Long before the subway sealed itself underground and long before repurposed rail lines became landscaped promenades, Manhattan moved above the street. Steel tracks ran up Third Avenue. Trains passed bedroom windows. Shadows cut across storefront signs. The city’s transit system was not hidden. It announced itself every few minutes in iron and noise. The Third […]

In the middle of the twentieth century, America developed a habit of explaining itself through warning films. They were shown in classrooms, union halls, churches, police academies, military briefings, and civic meetings. They arrived on 16mm reels in metal canisters and were projected onto pull-down screens that smelled faintly of dust and overheated bulbs. School […]

You may know Thomas Edison invented many things, like the lightbulb, sound recording, and the projecting kinetoscope, one of the earliest demonstrations of what we now call movies. But did you know that Edison is also responsible for the first snuff film? The stuff of urban legends, a snuff film is a genre of movie […]

Marking the 50th anniversary of the release of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, we take a step back to look at his earliest film, The Day of the Fight from 1951. The Day of the Fight is the primary touchstone from which Stanley Kubrick’s unique cinematic style would evolve. Like the battling man-apes during 2001‘s […]

It’s 1971.  A crew of friends from San Rafael High School, who called themselves the Waldos, planned to meet at the Louis Pasteur sculpture on campus at 4:20pm.  Their plan, sounding like something out of the film The Goonies, was to follow a lost map which led to an abandoned marijuana crop. It’s 1971. A […]

Of famous songs, The Delta Rhythm Boys version of Dry Bones may be the most famous. Their harmonic vocal styles would directly influence the Doo Wop sound that later permeated rock and funk. Aside from Happy Birthday and Amazing Grace, Dry Bones may be one of the most well-known songs in the western world. You […]