3D Printed Zoetrope Animates Rubens’ Famous Painting, “The Massacre of the Innocents”

in Animation, Art, Religion | May 22nd, 2015

In the 17th cen­tu­ry, the Flem­ish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens paint­ed “The Mas­sacre of the Inno­cents” (see below), an artis­tic depic­tion of a very brief Bib­li­cal pas­sage in The Gospel of Matthew. The pas­sage recounts the sto­ry of how Herod the Great, a Roman client king of Judea, ordered the exe­cu­tion of young male chil­dren in Beth­le­hem, hop­ing to avoid los­ing his throne to a new­ly-born King of the Jews. And it reads like this:

Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceed­ing­ly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male chil­dren who were in Beth­le­hem and in all its dis­tricts, from two years old and under, accord­ing to the time which he had deter­mined from the wise men. Then was ful­filled what was spo­ken by Jere­mi­ah the prophet, say­ing:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamen­ta­tion, weep­ing, and great mourn­ing,
Rachel weep­ing for her chil­dren,
Refus­ing to be com­fort­ed,
Because they are no more.”

In the 21st cen­tu­ry, Sebas­t­ian Bur­don and Mat Coll­ishaw have now come along and cre­at­ed “All Things Fall,” a 3d zoetrope that brings the “Mas­sacre of the Inno­cents” to life. Using a 19th cen­tu­ry opti­cal tech­nique that pro­duces the illu­sion of motion, the zoetrope vir­tu­al­ly ani­mates the grue­some Bib­li­cal scene. You can watch it play out, eeri­ly, above.

Accord­ing to Bur­don, it took “6 months to do all the 3d mod­el­ing and ani­ma­tions” and involved “cre­at­ing over 350 char­ac­ter fig­ures, envi­ron­ment ele­ments and archi­tec­ture. A pret­ty stun­ning effort.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

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

in Music | May 21st, 2015

You don’t know avant-garde music unless you know John Cage. And now we have anoth­er rich, eas­i­ly acces­si­ble online resource that can help us get to know John Cage bet­ter. The new site is called Mak­ing the Right Choic­es: A John Cage Cel­e­bra­tion, and it has its ori­gins in the cel­e­bra­tion of Cage’s 100th birth­day put on by con­duc­tor Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Sym­pho­ny in Feb­ru­ary 2013.

This Cage-devot­ed, Knight Foun­da­tion-fund­ed site, in the words of Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Alli­son Meier, “presents a com­pre­hen­sive overview of his career, from a water­ing can poured on nation­al tele­vi­sion to a rhyth­mic solo piano per­for­mance inspired by lost love,” mate­r­i­al from Cage’s life and career as well as mate­r­i­al inspired by it, and of course “video and audio from the 2013 per­for­mances in Mia­mi Beach, includ­ing some famil­iar and some obscure pieces from [Cage’s] influ­en­tial and exper­i­men­tal career of both music and staged silence.”

You may remem­ber when we fea­tured Cage’s 1960 per­for­mance of Water Walk on I’ve Got a Secret. The site does­n’t fail to include that clas­sic tele­vi­sion clip, but it also offers videos on the stag­ing of Water Walk today, from its direc­tion and back­ground to its rehearsal to the the­atri­cal­i­ty of its per­for­mance to the place­ment of the cam­eras film­ing it. You can find these and many oth­er audio­vi­su­al explo­rations of the nuts and bolts of Cage’s work at Mak­ing the Right Choic­es’ cat­a­log of videos.

“John Cage gen­uine­ly want­ed to open up the beau­teous expe­ri­ence of sound for every­one,” writes Tilson Thomas in a piece on the com­pos­er. “Much of his work could be described as kits to be used in the cre­ation of a per­for­mance that relies on the per­cep­tions, imag­i­na­tions and choic­es of the musi­cians. It was a spir­i­tu­al mis­sion for him to cre­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the per­for­mance to exist while at the same time to inter­fere with it as lit­tle or as sub­tly as pos­si­ble.” That chal­lenge Cage set for him­self keeps his work fas­ci­nat­ing to us to this day — and as Tilson Thomas and the New World Sym­pho­ny sure­ly found out, it remains as much of a chal­lenge as ever for those who pick it up today.

Vis­it Mak­ing the Right Choic­es: A John Cage Cel­e­bra­tion .

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Watch a Sur­pris­ing­ly Mov­ing Per­for­mance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

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.

Watch the Hardcore Original Ending to Kevin Smith’s 1994 Cult Hit Clerks

in Film | May 21st, 2015

I’m not sure if it’s still the case today, in fact, I’m almost sure it isn’t, but in my day the ethos of an entire gen­er­a­tion could be tidi­ly summed up by ref­er­ence to a hand­ful of movies. Or at least that’s what we were led to believe, those of us who came of age in the ear­ly-to-mid 90s, when films like Richard Linklater’s Slack­er (watch free online), Ben Stiller’s Real­i­ty Bites, and Kevin Smith’s Clerks achieved almost instant cult sta­tus as totems of mid­dle class ennui—that of overe­d­u­cat­ed nar­cis­sists and direc­tion­less dream­ers and cyn­ics with ser­i­al roman­tic dis­as­ters and a gnaw­ing sense of the dwin­dling returns on their heavy invest­ment in cul­tur­al cap­i­tal.

Of this ad hoc tril­o­gy of 90s slack­er­dom, it’s Smith’s 1994 low-bud­get, black and white paean to the lives of low-wage con­ve­nience and video store clerks, their clue­less cus­tomers, and a com­ic duo of stoned hang­ers-on that per­haps holds up best, and this is because the film’s comedy—ranging from gal­lows humor to gross-out slap­stick to obser­va­tion­al geekery—seems most ground­ed in the every­day expe­ri­ences of real, absurd­ly bored, work­ing stiffs every­where. So it’s for the best that Smith decid­ed not to fin­ish the film with the orig­i­nal end­ing he shot, which you can see above. In it, the movie’s main char­ac­ter, Quick Stop clerk Dante Hicks, is killed in a rob­bery. The last image we see in this version’s har­row­ing dénoue­ment is of his corpse, awk­ward­ly wedged behind the Quick Stop counter.

It’s an end­ing that makes lit­tle sense tonal­ly. Despite the movie’s detours into the macabre, it nev­er gets seri­ous enough to jus­ti­fy this kind of heav­i­ness. As Men­tal Floss puts it, “the alter­nate end­ing to Kevin Smith’s break­through film turned a light­heart­ed vul­gar com­e­dy [see above] into a dark tragedy of Ing­mar Bergman-ish pro­por­tions.” Actor Bri­an O’Halloran, who played Dante, thought as much. “I hat­ed that end­ing,” Rolling Stone quotes him as say­ing, “I just thought it was too quick of a twist.” I guess it’s a good thing for Smith (and O’Hal­lo­ran) that he final­ly agreed, since with­out the Clerks universe’s main char­ac­ter, there may have been no Clerks 2, for what it’s worth, though Jay and Silent Bob would cer­tain­ly have gone on to their post-Clerks revenge.

Smith’s choice to keep it light also speaks to the spir­it of the time—or the spir­it of these filmed rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the time, which are ulti­mate­ly about a lack of res­o­lu­tion, a meta-lack of res­o­lu­tion, that becomes its own brand of tragi­com­e­dy. Clerks is loose­ly mod­eled on Dante’s vision of pur­ga­to­ry, but feels more like Samuel Beck­ett trans­posed to sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey. The char­ac­ters in Smith’s films for­ev­er live their lives in what post-hard­core band Fugazi so anthem­i­cal­ly called the “wait­ing room”—the kind of place where, in the midst of a per­son­al cri­sis, the most log­i­cal thing to do is debate the ethics of killing off inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors on Return of the Jedi’s Death Star.

The Clerks alter­nate end­ing appears on the 10th anniver­sary DVD of the film. You’ll prob­a­bly agree the movie works much bet­ter with­out this fatal­ly abrupt turn, but watch­ing it gives us a glimpse of a world where death—always hov­er­ing on the edges of slackerdom—intrudes to break the spell of ter­mi­nal inac­tion and emo­tion­al paral­y­sis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Kevin Smith’s Clever First Film, Mae Day: The Crum­bling of a Doc­u­men­tary (1992)

The Always-NSFW Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes Catch Up in Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Pod­cast

Hear Kevin Smith’s Three Tips For Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers (NSFW)

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

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

Take a Free Course on Film Noir; Then Watch Oodles of Free Noir Films Online

in Film, Online Courses | May 21st, 2015

Cinephiles, if you have some spare time in the com­ing months and feel like watch­ing, say, over 100 film noir movies from the Turn­er Clas­sic Movie (TCM) vaults, then you will be delight­ed with Sum­mer of Dark­ness, which will devote every Fri­day, from June through July, to 24 hours of noir clas­sics and rar­i­ties. And sup­pose you’d like a reward, like a cer­tifi­cate that proves you not only watched those movies, but prop­er­ly stud­ied them? Well TCM has that cov­ered too, offer­ing a free nine-week course in “The Case of Film Noir” to run con­cur­rent with the series. It’s free to sign up, and the course runs June 1 — August 4. Says TCM:

This is the deep­est cat­a­log of film noir ever pre­sent­ed by the net­work (and per­haps any net­work), and pro­vides an unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for those inter­est­ed in learn­ing more to watch over 100 clas­sic movies as they inves­ti­gate “The Case of Film Noir.”

The course is being taught by Richard L. Edwards, Ph.D. who co-hosts the Out of the Past: Inves­ti­gat­ing Film Noir pod­cast and also teach­es at Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty in Muncie, Indi­anapo­lis.

For those who don’t have TCM, or even cable, don’t wor­ry. The net­work promis­es to post links to online pub­lic domain films. Or, bet­ter yet, you could jump right into our col­lec­tion of 60 Free Noir Films Online, which fea­tures pub­lic domain clas­sics by Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, John Hus­ton, and many more.

Have a hazy, dan­ger­ous sum­mer and watch out for femme fatales!

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Content:

60 Free Film Noir Movies

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time: A List by “Noir­chael­o­gist” Eddie Muller

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

Kansas City Con­fi­den­tial: Did This 1952 Noir Film Inspire Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs?

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.

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

in Animation | May 20th, 2015

The inter­net over in Japan was lit ablaze last month by a stu­dent film. Titled “Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux” (“Girls and Guys from the Sum­mits and the Skies”), the short is a gor­geous­ly ani­mat­ed trail­er for what looks like an amaz­ing yet-to-be-made fea­ture film. Cre­at­ed by Gwenn Ger­main, who is study­ing at the French art school Créa­pole, the ani­ma­tion is also a love let­ter to leg­endary film­mak­er Hayao Miyaza­ki. You can watch it above.

“I’ve been told by a friend of mine that all the movies that I’ve made are essen­tial­ly the same!” That’s what Miyaza­ki said to me dur­ing a round­table for his children’s movie Ponyo. Though the sto­ries vary from movie to movie, his world is imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able and remark­ably con­sis­tent. He cre­ates uni­vers­es that are won­drous and mys­ti­cal.

He has an almost shaman­is­tic rev­er­ence for nature; rocks, trees, rivers, and oceans all seem to be alive and aware. And he pop­u­lates his world with shape-shift­ing crea­tures like the rav­en­ous masked blob No-Face in Spir­it­ed Away; the Great For­est Spir­it in Princess Mononoke, which looks like it was yanked straight out of Japan­ese mythol­o­gy; and per­haps his most delight­ful cre­ation, the Cat Bus from My Neigh­bor Totoro, com­plete with head­light eyes, a Cheshire grin and a warm, womb-like inte­ri­or. It was this whim­si­cal cre­ation that report­ed­ly impressed The Emper­or him­self – Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.

It’s no won­der why Japan­ese neti­zens went crazy for “Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux.” Germain’s short seems sprung from the same world as Miyaza­ki. The giant bugs look like some­thing out of Nau­si­caa of the Val­ley of the Wind. The ambigu­ous­ly Euro­pean archi­tec­ture looks like some­thing from Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice and those pur­ple amor­phous worms look like some­thing from Spir­it­ed Away.  Heck, Miyaza­ki him­self even seems to be in Ger­main’s short – that beard­ed old guy at the end of the movie is a spit­ting image of the famed ani­ma­tor.

Ger­main cred­its oth­er influ­ences aside from Miyaza­ki: Syd Mead, the con­cept artist who cre­at­ed those fly­ing cars in Blade Run­ner and the city of the future in the upcom­ing Tomor­row­land, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the bound­less­ly imag­i­na­tive French illus­tra­tor Moe­bius. Their influ­ence might not be as obvi­ous as Miyaza­k­i’s, how­ev­er.

In any case, I am seri­ous­ly look­ing for­ward to see­ing a fea­ture length ver­sion of “Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

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

Mesmerizing Timelapse Film Captures the Wonder of Bees Being Born

in Film | May 20th, 2015

From Nation­al Geo­graph­ic comes this: A short time­lapse film that lets you watch “the eeri­ly beau­ti­ful growth of lar­vae into bees.” Shot by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Anand Var­ma, the mes­mer­iz­ing video starts with the lar­vae of work­er bees just hatch­ing from eggs, then fol­lows their mat­u­ra­tion into adult bees. The video cov­ers an 11-day process in one short minute.

You can get a behind-the-scenes account of the mak­ing of this video over at Nat Geo. When you’re there, you might also want to check out these pret­ty amaz­ing por­traits of bees.

via Kot­tke/This is Colos­sal

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Watch Sherlock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Animated, Steampunk Take on Sherlock Holmes

in Animation, Television | May 20th, 2015

With such majes­tic, painstak­ing­ly craft­ed films as Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, My Neigh­bor Totoro, and Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyaza­ki has made his name as Japan­ese ani­ma­tion’s pre­em­i­nent artis­tic vision­ary — and quite pos­si­bly ani­ma­tion’s pre­em­i­nent artis­tic vision­ary as well. But before he co-found­ed Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, the house that has become syn­ony­mous with Miyaza­k­i’s kind of lush, uni­ver­sal­ly appeal­ing, and award-win­ning films, he worked on var­i­ous kinds of ani­ma­tion, for dif­fer­ent media and pitched at dif­fer­ent lev­els of seri­ous­ness. One of the most notable projects of the end of that chap­ter of his career trans­posed the adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes into a world of anthro­po­mor­phic dogs.

The Ital­ian-Japan­ese co-pro­duc­tion Sher­lock Hound aired as a tele­vi­sion series between 1984 and 1985. Of its 26 episodes, which sent the cor­gi Sher­lock Hound and ter­ri­er Doc­tor Wat­son after a vari­ety of thieves and on all sorts of adven­tures across a steam­punk Lon­don, Miyaza­ki direct­ed six.

In the Miyaza­ki-direct­ed episode “Trea­sure Under the Sea” at the top of the post, for instance, the detect­ing duo go after a sub­ma­rine pur­loined by recur­ring antag­o­nist of both Holmes and Hound, Pro­fes­sor Mori­ar­ty, who here takes the form of a wolf.

“The Sov­er­eign Gold Coins” finds Hound and Wat­son in pur­suit of that seem­ing­ly more tra­di­tion­al stripe of crim­i­nal known as a safe­crack­er, and in “Mrs. Hud­son is Tak­en Hostage,” their land­la­dy (who seems con­sid­er­ably more youth­ful in Miyaza­k­i’s vision than the matron in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s) goes miss­ing, though her kid­nap­per bad­ly under­es­ti­mates the dif­fi­cul­ty of pulling off his plan under Hound’s watch. Miyaza­ki would direct three more episodes (“The Stormy Get­away,” “The Crown of Maza­lin,” and “The Four Sig­na­tures”) before a rights dis­pute with Conan Doyle’s estate threw a wrench into pro­duc­tion. The show lat­er went on under oth­er cre­ators, and U.S. view­ers can see the whole, still-delight­ful run on Hulu, but Miyaza­ki did­n’t look back — and see­ing as Nau­si­caä had come out that same year, he did­n’t need to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Hear the Voice of Arthur Conan Doyle After His Death

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.

Peter Sellers Covers the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night,” “She Loves You” & “Help!”

in Comedy, Music | May 20th, 2015

In the ear­ly six­ties, Peter Sell­ers, one of the great­est com­ic actors of his gen­er­a­tion, met per­haps the great­est musi­cians of the age, the Bea­t­les, through their mutu­al pro­duc­er George Mar­tin. The par­tic­u­lar­ly British sen­si­bil­i­ties of the band and the actor—slapstick and word­play, accent and cos­tume changes—had sur­pris­ing­ly broad appeal in the six­ties, and a com­mon his­to­ry in their mutu­al admi­ra­tion of Eng­lish come­di­an and writer Spike Mil­li­gan.

Sell­ers rose to promi­nence on the Mil­li­gan-cre­at­ed BBC radio pro­gram The Goon Show, which the Bea­t­les cit­ed as a major influ­ence on their work. Their con­stant pat­ter in inter­views, films, even rehearsals, their ten­den­cy to break into music hall song and dance, comes right out of Sell­ers in a way (see, for exam­ple, the great com­ic actor in a rare inter­view here), but was also very much an expres­sion of their own extro­vert­ed per­son­al­i­ties. It stands to rea­son then that Sell­ers and the Bea­t­les, as we wrote in an ear­li­er post, “became fast friends.”

And as the Bea­t­les had paid trib­ute to Sell­ers’ com­e­dy, he would return the favor, cov­er­ing three of their most pop­u­lar songs as only he could. At the top of the post, see Sell­ers do a spo­ken word ver­sion of “A Hard Day’s Night” as Lawrence Olivier’s Richard III. And above and below, he gives us sev­er­al ren­di­tions of “She Loves You,” in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent accents, “in the voice of Dr. Strangelove, again with cock­ney and upper-crusty accents, and final­ly with an Irish twist. The record­ings were all released posthu­mous­ly between 1981 and 1983 on albums no longer in cir­cu­la­tion.”

There are many more Beatles/Sellers con­nec­tions. Before tap­ing his “Hard Day’s Night” skit for Grana­da tele­vi­sion spe­cial “The Music of Lennon & McCart­ney,” Sell­ers had pre­sent­ed the band with a Gram­my for the song, which won “Best Per­for­mance of a Vocal Group” in 1965. “Inci­den­tal­ly,” writes Mersey Beat’s Bill Har­ry, “the [Gram­my] pre­sen­ta­tion was made on the stu­dio set of ‘Help!’ and, inter­est­ing­ly, Sell­ers had orig­i­nal­ly been offered the script of ‘Help!’ (Obvi­ous­ly under a dif­fer­ent title) but turned it down.” Sell­ers and the Goon Show cast had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Richard Lester, direc­tor of the Bea­t­les films and the John Lennon-star­ring How I Won the War.

Com­pletists out there may have also heard the record­ed con­ver­sa­tion between Sell­ers and the Bea­t­les that appears at the end of a boot­leg ver­sion of the White Album, which cir­cu­lat­ed for years under the title The Peter Sell­ers Tape. That the band and the come­di­an got along so famous­ly is no great sur­prise, nor that Sell­ers had so much fun rework­ing the rather sil­ly, and infec­tious­ly catchy, pop songs of the Bea­t­les’ ear­ly career, bring­ing to them his bat­tery of char­ac­ters and voic­es. We’ve saved what may be Sell­ers’ best Bea­t­les cov­er for last. Below, hear him—in the voice of a lec­tur­ing vic­ar and with a back­ing choir—deliver “Help!” as a 45 RPM ser­mon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Presents The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

The Bea­t­les Per­form a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (1964)

John Cleese, Ringo Starr and Peter Sell­ers Trash Price­less Art (1969)

John Lennon’s Appear­ances in How I Won the War, the Absur­dist 1967 Film

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

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recreated in an Adorable Paper Animation

in Animation, Television | May 19th, 2015

Yea, and there was a rejoic­ing all round the land last week when Show­time and David Lynch final­ly worked out a deal to bring back Twin Peaks after ini­tial reports that Lynch had backed out.

So while we wait for 2016, check out Matthew Fuller’s re-cre­ation of the Twin Peaks title sequence in ani­mat­ed paper cut outs. Fuller’s rough hewn cre­ation is adorable, stay­ing true to the lan­guid pace and dreamy objects of the orig­i­nal. (I had kind of for­get­ten that very large log on dis­play at the one minute mark.)

Fuller just start­ed this YouTube chan­nel And the World Was Paper two weeks ago, kick­ing it off with a recre­ation of the new Star Wars trail­er. He is also promis­ing a new paper video every fort­night, so be sure to sub­scribe.

Mean­while, this paper ver­sion of Twin Peaks isn’t the first time the titles has been recre­at­ed. Check out Filthy Frack­ers 8‑bit ver­sion here:

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

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.

William S. Burroughs — Alternative Rock Star — Sings with Kurt Cobain, Tom Waits, REM & More

in Music | May 19th, 2015

Image via Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis

Like many of the best coun­ter­cul­tur­al icons, William S. Bur­roughs had at least two sep­a­rate peri­ods of under­ground fame. The first came in the late 1950s and 60s when he wrote such clas­sics-to-be of Beat lit­er­a­ture as Junkie, Naked Lunch, and the “cut-up” tril­o­gy of The Soft Machine, The Tick­et That Explod­ed, and Nova Express. The sec­ond came in the 1980s and 90s, when a new wave of coun­ter­cul­tur­al icons, them­selves raised on Bur­roughs’ writ­ing, came of age and sought out their hero for col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“How a nov­el­ist with no musi­cal back­ground who began his career in the 1940s became so pop­u­lar an alter­na­tive music fig­ure that Kurt Cobain backed him up on one of Cobain’s last record­ings is one of the odd­er, more fas­ci­nat­ing foot­notes in this oth­er­wise heav­i­ly exam­ined musi­cal era,” says Music for Mani­acs.

Many rock­ers who looked up to Bur­roughs attend­ed his live read­ings, but for some, “it was­n’t enough to just lis­ten to Bur­roughs read his own works, with increas­ing­ly elab­o­rate musi­cal back­ings, but to hire him to per­form on record­ings. And that is what we have here: not Bur­roughs’ own releas­es, but his var­i­ous mis­cel­la­neous appear­ances on oth­er bands’ songs.”

Above, hear Bur­roughs with Tom Waits on jazz tune “T’Ain’t No Sin” and with Min­istry on “Quick Fix.” You can lis­ten to all of these record­ings, in which Bur­roughs records with or cov­ers the mate­r­i­al of REM, The Doors, Lau­rie Ander­son, Mar­lene Diet­rich, Kurt Cobain, and oth­ers, at Ubuweb. The playlist runs as fol­lows. Click to lis­ten:

1. Fuck Me Kit­ten (with REM, from “Songs in the Key of X: Music from and Inspired by ‘the X‑Files’ ” — 1996)
2. Is Every­body In? (with The Doors, recit­ing Jim Mor­ri­son poet­ry, from “Stoned Immac­u­late: The Music of the Doors”)
3. Sharkey’s Night (with Lau­rie Ander­son, from “Mis­ter Heart­break” — 1983)
4. What Keeps Mankind Alive (from Kurt Weill trib­ute album “Sep­tem­ber Songs”)
5. ‘T ‘Aint No Sin (1920s jazz song, per­formed on Tom Waits’ “The Black Rid­er” — 1993)
6. Quick Fix (w/Ministry, “Just One Fix” b‑side — 1992)
7. Old Lady Sloan (w/The Eudo­ras, cov­er­ing a song by a Lawrence, Kansas punk band from “The Mor­tal Micronotz Trib­ute!” — 1995
8. Ich Bin Von Kopf Bis Fub Auf Liebe Eingestellt (Falling In Love Again) — Mar­lene Deitrich cov­er, from “Dead City Radio” — 1988
9. The “Priest” They Called Him — (w/Kurt Cobain, 1992)

Not only do per­form­ers like Bur­roughs rarely enjoy a two-act career like his, they hard­ly ever put out mate­r­i­al as odd in their last act as they did in their first. But noth­ing in the life of the “rock star to rock stars,” as Music for Mani­acs calls him, hap­pened in the tra­di­tion­al mat­ter. And once you get through his stint as an alter­na­tive rock star, do have a look at his stint as an alter­na­tive per­former on the sil­ver screen.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

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.