Watch Quentin Tarantino Fave The Street Fighter, The First Movie To Get an X‑Rating for Violence (NSFW)

in Film | August 15th, 2014

Bruce Lee died in 1973 just before the pre­miere of Enter the Drag­on — the high­est gross­ing movie of that year. Lee’s sud­den and mys­te­ri­ous death left a huge void that stu­dios scram­bled to fill. Some shady Hong Kong pro­duc­ers start­ed crank­ing out kung fu flicks star­ring decep­tive­ly named actors like Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lai or, com­bin­ing two ‘70s tough guys in one name, Bron­son Lee. Amer­i­can stu­dios start­ed mak­ing movies like Black Belt Jones star­ring Enter the Drag­on co-star Jim Kel­ly. It was in this con­text that Amer­i­can pro­duc­ers acquired the Japan­ese karate thriller Gek­i­tot­su! Sat­su­jin Ken star­ring Shinichi Chi­ba and renamed it The Street Fight­er. The movie became noto­ri­ous for earn­ing an X‑rating sole­ly for vio­lence, and it turned its lead, rechris­tened Son­ny Chi­ba, into a cult idol. You can watch The Street Fight­er above, poor­ly dubbed and in the wrong aspect ratio. Just as it was prob­a­bly screened at your local grind­house the­ater back dur­ing the Ford admin­is­tra­tion. (The film, by the way, is in the pub­lic domain.)

The movie’s sto­ry is a typ­i­cal tale of man­ly hon­or, revenge and betray­al, where men set­tle their dif­fer­ences with their fists and women — the “good” women, any­way – sim­per on the side­lines. Chi­ba plays Ter­ry Tsu­ru­gi, a badass street thug. Sure, he might be a world-class jerk, espe­cial­ly after he sells one dead­beat client into pros­ti­tu­tion, but he’s a jerk with a code of hon­or. Of course, you don’t watch mar­tial arts movies – or almost any Japan­ese movie from the 1970s, real­ly – for its pro­gres­sive stance on gen­der rela­tions. You watch them for the ass kick­ing. And on that front, The Street Fight­er deliv­ers. So when Tsug­uri gets hired to pro­tect the beau­ti­ful daugh­ter of a dead oil tycoon from a nefar­i­ous band of gang­sters, you know he will do just that, even if it involves throw­ing punch­es, deliv­er­ing gory eye gouges and, in one mem­o­rable scene, rip­ping the tes­ti­cles clean off of a rapist. The movie’s relent­less vio­lence and gen­er­al nihilism made The Street Fight­er a hit, spawn­ing a hand­ful of sequels – Return of the Street Fight­er, Sis­ter Street Fight­er and Street Fighter’s Last Revenge. The movie also made at least one major fan: Quentin Taran­ti­no.

Taran­ti­no loved the movie in a way that only the reign­ing uber-nerd of ’70s exploita­tion movies could: he made ref­er­ences to it in his works. Clarence and Alaba­ma watched The Street Fight­er and its sequels in True Romance. Taran­ti­no even cast Chi­ba as Han­zo, the ace katana mak­er in Kill Bill. In the run up to his 2007 dou­ble bill with Robert Rodriguez, Grind­house, Taran­ti­no placed The Street Fight­er 13th on his list of favorite exploita­tion flicks, above Dario Argento’s gial­lo clas­sic Sus­piria but below the absolute­ly bonkers Mas­ter of the Fly­ing Guil­lo­tine.

You can find The Street Fight­er list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee: The Lost TV Inter­view

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net (1964)

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 one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

Robin Williams & Bobby McFerrin Sing Fun Cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together”

in Comedy, Music | August 14th, 2014

In 1998, leg­endary Bea­t­les’ pro­duc­er George Martin—all set to “hang up his ear­phones” and retire— brought togeth­er the most unusu­al assort­ment of peo­ple for In My Life, a trib­ute album com­posed entire­ly of Mar­tin-pro­duced Bea­t­les’ songs per­formed pri­mar­i­ly by actors and come­di­ans. Goldie Hawn gives a “gig­gly night­club chanteuse” read­ing of “A Hard Day’s Night,” Bil­ly Con­nol­ly does a slight­ly cracked ver­sion of “Being for the Ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite,” Jim Car­rey cov­ers “I Am the Wal­rus” (in a musi­cal per­for­mance sur­pris­ing­ly sub­dued next to, for exam­ple, his ren­di­tion of ”Some­body to Love”), and Sean Con­nery clos­es things out with a somber read­ing of “In My Life.”

But the album’s open­ing track is its best: Robin Williams and Bob­by McFerrin’s duet of “Come Togeth­er” redeems many of the record’s weak­est moments. Just above, hear the track over a fan-made slideshow of Williams high­lights. Williams and McFer­rin had teamed up before in the won­der­ful­ly sil­ly video for “Don’t Wor­ry Be Hap­py.” Here, with ample help from Martin’s lush pro­duc­tion, they man­age to evoke the slinky, seduc­tive weird­ness of the orig­i­nal song while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hav­ing a goofy old time of it. Pop­mat­ters edi­tor Sarah Zup­ko, a self-con­fessed Beat­le­ma­ni­ac who oth­er­wise found the album a supreme dis­ap­point­ment, calls Williams’ “leer­ing” through the song “a hoot,” and I’m sure you’ll agree.

Just above, watch a one-hour BBC doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of In My Life. At 9:30, see Williams, Mar­tin, and McFer­rin in the hys­ter­i­cal record­ing ses­sions for their “Come Togeth­er” cov­er. Mar­tin admits that he asked Williams to join the project “with some trep­i­da­tion,” then real­ized that “it was with some trep­i­da­tion” that Williams accept­ed. It was Williams who sug­gest­ed “bring­ing along a mate,” McFer­rin, whom he calls “a one-man accom­pa­ni­ment.” Among many oth­er charms, the short doc fea­tures Mar­tin through­out explain­ing not only the process of record­ing In My Life, but also his mem­o­ries of the orig­i­nal record­ing ses­sions for these songs, clear­ly so dear to him and his proud­est lega­cy. But of course, giv­en our nation­al peri­od of mourn­ing for the warm, bril­liant­ly fun­ny, deeply humane, and trag­i­cal­ly sad Robin Williams, the real joy is see­ing him here in much hap­pi­er times, encour­ag­ing and prais­ing the tal­ents of oth­ers even as he shines so bright­ly along­side them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robin Williams (1951–2014) Per­forms Unknown Shake­speare Play in 1970s Standup Rou­tine

Bob­by McFer­rin Shows the Pow­er of the Pen­ta­ton­ic Scale

George Mar­tin, Leg­endary Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er, Shows How to Mix the Per­fect Song Dry Mar­ti­ni

Jim Car­rey Sings a Pret­ty Damn Good Cov­er of The Bea­t­les “I Am the Wal­rus”

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

Tap Into Timeless Wisdom: Download 36 Free Courses in Ancient History, Literature & Philosophy

in Education, History, Literature, Online Courses, Philosophy | August 14th, 2014

I know, it’s a dat­ed ref­er­ence now, but since I still watch the remade Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca series on Net­flix, the mys­ti­cal refrain—“All of this has hap­pened before and will hap­pen again”–still seems fresh to me. At any rate, it’s fresh­er than the clichéd “his­to­ry repeats itself.” How­ev­er you phrase it, the tru­ism looks more and more like a gen­uine truth the more one stud­ies ancient his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, and phi­los­o­phy. The con­flicts and con­cerns that feel so of the moment also occu­pied the minds and lives of peo­ple liv­ing hun­dreds, and thou­sands, of years ago, and what­ev­er you make of that, it cer­tain­ly helps put the present into per­spec­tive. Can we ben­e­fit from study­ing the wis­dom, and the fol­ly, of the ancients? To this ques­tion, I like to turn to an intro­duc­to­ry essay C.S. Lewis penned to the work of a cer­tain church father:

Every age has its own out­look. It is spe­cial­ly good at see­ing cer­tain truths and spe­cial­ly liable to make cer­tain mis­takes. We all, there­fore, need the books that will cor­rect the char­ac­ter­is­tic mis­takes of our own peri­od. And that means the old books. […] If we read only mod­ern books […] where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggra­vate the error with which we are already dan­ger­ous­ly ill. The only pal­lia­tive is to keep the clean sea breeze of the cen­turies blow­ing through our minds, and this can be done only by read­ing old books.

I may dis­agree with Lewis about many things, includ­ing that “clean sea breeze” of his­to­ry, but I take to heart his point about read­ing the ancients to mit­i­gate our mod­ern bias­es and shine light on our blind spots. To that end, we present links to sev­er­al excel­lent online cours­es on the ancients from insti­tu­tions like Yale, NYU, and Stan­ford, free to peruse or take in full. See our mas­ter list—Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy—for 36 qual­i­ty offer­ings. As always, cer­tain cours­es pro­vide more resources than oth­ers, and a few only offer their lec­tures through iTunes. These are deci­sions course admin­is­tra­tors have made, not us! Even so, these free resources are invalu­able to those wish­ing to acquaint, or reac­quaint, them­selves with the study of ancient human­i­ties.

You can, for exam­ple, take a course on Ancient Israel from NYU’s Daniel Flem­ing (Free Online Video & Course Info — Free Online Video), study Plato’s Laws with the renowned Leo Strauss from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go (Free Online Audio) or Socrates ( Free Online Audio) with that university’s equal­ly renowned Alan Bloom. Take a course called “Ancient Wis­dom and Mod­ern Love” (Syl­labus - Free iTunes Video — Free Online Video) with Notre Dame’s David O’Connor or study Virgil’s Aeneid ( Free iTunes Audio) with Susan­na Braund, whose lec­tures were record­ed at Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. You’ll find many more ancient his­to­ry, lit, and phi­los­o­phy classes—36 in all, includ­ing five more Leo Strauss Pla­to seminars—on our meta list: Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy. Read, study, repeat.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Learn 47 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

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

Watch the First Episode of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, Of Which Stanley Kubrick Became a Big Fan

in Animation, Film, Television | August 14th, 2014

Osamu Tezu­ka is one of the great cre­ative forces of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Known in his native Japan as the “god of man­ga,” Tezu­ka was mind-bog­gling­ly pro­duc­tive, crank­ing out around 170,000 pages of comics in his 60 years of life. He almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly made man­ga respectable to read for adults, cre­at­ing tales that were both uni­ver­sal and emo­tion­al­ly com­plex. And he worked in pret­ty much every genre you can imag­ine from hor­ror, to girly fan­ta­sy, to an epic series about the life of the Bud­dha. Yet of all of Tezuka’s many vol­umes of comics, his best beloved work was Tet­suwan Ato­mu, oth­er­wise known as Astro Boy.

In 1962, Tezu­ka ful­filled a child­hood dream by open­ing an ani­ma­tion stu­dio. One of his first projects was to adapt was Astro Boy. The tele­vi­sion series pre­miered in 1963 and proved to be huge­ly pop­u­lar in Japan. It wasn’t long before Amer­i­can TV start­ed air­ing dubbed ver­sions of the show. You can see the very first episode, “Birth of Astro Boy,” above.

After his son dies in a freak car acci­dent, sci­en­tist Dr. Astor Boyn­ton is dri­ven mad by grief. He devel­ops an insane laugh and, with it, an equal­ly insane plan to build a robot who looks just like his dead son. After a Franken­stein-esque mon­tage, Astro Boy is born. All seems well for the adorable, sweet-natured robot, until Boyn­ton freaks out over Astro Boy’s lack of  growth. “I’ve been a good father to you, haven’t I?” he whines. “Well then, why can’t you be a good son to me and grow up to be a nor­mal human adult?” How’s that for a parental guilt trip?

So Dr. Boyn­ton casts Astro Boy out, sell­ing him into slav­ery to The Great Cac­cia­tore, an evil cir­cus ring­leader who forces him to be the world’s cutest robot glad­i­a­tor. For­tu­nate­ly, Dr. Ele­fun, a col­league of Dr. Boyn­ton, takes pity on Astro Boy and works to free him from his bondage.

The whole sto­ry plays out as if Mary Shel­ley and Fritz Lang col­lab­o­rat­ed to make Dum­bo. Tezu­ka throws in a lot of wacky slap­stick com­e­dy, which just bare­ly takes the edge off the story’s Dick­en­sian melo­dra­ma, which relent­less­ly mines all those pri­mal fears you thought you got over. In short, it’s bril­liant.

The series ran for two years in the States and then con­tin­ued on re-runs though­out the decade. One of the shows fans was appar­ent­ly Stan­ley Kubrick. Dur­ing the mid-60s, Kubrick sent Tezu­ka a let­ter ask­ing if he would be inter­est­ed in help­ing with the art direc­tion and design of his new movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The offer would have required that Tezu­ka spend a year or more in Lon­don. Though great­ly flat­tered, Tezu­ka turned the offer down. The worka­holic artist sim­ply couldn’t spend that much time away from his stu­dio. One has to won­der what Kubrick’s mas­ter­piece would have looked like seen through the prism of Tezu­ka.

In 2001, Steven Spiel­berg pre­miered a movie that was a long ges­tat­ing project of Kubrick’s – the wild­ly under­rat­ed A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence. The par­al­lels between that movie, about a robot child cast out by his par­ents into a cru­el world, and Astro Boy are strik­ing. Kubrick, as it turns out, might have been even a big­ger fan of the God of Man­ga than pre­vi­ous­ly thought.

Here’s the trail­er for A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

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

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

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 one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

Read 12 Stories By Haruki Murakami Free Online

in Literature | August 13th, 2014

Image by wakari­m­a­sita, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In her New York Times review of Haru­ki Murakami’s lat­est, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age, Pat­ti Smith writes that the nov­el­ist has two modes, “the sur­re­al, intra-dimen­sion­al side” and the “more min­i­mal­ist, real­ist side.” These two Murakamis often coex­ist with­in the same work of fic­tion, as the fan­tas­tic or the super­nat­ur­al invades the real, or the oth­er way around. Like one of his lit­er­ary heroes, Franz Kaf­ka, Murakami’s work doesn’t so much cre­ate alter­nate real­i­ties as it alters real­i­ty, with all its mun­dane details and hum­drum dai­ly rou­tines. As Ted Gioia put it in a review of Murakami’s Kaf­ka on the Shore, “this abil­i­ty to cap­ture the phan­tas­magor­i­cal in the thick of com­muter traf­fic, broad­band Inter­net con­nec­tions and high-rise archi­tec­ture is the dis­tinc­tive call­ing card of Murakami”—he “mes­mer­izes us by work­ing his leg­erde­main in places where real­i­ty would seem to be rock sol­id.”

In Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki Muraka­mi works this same mag­ic, as you can see in this excerpt pub­lished in Slate last month. Tex­tured with gran­u­lar real­ist details and straight­for­ward nar­ra­tion, the scene slow­ly builds into a cap­ti­vat­ing super­nat­ur­al tale that slides just as eas­i­ly back into the weft and warp of wak­ing life. In one piece of dia­logue, Muraka­mi sums up one way we might read all of his “sur­re­al, intra-dimen­sion­al” flights: “It wasn’t an issue of whether or not he believed it. I think he total­ly accept­ed it as the weird tale it was. Like the way a snake will swal­low its prey and not chew it, but instead let it slow­ly digest.” Giv­en the jit­tery, dis­tract­ed state of most mod­ern read­ers in a tech­no­log­i­cal land­scape that push­es us to make hasty judg­ments and snap­py, ill-con­sid­ered replies, it is sur­pris­ing how many of Murakami’s fans are will­ing to take the time. And it is no sub­set of clois­tered devo­tees either, but, in Pat­ti Smith’s words, “the alien­at­ed, the ath­let­ic, the dis­en­chant­ed and the buoy­ant.”

Muraka­mi finds read­ers across this broad spec­trum for many rea­sons; his prose is acces­si­ble even when his nar­ra­tives are baf­fling. (Gioia notes that “when the Japan­ese pub­lish­er of Kaf­ka on the Shore set up a web­site allow­ing read­ers to ask ques­tions of the author, some 8,000 were sub­mit­ted.”) His peren­ni­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with, and immer­sion in, the worlds of jazz, rock, and clas­si­cal music, base­ball, and run­ning, draw in those who might nor­mal­ly avoid the Kaf­ka-esque. But when we come to Muraka­mi, Kaf­ka-esque is very often what we find, as well as Salinger-esque, Von­negut-esque, Pyn­chon-esque, even Philip K. Dick-esque, as well as the –esque of real­ist mas­ters like Ray­mond Carv­er. Whether you’re new to Muraka­mi or a long­time fan of his work, you’ll find all of these ten­den­cies, and much more to love, in the four short sto­ries we present below, all free to read at The New York­er for a lim­it­ed time (the mag­a­zine will go behind a pay­wall in the fall).

Take advan­tage of this brief reprieve and enjoy the many rich­es of Haru­ki Murakami’s fic­tive worlds, which so decep­tive­ly imper­son­ate the one most of us live in that we feel right at home in his work until it jolts us out of the famil­iar and into a “weird tale.” Whether you believe them or not, they’re sure to stay with you awhile.

“Kah0” (July 1, 2024)

“Kino” (Feb­ru­ary 23, 2015)

“A Walk to Kobe” (August 6, 2013)

“Sam­sa in Love” (Octo­ber 28, 2013)

“Yes­ter­day” (June 9, 2014)

“Scheherazade” (Octo­ber 13, 2014)

“Town of Cats,” trans­lat­ed from the Japan­ese by Jay Rubin (Sep­tem­ber 5, 2011)

“U.F.O. in Kushi­ro” (March 28, 2011; orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished March 19, 2001)

“Cream” (Jan­u­ary 28, 2019)

“With the Bea­t­les” (Feb­ru­ary 10, 2020)

“Con­fes­sions of a Shi­na­gawa Mon­key” (June 1, 2020)

“The King­dom That Failed” (August 13, 2020)

And last but sure­ly not least, we bring you “The Folk­lore of Our Times” from The Guardian (pub­lished August 1, 2003), one of Murakami’s involved real­ist com­ing-of-age nar­ra­tives notable for the mature, almost world-weary insights he draws from the seem­ing­ly unex­cep­tion­al fab­ric of ordi­nary expe­ri­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

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

Free Classics Courses

in | August 13th, 2014

Get free Clas­sics cours­es online from the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties.  For more online cours­es, vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

• Ancient Greece: City and Soci­ety – Free iTunes Audio – Dr Gillian Shep­herd, La Trobe Uni­ver­si­ty, Aus­tralia
• Ancient Greece: Myth, Art & War – Free iTunes Audio – Dr Gillian Shep­herd, La Trobe Uni­ver­si­ty – Aus­tralia
• Ancient Greek His­to­ry – Free Online Course – Don­ald Kagan, Yale
• Ancient Israel – Free Online Course – Daniel Flem­ing, NYU
• Ancient Phi­los­o­phy – Free Online Audio – David Ebrey, UC Berke­ley

• Epics of Rome – Free iTunes Audio – Rhi­an­non Evans, LaTrobe Uni­ver­si­­ty-Aus­­tralia
• Han­ni­bal – Free Online Audio– Patrick Hunt, Stan­ford
• Roman Archi­tec­ture – Free Online Course – Diana E. E. Klein­er, Yale
• The Ancient Greek Hero — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Gre­go­ry Nagy, Har­vard
• The Ancient Greeks — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• The Phi­los­o­phy of Tragedy – Free Online Video – Prof. Michael Davis, Sarah Lawrence Col­lege
• The Roman World – Free iTunes Audio – Rhi­an­non Evans, La Trobe Uni­ver­si­ty – Aus­tralia
• Virgil’s Aeneid: Anato­my of a Clas­sic – Free iTunes Audio – Susan­na Braund, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talking Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dynamite

in Film | August 13th, 2014

Jim Jar­musch is the anti-MTV film­mak­er. Most music videos, from the dawn of MTV in 1981 on, are slick and facile, long on visu­al spec­ta­cle and short on things like depth or, you know, coher­ence. Jar­musch, who start­ed mak­ing movies in the East Vil­lage in the 1970s when the DIY-spir­it of the No Wave move­ment was at its zenith, made movies that were delib­er­ate­ly slow and spare, recall­ing Bertolt Brecht and Yasu­jiro Ozu.

“I don’t gen­er­al­ly like music videos because they pro­vide you images to go with the songs rather than you pro­vid­ing your own,” he said in an inter­view with Film Com­ment back in 1992. “You lose the beau­ty of music by not bring­ing your own men­tal images or rec­ol­lec­tions or asso­ci­a­tions. Music videos oblit­er­ate that.”

Yet he did direct a hand­ful of videos. As much as he dis­likes the medi­um, Jar­musch gets music in a way that few oth­er direc­tors do. It is an inte­gral ele­ment of all Jarmusch’s work. Check out the open­ing to his third fea­ture Down By Law:

He uses Tom Waits’s “Jock­ey Full of Bour­bon” to ani­mate those gor­geous track­ing shots of New Orleans to set up the char­ac­ters and evoke a mood of retro-cool. Jarmusch’s bril­liant edit­ing and cam­era work cre­ate new asso­ci­a­tions with the music. I can’t lis­ten to Tom Waits’ song now with­out think­ing of Down By Law.

The prob­lem that Jar­musch real­ly had with music videos, it seems, is the end pur­pose. The music in Down By Law serves the sto­ry. A music video serves com­merce. Jar­musch admit­ted as much when he butted heads with Waits over mak­ing a video for “It’s All Right By Me,” which you can see above.

“I had a big fight years ago with Tom Waits,” he recalled in an inter­view with The Guardian. “He said: ‘Look, it’s not your film. It’s a pro­mo for my song.’ It was after Down By Law, and it was about the edit­ing. But he was right….I remem­ber I locked him out­side in the park­ing lot, and he’s ham­mer­ing at the door, and he’s shout­ing through ‘Jim! I’m gonna glue your head to the wall!’ He did­n’t glue my head to the wall. But they’re not real­ly films of mine, they’re films for a song. I learned that a long time ago.”

Jarmusch’s first music video was “The Lady Don’t Mind” by the Talk­ing Heads off, of their album Lit­tle Crea­tures. It fea­tures some lone­ly shots of New York City and an emp­ty apart­ment that looks very rem­i­nis­cent of Jarmusch’s ear­ly ‘80s works.

Here’s a music video for Neil Young’s “Dead Man” which is essen­tial­ly a mon­tage of shots from Jarmusch’s same-named 1996 mas­ter­piece. One sus­pects he had less trou­ble with this video than the oth­ers.

Final­ly, over at Dan­ger­ous Minds, you can see a video that Jar­musch shot for Big Audio Dyna­mite’s song “Sight­see M.C.!.” BAD was, of course, the band formed by the gui­tarist and singer of the Clash, Mick Jones.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

Tim Bur­ton Shoots Two Music Videos for The Killers

Watch the Uncen­sored Andy Warhol-Direct­ed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hel­lo Again” (NSFW)

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 one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

Jorge Luis Borges, Film Critic, Reviews King Kong (1933)

in Film, Literature | August 13th, 2014

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured Jorge Luis Borges’ review of Cit­i­zen Kane. But as a film crit­ic, the writer of such influ­en­tial short fic­tions as “The Aleph,” “The Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths,” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” did­n’t start there, with per­haps the most influ­en­tial motion pic­ture ever pro­duced. Flick­er has more on the movies that caught Borges’ crit­i­cal eye:

He was a pas­sion­ate admir­er of Char­lie Chap­lin. In a won­der­ful sen­tence that typ­i­fies his writ­ing style, Borges writes, “Would any­one dare ignore that Char­lie Chap­lin is one of the estab­lished gods in the mythol­o­gy of our time, a cohort of de Chirico’s motion­less night­mares, of Scar­face Al’s ardent machine guns, of the finite yet unlim­it­ed uni­verse of Gre­ta Garbo’s lofty shoul­ders, of the gog­gled eyes of Gand­hi?”

Borges’ film reviews were often quite humor­ous. When dis­cussing Josef von Sternberg’s ver­sion of Crime and Pun­ish­ment (1935), he writes, “Indoc­tri­nat­ed by the pop­u­lous mem­o­ry of The Scar­let Empress, I was expect­ing a vast flood of false beards, miters, samovars, masks, surly faces, wrought-iron gates, vine­yards, chess pieces, bal­alaikas, promi­nent cheek­bones, and hors­es. In short, I was expect­ing the usu­al von Stern­berg night­mare, the suf­fo­ca­tion and the mad­ness.”

But the film-review­ing Borges’ mas­ter­piece of dis­missal takes on King Kong, Mer­ian C. Coop­er and Ernest B. Schoed­sack­’s most icon­ic giant-ape dis­as­ter movie of them all:

A mon­key, forty feet tall (some fans say forty-five) may have obvi­ous charms, but those charms have not con­vinced this view­er. King Kong is no full-blood­ed ape but rather a rusty, des­ic­cat­ed machine whose move­ments are down­right clum­sy. His only virtue, his height, did not impress the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, who per­sist­ed in pho­tograph­ing him from above rather than from below —  the wrong angle, as it neu­tral­izes and even dimin­ish­es the ape’s over­praised stature. He is actu­al­ly hunch­backed and bow­legged, attrib­ut­es that serve only to reduce him in the spectator’s eye. To keep him from look­ing the least bit extra­or­di­nary, they make him do bat­tle with far more unusu­al mon­sters and have him reside in caves of false cathe­dral splen­dor, where his infa­mous size again los­es all pro­por­tion. But what final­ly demol­ish­es both the goril­la and the film is his roman­tic love — or lust — for Fay Wray.

As Mour­daunt Hal­l’s con­tem­po­rary New York Times review of this “Fan­tas­tic Film in Which a Mon­strous Ape Uses Auto­mo­biles for Mis­siles and Climbs a Sky­scraper” put it, “Through mul­ti­ple expo­sures, processed ‘shots’ and a vari­ety of angles of cam­era wiz­ardry the pro­duc­ers set forth an ade­quate sto­ry and fur­nish enough thrills for any devo­tee of such tales,” but “it is when the enor­mous ape, called Kong, is brought to this city that the excite­ment reach­es its high­est pitch. Imag­ine a 50-foot beast with a girl in one paw climb­ing up the out­side of the Empire State Build­ing, and after putting the girl on a ledge, clutch­ing at air­planes, the pilots of which are pour­ing bul­lets from machine guns into the mon­ster’s body.” That sight must have struck the (still not over­ly thrilled) Hall as more impres­sive than it did Borges, but then, Borges, that vision­ary of dizzy­ing labyrinths, eter­ni­ties, and infini­tudes, had already seen true visions of enor­mous­ness — and enor­mi­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges, Film Crit­ic, Reviews Cit­i­zen Kane — and Gets a Response from Orson Welles

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) and Humphrey Bogart Pal Around During a 1956 Screen Test

in Film, Life | August 12th, 2014

“With deep sor­row, yet with great grat­i­tude for her amaz­ing life, we con­firm the pass­ing of Lau­ren Bacall.” So tweet­ed The Humphrey Bog­a­rt Estate today, let­ting cinephiles every­where know that Hol­ly­wood lost yet anoth­er great one this week. She was 89.

Bacall, of course, met Humphrey Bog­a­rt on the set of To Have and Have Not in 1943. And they became one of Hol­ly­wood’s leg­endary cou­ples, star­ring togeth­er in The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Pas­sage (1947), and Key Largo (1948). Above you can watch Bogie and Bacall share some light moments togeth­er dur­ing a cos­tume test for Melville Good­win, USA, a film the cou­ple nev­er ulti­mate­ly made. The footage was shot on Feb­ru­ary 20, 1956, just after Bog­a­rt learned that he had esophageal can­cer. He passed away less than a year lat­er, on Jan­u­ary 14, 1957. May Bogie & Bacall rest in peace.

Note: The cos­tume test, like many from the peri­od, does­n’t have sound. As you’ll see, you hard­ly need sound to appre­ci­ate the scene that unfolds. Don’t miss the part where the cam­era zooms in.

Jorge Luis Borges Reviews Citizen Kane — and Gets a Response from Orson Welles

in Film, Literature | August 12th, 2014

When we dis­cov­er Jorge Luis Borges, we usu­al­ly dis­cov­er him through his short sto­ries — or at least through his own high­ly dis­tinc­tive uses of the short sto­ry form. Those many of us who there­upon decide to read every­thing the man ever wrote soon­er or lat­er find that he ven­tured into oth­er realms of short text as well. Borges spent time as a poet, an essay­ist, and even as some­thing of a film crit­ic, a peri­od of his career that will delight the siz­able cinephilic seg­ment of his read­er­ship. “I’m almost a cen­tu­ry late to this par­ty,” writes one such fan, Bren­dan Kiley at The Stranger, “but I recent­ly stum­bled into the movie reviews of Jorge Luis Borges (in his Select­ed Non-Fic­tions) and they’re fan­tas­tic: gloomy, some­times bitchy, hilar­i­ous.” He first high­lights Borges’ 1941 assess­ment of Cit­i­zen Kane, which Inter­rel­e­vant pro­vides in its inci­sive, unspar­ing, ref­er­en­tial, and very brief entire­ty:

AN OVERWHELMING FILM

Cit­i­zen Kane (called The Cit­i­zen in Argenti­na) has at least two plots. The first, point­less­ly banal, attempts to milk applause from dimwits: a vain mil­lion­aire col­lects stat­ues, gar­dens, palaces, swim­ming pools, dia­monds, cars, libraries, man and women. Like an ear­li­er col­lec­tor (whose obser­va­tions are usu­al­ly ascribed to the Holy Ghost), he dis­cov­ers that this cor­nu­copia of mis­cel­lany is a van­i­ty of van­i­ties: all is van­i­ty. At the point of death, he yearns for one sin­gle thing in the uni­verse, the hum­ble sled he played with as a child!

The sec­ond plot is far supe­ri­or. It links the Koheleth to the mem­o­ry of anoth­er nihilist, Franz Kaf­ka. A kind of meta­phys­i­cal detec­tive sto­ry, its sub­ject (both psy­cho­log­i­cal and alle­gor­i­cal) is the inves­ti­ga­tion of a man’s inner self, through the works he has wrought, the words he has spo­ken, the many lives he has ruined. The same tech­nique was used by Joseph Con­rad in Chance (1914) and in that beau­ti­ful film The Pow­er and the Glo­ry: a rhap­sody of mis­cel­la­neous scenes with­out chrono­log­i­cal order. Over­whelm­ing­ly, end­less­ly, Orson Welles shows frag­ments of the life of the man, Charles Fos­ter Kane, and invites us to com­bine them and to recon­struct him.

Form of mul­ti­plic­i­ty and incon­gruity abound in the film: the first scenes record the trea­sures amassed by Kane; in one of the last, a poor woman, lux­u­ri­ant and suf­fer­ing, plays with an enor­mous jig­saw puz­zle on the floor of a palace that is also a muse­um. At the end we real­ize that the frag­ments are not gov­erned by any secret uni­ty: the detest­ed Charles Fos­ter Kane is a sim­u­lacrum, a chaos of appear­ances. (A pos­si­ble corol­lary, fore­seen by David Hume, Ernst Mach, and our own Mace­do­nio Fer­nan­dez: no man knows who he is, no man is any­one.) In a sto­ry by Chester­ton — “The Head of Cae­sar,” I think — the hero observes that noth­ing is so fright­en­ing as a labyrinth with no cen­ter. This film is pre­cise­ly that labyrinth.

We all know that a par­ty, a palace, a great under­tak­ing, a lunch for writ­ers and jour­nal­ists, an atmos­phere of cor­dial and spon­ta­neous cama­raderie, are essen­tial­ly hor­ren­dous. Cit­i­zen Kane is the first film to show such things with an aware­ness of this truth.

The pro­duc­tion is, in gen­er­al, wor­thy of its vast sub­ject. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy has a strik­ing depth, and there are shots whose far­thest planes (like Pre-Raphaelite paint­ings) are as pre­cise and detailed as the close-ups. I ven­ture to guess, nonethe­less, that Cit­i­zen Kane will endure as a cer­tain Grif­fith or Pudovkin films have “endured”—films whose his­tor­i­cal val­ue is unde­ni­able but which no one cares to see again. It is too gigan­tic, pedan­tic, tedious. It is not intel­li­gent, though it is the work of genius—in the most noc­tur­nal and Ger­man­ic sense of that bad word.

“A kind of meta­phys­i­cal detec­tive sto­ry,” “a labyrinth with no cen­ter,” “the work of a genius” — why, if I did­n’t know bet­ter, I’d think Borges here describes his own work. Welles him­self did­n’t go igno­rant of his film’s Bor­ge­sian nature, or at least of the ten­den­cy of oth­ers to point out its Bor­ge­sian nature, not always in a pos­i­tive light. “Some peo­ple called it warmed-over Borges,” Welles recalled in a con­ver­sa­tion 42 years lat­er with the film­mak­er Hen­ry Jaglom. Nor did he for­get Borges’ own cri­tique: “He said that it was pedan­tic, which is a very strange thing to say about it, and that it was a labyrinth. And that the worst thing about a labyrinth is that there’s no way out. And this is a labyrinth of a movie with no way out. Borges is half-blind. Nev­er for­get that. But you know, I could take it that he and Sartre” — who thought the film’s image “too much in love with itself” — “sim­ply hat­ed Kane. In their minds, they were see­ing— and attack­ing — some­thing else. It’s them, not my work.” Defen­sive though this may sound, it iden­ti­fies the impulse that had the author of Labyrinths see­ing all those labyrinths in the movie: to quote Anaïs Nin, a writer con­tem­po­rary though not often brought into the same con­text with Borges, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

You can also read Borges’ 1933 review of King Kong here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions

Jorge Luis Borges: “Soc­cer is Pop­u­lar Because Stu­pid­i­ty is Pop­u­lar”

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.