A Big Super Cut of Saturday Night Live Cast Members Breaking Character and Cracking Up

in Comedy, Television | August 26th, 2016

Corps­ing—aka laugh­ing inap­pro­pri­ate­ly onstage—requires far less skill than sol­dier­ing on when the actor play­ing oppo­site los­es con­trol, an occur­rence that almost always wins audi­ence favor.

The recent­ly released super cuts of Sat­ur­day Night Live cast mem­bers’ com­po­sure desert­ing them, above and below, sug­gest that the worst offend­ers are aware that view­ers will lap up these laps­es. Why strive to stay in char­ac­ter when bloop­er reel star­dom awaits?

It’s a fact that these crack ups have the abil­i­ty to loosen things up, recall­ing that free­wheel­ing peri­od before the show became the insti­tu­tion its cast mem­bers dreamed of audi­tion­ing for since child­hood.

It’s unclear what—if any—meaning we should ascribe to the evi­dence that the most indul­gent gig­glers are all male.

Could it be that women are fun­ny after all… enough to win the sort of punch­lines that’ll make the boys lose it on cam­era?

If so, per­haps we can arrange for aliens to abduct the next com­men­ta­tor who sug­gests oth­er­wise, probe him, then seat him oppo­site a bewigged Kate McK­in­non. No offense to guest host Ryan Gosling, the embod­i­ment of a good sport. His inabil­i­ty to stay in char­ac­ter was both under­stat­ed and heart­warm­ing, and he was­n’t pan­der­ing. SNL reg­u­lars Aidy Bryant and Bob­by Moyni­han strug­gled too. I still wager a lot of fun­ny ladies watched that Close Encoun­ters skit, and root­ed for McK­in­non to be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take down an old school chau­vin­ist pig.

But not every­one delights in watch­ing these guys run off the rails, as Slate’s Jes­si­ca Win­ter notes in a piece about SNL’s corps­ing phe­nom­e­non:

Tra­cy Mor­gan exco­ri­at­ed his fel­low cast mem­ber (Jim­my Fal­lon) for “laugh­ing and all that dumb shit he used to do,” explain­ing, “That’s tak­ing all the atten­tion off of every­body else and putting it on you, like, ‘Oh, look at me, I’m the cute one.’

It’s true that the cam­era nev­er could resist cast mem­ber Bill Hader’s elab­o­rate, utter­ly unsuc­cess­ful attempts to bring his face to heel. Wit­ness the dress rehearsal for the West Coast-fla­vored soap opera spoof, The Cal­i­for­ni­ans, below. Amaz­ing how lit­tle it changed en route to per­for­mance.

The writ­ers out­did them­selves when they bestowed a sig­na­ture ges­ture on anoth­er of Hader’s recur­rent char­ac­ters, New York City cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor, Ste­fon. His new­found pro­cliv­i­ty for hid­ing his face behind his hands could’ve helped the actor pull it togeth­er, but instead it turned into a bit. Won­der what Tra­cy Mor­gan thought when Had­er attrib­uted his inabil­i­ty to keep a straight face to his straight man / Week­end Update foil Seth Myers:

A per­son being patient with an insane per­son is my favorite thing in the world…. You were being so patient with this mani­ac who had the sim­plest job in the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don Par­do (1918–2014), Voice of Sat­ur­day Night Live, Sug­gests Using Short Words

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

Father Gui­do Sar­duc­ci Pitch­es “The Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Hear the One Night Sun Ra & John Cage Played Together in Concert (1986)

in Jazz, Music | August 25th, 2016

It’s hard to imag­ine two fig­ures more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of two dis­parate direc­tions exper­i­men­tal music took in the 20th cen­tu­ry than John Cage and Sun Ra. Cage’s aleato­ry arrange­ments and instru­ments impro­vised from radios and TV sets left much to the dis­cre­tion of the per­former. And yet, odd­ly, he did­n’t think much of impro­visato­ry music, writ­ing in his 1961 book Silence that he con­sid­ered jazz “rather sil­ly” and “unsuit­ed,” notes Seth Colter Walls at Pitch­fork, “for ‘seri­ous’ con­texts.”

Sun Ra, on the oth­er hand, while a mas­ter impro­vis­er, left lit­tle to chance. He embraced the role of band­leader of his Arkestra with unique vig­or, “com­plete­ly obsessed with pre­ci­sion and dis­ci­pline.” Cage pre­ferred the plain-spo­ken, unspo­ken, and word­less. Ra deliv­ered roco­co trea­tis­es onstage, dressed in glit­ter­ing capes and head­dress­es. How the two would, or could, come togeth­er may seem a mys­tery, but come togeth­er they did, for a one-time con­cert event at a Coney Island freak show.

The result­ing album is “one of the most sought after records in either discog­ra­phy,” writes The Vinyl Fac­to­ry in an announce­ment of the full per­for­mance’s recent release by label Mod­ern Har­mon­ic. Fans can final­ly pur­chase that dou­ble LP, or lis­ten to the live record­ing for free below. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.) Though it may seem like a bit of a nov­el­ty, “the album grad­u­al­ly emerges as some­thing greater than a foot­note,” Walls writes, “despite the arms-length embrace, the over­all con­cert has a sur­pris­ing­ly seam­less qual­i­ty.”

Cage’s con­tri­bu­tions con­sist main­ly of word­less vocal­iza­tions and poignant silences. Ra recites poet­ry and unleash­es solo after solo on his Yama­ha DX7 syn­the­siz­er, blend­ing “sci-fi movie tones” with “spright­ly fig­ures” and “dense chords and drones.” The album’s trail­er at the top of the post offers some rare black and white footage of the occa­sion, which briefly includ­ed a cou­ple of addi­tion­al artists–Arkestra sax­o­phon­ist Mar­shall Allen and singer June Tyson. (Tyson’s inten­tion­al­ly strained per­for­mance “is beset by ampli­fi­ca­tion prob­lems,” Walls warns, “though the noise-dam­aged result works, in con­text.”

Through­out the one-off meet­ing, Ra and Cage trade solos, each respect­ful­ly yield­ing the stage to the oth­er in turn. While this set­up high­lights the two giants’ pro­found­ly dif­fer­ent approach­es to making–and con­ceiv­ing of–music, Sun Ra’s “abil­i­ty to meet Cage more than halfway… helps hold the entire gig togeth­er,” writes Walls. One of the few tracks on which the two col­lab­o­rate direct­ly, “Silent Duet,” is, well, exact­ly that. Since we can­not see the per­for­mance, we have to imag­ine the two of them, sit­ting side-by-side in silence, as the audi­ence seems to all but hold its breath.

The odd thump of a foot against the mic stand aside, the record­ing doc­u­ments almost total dead air. Then this gives way to Cage’s cryp­tic mum­bling and Ra’s restrained key­board taps in “Emp­ty Words and Key­board.” The effect is elec­tric, the moment sacred, and the col­lab­o­ra­tion, though fleet­ing, reveals itself as gen­uine­ly inspired, not only for its care­ful play of con­trast­ing avant-gardis­m’s against each oth­er but for the extra­or­di­nary instances in which Afro­fu­tur­ist free jazz and Fluxus min­i­mal­ism find accord.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Sun Ra Christ­mas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broad­cast of Poet­ry and Music

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

The Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33”

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

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra

in Music, Television | August 25th, 2016

With Twin Peaks com­ing back to our TV screens next year, fans want to know who’s com­ing back from the orig­i­nal cast and crew. The same could be said for com­pos­er Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, whose theme music for the series still evokes shots of sawmills, high water­falls, rustling pines, and a deep, dark sense of mys­tery com­bined with the pangs of doomed romance.

In this selec­tion from an August 19, 2016 con­cert from the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, under the baton of Antho­ny Wee­den, Badalamenti’s score is giv­en a chance to stand alone as a com­po­si­tion with­out the visu­als. Bathed in red light, the orches­tra looks appro­pri­ate­ly Lynchi­an, and all that’s miss­ing is a large red cur­tain and zigzag floor­ing. The arrange­ment hews close to Badalamenti’s, though his small com­bo from the orig­i­nal sound­track gets expand­ed to a full orches­tra, with ket­tle­drums, glock­en­spiel, harp, and con­cert bells. How­ev­er, when “Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme” segues into the title theme, the two-note twang is still played on elec­tric gui­tar. (You can’t mess with that!)

In this con­text, Badalamenti’s nods to Bernard Hermann’s Ver­ti­go score are even more appar­ent, espe­cial­ly in the del­i­cate, swelling love melody that is always in dan­ger of sad col­lapse. The con­cert also fea­tured selec­tions from oth­er great tele­vi­sion sound­tracks, includ­ing Game of Thrones, Home­land, Break­ing Bad, Six Feet Under, and more. The whole con­cert can be watched here.

“We had a fab­u­lous time per­form­ing it —a very spe­cial part of the evening,” Antho­ny Wee­den is quot­ed as say­ing on the go-to Wel­come to Twin Peaks site. And he added, “I can’t wait for the new series!”

Nei­ther can we, Mr. Wee­den.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

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

Pizza Box Becomes a Playable DJ Turntable Through the Magic of Conductive Ink

in Food & Drink, Music, Technology | August 25th, 2016

Turns out Piz­za Hut is good for some­thing…

They’ve teamed up with the print­ed elec­tron­ics com­pa­ny Novalia to turn card­board piz­za box­es into playable turnta­bles. Spe­cial­iz­ing in tech­nol­o­gy that adds touch and con­nec­tiv­i­ty to every­day sur­faces, Novalia has cre­at­ed two scratch­able decks, each with con­trols that let you fine-tune the vol­ume, pitch, play­back, and cross­fad­ing. And it’s all done with the mag­ic of con­duc­tive ink.

Accord­ing to Live for Music, “the bat­tery-pow­ered box can be hooked up to a com­put­er or phone through Blue­tooth, then con­nect­ed to any DJ soft­ware like Ser­a­to or DJ Pro.” Right now, the playable piz­za box is only avail­able at a few Piz­za Hut loca­tions in the UK. Above, DJ Vec­tra offers a primer on using the new gad­get.

via Live for Music

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:

Lis­ten to Tree Rings Get­ting Played on a Turntable and Turned into Music

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

Postage Stamps from Bhutan That Dou­ble as Playable Vinyl Records

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Take a Virtual Reality Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

in Art, Technology | August 25th, 2016

A muse­um which con­tains only works of art that nobody can find sounds like some­thing Jorge Luis Borges would’ve dreamed up, but it has twice become a real­i­ty in the 21st cen­tu­ry — or twice become a vir­tu­al real­i­ty, any­way. “The Con­cert by Johannes Ver­meer. Pop­py Flow­ers by Vin­cent van Gogh. Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. These are some of the world’s most famous and expen­sive paint­ings ever stolen,” writes Fast Com­pa­ny’s Mark Wil­son. And though their where­abouts remain unknown, you can see them at The Muse­um of Stolen Art, “a vir­tu­al real­i­ty exhi­bi­tion cre­at­ed by Ziv Schnei­der, a grad­u­ate stu­dent at Tisch ITP, that puts stolen works back on dis­play.”

At the moment, Schnei­der’s project exists on Google’s vir­tu­al real­i­ty plat­form Card­board, and you can down­load it as a smart­phone app for iOS or Android. Its cur­rent exhibits include “a col­lec­tion of pho­tographs list­ed as stolen in the FBI’s art crime data­base”; the pri­vate col­lec­tion of Fer­di­nand and Imel­da Mar­cos, for­mer pres­i­dent and first lady of the Philip­pines, now “being searched for by the PCGG – a Philip­pine gov­ern­ment office in charge of seiz­ing the Mar­cos’ ill got­ten wealth and bring­ing it back”; and “a large col­lec­tion of paint­ings stolen in some of the world’s most famous art heists, includ­ing the Stew­art and Isabel­la Gard­ner Muse­um in Boston.”

But even before Schnei­der’s insti­tu­tion opened its vir­tu­al-real­i­ty doors, writes The Cre­ators Pro­jec­t’s Becky Chung, “halfway across the world anoth­er insti­tu­tion — also called the Muse­um of Stolen Art — was debut­ing its gallery exhi­bi­tion of works cur­rent­ly report­ed stolen or miss­ing.” This Muse­um of Stolen Art, in the Nether­lands, presents the Pop­py Flow­ers and Water­loo Bridges of the art world in not vir­tu­al but aug­ment­ed real­i­ty: its vis­i­tors raise their phones or tablets up to its mean­ing­ful­ly emp­ty walls, and on their screens see the pur­loined works restored to their right­ful frames. William Gib­son, in some sense the Bor­ge­sian vision­ary of our tech-sat­u­rat­ed time, has described aug­ment­ed real­i­ty as the nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion of vir­tu­al real­i­ty. It’s made vir­tu­al art recov­ery pos­si­ble; can vir­tu­al art theft be far behind?

Reminder: You can down­load The Muse­um of Stolen Art smart­phone app on iOS and Android. The app is ide­al­ly designed for those with a Google card­board view­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Vis­it The Muse­um of Online Muse­ums (MoOM): A Mega Col­lec­tion of 220 Online Exhi­bi­tions

The British Muse­um Is Now Open To Every­one: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour and See 4,634 Arti­facts, Includ­ing the Roset­ta Stone

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the 1913 Exhi­bi­tion That Intro­duced Avant-Garde Art to Amer­i­ca

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

What Are the Most Stolen Books? Book­store Lists Fea­ture Works by Muraka­mi, Bukows­ki, Bur­roughs, Von­negut, Ker­ouac & Palah­niuk

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.

The Best 100 Movies of the 21st Century (So Far) Named by 177 Film Critics

in Film | August 24th, 2016

When prompt­ed to think of the cin­e­mat­ic peaks of the 20th cen­tu­ry, or of spe­cif­ic decades like the 1930s, the 1970s, or the 1990s, we can usu­al­ly thread up spe­cif­ic exam­ples in the pro­jec­tor of our mind right away. Grand Illu­sion and Gone with the Wind! Taxi Dri­ver and The God­fa­ther! Pulp Fic­tion and Far­go! But in this cen­tu­ry it gets trick­i­er. This prob­a­bly does­n’t have to do with a pre­cip­i­tous drop in the qual­i­ty of cin­e­ma itself, nor with a lack of films to con­sid­er — indeed, the 2000s and 2010s so far have bur­dened cinephiles with more crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed pic­tures than they can get around to see­ing.

The rel­a­tive recen­cy of the movies of the 21st cen­tu­ry presents some­thing of a chal­lenge, since the zeit­geist has­n’t had quite enough time to digest most of them. And what now con­sti­tutes the “zeit­geist,” any­way? We live in a post­mod­ern time, we often read, and that usu­al­ly seems to mean that a greater vari­ety of aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, his­tor­i­cal peri­ods, and world cul­tures now coex­ist for us on an essen­tial­ly lev­el play­ing field than ever before. The expe­ri­ence of the mod­ern movie­go­er reflects this con­di­tion, as does the BBC’s list of the 21st cen­tu­ry’s 100 great­est films (so far), the top ten of which fol­low:

1. Mul­hol­land Dri­ve (David Lynch, 2001)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
3. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Ander­son, 2007)
4. Spir­it­ed Away (Hayao Miyaza­ki, 2001)
5. Boy­hood (Richard Lin­klater, 2014)
6. Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
7. The Tree of Life (Ter­rence Mal­ick, 2011)
8. Yi Yi: A One and a Two (Edward Yang, 2000)
9. A Sep­a­ra­tion (Asghar Farha­di, 2011)
10. No Coun­try for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)

To pro­duce the list, the BBC sur­veyed 177 crit­ics “from every con­ti­nent except Antarc­ti­ca. Some are news­pa­per or mag­a­zine review­ers, oth­ers write pri­mar­i­ly for web­sites; aca­d­e­mics and cin­e­ma cura­tors are well-rep­re­sent­ed too.” They note that they include the year 2000, though not tech­ni­cal­ly part of the cen­tu­ry, since “not only did we all cel­e­brate the turn of the mil­len­ni­um on 31 Decem­ber 1999, but the year 2000 was a land­mark in glob­al cin­e­ma, and, in par­tic­u­lar, saw the emer­gence of new clas­sics from Asia like noth­ing we had ever seen before,” not just Yi Yi and In the Mood for Love but Ang Lee’s Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Drag­on a bit down the list.

France, though a coun­try close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with mid-20th-cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma, makes an admirable show­ing here with the likes of Agnès Var­da’s The Glean­ers & I, Michael Haneke’s Caché, Claire Denis’ White Mate­r­i­al, and Jean-Luc Godard­’s voy­age into 3D, Good­bye to Lan­guage. Some films shame­ful­ly over­looked at their ini­tial release, like Ken­neth Lon­er­gan’s Mar­garet and Andrew Dominik’s The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James by the Cow­ard Robert Ford, appear here as per­haps a pre­lude to their right­ful redis­cov­ery. We can tell which auteurs have defined the cin­e­mat­ic cen­tu­ry so far by the pres­ence of more than one of their works: the late Abbas Kiarosta­mi’s Ten and Cer­ti­fied Copy both appear, as do three films by Thai­land’s Apichat­pong Weerasethakul and six by those still-ambi­tious once-wun­derkinds of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma, the Ander­sons Wes and Paul Thomas.

Most of these movies exploit, to a deep­er extent than the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed pic­tures of decades pre­vi­ous, the cre­ation of dream­like expe­ri­ences pos­si­ble in film. None do it more vivid­ly, per­haps, than the occu­pi­er of the top spot, David Lynch’s Mul­hol­land Dri­ve. The selec­tion will sur­prise some read­ers, and oth­ers not at all. What makes that par­tic­u­lar movie so good? Con­ve­nient­ly, the BBC pro­vides on the side­bar a link to an arti­cle by Luke Buck­mas­ter explain­ing just that.

Buck­mas­ter com­pares Mul­hol­land Dri­ve to Cit­i­zen Kane, “writer/director Orson Welles’ esteemed 1941 fea­ture film debut – BBC Culture’s crit­ics poll of the 100 great­est Amer­i­can films last year put Kane at num­ber one. If Kane can be viewed as an essay on the nuts and bolts of film-mak­ing – a mas­ter­class in tech­ni­cal process­es, from mon­tage to deep focus, dis­solves and the manip­u­la­tion of mise en scène – Mul­hol­land Dri­ve’s appeal is more the­mat­ic and con­cep­tu­al. It is less a demon­stra­tion of how great cin­e­ma is achieved than what great cin­e­ma can achieve, its capac­i­ty for ideas seem­ing­ly end­less.” May the remain­ing 84 years of the 21st cen­tu­ry find that capac­i­ty more end­less still.

See the BBC’s com­plete list here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

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.

Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Gets an Epic, Instrumental Soundtrack from the Indie Band Joan of Arc

in Film, Music | August 23rd, 2016

The lega­cy of the silent film era is always with us, even as we move fur­ther and fur­ther away from film and clos­er to com­put­er art. Not only do the com­po­si­tions, cos­tum­ing, and cam­er­a­work of gold­en age clas­sics like Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu, The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari and oth­ers con­tin­ue to inform cur­rent direc­tors’ work, CGI and oth­er­wise, but these films have spawned their own pres­ti­gious form of music. In recent decades scores for clas­sic silents have become the spe­cial prove­nance of avant-garde and exper­i­men­tal com­posers. The pair­ing makes sense. These are movies that raised the stakes for their medi­um and estab­lished the first gen­er­a­tion of cin­e­mat­ic auteurs—Fritz Lang, F.W. Mur­nau, D.W. Grif­fith, Char­lie Chap­lin, and, of course, Carl Drey­er, the Dan­ish direc­tor of 1928’s pro­found­ly intense The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc.

As with all of the acknowl­edged clas­sics of the era, Dreyer’s mas­ter­piece has received many con­tem­po­rary musi­cal treat­ments in the past few decades, includ­ing an orig­i­nal operetta by Richard Ein­horn (on the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion edi­tion) and many more clas­si­cal and mod­ernist scores. But it has also been part of a par­al­lel trend—of indie rock musi­cians like Dengue Fever, Yo La Ten­go, Sparkle­horse, and Dean and Brit­ta scor­ing clas­sic silent films. First, Aus­tralians Nick Cave and The Dirty Three came togeth­er in 1995 to play a live sound­track for Joan of Arc in Lon­don. Then Cat Pow­er accom­pa­nied the film in 1999 for sev­er­al dates. In 2011, for one night only, Chica­go indie stal­warts Joan of Arc per­formed their 80-minute instru­men­tal score for a packed screen­ing at the Chica­go Inter­na­tion­al Movies and Music Fes­ti­val. Hear it, along with the film, above. (A copy can be pur­chased online here.) It was an “unex­pect­ed turn for the band,” their label Joy­ful Noise notes, giv­en that they had just “released their most con­ven­tion­al­ly ‘rock­ing’ album in years, ‘Life Like.’”

Asso­ci­at­ed with singer and sole per­ma­nent mem­ber Tim Kinsella’s raspy yelps and warped songcraft, the band here takes a post-rock direc­tion, loud and dirge-like. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it does, writes Joy­ful Noise, offer a “dark, flow­er­ing son­ic coun­ter­part to the film’s grim sub­ject mat­ter (which is a rather haunt­ing depic­tion of sav­age reli­gious per­se­cu­tion).” Dreyer’s film is indeed a grim work of art, but it is not any less beau­ti­ful for its oppres­sive nar­ra­tive. As run­ning titles in the Joan of Arc-scored film’s intro inform us, like its pro­tag­o­nist, “The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc was the vic­tim of sev­er­al ordeals,” includ­ing cen­sor­ship upon release and the loss of the orig­i­nal neg­a­tive and a re-edit­ed copy to fire. Like­wise for the film’s actress, the great Renee Maria Fal­conet­ti, “the per­for­mance was an ordeal,” as Roger Ebert points out, with leg­ends telling “of Drey­er forc­ing her to kneel painful­ly on stone and then wipe all expres­sion from her face.”

Known “only in muti­lat­ed copies” for over half a cen­tu­ry, the 1985 restora­tion above comes from an orig­i­nal Dan­ish copy dis­cov­ered “com­plete and in very good con­di­tion” at a Nor­we­gian men­tal insti­tu­tion in 1981. It is a curi­ous sto­ry. Schol­ars have often spec­u­lat­ed that the his­tor­i­cal Joan of Arc was schiz­o­phrenic or that she suf­fered from “one of numer­ous neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric con­di­tions that trig­ger hal­lu­ci­na­tions or delu­sions.” Falconetti’s per­for­mance of Joan is ambigu­ous, sug­gest­ing on the one hand, a “faith that seemed to stay any sug­ges­tion of irri­ta­tion,” as one con­tem­po­rary review­er wrote, and on the oth­er, the dazed, far­away look of a per­son in the throes of men­tal ill­ness. And the film’s warped per­spec­tives and extreme close-ups and angles sug­gest a kind of dis­tur­bance, of the cor­rupt, super­sti­tious social order that inter­ro­gates and exe­cutes Joan, and also of Joan’s mind as she con­fronts her implaca­ble judges. Joan of Arc’s puls­ing, atmos­pher­ic sound­track, draws out this very ten­sion, writ­ten in Falconetti’s every exquis­ite expres­sion.

This ver­sion of Drey­er’s Joan of Arc will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Anoth­er ver­sion, with­out any sound what­so­ev­er, can be found above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film, The Golem, with a Sound­track by The Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis

Watch Online The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc by Carl Theodor Drey­er (1928) 

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

Watch 10 Clas­sic Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Fritz Lang’s M to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

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

A 12-Hour Eastern Spirituality Playlist: Features Lectures & Readings by Joseph Campbell, Christopher Isherwood, the Dalai Lama & Others

in Religion | August 23rd, 2016

Krish­na teach­ing Arju­na, from the Bha­ga­va­ta Gita, by Arnab Dut­ta, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Open­ing with 19th cen­tu­ry British Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Disraeli’s quote, “The East is a career,” Edward Said’s Ori­en­tal­ism traced the lin­eage of “the Ori­ent” as “almost a Euro­pean inven­tion.” Through dis­cours­es sci­en­tif­ic, polit­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and oth­er­wise, Euro­pean thinkers, artists, and states­men, Said con­tend­ed, “accept­ed the basic dis­tinc­tion between East and West as the start­ing point for elab­o­rate the­o­ries, epics, nov­els, social descrip­tions and polit­i­cal accounts.” But at the root of a long aca­d­e­m­ic tra­di­tion of com­par­a­tive analy­ses of “East” and “West,”—a rela­tion­ship of dominance—there lay the recog­ni­tion, how­ev­er dim, that “The Ori­ent is not only adja­cent to Europe; it is also… the source of its civ­i­liza­tions and lan­guages.”

The cul­tur­al debts that Europe owed its colonies were not the kind of thing most politi­cians liked to dis­cuss, but many Euro­pean and U.S. writ­ers and schol­ars fas­ci­nat­ed with the East have long rec­og­nized reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal con­ti­nu­ities between the two hemi­spheres. The num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions between so-called West­ern and East­ern tra­di­tions only increased as the 20th cen­tu­ry wore on and Euro­pean Empires crum­bled, giv­ing rise mid-cen­tu­ry to a whole soci­ety of com­par­a­tive East/West reli­gion­ists and writ­ers: D.T. Suzu­ki, Alan Watts, Her­man Hesse, Aldous Hux­ley, Allen Gins­berg.… Although many West­ern schol­ars’ pro­nounce­ments may have over­gen­er­al­ized or dis­tort­ed, inter­est in a dia­logue has only grown since the 50s and 60s, and sym­pa­thet­ic pre­sen­ta­tions of Bud­dhism, Tao­ism, Hin­duism, and oth­er “East­ern reli­gions” pro­lif­er­at­ed.

From this atmos­phere emerged the work of Joseph Camp­bell, famous for The Hero with a Thou­sand Faces, pub­lished in 1949, a work of com­par­a­tive reli­gion that adopt­ed a philo­log­i­cal approach to myth like that of Campbell’s own hero, Niet­zsche. Camp­bell may have seen East and West as dis­tinct cul­tur­al entities—titling one lec­ture “The East­ern Way” and anoth­er “The West­ern Quest”—but his the­o­ry did not allow for a strict cul­tur­al hier­ar­chy. In his many record­ed lec­tures, Camp­bell stress­es the sim­i­lar­i­ties and com­mon ori­gins of world tra­di­tions, which inhab­it, he says, a “sin­gle con­stel­la­tion.” We have a few of those talks in full in the 12 hour Spo­ti­fy playlist on East­ern Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty above, includ­ing lec­tures on “Imagery of Rebirth Yoga” and “Hin­duism,” deliv­ered in the late six­ties.

We also have Christo­pher Ish­er­wood read­ing selec­tions from his trans­la­tion with Swa­mi Prab­ha­vanan­da of the Bha­gavad-Gita. Isherwood’s famed embrace of Vedan­ta did much to fos­ter inter-reli­gious dia­logue, and he left behind a “tremen­dous cache of self-rev­e­la­to­ry works,” writes Amer­i­can Vedan­tist, “includ­ing essays, lec­tures, nov­els, his diaries, and the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal My Guru and His Dis­ci­ple.” Next to Camp­bell and Ish­er­wood, we have Tibetan Bud­dhist author­i­ty the Dalai Lama giv­ing an intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture on Bud­dhism and a talk on “Cul­ti­vat­ing Hap­pi­ness.” Round­ing out the playlist is anoth­er intro­duc­tion to Bud­dhism by Emma Hignett, a read­ing of the Tao te Ching, and a read­ing by Robert Hamil­ton of his fas­ci­nat­ing com­par­a­tive study of world reli­gions, Caduceus.

While each of us could, of course, take it upon our­selves to learn San­skrit, or Pali, or Chi­nese, trans­late ancient reli­gious lit­er­a­ture and draw our own con­clu­sions, we can also par­take of the work of schol­ars and writ­ers who have invest­ed deeply in their sub­ject, per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and returned with a great deal of wis­dom about glob­al spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions. The lec­tures on this playlist (if you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here) offer an excel­lent sam­pling of that wis­dom and schol­ar­ship. You’ll find much more on our site in work by Jorge Luis Borges, Alan Watts, Robert Thur­man, the Dalai Lama, Her­bie Han­cock, Son­ny Rollins, Leonard Cohen, and many more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks Phi­los­o­phy with a Bud­dhist Monk on Ger­man Tele­vi­sion (1963)

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

The Dalai Lama’s Intro­duc­tion to Bud­dhism

48 Hours of Joseph Camp­bell Lec­tures Free Online: The Pow­er of Myth & Sto­ry­telling

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

The History of Photography in Five Animated Minutes: From Camera Obscura to Camera Phone

in Photography | August 23rd, 2016

We find our­selves, still ear­ly in the 21st cen­tu­ry, in an unprece­dent­ed era in the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy. The con­sumers of the devel­oped world have, of course, had access to cam­eras of their own for decades and decades, but now almost each and every one of us walks around with a cam­era in our pock­et. When a par­tic­u­lar land­scape, build­ing, ani­mal, human being, or oth­er sight strikes our fan­cy, we cap­ture it with­out a momen­t’s hes­i­ta­tion — and, often, with­out hav­ing giv­en a momen­t’s thought to the tech­no­log­i­cal and artis­tic his­to­ry of the dis­ci­pline we are, if for lit­tle more than an instant, prac­tic­ing.

Most of us, know­ing our­selves to be no Ansel Adams, Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, or Diane Arbus, would hes­i­tate to describe the snaps with which we doc­u­ment and share our dai­ly lives as “pho­tog­ra­phy.” But in tak­ing any pic­ture, no mat­ter how mun­dane or even sil­ly, we place our­selves in the stream of a tra­di­tion. But we can gain an under­stand­ing of that tra­di­tion, at least in broad strokes, from “The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Min­utes,” the Coop­er­a­tive of Pho­tog­ra­phy video above which, in the words of its nar­ra­tor, offers an insight into — brace your­self for this and oth­er puns —  “how pho­tog­ra­phy has devel­oped.”

Begin­ning with the cam­era obscu­ra, the reflec­tion and trac­ing devices that date back to antiq­ui­ty (lat­er described and used by Leonar­do da Vin­ci), the video moves swift­ly from mile­stone to pho­to­graph­ic mile­stone, includ­ing the first pho­to­graph, a “heli­o­graph” tak­en in 1826; Louis Daguer­re’s inven­tion of “the first prac­ti­cal pho­to­graph­ic process” in 1833; the first self­ie, tak­en in 1839; the emer­gence of mobile pho­to stu­dios in the 1850s; Ead­weard Muy­bridge’s motion-pho­tog­ra­phy stud­ies of the 1870s; Kodak’s pro­duc­tion of the first roll-film con­sumer cam­era in 1888; the game-chang­ing Leica I hit­ting the mar­ket in 1925; the first sin­gle-lens reflex in 1949; the first dig­i­tal cam­era in 1975; and, open­ing our own era, the first cam­era phone in 2000.

And now our smart­phones and their “insane­ly pow­er­ful cam­eras” onboard have turned pho­tog­ra­phy into a “glob­al pas­sion” that “has tru­ly brought the world clos­er togeth­er.” The pro­lif­er­a­tion of hasti­ly tak­en, essen­tial­ly uncom­posed shots of our pur­chas­es, our food, and our­selves have giv­en old-school pho­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts plen­ty to com­plain about, but the era of acces­si­ble pho­tog­ra­phy has only just begun. Most of us are still, in some sense, tak­ing heli­ographs and daguerreo­types; just imag­ine how the next fif­teen years will, er, expose our true pho­to­graph­ic capa­bil­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ansel Adams Reveals His Cre­ative Process in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

How to Take Pho­tographs Like Ansel Adams: The Mas­ter Explains The Art of “Visu­al­iza­tion”

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Get­ty Images Makes 35 Mil­lion Pho­tos Free to Use Online

Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspir­ing Pho­tog­ra­phers: Skip the Fan­cy Equip­ment & Just Shoot

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.

The Hidden Secrets in “Daydreaming,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s New Radiohead Music Video

in Film, Music | August 22nd, 2016

Paul Thomas Ander­son, as his fans will tell you, makes the kind of large-scale cin­e­ma nobody else does any­more: intense of emo­tion, involved of sto­ry, col­or­ful­ly pop­u­lat­ed, wide of aspect ratio (and even, in the case of The Mas­ter, shot on 70-mil­lime­ter film), no super­heroes asked, none giv­en. Hav­ing dis­played unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to his visions from the very begin­ning, it makes sense that, on his lat­est music video, he would work with Radio­head, a band no less com­mit­ted to their own. Radio­head fans know the ambi­tious­ness of a Radio­head song or album when they hear it, but what makes the video Ander­son direct­ed for “Day­dream­ing,” their sin­gle released this past May, Ander­son­ian?

“Like many great works of art, Radio­head­’s lat­est music video makes you strug­gle for its inner mean­ing,” says Rishi Kane­r­ia in his explana­to­ry video “Radio­head: the Secrets of ‘Day­dream­ing.’ ” His nar­ra­tion describes the video’s osten­si­bly sim­ple form: “an old­er, tired-look­ing Thom Yorke” — Radio­head­’s singer and co-founder — “open­ing door after door, and like a ghost, walk­ing through the back­ground of seem­ing­ly ran­dom peo­ple’s lives,” all “a metaphor for the choic­es Thom has had to make in his life, of the doors he’s stepped through, while nev­er quite know­ing what’s on the oth­er side. Because he can nev­er go back, we see him con­stant­ly push­ing for­ward, con­tin­u­al­ly search­ing for mean­ing and an ulti­mate rest­ing place. ”

Kane­r­ia keys in on details that only those with a thor­ough knowl­edge of the life and work of Yorke and his band could notice. In real life, Yorke had just split up with his part­ner of 23 years; in the video, he walks through 23 doors. In the video, he wears an out­fit designed by Rick Owens; in real life, his part­ner was named Rachel Owens. (Well, Rachel Owen, but close enough.) The var­i­ous rooms through which York pass­es con­tain women, usu­al­ly moth­ers, even in a hos­pi­tal ward. Can we con­sid­er that a ref­er­ence to his recu­per­a­tion from a “severe car crash in 1987, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing there’s a wheel on the wall”?

When Yorke’s char­ac­ter final­ly finds solace beside a fire in a cave, he speaks a back­wards phrase to the cam­era which, reversed, sounds like, “Half of my life, half of my love.” 23 years, of course, con­sti­tutes just about half of the 47-year-old Yorke’s life — and, Kane­r­ia notes, the num­ber of years since the band began record­ing. The video also per­forms oth­er exege­ses numer­i­cal, lyri­cal, and visu­al, and zodi­a­cal, every­where find­ing ref­er­ences to Rachel as well as to Radio­head — song titles, album art, even the set­tings of past music videos — to the point that we see “how Thom’s per­son­al life with Rachel is inescapably sat­u­rat­ed and sur­round­ed by all things Radio­head.”

Nobody ever called bal­anc­ing the demands of domes­tic life and those of per­haps the biggest rock band in the world easy. Still, few recent works of art have illus­trat­ed this kind of strug­gle as vivid­ly as the “Day­dream­ing” video, and Ander­son, not just one of the most famous and respect­ed film­mak­ers alive but a hus­band and a father to four chil­dren, sure­ly knows some­thing about it as well. So often com­pared to his cin­e­ma-redefin­ing pre­de­ces­sors from Robert Alt­man to Stan­ley Kubrick, he must also know as well as Yorke does what it means to have your work sub­ject­ed to such close scruti­ny — and to want to cre­ate work that will repay that scruti­ny.

The Ander­son-Radio­head con­nec­tion goes as least as far back as 2007’s There Will Be Blood, scored by the band’s gui­tarist Jon­ny Green­wood. Ander­son com­mis­sioned Green­wood’s musi­cal ser­vices again for his next two pic­tures, The Mas­ter, and Inher­ent Vice, and last year made a doc­u­men­tary called Jun­jun about Green­wood’s solo album of the same name. No mat­ter how much of Kane­r­i­a’s pre­sent­ed rev­e­la­tion you believe, “Day­dream­ing” sits as suit­ably with the rest of Ander­son­’s fil­mog­ra­phy as it does in its treat­ment of an old theme: you can’t enjoy every kind of sat­is­fac­tion — but from the life­long bat­tle to do so, most­ly against one­self, emerges art.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Delight in Prince’s Extra­or­di­nar­i­ly Poignant Cov­er of Radiohead’s “Creep” & His Com­plete 2008 Coachel­la Set

How Paul Thomas Ander­son Dropped Out of NYU Film School in 2 Days; Stud­ied Lit­er­a­ture with David Fos­ter Wal­lace

Radiohead’s “Creep” Per­formed in a Vin­tage Jazz-Age Style

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Radio­head-Approved, Fan-Made Film of the Band at Rose­land for 2011′s The King of Limbs Tour

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Radio­head: Mak­ing Videos With­out Cam­eras (or Lights)

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.