The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Film | ≅ 3 Comments
Talk about dodging cinematic bullets. Imagine The Godfather without Marlon Brando. It almost happened. And then Star Wars with Kurt Russell (playing Han Solo). It was a real enough possibility, and here’s the audition tape as proof… Related Content: Star Wars as Silent Film Star Wars the Musical: The Force is Strong in this One Darth [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
The Israeli mashup artist known as Kutiman gave us Thru Jersusalem last month, a contemplative journey through Jerusalem’s eclectic, local music scene. Now he returns to his Mother of All Funk Chords roots and goes uptempo again, stitching together 80 covers of Led Zeppelin’s 1974 classic, “Black Dog” (original here). Perhaps more than any other I’ve seen, [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
Kudos to How to be A Retronaut for finding this great clip of Jack Kerouac playing pool in early 1967. We bet he was the coolest player in that particular room (at the Pawtucketville Social Club, in Lowell, Mass). But we’d also bet that he copied that cool, taut persona from Paul Newman’s turn as “Fast [...]
≡ Category: Philosophy | ≅ 1 Comment
In 1973, Orson Welles narrated this animated short, which features somewhat surreal artwork by Dick Oden. You can see more of Oden’s work here. The Allegory of the Cave illustrates Plato’s view of knowledge as presented in Book VII of The Republic: in ordinary experience, we see only shadows of the true world, which we [...]
≡ Category: Art, Music | ≅ 2 Comments
Back in 2009, Blue Note Records, the influential jazz label, was celebrating its 70th anniversary. And The Bella Vista Social Pub, looking to promote its own summer jazz concerts in Siena, Tuscany, came up with a smart idea. Why not pay tribute to Blue Note (and promote the Italian concert series) by animating the cool [...]
≡ Category: Film, History | ≅ 3 Comments
This short film showing Havana in the 1930s was shot by André de la Varre, the long-time cameraman and cinematographer for American traveler, photographer and filmmaker Burton Holmes. In those days, Havana was a flourishing and fashionable city dubbed the “Paris of the Caribbean,” attracting an ever increasing number of tourists. André de la Varre’s film portrays [...]
≡ Category: Film, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
Although British director Peter Greenaway is best known for feature films like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Prospero’s Books, and The Pillow Book, he has also completed several highly respected projects for television, including this 53-minute exploration of the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin is structured around 18 separate tableaux, [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Before the weekend slips away, we want to remember Billie Holiday who died 52 years ago today. Only 44 years old, Holiday exited the world all too young. The years of drug and alcohol abuse, resulting in liver and heart disease, finally took their toll. And although she earned $1,000 per week at the high [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Science | ≅ 2 Comments
This gorgeous video of a cymbal (shot with a Phantom at 1,000 frames per second) made our morning. And then Kottke’s find below — brilliant footage of vibrating guitar strings — made our afternoon. Hope you enjoy them as much as we did, and have a great weekend! Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Film | ≅ 4 Comments
Kevin Spacey has got talent. The man has won two Academy Awards. So we know he can act. He can sing. He now serves as the Artistic Director of the Old Vic Theatre in London. And let’s check off another box. Spacey can do some great impersonations. Appearing on Inside the Actors Studio back in July 2000, [...]
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