Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Rendered in the Style of Picasso; Blade Runner in the Style of Van Gogh

in Art, Film | June 14th, 2016

And now for some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.

Over on his Tum­blr, “The Pro­fes­sion­al Dork,” Bhau­tik Joshi has post­ed 2001: A Space Odyssey “ren­dered in the style of Picas­so using deep neur­al net­work based style trans­fer.” And also Blade Run­ner in the style of ‘Star­ry Night’ by Van Gogh. All of this is done using Deep Neur­al Net­works, a pro­gram­ming par­a­digm that allows a com­put­er to learn from obser­va­tion­al data (includ­ing the paint­ing styles of icon­ic painters). To learn more about Neur­al Net­works and Deep Learn­ing, you can read this free ebook by Michael Nielsen, which will be added to our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Text­books. Enjoy.

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!

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night”

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Filmmaker Ken Burns Urges Stanford Graduates to Defeat Trump & the Retrograde Forces Threatening the U.S.

in Graduation Speech, History, Politics | June 14th, 2016

This time of year, we see grad­u­a­tion speech­es pop­ping up all over the web. The com­mence­ment address as a genre focus­es on the oppor­tu­ni­ties, chal­lenges, and respon­si­bil­i­ties grad­u­ates will face post-col­lege, and often espous­es time­less life lessons and philoso­phies. But this year, as you may have seen, esteemed doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Ken Burns took the oppor­tu­ni­ty of his grad­u­a­tion speech, pre­sent­ed to the 2016 class at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, to address the timeli­est of issues: the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and the threat of “an incip­i­ent pro­to-fas­cism.” The grad­u­a­tion just hap­pened to fall on the same day as the dead­liest mass-shoot­ing in recent Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

Vot­ers are angry at the sys­tem, we’re told again and again, and frankly the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have every rea­son to be. But anger can be intox­i­cat­ing, and the seg­ment of the elec­torate that car­ried Don­ald Trump to pow­er seems drunk with rage and hos­til­i­ty. The promise of Trump­ism puts me in mind of his­to­ri­an and crit­ic Richard Slotkin’s clas­sic study of U.S. mythol­o­gy, Regen­er­a­tion Through Vio­lence, which describes the nation’s com­pul­sion to purge the coun­try of threat­en­ing oth­ers in order to restore some myth of lost inno­cence. “I will give you every­thing, I’m the only one,” the can­di­date vows, while scape­goat­ing group after group for the coun­try’s prob­lems.

In his Stan­ford com­mence­ment speech on Sun­day, Burns decried “the dic­ta­to­r­i­al ten­den­cies of the can­di­date with zero expe­ri­ence in the much maligned but sub­tle art of gov­er­nance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for any­thing, offer­ing only bom­bas­tic and con­tra­dic­to­ry promis­es and ter­ri­fy­ing Orwellian state­ments.” The Repub­li­can can­di­date for pres­i­dent is “a per­son,” Burns said in his impas­sioned speech, “who eas­i­ly lies, cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment where truth doesn’t seem to mat­ter.”

As a stu­dent of his­to­ry, I rec­og­nize this type. He emerges every­where and in all eras. We see nur­tured in his cam­paign an incip­i­ent pro­to-fas­cism, a nativist anti-immi­grant Know Noth­ing-ism, a dis­re­spect for the judi­cia­ry, the prospect of women los­ing author­i­ty over their own bod­ies, African-Amer­i­cans again asked to go to the back of the line, vot­er sup­pres­sion glee­ful­ly pro­mot­ed, jin­go­is­tic saber-rat­tling, a total lack of his­tor­i­cal aware­ness, a polit­i­cal para­noia that, pre­dictably, points fin­gers, always mak­ing the oth­er wrong. These are all vir­u­lent strains that have at times infect­ed us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again — all hap­pen­ing at once. We know from our his­to­ry books that these are the dis­eases of ancient and now fall­en empires. The sense of com­mon­wealth, of shared sac­ri­fice, of trust, so much a part of Amer­i­can life, is erod­ing fast, spurred along and ampli­fied by an amoral inter­net that per­mits a lie to cir­cle the globe three times before the truth can get start­ed.

We no longer have the lux­u­ry of neu­tral­i­ty or “bal­ance,” or even of bemused dis­dain. Many of our media insti­tu­tions have large­ly failed to expose this char­la­tan, torn between a nag­ging respon­si­bil­i­ty to good jour­nal­ism and the big rat­ings a media cir­cus always deliv­ers. In fact, they have giv­en him the abun­dant air­time he so des­per­ate­ly craves, so much so that it has actu­al­ly worn down our nat­ur­al human revul­sion to this kind of behav­ior. Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing some­thing right. He is not. Edward R. Mur­row would have exposed this naked emper­or months ago. He is an insult to our his­to­ry. Do not be deceived by his momen­tary “good behav­ior.” It is only a spoiled, mis­be­hav­ing child hop­ing some­how to still have dessert.

And do not think that the tragedy in Orlan­do under­scores his points. It does not. We must “dis­en­thrall our­selves,” as Abra­ham Lin­coln said, from the cul­ture of vio­lence and guns. And then “we shall save our coun­try.”

The words of Lin­coln that Burns quotes come from the president’s annu­al remarks to con­gress in 1862, in which Lin­coln made the case for the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, one month before sign­ing it. (A doc­u­ment, iron­i­cal­ly, that Slotkin says “rad­i­cal­ly expand­ed the exist­ing pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy” in its pur­suit of a just cause.) In his address, Lin­coln makes a force­ful moral argu­ment, all the more elo­quent for its char­ac­ter­is­tic brevi­ty.

Fel­low-cit­i­zens, we can­not escape his­to­ry. We of this Con­gress and this admin­is­tra­tion, will be remem­bered in spite of our­selves. No per­son­al sig­nif­i­cance, or insignif­i­cance, can spare one or anoth­er of us.

Like­wise, Burns—addressing future lead­ers at an elite institution—makes his case for heed­ing the lessons of his­to­ry, con­sid­er­ing pos­ter­i­ty, and reject­ing Trump, inde­pen­dent of par­ti­san inter­ests: “This is not a lib­er­al or con­ser­v­a­tive issue, a red state-blue state divide. This is an Amer­i­can issue.” He also implores “those ‘Vichy Repub­li­cans’ who have endorsed him to please, please recon­sid­er.” The hor­rif­ic mass mur­der in Orlan­do has fur­ther inflamed what Burns calls “the trou­bling, unfil­tered Tourette’s of [Trump’s] tribalism”—with renewed calls for bans on all Mus­lims, more inflam­ma­to­ry insin­u­a­tions that the pres­i­dent col­ludes with ter­ror­ists, and bizarre alle­ga­tions that a Clin­ton aide is a Sau­di agent.

Trump did not invent this rhetoric of big­otry, con­spir­a­cy, and para­noia, but he has manip­u­lat­ed and exploit­ed it more effec­tive­ly than any­one else, to poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous effect. “The next few months of your ‘com­mence­ment,’ ” Burns says, “that is to say, your future, will be crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of our repub­lic.” He urges the grad­u­at­ing Stan­ford class to take action: “before you do any­thing with your well-earned degree, you must do every­thing you can to defeat the ret­ro­grade forces that have invad­ed our demo­c­ra­t­ic process.” Those process­es may already be deeply com­pro­mised by mon­eyed inter­ests, but destroy­ing the edi­fice on which they’re built, Burns sug­gests, will hard­ly restore any sup­pos­ed­ly lost “great­ness.” Watch Burns’ full com­mence­ment speech above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Burns on the Art of Sto­ry­telling: “It’s Lying Twen­ty-Four Times a Sec­ond”

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

Prince­ton His­to­ri­an Sean Wilentz on How Trump May Change (If Not Destroy) the GOP

J.K. Rowl­ing Defends Don­ald Trump’s Right to Be “Offen­sive and Big­ot­ed”

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

Harvard Dean Lists the 5 Essential Questions to Ask In Life … Which Will Bring You Happiness & Success

in Graduation Speech, Life | June 13th, 2016

And now for a dif­fer­ent kind of grad­u­a­tion speech.

Most com­mence­ment speech­es pro­vide answers of sorts–pieces of wis­dom you can car­ry with you, life strate­gies you can use down the road. Above James Ryan, Dean of Har­vard’s School of Edu­ca­tion, offers some­thing else–not answers, but ques­tions, the five essen­tial ques­tions to ask as you move through life. He elab­o­rates on each above:

1.) Wait, what?

2.) I won­der, why/if?

3.) Could­n’t we at least?

4.) How can I help?

5.) What real­ly mat­ters?

Bonus ques­tion: And did you get what you want­ed out of life, even so?

You can watch Ryan’s com­plete com­mence­ment speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness? Lessons from a 75-Year-Long Har­vard Study

Oprah Winfrey’s Har­vard Com­mence­ment Speech: Fail­ure is Just Part of Mov­ing Through Life

The Har­vard Clas­sics: Down­load All 51 Vol­umes as Free eBooks

Harvard’s Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Course Teach­es You to Code in 12 Weeks

Har­vard Presents Two Free Online Cours­es on the Old Tes­ta­ment

“Forbidden Images,” a Compilation of Scandalous Scenes from the Early Days of Cinema (NSFW in 1926)

in Film, History | June 13th, 2016

Last night I caught a screen­ing of Park Chan-wook’s new movie The Hand­maid­en, whose dar­ing­ly frank love scenes — by the stan­dards of main­stream cin­e­ma, at least — have already drawn no small amount of inter­na­tion­al noto­ri­ety. That goes espe­cial­ly for a once cen­sor­ship-heavy coun­try like South Korea, where The Hand­maid­en came from and where I saw it. But it also comes just as one more push of the enve­lope in the process that has been broad­en­ing the range of “accept­able” imagery for high-pro­file pro­duc­tions ever since the birth of the medi­um. You can get a sense of just how much it has accom­plished by watch­ing “For­bid­den Images,” the four-minute com­pi­la­tion just above.

“I made this film for the 2007 edi­tion of the 72 Hour Film Fest in Fred­er­ick, MD,” writes its uploader, “These scenes come from a reel of 35mm nitrate that was dis­cov­ered in the pro­jec­tion booth of an old movie the­ater in Penn­syl­va­nia. The pro­jec­tion­ist spliced togeth­er this reel of banned, cen­sored scenes to meet local moral stan­dards or for late night, ‘per­son­al’ screen­ings.” And what does this dis­til­la­tion of pure cin­e­mat­ic scan­dal show us? Bathing beau­ties, jubi­lat­ing flap­pers, faint­ing damsels, whirling lady dervish­es, skirts fly­ing in the wind, and a whole lot of feet, most of them still shod — a far cry from what most of us, absent very spe­cif­ic desires indeed, would con­sid­er forms of tit­il­la­tion today.

Yet at the time, “For­bid­den Images” tells us, film­mak­ers and the­ater own­ers had to cut out these shots lest they face arrest. But what films did they have to cut them out of? The video’s com­menters on Youtube have iden­ti­fied scenes from Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Gre­ta Gar­bo in The Temptress, and a 1926 pic­ture called The Black White Sheep. We may laugh at what peo­ple in the silent era con­sid­ered unshow­able, but this com­pi­la­tion presents us with the unavoid­able ques­tion: “Will our cur­rent forms of cen­sor­ship and moral stan­dards appear just as ridicu­lous to future audi­ences?” After all, we can always push the enve­lope a lit­tle fur­ther — and thus far, we always have.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch After the Ball, the 1897 “Adult” Film by Pio­neer­ing Direc­tor Georges Méliès (Almost NSFW)

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Watch Scar­let Street, Fritz Lang’s Cen­sored Noir Film, Star­ring the Great Edward G. Robin­son (1945)

Watch Jean Genet’s Only Film, the Cen­sored A Song of Love (1950)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

Bertrand Russell Lists His 20 Favorite Words in 1958 (and What Are Some of Yours?)

in English Language, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry, Writing | June 13th, 2016

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Is it pos­si­ble to ful­ly sep­a­rate a word’s sound from its meaning—to val­ue words sole­ly for their music? Some poets come close: Wal­lace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, John Ash­bery. Rare pho­net­ic meta­physi­cians. Sure­ly we all do this when we hear words in a lan­guage we do not know. When I first encoun­tered the Span­ish word entonces, I thought it was the most beau­ti­ful three syl­la­bles I’d ever heard.

I still thought so, despite some dis­ap­point­ment, when I learned it was a com­mon­place adverb mean­ing “then,” not the rar­i­fied name of some mag­i­cal being. My rev­er­ence for entonces will not impress a native Span­ish speak­er. Since I do not think in Span­ish and strug­gle to find the right words when I speak it—always translating—the sound and sense of the lan­guage run on two dif­fer­ent tracks in my mind.

An exam­ple from my native tongue: the word obdu­rate, which I adore, became an instant favorite for its sound the first time I said it aloud, before I’d ever used it in a sen­tence or parsed its mean­ing. It’s not a com­mon Eng­lish word, how­ev­er, and maybe that makes it spe­cial. A word like always, which has a pret­ty sound, rarely strikes me as musi­cal or inter­est­ing, though non-Eng­lish speak­ers may find it so.

Every writer has favorite words. Some of those words are ordi­nary, some of them not so much. David Fos­ter Wallace’s lists of favorite words con­sist of obscu­ri­ties and archaisms unlike­ly to ever fea­ture in the aver­age con­ver­sa­tion. “James Joyce thought cus­pi­dor the most beau­ti­ful word in the Eng­lish lan­guage,” writes the blog Futil­i­ty Clos­et,” Arnold Ben­net chose pave­ment. J.R.R. Tolkien felt the phrase cel­lar door had an espe­cial­ly beau­ti­ful sound.”

Who’s to say how much these authors could sep­a­rate sound from sense? Futil­i­ty Clos­et illus­trates the prob­lem with a humor­ous anec­dote about Max Beer­bohm, and brings us the list below of philoso­pher Bertrand Russell’s 20 favorite words, offered in response to a reader’s ques­tion in 1958. Though Rus­sell him­self had a fas­ci­nat­ing the­o­ry about how we make words mean things, he sup­pos­ed­ly made this list with­out regard for these words’ mean­ings.

1. wind
2. heath
3. gold­en
4. begrime
5. pil­grim
6. quag­mire
7. dia­pa­son
8. alabaster
9. chryso­prase
10. astro­labe
11. apoc­a­lyp­tic
12. ineluctable
13. ter­raque­ous
14. inspis­sat­ed
15. incar­na­dine
16. sub­lu­nary
17. choras­mean
18. alem­bic
19. ful­mi­nate
20. ecsta­sy

So, what about you, read­er? What are some of your favorite words in English—or what­ev­er your native lan­guage hap­pens to be? And do you, can you, choose them for their sound alone? Please let us know in the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Cre­ates Lists of His Favorite Words: “Mau­gre,” “Taran­tism,” “Ruck,” “Prima­para” & More

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

5 Won­der­ful­ly Long Lit­er­ary Sen­tences by Samuel Beck­ett, Vir­ginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & Oth­er Mas­ters of the Run-On

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

Bertrand Russell: “The Problem with the World Is That Fools & Fanatics Are So Certain of Themselves”

in Life, Philosophy | June 12th, 2016

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“The whole prob­lem with the world is that fools and fanat­ics are always so cer­tain of them­selves, but wis­er peo­ple so full of doubts.” — Bertrand Rus­sell

Our hearts go out to the fam­i­lies and friends who lost loved ones in Orlan­do this morn­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Lis­ten to ‘Why I Am Not a Chris­t­ian,’ Bertrand Russell’s Pow­er­ful Cri­tique of Reli­gion (1927)

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Helen Mirren Holds Her Own (and Then Some) in a Cringe-Inducingly Sexist TV Interview, 1975

in Film, Television, Theatre | June 10th, 2016

Say what you will about Kim Kar­dashi­an. (Go ahead, I’ll wait.)

Yes, she may only be famous for being rich and famous—not a par­tic­u­lar­ly admirable cul­tur­al achieve­ment. But, “and this is the big word: B‑U-T-T‑,” says Helen Mir­ren, “it’s won­der­ful that you’re allowed to have a butt nowa­days… Thanks to Madame Kar­dashi­an.” Should you think Madame Kardashian’s butt-bar­ing shame­ful, you’ll have Dame Helen to deal with, and she may not deal with you kind­ly.

Though the Kar­dashi­ans are “a phe­nom­e­non I just don’t find inter­est­ing,” Mir­ren said recent­ly, she admires Kim and oth­er women in pop cul­ture for their body pos­i­tiv­i­ty: “When I was grow­ing up, it was thought to be unbe­liev­ably slut­tish to even have a bra strap show­ing. Every­thing was about women con­form­ing…. Women were con­trolled by being shamed…. I love shame­less women. Shame­less and proud.”

Mir­ren knows well of what she speaks. Though an accom­plished stage actress since the mid-six­ties, she has been pigeon­holed by crit­ics as a sex sym­bol through­out her career in the­atre and film. While per­form­ing with the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny, one paper dubbed her “Stratford’s very own sex queen.” Mirren’s ear­ly film work includ­ed nude scenes in 1969’s Age of Con­sent and the 1979 Bob Guc­cione-pro­duced Caligu­la, and she has called the decade between those two films the most sex­ist time in recent his­to­ry, “worse than the 1940s or 50s,” she says, “It was hor­ri­ble. That decade, after the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion but before fem­i­nism, was per­ilous for women.”

Some evi­dence is on dis­play in the clips above from an infa­mous 1975 inter­view Mir­ren gave with a leer­ing Michael Parkin­son. The inter­view begins, at the top, with Parkin­son quot­ing sev­er­al crit­ics on Mirren’s “slut­tish eroti­cism,” among oth­er things. It quick­ly goes down­hill from there. Mir­ren shrugs off the sex­ist lin­go; Parkin­son can’t shut up about it, ask­ing if “what can best be described as your ‘equip­ment’ hin­ders you, per­haps, in that pur­suit” of being, he says, “in quotes a ‘seri­ous actress.’” Asked to clar­i­fy, he stum­bles, then says that her body “might detract from the per­for­mance, if you know what I mean.” She doesn’t.

Mir­ren doesn’t make this belit­tling sex­ism easy for Parkin­son, but he can’t seem to stop him­self. It’s hard to watch, but also inspir­ing to see her poise and con­fi­dence in the face of his boor­ish­ness. (She calls his ques­tions “bor­ing” and he final­ly vows to “leave off this sexy image thing,” though he comes back to it.) Yvonne Roberts in The Guardian calls the inter­view “far from unusu­al,” and the kind of thing that “gave Jim­my Sav­ile his cov­er.” She also says that though “Mir­ren is right on the impact of the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion,” she is “wrong on chronol­o­gy. The 70s was the decade when fem­i­nism took hold—and per­haps that’s why sex­ism became still more marked.” Pro­nounced back­lash always fol­lows social change, a phe­nom­e­non we’ve seen so often that it seems inevitable.

The Parkin­son inter­view was Mirren’s first talk show appear­ance, and she remem­bers being “ter­ri­fied” at the time. On re-watch­ing the inter­view in 2011, she said, “I actu­al­ly thought, bloody hell! I did real­ly well. I was so young and inex­pe­ri­enced. And he was such a f***ing sex­ist old fart. He was.” She remem­bers him as “an extreme­ly creepy inter­view­er” and told BUST mag­a­zine in 2010 she was “far more polite than I should have been.” Mir­ren got the chance to con­front Parkin­son about that creepy 1975 appear­ance when she returned as a guest on his show in 2006 to talk about her title role in The Queen.

In the clip above from that appear­ance, Parkin­son returns to the sub­ject of Mirren’s breasts in dis­cussing her lead part in the BBC police pro­ce­dur­al series Prime Sus­pect. She forth­right­ly takes him to task. “I’m glad you men­tioned that, Michael,” she says, “because you can’t resist, can you?” Of the 1975 inter­view, she says, “I hat­ed you. I thought you were a sex­ist per­son.” Parkin­son hasn’t changed, it’s clear, but Mir­ren says she’s “mel­lowed.” The exchange is a lot less awk­ward, per­haps because Parkin­son knows he can’t bul­ly Mir­ren the movie star as he did the young stage actress.

Though Mir­ren now says she’s hap­py to no longer be a sex sym­bol, she also express­es admi­ra­tion for “women who have claimed their own bod­ies…. They all raise their mid­dle fin­gers to this epi­thet of ‘slut.’ They wear what they want to wear, behave as they want to behave.” Though she did not have chil­dren, she tells BUST she would have taught her daugh­ter to “say ‘f*ck off’ in the face of sex­ism”: “It’s quite valu­able to have the courage and the con­fi­dence to say, ‘No, f*ck off, leave me alone, thank you very much.” Sad­ly, as we see again and again, in a cul­ture that still shames and deval­ues women, and enables rape and sex­u­al vio­lence, that courage and con­fi­dence, incred­i­bly valu­able as it is, isn’t enough to stop con­tin­ued ram­pant sex­ism and abuse in the enter­tain­ment indus­try and every­where else.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Mir­ren Now Teach­ing Her First Online Course on Act­ing

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

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

The Bizarre, Surviving Scene from the 1933 Soviet Animation Based on a Pushkin Tale and a Shostakovich Score

in Animation, Film, Literature | June 10th, 2016

Hot dumplings! Mar­i­nat­ed apples! A bar­rel of cucum­bers!

Want to add some quick col­or to your per­for­mance or film? Slip in a quick non-nar­ra­tive ven­dor scene. No need for char­ac­ter or plot devel­op­ment. The audi­ence will be quite con­tent with the hawk­ers’ musi­cal recita­tion of their wares.

The Gersh­win / Hey­ward opera Por­gy and Bess’ com­ic “Ven­dor’s Trio” makes a nice break from the tragedy.

The live­ly mar­ket num­ber Who Will Buy? tem­porar­i­ly side­lines Oliv­er’s orphans to show­case the tal­ents of the adult cho­rus mem­bers.

When the Simp­sons’ 179th episode took Homer to New York City back in 1997, he was able to pur­chase such exot­ic del­i­ca­cies as Khlav Kalash and canned crab juice from a col­lec­tion of push­carts at the base of the World Trade Cen­ter.

Less well known is the above bazaar sequence from The Tale of the Priest and of His Work­man Bal­da (1933), a clas­sic of Sovi­et ani­ma­tion. This short clip is the only part of direc­tor Mikhail Tsekhanovsky’s unfin­ished fea­ture-length work to sur­vive. The rest was destroyed in a fire at the LenFilm archives in World War II, the seem­ing­ly final chap­ter in its trou­bled his­to­ry.

The film was based on Alexan­der Pushkin’s poet­ic retelling of a Russ­ian folk tale about a greedy priest, who strikes an ill-advised bar­gain with a brawny work­er. It was pub­lished posthu­mous­ly, and only after cen­sors had changed the priest into a mer­chant.

As he began work on the pro­duc­tion, Tsekhanovsky invit­ed Dim­it­ry Shostakovich to com­pose the score, an inno­va­tion at a time when musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment was added to com­plet­ed silent films. Shostakovich start­ed, but was derailed by Prav­da’s 1936 denun­ci­a­tion of his work in an arti­cle titled “Mud­dle Instead of Music.”

Even­tu­al­ly Tsekhanovskiy threw in the tow­el, too.

It does not end there, how­ev­er.

After Shostakovich’s death, his wid­ow got his stu­dent, Vadim Biber­ga, to com­plete work on the unfin­ished score. The Russ­ian Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra released it in 2006, as part of a Shostakovich cen­ten­ni­al.

A com­mem­o­ra­tive live per­for­mance that same year drew fire from the local dio­cese of the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church, who object­ed to the mock­ing por­tray­al of the priest. The the­ater bowed to pres­sure, stag­ing sev­en priest-free num­bers from the opera.

This recent his­to­ry adds an air of defi­ance to the grotes­queries of the sur­viv­ing clip, with top hon­ors going to the smut ped­dler enter­ing at the one minute mark, to extol the virtues of “a Venus with no gar­ments and fat thighs.”

You can lis­ten to Shostakovich’s full score here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Ani­mat­ed Shorts by the Ground­break­ing Russ­ian Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Come Soft Rain’

Watch Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Win­nie the Pooh, Cre­at­ed by the Inno­v­a­tive Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

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

Malcolm Gladwell Has Launched a New Podcast, Revisionist History: Hear the First Episode

in History, Podcasts | June 10th, 2016

Mal­colm Glad­well has a pod­cast. Some of you will require no fur­ther infor­ma­tion, and in fact have already clicked over to iTunes (or anoth­er pod­cast down­load­ing appli­ca­tion of your choice), des­per­ate to down­load the first episode. Allow me to inform those cool­er heads who remain that Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry won’t begin its ten-week run, with one episode out per week, until June 16th. (Update: The first episode is now live and you can stream it below.) But you can sub­scribe right now (iTunes — Stitch­er — RSS), and while you wait over the next few days, you can lis­ten to the pre­view that Glad­well has already post­ed.

You can also get a lit­tle a taste of Glad­well’s new project by watch­ing the trail­er at the top of the post. “Every week, I’m going to take you back into the past,” Glad­well promis­es in the video’s nar­ra­tion, “to exam­ine some­thing that I think has been over­looked and mis­un­der­stood.”

He gets into more detail on the Bri­an Lehrer Show seg­ment below, in which he describes the first episode of Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry as about the ques­tion of what it means to be “the first out­sider to enter a closed world,” start­ing from the career of British painter Eliz­a­beth Thomp­son, whose 1874 can­vas The Roll Call became, for a time, the most famous image in the coun­try. It broke its female artist into the male-dom­i­nat­ed world of paint­ing, and seemed, for an even short­er time, to her­ald a new era rich with high-pro­file female painters. “Every­one waits and waits for the rev­o­lu­tion to hap­pen,” Glad­well says, already into his char­ac­ter­is­tic sto­ry­telling mode, “and it nev­er hap­pens.”

Lehrer reacts to Glad­well’s choice of the sto­ry of “the first woman to break through in a male-dom­i­nat­ed field” with the obvi­ous ques­tion: “Is that a coin­ci­dence?” It is absolute­ly not a coin­ci­dence, Glad­well replies, going on to con­nect the phe­nom­e­non in ques­tion to not just mod­ern fig­ures like Hillary Clin­ton but Barack Oba­ma, Julia Gillard, and Mar­garet Thatch­er as well, and in the pod­cast itself sure­ly many oth­ers besides. He also hints at an episode lat­er in the sea­son that begins with an obscure Elvis Costel­lo song — and a “ter­ri­ble” one at that, he adds — and uses it “as a way of find­ing out how cre­ativ­i­ty works, and how an awful lot of what we con­sid­er works of genius had an incred­i­bly cir­cuitous path to great­ness,” end­ing up at a gallery look­ing at Cézannes.

You can sign up for episode updates at the offi­cial Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry site. The show comes as a prod­uct of Panoply, the pod­cast net­work of The Slate Group, and its first sea­son promis­es slick pro­duc­tion in addi­tion to the kind of com­pelling sto­ries and mem­o­rable social-sci­ence insights with which Glad­well has made him­self famous. And we should­n’t ignore his tal­ent for mar­ket­ing, either, ful­ly in evi­dence from noth­ing more than the tagline he speaks in the trail­er: “Because some­times the past deserves a sec­ond chance.” All this togeth­er sounds like more than a good rea­son to give his pod­cast a first one.

Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry is list­ed in our new col­lec­tion, The 150 Best Pod­casts to Enrich Your Mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Jump Into the “Pod­cast­ing Renais­sance” with These Intel­li­gent Shows (and Tell Us Your Favorites)

Mal­colm Glad­well: What We Can Learn from Spaghet­ti Sauce

Mal­colm Glad­well: Tax­es Were High and Life Was Just Fine

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

Martin Scorsese Sends a Sweet Video to the Young Creator a Kubrick/Scorsese Mashup

in Film, Life | June 9th, 2016

If you’re a vet­er­an read­er of Open Cul­ture, you may remem­ber a 2010 video trib­ute called “Kubrick vs Scors­ese.” To make the video, Lean­dro Cop­per­field, a young cinephile liv­ing in Rio de Janeiro, spent 25 days re-watch­ing 35 films, select­ing more than 500 scenes, and then edit­ing them into an homage to his two favorite direc­tors. Watch it here.

No doubt, it must have come as a sur­prise when, six years lat­er, Cop­per­field received a video from Scors­ese him­self, prais­ing the mon­tage Lean­dro made so long ago. Again, if you’re an old-timer here, you’ll know that this isn’t the first time Scors­ese has shown kind­ness to younger artists. In 2014, we recount­ed the sto­ry of Col­in Levy, a teenage film­mak­er who met with Scors­ese, and came away with a list of 39 For­eign Films Essen­tial for a Young Film­mak­er. Props to Mar­ty for being a good men­tor and teacher too.

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:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Mar­tin Scors­ese Plays Vin­cent Van Gogh in a Short, Sur­re­al Film by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See