You’ve seen buildings magically transformed into artistic canvases before — the Astronomical Clock Tower in Prague; the iconic buildings at Cambridge University; and then this facade in Ukraine. But have you seen the audience take control of the architectural painting? That’s what happened in Lyon, France during the “Fête des lumières,” held last December. Throw an audio analysis algorithm and a microphone into the mix, and the audience now drives the surreal architectural show…
You’ve heard him read Lady Gaga, you’ve seen him reminisce with his fellow lov-ahs on Saturday Night Live, and you’ve heard him sub in for Leonard Lopate on the radio. But we’re not sure if any of Christopher Walken’s appearances can beat his demented spin on “The Three Little Pigs.” Mr. Walken’s reading of the potentially terrifying story is uncharacteristically jolly (he’s going for laughs, not chills), and we freely recommend it for children. Especially children from Brooklyn.
Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.
In 1932, as America slipped deeper into the Great Depression, Raymond Chandler lost his job as an oil company executive. Drinking and absenteeism didn’t help. So it was time to improvise. Soon enough, the 45 year old reinvented himself, becoming America’s foremost writer of hard-boiled detective fiction. During the 30s, he wrote 20 stories for pulp magazines and published his first novel, The Big Sleep(1939). Then, it was off to Hollywood, where Chandler co-wrote Double Indemnity (1944) with Billy Wilder and collaborated on Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train(1951).
Hollywood may have buttered Chandler’s bread, but he never felt much affection for the film industry, and didn’t hesitate to say so. Writing for The Atlantic in November, 1945, he lamented how the Hollywood system bled anything you’d call “art” from the screenwriting process:
Hollywood is a showman’s paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making – and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay. But in Hollywood the screenplay in written by a salaried writer under the supervision of a producer — that is to say, by an employee without power or decision over the uses of his own craft, without ownership of it, and, however extravagantly paid, almost without honor for it.
Back in 1915, John Buchan published his gripping adventure novel The Thirty-Nine Steps (find free ebook here). Two decades later, in 1935, Alfred Hitchcock directed the first of four film adaptations based on the book, and it’s by far the best. We won’t revisit the plot.
The director’s deepest subjects—theater and its relation to film, the abandonment of human beings in vacant and foreboding landscapes, the complex human quest for knowledge, and the nature of accidents—abound in The 39 Steps. Hitchcock’s perception of the precariousness of human existence, and his belief in film’s capacity to reveal and reflect on it, lie at the heart of his achievement as a master of the art of film.
Thanks to YouTube and the Internet Archive, you can sit back and enjoy The 39 Steps online. It’s perfect for the upcoming weekend, and it’s one of 15 Hitchcock films available on the web. See our list of Free Hitchcock Films and our larger list of 1000+ Free Movies Online.
Almost 35 years ago, sometime in the late 70s, the filmmakers Errol Morris and Werner Herzog made a bet. Correction: At the time, Herzog was a filmmaker, and already a star, but Errol Morris was just a guy obsessed with the idea of making a film about a pet cemetery. ‘I don’t believe you have the guts,’ Herzog told Morris. ‘But if you do, I’ll eat my shoe.’
Morris rolled up his sleeves and got to work. The result is his stunning debut, Gates of Heaven (1978). In response, Herzog rolled up his sleeves, and got to work as well — in the kitchen, where he and uber-chef Alice Waters tried their mightiest to concoct a decent recipe for leather footwear.
Just to complete the documentarian trifecta, the 20-minute short film, Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe(1980), was directed by the great Berkeley filmmaker, Les Blanc. You can watch a shortened version above, or the full version here. The film is also now added to our big collection of Free Movies Online.
Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.
Canadian “geek rapper” Baba Brinkman first garnered popular attention with a well-received, well-reviewed rap adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (To get a sense of the project, check out this brief scene from “The Pardoner’s Tale.”) And we also previously featured his brilliant work on Macmillan’s What’s Your English? campaign.
Brinkman has brought his follow-up show, a fascinating homage to Charles Darwin called “The Rap Guide to Evolution,” to New York City, where it’s getting rave reviews. In the video above, he explains how he went about putting the project together, and how evolutionary science enriched his understanding of the violence and anger so prevalent in the music he loves. The whole talk is great, but if you want to start off with a taste of the rap itself, skip forward to minute 9:03.
Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.
The Dziga Vertov Group (1968–1972) was a film collective co-founded by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, named after the pioneering documentary filmmaker Dziga Vertov. Anti-auteur, anti-verité, anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist, the DVG was also the most radical of the French film collectives, and so, of course, it managed to land a great advertising gig.
But don’t call it a sellout. According to at least one account, Godard and Gorin managed to stick it to their ad agency. Furthermore, they delivered full-throttle irony: Their Schick commercial features a young man and woman arguing over a news broadcast about Palestine … and Palestine was also the subject of an ill-fated 1970 DGV project called “Until Victory.” You can read the fascinating back-story of that film here.
And for the movie geeks: Yes, the actress is Godard regular Juliet Berto.
Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.
Stephen B. Smith, a political science professor at Yale University since 1984, has made available a 24-lecture course, Introduction to Political Philosophy, which covers Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Tocqueville.
His approach is highly literary. In his Republic lectures, for instance, he spends a good chunk of the time discussing the metaphors and characters involved. One of Smith’s major concerns is what citizenship amounts to. The lecture above is on Plato’s “Apology,” and while this may be Plato’s most famous work (with its dictum that “The unexamined life is not worth living”), it’s less about political philosophy than about the virtuous life. Smith sees these topics as intimately related, and in his closing lecture, he gives a defense of patriotism, saying that in the ivy league environment, expressing an interest in patriotism is like confessing an interest in child pornography.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for these feel-good moments. This past weekend, Adam Bevell, who lost his sight more than two decades ago, attended his 20th U2 concert in Nashville. Throughout the show, he held up a sign that read “Blind Guitar Player: Bring Me Up!” And eventually Bono took him up on the offer, inviting him on stage to strum along to “All I Want is You” and then letting him leave with a little party favor — Bono’s green guitar. A class act.
You know George Lucas’ classic, The Empire Strikes Back. Now roll it back a good 60 years and imagine the silent version. It works unexpectedly well.
H/T to @wesalwan. And don’t miss many landmark silent films in our collection of Free Movies Online. Chaplin, early Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, the first sci-fi and western films — they’re all there. Find them at the bottom of the page…
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