A View From the Room Where Melville Wrote Moby Dick (Plus a Free Celebrity Reading of the Novel)

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | April 11th, 2013

It’s in Pitts­field, Mass­a­chu­setts, right in the midst of the Berk­shires. Need­less to say, not a drop of water in sight.

Now that I’ve got your atten­tion, let me give you an update on The Moby Dick Big Read project. Since we high­light­ed the project last fall, all 135 chap­ters of the great Amer­i­can nov­el have been read by celebri­ties like Til­da Swin­ton, Stephen Fry, Mary Oliv­er, and Simon Cal­low. And now the com­plete set of audio record­ings are online and ready for free down­load. Get them here:  iTunes, Sound­cloud, RSS Feed, or the Big Read web site itself.

We start you off with Tilda’s read­ing of Chap­ter 1 right below.

Pho­to above comes to us via @stevesilberman

William Shatner Sings Nearly Blasphemous Version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (1968)

in Music | April 10th, 2013

On a lazy sum­mer week­end last year, we asked for a lit­tle help from our friends. We asked: “What are the worst Bea­t­les’ cov­ers you’ve ever heard — ones so bad, they’re good?” And boy did you deliv­er. You rat­tled off 15 cringe-induc­ing cov­ers, includ­ing Bill Cos­by singing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band;” Sean Con­nery talk­ing his way through “In My Life;” Wing screech­ing “I Wan­na Hold Your Hand;” Tiny Tim doing dam­age to “Nowhere Man;” and much more. Look­ing back, I’m still per­son­al­ly drawn (in a it’s-so-cheesy-it’s-great kind of way) to William Shat­ner’s ver­sion of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds.” Rid­ing high on his Star Trek fame, Shat­ner record­ed the song for his first music album, The Trans­formed Man, a 1968 con­cept album that jux­ta­posed clas­sic lit­er­a­ture with mod­ern pop lyrics. For exam­ple, he put lines from Cyra­no de Berg­er­ac next to Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tam­bourine Man.” Years lat­er, in a 2001 inter­view, Paul McCart­ney laugh­ing­ly gave props to Shat­ner’s per­for­mance.

When you’re done with this piece of work, I’d encour­age to vis­it The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs.

Artist Shepard Fairey Curates His Favorite YouTube Videos

in Art, Music | April 10th, 2013

In a video for MOCA, the “defin­ing muse­um of con­tem­po­rary art” in Los Ange­les, Shep­ard Fairey, the graph­ic design­er and illus­tra­tor best known for the Oba­ma Hope poster of 2008, spent a few min­utes rap­ping about the YouTube videos that have inspired him, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. He starts with one we’ve fea­tured here before  — Saul Bass’ Pitch for the Redesign of Ma Bel­l’s Logo. Read all about that fas­ci­nat­ing 1969 project here.

Next up comes the 1981 music video for Blondie’s “Rap­ture” — momen­tous because it was the first rap video ever aired on MTV and because it fea­tures an appear­ance by graf­fi­ti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who stepped in for Grand­mas­ter Flash when he inex­plic­a­bly went MIA.

Now let’s roll George Clin­ton’s video for “Atom­ic Dog” (1982), an inspi­ra­tion to Fairey because it lay­ers 1980s-video game imagery on top of prison scenes, cre­at­ing a “tem­plate for what a lot of gang­ster rap­pers would embrace lat­er.” Call it the ur-gangs­ta rap video.

Final­ly, Shep­ard refers to videos by The Sex Pis­tols, the Eng­lish punk band formed in 1975. But when it comes to select­ing a par­tic­u­lar clip, he leaves us hang­ing. So, giv­en that curat­ing YouTube videos is our every­day gig, hope you don’t mind if we lay some “God Save the Queen” on you. Enjoy.

via Boing Boing

Ernest Hemingway Appears on Cuban TV in 1954; Talks About Winning The Nobel Prize

in Literature | April 10th, 2013

Ernest Hem­ing­way lived in Cuba much longer than he lived in Paris or Key West. From 1939 until 1960–the year before his death–he lived on a farm out­side Havana, in the vil­lage of San Fran­cis­co de Paula, called Fin­ca Vigía, or “Look­out Farm.”

It was not the most fruit­ful peri­od of Hem­ing­way’s life as a writer. His 1950 nov­el, Across the Riv­er and Into the Trees, was sav­aged by the crit­ics, and many were begin­ning to think he was fin­ished. But in 1952 Hem­ing­way came roar­ing back with The Old Man and the Sea, set in Cuba, an ele­men­tal sto­ry of a lone­ly old fish­er­man’s strug­gle to catch a big fish and bring it back to shore through shark-infest­ed waters. With The Old Man and the Sea, William Faulkn­er said, Hem­ing­way had found God. “Time may show it to be the best sin­gle piece of any of us,” said Faulkn­er,” I mean his and my con­tem­po­raries.”

In 1953 the nov­el was award­ed the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1954 Hem­ing­way received the Nobel Prize in Fic­tion. Short­ly after­ward he was vis­it­ed at the Fin­ca Vigía by reporter Juan Manuel Martínez and a cam­era­man from the Cuban tele­vi­sion net­work CMQ. In a mix­ture of Castil­ian Span­ish and Cuban ver­nac­u­lar, Hem­ing­way tells Martínez that he is over­joyed at being the first Cubano sato, or “half-breed Cuban” to receive a Nobel Prize. “The use of the adjec­tive ‘sato’ by Ernest Hem­ing­way shows he had a deep rela­tion­ship with ordi­nary Cubans,” writes Guiomar Vene­gas Del­ga­do in a 2009 arti­cle in enVi­vo, the jour­nal of Cuban radio and tele­vi­sion, “and that as an artist he knew to lis­ten and assim­i­late their idioms and slang.”

To hear Ernest Hem­ing­way read his 1954 Nobel Prize accep­tance speech from Cuba, see our July 2011 post, “Remem­ber­ing Ernest Hem­ing­way, Fifty Years After His Death.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

James Joyce in Paris: “Deal With Him, Hem­ing­way!”

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Master Class on Film Editing

in Film | April 10th, 2013

If you’ve made a film, you’ll remem­ber when you real­ized that edit­ing, more than any oth­er stage of pro­duc­tion, deter­mines the audi­ence’s final expe­ri­ence.  “The first films ever made were shot in one take,” wrote the late, always edit­ing-con­scious Roger Ebert, review­ing Mike Fig­gis’ Time Code. “Just about every­body agrees that the intro­duc­tion of edit­ing was an improve­ment.” Fig­gis’ film tried to do with­out edit­ing, suc­cess­ful­ly to my mind, not so suc­cess­ful­ly to Ebert’s. Lat­er, the crit­ic open­ly loathed Vin­cent Gal­lo’s tra­di­tion­al­ly edit­ed The Brown Bun­ny, but his opin­ion turned almost 180 degrees when the direc­tor re-edit­ed the movie, strate­gi­cal­ly cut­ting 26 min­utes. “It is said that edit­ing is the soul of the cin­e­ma,” Ebert wrote of the revi­sion. “In the case of The Brown Bun­ny, it is its sal­va­tion.” Yet the impulse to cre­ate a whol­ly unedit­ed film still occa­sion­al­ly grabs a major film­mak­er, and not all of them wind up remak­ing Andy Warhol’s eight-hour still shot Empire.

Some of these pic­tures, thanks to well-placed cuts and clever cam­era move­ments, only look unedit­ed. The best-known of these comes from no less a crafts­man than Alfred Hitch­cock, who built 1948’s Rope out of ten seem­ing­ly cut-free seg­ments, each inter­nal splice metic­u­lous­ly dis­guised. Twelve years lat­er, he would make his most overt and mem­o­rable use of edit­ing in Psy­cho. In the clip at the top of this post, Hitch­cock him­self explains the impor­tance of edit­ing — or, in his pre­ferred term, assem­bly. He breaks down the struc­ture of Psy­cho’s famous show­er scene. “Now, as you know, you could not take the cam­era and just show a nude woman being stabbed to death. It had to be done impres­sion­is­ti­cal­ly. It was done with lit­tle pieces of the film: the head, the hand, parts of the tor­so, shad­ow on the cur­tain, the show­er itself. In that scene there were 78 pieces of film in about 45 sec­onds.” Say what you will about the con­tent-restrict­ing Hays Code; its lim­i­ta­tions could some­times dri­ve to new heights the visu­al cre­ativ­i­ty of our best cin­e­mat­ic minds.

If you’d like to behold more of the edit­ing prowess Hitch­cock com­mand­ed, vis­it our col­lec­tion of 20 Free Alfred Hitch­cock Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

Alfred Hitch­cock: The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Alfred Hitch­cock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Cre­ative Mind

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

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

Fascinating Kodachrome Footage of “Victory over Japan Day” in Honolulu, 1945

in History | April 9th, 2013

When Field Mar­shal Wil­helm Kei­t­el signed Nazi Ger­many’s uncon­di­tion­al sur­ren­der on May 8, 1945 in Berlin (footage here), the Sec­ond World War may have been over for Europe, but the war on the Pacif­ic front waged on as Japan refused to sur­ren­der. Only after the fate­ful deci­sion to drop atom­ic bombs on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, and after the Sovi­ets invad­ed Japan­ese-held Manchuria, did Emper­or Hiro­hi­to accept the hope­less­ness of the sit­u­a­tion and agree to sur­ren­der on August 15. When the offi­cial radio announce­ment (record­ing here) was broad­cast — due to time zone dif­fer­ences on August 14 in the U.S. — the news spread like wild­fire and the day became known as “Vic­to­ry over Japan Day”, or sim­ply as “VJ Day.” Spon­ta­neous cel­e­bra­tions erupt­ed all over the Unit­ed States, but espe­cial­ly on Hawaii, where the Japan­ese attacked Pearl Har­bor on Decem­ber 7, 1941 lead­ing the US to offi­cial­ly enter World War II.

One of these spon­ta­neous cel­e­bra­tions in Hon­olu­lu was cap­tured on Kodachrome 16mm film and has been dig­i­tal­ly restored. One com­menter on Vimeo has iden­ti­fied all of the exact loca­tions here.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

The Personality of Parisian Neighborhoods Expressed Through Typography

in Art | April 9th, 2013

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Havas Worl­wide Paris, a glob­al design agency, reawak­ened fond mem­o­ries of my days liv­ing in Paris. They did it by cre­at­ing this artis­tic video that cap­tures the char­ac­ter of Parisian neighborhoods/metro stops through typog­ra­phy. The Marais, Latin Quar­ter, Mont­martre, Père Lachaise, Bastille — they all get a cre­ative nod.

The video was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a New Years Greet­ing card, and it comes to us via Pret-a-Porter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Le Fla­neur: Time Lapse Video of Paris With­out the Peo­ple

Names of Paris Métro Stops Act­ed Out: Pho­tos by Janol Apin

It’s 5:46 A.M. and Paris Is Under Water

David Lynch Talks About His 99 Favorite Pho­tographs at Paris Pho­to 2012

Italian Photographer Maurizio Galimberti Creates Cubist Polaroid Collages of Artists & Celebrities

in Art, Media, Photography | April 9th, 2013

Five years ago Polaroid announced that they would no longer make ana­log insta­mat­ic film. At that moment, if one lis­tened care­ful­ly, one could almost hear some of the 20^th cen­tu­ry’s most famous artists wail in despair, even from the grave. Ansel Adams loved Polaroid and shot some of his famous Yosemite images in that for­mat first.

But a tech­nique with that kind of fol­low­ing doesn’t die off eas­i­ly. Two ardent Polaroid fans—ardent enough to actu­al­ly attend the clo­sure of a Polaroid fac­to­ry in the Netherlands—met and came up with a plan to save the fac­to­ry and Polaroid instant film. They called their plan the Impos­si­ble Project. They leased one of the Dutch fac­to­ry build­ings and even­tu­al­ly fired up the machines again, turn­ing out new instant film.

Lucky for us. Artists like David Hock­ney have long made beau­ti­ful use of Polaroid instant pho­tos to con­struct cubist col­lages. One of the best at this is the Ital­ian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mau­r­izio Gal­im­ber­ti who cre­ates ter­rif­ic celebri­ty por­traits using a Polaroid.

Gal­im­ber­ti con­sid­ers him­self a painter who uses a cam­era. Watch­ing the video of his pho­to shoot with painter Chuck Close, it’s inter­est­ing to observe how sim­i­lar Galimberti’s pho­to col­lage (above) is to Close’s own paint­ed self-por­traits.

Gal­im­ber­ti also has pret­ty good access to celebri­ties, hav­ing shot the por­trait of John­ny Depp and this one of George Clooney at the 2003 Venice Film Fes­ti­val.

Gal­im­ber­ti posts a num­ber of more recent celebri­ty por­traits on his web­site, where he also dis­plays his abstract city pho­to col­lages.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site: .  

Room 237: New Documentary Explores Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Those It Obsesses

in Film | April 9th, 2013

Young movie fans often dis­cov­er the exis­tence of auteurs through one auteur in par­tic­u­lar: Stan­ley Kubrick. Often, they dis­cov­er him through one film in par­tic­u­lar: The Shin­ing. Adapt­ed — loose­ly adapt­ed, to the point of rein­ven­tion — from Stephen King’s nov­el, Kubrick­’s first pic­ture of the eight­ies found itself mar­ket­ed as a straight-on hor­ror movie. Kids savor few expe­ri­ences so rich­ly as get­ting scared by a sto­ry, but when they sit down to get scared by The Shin­ing, they don’t feel quite what they expect­ed to. The movie may fill them with fear (I’ve per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced no greater dis­tur­bance than the stare of that 1920s fel­low in the dog cos­tume toward the end), but it also fills them with the sense that it does­n’t quite align with all the hor­ror movies they’ve watched before. Some of these kids want to find out why. Soon­er or lat­er, they stum­ble upon Bill Blake­more’s well-known essay “The Fam­i­ly of Man,” which exam­ines The Shin­ing and finds it brim­ming with sym­bol­ism per­tain­ing to Native Amer­i­can dis­pos­ses­sion and slaugh­ter. These kids sure­ly all grow up to become cinephiles, but I like to think that some grew up to become the sub­jects of Room 237, Rod­ney Ascher’s new doc­u­men­tary about Shin­ing obses­sives, whose trail­er you can watch above.

“In 1980 Stan­ley Kubrick released his mas­ter­piece of mod­ern hor­ror The Shin­ing,” reads the trail­er’s crawl. “Over 30 years lat­er, we’re still strug­gling to under­stand its hid­den mean­ings.” John Pow­ers’ NPR piece on the doc­u­men­tary can tell you more. “Where you may think it’s mere­ly a hor­ror sto­ry — remem­ber that blood flood­ing out of the ele­va­tor? — these devo­tees argue that Kubrick­’s movie is real­ly about more than a writer going homi­ci­dal­ly bonkers,” Pow­ers says. “For one, it’s about the geno­cide against Native Amer­i­cans; for anoth­er, it’s about the Holo­caust; yet anoth­er says the film is Kubrick­’s admis­sion that he helped fake footage of the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing. By way of evi­dence, these folks point to all sorts of ‘clues,’ from the pres­ence in sev­er­al shots of the Calumet Bak­ing Pow­der logo — with its dis­tinc­tive trib­al chief in a feath­ered head­dress — to appar­ent con­ti­nu­ity errors involv­ing mis­placed chairs that, this being Kubrick, can’t pos­si­bly be mere errors.” Whether you cred­it Shin­ing the­o­ries or not, you might con­sid­er pref­ac­ing your own Room 237 screen­ing with a watch of The Shin­ing Code, an hour-long video essay on Kubrick­’s film that puts this mind­set on dis­play. Just promise us you won’t get involved with any moon hoax peo­ple.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mak­ing The Shin­ing

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing (As Told by Those Who Helped Him Make It)

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

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

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

Flashmob Recreates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shopping Mall

in Art, Business | April 8th, 2013

The Euro­pean bank­ing sec­tor may still be on shaky foot­ing. But it’s not stop­ping Euro­pean banks from putting togeth­er a good flash­mob. Last year, the Span­ish bank, Ban­co Sabadell, brought togeth­er 100 pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians and singers to per­form the anthem of the Euro­pean Union — Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. And mov­ing­ly so. It all hap­pened in the Plaça de Sant Roc in Sabadell, Spain, a lit­tle north of Barcelona.

This year, we trav­el north to the city of Bre­da in Hol­land, where the Dutch multi­na­tion­al bank ING paid per­form­ers to recre­ate Rem­brandt’s famous paint­ing, The Night Watch, in a shop­ping cen­ter. The occa­sion? The re-open­ing of The Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam on April 13 after a long 10-year ren­o­va­tion.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Imag­in­ing Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You