How Did David Fincher Become the Kubrick of Our Time? A New, 3.5 Hour Series of Video Essays Explains

in Film | September 10th, 2015

Most film-lovers must long for the next Stan­ley Kubrick, a new the­mat­i­cal­ly adven­tur­ous, aes­thet­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous, big bud­get-com­mand­ing, and take-after-take per­fec­tion­is­tic cin­e­mat­ic vision­ary for our time. But some film-lovers believe our time already has its own Stan­ley Kubrick in David Finch­er, direc­tor of such high­ly acclaimed pic­tures as Fight Club, Zodi­ac, The Social Net­work, The Game, and Sev­en — excuse me, Se7en. And just like Kubrick, Finch­er did­n’t start off at that lev­el of the game. No, his career first gath­ered momen­tum with com­mer­cials, a bunch of music videos for the likes of The Motels, Paula Abdul, and Rick Spring­field, and of course, Alien 3 — excuse me, Alien³.

So what exact­ly went wrong with that crit­i­cal­ly sav­aged yet (we now real­ize) auteur-direct­ed chap­ter of the Alien fran­chise? That ques­tion gets addressed in detail ear­ly on in the lat­est mul­ti-part video essay from Cameron Beyl’s Direc­tors Series.

You may remem­ber that we fea­tured the Direc­tors Series’ pre­vi­ous essay in April, but if you don’t, it should­n’t sur­prise you to learn that it exam­ined the Kubrick oeu­vre. Beyl end­ed it with a dec­la­ra­tion of his own mem­ber­ship in the afore­men­tioned Finch­er-Is-Our-Kubrick club, and cinephiles all over the inter­net thrilled to his announce­ment of Finch­er as his next object of analy­sis.

To date, five episodes of The Direc­tors Series: David Finch­er have come out, which deal with Fincher’s career as fol­lows:

1. “Bap­tism By Fire” (Rick Spring­field­’s music videos and The Beat of the Life Drum, assort­ed music videos and com­mer­cials, Alien 3)
2. “Redemp­tion & Tri­umph” (assort­ed com­mer­cials, Se7en)
3. “Cap­tur­ing the Zeit­geist” (The Game, Fight Club, Pan­ic Room)
4. “Into the Dig­i­tal Realm” (var­i­ous com­mer­cials and music videos, Zodi­ac, The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton)
5. “The Bleed­ing Edge”

Even though the series has­n’t yet reached The Social Net­work, The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too, and Gone Girl, you won’t come away from the case Beyl has assem­bled so far uncon­vinced of Fincher’s influ­ences, pref­er­ences, and obses­sions: crime, decay, punk, obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy, archi­tec­ture, sur­veil­lance, cor­po­rate and per­son­al wealth, unusu­al illus­tra­tive visu­al effects, col­ors like blue and orange in high con­trast, nihilism, pre­de­ces­sors like Rid­ley and Tony Scott — the list goes on, and will go on as long as Fincher’s career does. It says a great deal about his film­mak­ing skill and style that his work has become so wide­ly known for both its over­whelm­ing­ly “grit­ty, grimy” and over­whelm­ing­ly “cold, clin­i­cal” look and feel. But if any direc­tor can ever arrive at this sort of tow­er­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry rep­u­ta­tion, Finch­er can, and if any video essays can explain how he did, the Direc­tors Series can.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

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

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.

M.C. Escher’s Perpetual Motion Waterfall Brought to Life: Real or Sleight of Hand?

in Design, Video - Arts & Culture | September 10th, 2015

Since M.C. Esch­er bent minds in the 20th cen­tu­ry with his Möbius strips, meta­mor­phoses, and impos­si­ble objects, oth­er artists have been try­ing to bring his cre­ations to life. And the advent of com­put­er illus­tra­tion, then ani­ma­tion, has made it all the more pos­si­ble.

In the real, “meat­space” world of organ­ic things, it’s a lit­tle bit hard­er. In Jan­u­ary 2011, a YouTu­ber by the name of “mcwolles” post­ed the video above. In it, a man pours water in a scale mod­el of Escher’s 1961 Water­fall. The con­trap­tion, using blue water, actu­al­ly seems to work. The water runs uphill through sev­er­al sharp angles and fin­ish­es by tum­bling off the top into the pad­dle­wheel below, where its begins its jour­ney again. “Mcwolles” ends the video star­ing into the cam­era as he tries to find the off switch…but also dares view­ers to fig­ure out how he did it.

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wikipedia

The Inter­net had a viral freakout—check out the 9.3 mil­lion views—and prompt­ly set about try­ing to offer solu­tions. “Look how the shad­ows fall!” sev­er­al peo­ple point­ed out. The locked-down cam­era was anoth­er clue.

In May of 2011, “mcwolles” offered a 360 tour of the cre­ation in his garage that offered some sug­ges­tions, and that was all that was need­ed for user “LookingMercury3D” to offer their expla­na­tion of how the trick was done. (Hint: edit­ing).

Since then, “mcwolles” has only post­ed two more videos: one of him los­ing weight and one of a dog hav­ing its way with a stuffed ani­mal. Maybe he’s busy work­ing on his next piece of Esch­er-inspired art.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Meta­mor­phose: 1999 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Life and Work of Artist M.C. Esch­er

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the 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.

The Inspiring Story of Ronald E. McNair, the Astronaut Who Endured Racism & Became One of the First African Americans in Space

in History, Life, Science | September 10th, 2015

On Jan­u­ary 28, 1986, NASA Chal­lenger mis­sion STS-51‑L explod­ed in the sky, into a twist­ing plume of smoke, a mere 73 sec­onds after take­off. It left a nation stunned, and sev­en astro­nauts dead. Among them was the pilot, physi­cist and MIT grad Ronald McNair, who, in 1984, had become only the sec­ond African-Amer­i­can to trav­el into out­er space.

As this ani­ma­tion nar­rat­ed by his own broth­er explains, McNair’s path to becom­ing an astro­naut was­n’t easy. Born and raised in the Jim Crow South (in Lake City, South Car­oli­na, to be pre­cise) McNair encoun­tered racism in his every­day life. One touch­ing sto­ry helps crys­tal­lize what his expe­ri­ence was like. As a nine-year-old, McNair tried to check out books from the “pub­lic” library — only to dis­cov­er that “pub­lic” meant books were for whites, not blacks. The video tells the rest of the sto­ry. And I’ll just flag one impor­tant detail men­tioned at the very end: On Jan­u­ary 28, 2011, exact­ly 25 years after his death, the library was renamed The Dr. Ronald E. McNair Life His­to­ry Cen­ter. You’ll also find a Ronald E. McNair Build­ing on MIT’s cam­pus too. And deserved­ly so.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nichelle Nichols Explains How Mar­tin Luther King Con­vinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

Albert Ein­stein Called Racism “A Dis­ease of White Peo­ple” in His Lit­tle-Known Fight for Civ­il Rights

How Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Used Hegel, Kant & Niet­zsche to Over­turn Seg­re­ga­tion in Amer­i­ca

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

Rock-Loving Kid Records a Spat with His Parents During the 1980s & Animates It 30 Years Later

in Animation | September 9th, 2015

Cer­tain­ly for me, and per­haps for many of you, there’s some­thing eeri­ly famil­iar about the scene that plays out in this ani­ma­tion. Here’s the back­sto­ry: Start­ing when he was 12, Mike Cohen, a kid grow­ing up in Buf­fa­lo, began record­ing the argu­ments he had with his par­ents (unbe­knownst to them). At least one of the tapes, record­ed in 1985, recent­ly end­ed up in the hands of Rodd Per­ry, a first time ani­ma­tor, who cre­at­ed the car­toon above.  By the looks of things, Broth­er Mike is still part of the music scene today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Film Revis­it­ing a Teenager’s 1969 Inter­view with John Lennon

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Shel Silverstein’s The Giv­ing Tree: The Ani­mat­ed Film Nar­rat­ed by Shel Him­self (1973)

Classics Stories by Edgar Allan Poe Narrated by James Mason in a 1953 Oscar-Nominated Animation & 1958 Decca Album

in Animation, Audio Books, Literature | September 9th, 2015

Some enthu­si­asts of 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror mas­ter (or, in a very real sense, 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror inven­tor) Edgar Allan Poe find his work best read aloud. Thus we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Poe deliv­ered in the grav­i­tas-filled voic­es of such not­ed thes­pi­ans as Vin­cent Price, Basil Rath­bone, Christo­pher Walken, Christo­pher Lee, and James Mason. Mason did the read­ing (above) as a nar­ra­tion for a 1953 ani­mat­ed short The Tell-Tale Heart, adapt­ing Poe’s 1843 sto­ry of the same name, which drew both an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film and — per­haps more in line with the Poe sen­si­bil­i­ty — a rat­ing of “X” from the British Board of Film Cen­sors.

WFMU man­aged to dig up even more Poe as read by Mason, three tracks of which they post­ed to their blog one Hal­loween, all with “creepy and dra­mat­ic organ stylings by Bud­dy Cole, who no doubt wore an Inver­ness cape for the occa­sion.” They come from a 1958 release from Dec­ca Records, fea­tur­ing Mason’s read­ings of not just “The Tell-Tale Heart” [MP3] but Poe’s cryp­tic fable “Silence” [MP3—below] and haunt­ing final poem “Annabel Lee” [MP3—bot­tom]. (The flip side of the album offers some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, in the form of Agnes Moore­head “and a sup­port­ing cast” per­form­ing Lucille Fletcher’s radio play “Sor­ry, Wrong Num­ber.”)

Opin­ions on who reads Poe most effec­tive­ly will dif­fer from lis­ten­er to lis­ten­er, but if you’d like to make a par­tial but direct com­par­i­son for your­self, sim­ply line up Mason’s ren­di­tion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” on a playlist with the ones we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed by Christo­pher Lee, Basil Rath­bone — and of course, Iggy Pop. It may have become Poe’s best-known sto­ry in the first place by hav­ing retained its impact over all these 172 years, but hav­ing such a range of per­for­ma­tive per­son­al­i­ties inter­pret it can’t hurt in keep­ing it as eerie as ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Clas­sic Album by The Alan Par­sons Project

Edgar Allan Poe Ani­mat­ed: Watch Four Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His Birth­day

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.

Donald Deconstructs Citizen Kane

in Business, Film | September 9th, 2015

If there is any con­tem­po­rary fig­ure out there that resem­bles Charles Fos­ter Kane, it is that real estate mogul and unlike­ly GOP front run­ner, Don­ald Trump. Like Kane, Trump was edu­cat­ed in, and thrown out of, some of the most elite pri­vate schools out there. Both have huge, larg­er-than-life per­son­al­i­ties that read­i­ly turned them into media icons. Both had tumul­tuous rela­tion­ships with women that end­ed up tabloid fod­der. Both osten­ta­tious­ly flaunt­ed their wealth. And both have grandiose polit­i­cal ambi­tions.

Above you can watch The Don­ald expound on Orson Welles’s mas­ter­piece in a clip direct­ed by none oth­er than mas­ter doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris. Trump is remark­ably thought­ful in this piece com­pared to the cam­paign trail where he often sounds like a WWE bark­er chan­nel­ing Mus­soli­ni. He comes to the movie from a van­tage point that most of us just don’t have; name­ly, he knows what it’s like being obscene­ly wealthy.

Cit­i­zen Kane is real­ly about accu­mu­la­tion. And at the end of the accu­mu­la­tion, you see what hap­pens. And it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly all pos­i­tive. I think you learn in Kane that maybe wealth isn’t every­thing. He had the wealth; he just didn’t have the hap­pi­ness. The table get­ting larg­er and larg­er and larg­er with he and his wife get­ting fur­ther and fur­ther apart as he got wealth­i­er and wealth­i­er, per­haps I can under­stand that…. Wealth iso­lates you from oth­er peo­ple.

At the end of the piece, Mor­ris asks Trump to give Kane some advice. His response, deliv­ered with a smirk, is pure Trump – i.e. bom­bas­tic and misog­y­nist. “Get your­self a dif­fer­ent woman.”

The seg­ment comes from an abort­ed project by Mor­ris called Movie Movie, where he envi­sioned putting mod­ern fig­ures into the films they most admire. So imag­ine Trump actu­al­ly in a re-enact­ment of Kane. Or, as also almost hap­pened, imag­ine Mikhail Gor­bachev star­ring in a reen­act­ment of Dr. Strangelove. It’s a damned shame that Movie Movie nev­er got made.

Below you can see more of Trump along with Gor­bachev, Lou Reed, Wal­ter Cronkite and oth­ers talk­ing about their favorite movies in a video made for the 2002 Acad­e­my Awards.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Orson Welles’ Clas­sic Radio Per­for­mance of 10 Shake­speare Plays

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

U.S. Detonates Nuclear Weapons in Space; People Watch Spectacle Sipping Drinks on Rooftops (1962)

in History | September 9th, 2015

In 1962, dur­ing the height of the Cold War, the Unit­ed States launched nuclear weapons (big­ger than the ones dropped on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki) into space and det­o­nat­ed them. Osten­si­bly, the goal was to see what these high alti­tude nuclear blasts might do to the Earth­’s mag­net­ic field.

The explo­sions took place some 400 kilo­me­ters (250 miles) above John­ston Island in the Pacif­ic Ocean. And, as the NPR video above describes it, folks liv­ing in the Pacif­ic watched the light show while gath­ered on rooftops and blithe­ly sip­ping drinks. Below, you can view arrest­ing footage of the tests — with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about get­ting radioac­tive fall­out in your cock­tail.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

80 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

The British Library Puts Over 1,000,000 Images in the Public Domain: A Deeper Dive Into the Collection

in Architecture, Archives, Books | September 8th, 2015

Every year for the past decade or so, we‘ve seen new, dire pro­nounce­ments of the death of print, along with new, upbeat rejoin­ders. This year is no dif­fer­ent, though the prog­no­sis has seemed espe­cial­ly pos­i­tive of late in robust appraisals of the sit­u­a­tion from enti­ties as diver­gent as The Onion’s A.V. Club and finan­cial giant Deloitte. I, for one, find this encour­ag­ing. And yet, even if all print­ed media were in decline, it would still be the case that the his­to­ry of the mod­ern world will most­ly be told in the his­to­ry of print. And iron­i­cal­ly, it is online media that has most enabled the means to make that his­to­ry avail­able to every­one, in dig­i­tal archives that won’t age or burn down.

One such archive, the British Library’s Flickr Com­mons project, con­tains over one mil­lion images from the 17th, 18th, and 19th cen­turies. As the Library wrote in their announce­ment of these images’ release, they cov­er “a star­tling mix of sub­jects. There are maps, geo­log­i­cal dia­grams, beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions, com­i­cal satire, illu­mi­nat­ed and dec­o­ra­tive let­ters, colour­ful illus­tra­tions, land­scapes, wall-paint­ings and so much more that even we are not aware of.” Microsoft dig­i­tized the books rep­re­sent­ed here, and then donat­ed them to the Library for release into the Pub­lic Domain.

One of the quirky fea­tures of this decid­ed­ly quirky assem­blage is the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor, a bot-run blog that gen­er­ates “ran­dom­ly select­ed small illus­tra­tions and orna­men­ta­tions, post­ed on the hour.” At the time of writ­ing, it has giv­en us an ad for the rather cul­tur­al­ly dat­ed arti­fact “Ori­en­tal Tooth Paste,” a prod­uct “pre­pared by Jews­bury & Brown.” Many of the oth­er selec­tions have con­sid­er­ably less fris­son. Nonethe­less, writes the Library, often “our newest col­league,” the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor, “plucks from obscu­ri­ty, places all before you, and leaves you to work out the rest. Or not.”

The Flickr Com­mons site itself gives us a much more con­ven­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion, with images—most of them dis­cov­ered by the Mechan­i­cal Curator—grouped into sev­er­al dozen themed albums. We have “Book cov­ers found by the com­mu­ni­ty from the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor Col­lec­tion,” fea­tur­ing images like that of The Texas Tramp or Sol­id Sam the Yan­kee Her­cules, a pulpy title pub­lished in 1890 by the Aldine Library’s “O’er Land and Sea” series. And just above, see an illus­tra­tion from the 1892 pub­li­ca­tion To the Snows of Tibet through China…With Illus­tra­tions and a Map. Each image’s page offers links to oth­er illus­tra­tions in the book and those of oth­er books pub­lished in the same year.

Here, we have a strik­ing illus­tra­tion from an 1841 edi­tion of The Cottager’s Sab­bath, a poem… with … vignettes… by H. War­ren. This image comes from “Archi­tec­ture, found by the com­mu­ni­ty from the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor Col­lec­tion.”

We also have odd­i­ties like the illus­tra­tion above, from 1885’s “A Can­ter­bury Pil­grim­age, rid­den, writ­ten, and illus­trat­ed by J. and E.R.P.” This is to be found in “Cycling, found by the com­mu­ni­ty from [you guessed it] the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor Col­lec­tion,” which also con­tains plen­ty of more com­mer­cial illus­tra­tions like the 1893 “Paten­tee of Keating’s Spring Fork.”

Speak­ing of com­merce, we also have an album devot­ed to adver­tise­ments, found by the com­mu­ni­ty from, yes, the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor Col­lec­tion. Here you will dis­cov­er ads like “Ori­en­tal Tooth Paste” or that below for “Gentlemen’s & Boy’s Cloth­ing 25 Per Cent. Under Usu­al Lon­don Prices” from 1894. Our con­cep­tion of Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land as exces­sive­ly for­mal gets con­firmed again and again in these ads, which, like the ran­dom choice at the top of the post, con­tain their share of awk­ward or humor­ous his­tor­i­cal notions.

Doubt­less none of the pro­to-Mad Men of these very Eng­lish pub­li­ca­tions fore­saw such a mar­vel as the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor. Much less might they have fore­seen such a mech­a­nism aris­ing with­out a mon­e­tiz­ing scheme. But thanks to this free, new­fan­gled algorithm’s efforts, and much assis­tance from “the com­mu­ni­ty,” we have a dig­i­tal record that shows us how pub­lic dis­course shaped print cul­ture, or the oth­er way around. A fas­ci­nat­ing, and at times bewil­der­ing, fea­ture of this phe­nom­e­nal archive is the require­ment that we our­selves sup­ply most of the cul­tur­al con­text for these aus­tere­ly pre­sent­ed images.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

2,200 Rad­i­cal Polit­i­cal Posters Dig­i­tized: A New Archive

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Down­load for Free 2.6 Mil­lion Images from Books Pub­lished Over Last 500 Years on Flickr

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

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

Maurice Sendak Sent Beautifully Illustrated Letters to Fans — So Beautiful a Kid Ate One

in Art, Letters | September 8th, 2015

I remem­ber thrilling, as a kid, to the enve­lope illus­tra­tions that the mag­a­zines I read ran on their let­ters pages. Not only would some of these read­ers (usu­al­ly read­ers my age, with a lot of time on their hands) go to the trou­ble of writ­ing and mail­ing a phys­i­cal let­ter to their peri­od­i­cal of choice, they’d actu­al­ly get as artis­tic as pos­si­ble with the enve­lope as well. Some even did pret­ty impres­sive jobs, though as the enve­lope-illus­tra­tors of our time go, few rank up there with the likes of Mau­rice Sendak.

“This is how Mau­rice Sendak some­times sent his let­ters,” wrote Let­ters of Note, tweet­ing out the image above. “Just imag­ine get­ting one.” The author of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen wrote the let­ter con­tained in this par­tic­u­lar enve­lope to his fel­low chil­dren’s book writer-illus­tra­tor Non­ny Hogro­gian, author of One Fine Day and The Con­test. Sendak’s close col­leagues might have got used to receiv­ing such uncon­ven­tion­al­ly illu­mi­nat­ed cor­re­spon­dence, but he also wrote back to each and every one of his young read­ers, some­times with sim­i­lar­ly pre­pared cor­re­spon­dence.

Let­ters of Note also tweet­ed a quote from a Fresh Air inter­view with Sendak in which Ter­ry Gross asked for his favorite com­ments from his fans. Sendak told the sto­ry of a boy from whom he received “a charm­ing card with a lit­tle draw­ing. I loved it.” In reply, he sent the child a post­card of appre­ci­a­tion and drew a Wild Thing on it, just as he did on the enve­lope of his let­ter to Hogro­gian. The boy’s moth­er then wrote back to say her son “Jim loved your card so much he ate it,” which Sendak con­sid­ered “one of the high­est com­pli­ments I’ve ever received. He did­n’t care that it was an orig­i­nal draw­ing or any­thing. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mau­rice Sendak’s Bawdy Illus­tra­tions For Her­man Melville’s Pierre: or, The Ambi­gu­i­ties

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Mau­rice Sendak’s Emo­tion­al Last Inter­view with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross, Ani­mat­ed by Christoph Nie­mann

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

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

A Last Glimpse Inside the Okura, Tokyo’s Modernist Masterpiece Hotel

in Architecture | September 8th, 2015

In late August, one of Tokyo’s grand­est hotels, Hotel Oku­ra closed its doors and its main wing will be demol­ished to make way for a $980 mil­lion recon­struc­tion. The new hotel will open in 2019.

The move was met with howls of protest around the world. The orig­i­nal hotel was hailed as a mod­ernist trea­sure. “It’s a mas­ter­piece,” lament­ed not­ed archi­tec­ture writer Hiroshi Mat­suku­ma. “It has a cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal val­ue that can nev­er be repro­duced again.”

The hotel first opened its doors in 1962 at a piv­otal time in Japan­ese his­to­ry. Eager to dis­tance itself from its mil­i­taris­tic past, the coun­try put on a new inter­na­tion­al­ist face to the world. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were meant to be a sort of com­ing out par­ty for a new, thor­ough­ly mod­ern nation. The Hotel Oku­ra was designed in this same opti­mistic spir­it.

Archi­tect Yoshio Taniguchi said that he intend­ed the hotel to be crisply mod­ern though imbued with “a firm dig­ni­ty imper­vi­ous to fleet­ing fash­ion.” Five decades lat­er, the hotel’s inte­ri­ors still seem strik­ing, ele­gant and won­der­ful­ly atmos­pher­ic. Taniguchi recruit­ed mas­ter arti­sans Hideo Kosa­ka, Shiko Munaka­ta and Ken­kichi Tomi­mo­to to craft the hotel’s look. The hotel’s murals, fur­ni­ture, exte­ri­or fac­ing, even the light fix­tures, all draw upon ele­ments of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese design, re-imag­ined for the jet age.

“It’s the light­ing fix­tures, the fur­ni­ture. What’s excit­ing is that you see this con­cept of Japan­ese design his­to­ry play out across the lob­by,” said Don Choi, pro­fes­sor of archi­tec­ture at Cal Poly San Luis Obis­po. “You would­n’t see that in Paris or New York. That atten­tion to detail makes it a com­plete work of art.”

Hotel Oku­ra has played host to sev­er­al US Pres­i­dents, from Ford to Oba­ma, along with oth­er inter­na­tion­al lumi­nar­ies from the Dalai Lama to Mikhail Gor­bachev. Even James Bond spent the night there in You Only Live Twice. Haru­ki Muraka­mi lat­er fea­tured the place promi­nent­ly in his beloved tome 1Q84.

For 50 years, the hotel has con­tin­ued to oper­ate large­ly unchanged. Even the menu for the hotel’s restau­rant, the Orchid Room, serves up the same fare they had back in 1964 — from crepes suzette to wiener schnitzel. The place was the Kennedy era dipped in amber. For the 21st cen­tu­ry vis­i­tor, that was no doubt much of its charm.

Mon­o­cle Mag­a­zine has pro­duced a love­ly video ele­gy to the hotel, which you can watch above.

Via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

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

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tour of Tal­iesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Per­son­al Home & Stu­dio

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.