The Films of Quentin Tarantino: Watch Video Essays on Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill & More

in Film | September 1st, 2015

In the ten years between Reser­voir Dogs (1992) and Kill Bill (2003), Quentin Taran­ti­no was all some film fans could talk about, and who many up-and-com­ing direc­tors idol­ized and copied. But it would take anoth­er ten years for his films to be intel­li­gent­ly dis­cussed, and it’s a sign of these times that the best essays are not in print but in video for­mat.

Matt Zoller Seitz and his col­leagues over at Indiewire’s Press Play blog led the charge with a series of 10 ‑12 minute video essays (col­lec­tive­ly called “On the Q.T.”) that explore indi­vid­ual Taran­ti­no films and his approach to film­mak­ing.

The video above is part two of the series and probes what it means to be cool in Pulp Fic­tion, how char­ac­ters cre­ate their own mytholo­gies and what hap­pens when real­i­ty con­fronts them.

If that video makes you look at Pulp Fic­tion in a deep­er way, then you’ll enjoy the first in the series, on Reser­voir Dogs. Seitz claims the film is both a col­lage of film quotes and ref­er­ences, from City on Fire to The Killing, but there’s a human heart beat­ing beneath all of it. And that’s a les­son lost on all the imi­ta­tors that came in Tarantino’s ‘90s wake, he says.

You might also want to check out this two part essay (Part 1 — Part 2) on Jack­ie Brown – this one craft­ed by Press Play’s Odie Henderson–which exam­ines what Taran­ti­no took from Elmore Leonard in his only adap­ta­tion to date, and what is pure QT. (Hint: It’s the cast­ing of Pam Gri­er).

The final video in the series looks at the Female Arche­type vs. the God­dess in Kill Bill. Cre­at­ed by Nel­son Car­va­jal, who uses cap­tions instead of nar­ra­tion, it’s the weak­est in the series, being long on clips and short on ideas.

But with The Hate­ful Eight on the hori­zon, the entire series will get you ready for inter­pret­ing the lat­est in his oeu­vre.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Quentin Taran­ti­no Super­cuts Explore the Director’s Styl­ized Use of Sound, Close Ups & Cars in His Films

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

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.

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The Groundbreaking Silhouette Animations of Lotte Reiniger: Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and More

in Animation | September 1st, 2015

You can’t talk about the ori­gin of the mod­ern ani­mat­ed film with­out talk­ing about the work of Lotte Reiniger (1899–1981), the Ger­man cre­ator of some 40 ani­mat­ed films between the 1910s and the 70s. And you can hard­ly talk about Reiniger’s work with­out talk­ing about the enchant­i­ng art of shad­ow pup­petry, which we most­ly asso­ciate with tra­di­tion­al cul­tures like that of Indone­sia, but which also inspired her ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry inno­va­tions in ani­ma­tion.

This may sound quite obscure, espe­cial­ly when put up against the Dis­ney and Pixar extrav­a­gan­zas in the­aters today, but all these forms of enter­tain­ment draw, in a sense, from a com­mon well: the fairy tale.

The cre­ators of today’s mega-bud­get ani­mat­ed films know full well the endur­ing val­ue of fairy tales, and so con­tin­ue to adapt their basic sto­ry mate­r­i­al, lay­er­ing on both the lat­est visu­al effects and smirk­ing gags with up-to-the-minute ref­er­ences in order to keep the obvi­ous enter­tain­ment val­ue high. But Indone­sian shad­ow pup­pet the­ater has been doing the same thing for cen­turies and cen­turies, con­vert­ing ancient folk­tales into an evening’s (albeit often a long evening’s) musi­cal enter­tain­ment for audi­ences of era after new era. And Reiniger, in her day, revived the old­est Euro­pean sto­ries with tech­nol­o­gy once as strik­ing and cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly cut­ting-edge as today’s most advanced CGI.

You can watch Reiniger’s 1922 adap­ta­tion of Cin­derel­la at the top of the post. “Nobody else has defined a form of ani­ma­tion as author­i­ta­tive­ly as she did,” writes Dan North of Spec­tac­u­lar Attrac­tions, “and the open­ing sec­tion, where scis­sors make the first cuts into the main char­ac­ter, con­jur­ing her out of sim­ple raw mate­ri­als, dis­plays the means by which the sto­ry is fab­ri­cat­ed and marks it out as a prod­uct of her labour.” Below that, we have a lat­er work, 1955’s Hansel and Gre­tel, an exam­ple of her fur­ther devel­oped tech­nique, and just above you’ll find that same year’s Däumelinchen, also known as Thum­be­li­na.

To get a clear­er sense of exact­ly what went into these shorts (or into 1926’s The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, her only fea­ture-length film, and first ful­ly ani­mat­ed fea­ture in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma), watch the sev­en­teen-minute doc­u­men­tary “The Art of Lotte Reiniger” just above. “No one else has tak­en a spe­cif­ic ani­ma­tion tech­nique and made it so utter­ly her own,” writes the British Film Insti­tute’s Philip Kemp, “to date she has no rivals, and for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es the his­to­ry of sil­hou­ette ani­ma­tion begins and ends with Reiniger” — but the way she breathed life into her mate­r­i­al lives on.

You can find Reiniger’s films added to our list of Free Ani­mat­ed Films, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Tur­tur­ro Reads Ita­lo Calvino’s Ani­mat­ed Fairy Tale, “The False Grand­moth­er”

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

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.

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Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley in a Striking Modern Aesthetic (1894)

in Art, Literature | September 1st, 2015

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In William Faulkner’s 1936 Absa­lom, Absa­lom!, one of the novel’s most eru­dite char­ac­ters paints a pic­ture of a Goth­ic scene by com­par­ing it to an Aubrey Beard­s­ley draw­ing. Ref­er­ences to Beard­s­ley also appear in oth­er Faulkn­er nov­els, and the Eng­lish artist of the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry also influ­enced the Amer­i­can nov­el­ist’s visu­al art. Like Faulkn­er, Beard­s­ley was irre­sistibly drawn to “the grotesque and the erot­ic,” as The Paris Review writes, and his work was high­ly favored among French and British poets of his day. The mod­ernist’s appre­ci­a­tion of Beard­s­ley was about more than Faulkner’s own youth­ful romance with French Sym­bol­ist art and mor­bid roman­tic verse, how­ev­er. Beard­s­ley cre­at­ed a mod­ern Goth­ic aes­thet­ic that came to rep­re­sent both Art Nou­veau and deca­dent, trans­gres­sive lit­er­a­ture for decades to come, pre­sent­ing a seduc­tive visu­al chal­lenge to the repres­sion of Vic­to­ri­an respectabil­i­ty.

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Beard­s­ley was a young aes­thete with a lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tion. In his short career—he died at the age of 25—he illus­trat­ed many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, fore­fa­ther of the Amer­i­can Goth­ic.

Beard­s­ley also famous­ly illus­trat­ed Oscar Wilde’s scan­dalous dra­ma, Salome in 1893, to the sur­prise of its author, who lat­er inscribed an illus­trat­ed copy with the words, “For the only artist who, besides myself, knows what the Dance of the Sev­en Veils is, and can see that invis­i­ble dance.” Beard­s­ley’s draw­ings first appeared in an art mag­a­zine called The Stu­dio, then the fol­low­ing year in an Eng­lish pub­li­ca­tion of the text.

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Beard­s­ley and Wilde’s joint cre­ation embraced the macabre and flaunt­ed Vic­to­ri­an sex­u­al norms. After an abrupt can­cel­la­tion of Salome’s planned open­ing in Eng­land, the illus­trat­ed edi­tion intro­duced British read­ers to the play’s unset­tling themes. The British Library quotes crit­ic Peter Raby, who argues, “Beard­s­ley gave the text its first true pub­lic and mod­ern per­for­mance, plac­ing it firm­ly with­in the 1890s – a dis­turb­ing frame­work for the dark ele­ments of cru­el­ty and eroti­cism, and of the delib­er­ate ambi­gu­i­ty and blur­ring of gen­der, which he released from Wilde’s play as though he were open­ing Pandora’s box.”

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Wilde’s play was osten­si­bly banned for its por­tray­al of Bib­li­cal char­ac­ters, pro­hib­it­ed on stage at the time. Fur­ther­more, it “struck a nerve,” writes Yele­na Pri­morac at Vic­to­ri­an Web, with its “por­tray­al of woman in extreme oppo­si­tion to the tra­di­tion­al notion of vir­tu­ous, pure, clean and asex­u­al wom­an­hood the Vic­to­ri­ans felt com­fort­able liv­ing with.” Wilde was at first con­cerned that the illus­tra­tions, with their sug­ges­tive­ly posed fig­ures and frankly sex­u­al and vio­lent images, would “reduce the text to the role of ‘illus­trat­ing Aubrey’s illus­tra­tions.’” (You can see some of the more sug­ges­tive images here.)

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Indeed, it is hard to think of Wilde’s text and Beardsley’s images as exist­ing inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er, so close­ly have they been iden­ti­fied for over a hun­dred years. And yet the draw­ings don’t always cor­re­spond to the nar­ra­tive. Instead they present a kind of par­al­lel text, itself dense­ly woven with visu­al and lit­er­ary allu­sions, many of them drawn from Sym­bol­ist preoccupations—with women’s hair, for exam­ple, as an allur­ing and threat­en­ing emblem of unre­strained female sex­u­al­i­ty. Pub­lished in full in 1894, in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Wilde’s orig­i­nal French text, the Beard­s­ley-illus­trat­ed Salome con­tained 16 plates, some of them tamed or cen­sored by the pub­lish­ers. Read the full text, with draw­ings, here, and see a gallery of Beardsley’s orig­i­nal uncen­sored illus­tra­tions at the British Library.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Pablo Picasso’s Ten­der Illus­tra­tions For Aristo­phanes’ Lysis­tra­ta (1934)

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

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How Drums & Bass Make the Song: Isolated Tracks from Led Zeppelin, Rush, The Pixies, The Beatles to Royal Blood

in Music | August 31st, 2015

There may be no more crit­i­cal inter­play between two musi­cians in mod­ern music than that between bassists and drum­mers. As jazz bassist Chris­t­ian McBride put it in a recent NPR inter­view, “the bass and drums should work as one instru­ment. It deter­mines whether it’s funk or jazz or coun­try or rock ‘n’ roll. It all depends on what rhythms are com­ing from the bass and the drums that make a par­tic­u­lar music what it is.” In funk and jazz, these rhythm play­ers tend to get a lot more cred­it. Most people—even die hard fans—would be hard pressed to name one coun­try bassist or drum­mer. In rock and roll, we’re used to laud­ing lead singers and gui­tarists. And cer­tain­ly clas­sic duos from Jag­ger and Richards, to Page and Plant, Roth and Van Halen, Mor­ris­sey and Marr and a lengthy list of oth­ers each have earned their vaunt­ed places in music his­to­ry.

Yet as a fan, I’ve always been drawn to unsung bass and drum combos—like The Smiths’ Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, Jane’s Addiction’s Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins, and many oth­ers in bands whose flam­boy­ant lead­ers tend­ed to over­shad­ow their rock sol­id sup­ports. This is not the case in many oth­er groups of super­stars. McBride gives us the exam­ples of Boot­sy Collins and John Starks in James Brown’s band, and bassist Sam Jones and drum­mer Louis Hayes from Can­non­ball Adderley’s ensem­ble. Today we look specif­i­cal­ly at some famed rock rhythm duos, and lis­ten in on iso­lat­ed tracks from some of their bands’ most well-known tunes. We begin with the absolute­ly clas­sic pow­er­house rhythm sec­tion of John Paul Jones (top) and John Bon­ham, whose grooves anchored the riff machine that was Led Zep­pelin. Just above, hear their push and pull on “Ram­ble On.”

As it turns out, Zep­pelin were big James Brown fans, and Jones has specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned the funk influ­ence on his play­ing. Jones and Bon­ham, in turn, have influ­enced thou­sands of rhythm play­ers, includ­ing per­haps one of the most famous of bass and drum duos, Rush’s Ged­dy Lee and Neil Peart. Just above, hear Lee’s fuzzed-out bass work in tan­dem with Peart’s expert time changes and break­downs in iso­lat­ed tracks from “Vital Signs,” a song from their ear­ly-eight­ies new wave-inspired album Mov­ing Pic­tures. Rush is cer­tain­ly not everyone’s cup of tea, but more rock and roll drum­mers than not prob­a­bly cite them as an influ­ence at some point in their careers. Though it wasn’t appar­ent to me in their hey­day, even such a min­i­mal­ist band as the Pix­ies had a Rush influ­ence, specif­i­cal­ly by way of drum­mer David Lover­ing. His locked grooves with bassist Kim Deal more or less defined the sound of the 90s through their influ­ence on Nir­vana, Weez­er, Radio­head, Smash­ing Pump­kins and count­less oth­ers. Hear their iso­lat­ed rhythm tracks from Doolit­tle’s “Wave of Muti­la­tion” below.

It’s hard­ly nec­es­sary to point out that per­haps the most famed rhythm sec­tion in rock his­to­ry comes from its most cel­e­brat­ed band. But Paul McCart­ney and Ringo Starr often get remem­bered more for their song­writ­ing and per­son­al­i­ties than for their rhythm play­ing. Ringo’s tak­en his share of unde­served flak for his no-frills style. I’ve always found him to be an espe­cial­ly taste­ful play­er who knows when to add the per­fect fill or accent, when to lay back and let the song dom­i­nate, and when to get out of the way entire­ly. Starr’s thought­ful drum­ming per­fect­ly com­ple­ments McCartney’s high­ly melod­ic walk­ing basslines—captured as well on the George Har­ri­son-penned “Some­thing,” below, as on any­thing else the band record­ed.

Again, it’s hard­ly nec­es­sary to cite the num­ber of bands influ­enced by the Bea­t­les, though it’s hard­er to name rhythm sec­tions direct­ly inspired by McCart­ney and Starr’s dynam­ic. Nonethe­less, their DNA runs through decades of pop music in all its forms. The oth­er three duos above have direct­ly inspired a more spe­cif­ic phe­nom­e­non of bands made up sole­ly of bass and drums. One such band, the UK’s Roy­al Blood, has won numer­ous awards (and praise from Jim­my Page). See them per­form a live ver­sion of “Fig­ure It Out” below.

Oth­er bands like Death From Above 1979 and Om have huge­ly devot­ed fol­low­ings. (See a dis­cus­sion of more bass-and-drum-only com­bos here.) With the suc­cess of these bands—along with the rise of elec­tron­ic dance music as a dom­i­nant form—it’s safe to say that killer rhythm sec­tions, so often over­shad­owed in rock and pop his­to­ry, have pushed past tra­di­tion­al lead play­ers and, in many cas­es, tak­en their place. I’d say it’s about time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks From Five Great Rock Bassists: McCart­ney, Sting, Dea­con, Jones & Lee

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

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

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Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Clever Promo for Ridley Scott’s New Sci-Fi Film, The Martian

in Astronomy, Film | August 31st, 2015

“Ever since our species first looked up at the sky, we dreamed of reach­ing Mars. Back in 2029, that dream became real, when the first humans stepped foot on the Red plan­et. And, in a few months, a new group of astro­nauts will make the jour­ney.…”

It all seems like many oth­er Neil deGrasse Tyson videos you’ve seen before. Until he says, “Back in 2029.” Wait, what?

Behold Neil deGrasse Tyson appear­ing in a clever pro­mo for Rid­ley Scot­t’s upcom­ing film The Mar­t­ian. 

Based on Andy Weir’s best­selling 2011 nov­el The Mar­t­ian, the movie will star Matt Damon as Mark Wat­ney, an astro­naut who goes on a big mis­sion to Mars — the one so stir­ring­ly described by Tyson above. But the jour­ney to Mars is not where the real action hap­pens, and we’ll just leave it at that. No spoil­ers here.

The film will hit the­aters in Octo­ber. You can watch an offi­cial trail­er here. And, in the mean­time, you can always lis­ten to Neil’s Star Talk Radio Show (ref­er­enced in the clip) any­time.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

Astro­naut Reads The Divine Com­e­dy on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion on Dante’s 750th Birth­day

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

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Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn & Twain Himself Meet Satan in the Zany 1985 Claymation The Adventures of Mark Twain

in Animation, K-12, Literature | August 31st, 2015

“But who prays for Satan?” Mark Twain asked in the auto­bi­og­ra­phy left behind as he exit­ed this mor­tal coil on the tail of Halley’s comet, whose 1835 appear­ance coin­cid­ed with his birth.

It’s a good ques­tion.

Had he instead asked who clay­mates Satan, the answer would have been clearcut.

1985 saw the release of The Adven­tures of Mark Twain, the world’s first all clay­ma­tion fea­ture film, in which Satan starred along­side Tom Sawyer, Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, Becky Thatch­er, and Twain him­self.

Direc­tor Will Vin­ton, father of the Cal­i­for­nia Raisins and Domi­no Pizza’s ill-fat­ed mas­cot, The Noid, drew on some of Twain’s best known work, cob­bling togeth­er a sto­ry in which the fic­tion­al kids stow­away aboard an air­ship Twain plans to pilot into the comet.

The Satan sec­tion above comes cour­tesy of the author’s final, unfin­ished nov­el, The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger. The ani­ma­tion is top notch, but hoo boy, it’s hard to imag­ine a vision this apoc­a­lyp­tic get­ting a G‑rating today.

Vin­ton him­self resist­ed the rat­ing, not want­i­ng to be lumped in with more reg­u­lar kid­die fare. It per­formed dis­ap­point­ing­ly at the box office despite great crit­i­cal response from such lofty realms as The New Repub­lic.

Is it real­ly so sur­pris­ing that fam­i­lies flock­ing to the Care Bears Movie steered clear of one fea­tur­ing a shape-shift­ing, free-float­ing mask, who ter­ror­izes the chil­dren in the film (and pre­sum­ably, the audi­ence) by con­jur­ing an enchant­i­ng lit­tle clay king­dom only to rain mis­for­tune upon it. We’re talk­ing smashed coffins, grief-strick­en clay moth­ers wail­ing over the bod­ies of their young, help­less vic­tims being swal­lowed up by cracks that appear in the earth.

Where’s the Hap­py Meal tie-in there!?

It’s reas­sur­ing to know that the exis­ten­tial hor­ror was indeed delib­er­ate. As Vin­ton told James Gartler in an inter­view with Ani­ma­tion World Net­work:

“… it was just such a bizarre char­ac­ter, to start with.  In fact, I haven’t seen a char­ac­ter quite like that in almost any­thing else – some­one who has this pow­er but no feel­ing one way or anoth­er and just sort-of tells it like it is regard­ing the future of human­i­ty.  We want­ed it to be about meta­mor­pho­sis, visu­al­ly, and make that a big part of sequence.  He trans­forms and grows up and down from the earth and appears out of noth­ing­ness. The design of the char­ac­ter came from an ear­ly draw­ing that Bar­ry Bruce did, where a jester was hold­ing his face on a stick.  I thought it was a real­ly inter­est­ing way to play it.  I end­ed up doing the voice of the Stranger with a female per­former.  We want­ed it to be almost androg­y­nous, so she and I did it togeth­er and made a point of not try­ing to hide it, even.”

I’m not sure the per­son or per­sons respon­si­ble for the the­atri­cal trail­er, below, got the memo…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Rock­well Illus­trates Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer & Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1936–1940)

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

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

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48 Hours of Joseph Campbell Lectures Free Online: The Power of Myth & Storytelling

in History, Photography | August 31st, 2015

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Pho­to by “Folk­sto­ry” fea­tures Joseph Camp­bell (left) with Jonathan Young, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

You may not be inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics, they say, but pol­i­tics is inter­est­ed in you. The same, if you believe famed mythol­o­gist Joseph Camp­bell, goes for myth: far from explain­ing only the ori­gin of the world as believed by extinct soci­eties, it can explain the pow­er of sto­ries we enjoy today — up to and includ­ing Star Wars.

The man behind PBS’ well-known series The Pow­er of Myth left behind many words in many for­mats telling us pre­cise­ly why, and now you can hear a fair few of them — 48 hours worth — for free on this Spo­ti­fy playlist. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware already, you can down­load it free here.)

“From the Star Wars tril­o­gy to the Grate­ful Dead,” says the Joseph Camp­bell Foun­da­tion, “Joseph Camp­bell has had a pro­found impact on our cul­ture, our beliefs, and the way we view our­selves and the world.” This col­lec­tion, The Lec­tures of Joseph Camp­bell, which comes from ear­ly in his career, offers “a glimpse into one of the great minds of our time, draw­ing togeth­er his most wide-rang­ing and insight­ful talks” in the role of both “a schol­ar and a mas­ter sto­ry­teller.” So not only can Camp­bell enrich our under­stand­ing of all the sto­ries we love, he can spin his life­time of mytho­log­i­cal research into teach­ings that, in the telling, weave into a pret­ty grip­ping yarn in and of them­selves.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

 

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.

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Oliver Sacks’ Last Tweet Shows Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Movingly Flashmobbed in Spain

in Music | August 30th, 2015

“A beau­ti­ful way to per­form one of the world’s great musi­cal trea­sures.” The video above, and the accom­pa­ny­ing 58-char­ac­ter sen­tence, make up the last tweet from Oliv­er Sacks, the influ­en­tial neu­rol­o­gist who passed away ear­li­er today. The clip (orig­i­nal­ly high­light­ed on our site back in 2012) fea­tures 100 musi­cians and singers from the Orches­tra Sim­fon­i­ca del Valles, Amics de l’Opera de Sabadell, Coral Belles Arts, and Cor Lieder Cam­era per­form­ing what’s now the anthem of the Euro­pean Union — Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. It’s a pret­ty stir­ring per­for­mance, and cer­tain­ly a worth­while way to punc­tu­ate a Twit­ter stream. (Side note: Dr. Sacks start­ed fol­low­ing our Twit­ter stream sev­er­al years ago, and we still con­sid­er it a great hon­or, a high point in OC his­to­ry.)

You can read Mr. Sacks’ obit­u­ary here, and an appraisal of his intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions here.

h/t @miafarrow

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Oliv­er Sacks Con­tem­plates Mor­tal­i­ty (and His Ter­mi­nal Can­cer Diag­no­sis) in a Thought­ful, Poignant Let­ter

30 Renowned Writ­ers Speak­ing About God: From Isaac Asi­mov to Oliv­er Sac­sks & Mar­garet Atwood

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Watch a Luthier Birth a Cello in This Hypnotic Documentary

in Design, Music | August 28th, 2015

It’s always inter­est­ing to see how things are made—crayons, Fend­er Stra­to­cast­ers, car­toon eggs…

The doc­u­men­tary above takes you through the cre­ation of a cel­lo in the Barcelona work­shop of mas­ter luthi­er Xavier Vidal i Roca. (To watch with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, click the closed cap­tion icon — “CC” — in the low­er right cor­ner.)

The open­ing shots of luthi­er Eduard Bosque Miñana tak­ing mea­sure­ments have the jazzy feel of a Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood seg­ment, but once music schol­ar Ramón Andres gets into the act, things take a turn toward the philo­soph­i­cal.

His thoughts as to the ways the “king of all instru­ments” speaks to the human con­di­tion are com­men­su­rate with the lev­el of crafts­man­ship its con­struc­tion requires.

(Though see­ing Miñana patient­ly fit a steam-shaped curve to the devel­op­ing instrument’s c‑bout leads me to ques­tion Andres’ choice of anthro­po­mor­phiz­ing pro­noun. With a waist­line like that, sure­ly this cel­lo is a deep-voiced queen.)

The mas­ter luthi­er him­self acknowl­edges that there is always a bit of mys­tery as to how any giv­en instru­ment will sound. Most mod­ern cel­los are copies of ancient instru­ments. With the design set, the luthi­er must chan­nel his or her cre­ative expres­sion into the con­struc­tion, work­ing with sim­i­lar­ly ancient tools — chis­els, palette knives, and the like. If pow­er tools come into play, direc­tor Lau­ra Vidal keeps them off­screen.

The effect is med­i­ta­tive, hypnotic…I was glad to have the mys­tery pre­served, even as I agree with cel­list Lito Igle­sias that musi­cians should make an effort to under­stand their instru­ments’ con­struc­tion, and the rea­sons behind the selec­tion of par­tic­u­lar woods and shapes.

Igle­sias also notes that the luthi­er is the unsung part­ner in every pub­lic per­for­mance, the one the audi­ence nev­er thinks to acknowl­edge.

The Sara­bande of Bach’s Suite for Solo Cel­lo no. 1 in G major brings things to an appro­pri­ate­ly emo­tion­al con­clu­sion.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

Elec­tric Gui­tars Made from the Detri­tus of Detroit

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

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Take a 360° Virtual Tour of Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Personal Home & Studio

in Architecture, Astronomy | August 28th, 2015

360 tour taliesin2

You can learn a lot about an archi­tect from look­ing at the build­ings they designed, and you can learn even more by look­ing at the build­ings they lived in, but you can learn the most of all from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tal­iesin. For that best-known of all Amer­i­can archi­tects, this house stands still today not just as his home but as one of his notable works, and as the stu­dio in which he designed oth­er notable works (includ­ing Falling­wa­ter). Wright’s enthu­si­asts make pil­grim­ages out to Spring Green, Wis­con­sin to pay their respects to this sin­gu­lar house on a hill, which offers tours from May through Octo­ber.

For those less inclined toward archi­tec­tur­al pil­grim­ages, we have this HD 360-degree “vir­tu­al vis­it” of Tal­iesin (also known as Tal­iesin East since 1937, when Wright built a Tal­iesin West in Scotts­dale, Ari­zona). “The cen­ter of Frank Lloyd Wright’s world was Tal­iesin East,” write the online tour’s devel­op­ers. “It was his home, work­shop, archi­tec­tur­al lab­o­ra­to­ry and inspi­ra­tion for near­ly all his life.” In the com­fort of your web brows­er, you can “expe­ri­ence what he saw dai­ly, sur­round­ed by Asian art, expan­sive views of Wisconsin’s rolling hills, his own court­yard gar­dens and a space to relax before a fire watched over by a por­trait of his moth­er.”

You can also get a view of “the actu­al draft­ing tables where Wright designed his most famous build­ings” and the draw­ings on them, all while “staff his­to­ri­an Keiran Mur­phy shares the his­to­ry, the per­son­al sto­ries and points out spe­cial objects in the room” (if you choose to keep the “tour guide” option turned on). And Tal­iesin cer­tain­ly does­n’t lack his­to­ry, either per­son­al or archi­tec­tur­al. Wright built its first iter­a­tion in 1911, and it last­ed until a para­noid ser­vant burnt it down in 1941, axe-mur­der­ing sev­en peo­ple there (includ­ing Wright’s live-in ladyfriend and her chil­dren) in the process. Wright, who’d been away at the time of the tragedy, recov­ered from the shock of it all, then set to work on Tal­iesin II, though he did­n’t real­ly live in it until after he returned from his work on Toky­o’s Impe­r­i­al Hotel in 1922.

Three years lat­er, anoth­er fire (this time prob­a­bly due to an elec­tri­cal prob­lem) bad­ly dam­aged the house again, neces­si­tat­ing the design of a Tal­iesin III, which he could begin only after dig­ging him­self out of a finan­cial hole in 1928. It is more or less that Tal­iesin that you can see today, whether you vis­it in per­son or through the inter­net. If you feel suf­fi­cient­ly inspired as a result, you could even apply to study at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Archi­tec­ture locat­ed there. While the house won’t like­ly turn you into an archi­tec­tur­al genius just by osmo­sis, at least you can rest assured that it has prob­a­bly put its most dra­mat­ic dis­as­ters behind it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

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.

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How to Age Gracefully: No Matter What Your Age, You Can Get Life Advice from Your Elders

in Life | August 28th, 2015

You can always learn some­thing from your elders. 8‑year-olds can learn from 9‑year-olds, just as octo­ge­nar­i­ans can learn from nona­ge­nar­i­ans. With age comes wis­dom. That’s the premise of this touch­ing, farewell video from the CBC’s Wire­Tap radio show, which is about to go off the air.

It’s not the first time we’ve explored this line of think­ing. For a lit­tle life per­spec­tive, we’d encour­age you to watch: Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18.

Or read: Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs,” an excerpt from the anthol­o­gy, Dear Me: A Let­ter to My 16-Year-Old Self.

via Kot­tke

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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