Out of silence, a lone, distorted electric guitar begins its cry. The air around its wriggling notes swelters. Barroom shutters flutter in the dry wind, a stagecoach zooms out of town so as to escape the imminent confrontation. When the dust clears, two worn men, twenty feet apart, stand frozen. They stare at each other, legs spread, right hands hovering near hips. A harmonica bounces off the guitar, and the tension rises. The street is desolate. First one and then the other reaches for his six-shooter. The guitar screeches. One man falls to the ground, dead.

We've seen this sequence or something like it in hundreds of Westerns ranging from the taut High Noon to Elvis's misbegotten Charro. They all climax with the gunfight that the audience has been screaming for. In the best of them, these blasts release both the actors and the folks in the theater. Starting in the late sixties, Sergio Leone directed a series of smart, barbed Westerns that took on the form's conventions only to tweak them obliquely. Morricone's austere, troubled score is integral to Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone's greatest film; Leone edited and cut the film to this majestic music, rather than the traditional other way around. This theme to the movie doesn't include the electric guitar or the harmonica (you have to go deeper into the film for that), but its orchestra does suggest something majestic and terrifying at the same time.

First, we take it for granted that, with the possible exceptions of Chinatown, Top Hat, and the upcoming A-Team movie (see David's preview) Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is the greatest movie of all time. I've written about it in Brief notes on taste and entertainment: A shark, an octopus, Celine Dion, and Batman.

Second, we consider the greatest scene ever in the greatest movie of all time. Yes, you've seen it already and don't forget that the key line of dialogue is NSFW, but it's worth another 68 seconds of your time:

Third, we need to be scientists about this. Could a shark (a) grow large enough to destroy a plane, and (b) generate enough power to fly in the air and reach that plane? Fortunately, the Interweb has someone who can explain all that for us. The greatest infographic of all time, one that both Edward Tufte and Nancy Duarte would have killed to create, is after the jump. You're welcome.

"The Superman serial was a 1948 15-part black-and-white movie serial starring an unaccredited Kirk Alyn (but billed only by his character name, Superman) and Noel Neill as Lois Lane. It is notable as the first live-action appearance of Superman on film and for the longevity of its distribution." All 15 chapters are available at the Internet Archive's open source movies archive. Meanwhile, Superman is still on the list of banned Twitter passwords.

Here are a few films I recommend based on my personal tastes. This is by no means exhaustive, inclusive, etc. Feel free to make further suggestions in the comments. Disclosure: Asterisks (*) mark films to which I have a connection.

Best of the best:

• Ma vie en rose (A family struggles with a gender-variant child. The best scripted film to date, in my opinion)
• Boys Don't Cry (True story of a trans man murdered in rural Nebraska. The second-best scripted film, in my opinion)
• The Crying Game (An IRA soldier takes a British soldier hostage and later meets his girlfriend. Explores gender, race, nationality, misogyny)
• Paris is Burning (Chronicles 90s New York ball culture. One of the best documentaries.)

Found on Sean Bonner's tumblog.

Cat Ladies is a one-hour long documentary about women who are living examples of the "crazy cat lady" stereotype. It was directed by Christie Callan-Jones, and just showed at the San Francisco documentary film festival, which ends tomorrow.

Bradley Novicoff of Dangerous Minds writes about Collapse, a new documentary by Chris Smith (American Movie, The Yes Men) about impending global doom, which Variety called "an intellectual horror movie" that's "unnervingly persuasive much of the time, and merely riveting when it's not."

From Apple's Trailer site:

Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new President will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil, and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight.  American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and to hope for the best.  But is anyone prepared for the worst?  Michael Ruppert is a different kind of American.  He predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter "From the Wilderness" at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial.

Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead.  He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation.  He is especially passionate over the issue of "peak oil," the concern raised by scientists since the 1970s that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel.  While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Ruppert doesn't hold back at sounding an alarm.  He portrays a future that resembles apocalyptic science fiction.  Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded; and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism.  Smith lets viewers form their own judgments.

The Cove, the provocative film that documented the hidden dolphin slaughters in Taiji, Japan, made its Japan debut at the Tokyo International Film Festival this week, and director Louie Psihoyos was there to bear witness to its unveiling. I talked to him just two hours after he got off the airplane from Narita on Thursday morning. Here's what he had to say about his experience in watching the film with the actual dolphin killers in the audience:

All the bad guys there, front row center. The mayor, the International Whaling Committee delegate, fishermen dressed up in suits...I couldn't have dreamed of a better screening. They had all come to Tokyo with their lawyers to see if there would be any kind of litigation against the film. The screening sold out within a few hours, so I offered to give them tickets. At one point, the mayor stormed out, and the IWC delegate held his head in his hands.

Arrested Motion reports on a short film by Takashi Murakami called "Akihabara Majokko Princess."

Starring Kirsten Dunst singing a cover to the Vapors' "Turning Japanese", the video includes footage of Dunst dancing through the streets of the Akihabara district in Tokyo dressed as a colorful princess. If you look carefully at the front image of our "Pop Life" article, you can see Murakami next to a painting paying tribute to this experience entitled "Kirsten Dunst & McG & Me".

Does anyone know if the video is available for viewing online?

Murakami x McG x Dunst - "Akihabara Majokko Princess" in "Pop Life" @ the Tate Modern

I was traveling this week, which, in these days of the abomination that is HLN*, means I spend my hotel mornings watching random non-news cable networks. This time, the choice was HBO Comedy, which is how I ended up watching a great classroom-themed, comedic retelling of American history featuring Robert Wuhl.

I caught a couple of incorrect details here and there, but in general Wuhl was on track and worth watching...if only for his take on the ascendancy of Franklin Pierce and his (in my opinion) pretty insightful overarching lessons:

1) Our understanding of history is "based on a true story"

and

2) "We'll get through it" makes a pretty good philosophy from which to approach American politics.

UPDATE: I should note that there's swearing in these videos. So, play audio with caution in respect to bosses, small children and your own proclivities.

Molly sez, "Home Movie Day (Oct 17) is a celebration of amateur films and filmmaking held annually at many local venues worldwide. Home Movie Day events provide the opportunity for individuals and families to see and share their own home movies with an audience of their community, and to see their neighbors' in turn. It's a chance to discover why to care about these films and to learn how best to care for them. Check out www.homemovieday.com for a location near you! 'Home Movie Day is important because our lives, our recollections, and our truth is recorded in home movies. One day, what the heck, c'mon!' -Steve Martin"

Home Movie Day 2009 (Thanks, Molly!)

Jeremy Nicholas, a British TV reporter, was told that he wasn't allowed to bring his laptop into a Cineworld movie theater because the chain had taken the advice of FACT (The Federation Against Copyright Theft) and banned computers from cinemas "to prevent piracy." The cinema had no facility for securely storing laptops -- which are worth thousands in and of themselves and often contain crucial and invaluable private and commercial information -- and suggested that he leave the laptop in his car in the unguarded parking lot.

Like many copyright loonies, FACT have shown again and again that they have no respect for property or privacy. These are the same people who advise theater owners to take away peoples' mobile phones during preview screenings (and won't disclose the security steps taken to protect them). There has never been a case of a movie recorded on a mobile phone. There has also never been a case of a pre-release movie leaking from a preview screening. And, of course, there's never been a case of a movie being pirated by someone with a laptop. I don't even know how you'd try -- hold the laptop on your lap, facing away from you?

Fundamentally, FACT is saying that people who have jobs that involve carrying computers (e.g. every single person I know) shouldn't go to the movies unless they're lucky enough to go home first.

Again: the message is, "Stay away from the cinema."

He confirmed that they had no cloakroom style ticket system in place to make sure you get your computer back after you've handed it in. So despite them treating customers with suspicion, as though were are all bootleggers, we have to trust them to get our equipment back.

I asked if it would be OK to take my mobile phone into the film as that does have the capacity to record movies. He asked if I was planning to use it for that purpose. I said no. He said it would be all right then.

Not the most rigorous interrogation and one that a determined bootlegger probably could have passed.

Mind you by now I'd shown him my BBC pass, my NUJ press card and (by accident) my Oyster card.

While I was standing being grilled in front of everyone, I saw a number of customers (or suspects as Cineworld probably calls them) being ushered to their seats. Many had bags, but they weren't computer bags, so they were OK. They were handbags and rucksacks, all of which could have contained iPhones, flips and all manner of small recording devices.

I was refused entry to a Cineworld cinema because I had a laptop with me. (via /.)

Hoag sez, "VODO, a new project from one of the figures behind STEAL THIS FILM, is a an attempt to harness the power of filesharing networks for the benefit of filmmakers and other creators. Its unprecedented coalition of filesharing sites and services, including Mininova, Isohunt, The Pirate Bay, Legal Torrents and many others, has offered to promote new works by creators who want to share their works. VODO then encourages downloaders to donate directly to the filmmakers. VODO's just distributed its first film, US NOW by Ivo Gormely, which is now highly seeded on Mininova and available on many major filesharing sites under a CC-by-SA license."

Vodo (Thanks Hoag!)

Access Copyright, the Canadian organisation that collects library royalties for writers, filed a jaw-droppingly dumb set of comments in the Canadian Copyright consultation. Access Copyright came out as opposing the right to record TV shows at home, and the right to "format shift" your media (e.g., load a CD on your MP3 player, or put an old ebook on a new reader or phone). They also say that almost all commercial use, no matter how trivial, should require a license and not fall under fair dealing. They come out against the interlibrary loan system, because it is digital.

Man, if these yahoos set out to destroy the public's faith in copyright, they could not do a better job than they're doing now. Yeesh.

The so-called format and time shifting exceptions, also known as personal use exceptions, were apparently included in Bill C-61 to address a practice that has become common among the public. Access Copyright submits that good public policy should not be dictated by legalizing common public practices.

It is worth mentioning here that Article 5(2)(b) of the EU Directive 2001/29/EC allows member states to introduce exceptions and limitations to the reproduction right for private use (which includes format and time shifting) "on the condition that rightsholders receive fair compensation". The requirement for fair compensation is to ensure that the private use exception complies with the three-step test.

Access Copyright believes that copyright owners should be given the opportunity to address these "common practices" through market-based solutions. We caution against the assumption that uses made by individuals for their personal use are inconsequential on the existing or potential market for a work. Format shifting for example is relatively new to printed works. Copyright owners should be given time to develop and test new services and business models for the delivery of content in the digital environment. The introduction of a format shifting exception for books could undermine the development of emerging business models. At the very least, the government should ensure that any restriction of the copyright owner's reproduction right be accompanied by fair compensation.

Access Copyright: Reduce Fair Dealing, No Taping TV Shows or Format Shifting

Mathias sez, "Nasty Old People is the first feature film in Swedish history to be released under a Creative Commons license."

Mette is a member of a neo-Nazi gang, her day job is to take care of four crazy old people that all are just waiting to die. Her life becomes a journey into a burlesque fairytale, where the rules of the game are created by Mette herself. Mette is indifferent about her way of life, until she one night assaults a man, kicking him senseless. Waking up the day after, she realizes that something is wrong, and in company with the her crazy oldies she longs for respect and love. She can tell that the old folks are marginalized by the modern society, but together they create a world and a voice of their own.

Nasty Old People

Download legally from the Pirate Bay

(Thanks, Mathias!)

Glyn sez, "The same French president who has for the second time brought in three strikes to France has for the second time been caught infringing copyright on a large scale. The presidential audiovisual services have produced 400 unauthorized copies of the 52-minute documentary 'A visage decouvert: Nicolas Sarkozy.' This is quite impressive as the producer of the documentary has only shipped 50 copies."

The French satirical investigative journalism weekly "Le Canard Enchaîné" reveals that our holier-than-thou presidency is in fact a pirate's lair. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the presidential audiovisual services produced 400 unauthorized copies of the 52 minutes documentary "A visage découvert : Nicolas Sarkozy"...

It is even more appalling that we are dealing with repeat offenders : last spring, while the Hadopi law was discussed, U.S. music duo MGMT received €30,000 as a settlement for a copyright infringement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy's party who used one of its songs at a political rally without permission. Those who led the charge against Internet users are not the most respectful of copyright.

The Killing

Earlier this week I remarked on Twitter how much I enjoyed Stanley Kubrik's 1956 movie about a race track heist, The Killing. Jack Shafer replied, "Okay, now you're ready for Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer). It will change your life."

I checked Netflix and learned that Detour isn't available there. But I remembered that archive.org has a large collection of public domain movies, so I looked there and lo and behold, they had it. I downloaded the highest resolution version watched it. The quality was quite good, aside from a couple of wobbly parts and a second of missing dialogue.

Detour

Jack steered me straight. This 1946 black-and-white film is as grim, hard-boiled, and twisty as any film noir title I've ever seen. Al (Tom Neal) plays a talented pianist stuck in cheap joint in New York. He's got an attitude to match the atmosphere (when a patron gives him a ten-dollar tip after he plays an insanely complex piece, he remarks that it's just "a piece of paper crawling with germs.")

Naturally, Al falls for the house singer, but she won't marry him because he doesn't have enough money. When she goes to Hollywood to try to become an actress, Al quits his job and starts hitchhiking across the country to be with her. He doesn't know it, but when a flashy loudmouth in a big car picks him up, Al's fate is sealed. Ann Savage, playing a femme fatale who seethes with bitter poison, is a show stealer.

It turns out that Archive.org has a collection of 43 film noir titles. If you've seen any of them, I'd appreciate it if you added your recommendations in the comments.

Archive.org's Welcome to Film Noir: expressionistic crime dramas of the 40s and 50s: tough cops and private eyes, femme fatales, mean city streets and deserted backroads, bags of loot and dirty double-crossers.

Suw Charman, of Ada Lovelace Day fame, sez,

Film maker Rosemarie Reed has been in touch with me about a film she's planning called Byron and Babbage: A Calculating Story. Based on Ada Lovelace's letters, it will be a feature-length documentary with some dramatic readings and will air on PBS National.

Rosemarie needs to gather letters of support from the community - from people who feel that Ada is an important figure.

Rosemarie says, "I need letters from people stating how important a film like Ada is and how they through their networks can help to publicize the film. It would be great if the women have organizations they work or belong to. If they are software developers or computer experts, this would be great. It would be best if they were Americans, as the NSF (National Science Foundation) is American."

Letters should be sent by the end of October to:

Rosemarie Reed
On the Road Productions International, Inc.
310 Greenwich Street, 21F
New York, NY 10013

Documentary film-maker Kirby Dick ("This Film is Not Yet Rated") has just released his latest doc, "Outrage," about anti-gay politicians who are secretly gay. These are the twisted lawmakers who campaign against gay rights in public, but who are, in fact, gay (and who generally enjoy the rights they're publicly against, thanks to their power and privilege).

An official selection of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, OUTRAGE investigates the hidden lives of some of the country's most powerful policymakers - from now-retired Idaho Senator Larry Craig, to former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy - and examines how these and other politicians have inflicted damage on millions of Americans by opposing gay rights. Equally disturbing, the film explores the mainstream media's complicity in keeping those secrets, despite the growing efforts to "out" them by gay rights organizations and bloggers.

Through a combination of archival news footage and exclusive interviews with politicians and members of the media, OUTRAGE probes the psychology of a double lifestyle, the ethics of outing closeted politicians, and the double standards that the media upholds in its coverage of the sex lives of gay public figures. As Barney Frank, perhaps the best-known openly gay member of Congress explains, "There is a right to privacy, but not a right to hypocrisy. It is very important that the people who make the law be subject to the law."

OUTRAGE (Thanks, Kirby!)

Richard Metzger blogs, "I can't wait to see the surreal new British comedy Bunny and the Bull, from Mighty Boosh director Paul King. Although it keeps getting referred to as "The Mighty Boosh movie" (and looks quite Booshian) it's not, the Mighty Boosh just happen to be in it." Video over at Dangerous Minds.

Previously:

The Improbable Movie Trading Cards contain the answer to the question that's plagued us all for decades: "What would the kid's merchandising for Apocalypse Now look like?"

I was addicted to movie trading cards as a kid, especially the stickers that came in the packs, so I'm glad to see that this collection contains a few of 'em.

Improbable movie trading cards (Thanks, Danny!)

Paul sez,

The Dutch public broadcaster VPRO is currently running a thematic week on the century of the city. As part of this they have commissioned a number of documentaries about places like Johannesburg, Paris and Gurgaon and they have taken the still rather unusual stuff of releasing most of these under a Creative Commons license that allows for redistribution and remixing of these documentaries.

What is especially cool about this is that they are doing this with current documentaries that have aired for the first time in the last 10 days (and while they are also selling a DVD box edition and trying to sell the documentaries to other broadcasters). Right now English language versions of documentaries I am Gurgaon - the new city in Inda by Marije Meerman and Stayin' Alive in Jo'Burg by Rob Schroder are available via bit-torrent and a third one (Metropolis: Coming to the City) will follow later this week.

Flickr user Graphic Nothing has a delightful set of "Movie Posters for Minimalists" that contain the minimum visual information necessary to convey a sense of the film. I have a feeling that a lot of these would work better for people who've already seen the movies, rather than as enticement to go to the cinema in the first place, but I'm still very pleased by them.

Movie Posters for Minimalists (via Wonderland)

Here's the trailer for the movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's bleakly horrific, post-apocalyptic novel The Road. It looks mighty grim. I'll be first in line to see it on November 25.

The Road trailer

This clever video pieces together scenes depicting the already-hoary suspense-film cliche in which a cellular phone's signal (or battery) gives out at just the wrong (right) time so that the characters will have something to be in suspense about. One thing I will always and forever love Iain Banks for is his 2003 novel Dead Air, a gripping, taut suspense novel in which everyone has a cellphone that always works. I was struck when I read it, believing that Banks had just created an entirely new genre: suspense novels in which none of the tension comes from characters not knowing key facts.

No Signal (and other cellular drama)

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He currently resides in Harlem, New York.

Is anyone here following We Love You So? A blog Spike Jonze and Co. set up giving us a  nice glimpse into all the little insights and influences that helped bring Where The Wild Things Are to life. The photo above is from their Where the Wild Things Ought To Be Contest, a cute photoshop competition that has some really clever entries. 

Ch ch check it out- http://weloveyouso.com

Jeff sez,

An iron fence on W. 21st St. in New York depicts the classic image of a rocket crashing into the Man in the Moon from Melies' 1902 pioneering science fiction film, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).

The fence is across from the Clinton School of the Arts for Writers and Artists, and I happened to snap this photo during lunch break. After I was done shooting about 10 or so photos, I noticed that a crowd of kids had surrounded me and continued talking about the image as I walked away.

Soooo, teacher that I am, I went back and asked if any of them knew what it was. None of them did, but they agreed that it was "awesome" and wondered if the thing in his eye might be a bullet. I explained about the Melies film, its history, and what the image was supposed to be, all of which the kids said was even more awesome, so they asked me to repeat the title so they could watch the film on Youtube.

I remember being fascinated by a still of the original scene in a book when I was their age, um, many moons ago. Not only is the fence homage cool in itself, but it was wonderful to see that "A Trip to the Moon" continues to inspire.

David and I love the 1979 movie Over the Edge, about youth run wild in a suburban cultural wasteland. The (out-of-print) soundtrack is terrific, and so were the kids in the movie (most were not professional actors).

On the 30th anniversary of the movie, Mike Sacks of Vice magazine put together an oral history of the movie with comments from 20 members of the cast and crew.

Jonathan Kaplan (director): I was only 30 when I was hired to do Over the Edge, but I had some unique experience, which helped. I had studied with Martin Scorsese when I was younger. And I had been the director of an infamous Sex Pistols movie called Who Killed Bambi?

What I took away from that experience was the spark and the truth that I saw in the punk aesthetic. And I saw that same spark and truth in the Over the Edge script. I thought, These kids are American punks. They’re not as articulate as the English punks, but they’re also in a rage.

With that in mind, I decided to attack Over the Edge from a punk angle: keep it simple. No fancy camera moves, visual effects, nothing fancy. I remember when I first saw Super Fly. There were boom shadows, badly shot scenes, and mistakes. But there was a simplicity and an authenticity to it that I really appreciated.

When it came time to cast Over the Edge, we tried to go for that same authenticity. We wanted real teens, as opposed to professional actors—and kids who were also age-appropriate. No twenty-somethings playing 14-year-olds.

OVER THE EDGE: An Oral History of the Greatest Teen Rebellion Movie of All Time

In "What If Star Wars Was Made By Environmentalists?" the movie is reimagined as "Star Non-Violent Resistance" and eco-tourism is used to establish independence from the empire; Vader is forced to file environmental impact statements on planetary destruction, etc. Funny!

What If Star Wars Was Made By Environmentalists?

Above, Jude Law in fab drag. A still from the forthcoming feature Rage, directed by Sally Potter, in which Law plays a female model named "Minx." The short version: A young student uses his phonecam to shoot interviews with the staff of a New York fashion house, and posts them online without the interviewees' knowledge or consent. A runway accident turns into a murder investigation, then, "denial leads to devastation." Here's a New York Times piece about the film, by Guy Trebay.

Zoolander it is not. Here's a Flickr set with more stills.

You'll spot Steve Buscemi, Judi Dench, John Leguizamo, Dianne Wiest, and Eddie Izzard all in the trailer, which is embedded after the jump.

My latest Guardian column, "Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick," discusses the difficulty of making truly 3D movies (that is, movies that lose something crucial in 2D) in a world where movies need to find a home on 2D small-screens in order to recoup.

Movies, after all, rely on the aftermarket of satellite, broadcast and cable licenses, of home DVD releases and releases to airline entertainment systems and hotel room video-on-demand services - none of which are in 3D. If the movie couldn't be properly enjoyed in boring old 2D, the economics of filmmaking would collapse. So no filmmaker can afford to make a big-budget movie that is intended as a 3D-only experience, except as a vanity project.

What's more, no filmmaker can afford to make a small-budget 3D movie, either, because the cinema-owners who've shelled out big money to retrofit their auditoriums for 3D projection don't want to tie up their small supply of 3D screens with art-house movies. They especially don't want to do this when there's plenty of competition from giant-budget 3D movies that add in the 3D as an optional adjunct, a marketing gimmick that can be used to draw in a few more punters during the cinematic exhibition window.

I have no doubt that there are brilliant 3D movies lurking in potentia out there in the breasts of filmmakers, yearning to burst free. But I strongly doubt that any of them will burst free. The economics just don't support it: a truly 3D movie would be one where the 3D was so integral to the storytelling and the visuals and the experience that seeing it in 2D would be like seeing a giant-robots-throwing-buildings-at-each-other blockbuster as a flipbook while a hyperactive eight-year-old supplied the sound effects by shouting "BANG!" and "CRASH!" in your ear.

This trailer for a notional 1951 version of Raiders of the Lost Ark has my head nigh-exploding with recursive delight: a retro movie that hearkens to 1950s adventure serials remade as a 1950s adventure serial!

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1951) Trailer (via Neatorama)

Here's a clip from a 1962 Russian movie called The Planet of Storms. The design of the vehicles and spacesuits is very nice. The information panel on the YouTube page has instructions for downloading the entire movie.

"The Planet of Storms" was one of the first Soviet fantastic films directed by Pavel Klushantsev, a screen version of the novel of Alexander Kazantsev about space travel. The film has been made with use of unique technologies of the combined shooting at times leave behind of advancing foreign analogues existing in those days.

On a planet Venus goes joint Soviet-American expedition on three spaceships. One of the ships perishes at collision with a meteorite. The remained crews make decision to make landing on Venus and left on an orbit only one person for support of communication with the Earth. The spaceship and a glider from other ship sit down far apart...

The Oscar-winning producer of a celebrated biopic about Charles Darwin says that the reason his movie -- which is being shown all around the world -- can't find a US distributor is that evolution is still too controversial in the USA.

US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution...

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".

What a sad loss. He will be remembered, respected, and missed. NYT obituary. Patti Smith, another personal idol of mine, says of Carroll, "I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation. The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty."

Photo: Patti and Jim (via ifcharlieparkerwasagunslinger, no image credit given)

This video of Canon 1 à 2 from J. S. Bach's Musical Offering (1747) being turned into a Moebius strip, then played in two directions at the same time would have been good to watch and listen to while I was reading the mind-bending Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid many years ago. (via cgr 2.0)

In today's New York Times, Miguel Helft reports that YouTube is negotiating with major Hollywood studios over an agreement that would allow the web video service to stream feature-length movies to users for a fee:

If a deal is reached, it would be a major change for YouTube, which has largely offered free content supported by advertising. It would also put YouTube, which is owned by Google, in direct competition with services from Netflix, Amazon and Apple, which allow users to buy or rent movies online.

YouTube, which already offers some older free movies on its site, is talking with Lions Gate Entertainment, Sony and Warner Brothers about making newer titles available on the site, the person said. Scott Rowe, a spokesman for Warner Brothers, declined to comment, and representatives for the other two studios were not immediately available.

Ephemera Assemblyman has a nice gallery of movie poster paintings from Ghana. Don't you wish the dog in Cujo really looked like this? It's ten times more nightmarish. (Thanks, Laura!)

Above: Never Can Say Goodbye, a short documentary film by Dianna Dilworth that shows how hardcore Michael Jackson fans are mourning their idol's death. The documentary is a follow-up to her previous award-winning feature We are the Children (blogged on BB here), in which she followed a group of MJ trufans during his 2004-2005 trial on child molestation charges. In this new work, Dilworth reconnects with Michael Jackson impersonator Sean Vezina (MySpace profile), who has been dressing up as the pop star at Jackson's Hollywood star for the past five years. Vezina was also a featured character in We are the Children.

Video link:
* Never Can Say Goodbye (snagfilms.com)
* Never Can Say Goodbye (vimeo.com)

In 1902, Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) premiered in French theaters. In many ways, it is the first "science fiction" film. Of course, it has been referenced on Futurama and The Mighty Boosh, and was the basis for the Smashing Pumpkins video "Tonight." The director of the film, Georges Méliès, was a stage magician at the Theatre Robert-Houdin before becoming enchanted with cinema after seeing a demo of the Lumière brothers' camera technology. (via Wired)

The Men Who Stare At Goats is UK journalist Jon Ronson's terrific, absurd, scary, and funny nonfiction book about the United States military's weird experiments with psychic spying, "Jedi" powers, subliminal sound weapons, and, er, the ability to kill an animal just by looking at it (hence the title). The book is coming to the big screen November 6 in the form of a dark comedy starring Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, and Jeff Bridges. What fun!

"The Men Who Stare At Goats" movie trailer (Thanks, Jason Tester!)
Buy "The Men Who Stare At Goats" book

In the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the French scientist character Claude LaCombe (François Truffaut) was based on my friend Jacques Vallée. Whenever I see the movie, which is one of my favorites of all time, I get a kick out of LaCombe insisting to the military man that the UFO phenomenon "is an event sociologique!" That's totally Jacques speaking. Jacques just pointed me to this deleted scene from Close Encounters that I didn't know existed. It shows an alternate first meeting between LaCombe and his translator David Laughlin (Bob Balaban). As Jacques says, the scene really gets at the emotionality of the story that Spielberg was trying to achieve along with telling a great weird tale.

Snip from an essay by artist Michaela Melián on Hedy Lemarr, the Austrian-born American scientist and actress who was once described as the most beautiful woman in the world by MGM's Louis B. Mayer. Art Fag City Editor Paddy Johnson says, "Not only was she the first actress to simulate an orgasm onscreen in 1933, but her frequency-switching device (now known as frequency hopping) developed with partner George Antheil, is the technology upon with cell phones are built."

Melián assembled this online essay for Art Fag City's annual IMG MGMT which, in which artists are invited to curate image essays on the blog. She also wrote a score to accompany the old school style slide show, which is embedded in the post.

Image above: Michaela Melián, Frequency Hopping, 2008, C-print, watercolor, thread, 35 x 28 cm.

Snip:

In her ex-husband's Salzburg villa, the immigrant had seen plans for remote controlled torpedoes, which were never built because the radio controls proved to be too unreliable. After the outbreak of the Second World War, she worked on practical ideas to effectively fight the Hitler regime. At a party in Hollywood, Lamarr met George Antheil, an avant-garde composer who also wrote film scores. While playing the piano with the composer, the actress suddenly has an important idea for her torpedo control system. Antheil sets up the system on 88 frequencies, as this number corresponds to the number of keys on a piano. To construct it, he employs something similar to the player piano sheet music that he used in his Ballet Mécanique.

In December 1940, the frequency-switching device developed by Lamarr and Antheil was sent to the National Inventors' Council. A patent was awarded on August 11, 1942. The two inventors leave it to the American military to figure out how to use the device. Lamarr's and Antheil's Secret Communication System disappears into the U.S. Army's filing cabinets.

Finally, in 1962, as the Cuba crisis brews the technology now known as frequency hopping is put to use. Its purpose is not to control torpedoes, but to allow for safe communications among blockading ships - whereupon the principles behind the patent become part of fundamental U.S. military communications technology. Today, this technology is not only the foundation for the U.S. military's satellite defense system, but also used widely in the private sector, particularly for cordless and mobile telephones.

Over at the WIRED "Underwired" pop culture blog, Hugh Hart has an extensive post up about cheesy, low-budget Mexican science fiction movies from the '50s and '60s. Above, a scene from Santo vs. the Martians (1967), which features the famous Mexican wrestler defending nuestra planeta against space-aliens. Snip:

These unsung heroes of vintage Mexican cinema mesmerized south-of-the-border moviegoers for a decade in low-budget pictures that threw together science, sex and action with low-budget abandon.

"Part of the charm of these films is that they are so atrociously underbudgeted and the effects are so cheesy," said UCLA Film & Television Archive programmer Shannon Kelley, who curated the upcoming free film series "Aztec Mummies & Martian Invaders: Mexican Sci-Fi Classics."

"To make something seem supernatural, they'd just add a strange warble sound effect in the background," she said. (...) "The aliens all wore these very simple Mylar costumes," she said. "Plus you have the posturing by the actors."

And if you're in Los Angeles, every Friday in August there are screenings of these films over at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. Looks like an amazing lineup, I hope to catch at least one of them: ¡ AZTEC MUMMIES & MARTIAN INVADERS !: MEXICAN SCI-FI CLASSICS

The 59-year old director died in Manhattan of a heart attack. He brought us such iconic eighties films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. IMDB, Wikipedia, Slashfilm, TMZ, Variety. Above, a montage of scenes from his films, created by a fan to the tune of the Who's "Baba O'Riley." (via Bonnie Burton)

BB pal and periodic guestblogger Richard Metzger has an amazing blog post up about the off-Broadway musical Man on the Moon. The play was conceived by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and his third wife, South African actress, Genevieve Waite, as a potential film or stage production originally entitled "Space."

The stage performance was produced by Andy Warhol. Long-lost video footage of the play is embedded above. More video over at Metzger's blog, too, amazing stuff.

The following text was written by Chris Campion and Jeffrey A. Greenberg from the liner notes of the CD release of Andy Warhol Presents Man on the Moon.

I'll post a snip here, but you have to read the whole thing to hear about the part Philips wrote for Elvis, and all the weird little factoids about Warhol's work, and allegations that George Lucas stole the idea for Star Wars from this offbeat project. Snip:

Space was born the day Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. Like millions of other people, John watched the 1969 moon landing on TV. He was living, at the time, on the Malibu property rented by British film director Michael Sarne, who was under contract at Fox to direct the adaptation of Gore Vidal's novel, Myra Breckenridge, with Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch and Mae West. Sarne had commissioned John to write songs for the film.

The Apollo 11 moon landing became an obsession. John would watch a recording of the TV transmission made on an early video tape machine over and over. The idea of exploring this new frontier - and particularly Neil Armstrong's scripted aside as he stepped onto the lunar surface that it was, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - fired John's imagination, and he began to piece together ideas for a mythical space opera set to music. "He loved myths," says Genevieve, who was first introduced to John by Sarne that summer. "He liked Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey."

(...) Genevieve bemoaned the fate of the show to her friend, Andy Warhol, who offered to find a backer, and did. Warhol also agreed to serve as a producer, and provided a director in the form of Paul Morrissey, who had made a series of avant-garde exploitation films under Warhol's aegis (Flesh, Trash, Heat, Chelsea Girls, etc.). John expressed his bemusement about Warhol's involvement in the song, "Oh Andy My Assistant": "Oh Andy, my assistant/your mind is so consistently blank/that I'm banking on you now/so please so don't try to comprehend/the reason why I have to send/ you up or else, I'm sure that we, shall have a terrible row/It's either you or I must save the race/ So bye-bye Andy and off you're goin' to Space."

Music CD: Andy Warhol Presents "Man on the Moon" (Amazon.com)

(Above, trailer for upcoming movie, "Leslie, My Name Is Evil")

Here's Part 1 of a 5-part excerpt from John Waters' forthcoming book, Role Models (2010) running in the The Huffington Post. Waters writes about his friendship with Leslie Van Houten, the Manson Family member who is serving a life sentence for murdering Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in 1969.

I have a really good friend who was convicted of killing two innocent people when she was nineteen years old on a horrible night of 1969 cult madness. Her name is Leslie Van Houten and I think you would like her as much as I do. She was one of those notorious "Manson girls" who shaved their heads, carved X's in their foreheads and laughed, joked, and sang their way through the courthouse straight to death row without the slightest trace of remorse forty years ago. Leslie is hardly a "Manson girl" today. Sixty years old, she looks back from prison on her involvement in the La Bianca murders (the night after the Tate massacre) in utter horror, shame, and guilt and takes full responsibility for her part in the crimes. I think it's time to parole her.

I am guilty, too. Guilty of using the Manson murders in a jokey, smart-ass way in my earlier films without the slightest feeling for the victims' families or the lives of the brainwashed Manson killer kids who were also victims in this sad and terrible case. I became obsessed by the Sharon Tate murders from the day I read about them on the front page of the New York Times in 1969 as I worked behind the counter of the Provincetown Book Shop. Later, when the cops finally caught the hippy killers and I actually saw their photos ("Arrest Weirdo in Tate Murders", screamed the New York Daily News headlines) I almost went into cardiac arrest. God! The Manson Family looked just like my friends at the time!

I'm looking forward to reading the other four parts of this excerpt, though I seriously doubt it'll change my opinion that Van Houten should spend the rest of her life in prison.

Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship, Part 1 of 5, by John Waters | Part 2

This Grey Gardens Coloring Book is the best curious collectible for the day. There are three volumes, signed by the artist, in the $30 set. Grey Gardens Collectibles Coloring Books (via Bust)

Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

Though I consider myself an ape enthusiast, I've never really cottoned to movies starring chimps. Chimps dressed in clothing performing slapstick gags just isn't my thing. Documentaries about primates usually aren't much better; they tend to be dry and humorless, sucking all the spirit out of their subjects while portraying their depressing circumstances. Also, there's just something incongruous about watching "nature" documentaries on TV screens. But People of the Forest: The Chimps of Gombe transcends all this. In a word, it's awesome. The documentary draws on 20 years of footage to tell the stories of a group of chimps that Jane Goodall followed in Gombe, Tanzania. It's as sweet and funny and heart-rending as any great feature film. Highly recommended. (The movie is out of print, but Amazon has a few copies, or you may be able to get it via P2P.)