California Summer 11

The excellent Wende Museum in L.A.

CA Roadtrip: Lone Pine Film History Museum

Dr. King Schultz's wagon from Django in the Lone Pine Film History Museum. 

Los Angeles to Las Vegas Neon Cruise

The Museum of Neon Art's "Neon Cruise", with stops at the Las Vegas Neon Museum, Frankie's Tiki Room, and the Peppermill.

National Maritime Museum

Ships' badges, figureheads, and models from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Live Butterflies

At the Hirst show at Tate Modern.

Invalides

While visiting the Musée de l'Armée, my dad and I also watched a large French military ceremony in the central courtyard of Invalides. The French navy dress uniforms (with the red pom pom on top of the hat) are particularly awesome. The enlisted men and women standing at attention with FAMAS rifles with fixed bayonets would have to cover the pointy tip of the bayonet with their hand when they moved around, presumably to prevent poking someone's eye out.

Joseph Banks in the British Museum

While hanging out in the curiosity cabinet room in the British Museum, I spotted the bronze portrait bust of Joseph Banks, who is a central figure in The Age of Wonder, which I spent pleasurable month or so reading.

Turbine Hall

Visitors enjoying the sun in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

Three Stooges

In the Louvre.

The Louvre

The Louvre, packed with paintings and people looking at and painting studies of and taking pictures of paintings.

From top to bottom: La Jaconde, Weenix (whose name, as pointed out by Wyeth, sounds like an Asterix character), the hall of Italian paintings, and a study of Rembrandt's Flayed Ox.

Ancient iPhone

The Louvre.

Nose Art & Design

At the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace.

Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace

Lots of funky French fighters from the 50s.

Pergamonmuseum

The Pergamonmuseum is Berlin's massive museum of ancient art and architecture. The only thing that would make it more impressive would be if it itself was taken apart, shipped to some distant country and, like the Pergamon Altar, enclosed in an even more enormous museum.

Harrier and Jaguar

Fiona Banner's Harrier and Jaguar in Tate Britain. Paintings can't compete with fighter-bombers.

Arts et Métiers

In the Ancienne église de Saint-Martin-des-Champs at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The circle of people below are looking at a replica of Foucault's Pendulum. The museum also has Pascal's adding machines and the standard meter bar in platinum (previously mentioned here).

Musée des Plans-Reliefs

The Musée des Plans-Reliefs in the Hôtel des Invalides (the final picture above shows the most deliciously named 17th century fort, Fort Paté).

Indiana Jones: The Adaptation

The Hirschhorn museum in Washington D.C. occasionally screens free movies in its auditorium. When Melody and I were undergrads, it was a reliable source of contemporary avant garde film. We saw Michael Haneke's original Funny Games there and one of the Cremaster series, for example. A couple of weeks ago, while browsing its film series, I saw that they would be screening Indiana Jones: The Adaptation, a more or less shot by shot recreation of the first Indiana Jones movie, made on a BetaMax over seven years (1981-1988). Both Melody and Zed predicted that the screening would be popular, and Melody recommended that we show up several hours in advance. I thought that was absurd, considering that I had never seen the auditorium more than half full. But when we showed up two hours in advance, there were already about 50 people in line ahead of us. Eventually the line grew so long that it coiled twice around the inside of the circular Hirschhorn courtyard. So many people showed up that they had to show the movie twice that night.



The filmmakers were there to introduce the movie and answer questions. They apologized beforehand for the terrible sound, and opened the movie with the invitation to "Let the Beta wash over you". You can get some idea of what the Adaptation is like in these clips.

The opening jungle sequence is recreated remarkably well, including the scene of the porter reaching nervously for his gun and Indiana Jones knocking it out of his hand with the bullwhip. The sound was indeed awful, and it was only because we had watched the original a couple of nights beforehand that we had any idea what anyone was saying. We also debated about whether the grainy, blurry picture helped or hindered the experience of the movie; it was often hard to tell what was going on, but otherwise mundane settings were concealed and made mysterious because you couldn't see much of what was going on. Most importantly, though, the low fidelity made what otherwise would have been glaring continuity problems easier to accept: characters' hair got longer and shorter, depending on the changing styles between 1981 and 1988, voices changed, actors got acne, grew noticeably in height and weight, and so on.

The only scene that was completely left out of the Adaptation was the fight with the strongman around the airplane. During Q&A Melody asked why they left that scene out. The director said that he still has nightmares about not doing that scene. He said that they had prepared to shoot it, with a big fan painted silver for the propellor, the most muscular kid in school ready to play the strongman (complete with a bald wig), and a mock-up of the plane that was to be blown up with a pipe bomb. But some undisclosed problem with the pipe bomb ruled out shooting the scene as planned, and the director said that the idea of blowing up a model with an M-80 was thought to be "too cheesy".

National Building Museum

National Building Museum, originally uploaded by Nat Hansen.

For the last three weeks, the National Building Museum has been showing movies that conspicuously feature elements of mid-centurury design and architecture: The Moon is Blue, The Best of Everything, and In Like Flint. The sound was pretty awful, since the interior of the museum is cavernous. But they did allow you to bring food in.