A Guided Tour of Guillermo del Toro’s Creativity-Inducing Man Cave, “Bleak House”

in Art, Film | September 15th, 2015

Many guys have man caves – a room, a base­ment, a shed where a dude can get away from the demands of domes­tic­i­ty and do dude things. Guiller­mo del Toro, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed direc­tor of such movies as Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacif­ic Rim and the upcom­ing Crim­son Peak, doesn’t just have a cave. He has an entire house. It’s called Bleak House and it’s pret­ty amaz­ing. In a fea­turette for Criterion’s release of Cronos (1993), Del Toro gives a guid­ed tour. You can watch it above.

As you can see, the place feels less like a frat house than an eccen­tric muse­um. One of his inspi­ra­tions was curios­i­ty cab­i­nets of old. Indeed, the walls are crammed with paint­ings, prints and curios and just about every cor­ner is teem­ing with skele­tons, skulls, ten­ta­cles and creepy things float­ing in bot­tles of formalde­hyde.

Anoth­er inspi­ra­tion was the orig­i­nal research library for Dis­ney Stu­dios, which fed the imag­i­na­tion of the studio’s artists with lots of art. So Del Toro has orig­i­nal frames from Ger­tie the Dinosaur by Win­sor McCay, the first ani­mat­ed movie ever, along with draw­ings by Moe­bius and pho­tographs of Alfred Hitch­cock. He also has piles of books, mag­a­zines and DVDs. “What­ev­er it is,” says Del Toro, “it’s here to pro­vide a shock to the sys­tem and get cir­cu­lat­ing the lifeblood of cre­ativ­i­ty, which I think is curios­i­ty. When we lose curios­i­ty, we lose entire­ly inven­tive­ness, and we start becom­ing old. So the man cave of Bleak house was designed to be sort of a com­pres­sion cham­ber where we can cre­ate a stim­u­lat­ing envi­ron­ment…” for artists.

Right above you even more about Bleak House in which Del Toro gives a tour to hor­ror direc­tor Tim Sul­li­van. Not only is the place filled with strange and macabre curiosi­ties but also memen­toes from Del Toro’s movies. Want to see Del Toro bran­dish the orig­i­nal Big Baby from Hell­boy II: The Gold­en Army? Check this video out.

Via @LaFa­mil­i­aFilm

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sketch­es by Guiller­mo del Toro Take You Inside the Director’s Wild­ly Cre­ative Imag­i­na­tion

Geome­tria: Watch Guiller­mo del Toro’s Very Ear­ly, Ghoul­ish Short Film (1987)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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

in Photography | September 15th, 2015

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Musi­cians can often become con­sumed by GAS—or “gear acqui­si­tion syn­drome”—obsess­ing over equip­ment for years instead of mak­ing music with what they have. This is dri­ven in part by the intim­i­dat­ing snob­bery of gear elit­ists, and in part by con­sumer mar­ket­ing seek­ing to con­vince us that we nev­er have enough. It seems that the pho­tog­ra­phy world also suf­fers from GAS, and, as a 1962 pitch let­ter to Pop Pho­to mag­a­zine by Hunter S. Thomp­son shows us—writes the pho­tog­ra­phy blog Peta Pix­el—“the land­scape of the pho­to world half a cen­tu­ry ago may not have been too dif­fer­ent from what we see today.”

In such a land­scape, gonzo jour­nal­ist, “exis­ten­tial­ist life coach,” and hob­by­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Thomp­son became a stren­u­ous advo­cate for the spar­tan art of snap­shot pho­tog­ra­phy. He wrote his pitch let­ter to Pop Pho­to in response to an arti­cle by Ralph Hat­ter­s­ley called “Good & Bad Pic­tures,” and to pro­pose his own essay on the sub­ject with the pos­si­ble title “The Case for the Chron­ic Snap­shoot­er.”

He first describes the feel­ing imposed on him by the New York pho­to world that “no man should ever punch a shut­ter release with­out many years of instruc­tion and at least $500 worth of the finest equip­ment.” In such an elit­ist envi­ron­ment, he became “embar­rassed to be seen on the street with my rat­ty equip­ment” and “stopped tak­ing pic­tures alto­geth­er.” Hattersley’s piece, however—which “cites Weegee and Cartier-Bresson”—convinced him that “snap­shoot­ing is not, by def­i­n­i­tion, a low and igno­rant art.” He revis­it­ed his prints, he writes, “and decid­ed that not all of them were worth­less. As a mat­ter of fact there were some that gave me great plea­sure.”

That’s my idea in a nut­shell. When pho­tog­ra­phy gets so tech­ni­cal as to intim­i­date peo­ple, the ele­ment of sim­ple enjoy­ment is bound to suf­fer. Any man who can see what he wants to get on film will usu­al­ly find some way to get it; and a man who thinks his equip­ment is going to see for him is not going to get much of any­thing.

The moral here is that any­one who wants to take pic­tures can afford ade­quate equip­ment and can, with very lit­tle effort, learn how to use it. Then, when the pic­tures he gets start resem­bling the ones he saw in his mind’s eye, he can start think­ing in terms of those added improve­ments that he may or may not need.

You can read Thompson’s full let­ter here. His advice to would-be pho­tog­ra­phers not only offers inspi­ra­tion to ama­teurs and hob­by­ists; it also gives us a phi­los­o­phy of pho­to­graph­ic art (and art more gen­er­al­ly) as an exten­sion of our nat­ur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ties, or “mind’s eye.” His “moral” might apply broad­ly to any cre­ative endeav­or like­ly to be stymied by GAS.

Thomp­son makes the case that what­ev­er we can afford can get us where we need to go: “Why give up because you can’t afford a cam­era with a 1.8 or 1.4 lens?” he writes, “First push 3.5 to its absolute lim­it, and if it still bugs you, you’ll find some way to buy that oth­er cam­era. If not, you don’t need it any­way.” He acknowl­edges that his the­sis “will rub some of your high-priced adver­tis­ers the wrong way,” but writes that shut­ter­bugs who can­not get results on low­er-priced gear will only be dis­ap­point­ed when they fail sim­i­lar­ly with the high-priced stuff.”

The push to shop instead of cre­ate com­pels us to obsess over what we don’t have—Thompson urges us to learn to make the very best with what we do.

You can see some of Thomp­son’s pho­tographs here.

via Peta Pix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

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

Discovered: First Use of the “F Word” May Date Back to 1310

in History | September 14th, 2015

We pre­vi­ous­ly thought that the first use of the “F word” dat­ed back to 1528 — to when a monk jot­ted the word in the mar­gins of Cicero’s De Offici­is. But it turns out that you can find traces of this col­or­ful curse word in Eng­lish court doc­u­ments writ­ten in 1310.

Dr. Paul Booth, a for­mer lec­tur­er in medieval his­to­ry at Keele Uni­ver­si­ty, was look­ing through court records from the age of Edward II when he acci­den­tal­ly stum­bled upon the name “Roger Fucke­bythenavele.” The name was appar­ent­ly used three times in the doc­u­ments, sug­gest­ing it was hard­ly a mis­take. Accord­ing to The Dai­ly Mail, Booth believes “Roger Fucke­bythenavele” was a nick­name for a defen­dant in a crim­i­nal case. And, going fur­ther, he sug­gests the nick­name could mean one of two things: ‘Either this refers to an inex­pe­ri­enced cop­u­la­tor, refer­ring to some­one try­ing to have sex with the navel, or it’s a rather extrav­a­gant expla­na­tion for a dimwit, some­one so stu­pid they think this that is the way to have sex.’ Booth has noti­fied the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary of his dis­cov­ery.

via The Dai­ly Mail

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Very First Writ­ten Use of the F Word in Eng­lish (1528)

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Stephen Fry, Lan­guage Enthu­si­ast, Defends The “Unnec­es­sary” Art Of Swear­ing

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Harry Clarke’s 1926 Illustrations of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psychedelic 60s

in Art, Books, Literature | September 14th, 2015

Evok­ing the play­ful grotesques of Shel Sil­ver­stein, the goth­ic gloom of Neil Gaiman’s Sand­man comics, the occult beau­ty of the Rid­er-Waite tarot deck, and the hid­den hor­rors of H.P. Love­craft, Har­ry Clarke’s illus­tra­tions for a 1926 edi­tion of Goethe’s Faust are said to have inspired the psy­che­del­ic imagery of the 60s. And one can eas­i­ly see why Clarke’s dis­turb­ing yet ele­gant images would appeal to peo­ple seek­ing altered states of con­scious­ness. Clarke, born in Dublin in 1889, came to promi­nence as an illus­tra­tor of imag­i­na­tive literature—by Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, Edgar Allan Poe, and others—though he worked pri­mar­i­ly as a design­er, with his broth­er, of stained glass win­dows. Faust was the last book he illus­trat­ed, and the most fan­tas­tic.

Clarke (1889 — 1931) drew his inspi­ra­tion from the Art Nou­veau move­ment that began in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry with artists like Aubrey Beard­s­ley and Gus­tav Klimt. We see the influ­ence of both in Clarke’s gaunt, elon­gat­ed fig­ures and his inter­est in unusu­al, organ­ic pat­terns and orna­men­ta­tion. We can also see—mentions an online Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty exhib­it of his work—the influ­ence of his own stained glass work, “through use of heavy lines in his black and white illus­tra­tions.” The blog Gar­den of Unearth­ly Delights notes that “ini­tial­ly Har­raps, the pub­lish­er, did not like the draw­ings (Clarke recalled that they thought the work was ‘full of steam­ing hor­rors’), and many of the illus­tra­tions were fin­ished under pres­sure.”

Despite the publisher’s reser­va­tions, reviews of the 2,000-copy lim­it­ed edi­tion were large­ly pos­i­tive. Review­ers praised the draw­ings for their “dis­tinc­tive charms” and “wealth of fan­tas­tic inven­tion.” One crit­ic for the Irish States­man wrote, “Clarke’s fer­til­i­ty of inven­tion is end­less. It is shown in the mul­ti­tude of designs less elab­o­rate than the page plates, but no less intense.” The “page plates” referred to eight full-col­or, full-page illus­tra­tions like the paint­ing of Faust and Mephistophe­les above. Addi­tion­al­ly, the book con­tains eight full-page ink wash illus­tra­tions, six full-page illus­tra­tions in black and white, and six­ty-four small­er black and white vignettes.

You can read the Clarke-illus­trat­ed poem online here, with the illus­tra­tions repro­duced, albeit bad­ly. (Also down­load the text in var­i­ous for­mats at Project Guten­berg.) To see many more high­er-qual­i­ty dig­i­tal scans like the ones fea­tured here, vis­it 50 Watts and The Gar­den of Unearth­ly Delights, which also brings us more quo­ta­tions from review­ers, includ­ing “a neg­a­tive review of the draw­ings” that sums up what we might—and what those 60s revival­ists sure­ly did—find most appeal­ing about Clarke’s illus­tra­tions. They present, wrote a crit­ic in the mag­a­zine Art­work,

A dream world of half-cre­at­ed fan­tasies; the pow­er­less fan­cies of senile visions; mis­shapen bod­ies with worm­like heads; star­ing eyes of octo­pus­es and rep­tiles gaze like pon­der­ous sauri­an of the lost world, while half-fin­ished homun­culi change like “plas­ma” in forms unbound by rea­son.

That last phrase, “unbound by rea­son,” could also apply to the weird, night­mar­ish pil­grim­age of Goethe’s hero, and to the shak­ing off of old stric­tures that artists like Clarke, his fin de siè­cle pre­de­ces­sors, and his psy­che­del­ic suc­ces­sors strove to achieve.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eugène Delacroix Illus­trates Goethe’s Faust, “One of the Very Great­est of All Illus­trat­ed Books”

Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illus­trat­ed by Aubrey Beard­s­ley in a Strik­ing Mod­ern Aes­thet­ic (1894)

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

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

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Read by Sir John Gielgud

in Audio Books, K-12, Literature, Poetry, Theatre | September 14th, 2015

I nev­er thought I could love an audio record­ing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won­der­land (tech­ni­cal­ly Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land and its sequel, Through the Look­ing-Glass) more than I love the unabridged ver­sion nar­rat­ed by Christo­pher Plum­mer. His won­der­ful­ly ham­my char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and its six hour run­ning time made it the per­fect sound­track for pick­ing nits from the foot long tress­es of a first-grad­er who’d been sent home with lice.

By the time she got the all clear, both of us had large por­tions of it com­mit­ted to mem­o­ry.

Christo­pher, I trea­sure the mem­o­ries of those long hours spent togeth­er on cas­sette, but I’m afraid I’ll be spend­ing the 150th anniver­sary of Alice with Sir John Giel­gud, below.

All in the gold­en after­noon

Full leisure­ly we glide;

For both our oars, with lit­tle skill,

By lit­tle arms are plied,

While lit­tle hands make vain pre­tense

Our wan­der­ings to guide.

He makes Lewis Car­roll sound like Shake­speare!

The cel­e­brat­ed dry wit that served him so well through­out his illus­tri­ous career keeps this 1989 Alice very easy on the ears. He takes the oppo­site approach from Plum­mer, under­play­ing the char­ac­ter voic­es. It’s rare to find a gen­tle­man of 85 who can play a 7‑year-old girl so con­vinc­ing­ly, and with so lit­tle fuss.

In an extreme­ly civ­i­lized bit of audio engi­neer­ing, Giel­gud record­ed the tracks in the ball­room of Wya­s­tone Leys, the Vic­to­ri­an coun­try estate that is home to the audiobook’s label. Also? The Eng­lish String Orches­tra ush­ers lis­ten­ers from scene to scene with excerpts from Mendelssohn’s String Sym­phonies. Ah…

Giel­gud’s read­ing of Alice has been made avail­able on Spo­ti­fy. Find it here. Or embed­ded here. You can also find it on Youtube as well. Com­pletists might also enjoy Gielgud’s turn as the Mock Tur­tle in Jonathan Miller’s superbly dark, black & white adap­ta­tion from 1966, here. (Giel­gud makes his entrance at the 13:55 mark.)

To lis­ten to Giel­gud on Spo­ti­fy, you will of course need Spotify’s soft­ware and account, both easy to come by: you just down­load and reg­is­ter.

Oth­er read­ings of Alice can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

Free Audio: Alice In Won­der­land Read by Cory Doc­torow

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

Lewis Carroll’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Told in Sand Ani­ma­tion

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will be appear­ing at the Brook­lyn Book Fes­ti­val in New York City next week­end.. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Vancouver Never Plays Itself

in Film | September 14th, 2015

Tony Zhou and his video series Every Frame a Paint­ing returns with a new episode: Van­cou­ver Nev­er Plays Itself.

A bustling sea­port city on the west coast of Cana­da, Van­cou­ver is a big movie pro­duc­tion town. In fact, it’s the third biggest film pro­duc­tion city in North Amer­i­ca, right behind LA and New York. And yet you would­n’t know it. Because Van­cou­ver nev­er plays itself. It always mas­quer­ades in movies as oth­er cities — New York, Seat­tle, San­ta Bar­bara and beyond.

Zhou shows you just how this decep­tion gets pulled off, again and again.

Find more episodes from his series below…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

The Art of Mak­ing Intel­li­gent Com­e­dy Movies: 8 Take-Aways from the Films of Edgar Wright

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Hear Blade Runner, Terminator, Videodrome & Other 70s, 80s & 90s Movies as Novelized AudioBooks

in Books, Film | September 14th, 2015

It is the year 2019. The world is over­crowd­ed. Decay­ing. Mech­a­nized. Android slaves, pro­grammed to live for only four years, are tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vels — strong, intel­li­gent, phys­i­cal­ly indis­tin­guish­able from humans. Into this world comes a band of rebel androids. Desparate to find the mas­ter­mind who built them, bent on extend­ing their life span, they will use all their super­hu­man strength and cun­ning to stop any­thing — or any­one — who gets in their way. Ordi­nary peo­ple are no match to them. Nei­ther are the police. This is a job for one man only. Rick Deckard. Blade Run­ner.

Thus opens the nov­el Blade Run­ner: A Sto­ry of the Future. But even if you so enjoyed Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner that you went back and read the orig­i­nal nov­el that pro­vid­ed the film its source mate­r­i­al, these words may sound unfa­mil­iar to you, not least because you almost cer­tain­ly would have gone back and read Philip K. Dick­’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, the real object of Blade Run­ner’s adap­ta­tion. When the movie came out in 1982, out came an edi­tion of Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? re-brand­ed as Blade Run­ner: Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? — and out as well, con­fus­ing­ly, came Blade Run­ner: A Sto­ry of the Future, the nov­el­iza­tion of the adap­ta­tion.

Who would read such a thing? Movie nov­el­iza­tions have long since passed their 1970s and 80s pre-home-video prime, but in our retro-lov­ing 21st cen­tu­ry they’ve inspired a few true fans to impres­sive demon­stra­tions of their enjoy­ment of this spe­cial­ized form of lit­er­a­ture. “They’re spe­cial to me because when I was younger there were a lot of films I desired to see but didn’t get to, and the nov­el­iza­tions were sold at the Scholas­tic Book Fairs,” says enthu­si­ast Josh Olsen in an inter­view with West­word, who describes his books of choice as “adapt­ed from films, or ear­ly drafts of films at least, locked with short dead­lines and print­ed cheap­ly and per­func­to­ri­ly and end up being part of the movie’s mas­sive mar­ket­ing uni­verse. Basi­cal­ly, it’s the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of the McDonald’s cup from back in the day.”

And so we have Audio­books for the Damned, Olsen’s labor of love that has tak­en over thir­ty of these nov­el­iza­tions (all out of print) and adapt­ed them yet one stage fur­ther. You can hear all of them on the pro­jec­t’s Youtube page, from Blade Run­ner: A Sto­ry of the Future (an easy start­ing place, since the nov­el­iza­tion’s scant eighty pages make for a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence con­sid­er­ably short­er than the movie itself) to The Ter­mi­na­tor to Video­drome. And if you’d like to spend your next cross-coun­try dri­ve with such cher­ished kitsch clas­sics as Pol­ter­geist, The Brood, Over the Edge, or The Lost Boys in unabridged (and unsub­tle) prose form, you can get them on their fea­tured audio­book page. This all deliv­ers to us the obvi­ous next ques­tion: which bold, nos­tal­gic Mil­len­ni­al film­mak­er will step for­ward to turn all these extreme­ly minor mas­ter­works back into movies again?

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

John Lan­dis Decon­structs Trail­ers of Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Films: Cit­i­zen Kane, Sun­set Boule­vard, 2001 & More

Moviedrome: Film­mak­er Alex Cox Pro­vides Video Intro­duc­tions to 100+ Clas­sic Cult Films

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Artist Animates Famous Book Covers in an Elegant, Understated Way

in Books | September 11th, 2015

Javier Jensen, an artist liv­ing down in San­ti­a­go, Chile, has breathed a lit­tle life into some beloved book cov­ers. And when I say lit­tle, I mean lit­tle. His ani­mat­ed touch­es are nice­ly under­stat­ed, hard­ly dis­tract­ing from the orig­i­nal cov­er designs.

To the 1851 cov­er of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick, Jensen added a lit­tle flip­ping whale tale (above). A plan­et shim­mers and a star sparkles on the cov­er of Antoine de Saint Exu­pery’s Le Petit Prince. Wisps of smoke rise from a pipe on Conan Doyle’s The Adven­tures and Mem­oirs of Sher­lock Holmes.

See more cov­ers, includ­ing how Jensen reworked Fran­cis Cugat’s orig­i­nal cov­er design for The Great Gats­by, here.

You can find many of these clas­sic works in our twin col­lec­tions:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

and

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

via Boing­Bo­ing/Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery

600+ Cov­ers of Philip K. Dick Nov­els from Around the World: Greece, Japan, Poland & Beyond

Illus­tra­tions for a Chi­nese Lord of the Rings in a Stun­ning “Glass Paint­ing Style”

10 Won­der­ful Illus­tra­tions from the Orig­i­nal Man­u­script of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Lit­tle Prince

Ralph Steadman’s Evolv­ing Album Cov­er Designs: From Miles Davis & The Who, to Frank Zap­pa & Slash (1956–2010)

A Wealth of Free Documentaries on All Things Japanese: From Bento Boxes to Tea Gardens, Ramen & Bullet Trains

in Television, Travel | September 11th, 2015

“I used to be OBSESSED with Japan­ese cul­ture,” wrote an uncom­mon­ly thought­ful Youtube com­menter. “I miss that part of me. Try­ing to search for it again. That’s when I was the hap­pi­est.” Many of us west­ern­ers — or real­ly, many of us non-Japan­ese — go through sim­i­lar peri­ods of affin­i­ty and avid­i­ty for all things Japan­ese. Some of us put it away with our child­ish things; some of us make Japan­ese cul­ture a life­long inter­est, or even the stuff of our pro­fes­sions. I myself got into Japan ear­ly, at some point found myself put off by the just slight­ly too obses­sive Japan­ese pop-cul­ture fan com­mu­ni­ty in the West (though I admit­ted­ly read that com­ment below a music video with four mil­lion views), and lat­er returned with a much more seri­ous intent to under­stand.

But to under­stand what? The Japan­ese lan­guage, cer­tain­ly, and Japan­ese film, Japan­ese cities, Japan­ese aes­thet­ics, Japan­ese tech­nol­o­gy — all the fruits of the cul­ture that stoke in the rest of the world both deep envy and, some­times, faint sus­pi­cion. Why do they per­sist in using writ­ing sys­tems that, despite their con­sid­er­able beau­ty, come with such aggra­vat­ing dif­fi­cul­ty? The com­pre­hen­sive sub­way net­works in metrop­o­lis­es like Tokyo and Osa­ka func­tion day in and day out with aston­ish­ing reach and reli­a­bil­i­ty, but why do their rid­ers tol­er­ate crowd­ed­ness even to the point of get­ting uncom­plain­ing­ly crammed inside the cars by white-gloved atten­dants? And why, despite the Japan­ese love for ele­gant design and advanced con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy, do their web sites look so jum­bled and con­fus­ing?

NHK World can put you on the road to under­stand­ing these and oth­er ques­tions with Japanol­o­gy, their series of Eng­lish-lan­guage doc­u­men­taries explor­ing the things large and small, all sur­pris­ing to the for­eign­er, that make up the fab­ric of Japan­ese life. BEGIN Japanol­o­gy, their series for the Japan-intrigued but not nec­es­sar­i­ly Japan-expe­ri­enced, has come to six sea­sons so far.

At the top of the post, you can see its episode on ben­to, those painstak­ing­ly pre­pared lunch box­es, sim­pli­fied ver­sions of which even those who know noth­ing of Japan have seen at gro­cery stores the world over. To learn more about ben­to’s place in Japan­ese cul­ture, pro­ceed on to the rel­e­vant episode of Japanol­o­gy Plus, NHK’s series for the even more insa­tiably curi­ous Japanophile. And cou­ple with an episode on Ramen above.

Japanol­o­gy Plus also ded­i­cates one of its half-hour pro­grams to the Shinkansen, com­mon­ly known as the “bul­let train,” that quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese mode of trans­porta­tion that, with its impec­ca­ble half-cen­tu­ry record of speed, safe­ty, and punc­tu­al­i­ty, has become the pride of the land. (I, for one, hold out hope that Oba­ma will make The Onion’s “Ambi­tious Plan to Fly Amer­i­cans to Japan to Use Their Trains” a real­i­ty.) But if you don’t feel quite ready yet to board a Shinkansen, much less learn about its inner work­ings, try the Begin Japanol­o­gy Spe­cial Mini series, which offers five-minute dis­tilled doc­u­men­taries on such icons of Japan as tea gar­dens, hot springs, and Mount Fuji. Watch­ing all these, I feel glad indeed that I’ve already got the tick­ets booked for my next flight over there. Do you have yours?

You can find Japanol­o­gy added to our list of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Japan’s Earth­quake Proof Under­ground Bike Stor­age Sys­tem: The Future is Now

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

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Let’s Learn Japan­ese: Two Clas­sic Video Series to Get You Start­ed in the Lan­guage

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

100,000+ Wonderful Pieces of Theater Ephemera Digitized by The New York Public Library

in Archives, Dance, Design, Film, Theatre | September 11th, 2015

Liv­ing in New York, it’s not unusu­al to encounter ardent the­ater lovers who’ve care­ful­ly pre­served decades worth of pro­grams, tick­ets, and ephemera from every play they’ve ever seen. These col­lec­tions can get a bit hoarder‑y, as any­one who’s ever sort­ed through the belong­ings of a recent­ly depart­ed life­long audi­ence mem­ber can attest.

If the­ater is dead — as gloomy Cas­san­dras have been pre­dict­ing since the advent of screens — these mono­liths of Play­bills and stubs con­sti­tute one hell of a tomb.

(Go ahead, toss that 1962 pro­gram to The Sound of Music…and why not dri­ve a stake through poor Uncle Mau­rice’s cold, dead heart while you’re at it? All he ever want­ed was to sit, eyes shin­ing in the dark, and maybe hang around the stage door in hopes of scor­ing Acad­e­my Award win­ner, Warn­er Bax­ter’s auto­graph, below. )

For those of us who con­ceive of the­atre as a still-liv­ing enti­ty, the New York Pub­lic Library’s recent deci­sion to start dig­i­tiz­ing its Bil­ly Rose The­atre Divi­sion archive is cause for cel­e­bra­tion. Such grand scale com­mit­ment to this art form’s past ensures that it will enjoy a robust future. Hope­ful­ly some­day all of the approx­i­mate­ly 10 mil­lion items in the Bil­ly Rose archive can be accessed from any­where in the world. But, for now, you can start with over 100,000 items. The com­par­a­tive­ly small per­cent­age avail­able now is still a boon to direc­tors, design­ers, writ­ers, and per­form­ers look­ing for inspi­ra­tion.

It’s also wild­ly fun for those of us who nev­er made it much past play­ing a poin­set­tia in the sec­ond grade hol­i­day pageant.

Tru­ly, there’s some­thing for every­one. The library sin­gles out a few tan­ta­liz­ing morsels on its web­site:

A researcher can exam­ine a 1767 pro­gram for a per­for­mance of Romeo and Juli­et in Philadel­phia, study Katharine Hepburn’s per­son­al papers (ed. note: wit­ness the many moods of Kate, above), review Elia Kazan’s work­ing script and notes for the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of A Street­car Named Desire, exam­ine posters for Har­ry Houdini’s per­for­mances, read a script for an episode of Cap­tain Kan­ga­roo, view set designs for the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of Guys & Dolls and cos­tume designs for the Ziegfeld Fol­lies, ana­lyze a video­tape of the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of A Cho­rus Line, and find rich sub­ject files and scrap­books that doc­u­ment the most pop­u­lar and obscure per­for­mances from across the cen­turies. 

You might also prowl for Hal­loween cos­tumes. What kid wouldn’t want to trick or treat as one of Robert Ten Eyck Stevenson’s 1926 designs for the Green­wich Vil­lage Fol­lies?

There’s cer­tain­ly no shame in moon­ing over a for­got­ten star… for the record, the one above is Alla Naz­i­mo­va in Salomé.

And there’s some­thing gal­va­niz­ing about see­ing a famil­iar star escap­ing the con­fines of her best known role, the only one for which she is remem­bered, truth be told…

For me, the hands down pearl of the col­lec­tion is the telegram at the top of the page. For­mer First Lady Eleanor Roo­sevelt sent it Gyp­sy Rose Lee to her­ald the re-open­ing of Gyp­sy, the musi­cal based on her life.

For the unini­ti­at­ed, telegrams were once an open­ing night tra­di­tion, as was stay­ing up to read the review in the ear­ly edi­tion, hot off the press.

More infor­ma­tion on vis­it­ing the archive, online or in per­son, can be found here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

2,200 Rad­i­cal Polit­i­cal Posters Dig­i­tized: A New Archive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and per­former, whose lat­est play, Fawn­book, opens in New York this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday