 34 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web. Or vis­it our meta col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Niv­en Presents an Oscar and Gets Inter­rupt­ed by a Streak­er (1974)

Hat­tie McDaniel, Star of Gone with the Wind, Gives a Mov­ing Acad­e­my Award Accep­tance Speech (1940)

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web

80 Years of Acad­e­my Award Win­ning Films in Posters