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Thursday, March 30th, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 11:30a | The Origins of Anime: Watch Free Online 64 Animations That Launched the Japanese Anime Tradition
Japanese animation has a way of seeming perpetually new and daring, but it now goes back at least a century. Having carved out its own aesthetic and intellectual space in world culture, anime (even foreigners who’ve never watched so much as a minute of it know the Japanese term) continues to generate a distinctive kind of excitement in its viewers. That goes for relatively recent features that have already attained classic status, like the lush, simultaneously realistic and fantastical works of Hayao Miyazaki, the darker, deeper visions like Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell, and the diversity of works in between. But how did those qualities manifest in the very earliest anime? We can now easily see for ourselves, thanks to the selection of 64 Japanese animated film classics made freely available online, as a celebration of the centenary of the form, by Japan’s National Film Archive.
“The most exciting of these are the two earliest extant anime The Dull Sword (Namakura Gatana, 1917) and Urashima Tarō (1918),” writes Nishikata Film Review’s Cathy Munroe Hotes, “films which were considered lost until copies were miraculously discovered in an antique shop in Osaka in 2008. As the vast majority of pre-war films have been lost due to natural disaster, war, and general neglect, each of these 64 films is an important glimpse into early anime history and early 20th century Japanese culture.” You can also browse the National Film Archive’s online collection of early animation by director. Watching the works of certain especially prolific ones like Noburō Ōfuji and Yasuji Murata (whose 1929 The Old Man’s Lump Removed, not available in the collection, appears above), you might come away convinced that, even in its first decades, Japanese animation had developed its auteur culture.
The movement (which sometimes barely qualifies as such) and sound (if any) in some of these shorts could hardly impress today, at least on a technical level. Nevertheless, those of us who’ve felt the excitement of the best of anime will recognize in the presentation of the images themselves — in its dynamism, its humor, its creativity — the special animating spirit, as it were, that first sparked our interest. Whether the sometimes slapdash likes of Speed Racer, Robotech, or Kimba the White Lion, which introduced generations of Westerners to anime in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, really marked that much of an improvement on crude production of, say, Murata’s My Ski Trip from 1930 remains open to debate, but through them all we can trace the development of the style and sensibility that, to this day, no animation but the Japanese variety has truly mastered. Enter the National Film Archive anime collection here. (NOTE: the National Film Archive assures us that the English version of the site “will be available in a month or two,” but you can find English-subtitled films there even now.) Related Content: Early Japanese Animations: The Origins of Anime (1917-1931) How the Films of Hayao Miyazaki Work Their Animated Magic, Explained in 4 Video Essays Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. The Origins of Anime: Watch Free Online 64 Animations That Launched the Japanese Anime Tradition is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.  |
| 2:32p | Hear the Prog-Rock Adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Million Copies Worldwide   Since the 1950s at least, Americans have embraced science fiction of all kinds—from the high concepts of 2001 to the high kitsch of Barbarella—even if sometimes only among devoted cult fans. The Queen-scored Flash Gordon, for example, did not do well in U.S. theaters on its release in 1980, though it was a hit in the UK. But not long after, its iconic, pulsing theme song, with its operatic blasts, became an unmistakable callback to the final days of 70s rock opera’s glorious excesses. And yet somehow, another equally bombastic sci-fi rock opera produced in 1978, Jeff Wayne’s musical adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, has been denied proper cult status in the States. At the time of its release, U.S. audiences, primed by the previous year’s colossal hit, Star Wars, perhaps sought more swashbuckling fare, not prog-rock double concept albums based on classic novels. American indifference, however, in no way hindered the album’s popularity abroad. According to its clunky website, Wayne’s adaptation, “is one of the best known and best-selling musical works of all time.” This is no empty boast; it had “sold approximately 15 million records around the world” by 2013 and in 2009 was named the 40th best-selling album ever. And for good reason! While you may never have heard of Wayne—he wrote music for TV commercials for much of his career, and once struck it big by producing David Essex’s 1973 hit “Rock On”—you know the “cast” of his War of the Worlds. Richard Burton narrates, lending the proceedings the gravitas Orson Welles gave The Alan Parsons Project’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe (and, many years earlier, brought to his own infamous War of the Worlds adaptation). The songs prominently feature Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott and The Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward, both huge stars at the time, as well as David Essex, “musical theater vet Julie Covington,” writes Dangerous Minds’ Ron Kretsch, and “guitar ace and Sex Pistols demo producer Chris Spedding.” Supplementing the album’s musical charms, and they are many, the original LP also came “packaged in a gatefold with a book containing the complete script and some awesome paintings, mostly by noted Lord of the Rings cover artist Geoff Taylor.” For many of us, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds will seem like a lost masterpiece, a brilliantly kitschy sci-fi, prog-disco classic that never got its due. For fans, however, in “no less than 22 countries,” as the album’s site proclaims, where it charted, reaching number one in half of them, the strangely inspired rock opera may well be very familiar.
You can hear the complete double LP at the playlist above (or click here), along with two more “sides” of alternates, outtakes, and demos. (If you need Spotify, download it here.) One of the songs, Hayward’s “Forever Autumn,” above, was originally written for a “late-‘60s LEGO commercial,” but warranted inclusion because “Wayne simply wanted a ballad to be included.” The move is typical of his more is more production approach to War of the Worlds, and yet, somehow, it all comes together into an engrossing experience. For some reason, in 2012, Wayne decided to remake the album, with Liam Neeson taking on the narration duties. Judging by its Amazon reviews, the new version is just as beloved by many fans as the old. via Dangerous Minds Related Content: Hear Orson Welles’ Iconic War of the Worlds Broadcast (1938) The Very First Illustrations of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897) The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Seminal Sci-Fi Novel The War of the Worlds Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Hear the Prog-Rock Adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Million Copies Worldwide is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 5:00p | Watch the Trippy Screen Projections Used by Pink Floyd During their Dark Side of the Moon Tours 
Even in the early years of Pink Floyd’s career, the band was experimenting with the possibilities of the live experience. Already dazzling audiences with booming sound, colorful light shows, and bubbling translucent oil projections, the group called in Abbey Road engineers to design a quadrophonic sound system in 1967 to send Rick Wright’s keyboards around the concert hall, along with nature sounds, footsteps, or maniacal laughter. By the time of Dark Side of the Moon, the band had even more of a budget, and began to screen short films, some animated, during their world tour concerts. Not really promotional videos, these films haven’t been seen outside their live context since. But the Internet has a way of finding these things. Earlier this month, several YouTube users uploaded the film reels used on Pink Floyd’s 1974 North American Tour, with music from Dark Side of the Moon added back in to give an indication of how it was used in the show. (The mixes are also quite different from the album–maybe a fan can tell us from where these come?) We get some very Kubrick-like traveling shots down both an empty hospital corridor and of Heathrow’s arrival lounge, and later a fist punching a bowl of eggs, Zabriskie Point-like exploding televisions, shots of Nixon and Idi Amin, and finally back to opening shots of the moon for the finale. But there’s also moments of animation created then-unknown filmmaker Ian Emes.
The up-and-coming and self-taught artist had already made an animation “French Windows” set to the Floyd song “One of these Days,” filled with trippy landscapes and rotoscoped dancers. It won awards at animation festivals and was shown on British TV. According to Emes:
The concert films differed from country to country, sharing 75 percent of their footage, which means if you are a true fan, you’ll have to watch the British Tour version and the French Tour to know what you’re missing. The British version features more information, but it’s not clear if it’s also by Emes.
After Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd continued to bring visuals into their live shows, most notably another animation for “Welcome to the Machine,” seen below. This time they used another up-and-coming illustrator and animator called Gerald Scarfe to create the harrowing graphics. Scarfe, of course, would later create many more works for Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and those animations would be used in concert and later in the Alan Parker film, The Wall. Related Content: Pink Floyd Performs on US Television for the First Time: American Bandstand, 1967 Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Provides a Soundtrack for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the artist interview-based FunkZone Podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here. Watch the Trippy Screen Projections Used by Pink Floyd During their Dark Side of the Moon Tours is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
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