Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Phony” Film “With Only Pretensions to Truth”

in Film, Sci Fi | July 15th, 2015

Yes­ter­day we ran a list of 93 films beloved by Stan­ley Kubrick, which includes two by Andrei Tarkovsky: 1972’s Solaris and 1986’s The Sac­ri­fice. You expect one auteur to appre­ci­ate the work of anoth­er — “game rec­og­nize game,” to use the mod­ern par­lance — but the selec­tion of Solaris makes spe­cial sense. Just four years before it, Kubrick had, of course, made his own psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and visu­al­ly-intense cin­e­mat­ic voy­age out from Earth into the great beyond, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The appre­ci­a­tion, alas, was­n’t mutu­al. “Tarkovsky sup­pos­ed­ly made Solaris in an attempt to one-up Kubrick after he had seen 2001 (which he referred to as cold and ster­ile),” writes Joshua War­ren at criterion.com. “Inter­est­ing­ly enough, Kubrick appar­ent­ly real­ly liked Solaris and I’m sure he found it amus­ing that it was mar­ket­ed as ‘the Russ­ian answer to 2001.’ ” Jonathan Crow recent­ly quot­ed Tarkovsky as say­ing: “2001: A Space Odyssey is pho­ny on many points, even for spe­cial­ists. For a true work of art, the fake must be elim­i­nat­ed.”

That pro­nounce­ment comes from a 1970, pre-Solaris inter­view with Tarkovsky by Naum Abramov. The Russ­ian auteur indicts what he sees as 2001’s lack of emo­tion­al truth due to its exces­sive tech­no­log­i­cal inven­tion, effec­tive­ly declar­ing that, in his own for­ay into the realm of sci­ence-fic­tion, “every­thing would be as it should. That means to cre­ate psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, not an exot­ic but a real, every­day envi­ron­ment that would be con­veyed to the view­er through the per­cep­tion of the film’s char­ac­ters. That’s why a detailed ‘exam­i­na­tion’ of the tech­no­log­i­cal process­es of the future trans­forms the emo­tion­al foun­da­tion of a film, as a work of art, into a life­less schema with only pre­ten­sions to truth.”

Crit­ic Philip Lopate writes that “the media played up the cold-war angle of the Sovi­et director’s deter­mi­na­tion to make an ‘anti-2001,’ and cer­tain­ly Tarkovsky used more intense­ly indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters and a more pas­sion­ate human dra­ma at the cen­ter than Kubrick.” And the films do have sim­i­lar­i­ties, from their “leisure­ly, lan­guid” nar­ra­tives to their “widescreen mise-en-scène approach that draws on supe­ri­or art direc­tion” to their “air of mys­tery that invites count­less expla­na­tions.” But Lopate argues that the themes of Solaris resem­ble those of 2001 less than those of Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go: “the inabil­i­ty of the male to pro­tect the female, the mul­ti­ple dis­guis­es or ‘res­ur­rec­tions’ of the loved one, the inevitabil­i­ty of repeat­ing past mis­takes.”

As a lover of both Kubrick and Tarkovsky’s work, I can hard­ly take sides. Maybe I just need to watch both 2001 and Solaris yet again, one after anoth­er, in order to bet­ter com­pare them. (Find Tarkovsky’s films free online here.) And maybe I need to throw Ver­ti­go into the evening as well. Now that’s what I call a triple fea­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Solaris (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Haunt­ing Vision of the Future

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

93 Films Beloved by Stan­ley Kubrick: From Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927) to Ron Shelton’s White Men Can’t Jump (1992)

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.

Allen Ginsberg’s Handwritten Poem For Bernie Sanders, “Burlington Snow” (1986)

in Poetry, Politics | July 15th, 2015

Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont Libraries

No mat­ter how much of a polit­i­cal junkie you are, you must sure­ly have had enough of the spec­ta­cle that is the 2016 cam­paign for the pres­i­den­cy. At cur­rent count, we are faced with an astound­ing 15 can­di­dates for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion, one of whom is doing his best to revive the ugli­est nativism of the 19th cen­tu­ry. On the oth­er side of our bina­ry par­ty sys­tem, we have only One. Or so it would seem if you were to pay atten­tion to much of the media cov­er­age, which only rarely men­tions the hand­ful of oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­tenders and most­ly ignores the ris­ing tide of sup­port for Bernie Sanders.

The Sen­a­tor from Ver­mont has unabashed­ly referred to him­self, through­out his long polit­i­cal career, as a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist or, on occa­sion, sim­ply a “socialist”—a word that strikes fear into the heart of many an Amer­i­can, and res­onates wide­ly with anoth­er por­tion of the elec­torate. Debates over what this means rage on. George Will calls Sanders’ social­ism a “cha­rade.” Thor Ben­son in the New Repub­lic accus­es him of play­ing “loose with the ter­mi­nol­o­gy.” The his­to­ry and cur­rent state of “social­ism” is so long and com­plex that no one def­i­n­i­tion seems to suit. Its polit­i­cal bag­gage in Amer­i­can dis­course, how­ev­er, is unde­ni­able.

This was just as true in 1986, when Allen Gins­berg wrote a poem in praise of Sanders, then may­or of Burling­ton, Ver­mont. Gins­berg play­ful­ly draws on the loose asso­ci­a­tions we have with the word, ham­mer­ing it home with tongue-in-cheek rep­e­ti­tion, then turn­ing reflec­tive.

Social­ist snow on the streets
Social­ist talk in the Mav­er­ick book­store
Social­ist kids suck­ing social­ist lol­lipops
Social­ist poet­ry in social­ist mouths
—aren’t the birds frozen social­ists?
Aren’t the snow­clouds block­ing the air­field
Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Appear­ances?
Isn’t the social­ist sky owned by
the social­ist sun?
Earth itself social­ist, forests, rivers, lakes
fur­ry moun­tains, social­ist salt
in oceans?
Isn’t this poem social­ist? It does­n’t
belong to me any­more.

Call­ing it “Burling­ton Snow,” Gins­berg com­posed the poem—equal parts goofy and sincere—on a vis­it to the city, one of many pil­grim­ages made by left-wing writ­ers and artists after Sanders’ string of attempt­ed for­eign pol­i­cy inter­ven­tions. You can read all about the opti­mistic socialist—or demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, or whatever—in Paul Lewis’ Guardian por­trait.

via Moth­er Jones

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg & The Clash Per­form the Punk Poem “Cap­i­tal Air,” Live Onstage in Times Square (1981)

‘The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

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

The (F)Art of War: Bawdy Japanese Art Scroll Depicts Wrenching Changes in 19th Century Japan

in Art | July 15th, 2015

When you think of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese art, you might think of a sumi‑e ink paint­ing that evokes a copse of bam­boo with a few mas­ter­ful lines. A haiku that cap­tures the fragili­ty of beau­ty in the length of a tweet. A gar­den that some­how con­veys the tran­scen­dence of all things by ele­gant­ly fram­ing the wind in the trees.

While the He-Gassen scroll from rough­ly the 1840s has lit­tle of the Zen-like restraint of the above exam­ples, it def­i­nite­ly shows the wind in the trees. He-Gassen (屁合戦) lit­er­al­ly trans­lates into “fart bat­tle” and it shows var­i­ous men and women with their rears in the air, break­ing hur­ri­cane-strength wind — blasts so pow­er­ful that they can launch cats into the air, blow through walls, knock over build­ings and gen­er­al­ly send vic­tims reel­ing. The scroll is eas­i­ly one of the most remark­able, and hilar­i­ous, pieces of art I’ve seen in a long while.

The whole thing might look like an extend­ed sketch from Ter­reace and Phillip, those gassy Cana­di­an TV stars from South Park, but some argue that He-Gassen might have a polit­i­cal dimen­sion. Dur­ing the Edo peri­od (1603–1867), flat­u­lence was used as a way to mock west­ern­ers. Japan was closed off from the out­side world and they were feel­ing more and more pres­sure from the West until final­ly Amer­i­can gun boats led by Com­modore Matthew Per­ry forced the coun­try open in 1853. What bet­ter way to thwart these West­ern inter­lop­ers than with a cav­al­cade of indus­tri­al strength gas?

You can see a few choice pic­tures above, or head over to the Wase­da Uni­ver­si­ty dig­i­tal archive and see the whole thing. 38 images in total.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

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

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

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.

Hear Dylan Thomas Read Three Poems by W.H. Auden, Including “September 1, 1939”

in Poetry | July 15th, 2015

Sep­a­rat­ed by only sev­en years, Dylan Thomas and W.H. Auden had what might be called a friend­ly rivalry—at least, that is, from Thomas’ point of view. The hard-drink­ing Welsh poet once wished Auden a hap­py sev­en­ti­eth birthday—on his thir­ti­eth. It’s a typ­i­cal com­ment, writes biog­ra­ph­er Wal­ford Davies, expressed “with the attrac­tive brio of a younger broth­er.” Thomas wrote of his admi­ra­tion for “the mature, reli­gious, and log­i­cal fight­er,” but dep­re­cat­ed “the boy bushranger” in the old­er, more reserved Auden.

Whether we take these appraisals as gen­tle rib­bing or—as anoth­er Thomas biog­ra­ph­er Andrew Lycett writes—“disdain,” it does not seem that Thomas felt such antipa­thy for Auden’s poet­ry. One would think the con­trary lis­ten­ing to him read Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening,” above. Thomas, Lycett tells us, “approved of Auden’s propen­si­ty for rad­i­cal cul­tur­al change” but dis­ap­proved of the way his “polit­i­cal tub thump­ing got in the way of his poet­ry.”

Thomas uses his sonorous voice in a the­atri­cal way that well-suits Auden’s state­ly verse. That voice became a reg­u­lar fea­ture for sev­er­al years on the BBC for whom Thomas record­ed broad­cast after broad­cast of read­ings and radio plays in the late 1940s. As we’ve detailed in a pre­vi­ous post, he made many record­ings of his own work as well, includ­ing of his most well known poem, “Do Not Go Gen­tle into that Good Night,” which he reads in somber, mea­sured tones. Above, in a read­ing of Auden’s “Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939,” Thomas takes a strained, almost affect­ed, tone, per­haps evinc­ing some aver­sion to the “polit­i­cal tub-thump­ing” in Auden’s poem. His breath­ing is labored, and he was, in all like­li­hood, drunk. He usu­al­ly was, and he did suf­fer from a breath­ing con­di­tion. Thomas sad­ly drank him­self to death, while Auden, who didn’t quite see sev­en­ty, lived on twen­ty more years, and record­ed his own read­ings of “As I Went Walk­ing” and “Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939.”

Both the lat­ter Auden poem and the one Thomas reads above, “Song of the Mas­ter and Boatswain,” begin in bars: the speak­er in “Sep­tem­ber 1” sits “in one of the dives / on Fifty-Sec­ond Street.” “Song of the Mas­ter and the Boatswain” opens “At Dirty Dick­’s and Slop­py Joe’s” where “we drank our liquor straight.” Aside from these set­tings nei­ther has any­thing at all in com­mon. “Mas­ter and Boatswain” is almost bawdy, but ends on a cyn­i­cal note. Writ­ten days after the event and dense with philo­soph­i­cal and clas­si­cal allu­sions, “Sep­tem­ber 1” laments Germany’s inva­sion of Poland, the effec­tive begin­ning of what would become World War II. Thomas was a more anar­chic, less restrained poet, and Auden, the more edu­cat­ed, and dis­ci­plined, of the two. But it can cer­tain­ly be said that they shared a sim­i­lar sen­si­bil­i­ty in a taste for the trag­ic.

You can immerse your­self in Auden and Thomas’ poet­ry by pick­ing up copies of Col­lect­ed Poems: Auden and The Col­lect­ed Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Orig­i­nal Edi­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dylan Thomas Recites ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’ and Oth­er Poems

“Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939″ by W.H. Auden

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

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neuroscience of Reading Great Literature

in Health, Literature, Neuroscience, Science | July 14th, 2015

I freely admit it—like a great many peo­ple these days, I have a social media addic­tion. My drug of choice, Twit­ter, can seem like a par­tic­u­lar­ly schizoid means of acquir­ing and shar­ing infor­ma­tion (or knee-jerk opin­ion, rumor, innu­en­do, non­sense, etc.) and a par­tic­u­lar­ly accel­er­at­ed form of dis­tractibil­i­ty that nev­er, ever sleeps. Giv­en the pro­found degree of over-stim­u­la­tion such out­lets pro­vide, we might be jus­ti­fied in think­ing we owe our short atten­tion spans to 21st cen­tu­ry tech­no­log­i­cal advances. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly, says Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Natal­ie Phillips—who stud­ies 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture from the per­spec­tive of a 21st cen­tu­ry cog­ni­tive the­o­rist, and who cau­tions against “adopt­ing a kind of his­tor­i­cal nos­tal­gia, or assum­ing those of the 18th cen­tu­ry were less dis­tract­ed than we are today.”

Ear­ly mod­ern writ­ers were just as aware of—and as con­cerned about—the prob­lem of inat­ten­tion as con­tem­po­rary crit­ics, Phillips argues, “amidst the print-over­load of 18th-cen­tu­ry Eng­land.” We might refer, for exam­ple, to Alexan­der Pope’s epic satire “The Dun­ci­ad,” a hilar­i­ous­ly apoc­a­lyp­tic jere­mi­ad against the pro­lif­er­a­tion of care­less read­ing and writ­ing in the new media envi­ron­ment of his day. (A world “drown­ing in print, where every­thing was ephemer­al, of the moment.”)

Phillips focus­es on the work of Jane Austen, whom, she believes, “was draw­ing on the con­tem­po­rary the­o­ries of cog­ni­tion in her time” to con­struct dis­tractible char­ac­ters like Pride and Prej­u­dice’s Eliz­a­beth Ben­nett. Tak­ing her cues from Austen and oth­er Enlight­en­ment-era writ­ers, as well as her own inat­ten­tive nature, Phillips uses con­tem­po­rary neu­ro­science to inform her research, includ­ing the use of brain imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy and com­put­er pro­grams that track eye move­ments.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Stan­ford’s Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive and Bio­log­i­cal Imag­ing (CNI), Phillips devised an exper­i­ment in 2012 in which she asked lit­er­ary PhD candidates—chosen, writes Stan­ford News, “because Phillips felt they could eas­i­ly alter­nate between close read­ing and plea­sure reading”—to read a full chap­ter from Austen’s Mans­field Park, pro­ject­ed onto a mir­ror inside an MRI scan­ner. At times, the sub­jects were instruct­ed to read the text casu­al­ly, at oth­ers, to read close­ly and ana­lyt­i­cal­ly. After­wards, they were asked to write an essay on the pas­sages they read with atten­tion. As you’ll hear Phillips describe in the short NPR piece above, the neu­ro­sci­en­tists she worked with told her to expect only the sub­tlest of dif­fer­ences between the two types of read­ing. The data showed oth­er­wise. Phillips describes her sur­prise at see­ing “how much the whole brain, glob­al acti­va­tions across a num­ber of dif­fer­ent regions, seems to be trans­form­ing and shift­ing between the plea­sure and the close read­ing.” As CNI neu­ro­sci­en­tist Bob Dougher­ty describes it, “a sim­ple request to the par­tic­i­pants to change their lit­er­ary atten­tion can have such a big impact on the pat­tern of activ­i­ty dur­ing read­ing,” with close read­ing stim­u­lat­ing many more areas of the brain than the casu­al vari­ety. What are we to make of these still incon­clu­sive results? As with many such projects in the emerg­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary field of “lit­er­ary neu­ro­science,” Phillips’ goal is in part to demon­strate the con­tin­ued rel­e­vance of the human­i­ties in the age of STEM. Thus, she the­o­rizes, the prac­tice and teach­ing of close read­ing “could serve—quite literally—as a kind of cog­ni­tive train­ing, teach­ing us to mod­u­late our con­cen­tra­tion and use new brain regions as we move flex­i­bly between modes of focus.”

The study also pro­vides us with a fas­ci­nat­ing picture—quite literally—of the ways in which the imag­i­na­tive expe­ri­ence of read­ing takes place in our bod­ies as well as our minds. Close, sus­tained, and atten­tive read­ing, Phillips found, acti­vates parts of the brain respon­si­ble for move­ment and touch, “as though,” writes NPR, “read­ers were phys­i­cal­ly plac­ing them­selves with­in the sto­ry as they ana­lyzed it.” Phillips’ study offers a sci­en­tif­ic look at a mys­te­ri­ous expe­ri­ence seri­ous read­ers know well—“how the right pat­terns of ink on a page,” says Dougher­ty, “can cre­ate vivid men­tal imagery and instill pow­er­ful emo­tions.” As with the so-called “hard prob­lem of con­scious­ness,” we may not under­stand exact­ly how this hap­pens any­time soon, but we can observe that the expe­ri­ence of close read­ing is a reward­ing one for our entire brain, not just the parts that love Jane Austen. While not every­one needs con­vinc­ing that “lit­er­ary study pro­vides a tru­ly valu­able exer­cise of peo­ple’s brains,” Phillips’ research may prove exact­ly that.

via Stan­ford News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen, Game The­o­rist: UCLA Poli Sci Prof Finds Shrewd Strat­e­gy in “Clue­less­ness”

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

What Hap­pens When Your Brain is on Alfred Hitch­cock: The Neu­ro­science of Film

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

93 Films Stanley Kubrick Really Liked

in Film | July 14th, 2015

Most cinephiles want to watch not just their favorite direc­tors’ films, but their favorite direc­tors’ favorite films. And how many cinephiles’ lists of favorite direc­tors fail to include Stan­ley Kubrick? In 2013, we fea­tured the only top-ten list the direc­tor of 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clock­work Orange ever wrote, for Cin­e­ma mag­a­zine in 1963, which runs as fol­lows:

• I Vitel­loni (Felli­ni, 1953)
• Wild Straw­ber­ries (Bergman, 1957)
• Cit­i­zen Kane (Welles, 1941)
• The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre (Hus­ton, 1948)
• City Lights (Chap­lin, 1931)
• Hen­ry V (Olivi­er, 1944)
• La notte (Anto­nioni, 1961)
• The Bank Dick (Fields, 1940)
• Rox­ie Hart (Well­man, 1942)
• Hell’s Angels (Hugh­es, 1930)

But fans eager to find out more of what shaped the cin­e­mat­ic taste of this auteur of all auteurs do have a few more resources to turn to. At criterion.com, Joshua War­ren has com­piled, “from inter­views with Kubrick­’s fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues, an inter­view [Kubrick] did in 1957 for Cahiers du ciné­ma as well as an inter­view in 1963 for Cin­e­ma mag­a­zine and the ‘Mas­ter list’ by the BFI,” an anno­tat­ed list of Kubrick­’s favorite films.

And at the BFI’s site, Nick Wrigley (“with the help of Kubrick’s right-hand man, Jan Har­lan”) has anoth­er set of such lists. Their com­bined selec­tions, orga­nized by direc­tor, run as fol­lows. Note that one film on the extend­ed list, Fritz Lang’s 1927 mas­ter­piece Metrop­o­lis, can be viewed above.

• Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
• Hus­bands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992)
• Man­hat­tan (Woody Allen, 1979)
• Radio Days (Woody Allen, 1987)
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Alt­man, 1971)
• If… (Lind­say Ander­son, 1968)
• Boo­gie Nights (Paul Thomas Ander­son, 1998)
• La notte (Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni, 1961)
• Harold and Maude (Hal Ash­by, 1971)
• Pelle the Con­queror (Bille August, 1987)
• Babet­te’s Feast (Gabriel Axel, 1987)
• Casque d’Or (Jacques Beck­er, 1952)
• Édouard et Car­o­line (Jacques Beck­er, 1951)
• Cries and Whis­pers (Ing­mar Bergman, 1972)
• Smiles of a Sum­mer Night (Ing­mar Bergman, 1955)
• Wild Straw­ber­ries (Ing­mar Bergman, 1972)
• Deliv­er­ance (John Boor­man, 1972)
• Hen­ry V (Ken­neth Branagh, 1989)
• Mod­ern Romance (Albert Brooks, 1981)
• Chil­dren of Par­adise (Mar­cel Carné, 1945)
• City Lights (Charles Chap­lin, 1931)
• The Bank Dick (Edward Cline, 1940)
• Beau­ty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
• Apoc­a­lypse Now (Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, 1979)
• The God­fa­ther (Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, 1972)
• The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
• Alexan­der Nevsky (Sergei Eisen­stein, 1938)
• The Spir­it of the Bee­hive (Vic­tor Erice, 1973)
• La stra­da (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1954)
• I vitel­loni (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1953)
• La Ker­messe Héroïque (Jacques Fey­der, 1935)
• Tora! Tora! Tora! (Richard Fleis­ch­er, 1970)
• The Fire­man’s Ball (Miloš For­man, 1967)
• One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest (Milos For­man, 1975)
• Cabaret (Bob Fos­se, 1972)
• The Exor­cist (William Fried­kin, 1973)
• Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971)
• The Ter­mi­nal Man (Mike Hodges, 1974)
• The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre (Tobe Hoop­er, 1974)
• Hel­l’s Angels (Howard Hugh­es, 1930)
• The Trea­sure of Sier­ra Madre (John Hus­ton, 1947)
• Deka­log (Krzysztof Kies­lows­ki, 1990)
• Rashomon (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1950)
• Sev­en Samu­rai (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1954)
• Throne of Blood (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1957)
• Metrop­o­lis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
• An Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don (John Lan­dis, 1981)
• Abi­gail’s Par­ty (Mike Leigh, 1977)
• La bonne année (Claude Lelouch, 1973)
• Once Upon a Time in the West (Ser­gio Leone, 1968)
• Very Nice, Very Nice (Arthur Lipsett, 1961)
• Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti (George Lucas, 1973)
• Dog Day After­noon (Sid­ney Lumet, 1975)
• Eraser­head (David Lynch, 1976)
• House of Games (David Mamet, 1987)
• The Red Squir­rel (Julio Medem, 1993)
• Bob le flam­beur (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956)
• Close­ly Watched Trains (Jiří Men­zel, 1966)
• Pacif­ic 231 (Jean Mit­ry, 1949)
• Roger & Me (Michael Moore, 1989)
• Hen­ry V (Lau­rence Olivi­er, 1944)
• The Ear­rings of Madame de… (Max Ophuls, 1953)
• Le plaisir (Max Ophuls, 1951)
• La ronde (Max Ophuls, 1950)
• Rose­mary’s Baby (Roman Polan­s­ki, 1968)
• The Bat­tle of Algiers (Gillo Pon­tecor­vo, 1966)
• Heimat (Edgar Reitz, 1984)
• Blood Wed­ding (Car­los Saura, 1981)
• Cría Cuer­vos (Car­los Saura, 1975)
• Pep­per­mint Frap­pé (Car­los Saura, 1967)
• Alien (Rid­ley Scott, 1977)
• The Ander­son Pla­toon (Pierre Schoen­do­erf­fer, 1967)
• White Men Can’t Jump (Ron Shel­ton, 1992)
• Miss Julie (Alf Sjöberg, 1951)
• The Phan­tom Car­riage (Vic­tor Sjöström, 1921)
• The Van­ish­ing (George Sluiz­er, 1988)
• Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind (Steven Spiel­berg, 1977)
• E.T. the Extra-ter­res­tri­al (Steven Spiel­berg, 1982)
• Mary Pop­pins (Robert Steven­son, 1964)
• Pla­toon (Oliv­er Stone, 1986)
• Pulp Fic­tion (Quentin Taran­ti­no, 1994)
• The Sac­ri­fice (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986)
• Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
• The Emi­grants (Jan Troell, 1970)
• The Blue Angel (Josef von Stern­berg, 1930)
• Dan­ton (Andrzej Waj­da, 1984)
• Girl Friends (Clau­dia Weill, 1978)
• The Cars that Ate Paris (Peter Weir, 1974)
• Pic­nic at Hang­ing Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)
• Cit­i­zen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
• Rox­ie Hart (William Well­man, 1942)
• Ådalen 31 (Bo Wider­berg, 1969)
• The Siege of Man­ches­ter (Her­bert Wise, 1965)

As you might expect from a film­mak­er who entered a dif­fer­ent genre with every pic­ture, this list of all the movies he went on record as admir­ing includes all dif­fer­ent kinds of movies. We expect to find respect­ed films by his col­leagues in respect­ed auteur­hood like Woody Allen, Ing­mar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Max Ophuls (who, said Kubrick, “pos­sessed every pos­si­ble qual­i­ty”). But per­haps more sur­pris­ing­ly, the list also includes thrillers like The Ter­mi­nal Man, exer­cis­es in hor­ror like The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre, and grotesque come­dies like The Cars That Ate Paris. But think about those movies for a moment, and you real­ize that, like Kubrick­’s own work, they all tran­scend their sup­posed gen­res. As for what he saw in White Men Can’t Jump — well, I sup­pose we’ve all got to take some secrets to the grave.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

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.

Insanely Cute Cat Commercials from Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki’s Legendary Animation Shop

in Animation | July 14th, 2015

Back in 2010, Hayao Miyaza­ki’s com­pa­ny Stu­dio Ghi­b­li pro­duced a com­mer­cial for the mas­sive food con­glom­er­ate Nissin Sei­fun. The spot cen­ters on a rotund cat named Kon­yara who bats lazi­ly at a red but­ter­fly – Nissin’s logo. Kon­yara is ren­dered in sim­ple thick, black lines that recall Japan­ese sumi‑e paint­ing.

Miyaza­ki report­ed­ly didn’t have much to do direct­ly with the piece but his influ­ence is all over it. The com­mer­cial was pro­duced by Miyazaki’s long time col­lab­o­ra­tor Toshio Suzu­ki and ani­mat­ed by Kat­suya Kon­do, who did the char­ac­ter design for per­haps Miyazaki’s most cat-cen­tric movie Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice.

Anoth­er Miyaza­ki col­lab­o­ra­tor, pop leg­end Akiko Yano, did the music. More to the point, Kon­yara looks like some of Miyazaki’s most endur­ing char­ac­ters from Totoro to Ponyo to the Kodama from Princess Mononoke. Adorable, ele­gant and vital.

The com­mer­cial was so suc­cess­ful that Nissin com­mis­sioned two more. The sec­ond one aired in 2012 and fea­tured a sleepy Kon­yara strug­gling to grab 40 winks while her off­spring, named Ko-Kon­yara (trans: Lit­tle Kon­yara), insists on cud­dling. The cal­lig­ra­phy on the side reads “Always togeth­er.”

The most recent Ghibli/Nissin com­mer­cial came out a few months ago. Konyara’s brood has expand­ed to three – the two new cats named Kuroneko and Buchi. All three tum­ble into the frame as Kon­yara presents them with a fish while text appears read­ing, “I’m hun­gry.” When the lit­tle black kit­ten, who looks a lot like a soot sprite from Totoro, runs off with din­ner, Kon­yara gives a resigned sigh. It’s an expres­sion that any­one who has spent long peri­ods with very young chil­dren will rec­og­nize.

You can watch all three above or here.

via Car­toon Brew

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

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.

Alexander Pushkin’s Poem “The Mermaid” Brought to Life in a Masterfully Hand-Painted Animation

in Animation, Literature | July 13th, 2015

Though his name may not car­ry much weight in Eng­lish speak­ing circles—his virtues “lost in trans­la­tion”—no Russ­ian writer stood as high in his time as Alexan­der Pushkin (1799–1837). In his short life of 37 years, Pushkin—the great grand­son of a cap­tured African prince—authored two of his coun­try’s most revered and influ­en­tial works, the play Boris Godunov and the nov­el in verse Eugene One­gin. Like a char­ac­ter in that lat­ter work, the eru­dite noble­man poet met his death at the hands of a sup­posed roman­tic rival “on a win­ter evening,” writes Phoebe Taplin in The Tele­graph, when he “trav­elled by sleigh from Nevsky Prospekt to the Black Riv­er area of St. Peters­burg, then filled with woods and dachas, where Georges D’Anthès fatal­ly wound­ed him in the stom­ach.”

Pushkin wrote as pas­sion­ate­ly as he lived—and died. (That final duel was the last of twen­ty-nine he fought). His work remains vis­cer­al­ly com­pelling, even in trans­la­tion: into oth­er lan­guages, oth­er gen­res, and oth­er media, as in the ani­mat­ed film above of a short poem of Pushk­in’s called Rusal­ka, or “The Mer­maid.” Ani­mat­ed in a mas­ter­ful hand-paint­ed style by Russ­ian artist and film­mak­er Alexan­der Petrov, the film tells the sto­ry of a monk who falls in love with a beau­ti­ful and dan­ger­ous myth­i­cal water spir­it. You can read a para­phrase, trans­la­tion, and inter­pre­ta­tion of the poem here. I rec­om­mend watch­ing the ten-minute film first. Though pre­sent­ed in Russ­ian with­out sub­ti­tles, you will—even if you don’t speak Russian—find your­self seduced.

Petrov, who painstak­ing­ly paints his images on glass with oils, has also adapt­ed the work of oth­er dra­mat­ic writ­ers, includ­ing anoth­er fel­low Russ­ian artist, Dos­to­evsky. His take on Hem­ing­way’s The Old Man and the Sea won an Acad­e­my Award in 2000, and most deserved­ly so. Petrov does not adapt lit­er­ary works so much as he trans­lates them into light, shad­ow, and sound, immers­ing us in their tex­tures and images. His Rusal­ka, just like the poem on which it’s based, speaks direct­ly to our imag­i­na­tions.

Find more lit­er­ary ani­ma­tions in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man”

Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky Told in a Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

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

10 Rules for Writers by Etgar Keret, the Israeli Master of the Short and Strange

in Books, Creativity, Literature, Writing | July 13th, 2015

Etgar Keret, above, is a best sell­ing author and award-win­ning film­mak­er with the soul of a teenage zine pub­lish­er. He’s a mas­ter of the strange and short who plays by his own rules. This sounds like a recipe for out­sider sta­tus but Keret fre­quent­ly pops up in The New York Times, The New York­er, and on pub­lic radio’s This Amer­i­can Life.

The child of Holo­caust sur­vivors told Tikkun that he began writ­ing sto­ries as a way out of his mis­er­able exis­tence as a stut­ter­ing 19-year-old sol­dier in the Israeli army. This may explain why he’s so gen­er­ous with young fans, hand­ing his sto­ries over to them to inter­pret in short films and ani­ma­tions.

When Rook­ie, a web­site for teenage girls, invit­ed him to share ten writ­ing tips, he play­ful­ly oblig­ed. It’s worth not­ing that he refrained from pre­scrib­ing some­thing that’s a sta­ple of oth­er authors’ tip lists — the adop­tion of a dai­ly writ­ing prac­tice. As he told the San Fran­cis­co Bay Guardian:

For me, the term “writ­ing rou­tine” sounds like an oxy­moron. It is a bit like say­ing “hav­ing-a-once-in-a-life­time-insight-which-makes-you-want-to burst-into-tears rou­tine.”

With no fur­ther ado, here are his ten rules for writ­ers, along with a lib­er­al sprin­kling of some of my favorite Keret sto­ries.

1. Make sure you enjoy writ­ing.

You won’t find Keret com­par­ing his cho­sen pro­fes­sion to open­ing a vein. As he told Rook­ie:

Writ­ing is a way to live anoth­er life…be grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand the scope of your life.

2. Love your char­ac­ters.

…though few will ever seem as lov­able as the girl in Goran Dukic’s charm­ing ani­ma­tion of  Keret’s sto­ry “What Do We Have In Our Pock­ets?” below.

3. When you’re writ­ing, you don’t owe any­thing to any­one.

Don’t equate lov­ing your char­ac­ters with treat­ing them nice­ly. See Keret’s sto­ry “Fun­gus.”

4. Always start from the mid­dle.

This is per­haps Keret’s most con­ven­tion­al tip, though his writ­ing shows he’s any­thing but con­ven­tion­al when it comes to locat­ing that mid­dle. His novel­la, Kneller’s Hap­py Campers (on which the film Wrist­cut­ters: A Love Sto­ry, star­ring Tom Waits, was based) man­ages to start at the begin­ning, mid­dle and end.

5. Try not to know how it ends.

At the very least, be pre­pared to dig your­self out to a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty, like the nar­ra­tor in Keret’s very short sto­ry “Mys­tique,” read below by actor Willem Dafoe.

6. Don’t use any­thing just because “that’s how it always is.”

Here, Keret is refer­ring to what he termed “the shrine of form” in an inter­view with his great admir­er, broad­cast­er Ira Glass, but his con­tent is sim­i­lar­ly unfet­tered.  If your writing’s become bogged down by real­i­ty, try intro­duc­ing a mag­ic fish who’s flu­ent in every­thing, as in “What, of This Gold­fish, Would You Wish?,” read by author Gary Shteyn­gart, below.

7. Write like your­self.

Leave the crit­ics hold­ing the bag on com­par­isons to Franz Kaf­ka, Kurt Von­negut and Woody Allen, Lydia Davis, Amos Oz, Don­ald Barthelme…

8. Make sure you’re all alone in the room when you write.

um…Etgar? Does this mean I have to give up my cof­fice?

9. Let peo­ple who like what you write encour­age you.

Nerts to under­min­ers, fren­e­mies, with­er­ing inter­nal edi­tors, and delib­er­ate­ly hate­ful review­ers!

10. Hear what every­one has to say but don’t lis­ten to any­one (except me).

Read the Rook­ie inter­view in which Keret expands on his rules.

via Rook­ie

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Kings’ Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Kurt Von­negut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

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

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

With Medieval Instruments, Band Performs Classic Songs by The Beatles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica & Deep Purple

in Music | July 10th, 2015

We’ve seen Euro­peans cov­er famous rock and met­al bands in an Amer­i­can folk style—Finnish musi­cians play­ing AC/DC, Iron Maid­en, and Dio in Appalachi­an folk, to be exact. Now, pre­pare to hear famous rock and met­al bands in a dis­tinc­tive­ly Euro­pean folk style: Medieval Belaru­sian folk, played by the beau­ti­ful­ly named Stary Olsa. The band’s name derives from a stream in East Belarus—their cloth­ing, instru­men­ta­tion, and rhythms from an ear­ly Lithuan­ian state called the Grand Duchy—but the songs are all 20th cen­tu­ry radio fod­der. Above, see them do Deep Purple’s “Child in Time,” and below, they tack­le the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers’ “Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion.”

Stary Olsa’s cov­er of Metallica’s “One” (fur­ther down), already an incred­i­bly dra­mat­ic song, works par­tic­u­lar­ly well in their syn­co­pat­ed Spar­tan style. The sounds and cos­tum­ing of the accom­plished Belaru­sian musi­cians will inevitably remind you—if you haven’t been under a rock in Belarus—of that Medieval-style fan­ta­sy show in which your favorite char­ac­ters meet hor­ri­bly vio­lent ends week after week.

When we look at the bloody his­to­ry of Medieval Europe, the grue­some­ness of Wes­t­eros can seem like only a slight exaggeration—dragons and ice zom­bies aside—of the so-called “dark ages.” These asso­ci­a­tions, and the solem­ni­ty of the song selec­tion and stark­ness of the voic­es and instru­ments, lend Stary Olsa’s per­for­mances a grav­i­tas that, frankly, ele­vates some of the mate­r­i­al far above its pop ori­gins (I’m look­ing at you, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers).

In order for such meld­ings of styles, peri­ods, and cul­tures to work, whether they be played for laughs or deeply seri­ous, the musi­cian­ship must be top notch. Such was the case with Finnish blue­grass met­al cov­er band Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls, and such is cer­tain­ly the case with Stary Olsa, who have appeared on Belaru­sian TV (from which some of these videos come) and are cur­rent­ly find­ing a lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty out­side their native coun­try that few Belaru­sian bands have achieved. It’s unlike­ly we’ll see them soon on the rock fes­ti­val cir­cuit, but their sta­tus as an inter­net sen­sa­tion is all but guar­an­teed. Just below, see the band trans­late a med­ley of The Bea­t­les’ “Obla-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” into their musi­cal idiom, prov­ing that they don’t just do dark, haunt­ing, and mys­te­ri­ous; they’re also pos­i­tive­ly dance­able.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

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