Behold the Masterpiece by Japan’s Last Great Woodblock Artist: View Online Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885)

in Art | April 17th, 2017

Uruguayan-French poet Jules Laforgue, one of the young T.S. Eliot’s favorites, pub­lished his major work, The Imi­ta­tion of Our Lady the Moon, in 1886, two years before his untime­ly death at 27 from tuber­cu­lo­sis. It is “a book of poems,” notes Wuther­ing Expec­ta­tions, “about clowns who live on the moon… wear black silk skull­caps and use dan­de­lions as bou­tonieres.” The Pier­rots in his poems, Laforgue once wrote in a let­ter, “seem to me to have arrived at true wis­dom” as they con­tem­plate them­selves and their con­flicts in the light of the moon’s many faces.

I can­not help but think of Laforgue when I think of anoth­er artist who, around the same time, began on the oth­er side of the world what is often con­sid­ered the great­est work of his career. The artist, Japan­ese print­mak­er Tsukio­ka Yoshi­toshi, also stood astride an old world and a rapid­ly mod­ern­iz­ing new one. And his visu­al rumi­na­tions, though lack­ing Laforgue’s arch com­e­dy, beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trate the same kind of dreamy con­tem­pla­tion, lone­li­ness, melan­choly, and weary res­ig­na­tion. The moon, as Laforgue wrote—a “Cat’s‑eye of bright / Redeem­ing light”—both com­forts and taunts us: “It comes with the force of a body blow / That the Moon is a place one can­not go.”

Yoshitoshi’s prints fea­ture a fix­a­tion on the moon’s mys­ter­ies, and a the­atri­cal device to aid in the con­tem­pla­tion of its mean­ings: char­ac­ters from Chi­nese and Japan­ese folk­lore and heroes from nov­els and plays, all of them staged just after key moments in their sto­ries, in sta­t­ic pos­tures and in silent dia­logue with the night. Heav­i­ly invest­ed with lit­er­ary allu­sions and deeply laden with sym­bol­ism, the 100 prints, writes the Fitzwilliam Muse­um, “con­jure a refined poet­ry to give a new twist to tra­di­tion­al sub­jects.”

The por­traits, most­ly soli­tary, wist­ful, and brood­ing, “pen­e­trat­ed deep­er into the psy­chol­o­gy of his sub­jects” than pre­vi­ous work in Yoshi­toshi’s Ukiyo‑e style, one soon to be altered per­ma­nent­ly by West­ern influ­ences flood­ing in between the Edo and Mei­ji peri­ods. Yoshi­toshi both incor­po­rat­ed and resist­ed this influ­ence, using fig­ures from Kabu­ki and Noh the­ater to rep­re­sent tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese arts, yet intro­duc­ing tech­niques “nev­er seen before in Japan­ese wood­block prints,” writes J. Noel Chi­ap­pa, break­ing con­ven­tion by “show[ing] peo­ple freely, from all angles,” rather than only in three-quar­ter view, and by using increased real­ism and West­ern per­spec­tives.

Yoshi­toshi began pub­lish­ing these prints in 1885, and they proved huge­ly pop­u­lar. Peo­ple lined up for new addi­tions to the series, which ran until 1892, when the artist died after a long strug­gle with men­tal ill­ness. In these last years, he pro­duced his great­est work, which also includes a kabu­ki-style series based on Japan­ese and Chi­nese ghost sto­ries, New Forms of 36 Ghost Sto­ries. “In a Japan that was turn­ing away from its own past,” Chi­ap­pa writes, Yoshi­toshi, “almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly man­aged to push the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese wood­block print to a new lev­el, before it effec­tive­ly died with him.

His tumul­tuous career, after very suc­cess­ful begin­nings, had fall­en into dis­re­pair and he had been pub­lish­ing illus­tra­tions for sen­sa­tion­al­ist news­pa­pers, an erot­ic por­trait series of famous cour­te­sans, and macabre prints of vio­lence and cru­el­ty. These pre­oc­cu­pa­tions become com­plete­ly styl­ized and psy­chol­o­gized in his final works, espe­cial­ly in One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon, an extra­or­di­nary series of prints. View them all, with short descrip­tions of each sub­ject, here, or at the Ronin Gallery, who pro­vide infor­ma­tion on the size and con­di­tion of each of its prints and allow view­ers to zoom in on every detail. The images have also been pub­lishished in a 2003 book, One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon: Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Yoshi­toshi.

While it cer­tain­ly helps to under­stand the lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al con­text of each print in the series, it is not nec­es­sary for an appre­ci­a­tion of their exquis­ite visu­al poet­ry. Per­haps the artist’s memo­r­i­al poem after his death at age 53 pro­vides us with a mas­ter key for view­ing his One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon.

hold­ing back the night
with increas­ing bril­liance
the sum­mer moon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

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

Take a 16-Week Crash Course on the History of Movies: From the First Moving Pictures to the Rise of Multiplexes & Netflix

in Film, History | April 17th, 2017

Almost all movies tell sto­ries, even the ones that don’t intend to. Put every movie ever made togeth­er, and they col­lec­tive­ly tell anoth­er sto­ry: the sto­ry of cin­e­ma. Of course, not just one “sto­ry of cin­e­ma” exists to tell: crit­ic Mark Cousins told one to great acclaim a few years ago in the form of his book and doc­u­men­tary series The Sto­ry of Film, as Jean-Luc Godard had done ear­li­er in his Histoire(s) du ciné­ma, whose very title acknowl­edges the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of pos­si­ble nar­ra­tives in the his­to­ry of the mov­ing image. Now, with a lighter but no doubt equal­ly strong per­spec­tive, comes the lat­est mul­ti­part video jour­ney through it: Crash Course Film His­to­ry.

“Movies haven’t always looked like they do now,” says host Craig Ben­zine (bet­ter known as the Youtu­ber Wheezy­Wait­er) in the trail­er above. “There was a real long process to fig­ure out what they… were. Were they spec­ta­cles? Doc­u­men­taries? Short films? If so, how short? Long films?

If so, how long? Is black and white bet­ter than col­or? Should sound be the indus­try stan­dard? And where should we make them?” And even though we’ve now seen over a cen­tu­ry of devel­op­ment in cin­e­ma, those issues still seem up for grabs — some of them more than ever.

In the first episode, Ben­zine dives right into his search for the source of the pow­er of movies, “one of the most influ­en­tial forms of mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion the world has ever known,” a “uni­ver­sal lan­guage that lets us tell sto­ries about our col­lec­tive hopes and fears, to make sense of the world around us and the peo­ple around us.” To do so, he must begin with the inven­tion of film — the actu­al image-cap­tur­ing cel­lu­loid sub­stance that made cin­e­ma pos­si­ble — and then goes even far­ther back in time to the very first mov­ing images, “illu­sions” in their day, and the sur­pris­ing qual­i­ties of human visu­al per­cep­tion they exploit­ed.

All this might seem a far cry from the spec­ta­cles you’d see at the mul­ti­plex today, but Crash Course Film His­to­ry (which comes from the same folks who gave us A Crash Course in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and A Crash Course in World His­to­ry) assures us that both of them exist on the same spec­trum — the ride along that spec­trum being the sto­ry of movies. It will last six­teen weeks, after which Crash Course and PBS Dig­i­tal Stu­dios will con­tin­ue their col­lab­o­ra­tive explo­ration of film with a course on pro­duc­tion fol­lowed by a course on crit­i­cism. Take all three and you’ll no doubt come out impressed not just by the size of the cre­ative space into which film has expand­ed, but also by how much it has yet to touch.

As new install­ments of Crash Course Film His­to­ry come out, they will be added to this playlist. Check back for updates.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

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

A Crash Course in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture: A New Video Series by Best-Sell­ing Author John Green

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

Cin­e­ma His­to­ry by Titles & Num­bers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Patti Smith, Umberto Eco & Richard Ford Give Advice to Young Artists in a Rollicking Short Animation

in Animation, Art, Creativity, Life | April 17th, 2017

Note: There are a cou­ple brief not-safe-for-work moments in this film.

Patron­iz­ing, pon­der­ous, well-mean­ing, self-aggran­diz­ing, inco­her­ent… young artists are sub­ject­ed to a lot of unso­licit­ed advice, and not just from their par­ents.

But what hap­pens when a young artist active­ly seeks it out?

Daniel­la Shuh­man turned to the Louisiana Channel’s series, “Advice to the Young,” feast­ing on the col­lect­ed wis­dom of such heavy hit­ters as per­for­mance artist Mari­na Abramovic, author Umber­to Eco, artist Ola­fur Elias­son, and the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed God­moth­er of Punk, Pat­ti Smith in prepa­ra­tion for her final project at Jerusalem’s Beza­lel Acad­e­my of Arts and Design.

Her resul­tant short film, above, appears to be the work of a deliri­ous­ly aggro inner child, one with a keen bull­shit meter and an anar­chic sense of humor.

“The most impor­tant advice I have is to have fun,” coun­sels nov­el­ist Jonathan Franzen—a man who alleged­ly wrote The Cor­rec­tions while wear­ing earplugs, ear­muffs, and a blind­fold, then bust­ed on Oprah Win­frey when she chose it for for her Book Club.

Cue great spurts of ani­mat­ed arte­r­i­al blood.

At least Franzen both­ers to sound encour­ag­ing… much more so than Abramovic, or fel­low nov­el­ist Richard “Talk Your­self Out of It If You Pos­si­bly Can Because You’re Prob­a­bly Not Going to Be Very Good At It” Ford.

(Par­ents strug­gling to come up with tuition may be relieved to learn that Ford’s on leave from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty this term.)

Mean­while, Shuh­man breaks for NSFW ter­ri­to­ry to visu­al­ize artist Eliasson’s advice, a move that would sure­ly please anoth­er Louisiana Chan­nel per­son­al­i­ty, car­toon­ist David Shrigley. Per­haps it can be his con­so­la­tion prize for not mak­ing the cut.

The pul­sat­ing repro­duc­tive organs aren’t entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate. Lis­ten to Eliasson’s full inter­view to hear him equate mak­ing art with mak­ing the world. Now that’s the sort of advice that will put a young artist to work!

Some of the more gen­er­ous advice:

Build a good name, keep your name clean, don’t make com­pro­mis­es, don’t wor­ry about mak­ing a bunch of mon­ey or being suc­cess­ful.

Don’t be embar­rassed about what excites you.

If you are doing some­thing weird that every­body hates, that might be some­thing worth look­ing into and worth inves­ti­gat­ing.

Make your own way in the world. Wrap up warm. Eat prop­er­ly, sen­si­bly. Don’t smoke and phone your mom.

We love imag­in­ing the sort of unfet­tered advice Shuh­man will one day be in a posi­tion to dis­pense.

You can see some of her post grad­u­a­tion illus­tra­tion work on her Flickr page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Great Film­mak­ers Offer Advice to Young Direc­tors: Taran­ti­no, Her­zog, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Ander­son, Felli­ni & More

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

Watch Frank Sinatra Record “It Was a Very Good Year” in the Studio in 1965, and You’ll Know Why They Called Him “The Voice”

in Music | April 15th, 2017

I’ll be hon­est, for a long time when I thought of Frank Sina­tra, I thought of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, rat­pack films, and the Olive Gar­den. That is, until I lived for a short time near The Bronx’s Arthur Avenue, the best Lit­tle Italy in New York. Sina­tra poured from the speak­ers of Ital­ian eater­ies and cig­ar and pas­try shops. It dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased the qual­i­ty of my pleas­ant asso­ci­a­tions with his music. Still, I rarely lis­tened very close­ly. I can’t entire­ly blame pop cul­ture for turn­ing him into back­ground music—it hap­pens to near­ly every major star. But overuse of his voice as accom­pa­ni­ment to olive oil, cig­ars, and mar­ti­nis has per­haps made us tune him out too often.

Treat­ing Sina­tra as mood music would not have sat well with some of the singers many of us grew up idol­iz­ing from a young age, like Paul McCart­ney and David Bowie, who both found his work for­ma­tive. McCart­ney thought so high­ly of it, he sent Sina­tra one of his ear­li­est com­po­si­tions, an off-kil­ter lounge croon­er called “Sui­cide” that he wrote at the age of 14. (Hear an unre­leased record­ing below.)

Bowie, in 1977, wrote what he express­ly intend­ed as a par­o­dy of Sinatra—“Life on Mars.” But the sto­ry is even stranger than that. He specif­i­cal­ly tried to “take the mick­ey” out of Sinatra’s “My Way,” a song cred­it­ed to Paul Anka that just hap­pens to have first been writ­ten, with dif­fer­ent lyrics, by Bowie, as “Even a Fool Learns to Love” in 1968 (hear Bowie sing it above). “Life on Mars,” one of the most beau­ti­ful­ly melod­ic songs in all of pop music, with one of Bowie’s best vocal per­for­mances, shows how much the Thin White Duke owed to Ole Blue Eyes.

These are just two of hun­dreds of male singers whose melodies have tak­en up immor­tal res­i­dence in our brains and who owe a tremen­dous debt to Frank Sina­tra. In addi­tion to his keen melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty, Sina­tra also set a high bar with his tech­nique. In the video at the top of the post from 1965, we see the con­sum­mate artist record “It Was a Very Good Year” in the stu­dio, while smok­ing a cig­a­rette and casu­al­ly sip­ping what may be cof­fee from a paper cup in his oth­er hand.

At one point, he stops and ban­ters with the engi­neer, ask­ing him to stop for any “P pop­ping,” the explo­sive sound result­ing from singers putting too much force into their “p” sounds and dis­tort­ing the micro­phone. Nowa­days every­one uses what’s called a “pop fil­ter” to catch these bursts of air, but Sina­tra doesn’t have one, or seem to need one. “I don’t thump,” he tells the record­ing engi­neer, “I’m a sneaky P pop­per.” Indeed. One com­menter on YouTube point­ed out Sinatra’s grace­ful mic tech­nique:

Notice how he turned his head when he sang “it poured sweet and clear” to avoid the spike on the P. In fact, he backed away from the mic just a bit for that whole last verse because he was singing much stronger for the last state­ment of the song. Think about it… this was a live stu­dio record­ing. One take. No over­dubs, No added tracks. Just pure tal­ent. The only thing the sound engi­neers had to do was adjust the eq lev­els a bit and that’s it. This is what you hear on the album. You’d be hard pressed to find ANYONE who could do that today.

Most vocal per­for­mances get record­ed in booths, and cer­tain­ly not in big open rooms with an orches­tra and no head­phones. Some singers learn to han­dle a micro­phone well. Many do not. Audio com­pres­sion sup­plies the dynam­ics, per­for­mances get processed dig­i­tal­ly and edit­ed togeth­er from sev­er­al takes. Young pro­duc­ers often won­der how peo­ple made great sound­ing records before improve­ments like pop fil­ters, iso­lat­ing mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems, or soft­ware that allow a near­ly infi­nite num­ber of cor­rec­tive tech­niques. The answer: per­haps many of these things aren’t always improve­ments, but props. As Sina­tra shows us in this footage, great sound in the stu­dio came from the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and atten­tive tech­nique of artists and engi­neers who got it right at the source.

Relat­ed Con­tent:       

Watch Sud­den­ly: Frank Sina­tra Stars in a 1954 Noir Film

Bob Dylan Releas­es a New Cov­er of Frank Sinatra’s “Full Moon and Emp­ty Arms”

“The Girl from Ipane­ma” Turns 50; Hear Its Bossa Nova Sound Cov­ered by Sina­tra, Krall, Methe­ny & Oth­ers

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

Live Stream the Concerts at Coachella This Weekend: Radiohead, Lady Gaga, Lorde, New Order & Much More

in Music | April 14th, 2017

This week­end, YouTube is live stream­ing Coachel­la 2017, which will fea­ture per­for­mances by Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Radio­head, Lorde, Bon Iver, New Order and more.

To watch the shows, you can tune into three chan­nels through­out the week­end, plus a Live 360 chan­nel for select per­for­mances. The chan­nels all appear below. And fur­ther down the page, you can find the sched­ule for the entire week­end. Enjoy!

Chan­nel 1

Chanel 2

Chanel 3

Live 360

The Line Up:

Fri­day, April 14

Chan­nel 1

• 3:35 – Ten­nis
• 4:10 – King Giz­zard & The Lizard Wiz­ard
• 5:00 – Bonobo
• 5:50 – Mac DeMar­co
• 6:55 – Glass Ani­mals
• 7:45 – Father John Misty
• 8:45 – Phan­togram
• 9:35 – The xx
• 10:40 – Radio­head

Chan­nel 2

• 3:35 – Preser­va­tion Hall Jazz Band
• 4:25 – SOHN
• 5:10 – Sam­pha
• 6:00 – Fran­cis and the Lights
• 6:50 – Oh Won­der
• 7:40 – BANKS
• 8:30 – Richie Hawtin
• 9:30 – Jag­war Ma
• 10:20 – DJ Shad­ow
• 11:20 – Travis Scott
• 12:15 – Cap­i­tal Cities

Chan­nel 3

• 3:35 – Klangstof
• 4:05 – Joseph
• 5:00 – The Lemon Twigs
• 5:45 – Stor­mzy
• 6:30 – Broods
• 7:20 – Big Gigan­tic
• 8:20 – Crys­tal Cas­tles
• 9:10 – Mac Miller
• 10:00 – Steve Angel­lo
• 11:00 – Empire of the Sun
• 11:55 – Dil­lon Fran­cis

Sat­ur­day, April 15

Chan­nel 1

• 3:35 – Local Natives
• 4:30 – Chi­cano Bat­man
• 5:15 – The Head and the Heart
• 6:10 – Bastille
• 7:20 – Two Door Cin­e­ma Club
• 8:20 – Future
• 9:15 – ScHool­boy Q
• 10:15 – Bon Iver
• 11:25 – Lady Gaga

Chan­nel 2

• 3:35 – Arkells
• 3:55 – Kaleo
• 4:45 – Car Seat Head­rest
• 5:40 – The Atom­ics
• 6:25 – Roisin Mur­phy
• 7:15 – DREAMCAR
• 8:05 – Mod­er­at
• 9:05 – Warpaint
• 9:55 – NAV
• 10:45 – DJ Snake
• 12:00 – Guc­ci Mane

Chan­nel 3

• 3:35 – Blos­soms
• 4:20 – Shu­ra
• 5:00 – Banks & Steelz
• 5:45 – Auto­graf
• 6:35 – Lit­tle Drag­on
• 7:25 – Mura Masa
• 8:15 – Gryf­fin
• 9:10 – Tory Lanez
• 10:00 – Röyk­sopp
• 10:55 – Mar­tin Gar­rix
• 12:05 – Clas­six

Sun­day, April 16

Chan­nel 1

• 3:35 – Ezra Fur­man
• 4:25 – Whit­ney
• 5:15 – Toots & The May­tals
• 6:10 – Grou­plove
• 7:20 – Future Islands
• 7:55 – Tove Lo
• 8:15 – Porter Robin­son & Madeon
• 9:20 – Lorde
• 10:25 – Kendrick Lamar

Chan­nel 2

• 3:35 – Grace Mitchell
• 4:25 – Pre­oc­cu­pa­tions
• 5:15 – Goldlink
• 6:10 – Jack Gar­ratt
• 7:00 – Kiiara
• 7:45 – Tycho
• 8:40 – Hans Zim­mer
• 9:45 – Hehlani
• 10:30 – New Order

Chan­nel 3

• 4:15 – Anna Lunoe
• 5:15 – NAO
• 6:55 – Kay­trana­da
• 8:10 – DJ Khaled
• 9:20 – Lorde
• 9:00 – Galan­tis
• 9:55 – Marsh­mel­lo
• 10:50 – Jus­tice

Discover the “Lost” Final Scene of The Shining, Which Kubrick Personally Had Recalled and Destroyed

in Film | April 14th, 2017

When we think of Stan­ley Kubrick, we can’t help but think of per­fec­tion­ism, a qual­i­ty he brought even to the mak­ing of what he called a “ghost film” — a genre for which he seemed to have lit­tle respect — with 1980’s The Shin­ing. So much did he want to get his adap­ta­tion (or rather, near-total reimag­i­na­tion) of Stephen King’s nov­el of the haunt­ed Over­look Hotel just right that he actu­al­ly had the first set of released prints recalled and destroyed because he did­n’t think he’d quite nailed the end­ing: specif­i­cal­ly, he want­ed to remove just one short scene from it, one which came imme­di­ate­ly before the haunt­ing final pho­to­graph of the Over­look’s 1921 Fourth of July Ball.

“There was a big length prob­lem with Warn­er Bros,” said screen­writer Diane John­son in an inter­view with Enter­tain­ment Week­ly’s James Hib­berd. “The film was too long and peo­ple said it had to be short­ened.” The two min­utes Kubrick cut from the end­ing con­sti­tut­ed what Hib­berd describes as a hos­pi­tal scene in which “the hotel man­ag­er, Ull­man (Bar­ry Nel­son), vis­its Wendy and Dan­ny after their ordeal and explains that no super­nat­ur­al evi­dence was found to sup­port their claims of what tran­spired,” not even the frozen body of Jack Nichol­son’s crazed Jack Tor­rance. “Just when the audi­ence begins to ques­tion every­thing they’ve seen, Ull­man omi­nous­ly gives Dan­ny the same ball that was rolled to him from an unseen force out­side Room 237.”

“In oth­er words,” said John­son in an expla­na­tion of the scene’s point, “all of this real­ly hap­pened, and the mag­ic events were actu­al. It was just a lit­tle twist. It was easy to jet­ti­son.” Roger Ebert, in a 2006 essay on the film, also thought “Kubrick was wise to remove that epi­logue,” though for a dif­fer­ent rea­son: “It pulled one rug too many out from under the sto­ry. At some lev­el, it is nec­es­sary for us to believe the three mem­bers of the Tor­rance fam­i­ly are actu­al­ly res­i­dents in the hotel dur­ing that win­ter, what­ev­er hap­pens or what­ev­er they think hap­pens.” Whether or not you think it should have been left in, we can sure­ly all agree that Kubrick did well to depart from King’s orig­i­nal end­ing, which had the Over­look explode in a ball of flame, tak­ing Jack with it, as the rest of the fam­i­ly escaped to safe­ty. Some­times what works on the page just does­n’t work on the screen.

The video above fea­tures the screen­play for the delet­ed orig­i­nal end­ing of The Shin­ing.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing (As Told by Those Who Helped Him Make It)

Go Inside the First 30 Min­utes of Kubrick’s The Shin­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

The Scores That Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Com­posed for Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“Primitive Potter” Travels into the Backcountry for 10 Days with Only a Knife & Buckskin and Makes Anasazi Pottery

in Art | April 13th, 2017

From film­mak­er Steve Olpin comes a short doc­u­men­tary (a “doc­u­men­tary poem”) called Earth and Fire, about artist and prim­i­tive pot­ter Kel­ly Magle­by. The film fol­lows Kel­ly as she trav­els into “the back­coun­try of South­ern Utah with a knife and a buck­skin for 10 days to try to learn about Anasazi pot­tery by doing it the way the Anasazi did it.” On her web­site, Kel­ly writes “My desire to make Anasazi pot­tery start­ed with my inter­est in prim­i­tive and sur­vival skills. I love the fact that you can go into the wild with noth­ing and get all you need to sur­vive and even flour­ish from the earth. The idea that you can go out and dig up some ‘dirt’, shape it, paint it and fire it all using only mate­ri­als found in nature is amaz­ing to me.” On her site, she details her method for mak­ing the pot­tery. Find more info about the Anasazi and their pot­tery here and here.

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!

How Quentin Tarantino Creates Suspense in His Favorite Scene, the Tension-Filled Opening Moments of Inglourious Basterds

in Film, Writing | April 13th, 2017

We all have a favorite Quentin Taran­ti­no scene, but the direc­tor of Pulp Fic­tion, Kill Bill, The Hate­ful Eight, and oth­er movies that can seem made out of noth­ing but mem­o­rable scenes also has one of his own. “My favorite thing I think I’ve ever writ­ten is the scene at the French farm­house at the begin­ning of Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds,” Busi­ness Insid­er quotes him as say­ing in a pan­el at San Diego Com­ic-Con. “The scene Taran­ti­no refers to is the very first one of his bru­tal World War II epic” where­in “SS Colonel Hans Lan­da (Christoph Waltz) arrives at a remote dairy farm in France that is sus­pect­ed of hid­ing Jew­ish peo­ple. Lan­da sits down with the farmer (Denis Meno­chet) and ques­tions him about the where­abouts of the Drey­fus fam­i­ly.” A “tense and sneaky psy­cho­log­i­cal mind game” ensues.

You can learn exact­ly what makes those open­ing twen­ty min­utes such a minia­ture mas­ter­piece in the Lessons from the Screen­play video above. Draw­ing from psy­cho­log­i­cal research on the nature of ten­sion and sus­pense, series cre­ator Michael Tuck­er high­lights cer­tain “key com­po­nents of ten­sion expe­ri­ences,” includ­ing uncer­tain­ty, insta­bil­i­ty, and a lack of con­trol, and shows how Taran­ti­no uses them to height­en the ten­sion as much as pos­si­ble through­out these sev­en­teen min­utes.

“It’s like the sus­pense is a rub­ber band,” Taran­ti­no says in a Char­lie Rose inter­view clip includ­ed in the video, “and I’m just stretch­ing it and stretch­ing it and stretch­ing it to see how far it can stretch.”

Taran­ti­no also uses a suite of tech­niques that movie­go­ers have come to asso­ciate specif­i­cal­ly with him, such as long stretch­es of dia­logue that go off on extend­ed tan­gents (“Part of my plan,” he says in anoth­er inter­view clip, “is to bury it in so much minu­tia about noth­ing that you don’t real­ize you’re being told an impor­tant plot point until it becomes impor­tant”), the charged con­sump­tion of food and drink, and the poten­tial for car­nage at any moment. “The fact that the audi­ence is aware they’re watch­ing a Taran­ti­no film adds to the sus­pense,” says Tuck­er. “We know there will be con­se­quences, and that Taran­ti­no has no qualms about show­ing vio­lence.” And after the tour de force of its open­ing, the movie still has well over two hours of pure Taran­tin­ian cin­e­ma to go.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Films of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Watch Video Essays on Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dogs, Kill Bill & More

Watch 34 of Quentin Tarantino’s Visu­al Ref­er­ences to Cit­i­zen Kane, Blade Run­ner, 8 1/2 & Oth­er Great Films

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

Decod­ing the Screen­plays of The Shin­ing, Moon­rise King­dom & The Dark Knight: Watch Lessons from the Screen­play

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda Creates a 19-Song Playlist to Help You Get Over Writer’s Block

in Music, Writing | April 13th, 2017

Pho­to by Steve Jurvet­son, via Flickr Com­mons

Last year we alert­ed you to a short doc about authors and their rela­tion­ship with writer’s block. Many were philo­soph­i­cal. Oth­ers like Philipp Mey­er dis­missed it: ““I don’t think writer’s block actu­al­ly exists,” he said. “It’s basi­cal­ly inse­cu­ri­ty.”

How seri­ous­ly you take it or how ter­ri­bly it affects you, we have a Spo­ti­fy playlist cre­at­ed by Lin-Manuel Miran­da of Hamil­ton fame called “Write Your Way Out.”

He revealed the playlist on his Twit­ter feed on March 20 with an apol­o­gy that the mix took longer to make than expect­ed. It is a mix, he said, “about writ­ing, songs that fea­ture great writ­ing, and every­thing in between.” Like his oth­er mix­es, he’s think­ing about us, that kind­ly Mr. Miran­da.

The eclec­tic mix begins with “Hap­py Birth­day Dar­ling” from Bright Lights Big City (“Now when you write my son, make the choice, find your voice, look down deep in your heart”), then fea­tures Eng­lish-lan­guage hip hop from the Hamil­ton Mix­tape (Nas’ “Wrote My Way Out”) and Span­ish-lan­guage hip hop from Calle 13 (“Aden­tro”), folk clas­sics (Joni Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morn­ing”, Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”), even some jaun­ty pop from Vam­pire Week­end (“Oxford Com­ma”) and Sara Bareilles (“Love Song”). He ends with Raúl Esparza­’s bal­lad “Why” from the musi­cal Tick, Tick, BOOM!, which clos­es the mix with a paean to the healthy addic­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty. (“I make a vow, right here and now / I’m gonna spend my time this way,” he sings.)

And don’t wor­ry if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy (which you can down­load here). He’s list­ed the tracks on his Twit­ter post too.

It’s nice to know that Miran­da fussed over this selec­tion like one used to do back in the days of cas­sette tapes. Does that mean he has a crush on all of us?

via Nerdist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

8 Writ­ers on How to Face Writer’s Block and the Blank Page: Mar­garet Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Car­ol Oates & More

A Clever Super­cut of Writ­ers Strug­gling with Writer’s Block in 53 Films: From Bar­ton Fink to The Roy­al Tenen­baums

How Famous Writ­ers Deal With Writer’s Block: Their Tips & Tricks

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

John Coltrane Draws a Picture Illustrating the Mathematics of Music

in Jazz, Math, Music | April 12th, 2017

Physi­cist and sax­o­phon­ist Stephon Alexan­der has argued in his many pub­lic lec­tures and his book The Jazz of Physics that Albert Ein­stein and John Coltrane had quite a lot in com­mon. Alexan­der in par­tic­u­lar draws our atten­tion to the so-called “Coltrane cir­cle,” which resem­bles what any musi­cian will rec­og­nize as the “Cir­cle of Fifths,” but incor­po­rates Coltrane’s own inno­va­tions. Coltrane gave the draw­ing to sax­o­phon­ist and pro­fes­sor Yusef Lateef in 1967, who includ­ed it in his sem­i­nal text, Repos­i­to­ry of Scales and Melod­ic Pat­terns. Where Lateef, as he writes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, sees Coltrane’s music as a “spir­i­tu­al jour­ney” that “embraced the con­cerns of a rich tra­di­tion of auto­phys­iopsy­chic music,” Alexan­der sees “the same geo­met­ric prin­ci­ple that moti­vat­ed Einstein’s” quan­tum the­o­ry.

Nei­ther descrip­tion seems out of place. Musi­cian and blog­ger Roel Hol­lan­der notes, “Thelo­nious Monk once said ‘All musi­cans are sub­con­scious­ly math­e­mati­cians.’ Musi­cians like John Coltrane though have been very much aware of the math­e­mat­ics of music and con­scious­ly applied it to his works.”

Coltrane was also very much aware of Einstein’s work and liked to talk about it fre­quent­ly. Musi­can David Amram remem­bers the Giant Steps genius telling him he “was try­ing to do some­thing like that in music.”

Hol­lan­der care­ful­ly dis­sects Coltrane’s math­e­mat­ics in two the­o­ry-heavy essays, one gen­er­al­ly on Coltrane’s “Music & Geom­e­try” and one specif­i­cal­ly on his “Tone Cir­cle.” Coltrane him­self had lit­tle to say pub­li­cal­ly about the inten­sive the­o­ret­i­cal work behind his most famous com­po­si­tions, prob­a­bly because he’d rather they speak for them­selves. He pre­ferred to express him­self philo­soph­i­cal­ly and mys­ti­cal­ly, draw­ing equal­ly on his fas­ci­na­tion with sci­ence and with spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions of all kinds. Coltrane’s poet­ic way of speak­ing has left his musi­cal inter­preters with a wide vari­ety of ways to look at his Cir­cle, as jazz musi­cian Corey Mwam­ba dis­cov­ered when he infor­mal­ly polled sev­er­al oth­er play­ers on Face­book. Clar­inetist Arun Ghosh, for exam­ple, saw in Coltrane’s “math­e­mat­i­cal prin­ci­ples” a “musi­cal sys­tem that con­nect­ed with The Divine.” It’s a sys­tem, he opined, that “feels quite Islam­ic to me.”

Lateef agreed, and there may be few who under­stood Coltrane’s method bet­ter than he did. He stud­ied close­ly with Coltrane for years, and has been remem­bered since his death in 2013 as a peer and even a men­tor, espe­cial­ly in his ecu­meni­cal embrace of the­o­ry and music from around the world. Lateef even argued that Coltrane’s late-in-life mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme might have been titled “Allah Supreme” were it not for fear of “polit­i­cal back­lash.” Some may find the claim ten­den­tious, but what we see in the wide range of respons­es to Coltrane’s musi­cal the­o­ry, so well encap­su­lat­ed in the draw­ing above, is that his recog­ni­tion, as Lateef writes, of the “struc­tures of music” was as much for him about sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery as it was reli­gious expe­ri­ence. Both for him were intu­itive process­es that “came into exis­tence,” writes Lateef, “in the mind of the musi­can through abstrac­tion from expe­ri­ence.”

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 Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ Ani­mat­ed

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