Martin Scorsese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies

in Film | July 31st, 2013

kubrick listCin­e­ma as we’ve almost always known it — “Edi­son, the Lumière broth­ers, Méliès, Porter, all the way through Grif­fith and on to Kubrick”  — has “real­ly almost gone.” So writes Mar­tin Scors­ese in his recent essay for the New York Review of Books, “The Per­sist­ing Vision: Read­ing the Lan­guage of Cin­e­ma.” He argues that tra­di­tion­al film forms have “been over­whelmed by mov­ing images com­ing at us all the time and absolute­ly every­where, even faster than the visions com­ing at the astro­naut” in Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “We have no choice but to treat all these mov­ing images com­ing at us as a lan­guage. We need to be able to under­stand what we’re see­ing and find the tools to sort it all out.” Only nat­ur­al that Scors­ese, as one of the best-known, high­est-pro­file auteurs alive, would ref­er­ence Kubrick, his gen­er­a­tional pre­de­ces­sor in the untir­ing fur­ther­ance of cin­e­mat­ic vision and craft.

We just yes­ter­day fea­tured a post about Kubrick­’s 1963 list of ten favorite films. Scors­ese, for his part, has impressed many as one of the most enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly cinephilic direc­tors work­ing in Amer­i­ca today: his essays about and appear­ances on the DVDs of his favorite movies stand as evi­dence for the sur­pris­ing breadth of his appre­ci­a­tion. Today, why not have a look at Scors­ese’s list, which he put togeth­er for Sight and Sound mag­a­zine, and which begins with the Kubrick selec­tion you might expect:

In “The Per­sist­ing Vision,” he cham­pi­ons com­pre­hen­sive film preser­va­tion, cit­ing the case of Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go, the final entry on his list, now named the great­est film of all time by Sight and Sound’s crit­ics poll. “When the film came out some peo­ple liked it, some didn’t, and then it just went away.” When, after decades of obscu­ri­ty, Ver­ti­go came back into cir­cu­la­tion,  the col­or was com­plete­ly wrong,” and “the ele­ments — the orig­i­nal pic­ture and sound neg­a­tives — need­ed seri­ous atten­tion.” A restora­tion of the “decay­ing and severe­ly dam­aged” film even­tu­al­ly hap­pened, and “more and more peo­ple saw Ver­ti­go and came to appre­ci­ate its hyp­not­ic beau­ty and very strange, obses­sive focus.” I, per­son­al­ly, could­n’t imag­ine the world of cin­e­ma with­out it — nor with­out any of the oth­er pic­tures Scors­ese calls his favorites.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

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.

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New Archive Reveals How Scientists Finally Solved the Vexing “Longitude Problem” During the 1700s

in Archives, Astronomy, Education, History, Science | July 31st, 2013

For cen­turies, sea­far­ing explor­ers and mer­chants reck­oned with the lon­gi­tude prob­lem. It was rel­a­tive­ly easy to fig­ure out a ship’s loca­tion on a north-south axis, but near­ly impos­si­ble to deter­mine how far east or west it was. And the stakes were high. Sail too far astray and your ship (and men) could end up so far afield that get­ting home before the food and water ran out might be impos­si­ble. The sail­ing world need­ed bet­ter tools to deter­mine loca­tion at sea.

In 1714 the British gov­ern­ment estab­lished the Board of Lon­gi­tude, offer­ing a cash prize to any­one who could fig­ure out how to detect how far east or west a ship was at sea. The Board was abol­ished in 1828, but only after fos­ter­ing inno­v­a­tive tech­niques that would for­ev­er change the nature of marine nav­i­ga­tion.

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Mar­itime Muse­um at Green­wich recent­ly released an archive mak­ing all of the let­ters, objects, and doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Board’s work avail­able, along with a spiffy set of videos that brings the Board’s his­to­ry and achieve­ments to life.

Dur­ing the Board’s tenure, clock­mak­er John Har­ri­son fig­ured out that sailors could find out their loca­tion if they knew local time at sea and com­pared that to the time at a com­mon ref­er­ence point. The moon was seen as a giant clock, and its posi­tion rel­a­tive to stars was record­ed in the Nau­ti­cal Almanac, giv­ing sailors the data to com­pare against the time at sea. One of the inno­va­tions vet­ted by the Board of Lon­gi­tude is John Harrison’s Sea Clock. Also dur­ing that time, Green­wich became the prime merid­i­an.

All of this work led to more accu­rate maps. The Board spon­sored jour­neys, includ­ing some aboard Cap­tain Cook’s ships with portable obser­va­to­ries for map­mak­ers to sketch and use tri­an­gu­la­tion to deter­mine accu­rate loca­tion on voy­ages, includ­ing one to the North­west­ern Unit­ed States.

You can start rum­mag­ing through the fas­ci­nat­ing archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Caught Map­ping: A Cin­e­mat­ic Ride Through the Nit­ty Grit­ty World of Vin­tage Car­tog­ra­phy

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Cut­ting-Edge Tech­nol­o­gy Recon­structs the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg 150 Years Lat­er

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix or vis­it her on the web at .

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Classic Monty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilarious Battle of Wits

in Comedy, Literature | July 31st, 2013

Have you ever won­dered what it would have been like to be present when Oscar Wilde was deliv­er­ing those daz­zling epi­grams of his? In this clas­sic sketch from Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, we’re pre­sent­ed with one hilar­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty.

The sketch is from Episode 39 of the Fly­ing Cir­cus, the last episode of sea­son three, which was record­ed on May 18, 1972 but not aired until Jan­u­ary 18, 1973. The scene takes place in 1895, in the draw­ing room of Wilde’s Lon­don home. Hold­ing court amid a room­ful of syco­phants, Wilde (played by Gra­ham Chap­man) com­petes with the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw (Michael Palin) and the Amer­i­can-born painter James McNeill Whistler (John Cleese) to impress Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s son Albert Edward (Ter­ry Jones), the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII.

As for the his­tor­i­cal basis of the sketch, “There seems to be no evi­dence for the con­vivial tri­umvi­rate of Whistler, Wilde, and Shaw,” writes Darl Larsen in Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus: An Utter­ly Com­plete, Thor­ough­ly Unil­lus­trat­ed, Absolute­ly Unau­tho­rized Guide, “espe­cial­ly as late as 1895, when Whistler was car­ing for his ter­mi­nal­ly ill wife and Wilde was in the ear­ly stages of his fall from grace.” Wilde’s play The Impor­tance of Being Earnest opened in Feb­ru­ary of that year, and short­ly after­ward he became embroiled in a legal bat­tle with the Mar­quess of Queens­ber­ry that led even­tu­al­ly to his impris­on­ment for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Wilde was once a pro­tégé of Whistler, but their friend­ship had dete­ri­o­rat­ed by 1895. Whistler was appar­ent­ly jeal­ous of Wilde’s suc­cess, and believed he had stolen many of his famous lines. When Wilde report­ed­ly said “I wish I had said that” in response to a wit­ty remark by Whistler in about 1888, the painter famous­ly retort­ed, “You will, Oscar, you will.” Shaw worked as a Lon­don the­atre crit­ic in the 1890s, and the Prince of Wales was a patron of the arts.

In the Python sketch, Wilde kicks off a round of wit­ti­cisms with his famous line, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” But things go rapid­ly down­hill as the con­ver­sa­tion turns into an exer­cise in heap­ing abuse on the Prince of Wales and pin­ning the blame on a rival:

WILDE: Your Majesty is like a big jam dough­nut with cream on the top.

PRINCE: I beg your par­don?

WILDE: Um…It was one of Whistler’s.

WHISTLER: I nev­er said that.

WILDE: You did, James, you did.

WHISTLER: Well, Your High­ness, what I meant was that, like a dough­nut, um, your arrival gives us pleasure…and your depar­ture only makes us hun­gry for more. [The prince laughs and nods his head.] Your High­ness, you are also like a stream of bat’s piss.

PRINCE: What?

WHISTLER: It was one of Wilde’s. One of Wilde’s.

WILDE: It sod­ding was not! It was Shaw!

SHAW: I…I mere­ly meant, Your Majesty, that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.

PRINCE: Oh.

WILDE: Right. Your Majesty is like a dose of clap–

WHISTLER: –Before you arrive is plea­sure, and after is a pain in the dong.

PRINCE: What??

WHISTLER AND WILDE: One of Shaw’s, one of Shaw’s.

SHAW: You bas­tards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

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Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Sonnet “Ozymandias” in Ominous Teaser for Breaking Bad’s Last Season

in Poetry, Television | July 31st, 2013

Since his improb­a­ble but riv­et­ing rise from put-upon, can­cer-strick­en chem­istry teacher Wal­ter White to socio­path­ic meth king­pin Heisen­berg, Bryan Cranston’s char­ac­ter in Break­ing Bad has come to embody all of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of an ancient despot: cun­ning, para­noia, the nurs­ing of old wounds and pre­ten­sions to unde­served great­ness. It seems per­fect­ly in char­ac­ter, then, that the show’s pro­duc­ers would tease the final sea­son with the omi­nous and dusty clip above, with Cranston read­ing Per­cy Bysshe Shelley’s son­net “Ozy­man­dias,” a poem about the hubris of anoth­er desert tyrant—well-known for his mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal fol­ly—Ramess­es II (also known by a translit­er­a­tion of his throne name, Ozy­man­dias).

The speak­er of Shel­ley’s poem meets a trav­eller from an “antique land,” who describes an immense stat­ue, bro­ken to pieces and lying strewn in the desert where “Noth­ing beside remains.” On the stat­ue’s pedestal, a sculp­tor has inscribed the words, “My name is Ozy­man­dias, king of kings. / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.” As Slate describes the teaser’s match-up:

The poem echoes all the show’s big themes: the mythol­o­gy of evil, the nuances of moral­i­ty, the arc of coro­na­tion and decay. The images, on the oth­er hand are fleeting—mostly New Mex­i­co desert and sub­ur­bia, though we end with a lin­ger­ing shot of Heisenberg’s dusty, worn hat rest­ing, like the poem’s once-colos­sal stat­ue.

Fans of the show famil­iar with the poem’s most pro­nounced theme, the fleet­ing nature of empires, no mat­ter how great, will know to antic­i­pate the fall of Heisen­berg in some spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion, though all we have so far are the vague hints of Walter’s esca­lat­ing vio­lence and para­noia from the last few episodes. Cranston seethes the poem’s most famous line—that one about despair (and the source of the poem’s cen­tral irony)—with par­tic­u­lar men­ace.

OzymandiasMSpage

The poem’s imagery, so com­mon to the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Egyp­tol­ogy of Shelley’s time and after, was alleged­ly inspired by a pas­sage in Roman-era his­to­ri­an Diodor­us Sicu­lus describ­ing just such a stat­ue. Also fuel­ing Shelley’s imag­i­na­tion were the Napoleon­ic archae­o­log­i­cal finds in Egypt, includ­ing news of the 1816 dis­cov­ery of a mas­sive Ramess­es II stat­ue by Ital­ian explor­er Gio­vani Bel­zoni (who sold it to the British Muse­um in 1821). Shel­ley wrote “Ozy­man­dias” in com­pe­ti­tion with a friend, financier and nov­el­ist Hen­ry Smith. Smith’s sub­mis­sion, “In Egypt’s Sandy Silence,” came first.

Crit­ic and writer Leigh Hunt pub­lished both poems in 1818 edi­tions of his month­ly mag­a­zine The Exam­in­er. While Smith’s poem bare­ly ris­es to the occa­sion, more clum­sy par­o­dy than seri­ous lit­er­ary endeav­or, Shelley’s—like the sculptor’s inscrip­tion in his poem—has out­last­ed the empire of his day and lives on in the micro­cos­mic TV rep­re­sen­ta­tions of our own impe­r­i­al works. Above, see an 1817 draft copy of Shelley’s iambic pen­tame­ter son­net, worked over with cor­rec­tions and revi­sions. Below see the fair copy he sent to Hunt for pub­li­ca­tion. Both copies reside at the Bodleian Library.

Ozymandiasfaircopy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator

Dis­cov­ered: Lord Byron’s Copy of Franken­stein Signed by Mary Shel­ley

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

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Stephen Colbert Tries to Make Sense of MOOCs with the Head of edX

in Comedy, MIT, MOOCs | July 31st, 2013

Last week Anant Agar­w­al, Pres­i­dent of edX (the MOOC con­sor­tium launched by Har­vard and MIT), paid a vis­it to The Col­bert Report. And it did­n’t take long for the host, the one and only Stephen Col­bert, to ask fun­ny but unmis­tak­ably prob­ing ques­tions about the advent of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es. “I don’t under­stand. You’re in the knowl­edge busi­ness in a uni­ver­si­ty. Let’s say I had a shoe store, ok, and then I hired you to work at my shoe store. And you said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s give the shoes away for free.’ I would fire you and then prob­a­bly throw shoes at your head.” In oth­er words, why would uni­ver­si­ties dis­rupt them­selves and give edu­ca­tion away at no cost? Where’s the san­i­ty in that?  If you have five min­utes, you can watch Agar­wal’s response and get a few laughs along the way. And if you’re ready to take a MOOC, then dive into our col­lec­tion of 550 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. 120 new cours­es will be start­ing in August and Sep­tem­ber alone.

via The Har­vard Crim­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Stephen Col­bert Dish­es Out Wis­dom & Laughs at North­west­ern

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es World­wide

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Stanley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films: The First and Only List He Ever Created

in Film | July 30th, 2013

Image by Moody Man, via Flickr Com­mons

When, over the past week­end, I noticed the words “Stan­ley Kubrick” had risen into Twit­ter’s trend­ing-top­ics list, I got excit­ed. I fig­ured some­one had dis­cov­ered, in the back of a long-neglect­ed stu­dio vault, the last extant print of a Kubrick mas­ter­piece we’d some­how all for­got­ten. No suck luck, of course; Kubrick schol­ars, giv­en how much they still talk about even the auteur’s nev­er-real­ized projects like Napoleon, sure­ly would­n’t let an entire movie slip into obscu­ri­ty. The burst of tweets actu­al­ly came in hon­or of Kubrick­’s 85th birth­day, and hey, any chance to cel­e­brate a direc­tor whose fil­mog­ra­phy includes the likes of Dr. Strangelove, The Shin­ing, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’ll seize. The British Film Insti­tute marked the occa­sion by post­ing a lit­tle-seen list of Kubrick­’s top ten films.

“The first and only (as far as we know) Top 10 list Kubrick sub­mit­ted to any­one was in 1963 to a fledg­ling Amer­i­can mag­a­zine named Cin­e­ma (which had been found­ed the pre­vi­ous year and ceased pub­li­ca­tion in 1976),” writes the BFI’s Nick Wrigley. It runs as fol­lows:

1. I Vitel­loni (Felli­ni, 1953)
2. Wild Straw­ber­ries (Bergman, 1957)
3. Cit­i­zen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre (Hus­ton, 1948)
5. City Lights (Chap­lin, 1931)
6. Hen­ry V (Olivi­er, 1944)
7. La notte (Anto­nioni, 1961)
8. The Bank Dick (Fields, 1940—above)
9. Rox­ie Hart (Well­man, 1942)
10. Hell’s Angels (Hugh­es, 1930)

But see­ing as Kubrick still had 36 years to live and watch movies after mak­ing the list, it nat­u­ral­ly pro­vides some­thing less than the final word on his pref­er­ences. Wrigley quotes Kubrick con­fi­dant Jan Har­lan as say­ing that “Stan­ley would have seri­ous­ly revised this 1963 list in lat­er years, though Wild Straw­ber­ries, Cit­i­zen Kane and City Lights would remain, but he liked Ken­neth Branagh’s Hen­ry V much bet­ter than the old and old-fash­ioned Olivi­er ver­sion.” He also quotes Kubrick him­self as call­ing Max Ophuls the “high­est of all” and “pos­sessed of every pos­si­ble qual­i­ty,” call­ing Elia Kazan “with­out ques­tion the best direc­tor we have in Amer­i­ca,” and prais­ing hearti­ly David Lean, Vit­to­rio de Sica, and François Truf­faut. This all comes in handy for true cinephiles, who can nev­er find sat­is­fac­tion watch­ing only the film­mak­ers they admire; they must also watch the film­mak­ers the film­mak­ers they admire admire.

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:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

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

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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.

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Noam Chomsky Went Gangnam Style … Ever So Briefly?

in MIT, Music, Philosophy, Random | July 30th, 2013

I’m usu­al­ly pret­ty dialed into this stuff, but some­how this one slipped by me last fall. Dur­ing the Gang­nam Style craze, MIT shot a par­o­dy video where Noam Chom­sky, the father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics, made a cameo appear­ance. Maybe it slipped by me because the appear­ance is brief. About 5 sec­onds, start­ing at the 3:20 mark. We were on the ball enough, how­ev­er, to spot anoth­er par­o­dy by Ai Wei­wei and then we had Slavoj Žižek demys­ti­fy­ing the whole Gang­nam Style phe­nom­e­non, com­plete with wild hand ges­tic­u­la­tions and fran­tic rubs of the nose. Any­way, one day this will make for some good archival footage — pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al meets inter­na­tion­al pop cul­ture craze — so we’re adding it to the trove.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

A Shirt­less Slavoj Žižek Explains the Pur­pose of Phi­los­o­phy from the Com­fort of His Bed

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

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The Lost/Animated Interview with Fidel Castro: If the Revolution Fails, Cuba Will be “Hell Itself” (1959)

in Animation, History | July 30th, 2013

“If this Rev­o­lu­tion falls, what we will have here in Cuba is a hell,” Fidel Cas­tro said in Havana in 1959. “Hell itself.”

Cas­tro was 32 when he made the procla­ma­tion dur­ing an inter­view record­ed just weeks after the over­throw of dic­ta­tor Ful­gen­cio Batista. The new Cuba was still tak­ing shape after the rev­o­lu­tion led by the 26th of July Move­ment. Cas­tro spoke exten­sive­ly about his vision for Cuba dur­ing a 35-minute inter­view with an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist that has nev­er been heard pub­licly until now.

The inter­view was dis­cov­ered a few years ago when Lau­ra Gal­loway found a tape in her late grand­fa­ther’s archives that sim­ply said “Galloway/Castro.” Clark Hewitt Gal­loway was the intra-Amer­i­can affairs edi­tor for U.S. News and World Report. Gal­loway cov­ered Latin and South Amer­i­ca for the mag­a­zine after serv­ing in the same region with the U.S. Army Intel­li­gence corps dur­ing WWII. Blank on Blank’s new episode for its PBS series ani­mates the sto­ry behind the tape and a col­lec­tion of out­takes from the inter­view. Cas­tro talks about: why Che Gue­vara, Raul Cas­tro and the 26th of July Move­ment were not Com­mu­nist; and why Cuba had issues with the Amer­i­can pres­ence in the Guan­tanamo Naval Base and, specif­i­cal­ly, Amer­i­can sailors stir­ring up trou­ble while out on the town in Guan­tanamo.

Blank on Blank has also post­ed the entire 35-minute inter­view in Span­ish with the Eng­lish trans­la­tion by Sebas­t­ian Bet­ti. Dur­ing the full inter­view, Cas­tro goes into great detail about how the Cuban econ­o­my would be rebuilt and how the agrar­i­an reform plan would be put into effect. He dis­putes whether Amer­i­can inter­ests in Cuba would be nation­al­ized. And he down­plays the idea of being asked to be a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date.

The release of this unearthed inter­view comes as Cas­tro’s broth­er, Raul, just gave a lengthy speech about the demise of Cuban cul­ture and con­duct despite what the rev­o­lu­tion has brought to the coun­try.

This post was brought to you by David Ger­lach, the founder of Blank on Blank.

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Guitar Stories: Mark Knopfler on the Six Guitars That Shaped His Career

in Music | July 30th, 2013

When Dire Straits front­man Mark Knopfler was a kid grow­ing up in New­cas­tle-Upon-Tyne, Eng­land, he dreamed about get­ting his own gui­tar. “I remem­ber stand­ing out­side music stores with my nose pressed up against the glass, just star­ing at those elec­tric gui­tars,” he told Peo­ple mag­a­zine in 1985. “I used to smell Fend­er cat­a­logs, I want­ed one so bad.” Knopfler even­tu­al­ly talked his father into buy­ing him a Höfn­er Super Sol­id V2 gui­tar for £50. The only prob­lem was, it did­n’t come with an ampli­fi­er. “I did­n’t have the nerve to ask poor old dad for an amp,” Knopfler says in the doc­u­men­tary above. “I blew up the fam­i­ly radio in fair­ly short order.”

Knopfler tells the sto­ry of that first gui­tar and five oth­ers that shaped his career in this fas­ci­nat­ing 45-minute doc­u­men­tary that aired in Britain last Octo­ber on the Sky Arts tele­vi­sion chan­nel. Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler is host­ed by Knopfler’s friend and co-founder of Dire Straits, bassist John Ill­s­ley. The film offers a num­ber of insights into Knopfler’s music and the key instru­ments that influ­enced his evolv­ing style.

From the open­ing scenes at a music shop in New­castle’s Cen­tral Arcade, where the young Knopfler spent hours star­ing at gui­tars through win­dows, Ill­s­ley and Knopfler move on to the city of Leeds, where Knopfler once worked as a junior reporter for the York­shire Evening Post. There they meet up with his long­time friend and men­tor Steve Phillips, a mem­ber of Knopfler’s post-Dire Straits band The Not­ting Hill­bil­lies. An afi­ciona­do of the Delta Blues, Phillips intro­duced the young Knopfler to the dis­tinc­tive sound of  “res­onator” acoustic gui­tars.

Although it was­n’t the first res­onator gui­tar he ever owned, Knopfler choos­es as his sec­ond key gui­tar a 1937 Nation­al Style “O” gui­tar he bought from Phillips in 1978. The dis­tinc­tive nick­el-plat­ed brass gui­tar, with its palm tree etch­ings around the edges and on the back, was fea­tured on the cov­er of Dire Straits’ best­selling 1985 album Broth­ers in Arms, and was used for some of the band’s best songs. At one point in the film, Knopfler picks up the Nation­al and demon­strates how he hit on the famous arpeg­gio lines in “Romeo and Juli­et,” from the Mak­ing Movies album, while exper­i­ment­ing with an open G tun­ing.

From Leeds, Ill­s­ley and Knopfler trav­el to the loca­tion of the orig­i­nal Path­way Stu­dios in Lon­don, where they record­ed their 1978 debut album, Dire Straits. Knopfler picks up his third key gui­tar, a 1961 Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er, and plays a few notes from the band’s break­through song, “Sul­tans of Swing.” The Stra­to­cast­er was the gui­tar Knopfler had always want­ed, but as his music pro­gressed he sought to diver­si­fy his sound. Knopfler’s fourth key gui­tar, which he played on Broth­ers in Arms, is a sun­burst 1958 Gib­son Les Paul. In one par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing moment in the film, Knopfler explains how he came up with the dis­tinc­tive gui­tar sound for the hit song “Mon­ey for Noth­ing” by play­ing the Les Paul through a sta­t­ic, part­ly depressed wah-wah ped­al.

While tour­ing with Dire Straits, Knopfler found it dif­fi­cult to con­stant­ly change back and forth between gui­tars, so he decid­ed to look for a sin­gle gui­tar that could pro­duce a vari­ety of sounds. To explain what hap­pened next, Knopfler and Ill­s­ley trav­el to the SoHo neigh­bor­hood of New York, where they pay a vis­it to Rudy’s Music on Broome Street and talk to the pro­pri­etor, Knopfler’s long­time friend Rudy Pen­sa, who has built cus­tom gui­tars since 1982. Knopfler and Pen­sa describe their col­lab­o­ra­tion on the design of Knopfler’s fifth key gui­tar, the Pen­sa MK‑1, which he played dur­ing his final years with Dire Straits.

The film ends with a vis­it to the Long Island work­shop of mas­ter luthi­er John Mon­teleone. In 2008 Mon­teleone built the sixth key gui­tar in Knopfler’s life, the acoustic “Isabel­la” arch­top, named after Knopfler’s eldest daugh­ter. Knopfler was so inspired by Mon­teleone’s crafts­man­ship that he wrote a song called “Mon­teleone” for his 2009 solo album, Get Lucky. The song speaks elo­quent­ly of Knopfler’s admi­ra­tion of Mon­teleone and, between the lines per­haps, of his life­long love affair with gui­tars:

via MetaFil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Eric Clap­ton Tries Out Gui­tars at Home and Talks About the Bea­t­les, Cream, and His Musi­cal Roots

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J.R.R. Tolkien Reads From The Two Towers, the Second Book of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

in Literature | July 30th, 2013

Tolkien fans, tell me: were you dis­ap­point­ed with the first install­ment of Peter Jackson’s Hob­bit film tril­o­gy? Did you find it as lum­ber­ing and clum­sy as a trio of cock­ney trolls, or as ugly as a bug-eyed and be-wat­tled gob­lin king? Pin­ing away for the days when The Lord of the Rings films were the go-to pop-cul­ture fan­ta­sy references—before, say, Twi­light harshed that buzz? Well, I could rec­om­mend to you some of the fan-made films that stepped in to fill the LOTR void in recent years. There’s the not-very-good Born of Hope and the very much bet­ter The Hunt for Gol­lum. I’ve seen them both because, well…. I just need­ed to is all.

But there is anoth­er way. I know it’s per­verse, pos­si­bly sub­ver­sive, and maybe, just maybe, even dan­ger­ous. Turn off the com­put­er and open the books up again—your yel­lowed, crumbly paper­backs, your Barnes & Noble econ­o­my re-issue edi­tions (I won’t judge), hell, turn on the Kin­dle. Savor the lan­guages Tolkien invent­ed and the Eng­lish that he re-invent­ed, immerse your­self in a lit­er­ary world at once utter­ly fan­tas­tic and per­fect­ly moral­ly seri­ous. Do that, and your crav­ing for spec­ta­cle may van­ish, maybe replaced by a crav­ing for more Tolkien—like his retelling of events in the Norse Edda saga in his Leg­end of Sig­urd and Gudrun.

And while you’re read­ing up on that one, lis­ten to the audio above of Tolkien him­self read­ing from Chap­ter IV of The Two Tow­ers. The rich­ness of his Eng­lish voice makes me wish we had record­ings of him read­ing all three nov­els, but we must work with what we’ve got, and it is good. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

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

 

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See What Happens When You Run Finnegans Wake Through a Spell Checker

in Books, Random | July 29th, 2013

Spell Check

Read­ing James Joyce’s Ulysses is no walk in the park. Why else would so many peo­ple false­ly claim to have read it. (See our post from last week, 20 Books Peo­ple Pre­tend to Read.) But Finnegans Wake is a whole ‘nother deal. Joyce’s final work is con­sid­ered one of the most dif­fi­cult works of fic­tion ever writ­ten, and con­trary to Ulysses, the nov­el “has some claim to be the least read major work of West­ern lit­er­a­ture,” accord­ing to Joyce schol­ar Lee Spink. Put sim­ply, peo­ple don’t even both­er read­ing … or pre­tend­ing to read … Finnegans Wake (unless, of course, they live in Chi­na, where the nov­el reached the #2 posi­tion on a Shang­hai best­seller list ear­li­er this year.)

But I digress: why don’t read­ers even give Finnegans Wake a shot? The illus­tra­tion above per­haps says it all. The web site stammpunct.com has cre­at­ed a visu­al show­ing what hap­pens when you run a page of the nov­el through a spell check­er. It yields a lot of red, and then some more red. A fram­able print of this visu­al can be pur­chased at stamm­punct for $35.

Copies of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake can be down­loaded from our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. And you can hear James Joyce read­ing ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake here. It was record­ed in 1929.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear James Joyce Read From his Epic Ulysses, 1924

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

 

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