Justice League of Public Domain Victorian Characters?

Yeah, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Alan Moore’s series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen , affords the readers a Steampunk setting for these fanciful creations of Victorian imagination.

The original series, illustrated by Kevin O’Neill, premiered in 1999 with Jim Lee’s Wildstorm Comics imprint and DC Comics formidable backing. Moore has noted as literary influences such diverse authors as William S. Burroughs, Douglas Adams, Aleister Crowley, and Oscar Wilde.

The value of keeping literary characters available in the public domain is exhibited in not only Alan Moore’s authorship, but with the character’s portrayal across multiple forms of media delivery. It is unfortunate Moore has developed such an acrimonious relationship with Hollywood and we won’t have the chance to see his stories through a collaborative lens, as the movie industry takes his work from the page to the screen.

At any rate, hope you enjoy a ride with some the iconic personalities of modern Western culture.

Source works of the principal characters:

Wilhelmina Murray

• Dracula by Bram Stoker

Archive related media: Movie

http://www.archive.org/details/nosferatu

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Archive related media: Text

The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Illustrated by Charles Raymond Macauley

Dr. Fu Manchu

• The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer

Archive related media: Old Time Radio

The Shadow of Fu Manchu

Serial melodrama, based on the stories by Sax Rohmer.

http://www.archive.org/details/FuManchuOTRKIBM

Allan Quatermain

• King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard

Archive related media: Movie

http://www.archive.org/details/king_solomans_mine

Capt. Capt. Nemo (Prince Dakkar?)

• Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island

Archive related media: Text

http://www.archive.org/details/worksofjulesvern05vern

Sherlock Holmes

• Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle

Archive related media: Audio Book

http://www.archive.org/details/return_holmes_0708_librivox

- baird

MLK - A Hero’s Journey

A hero is one who has given him(her)self up to the benefit of another.

April 4 marks the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination. Voicing ideas and challenging authority is a path lined with fatal dangers. In an extreme case of delayed gratification, 40 years later we have our first black candidate with a reasonable chance at the White House.

Democracy Now! Monday, January 21, 2008 - Democracy Now!
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968

…if he had lived, he would have turned 79 years old. In the early 1960s, King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South where police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods were used against Southern blacks seeking the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter. After passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights”—including economic rights.

Rustbelt Radio - Pittsburgh Indymedia
Reflections on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

CascadiaPublicRadio - portland oregon community radio
Monday, January 15 22nd Annual “Keep Alive the Dream” Tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. January 15th 11:00 - 6:00 PM Folk Espresso– Folk music in the morning. (5:30) am The KBOO Morning News at 7:00 am More Talk Radio – Del Walker hosts a discussion of the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We Celebrate Martin Luther King
Montage of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as part of the celebration in San Antonio Tx, which takes place each year. This year’s celebration was taped for San Antonio Public Access TV.

I Have a Dream, Martin Luther King Jr. - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
This is an audio recording of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. giving the “I Have a Dream” speech during the Civil Rights rally on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.

MOR Episode 1 - Row Lewis
In this broadcast, Row Lewis discusses what Dr. King’s legacy means to her as a minister and sheds light on the watering down of MLK’s revolution of consciousness: “They’ve created a mythical Martin Luther King Jr., constructed solely from a few lines in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. And each year, we hear only a portion of this remarkable and rebellious address to an oppressive nation…”

- baird

Celebrate One Web Day Sept. 22, 2007

One Web Day is like Earth Day for the Internet. The goal of the annual event is to celebrate the web and the difference it makes in our lives; and to take time to reflect on what the web could mean for the world and human kind in the future.

While it is easy to take the Web for granted, there are substantial threats to the free flow of online information all around the world. The supporters of One Web Day hope to create a global constituency that thinks of itself as responsible for the future of the Internet, so that when negative things happen (such as censorship, restricted access, or heavy-handed law enforcement control) people will act.

The second annual One Web Day is happening this September 22. The Internet Archive has created a special One Web Day Collection where anyone may upload a video to celebrate One Web Day. You may also want to upload your One Web Day video to the collections on blipTV, YouTube, and Dotsub.com with the tag “onewebday2007″.

To upload to the Archive collection, start here and select “One Web Day (Sept 22, 2007)” from the drop-down menu titled “—Pick A Collection—” before you click “Upload Files”.

Archival Space

In honor of the recent announcement that the Internet Archive is partnering with NASA to archive and manage all of their photographs and audiovisual materials, this blog entry is devoted to space science. The archive has several titles that address our fascination with space exploration, including historic newsreels, educational shorts, TV programs and kitschy ephemera.

Science in Action: Aero Medicine (1956): In two parts, Part I and Part II. Science in Action was a 1950’s TV series produced by the California Academy of Science. The host was Dr. Earl Herald, a Bay Area science community mainstay from the Steinhart Aquarium. This episode: the physiology of space travel! What happens to the human body during launch, and in orbit?

Space Progress. ‘Man-In-Space’ Capsule Recovery Successful (1960): Newsreel covering a capsule launch test from NASA’s Project Mercury.

 

Space History. Reds Orbit Two Craft (1962): In this newsreel, “the Russians chalk up another victory in the space race, as they put two manned spacecraft into orbit within 24 hours.” Cue ominous “Reds” music …

 

The Big Bounce (1960): A detailed overview of NASA’s development of Echo, the world’s first passive communications satellite, with layman’s terminology galore to explain why the satellite is relevant and important for the average person, “For instance, we would like to see live television programs, history in the making, from all over the world. But TV broadcasting presents a special problem. One TV channel requires the space of almost 1,000 telephone circuits.” Technicolor makes for some gorgeous archival imagery here.

Net Café: Space Science (1998): The Internet Café was a TV program that ran for seven years in the late 1990’s to early 2000’s, covering early web culture from the vantage point of the average internet café. This episode is a fantastic overview of the presence of space culture on the web circa 1998.

Way Stations In Space (1961): Despite the fact that, as one user mentions, “the physics are bad” this is still a gem of Cold War ephemera. As archive enthusiast “Spuzz” points out, this is exactly “the type of space race film you would see in the late 50’s and early 60’s to teach people what to expect in space in the next decade or so.”

Highlights 1965: A Progress Report (1965): In three parts, Part I, Part II and Part III. If ever a NASA progress report was eventful, it was during the mid 1960’s. Smack in the middle of the “space race,” the organization gives a fairly technical but fascinating overview of its activities and advancements from the year 1965.

Cheerios (1960): This commercial features “a team of JUNIOR spacemen with an OUT OF THIS WORLD breakfast!”

 

 

 

Space Ace: Commercial for a video game that features a character named Dexter, who’s been blasted with an “infanto-ray” by the evil commander Bork and turned into a child. The goal of the game is to “run the bad guy out of the solar system and regain your manhood.” For more on this quest, see the “Reds Orbit Two Craft” film one more time. Pay attention to the ominous music.

Written by: Stephanie Sapienza

Celluloid Ephemera

It’s easy to forget that film was always a tangible, physical medium before the advent of inexpensive digital technologies. Even though the archive’s primary moving image collections are digital by the time they reach us in mpeg, quicktime, or flash formats, many of our assets were originally shot on film. And many of them are self reflexive about the process, as evidenced by some of the items below.

Before Production:

Technicolor for Industrial Films (ca. 1949): Technicolor was an early color film process in which film was shot on three different film strips (red, green and blue), and then recombined through a special process to produce a unique level of color saturation that modern film stocks – much less digital video - cannot achieve. This film shows industrial film producers how Technicolor can help them showcase their products in a way that really highlights their visual qualities.

The Alchemist In Hollywood (1940): In two parts, Part I and Part II. A film attempting to explain the chemical concepts involved with the production of (primarily) black and white film stocks, or “how the alchemist in Hollywood makes entertainment out of silver.” Even if you don’t fully grasp all the concepts presented here, you can still gain an appreciation to all the steps that went into the early production of film.

Film Production:

Behind the Lens (1940): An explanation of how certain kinds of special cinematography “see things for science” by allowing us to see how dandelions grow, how tires and suspension absorbs shocks, and how cats land on their feet.

 

How to Make Home Movies Your Friends Will Want to See Twice: A unique film whose title is fairly self-explanatory. The film is silent, tinted red and thoroughly subtitled to show the viewer how they can make interesting home movies.

#Bfl O {ggGX = STwWcfl x 2s4 (Calvin Workshop) (ca. 1963): This highly entertaining spoof of the filmmaking process shows us how monkeys might do it.

 

Care of film prints:

Murder on the Screen (Eastman Kodak sponsored film): Info-tainment at its kooky best, this Kodak-sponsored film leads us through a crime investigation to find out who murdered a once-beautiful film print. Was it Jones the lab man? Smith, the film disributor? Brown, the station director? Or Harris, the projectionist? You’ll have to watch the film to find out …

Facts about Film (1948): This film was intended for anyone who planned on using film in their classroom, library, or at home. It includes tips on how to store, handle and project your film collection.

 

 

Written by: Stephanie Sapienza

How to be Clean

What better way to spruce up a potentially boring subject than through film! The archive has several films that all find different ways – sometimes bizarre, sometimes clever but always entertaining – to attack the subject of cleanliness and personal hygiene.

With the exception of any General Health Habits from 1928, most of these films are from the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Regarding this trend, archive reviewer “Marysz” probably put it best when she said in her review of Body Care and Grooming:

“Was there a grooming crisis on America’s college campuses in the late forties? This was a generation that had grown up during World War II. Dad was in the service and mom worked in a munitions factory. Nobody was around check if the kids had brushed their teeth or not. In any case, I guess films like this worked. These students grew up to be the tidy, conformist parents of the fifties. But those old unhygienic habits came back to haunt them in their counter-culture children, who used sloppy grooming as a sign of political protest.”

With that in mind, let’s look at some of the influences at the front end of this cleanliness trend.

Soapy the Germ Fighter: Young Billy learns a lesson about fighting germs and disease from a talking bar of soap. Cleanliness ensures.

 

 

 

Kitty Cleans Up (1949): A somewhat creepy black and white short about a girl named Helen who is perhaps a bit too attached to her cat Kitty. Helen compares her daily cleanup routine to her Kitty’s self-cleaning, on the day she brings her cat in for a show and tell pet show.

Good Health Practices (1953): Jim and Judy are the role models who know how to be good, clean children. Thankfully, this film teaches us not to be bashful or silly about toilet habits.

 

 

General Health Habits (1928): Very early silent hygiene film that is sparse yet contains some interesting comparisons between urban and rural life, and the contaminants that may exist in each.

 

Personal Hygiene (1950): In two parts, Part I and Part II. Everyone knows that the best way to teach hygiene is through folk music … er, maybe not everyone, but the residents of the army barracks depicted in Personal Hygiene certainly have their fingers on the pulse. They teach the stinky, music-obsessed soldier Homer to keep the bugs off through music. I can’t help but think that the filmmakers were influenced by “The Washing Song,” sung by the seven dwarves from Disney’s Snow White. .

Body Care and Grooming (1948): Younger children aren’t the only ones who need to hear about grooming habits – dirty college students need to know that frumpy slips and bobby socks won’t help them nab that squeaky-clean boy or girl they’ve been eyeing.
Written by: Stephanie Sapienza

Stop Motion Part II: The World Moves Around You

Part II of our series on stop motion animation at the archive features commercials, industrials and innovative shorts from both the early years of cinema and from recent years.

Commercials and Industrial Films using stop motion:

Saint Paul Police Detectives and Their Work: A Color Chartoon (ca. 1941): This clever informational short contains lots of stop motion, to illustrate the daily activities of the Saint Paul police force.

Lucky Strike Tobacco Commercials (1948): Who doesn’t like dancing cigarettes telling them to smoke? The archive has them, courtesy of Lucky Strike, both marching cigarettes and square dancing cigarettes. *NOTE* The archive does not recommend smoking dancing cigarettes.

Japanese Coca Cola commercial (2001): Although the archive does not endorse feeding your infant child sugar soft drinks, it does endorse watching great miniature model animation like this.

Auto-Lite on Parade (1940): Auto parts have never been this exciting! The climax of this sponsored film features various auto parts (as well as pots, pans and other consumer goods) in a miniature town parade.
(animation begins approximately 19:37)

Aluminum on the March (Part I) (1956): In a strange way, this film heralds the onset of factory automation with its portrayal of marching steel, even including a foreman character made of steel who “directs” small blocks of steel to go forward to their “specific fabricating sequences.”

Other great stop motion films in the archive:

Checkmate (2003): In this independent short film, some random soundstage inhabitants mix up their daily routine with a short game of chess and various other shenanigans involving boxes and laptops.

Mud animation by Joseph Sunn (1926): The archive has three films by stop motion pioneer Joseph Sunn. Very little is available online about Sunn, who may or may not be the same man featured in this San Francisco Weekly article. Either way, the films are a joy to watch:
The Penwiper
Green Pastures
Long Live the Bull

Written by: Stephanie Sapienza

Airships and Balloons

The history of gas and wind-powered air travel is steeped in myth and legend, inspiring many a writer to create a story around the idea. The archive holds several text and moving image items related to airship travel, dirigibles, and hot air balloons:

Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail, a story of 2000 AD (1905): Many don’t consider Kipling one of the progenitors of science fiction writing, but writers like John W. Campbell have stated that he was “the first modern science fiction writer,” in that he began the science fiction literature tradition of exposition through the characters’ eyes. In Night Mail and in As Easy as ABC (1912), Kipling writes of a world controlled by the Aerial Board of Control, a massive Big Brother-esque organization that controls the world’s air travel and usurps the power of individual nation-states.

Jules Verne’s A Voyage in a Balloon (1852): Verne’s better-known balloon story was 1863’s Five Weeks in a Balloon, but Voyage was written more than 10 years before, and marks Verne’s first English-language publication.

Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad (c1910): This novel by Mark Twain was published in 1894. It features Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a parody of Jules Verne-esque adventure stories. In the story, Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic hot air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas to see some of the world’s greatest wonders, including the Pyramids and the Sphinx (info lifted from Wikipedia article)

Flying Machines past, present and future: A popular account of flying machines, dirigible balloons and aeroplanes (c1914):
Early accounts of the development of aerial travel technology in the early 20th century. If the text seems dry, keep flipping for incredible archival photos of early machines. Chapters include “Dirigible Balloons”, “Flying Machines”, “The Art of Flying,” and “Flying Machines of the Future.”

The romance of modern invention, containing interesting descriptions in non-technical language of wireless telegraphy, liquid air, modern artillery, submarines, dirigible torpedoes, solar motors, airships, etc., etc (1907) : Wow. The title pretty much sums this one up. Contains 25 illustrations (with index)

Journal of my forty-fifth ascension, being the first performed in America, on the ninth of January, 1793 (191 : Jean-Pierre Blanchard was a pioneer of aviation and ballooning, admired by many who followed his many balloon ascensions (including George Washington, from whom there is a transcribed letter in this book). Luckily he kept a journal (an early blog, if you will) so his followers could read about his exploits and adventures.

Castle and Pathe coverage of the Hindenberg explosion (1937): A popular item from the Prelinger Collection, the archive also contains an excerpt of this tragic moment composited with the infamous and highly emotional real time radio commentary by Herb Morrison.

Written by: Stephanie Sapienza

Stop Motion Part I: Attack of the Toys!

Anyone who has explored the archive’s Animation and Cartoons section knows that we have an extensive collection of animated titles. So extensive, in fact, that one can get lost trying to find certain types of films. In order to showcase some of our holdings that feature one specific style of animation - Stop Motion Animation - this blog will produce a series with some of the collection’s highlights.

This week - animation with toys! Here are four artists who have this technique down pat:

Spite Your Face Productions: Tony Mines and Tim Drage

LEGO’s are among the most popular toys used in stop-motion animation. Just do a moving image search for LEGOs on the website and you’ll see the massive breadth of entries in this area. Not that there isn’t charm to some of the amateur attempts, but after wading through a number of these, its nice to see the work of some LEGO pros like Mines and Drage. They have a budget behind them, impressive collections of blocks and even digital animation for the facial expressions of some characters. The archive contains the following films from these two filmmakers:

The Perils of Doc Ock (Spiderman II parody)

(Alternate Special Ending of Perils of Doc Ock)

One: A Space Odyssey

(Redux/Improved version of One: A Space Odyssey)

The Han Solo Affair

(Behind the Scenes of Han Solo Affair)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail in LEGO

All of the Dead

JamesFM Productions: James Maduzia

Another entry in the LEGO category, Maduzia’s film The Letter is smoothly animated and clever with its gags - we are anxiously awaiting more films from James in the future!

Svencentral: Sven van der Hart

Former comic book illustrator Van der Hart is another pro, who uses Playmobil toys in his films. In The Viking Five, two sets of Vikings argue about who gets to rob an inebriated monk. In the very short Santa’s New Ride, Santa gets tempted by a vehicle upgrade (and Sir Mixalot), and in the ultra-professional Bloody Snow, toys turn violent in a Western-style showdown.

Written by: Stephanie Sapienza

Time for Wine

The Internet Archive is located in San Francisco, and so to celebrate our proximity to some of the most renowned wine regions in the world, we bring you this entry about our favorite ferment. This entry contains aromas of cedar, apple and gunsmoke …

Virtual Wine video blogs
Ben Llewelyn and James Booth started Virtual Wine as a way for people to learn and chat online about wine and wine culture. The Internet Archive holds many of their short video blog tutorials and discussions, including Wine Storage, Buying a Wine Glass, Ordering and Returning Restaurant Wine, Matching Food and Wine, How Long to Keep Opened Wine, and How to Decant Old Wine.

Tasting Vlog from The Wine Vibe, featuring four wines (Verdejo, Viognier, Tempranillo and Zinfandel) in the $10 price range that were made from organically-grown grapes. Featured wineries are Casamaro Winery from the Rueda region of Spain, and Cline Winery from Sonoma. *NOTE* The actual tasting begins two minutes into the clip.

Wine Country Live! Episode – Stupid Wine Questions
Why can’t you make red wine from white grapes? Why do wineries grow rose bushes near the road? What exactly do corks DO for wine? This episode of Wine Country Live! is devoted to people’s stupid questions that they’ve been afraid to ask. Wine Country Live! is produced in Sonoma County, hosted by Michael DeLoach, and featuring Daryl Roberts, publisher of WineX Magazine and Robinson Olmstead with current wine-related news.
*NOTE* To play the Real Media file, right click on the link (hold down option + click for Macs) and click on “Copy Link Location,” then open Real Player, go to File, Open Location and paste in the link.

Wine and the wine trade (1921)
Andre L. Simon wrote this book in 1921, dedicated to the history and making of wine. Includes 21 vintage photos of wine ephemera like corking machines, bottle testing and various vineyards and varietals.

The WineMaster freeware helps you keep track of your favorite wines and make tasting notes on your handheld device.

For fun:

Prison Wine! This vlogger teaches us how to make wine with a plastic bag, moldy bread stuffed into a sock (to replace yeast, which is highly contraband in prison), fruit juice, sugar and raisins. *NOTE* The Internet Archive advocates this as entertainment only - try at home only at your own risk …

Written by: Stephanie Sapienza