The Only Known Footage of the 1926 Film Adaptation of The Great Gatsby (Which F. Scott Fitzgerald Hated)

in Film, Literature | April 9th, 2013

Every­one’s get­ting ready for the release of The Great Gats­by, the new film adap­ta­tion of F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s 1925 clas­sic nov­el. Direct­ed by Baz Luhrmann, this ver­sion stars Leonar­do DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mul­li­gan, Isla Fish­er and oth­ers. It has been shot in 3D.

Undoubt­ed­ly, crit­ics will be quick to com­pare the 2013 adap­ta­tion to the 1974 pro­duc­tion, which had its own strengths — a screen­play writ­ten by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and Vladimir Nabokov for starters. And then a cast with Robert Red­ford, Mia Far­row, and Sam Water­ston in star­ring roles. See the orig­i­nal trail­er above.

Few­er com­par­isons will be made to the less star-stud­ded adap­ta­tion of 1949, which came into the­aters and then fell into deep obscu­ri­ty. And nary a word will be said about how Luhrman­n’s film stacks up against the first appear­ance of The Great Gats­by on cel­lu­loid. That’s because the 1926 silent film has­n’t been seen in decades. It’s sim­ply lost. All that remains of the orig­i­nal 80 minute film is the one minute trail­er above. And the ghost of F. Scott Fitzger­ald isn’t com­plain­ing. Accord­ing to Anne Mar­garet Daniel’s post in Huff­Po, when Scott and Zel­da saw the film in Hol­ly­wood, they gave the Para­mount pro­duc­tion one big thumbs down. (That’s for you Roger.) Zel­da wrote in a let­ter: “We saw ‘The Great Gats­by’ in the movies. It’s ROTTEN and awful and ter­ri­ble and we left.” Hem­ing­way could­n’t have said it bet­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

F. Scott Fitzger­ald in Drag (1916)

Find The Great Gats­by in our Free eBooks Col­lec­tion

90 Silent Films in Col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online

The Fine Art of Painting Portraits on Coffee Foam

in Food & Drink | April 6th, 2013

Espres­so is his palette. Cof­fee is his medi­um. Wel­come to the artis­tic world of Mike Breach, a NYC barista, who painstak­ing­ly “paints” por­traits on lattes and cap­puc­ci­nos. After you vis­it Breach’s tum­blr filled with “Baris­tArt,” you’ll nev­er be quite so impressed by that heart-shaped design oth­er baris­tas pour onto your expen­sive foam.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

Daniel Dennett and Cornel West Decode the Philosophy of The Matrix

in Film, Philosophy | April 5th, 2013

Apoth­e­o­sis of cyber­punk cul­ture, 1999’s The Matrix and its less-suc­cess­ful sequels intro­duced a gen­er­a­tion of fan­boys and girls to the most styl­ish expres­sion of some age-old ide­al­ist thought exper­i­ments: the Hin­du con­cept of Maya, Plato’s cave, Descartes’ evil demon, Hilary Putnam’s Brain in a Vat—all notions about the nature of real­i­ty that ask whether what we expe­ri­ence isn’t instead an elab­o­rate illu­sion, con­ceal­ing a “real” world out­side of our per­cep­tu­al grasp. In some versions—such as those of cer­tain Bud­dhists and Chris­t­ian Gnos­tics, whose ideas The Matrix direc­tors bor­rowed liberally—one can awak­en from the dream. In oth­ers, such as Kant’s or Jacques Lacan’s, that prospect is unlike­ly, if impos­si­ble. These ques­tions about the nature of real­i­ty ver­sus appear­ance are main­stays of intro phi­los­o­phy cours­es and stereo­typ­i­cal ston­er ses­sions. But they’re also peren­ni­al­ly rel­e­vant to philoso­phers and neu­ro­sci­en­tists, which is why such aca­d­e­m­ic lumi­nar­ies as Daniel Den­nett and David Chalmers con­tin­ue to address them in their work on the nature and prob­lem of con­scious­ness.

Den­nett, Chalmers, the always cap­ti­vat­ing scholar/theologian/activist Cor­nel West, and a host of oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic thinkers, appear in the doc­u­men­tary above, Phi­los­o­phy and the Matrix: Return to the Source. Part of the sprawl­ing box-set The Ulti­mate Matrix Col­lec­tion, the film com­ments on how The Matrix does much more than dra­ma­tize an under­grad­u­ate the­sis; it takes on ques­tions about reli­gious rev­e­la­tion and author­i­ty, para­psy­chol­o­gy, free will and deter­min­ism, and the nature of per­son­al iden­ti­ty in ways that no dry philo­soph­i­cal text or arcane mys­ti­cal sys­tem has before, thanks to its hip veneer and pio­neer­ing use of CGI. While some of the thinkers above might see more pro­fun­di­ty than the movies seem to war­rant, it’s still inter­est­ing to note how each film gloss­es the great meta­phys­i­cal ques­tions that intrigue us pre­cise­ly because the answers seem for­ev­er out of reach.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Matrix: What Went Into The Mix

Daniel Den­nett (a la Jeff Fox­wor­thy) Does the Rou­tine, “You Might be an Athe­ist If…”

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Bob Dylan and Van Morrison Sing ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,’ 1998

in Music | April 5th, 2013

Recent­ly we post­ed a remark­able pair of videos fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son singing togeth­er on a hill­top in Athens. Today we’re back with anoth­er rare duet from the leg­endary singer-song­writ­ers, this one record­ed nine years after the jam ses­sion in Greece.

The per­for­mance took place on June 24, 1998 at the Nation­al Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land. Dylan was on a world tour to sup­port his Time Out of Mind album, which was released the pre­vi­ous fall. Mor­ri­son shared the bill at some parts of the tour, includ­ing shows in North Amer­i­ca, North­ern Ire­land, Eng­land, Scot­land and France. Mor­ri­son usu­al­ly opened for Dylan, but on at least two occa­sions Mor­ri­son closed the show: in his native Belfast, and in Birm­ing­ham.

Near the end of Dylan’s Birm­ing­ham set, the audi­ence was sur­prised when Mor­ri­son walked onstage in his sun­glass­es and pork pie hat. The two sang a duet of “Knockin’ on Heav­en’s Door,” with Dylan play­ing acoustic gui­tar and Mor­ri­son the har­mon­i­ca. It was a rare event: With only a cou­ple of brief excep­tions ear­li­er in the tour, the two super­stars kept their appear­ances sep­a­rate. For­tu­nate­ly, some­one with a video cam­era was there to cap­ture the moment.

h/t Paul Jones

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Won­drous Night When Glen Hansard Met Van Mor­ri­son

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

The Two Roger Eberts: Emphatic Critic on TV; Incisive Reviewer in Print

in Film, Television | April 5th, 2013

“It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.” Words of writer­ly wis­dom from the late Roger Ebert, whom sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans came to rec­og­nize not just as a film crit­ic, but as the very per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of film crit­i­cism. He earned this place in the coun­try’s zeit­geist by mas­ter­ing two stark­ly dis­parate types of media: the medi­um-length but always sub­stan­tial review writ­ten for news­pa­pers, and the short con­ver­sa­tion­al review broad­cast on tele­vi­sion. The for­mer we read in the form of his syn­di­cat­ed film pieces for the Chica­go Sun-Times; the lat­ter we watched on Siskel and Ebert at the Movies. After his co-host Gene Siskel’s pass­ing in 1999, Ebert con­tin­ued with Roger Ebert and the Movies, fol­lowed by Ebert and Roeper and the Movies. But long­time fans of his film crit­i­cism on tele­vi­sion, and new fans dis­cov­er­ing the show’s old episodes on the inter­net, will always look back to Ebert’s on-air debates — which some­times devolved, sim­ply, into fights — as the peak of the form, at least in terms of enter­tain­ment val­ue. Above you’ll find a clas­sic exam­ple in Siskel and Ebert’s tiff over the fire­fight in Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Full Met­al Jack­et. “I have nev­er felt a kill in a movie quite like that,” insists Siskel. “Not in Apoc­a­lypse Now? Not in The Deer Hunter? Not in Pla­toon?” Ebert asks before his riposte: “In that case, you’re going to love the late show, because they have kills like that every night in black and white star­ring John Wayne.” (BTW, we have a col­lec­tion of John Wayne films here.)

Ebert knew how to deliv­er that metaphor­i­cal punch (and, when nec­es­sar­i­ly, to approach the edge of actu­al fisticuffs) on tele­vi­sion. In print, he knew how to remain curi­ous and thought­ful even when served each week’s heap­ing help­ing of stu­dio medi­oc­rity. This milder, more com­pli­cat­ed, vast­ly knowl­edge­able crit­i­cal per­sona comes through in his 1996 con­ver­sa­tion with Char­lie Rose (part one, part two) just above. Though he could cel­e­brate and dis­miss with the utmost con­vic­tion, he also under­stood that the film crit­ic has high­er duties than eval­u­a­tion. He demon­strates this under­stand­ing all through­out his review archive, which, embrac­ing the web before most crit­ics of his gen­er­a­tion, he’d put online by the mid-nineties. Back then, I spent an hour or two every day after school in the library, plow­ing through his back pages. I thought I was learn­ing about the movies, as indeed I was, and I was cer­tain­ly learn­ing a thing or two about review­ing the movies, but I was above all learn­ing about the whole craft of writ­ing, and thus about approach­ing the world, cin­e­mat­ic and oth­er­wise. We won’t remem­ber Roger Ebert for the stars he doled out and with­held, nor for the angle of his thumbs; we’ll remem­ber him for his abil­i­ty to, through the lens of the movies, con­sid­er life itself. 

Relat­ed con­tent:

Roger Ebert Talks Mov­ing­ly About Los­ing and Re-Find­ing His Voice (TED 2011)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

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

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

in Film | April 4th, 2013

We do not, alas, live in the gold­en age of Amer­i­can movie poster design. Some Unit­ed States inde­pen­dent films (and espe­cial­ly their Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion DVD releas­es, if they get them) still fly under the ban­ner of strik­ing imagery designed by dar­ing artists and graph­ic design­ers, but for main­stream Hol­ly­wood pic­tures, the thrill has def­i­nite­ly gone. Even when their most icon­ic posters of decades past show­case admirable crafts­man­ship, they often lack a cer­tain artis­tic zing. Every Indi­ana Jones fan, for instance, has a spe­cial place in their heart for Raiders of the Lost Ark’s clas­sic poster, but even the sternest Indy purist would have to admit that one of the film’s Pol­ish posters, shown above, imme­di­ate­ly com­mu­ni­cates some­thing the orig­i­nal, near-pho­to­re­al­is­tic image does­n’t. You can see anoth­er Pol­ish ren­di­tion of Raiders, one that con­veys even more ful­ly the unex­pect­ed inten­si­ty of Har­ri­son Ford’s all-Amer­i­can hero archae­ol­o­gist, in this col­lec­tion fifty Pol­ish film posters from wellmed­icat­ed.

Fol­low­ers of many vari­eties of visu­al art, espe­cial­ly ani­ma­tion, know that Poland has a rich visu­al tra­di­tion indeed. Exe­cut­ed by the hand of a Pol­ish artist, ideas that would seem non­sen­si­cal or ridicu­lous any­where else in the world sud­den­ly make sense. Just above we have the Pol­ish poster adver­tis­ing Stroszek by Wern­er Her­zog, whose movies, based on his own inex­plic­a­ble but some­how sat­is­fy­ing ideas of “ecsta­t­ic truth,” per­haps mer­it Pol­ish posters more than any­one else’s. Just below, we see what Pol­ish view­ers saw when they lined up to buy tick­ets for Star Wars’ sequel The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe it strikes you as heresy to accept any­thing but Drew Struzan’s hardy, Darth Vad­er-cen­tric, explo­sion-laden orig­i­nal, but this one urges me to think about the entire­ty of Star Wars’ project in a whole new — or at least new­ly askew — way. The oth­er coun­try which has long led the way with inter­est­ing home­grown posters for Amer­i­can movies? Ghana.

via @sheerly

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

Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks Sing “Sweet Georgia Brown” Live…and in Polish

in Comedy, Film, Music | April 2nd, 2013

The Cap­tain and Tenille. 

Son­ny and Cher.

Shields and Yarnell.

Ban­croft and Brooks?

Not exact­ly, but one thing’s cer­tain. Had mar­ried cou­ple Anne Ban­croft and Mel Brooks under­tak­en to co-host a tele­vi­sion vari­ety show in the 70’s or 80’s, they would’ve mopped up the era’s com­pe­ti­tion faster than you can say Mr Clean Sun­shine Fresh.

Our best evi­dence is this clip from the 1983 Brooks-host­ed episode of the BBC vari­ety hour, An Audi­ence with…  All the tropes of the once pop­u­lar form—the celebri­ty ‘as audi­ence plant, the staged spon­tane­ity, the audi­ence eager­ly fol­low­ing direction—are on dis­play in the lead up to the big pay off, a light-foot­ed live ren­di­tion of Sweet Geor­gia Brown…in heav­i­ly accent­ed Pol­ish.

It def­i­nite­ly leaves one want­i­ng more. (In which case, you could try your luck with Brooks’ remake of To Be or Not to Be, in which he and Ban­croft play roles orig­i­nat­ed by Jack Ben­ny and Car­ole Lom­bard).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Crit­ic: Hilar­i­ous Oscar-Win­ning Film Nar­rat­ed by Mel Brooks (1963)

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1966

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s will be per­form­ing live in Brook­lyn Brain Frame lat­er this month.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Art and Science of Beer

in Food & Drink | March 26th, 2013

Charles Bam­forth is the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Pro­fes­sor of Malt­ing and Brew­ing Sci­ences at UC Davis, which means he knows a few things about mak­ing beer. He can get into some nit­ty-grit­ty top­ics, like the enzy­mol­o­gy of the brew­ing process, foam sta­bil­i­ty, and the psy­chophysics of beer per­cep­tion. But that’s not what he’s doing here. In the clip above, the “Pope of Foam,” as Bam­forth is oth­er­wise known, gives you a quick overview of the beer-mak­ing process, describ­ing every­thing from grind­ing the malt, to boil­ing the wort, to bot­tling with glass ver­sus cans. Final­ly, the Pope gives you a hot tip: how to pick the fresh­est pint when you’re at a pub.

If you want to go deep­er into Bam­forth’s world, you can read his 2009 book: Beer: Tap into the Art and Sci­ence of Brew­ing. Or don’t miss this pre­vi­ous post where a Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham sci­en­tist explains The Physics of Guin­ness Beer.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe for the DIY Con­nois­seur

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Climb Three of the World’s Highest Peaks on Google Street View

in Google, Photography, Travel | March 24th, 2013

What’s sur­pris­ing about Ever­est Base Camp is the col­or. It’s a flinty, gray place lit­tered with shards of Himalayan sand­stone and shale. Here and there appears a vivid green pool of alpine water. And then there’s the red, blue and green prayer flags hung by Himalayans to blow bless­ings in the wind.

Google Street View’s lat­est project, the World’s High­est Peaks, takes us to Ever­est and two oth­er moun­tains includ­ed in the Sev­en Summits—the high­est moun­tains on each of the sev­en con­ti­nents.

Teams of moun­taineers tot­ed dig­i­tal cam­eras on treks to the top of each moun­tain and inte­grat­ed their images into Google maps so we can trek along with them from the com­fort of our lap­tops, iPhones or Android devices. Like Google Street View’s Ocean gallery, the moun­tain images bring us to places we may nev­er see with our own eyes.

It’s easy to imag­ine the dry, cold cli­mate at Camp Col­era, where hik­ers wait for the weath­er to per­mit a climb of Aconagua, the high­est moun­tain in the Andes. The views of Tan­za­nia from Arrow Glac­i­er are breath­tak­ing. Hik­ers camp here before mak­ing the treach­er­ous ascent to Uhu­ru—the “rooftop of Africa” and the sum­mit of Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro.

One of the things Google does real­ly well is cre­ate gal­leries of images that are the kind we might take our­selves, not fil­tered-lens pro­fes­sion­al shots that belong on cal­en­dars. We see moun­taineers rest­ing and hang­ing out at the frosty Casa de Piedra, on the way up to Aconagua, hik­ers pic­nick­ing at Lemosho Glades as they switch from jeep to foot on the climb up Kil­i­man­jaro, and the weird, aban­doned diesel bar­rels that serve as shel­ter for folks climb­ing Mount Elbrus in Rus­sia.

As usu­al, Google lets us in on the process of col­lect­ing all these images with a fun blog writ­ten by the pho­tog­ra­phers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

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

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Google Street View Takes You on a Panoram­ic Tour of the Grand Canyon

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

How Pi Was Nearly Changed to 3.2 … and Copyrighted!

in History, Math | March 22nd, 2013

The sto­ry above—from our old friend James Grime of Num­ber­phile and Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty—has all the mak­ings of weirdo Amer­i­cana: bad ama­teur sci­ence, com­mer­cial ven­tures based upon the same, and a state leg­is­la­ture eager to embrace it all. In 1897, an ama­teur math­e­mati­cian named Edwin Good­win believed he’d solved an ancient prob­lem ruled insol­u­ble fif­teen years ear­li­er. He thought that he had squared the cir­cle and could rea­son­ably copy­right Pi as 3.2. Yes, that’s right, after his “dis­cov­ery,” Good­win, a native of Indi­ana, decid­ed to copy­right his proof so that any­one using it out­side of the state would have to pay him roy­al­ties.

But kind­ly, in a ges­ture of nativist good­will (or polit­i­cal oppor­tunism), Good­win decid­ed he would let his home state of Indi­ana use his proof for free for edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es. In fact, he said as much when he intro­duced a bill to the Indi­ana House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to rule his proof cor­rect and grant him sole pro­pri­etor­ship. And, as some­times hap­pens in sto­ries like this, the bill passed, unan­i­mous­ly, and the leg­is­la­tors were impressed. But one man wasn’t. By sheer chance, a pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics hap­pened to be in atten­dance. While he declined to meet math­e­mat­ics hero Edwin Good­win, he did take it upon him­self to warn the Indi­ana Sen­ate of what was com­ing its way. Luck­i­ly for the state’s school­child­ren, the Sen­ate threw the bill out, but not before a half-hour spent  mock­ing its silli­ness.

But is the idea of squar­ing a cir­cle ridicu­lous? Dr. Grime cites one Indi­an math­e­mati­cian who pro­posed a some­what fea­si­ble solu­tion. And what exact­ly does it mean to “square a cir­cle”? If you don’t know (and I don’t), you’ll have to wait till next time on Num­ber­phile, when Grime and his team promise to explain it to us rubes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Math in Good Will Hunt­ing is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Incred­i­ble Men­tal Math Gym­nas­tics on “Count­down”

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness