Salvador Dalí Gets a Screen Test by Andy Warhol (1966)

in Art, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | February 4th, 2013

The Sur­re­al­ist is ready for his close up, Mr. Warhol. Are you ready for him?

As pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed on this site, Andy Warhol filmed near­ly 500 “screen tests” in the mid-60s. He was­n’t look­ing to dis­cov­er unknown tal­ent or cast an upcom­ing movie. His inter­est seemed to stem more from voyeurism, the col­lec­tor’s impulse, and his fix­a­tion with glam­our. The major­i­ty of his cel­e­brat­ed sub­jects, obey­ing Warhol’s instruc­tions, refrained from ham­ming it up on cam­era.

Report­ed­ly, Bob Dylan was a bit of a diva.

But it was not until Sal­vador Dalí faced the lens that the mak­er met his match…twice. The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art doc­u­ments the Span­ish artist’s fla­grant dis­re­gard for Warhol’s stric­tures, while also spec­u­lat­ing on Warhol’s response.

And yet, some­thing soul­ful does come through in the clip above. Is Dalí emot­ing? Or is the shim­mer­ing back­ground melody by Arman­do Dominguez the inspi­ra­tion for Des­ti­no, a Dali-Dis­ney ani­mat­ed joint that took 57 years in the mak­ing?

Relat­ed Con­tent

Sal­vador Dalí Reveals the Secrets of His Trade­mark Mous­tache (1954)

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Andy Warhol’s ‘Screen Test’ of Bob Dylan: A Clas­sic Meet­ing of Egos

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will let you know if she makes it to Pitts­burgh for her screen­test if you fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Watch Paperman, A CGI Short from Disney that Looks and Feels Like Classic Handmade Animation

in Animation | February 1st, 2013

I missed Dis­ney’s Wreck-It Ralph in its main the­atri­cal run. I now con­sid­er that a shame, as friends have since since informed me that the movie press­es all the right cul­tur­al but­tons for a twen­tysome­thing Amer­i­can male who, like me, grew up play­ing and lov­ing video games. I feel dou­bly sor­ry not to have seen it now that Paper­man has come avail­able on the net. Push­ing anoth­er, more dis­tant cul­tur­al but­ton by pre­ced­ing a fea­ture with a short, Wreck-It Ralph’s screen­ings opened with this six-minute tale by Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion of a seem­ing­ly frus­trat­ed romance con­duct­ed by paper air­plane between two office tow­ers. The place looks to be a major city rum­bling with Amer­i­can com­mer­cial ener­gy, and the time looks to be the black-and-white mid­dle of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry — a cul­tur­al moment, in oth­er words, that pro­duced some ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts’ very favorite work. Look at almost any of Paper­man’s indi­vid­ual frames, in fact, and you could mis­take it for a pro­duc­tion of that gold­en era.

But in motion, some­thing feels very dif­fer­ent indeed. We’ve grown used to Pixar-style com­put­er gen­er­at­ed imagery mak­ing up our ani­mat­ed movies, and while Paper­man looks much more like a clas­sic hand-drawn Dis­ney pic­ture, it actu­al­ly comes as a prod­uct of the sort of tech­nol­o­gy that dri­ves the likes of Wreck-It Ralph. But it ben­e­fits from inno­va­tion that enables the kind of weight, smooth­ness, and phys­i­cal­i­ty of which the hand ani­ma­tors of yore could only dream. Wired’s Graeme McMil­lan reports that “Paper­man‘s seem­ing­ly seam­less way of blend­ing the per­son­al­i­ty of hand-drawn ani­ma­tion with CGI in the phys­i­cal space of the sto­ry is the result of new in-house soft­ware called Mean­der, a vec­tor-based draw­ing pro­gram that allows for manip­u­la­tion of the line after the fact — some­thing that [direc­tor John] Kahrs described as ‘just like paint­ing on the sur­face of the CG.’ ” Does that way lay the future of ani­ma­tion? Per­haps it depends on how well Paper­man per­forms at this year’s Acad­e­my Awards. Keep your eye on the Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film cat­e­go­ry, car­toon buffs — even more than you usu­al­ly do.

You will find Paper­man in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

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.

Alistair Cooke’s Historic Letter From America (1946 – 2004) Now Online, Thanks to the BBC

in History, Radio, Television | January 31st, 2013

Think of Mas­ter­piece The­ater and you might think of Down­ton Abbey, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, or even the Cook­ie Mon­ster. But the man who real­ly made the series famous was broad­cast­er Alis­tair Cooke, the series’ crisp, avun­cu­lar host. Seat­ed in a leather chair, sur­round­ed by bound vol­umes, Cooke intro­duced all of the great British pro­gram­ming brought to the States by WGBH—I, Claudius and Upstairs, Down­stairs and The Six Wives of Hen­ry VIII—and brought a cozy grav­i­tas to Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion.

Cooke died in 2004 and left a lega­cy as a broad­cast essay­ist: Let­ter from Amer­i­ca, a series of 15-minute radio pieces now col­lect­ed into an exten­sive dig­i­tal archive by BBC Radio 4. The essays aired week­ly through­out the world for 58 years, begin­ning in 1946, send­ing Cooke’s slight­ly amused voice over the air­waves. He gave us his ex-pat take on every­thing from Amer­i­can hol­i­days (includ­ing his per­son­al involve­ment in mak­ing George Washington’s birth­day a nation­al hol­i­day), to the ways Amer­i­can Eng­lish varies from British Eng­lish, to major events in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

Cooke cap­tured America’s grief after John F. Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed, but his eye­wit­ness account of Bob­by Kennedy’s death would become one of his most pow­er­ful reports. Cooke was in the lob­by of the Ambas­sador Hotel when Kennedy was shot and used scratch paper to scrib­ble down his impres­sions of the chaos.

He was bril­liant at craft­ing char­ac­ter-dri­ven sto­ries about issues. His piece about John Lennon’s death (above) segued neat­ly into an explo­ration of gun vio­lence in Amer­i­ca. He report­ed on the sui­cide of actress Jean Seberg and used the obit­u­ary as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the excess­es of FBI sur­veil­lance and witch-hunt­ing.

Cooke wasn’t as good a writer as he was a reporter (view his orig­i­nal scripts in the Boston Uni­ver­si­ty archive) and he audi­bly sighs dur­ing some broad­casts, as if he is either tired or bored. But his point of view is price­less: an obser­vant, charm­ing out­sider who fell in love with his adopt­ed coun­try, warts and all.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

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

Two Very Early Concert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

in Music | January 31st, 2013

There are always those bands that you’d wish you’d seen live—bands that seem like they’ll go on for­ev­er (maybe so long you wish they’d quit already). But then you nev­er get around to it, and, Bam!, one day the chance is lost. One of those bands for me is R.E.M., the only U.S. band in my book whose ear­ly work stood up to almost every­thing The Smiths put out. Since I was such a young lad when I first heard them cir­ca-Doc­u­ment, it wasn’t easy for me to get out to con­certs. And by the time I was old enough, they’d moved on some from their ear­ly jan­gle and stomp, garage-rock, post-punk sound, and I’d moved on to oth­er favorites. That’s a shame, in hind­sight, but now thanks to the heav­en­ly mag­ic (or dev­il­ry) of YouTube, I can (and do) spend hours catch­ing up on con­cert film of bands like R.E.M. that I was born too late to see live in their prime.

Whether or not you had the priv­i­lege of see­ing Michael Stipe and com­pa­ny in per­son, there’s lit­tle chance that you were at the show above (if so, speak up!). It’s prob­a­bly one of their first, at the 688 Club in Atlanta, open­ing for Tex-Mex “Nue­vo wavo” gui­tarist, Joe “King” Car­ras­co.

This gig took place on either Feb­ru­ary 2oth or 21st, 1981, a full eigh­teen months before their debut release, the EP Chron­ic Town. There are a few tunes here that nev­er resur­faced in lat­er record­ings (“Nar­ra­tor,” “Dan­ger­ous Times”) and a cou­ple that became clas­sics (“Gar­den­ing at Night,” “Radio Free Europe”). The film opens with them in the midst of cov­er­ing the Son­ny West-penned 1950’s clas­sic “Rave On” (one of Bud­dy Holly’s last hits). And of course it makes per­fect sense that they would owe a debt to this sound, but they trans­formed it so com­plete­ly in their orig­i­nal song­writ­ing that it isn’t always evi­dent. They pull it off with panache.

The whole gig is a tes­ta­ment to what a togeth­er band they were even at this ear­ly stage. It’s all there—Stipe’s vocal quirks and full-body dance attacks, Mike Mills’ bounc­ing bass lines and angel­ic vocal har­monies, Peter Buck’s right-hand­ed Rick­en­backer arpeg­gios (and dap­per vest), and drum­mer Bill Berry’s ever-reli­able back­beat. Nev­er known as over­ly tech­ni­cal musi­cians (an over­rat­ed qual­i­ty in rock, in my opin­ion), what R.E.M. may have lacked in vir­tu­os­i­ty, they made up for in per­son­al­i­ty. Anoth­er com­plete con­cert film below, from Octo­ber 10th, 1982, shows them on a high, two months after Chron­ic Town’s release. Filmed at the Raleigh Under­ground, this gig includ­ed a num­ber of songs that would appear on their first full-length, the moody, con­fi­dent, and time­less Mur­mur.

via Slic­ing Up Eye­balls

Relat­ed Con­tent

R.E.M.’s Final Live Moments in Mex­i­co (and a Vin­tage Ear­ly Con­cert)

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

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

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

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Casting of The Godfather with Coppola, Pacino, De Niro & Caan

in Film | January 30th, 2013

I once heard a radio broad­cast about a lady who watch­es The God­fa­ther every sin­gle day. Impres­sive as that may sound, it prob­a­bly does­n’t even count among the top hun­dred acts of cin­e­mat­ic faith per­formed in the name of Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s 1972 Mario Puzo adap­ta­tion, fea­tur­ing Mar­lon Bran­do. Though I myself more often go to the well of Apoc­a­lypse Now, Cop­po­la’s 1979 Viet­nam-themed Joseph Con­rad adap­ta­tion, fea­tur­ing Mar­lon Bran­do, I under­stand why God­fa­ther fans obsess. Roger Ebert, of course, under­stands even bet­ter. His “Great Movies” piece on the pic­ture describes it as “a bril­liant con­jur­ing act, invit­ing us to con­sid­er the Mafia entire­ly on its own terms,” with a “sub­tly con­struct­ed” script that “fol­lows no for­mu­las except for the clas­sic struc­ture in which pow­er pass­es between the gen­er­a­tions,” pop­u­lat­ed by “remark­able faces” and cap­tured with “rich, atmos­pher­ic, expres­sive” cin­e­matog­ra­phy (by Gor­don Willis), “cel­e­brat­ed for its dark­ness.” These qual­i­ties all do their part to make us hold up The God­fa­ther as a paragon of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma, but lovers of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma tend to val­ue one craft above all: act­ing. How, then, did Cop­po­la and his col­lab­o­ra­tors arrange for such unfor­get­table per­for­mances?

These clips about the cast­ing of The God­fa­ther shed light on the process. Many of us grew famil­iar with what Ebert calls Bran­do’s “just­ly famous and often imi­tat­ed” por­tray­al of Don Vito Cor­leone through cul­tur­al osmo­sis alone, before we’d ever seen the movie. At the top of the post, you can hear Cop­po­la and James Caan talk about what a hard time stu­dio exec­u­tives had accept­ing Bran­do in the first place. “Every time [Cop­po­la] men­tioned Bran­do’s name,” Caan remem­bers, “one of the exec­u­tives said, ‘If you men­tion his name again, you’re out!’ ” Cop­po­la quotes the pres­i­dent of Para­mount Pic­tures as sim­ply declar­ing that “Mar­lon Bran­do will nev­er appear in this motion pic­ture,” but when the film­mak­er pressed them, they offered a deal: “If he does a screen test and puts up a bond guar­an­tee­ing that none of his shenani­gans will cause a delay, you can con­sid­er him.” It was in this screen test that Bran­do came up with the icon­ic bull­dog-like look and man­ner of the all-pow­er­ful Sicil­ian pater­fa­mil­ias. But that alone did­n’t guar­an­tee the film’s ascent into great­ness; oth­er cast mem­bers, like Caan and Al Paci­no, also had to fall into place. Nei­ther were yet box office-friend­ly stars, nor was Robert de Niro, who also audi­tioned. In the end, it all came togeth­er. Rot­ten Toma­toes summed up the crit­i­cal con­sen­sus as fol­lows: “The God­fa­ther gets every­thing right.”

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.

James Taylor Performs Live in 1970, Thanks to a Little Help from His Friends, The Beatles

in Music, Television | January 29th, 2013

James Tay­lor Sings James Tay­lor, a BBC broad­cast from Novem­ber 1970, appears above. Though the near­ly 40-minute solo per­for­mance show­cas­es a play­er who has devel­oped and mas­tered his dis­tinc­tive musi­cal per­sona, it also show­cas­es one who has only reached a mere 22 years of age. But don’t let his aw-shucks youth­ful­ness fool you; by this point, Tay­lor had already endured a life­time’s worth of for­ma­tive trou­bles. He’d fall­en into deep depres­sion while still in high school, spent nine months in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal, tak­en up and quit hero­in, bot­tomed out and spent six months in recov­ery, under­went vocal cord surgery, tak­en up methedrine, gone into methadone treat­ment, had an album flop, and bro­ken his hands and feet in a motor­cy­cle wreck. Fire and rain indeed. But he’d also found favor with the Bea­t­les, becom­ing the first Amer­i­can signed on their Apple label and recruit­ing Paul McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son to play on his “Car­oli­na in My Mind.” At the end of the six­ties, the world at large did­n’t know the name James Tay­lor, but his fel­low musi­cians knew it soon would.

“I just heard his voice and his gui­tar,” said McCart­ney, “and I thought he was great.” Ear­li­er in 1970, many lis­ten­ers sure­ly felt the same thing after drop­ping the nee­dle onto Tay­lor’s break­through sec­ond album Sweet Baby James. By the time James Tay­lor Sings James Tay­lor went to air, he’d accrued enough of an inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion to guar­an­tee appre­ci­a­tion from even non-Bea­t­les on the oth­er side of the pond. Know­ing his audi­ence, Tay­lor opens with a ren­di­tion of Lennon and McCart­ney’s “With a Lit­tle Help from My Friends.” The Bea­t­les con­nec­tions don’t stop there: Song­facts reports that Tay­lor’s “Some­thing in the Way She Moves,” the first sin­gle from his pre-Sweet Baby James Apple debut, may have inspired George Har­ri­son to write “Some­thing.” What’s more, Tay­lor had orig­i­nal­ly titled his song “I Feel Fine,” before real­iz­ing that the Bea­t­les had record­ed a song by that name. Though more trou­bled times lay ahead for the hum­ble (if already well on his way to wealth and fame) young singer-song­writer, this pro­duc­tion cap­tures Tay­lor just before super­star­dom kicked in.

Relat­ed con­tent

James Tay­lor Gives Free Acoustic Gui­tar Lessons Online

‘The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The John­ny Cash Show, 1971

Joni Mitchell: Singer, Song­writer, Artist, Smok­ing Grand­ma

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.

Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis Draws from the Life of Greenwich Village Icon Dave Van Ronk

in Film, Music | January 28th, 2013

If you care about the folk revival of the six­ties, or about most any­thing that went on in Green­wich Vil­lage back then, Dave Van Ronk lived just the life you’ll want to learn about. Known as “the May­or of Mac­Dou­gal Street,” he not only became a neigh­bor­hood fix­ture but backed up his for­mi­da­bly large, eccen­tri­cal­ly rum­pled pres­ence with such a set of acoustic gui­tar and vocal skills that no less a future super­star than Bob Dylan looked to him as a guru. (Even Joni Mitchell deemed Van Ronk’s inter­pre­ta­tion of her “Both Sides Now” the finest ever record­ed.) Only toward the end did this musi­cal­ly eclec­tic, tech­ni­cal­ly pro­fi­cient lover of jazz and blues get around to telling the sto­ries of his life in folk; a mem­oir, put down on paper by gui­tarist-his­to­ri­an Eli­jah Wald, appeared three years after his death. Now, eight years after that, Van Ronk’s words, deeds, and songs have inspired Inside Llewyn Davis, the lat­est film from Joel and Ethan Coen, whose trail­er you can watch above.

Giv­en that the pro­duc­tion offi­cial­ly optioned Van Ronk’s mem­oir, you might expect a thin­ly veiled biopic, but the Coen broth­ers had oth­er ideas — as, to their fans’ delight, they usu­al­ly do. The New York Times’ Michael Cieply describes mem­oirist Wald’s cau­tion­ing that “the world of Inside Llewyn Davis, hav­ing been devised by the Coens, is ‘less inno­cent’ than one inhab­it­ed by Van Ronk, Mr. Dylan, Paul Clay­ton, the Rev. Rev­erend Gary Davis, Joni Mitchell, Tom Pax­ton and the myr­i­ad oth­er singers who are invoked in the film.” In mak­ing the movie as musi­cal as pos­si­ble with­out actu­al­ly mak­ing it a musi­cal, the Coens enlist­ed pro­duc­er T Bone Bur­nett to recre­ate the con­ver­gence of “influ­ences from Appalachia, the Deep South, the Far West [and] New Eng­land” that stoked the folk revival that attract­ed so many young New York­ers. “It was that cul­tur­al dis­con­nect” between those worlds, Cieply quotes Coen as say­ing, “that lured him and his broth­er — long fans of folk music — to look for the movie in all of it.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Coen Broth­ers Make a TV Com­mer­cial — Ridi­cul­ing “Clean Coal”

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

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

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.

Meet “Dashan,” the Canadian Comedian Who Achieved Accidental Stardom in China

in Comedy, Life | January 25th, 2013

West­ern stu­dents of the Chi­nese lan­guage tend to know Dashan. Some­times they don’t like him very much. The vari­ety of pos­si­ble expla­na­tions obvi­ous­ly includes sim­ple jeal­ousy, since Dashan (giv­en name Mark Rowswell) enjoys fame across Chi­na for his mas­tery of Man­darin. But just as this anti-Dashan resent­ment actu­al­ly springs from more com­pli­cat­ed caus­es, so the fer­vent­ly pro-Dashan feel­ings of mil­lions of Chi­nese fans spring from more than his unusu­al flu­en­cy. Ambas­sador to Chi­na’s Fun­ny Bone, the fifty-minute doc­u­men­tary above, traces Dashan’s seem­ing­ly uncal­cu­lat­ed rise from his under­grad­u­ate days in Chi­nese stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, to his break­through appear­ance on Chi­na Cen­tral Tele­vi­sion’s 1988 New Year’s Gala, to his inescapable pres­ence on the Chi­nese stage and screen — includ­ing but by no means lim­it­ed to endors­ing a “Cana­di­an fast food restau­rant.” This sort of celebri­ty makes one instinc­tive­ly want to para­phrase Samuel John­son’s line about the dog walk­ing on its hind legs: even if a west­ern­er speak­ing Chi­nese on tele­vi­sion is not done well, audi­ences are sur­prised to find it done at all.

But Dashan does do it well, and he does it in a con­text even more chal­leng­ing than a four-legged ani­mal walk­ing upright: the tra­di­tion­al form of lan­guage com­e­dy known as xiang­sheng. The doc­u­men­tary shows Dashan per­form­ing as part of a duo, and just above you can see him going solo. Out­side of this spe­cial­ized set­ting, observers have com­pared his mild, easy­go­ing, friend­ly — dare I say Cana­di­an? — per­sona to Dick Clark’s; one inter­vie­wee in Ambas­sador even describes him as harm­less­ly sym­bol­iz­ing Cana­da just as a pan­da sym­bol­izes Chi­na. Yet his detrac­tors have grown vocal enough to prompt some­one to pub­licly ask, on ques­tion-and-answer site Quo­ra, “Why do so many Chi­nese learn­ers seem to hate Dashan?” The top answer comes from Dashan him­self, who pro­vides a thor­ough, clear­head­ed, and self-aware analy­sis of the per­cep­tion of his char­ac­ter. He even cites, approv­ing­ly, the answer from Chi­na watch­er and rock­er Kaiser Kuo: “Dashan seems like a nice enough guy, but for some rea­son every once in a while I have the urge to punch him in the face.”

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.

Tom Waits and Keith Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenandoah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Listen Online

in Music | January 25th, 2013

In 2006, Anti- Records, home of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neko Case, Kate Bush (and so many more favorites of mine, this list is already too long), pub­lished the tons-of-fun com­pi­la­tion Rogue’s Gallery, a selec­tion of sea shanties and pirate songs as inter­pret­ed by an ensem­ble of lumi­nar­ies from the pop, indie, and folk worlds. The two-CD, forty-three track release is avail­able on YouTube (I’d rec­om­mend Nick Cave’s “Fire Down Below,” but he’s an old hand at this kind of thing).

Both CDs are pro­duced by Hal Will­ner and curat­ed by Will­ner and Pirates of the Caribbean star John­ny Depp and direc­tor Gore Verbin­s­ki; Son of Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Bal­lads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys is set for release on Feb­ru­ary 19th. Will­ner told Rolling Stone in Decem­ber that this new release “seems happier—not as much about tor­ture, sodomy and death.” Hard to imag­ine a sea song with­out those three things, but here we are, with “Shenan­doah” (above), a nos­tal­gic hymn to old Vir­ginia, sup­pos­ed­ly sung by Mis­souri Riv­er flat­boat­men in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, then export­ed ‘round the world on clip­per ships. The ver­sion above by Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards turns the maudlin bal­lad into a drunk­en funer­al dirge. A com­menter on the video puts it per­fect­ly: “If a song could smell like whiskey….” Richards’ spare elec­tric gui­tar work near the end adds a clean, melod­ic coun­ter­point to Waits’ down-and-out growl. Won­der­ful stuff.

The song has long been a favorite of clean-shaven choral and vocal groups like the Statler Broth­ers and Mor­mon Taber­na­cle Choir and was the title theme of the 1965 Civ­il War film Shenan­doah, with Jim­my Stew­art. Waits and Richards do the song a much-need­ed service—they reclaim it for the drunk­en, dirty boat­men and rum-soaked, lone­ly sailors who sang it at sea.

* Cor­rec­tion: a pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this post stat­ed that Rogue’s Gallery and Son of Rogue’s Gallery were asso­ci­at­ed with the Walt Dis­ney com­pa­ny and part of the Pirates of the Caribbean pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign. As you can see from pro­duc­er Hal Will­ner’s com­ment below, nei­ther project is asso­ci­at­ed with Dis­ney or the mar­ket­ing of the Pirates films. We apol­o­gize for the mis­take. 

Relat­ed Con­tent

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

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

NASA Sends Image of the Mona Lisa to the Moon and Back

in Astronomy, Science, Technology | January 24th, 2013

The same super-fast laser tech­nol­o­gy that sent clear images of Mars back to Earth just cleared anoth­er hur­dle clos­er to home by send­ing an image of the Mona Lisa to the sur­face of the moon and back again.

Sci­en­tists at NASA want­ed to know whether they could use laser puls­es to “com­mu­ni­cate” with the lunar sur­face using the same tool that tracks the posi­tion of the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter.

The team sent a dig­i­tized ver­sion of Leonardo’s famous­ly inscrutable sig­no­ra from the God­dard Space Cen­ter in Mary­land 240,000 miles up to a laser trans­mit­ter aboard the orbit­ing space­craft. Pix­els trav­eled one at a time and were adjust­ed for bright­ness by con­trolled delays in their arrival time. The team cor­rect­ed errors in the image using com­mon DVD and CD tech­niques.

Pret­ty much every­body knows what the Mona Lisa looks like, so maybe that’s why they picked her face, instead of, well, mine. Maybe NASA is hop­ing her name will be changed to Moona Lisa.

The Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (explained above) began its lunar orbit near­ly four years ago. Laser puls­es beam down to the moon and then bounce back to form images of the sur­face. Like those star­tling pic­tures of Mars, laser tech­nol­o­gy is help­ing devel­op a crys­tal clear topo­graph­i­cal map of the moon, includ­ing the tracks of two astro­nauts’ unsuc­cess­ful trek to the top of a crater and the site of a lost Russ­ian rover.

The Mona Lisa’s trip to the moon is impor­tant because the image was sent at the same time as laser puls­es that track the craft’s position—the first out­er space con­fer­ence call—and it sets the stage for future high-data trans­mis­sions between Earth and its satel­lite explor­ers.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent

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Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her at .