Lick the Star: Sofia Coppola’s Very First Film Follows a 7th-Grade Conspiracy (1998)

in Film | January 4th, 2013

Young women trapped in gild­ed cages: that’s the theme that comes to mind when think­ing about the films of Sofia Cop­po­la, so read­i­ly that her Wikipedia page uses the phrase almost ver­ba­tim. The Vir­gin Sui­cides starred five sub­ur­ban sis­ters under ever-tight­en­ing parental lock­down. Lost in Trans­la­tion found a rock pho­tog­ra­pher’s wife free yet adrift in a swank Tokyo hotel. Marie Antoinette made a sub­ject of, well, Marie Antoinette, and Some­where left its eleven-year-old daugh­ter of a dis­af­fect­ed movie star with no choice but turn up on on her dad’s Chateau Mar­mont doorstep. Even now, the film­mak­er com­pletes work on The Bling Ring, whose tit­u­lar clutch of teenagers find them­selves dri­ven to bur­gle the homes of Paris Hilton, Lind­say Lohan, and oth­er such lumi­nar­ies, sure­ly out of sheer ennui. But the most vicious expres­sion of the sig­na­ture Sofia Cop­po­la set­up came in her very first film, the 1998 short Lick the Star.

Set amid the aris­to­crat­ic court-lev­el intrigue of a mid­dle-class junior high school, the sto­ry traces the break­down of a con­spir­a­cy by the girls, led by sev­enth-grade queen bee Chloe, to grad­u­al­ly poi­son the boys with dos­es of arsenic. In what we by now will have come to think of as a Cop­polan turn, Chloe gets the idea from V.C. Andrews’ Flow­ers in the Attic, copies of which she pass­es around to the under­lings she pres­sures into help­ing her exe­cute the plan. Alas, what goes for the best-laid plans of mice and men goes also for those of spite­ful thir­teen-year-old girls. Shot on black-and-white 16-mil­lime­ter film, Lick the Star would at first seem to fit right in, aes­thet­i­cal­ly, with the oth­er quick-and-dirty debuts of the 1990s’ Amer­i­can indie boom, but a series of strik­ing styl­is­tic touch­es soon set it apart. More evi­dence for Cop­po­la’s defend­ers, who argue against the detrac­tors who accuse her of hav­ing got­ten by on nepo­tism. Then again, with­out the right con­nec­tions, could she have cast Peter Bog­danovich as the prin­ci­pal?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Bob Marley, The Legend, Live in Santa Barbara: Watch the Complete 1979 Concert

in Music | January 3rd, 2013

In the fall of 1979 Bob Mar­ley and his band, the Wail­ers, went on tour to pro­mote their album, Sur­vival. It turned out to be the sec­ond-to-last tour for the reg­gae star, who had been diag­nosed two years ear­li­er with can­cer. But in late 1979 Mar­ley appeared to be in excel­lent form. Lucky for us, a cam­era crew was there to record one of his shows.

The film above was shot at the San­ta Bar­bara Coun­ty Bowl in Cal­i­for­nia on Novem­ber 25, 1979, just 16 months before Mar­ley’s untime­ly death at the age of 36. It was released on DVD in 2003 as Bob Mar­ley: The Leg­end Live. The Wail­ers were in their sec­ond incar­na­tion in 1979, and had become lit­tle more than a back­up band after the depar­ture in 1974 of core mem­bers Peter Tosh and Bun­ny Wail­er.

The line­up in the film includes Mar­ley on rhythm gui­tar and vocals, broth­ers Aston and Carl­ton Bar­rett on bass and drums, Junior Mar­vin and Al Ander­son on lead gui­tar, Tyrone Down­ie and Earl “Wya” Lin­do on key­boards, Devon Evans and Alvin “Seeco” Pat­ter­son on per­cus­sion, Glen DaCos­ta on sax­o­phone, Dave Mad­den on trum­pet and the “I Threes” (Judy Mowatt, Mar­cia Grif­fiths and Mar­ley’s wife Rita) on back­ing vocals.

The film is essen­tial­ly a record of the com­plete San­ta Bar­bara con­cert, but the order of the songs has been re-arranged. Here’s the set list as it appears in the film:

1. Pos­i­tive Vibra­tion
2. Wake Up and Live
3. I Shot the Sher­iff
4. Ambush in the Night
5. Con­crete Jun­gle
6. Run­ning Away
7. Crazy Bald­head
8. Them Bel­ly Full (But We Hun­gry)
9. The Hea­then
10. Ride Nat­ty Ride
11. Africa Unite
12. One Drop
13. Exo­dus
14. So Much Things to Say
15. Zim­bab­we
16. Jam­ming
17. Is This Love
18. Kinky Reg­gae
19. Stir It Up
20. Get Up, Stand Up

Bob Mar­ley: The Leg­end Live is not the last film ever made of a Mar­ley con­cert, as some have claimed, but it is an excel­lent record from the late peri­od of the man who put reg­gae on the glob­al music map.

British Actors Read Poignant Poetry from World War I

in History, Literature, Poetry | January 3rd, 2013

The First World War (1914–1918) changed Britain to a degree that was unthink­able in 1914. Pre-war cer­tain­ties and val­ues such as hon­or, father­land and progress dis­in­te­grat­ed on the bat­tle­fields and trench­es in France and Bel­gium. New tech­nol­o­gy such as tanks, machine guns, grenades, flame throw­ers and poi­son gas were used to destroy the ene­my; con­stant fire for days on end was intend­ed to break the sol­diers in the trench­es. Unspeak­able hor­rors led to psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems of unknown pro­por­tions.

Cop­ing with these hor­rors dur­ing and after The Great War (as it’s still called in Britain today) seemed like a Her­culean task to poets — how do you put the unspeak­able into words? Some poets, e.g. Rupert Brooke, still cel­e­brat­ed the hero­ism of the Eng­lish sol­diers (e.g., 1914 II. Safe­ty), where­as oth­ers, such as Wil­fred Owen, tried to describe the hor­rors of this war (e.g., Dulce et Deco­rum Est).

Every year on the Sun­day clos­est to Novem­ber 11, Britain remem­bers the dead of the First World War. For Remem­brance Day 2012, famous British actors were asked to recite First World War poet­ry. The fin­ished clips were to be shown on TV that day. The video above shows three actors recit­ing four poems by Rupert Brooke and Wil­fred Owen (click the names of the actors for infor­ma­tion about them and the titles of the poems for the full text):

1. Sean Bean reads Wil­fred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”
2. Gem­ma Arter­ton reads Wil­fred Owen’s “Arms and the Boy”
3. Sophie Okone­do reads Rupert Brooke’s “The Sol­dier”
4. Sean Bean reads Wil­fred Owen’s “The Last Laugh”

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

• A lit­tle known yet very pow­er­ful poem by TE Hulme: Trench­es: St Eloi
• Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and the road to war
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford: First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Hear Beck’s Song Reader Songbook Performed by the Portland Cello Project

in Music | January 1st, 2013

Beck Hansen is the ulti­mate musi­cal changeling. His career has tak­en him from ear­ly anti-folk begin­nings to the lo-fi col­lage art of his major label debut Mel­low Gold.  He has per­fect­ed tongue-in-cheek white-boy funk on Mid­nite Vul­tures and sad sack coun­try trou­ba­dourism on Sea Change. His mas­tery of gen­res and styles and abil­i­ty to shift from rev­er­ent homage to irrev­er­ent par­o­dy on a dime is per­haps matched only by the sad­ly now-defunct Ween. But with his lat­est release, Song Read­er, Beck leaps out of the ranks of pop chameleon and into that of the Amer­i­can Com­pos­er.  In per­haps the great­est exper­i­ment in retro musi­cal crowd­sourc­ing, Beck released his last album as a book of sheet music—20 songs in all, with lyrics—and asked the fans them­selves to arrange, play, sing, and record the songs.

Plen­ty of peo­ple have tak­en up the chal­lenge. A col­lec­tion of Song Read­er interpretations—from sim­ple acoustic gui­tar treat­ments to lush piano-and-strings arrangements—is avail­able here (each with accom­pa­ny­ing videos). Most recent­ly, an ensem­ble called the Port­land Cel­lo Project has tak­en on Beck’s “album,” enlist­ing the tal­ents of a hand­ful of vocal­ists. In the video above, watch the cel­lists per­form “Title of this Song” with Lizzy Elli­son at Portland’s Aladdin The­ater. You can hear the full record­ing of the Port­land Cel­lo Project’s Song Read­er below, and lis­ten to Beck explain the gen­e­sis of Song Read­er on NPR’s “All Things Con­sid­ered” here.

via NPR

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

The Ramones Play New Year’s Eve Concert in London, 1977

in Music | December 31st, 2012

Before the Clash, before the Sex Pis­tols, there were the Ramones. The mot­ley group from For­est Hills, Queens ignit­ed the punk move­ment, first in New York and lat­er in Lon­don, with an image and sound that cut to the core of rock and roll: jeans and leather jack­ets and two-minute songs played one after anoth­er at break­neck speed. As the band’s biog­ra­phy at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame web­site says:

The Ramones revi­tal­ized rock and roll at one of its low­est ebbs, infus­ing it with punk ener­gy, brash atti­tude and a loud, fast new sound. When the punk-rock quar­tet from Queens hit the street in 1976 with their self-titled first album, the rock scene in gen­er­al had become some­what bloat­ed and nar­cis­sis­tic. The Ramones got back to basics: sim­ple, speedy, stripped-down rock and roll songs. Voice, gui­tar, bass, drums. No make­up, no egos, no light shows, no non­sense.

On Decem­ber 31, 1977, the Ramones played a clas­sic show at the Rain­bow The­atre in North Lon­don. The music was pre­served on the 1979 album It’s Alive, con­sid­ered by many to be the best live album from the punk era, and a por­tion of the show was lat­er includ­ed in the film Ramones: It’s Alive 1974–1996.

The 26-minute film ver­sion (above) con­tains exact­ly half of the 28 songs on the album:

1. Blitzkrieg Bop
2. I Wan­na Be Well
3. Glad to See You Go
4. You’re Gonna Kill That Girl
5. Com­man­do
6. Havana Affair
7. Cretin Hop
8. Lis­ten to My Heart
9. I Don’t Wan­na Walk Around With You
10. Pin­head
11. Do You Wan­na Dance?
12. Now I Wan­na Be a Good Boy
13. Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue
14. We’re a Hap­py Fam­i­ly

The set list draws on mate­r­i­al from the band’s first three albums: Ramones, from ear­ly 1976, and Leave Home and Rock­et to Rus­sia, both released in 1977. The Ramones are still in their clas­sic line­up here, includ­ing Joey Ramone (Jef­frey Hyman) on vocals, John­ny Ramone (John Cum­mings) on gui­tar, Dee Dee Ramone (Dou­glas Colvin) on bass and Tom­my Ramone (Thomas Erde­lyi) on drums. Tom­my Ramone quit play­ing drums for the group a few months lat­er. Ramones: It’s Alive cap­tures one of the great­est rock and roll bands of all time at their absolute zenith. It’s a great way to get the New Year’s par­ty rolling. Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

The Ramones, a New Punk Band, Play One of Their Very First Shows at CBGB (1974)

The Ramones’ First Press Release: We’re Part Musi­cians, Den­tists & Degen­er­ates (1975)

Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten: The Classic Film Re-Imagined By 40 Artists

in Art, Film | December 31st, 2012

Thinkers, cre­ators, and imag­in­ers of all kinds love Pow­ers of Ten, with good cause. If you’ve nev­er seen Charles and Ray Eames’ still-influ­en­tial film on all the var­i­ous scales at which one can view the uni­verse, take nine min­utes and watch it free online. Though the orig­i­nal pow­er cou­ple of mod­ern Amer­i­can design pro­duced the film 35 years ago, the short has stayed as crisp, strik­ing, and (lit­er­al­ly) per­spec­tive-alter­ing as ever. We may not need a new Pow­ers of Ten, per se, but who would­n’t be inter­est­ed in see­ing how many 21st-cen­tu­ry inter­pre­ta­tions of its theme 40 artists can come up with? The Pow­ers Project has tak­en on this very idea, invit­ing con­trib­u­tors from Los Ange­les to Köln to Welling­ton to Kyoto to re-envi­sion each of the dis­tances from which the orig­i­nal film views human­i­ty, from one meter away to 10²⁴ meters away to .000001 angstroms away.

Just above, you can watch one com­plet­ed seg­ment of the Pow­ers Project from Lon­don’s Jor­di Pagès. In it, the cam­era moves toward the sur­face of a hand and into the skin, even­tu­al­ly find­ing its way into a sin­gle blood ves­sel. When it even­tu­al­ly comes avail­able online, the fin­ished project will include almost as many styles of film­mak­ing as it does scales of view­ing. Open to as many tech­niques of and per­spec­tives on mov­ing image cre­ation as its con­trib­u­tors could sum­mon, the film will take the Eames’ idea, orig­i­nal­ly all about the straight-on per­cep­tion of real­i­ty, into a new realm of abstrac­tion. Who’d have guessed how much rich artis­tic poten­tial remained in, as Pow­ers of Ten’s sub­ti­tle puts it, the Rel­a­tive Size of Things in the Uni­verse and the Effect of Adding Anoth­er Zero?

via Fast­CoDe­sign

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Richard Feynman’s Ode to a Flower: A Short Animation

in Animation, Science | December 29th, 2012

A rose by any oth­er name would smell as sweet, but could­n’t one’s appre­ci­a­tion of that aro­ma get a boost from under­stand­ing the sci­ence behind its exis­tence? So the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Richard Feyn­man argues from beyond the grave in ‘Ode to a Flower’, a short ani­ma­tion by Fras­er David­son. Pulling from a 1981 BBC inter­view with the charis­mat­ic Nobel lau­re­ate, David­son’s sim­ple graph­ics make the case for a mul­ti­fac­eted sense of admi­ra­tion. Revers­ing the angle, are there not those of us for whom Sci­ence is a patient ether­ized upon a table, until viewed through the warm lens of a tight­ly edit­ed ani­ma­tion? Speak­ing for myself, yes.
Let us find ways for our exist­ing pas­sions to lead to new found appre­ci­a­tions and an ever-deep­en­ing sense of won­der in the new year.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of Peanut, a graph­ic nov­el released ear­li­er this week. Find her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed con­tent:

Richard Feyn­man Presents Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics for the Non­Sci­en­tist

Leonard Susskind, Father of String The­o­ry, Warm­ly Remem­bers His Friend, Richard Feyn­man

Microscopic Battlefield: Watch as a Killer T Cell Attacks a Cancer Cell

in Biology, Science | December 28th, 2012

Every day, inside our body, there is a war going on. Micro­scop­ic invaders of one kind or anoth­er try to make a meal of us, and our immune sys­tem fights back, seek­ing out the invaders and destroy­ing them. One of our body’s most impor­tant foot-sol­diers in this war is the T cell, a type of white blood cell with recep­tors that can rec­og­nize for­eign sub­stances. Like all white blood cells, T cells orig­i­nate in the bone mar­row, but then they migrate to an organ called the thy­mus (hence the “T” in “T cell”), where they evolve into spe­cial­ized immune sys­tem war­riors. Mature T cells, which leave the thy­mus and cir­cu­late around the body, come in dif­fer­ent types. One type, the cyto­tox­ic T cell, spe­cial­izes in attack­ing and killing cells of the body that are infect­ed by virus­es, bac­te­ria, or can­cer.

Which is where this fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle video comes in. It shows a cyto­tox­ic T cell (also known as a “killer T cell”) attack­ing a can­cer­ous cell. The process is shown at 92 times the actu­al speed. And for a sense of scale, a cyto­tox­ic T cell is only 10 microns long, or about one-tenth the width of a human hair. The video was cre­at­ed by PhD stu­dent Alex Rit­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, and post­ed recent­ly in the uni­ver­si­ty’s “Under the Micro­scope” Web series. Rit­ter’s super­vi­sor in the Depart­ment of Med­i­cine, Pro­fes­sor Gillian Grif­fiths, explains the impor­tance of the research asso­ci­at­ed with the video:

Cyto­tox­ic T cells are very pre­cise and effi­cient killers. They are able to destroy infect­ed or can­cer­ous cells, with­out destroy­ing healthy cells sur­round­ing them.…By under­stand­ing how this works, we can devel­op ways to con­trol killer cells. This will allow us to find ways to improve can­cer ther­a­pies, and ame­lio­rate autoim­mune dis­eases caused when killer cells run amok and attack healthy cells in our bod­ies.

You can bone up on biol­o­gy by vis­it­ing the Bio sec­tion in our col­lec­tion of 625 Free Cours­es Online.

Watch Cabbit: A Handmade Animation by Crosshatch Artist, Soogie

in Animation | December 23rd, 2012

Those prone to using “twee” as a pejo­ra­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly in con­nec­tion to the films of Wes Ander­son, should lay in a sup­ply of anti­dote before view­ing the ani­mat­ed short, Cab­bit.

Its cre­ators describe the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter as “a charm­ing lit­tle ani­mal spir­it whom (sic) spends its days tea-danc­ing with kin­dred spir­its and explor­ing the won­ders of the nat­ur­al world.”

As in The Lorax, indus­try and the fool­ish humans in its thrall are major bad­dies. But where­as the apoplec­tic Lorax takes an activist stance, Cab­bit drifts along, serene in its tweeds.

As eco­log­i­cal state­ments go, it’s pret­ty mild stuff.

For this view­er, the more intrigu­ing ele­ment is the back sto­ry. In ani­ma­tion terms, Cab­bit is a throw­back, painstak­ing­ly hand drawn with Sharpie mark­ers by a most­ly house­bound Mis­soula artist, who flies under the code name Soo­gie. His crafts­man­ship caught the atten­tion of sound design­er, John Kassab, who saw punk where oth­ers saw twee. Kassab may not pilot a diri­gi­ble or squash pos­sums with his Mod­el T,  but as humans go, he’s pret­ty up on tech­nol­o­gy. With Kassab as pro­duc­er, Soo­gie waged a Kick­starter cam­paign, suc­cess­ful­ly tea danc­ing with kin­dred spir­its who under­wrote the pur­chase of high end dig­i­tal equip­ment. Kass­ab’s next goal is to ush­er the oth­er­world­ly, anthro­mor­phic Cab­bit onto the film fes­ti­val cir­cuit. Til then, it must abide entire­ly with­in the con­fines of this steam­punk world we refer to as the Inter­net.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is Wes Ander­son­’s #1 Fan.

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Complete Concert

in Music | December 22nd, 2012

In late Jan­u­ary and ear­ly Feb­ru­ary of 1982 the Clash played eight shows in Japan. The band was embark­ing on a month-long tour of the Far East that, as fate would have it, would be the last tour with their clas­sic line­up. When it was over, drum­mer Top­per Head­on was kicked out because of his dis­rup­tive drug habit, and the band would nev­er be the same. In this video we roll back the clock to see and hear the Clash in the twi­light of their hey­day.

The con­cert was appar­ent­ly filmed on the fourth night of the tour, at the Nakano Sun Plaza in Tokyo on Jan­u­ary 28, 1982. Accord­ing to music jour­nal­ist Chris Salewicz’s book Redemp­tion Song: The Bal­lad of Joe Stum­mer, the Clash had refused to play in Japan pri­or to this tour because of the Japan­ese cus­tom for­bid­ding audi­ence mem­bers to stand up. They agreed to play after a com­pro­mise was struck: The fans could stand, but only at their seats.

The band had just fin­ished record­ing Com­bat Rock, but none of the songs from the unre­leased record are in the film. At one point, bassist Paul Simonon’s wife Pearl Har­bor (a.k.a. Pearl E. Gates) of the new wave band Pearl Har­bor and the Explo­sions joins the Clash onstage to sing “Fujiya­ma Mama.” Here’s the set list:

1. Lon­don Call­ing
2. Safe Euro­pean Home
3. (White Man) in Ham­mer­smith Palais
4. Brand New Cadil­lac
5. Char­lie Don’t Surf
6. Clam­p­down
7. This is Radio Clash
8. Armagideon Time
9. Jim­my Jazz
10. Tom­my Gun
11. Fujiya­ma Mama
12. Police On My Back
13. White Riot

The Clash’s charis­mat­ic front­man, Joe Strum­mer, died ten years ago this Sat­ur­day, on Decem­ber 22, 2002. You can read a lit­tle about him in our Aug. 21 post, “Remem­ber­ing the Clash’s Front­man Joe Strum­mer on His 60th Birth­day.” But per­haps a good way to remem­ber him would be to watch this film, a rare visu­al record of a con­cert by the group many called “the only band that mat­ters.”

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:

The Clash: West­way to the World

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Clash Songs at the Library

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man