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This is a wild story! So, in the late sixties, George Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic crew were tripping balls on LSD on their way to a gig in Pittsburgh. Billy Bates, one of the founders, thought he'd be clever and take a shortcut, driving right past a barricade. — Read the rest
How do you solve a problem like Superman? For the last 40 years, Superman's popularity has declined significantly from its former glory. Unlike his Justice League cohort Batman, Supes' stature as a pillar in the superhero genre has continually eroded with each passing year. — Read the rest
Danse Exquise is an animation that evokes the feeling of being inside of a kaleidoscope. I love the brilliant colors and painterly quality of the characters and ever-morphing background. For me, watching this was less about plot and more about having a completely immersive visual experience. — Read the rest
We wrote about news of Agent Elvis (then called Agent King) back in 2019. There finally is an official trailer for the animated series, co-created by Priscilla Presley, and news that the Netflix show will premier on March 17.
The series is animated by Robert Valley (Love Death & Robots, Pear Cider and Cigarettes, Gorillaz) and stars the voice acting of Matthew McConaughey, Don Cheadle, Katlin Olsen, Johnny Knoxville, Niecy Nash, Ed Helms, Chris Elliott, and a slew of other comedic actors.
Even with all of the endless adaptations of comic book superheroes, there isn't a single character that can measure up to Batman's success in film and television. Since the late 80s, Batman films have remained at the pinnacle of superhero cinema, thanks to Tim Burton's timely take on the Caped Crusader. — Read the rest
Composed of over 1000 engravings from the 19th century, the short animation Still Life (above) is “a meditation on subject/object dualism,” exploring “the idea that we live in a world of objects and a world of objects lives within us.” It’s created by Conner Griffith, an experimental L.A. filmmaker who likes working “with collections to explore the universal stories that can emerge from visual choreography and the relationship between sound and image.” For anyone interested, Griffith has made available the 1400 images used here in a Google Drive doc. You can find more of his short films on Vimeo.
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"In Your Wildest Dreams" is a 1996 duet by soul/R&B legends Tina Turner and Barry White. The bizarre, hot, and hilarious music video below was created by stop motion animation studio Aardman Animations and features cameos from their superstars Wallace and Gromit along with, er, Antonio Banderas. — Read the rest
Back in 1964, Shel Silverstein wrote The Giving Tree, a widely loved children’s book now translated into more than 30 languages. It’s a story about the human condition, about giving and receiving, using and getting used, neediness and greediness, although many finer points of the story are open to interpretation. Today, we’re rewinding the videotape to 1973, when Silverstein’s little book was turned into a 10-minute animated film. Silverstein narrates the story himself and also plays the harmonica…. which brings us to his musical talents. Don’t miss Silverstein, also a well-known songwriter, appearing on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970, and the two singing “A Boy Named Sue.” Silverstein wrote the song, and Cash made it famous. Thanks to Mark, co-editor of the philosophy blog/podcast The Partially Examined Life for sending these along.
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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, Venmo (@openculture) and Crypto. Thanks!
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Imagine two prisoners, each one placed in solitary confinement. The police offer a deal: if each betrays the other, they’ll both get five years in prison. If one betrays the other but the other keeps quiet, the betrayer will walk free and the betrayed will serve ten years. If neither say anything, they’ll both be locked up, but only for two years. Unable coordinate, both prisoners will likely betray each other in order to secure the best individual outcome, despite the fact that it would be better on the whole for both to keep their mouths shut. This is the “prisoner’s dilemma,” a thought experiment much-cited in game theory and economics since the middle of the twentieth century.
Though the situation the prisoner’s dilemma describes may sound quite specific, its general form actually conforms to that of a variety of problems that arise throughout the modern world, in politics, trade, interpersonal relations, and a great many others besides.
Blogger Scott Alexander describes the prisoner’s dilemmas as one manifestation of what Allen Ginsberg called Moloch, the relentless unseen force that drives societies toward misery. Moloch “always and everywhere offers the same deal: throw what you love most into the flames, and I can grant you power.” Or, as he’d put it to Chewy the gingerbread man, “Betray your friend Crispy, and I’ll make a fox eat only three of your limbs.”
Such is the situation animated in gloriously woolly stop-motion by Ivana Bošnjak and Thomas Johnson in the TED-Ed video at the top of the post, which replaces the prisoners with “sentient baked goods,” the jailer with a hungry woodland predator, and years of imprisonment with bitten-off arms and legs. After explaining the prisoner’s dilemma in a whimsical manner, it presents one proposed solution: the “infinite prisoner’s dilemma,” in which the participants decide not just once but over and over again. Such a setup would allow them to “use their future decisions as bargaining chips for the present one,” and eventually (depending upon how heavily they value future outcomes in the present) to settle upon repeating the outcome that would let both of them walk free — as free as they can walk on one gingerbread leg, at any rate.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
The Midnight Parasites is a short psychedelic animation directed by Yoji Kuri. This wonderfully strange 9-minute film, created in 1972, has been regarded as a precursor to René Laloux's acclaimed 1973 animation, Fantastic Planet. The Midnight Parasites takes place in a desolate, alien landscape where many strange beings interact. — Read the rest
DONKS, by artist Felix Colgrave, features creatures and objects existing somewhere between the abstract and the figurative. I love how Colgrave relies heavily on sound to give each character and scene a distinct personality. I also love how the creatures and objects in this film are composed of hodgepodge shapes and objects that one wouldn't expect to see combined together. — Read the rest
Back in April 2020, animator Henning M. Lederer launched his “Books & Sleeves” project where he turns abstract geometric patterns, all featured on vintage book and record covers, into mesmerizing moving images. Above, you can watch the second installment of the project, which doesn’t disappoint.
In the past, we’ve also featured more of Lederer’s creative work–from his animations of mid-century minimalist book covers and vintage psychology and philosophy books, to his animation of a 1926 lithograph that famously portrays the human body as a modern factory. Be sure to give them all a watch.
If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here.
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, Venmo (@openculture) and Crypto. Thanks!
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A strong character in her own right, Harley Quinn is defined by strong relationships. When Paul Dini and Bruce Timm first conjured the character for Batman: The Animated Series in the 90s, Harley Quinn was designed to be a fun subversion of the hulking henchman trope. — Read the rest
Unless he's tangling with aliens or interdimensional imps that wear a costume identical to his own, Batman works with almost any type of villain. Usually, the Dark Knight functions best against foes that are human and psychotic, but that doesn't mean that he can't battle superpowered villains too. — Read the rest
Can we really say that Jeff Bezos isn't Lex Luthor? On paper, his resume fits the bill well enough, but the one element that truly fuels the rumor is the content offered on Amazon Prime Video. Even though it's a brilliant show in its own right- and a superior version of the comic it adapts- The Boys goes out of its way to sully Superman's perception through Homelander, the series' central antagonist. — Read the rest
When a show creates and airs more than 740 episodes of television, finding consensus about the best of those episodes is nearly impossible. Yet, 30 years after it first aired, The Simpsons‘ “Marge vs. the Monorail” might be closest to the crown. This piece from Alan Siegel isn’t the first time an outlet has examined the episode’s impact — see Vice‘s oral history from 2020 — but it gleefully dives into the origin and execution the way few others have. D’ohnt skip it.
The episode was the first true extravaganza for a groundbreaking animated series that was originally conceived as an intimate family comedy. Both visually and narratively, it was an installment that expanded the world of The Simpsons as it moved beyond its first few seasons. All the quotable lines, sight gags, pop culture references, ambitious set pieces, and catchy songs add up to something unexpectedly (and eternally) prescient. The episode is now synonymous with modern hucksterism: Whenever a fancy new transportation system, or a billion-dollar eyesore, or a deal that enriches corporate executives and few others comes along, it can’t escape comparisons to Lanley’s genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail. “I get a kick out of the cultural reach of The Simpsons,” says television writer and producer Jeff Martin, who had a hand in making “Marge vs. the Monorail.” “Now if there’s some shorthand for a dishonest salesman, a flimflam man, it’s a monorail salesman.”
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