Whatsky?
Ivan Orkin is the noodle-obsessed restaurateur from Long Island who, remarkably for a ‘gaijin’ foreigner, became a culinary marvel after opening two ramen joints in Tokyo, the first in 2007. “As a white guy from New York opening a shop in the heart of ramen land, I dealt with some pretty hard customers,” he muses. “But New York’s the same there I’m still a white guy making ramen trying to convince people that I can cook noodles.” In today’s film that is inspired by the seminal Japanese ‘noodle Western’ Tampopo, director Jake Sumner captures Orkin’s stateside debut, the Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop at Gotham West Market in Hell’s Kitchen; coincidentally, during his early days in Japan, Orkin taught English to Tampopo’s female star, Nobuko Miyamoto. Back in Japan, the chef’s bespectacled profile is emblazoned on his own best-selling range of Sapporo Ichiban instant ramen, seducing the public from local supermarket aisles with his rye-flecked, Jewish deli-influenced noodles.

Curated by?
Emm, editor of The List.

Source?
Nowness.

What’s the storie?
Internet cafes have existed in Japan for over a decade, but in the mid 2000’s, customers began using these spaces as living quarters. Internet cafe refugees are mostly temporary employees; their salary too low to rent their own apartments.

Curated by?
Emm, founder of The List.

What?
Les Fiancés Du Pont Macdonald centers on a Buster Keatonsque dandy in a flat straw hat who waves good-bye to his doll-like girlfriend. Yet when he dons a pair of sunglasses, everything goes wrong. He witnesses his beloved getting injured in an accident only to be hauled off by a hearse. When he takes off the glasses to wipe away the tears, he realizes that he saw it all wrong. The glasses make everything seem metaphorically dark. No wonder the movie’s subtitle is “Beware of Dark Glasses.”

Source?
OpenCulture.

Curated by?
Emm, editor of The List.

Whatsky?
Grace Jones is such a likable presence that any random 44 minutes of her life would, we can presume, be tolerably diverting. Even better when it’s a pristine chunk of her performing on Chilean TV right smack in her prime. This marvelous footage popped up on YouTube in December but hasn’t gotten the play it deserves (yet).

Curated by?
Emm, Editor of The List.

Source?
Dangerousminds.

Whatsky?
We couldn’t resist serving this Apple Watch commercial parody once again.

Curated by?
Emm, editor of The List.

What are we looking at?
Well, the title kinda sums it up.

Curated by?
Emm, Editor for The List.

Whatsky?
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth tells the story of the transformation of the American city in the decades after World War II, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development and the St. Louis residents who called it home. At the film’s historical center is an analysis of the massive impact of the national urban renewal program of the 1950s and 1960s, which prompted the process of mass suburbanization and emptied American cities of their residents, businesses, and industries.

Curated by?
Emm, Editor of The List.

What are we looking at?
You might have heard of the recently released film A Most Violent Year, starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. To promote the film, they created a fantastic blog NYC 1981, dedicated to all sorts of curious and forgotten stories that took place in New York City, 1981. This brilliant short film is one of their latest posts.

Curated by?
Emm, editor of The List.

Whatsky?
In the clip above, Gay Byrne, a broadcaster with RTÉ, asks Stephen Fry : Suppose there is a God, and you arrive at the Pearly Gates, what would you say to him, her or it? Fry, an avowed secular humanist, isn’t throwing God any softballs: Why create a world where kids have bone cancer? Why create insects that burrow into children’s eyes and render them blind? Why create a world with so much pain, misery and injustice in it? As he answers these questions, and concludes that such a God (were it to exist) would be nothing short of maniacal, Byrne’s face contorts, revealing his discomfort.

Curated by?
Emm, editor of The List.

Whatsky?
John Richardson directs this documentary about his friend Pablo Picasso. In an effort to understand the legendary artist’s inspiration, the film examines Picasso’s life as well as his obsessions with the occult, with eroticism, and with mortality.

Curated by?
Emm, editor of The List.

Whatsky?
Jaw dropping, never before seen performance by illusionist David Blaine. David Blaine travels the world, astonishing people with inconceivable magic. In his new show he visits Kanye West, Harrison Ford, Will Smith, Olivia Wilde and Stephen Hawking.

Curated by?
Emm, editor of The List.

Whatsky?
If you are a Patti Smith fan, prepare to watch what is undoubtedly the best long form record we have of The Patti Smith Group from their early days, maybe the best full show period. Smith is in her full on Mick Jagger meets Rimbaud mode and she kills it here, just kills it. There are two Velvet Underground covers—the band walks onstage and starts up with “We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together” and later does “Pale Blue Eyes.” There’s also a Stones cover “Time Is On My Side” before Patti straps on a guitar for a rather incendiary, you might say Dionysian take on “Radio Ethiopia” at the 38 minute mark.

Source?
DANGEROUSMINDS

Curated by?
Emm, editor of The List.

What?
Why do we like an original painting better than a forgery? Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that human beings are essentialists — that our beliefs about the history of an object change how we experience it, not simply as an illusion, but as a deep feature of what pleasure (and pain) is..

Curated by?
Emm, Editor of The List.

What are we looking at?
The Fountain of Youth is a 1956 TV pilot for a proposed Desilu TV series (with a tentative title, The Orson Welles Show) which was never produced, and was subsequently televised once, on September 16, 1958 for NBC’s Colgate Theatre. The short film was directed by Orson Welles,based on the short story “Youth from Vienna” by John Collier, and stars Joi Lansing and Rick Jason as a couple faced with an unavoidable temptation concocted by a scientist (Dan Tobin). Welles himself is also much in evidence as onscreen narrator. The show won the prestigious Peabody Award in 1958 after its single broadcast.

Curated by?
EMM, curator of The List.

What’s the storie?
A waltzing photographer follows a loose board around a city block. The best introduction to the music of Philip Glass.

Source?
THEWORLDSBESTEVER

Curated by?
EMM, editor of The List.

Whatsky?
Over the top 1950s “Populuxe” advertisement for General Motors, set at their 1956 Motors Motorama. A woman falls asleep and dreams of a glorious future of perfect products, including a variety of shiny futuristic dream cars and Frigidaire’s fully automated “Kitchen of the Future.” The star of the story is played by dancer and choreographer Tad Tadlock. 

Film buff stuff?
The film has over the years become a popular symbol of 50s consumerist culture and was featured extensively in the BBC documentary series Pandora’s Box by Adam Curtis. It also appears in its entirety with an amusing “commentary” as a short feature in a fifth-season episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Some footage was also used in the music video for Peter Gabriel’s 1987 single “In Your Eyes”, Rush’s 1989 music video for “Superconductor”, a 1989 commercial for the Nintendo Game Boy game Super Mario Land, and a 1994 commercial for Power Macintosh. Part of the film, with dialogue, is played during the opening titles for The Hills Have Eyes. Some snippets (without dialogue) are played in the video watched by Michael Douglas during his physical in The Game and in the opening titles for The Stepford Wives.

What?
Mbwana and his best friend Juma are two young men with big dreams. These dreams become reality when they photograph a gigantic fish leaping out of the sea and their small town blossoms into a tourist hot-spot as a result. But for Mbwana, the reality isn’t what he dreamed – and when he meets the fish again, both of them forgotten, ruined and old, he decides only one of them can survive. Jonah is a big fish story about the old and the new, and the links and the distances between them. A visual feast, shot though with humour and warmth, it tells an old story in a completely new way.

Curated by?
EMM, editor of The List

Whatsky?
Well, the title kinda gives it away. A remarkably fresh Madonna doing what she does best at the legendary Dacentaria in 1982. Enjoy.

Whatsky?
Reggie Watts’ beats and mind defy boxes. Unplug your logic board and watch as he blends poetry and crosses musical genres in this larger-than-life performance.

What?
Claustrophobes, take caution, and for pity’s sake, don’t try this at home! Should such warnings leave you undeterred, PBS has step-by-step instructions for performing Houdini’s strait jacket escape. Well, almost step-by-step. Derived from the master’s own 1909 Handcuff Secrets (read the text online here), the directions are both vague and horrifying in their specificity, falling somewhere between assembling an Ikea bookshelf and 127 Hours.

Source?
Open Culture.

What?
In late 1964, when he was at the height of his success, Peter Sellers filmed a series of vaudevillian sketches with a group of wealthy and socially elite friends. He edited the scenes together into a movie and called it I Say I Say I Say.

What?
Another one of those nights you should have been present. Here’s a second chance.

Whatsky?
In 1971, The Rolling Stones recorded their masterful double album Exile on Main Street, under some fabulous circumstances in the south of France. That same year, they embarked on their first American tour since the 1969 disaster at Altamont tarnished their brand. Photographer Robert Frank was there to film it all, and I mean all, with cameras backstage and everywhere else, wielded by band members, groupies, and roadies. The resulting film, Cocksucker Blues (short clip above)—named after an equally elusive and decadent unreleased single—was embargoed by the band, banned by censors, and only shown in 1979 and then only once every five years thereafter, with Frank present, under a strange agreement negotiated with much legal wrangling by Frank, the band, and the courts.

Source?
OPEN CULTURE.