The New Yorker: Finger Drumming Keith Moon

Some­how this flew below my radar. Back in Novem­ber, James Wood, the Har­vard lit pro­fes­sor and New York­er staff writer, revis­it­ed his child­hood idol — Kei­th Moon, the long­time (though now depart­ed) drum­mer for The Who. In “The New York­er Out Loud” pod­cast, Wood demon­strates – using his fin­gers – what makes Moon’s style so dis­tinc­tive. (Lis­ten here.) And, as an added bonus, we give you Wood fin­ger drum­ming on his kitchen table at home. At least one of these clips will make your day…

Alan Davies: How Long is a Piece of String?

Yes­ter­day’s lack­lus­ter Acad­e­my Awards cer­e­mo­ny may have afford­ed you some unex­pect­ed time for con­tem­plat­ing life’s more urgent ques­tions, such as the one British come­di­an Alan Davies pur­sues above:  How long is a piece of string? Watch Davies, who is also a fre­quent pan­elist on the pop­u­lar Stephen Fry-host­ed quiz show Quite Inter­est­ing, explore the rid­dle’s philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions and inevitable con­nec­tion to string the­o­ry with the help of physics, quan­tum mechan­ics, and final­ly a vis­it with math­e­mati­cian Mar­cus de Sautoy. Fans of the Davies/du Sautoy inter­ac­tion may also want to check out Du Sautoy’s TED talk on Sym­me­try, as well as the debates in that video’s com­ments sec­tion. More docs can be found in our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Gay Talese: Drinking at New York Times Put Mad Men to Shame

Mad Men brings us back to a bygone era, the ear­ly 60s, when alco­hol flowed freely through­out the work­ing day. (Watch this mon­tage to get up to speed.) An act of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, many might think. But, appar­ent­ly not so. Accord­ing to a piece in The New York Times, the show basi­cal­ly gets it right. Alco­hol was as com­mon in offices as office sup­plies. And then we have this: Gay Talese, the best­selling author and jour­nal­ist, remem­ber­ing the Times news­room dur­ing the same era – a crew bare­ly fit to pub­lish the news that’s fit to print.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Discovery’s Final Launch Viewed from Airplane

A rather dif­fer­ent angle on the Dis­cov­ery’s final launch. The view from 35,000 feet.…

via Boing­Bo­ing

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Art of Making Movie Sounds

Right in time for the Oscars. Gary Heck­er is what you’d call a “Foley artist,” some­one who spe­cial­izes in cre­at­ing every­day sounds for movies – the sound of hors­es gal­lop­ing, swords being unsheathed, dirt crunch­ing beneath cow­boy boots. In short, the big and small sounds you hear (and take for grant­ed) when­ev­er you see a movie. Tim­ing. Cre­ativ­i­ty. They’re all part of this hid­den art…

A quick PS: This Sound­works video col­lec­tion takes you behind the scenes into the audio post-pro­duc­tion of fea­ture films, video game sound design, and orig­i­nal sound­track scor­ing. Good spot by @sheerly.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Facebook Obsession

Are we obsessed with Face­book? It’s hard to argue with the num­bers pre­sent­ed visu­al­ly in this artis­tic lit­tle video by Alex Trimpe. One data point that struck me (if true): 48% of young Amer­i­cans learn about the news, about what’s hap­pen­ing in the world, through Face­book. A big shift in the way infor­ma­tion gets into peo­ple’s hands.

And that’s part of a trend we’re see­ing here too. More and more, Open Cul­ture fans are join­ing our Face­book page, let­ting our dai­ly posts trick­le into their Face­book News Feeds, then shar­ing the intel­li­gent media with friends. You can join our Face­book Page here, or also fol­low us on Twit­ter where we tweet and re-tweet extra cul­tur­al good­ies 24/7.

Thanks Ian for the heads up on the FB video…

Pete Eckert: Blind Photographer, Visual Artist

Pete Eck­ert is blind, total­ly blind. But his dis­abil­i­ty (if you can call it that) has­n’t stopped him from express­ing him­self visu­al­ly. As Pete explains in the video above, he has always been a visu­al per­son. And pho­tog­ra­phy has become more than a cre­ative out­let for Pete. It’s a per­son­al form of artis­tic expres­sion, the way he sees the world through sound.

Eck­ert was named the Grand Prize recip­i­ent of Artists Want­ed: Expo­sure in 2008, an inter­na­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion. You can learn more about Pete Eck­ert in this video and on his web page.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

Bruce Lee’s Lost Interview


Bruce Lee’s act­ing career began on tele­vi­sion in 1966, when he land­ed a part in The Green Hor­net. (Watch his amaz­ing audi­tion here). But it took anoth­er five years before he gave his first (and only) tele­vi­sion inter­view. For 25 min­utes in Decem­ber 1971, the mar­tial arts star sat down with Pierre Berton, a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist, in Hong Kong. And their con­ver­sa­tion cov­ered a fair amount of ground – Lee’s suc­cess star­ring in Man­darin films .… despite only speak­ing Can­tonese; his dif­fi­cul­ty devel­op­ing a career in a coun­try still hos­tile toward Chi­na; and his work train­ing oth­er Hol­ly­wood stars in the mar­tial arts. Berton prob­a­bly nev­er scored many points for his inter­view­ing style. But Berton is not the point here. It’s all about Lee. via Brain­Pick­ings

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.