Movie Tearjerkers: What’s the Saddest Scene in Cinema?

According this fascinating piece in The Smithsonian, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1979 weepfest The Champ is the most consistently effective tearjerker in the history of film. It’s also the tearjerker most often used in scientific studies of grief and sadness:

The Champ has been used in experiments to see if depressed people are more likely to cry than non-depressed people (they aren’t). It has helped determine whether people are more likely to spend money when they are sad (they are) and whether older people are more sensitive to grief than younger people (older people did report more sadness when they watched the scene). Dutch scientists used the scene when they studied the effect of sadness on people with binge eating disorders (sadness didn’t increase eating).

We would have gone with either the last scene of West Side Story or that devastating 1989 Negro College Fund commercial with the pennies. Feel free to post your own candidates in the comments.

via Neatorama

Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.

Open Culture Beat No. 7: The Best Culture Links of the Week

What cultural goodies did we tweet (and re-tweet) on our Twitter stream during the past week? Here are some highlights. Follow us on Twitter at @openculture … or Like us on Facebook. We’ll keep you plugged in…

Sources: @coudal,  @kottke,  @philosophybites,  @maudnewton,  @eugenephoto,  @courosa@matthiasrascher,  @BrainPicker.

A Heartfelt, Animated Tribute to Jim Henson

Good luck staying dry-eyed through this moving tribute to Jim Henson, which features a group of puppets trying to cope with the death of their beloved creator. It’s a long time since we’ve seen the so-called stages of grief dramatized so beautifully and with such economy. (The filmmakers recently followed up their 5-minute short with a trailer for what looks like a promising feature-length version.)

Henson fans may also want to check out his 1969 video primer on how to make puppets, as well as this new exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image, which hosts a wonderful tribute to the puppeteer’s long time collaboration with Frank Oz.

Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.

Improv with New Yorker Cartoonists

When you think of The New Yorker, you think about two things — long-form articles and legendary cartoons. The two art forms have gone hand-in-hand since the magazine began publishing in 1925, and, decades later, a younger generation of cartoonists still delivers the laughs. Thanks to the Gel Conference 2011 (see all videos here), you can spend 25 minutes inside their artistic world. Matt Diffee, Drew Dernavich, and Zach Kanin talk about their sometimes controversial work at the magazine and draw improv cartoons based on audience suggestions. Fun guaranteed for all. H/T @opedr

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Einstein’s Relativity: New Yorker Cartoon Animated

50 Famous Academics & Scientists Talk About God

Jonathan Pararajasingham has pulled together a montage of 50 renowned academics, mostly all scientists, talking about their thoughts on the existence of God. The list includes includes 16 Nobel prize winners, and a bundle of recognizable names, including Richard Feynman, Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, and Leonard Susskind. The full list appears below the jump. (Click “more.”) Click here to find another 50 Academics Talking About God and 30 renowned writers doing the same.

(more…)

Bill Graham’s Concert Vault: From Miles Davis to Bob Marley

Wolfgang Grajonca had a hard childhood. Young and orphaned during World War II, Grajonca moved from Germany to Paris, Marseille and Lisbon, and eventually the United States by sea, each time staying one step ahead of the westward-moving Nazis. The 10 year old settled in New York, changed his name to Bill Graham, later fought in Korea, and headed to San Francisco, where he became a legendary concert promoter. Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and The Fish, The Rolling Stones — Graham put them all on the West coast stage.

The promoter of the Counterculture was killed in a helicopter crash in October 1991 and left behind a huge trove of recordings and memorabilia. Out of the ashes arose Wolfgang’s Vault, a website that peddles many Bill Graham goods, but also features a good number of free concerts from the heyday: The Who and Miles Davis (Tanglewood, 1970), The Allman Brothers Band (New York, 1970), Muddy Waters (Los Angeles, 1971), Bob Marley and the Wailers and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (1978).  They’re all available online, along with other acts including Van Morrison, AC/DC, Santana, The Band, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Jump into the collection here.

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Free Grateful Dead Concert Archive

Freddie Mercury, Live Aid (1985)

David Bowie and Bing Crosby Sing Christmas Duet

The Seashell and the Clergyman: The World’s First Surrealist Film

A few weeks ago, we posted New York Times critic A.O.Scott’s thoughtful three-minute look back at the surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou. The 1929 Buñuel/Dalí production may well be the world’s most famous bit of early surrealist cinema, but it was not the first. That honor goes to another very strange (and indubitably surreal) short film screened in Paris in 1928, prompting the now infamous condemnation from the British Board of Film Censors. It insisted that the 31-minute film was “apparently meaningless.” They then added, “If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.”

The Seashell and the Clergyman, based on Antonin Artaud’s screenplay about a priest who lusts after a General’s wife, was directed by the cinema theorist, journalist, and critic Germaine Dulac (1882-1942). Dulac was also a groundbreaking feminist filmmaker — she is best known today for The Smiling Mrs. Beudet (1923), a seminal silent film about a woman trapped in a loveless marriage.

You can find both in our collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.

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The Great Train Robbery: Where Westerns Began

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Salvador Dali (and Other VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”

Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.

 

 

Donald Duck & Friends Star in World War II Propaganda Cartoons

During World War II, all hands were on deck, even in Hollywood. Many of America and Britain’s finest filmmakers, from Hitchcock to Frank Capra, were recruited to create propaganda films to support the war effort. (More on that here.) And the same went for Walt Disney, who turned his lovable cartoon characters into good patriots.

In 1942, Disney released “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” an anti-Nazi propaganda movie that bolstered support for the war, and eventually won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Then, a year later, came The Spirit of ’43, which features Donald Duck helping Americans to understand why they need to pay their taxes. Other wartime Disney shorts include Donald Gets Drafted (1942)The Old Army Game (1943), and Commando Duck (1944). Then, coming out of this propaganda tradition, you’ll also find Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck, a recent spoof by Jonathan McIntosh (of Rebellious Pixels). It’s a good bit of fun.

Note: Der Fuehrer’s Face and The Spirit of ’43 appear in the Animation section of our collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.

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How Disney Cartoons Are Made

Disney’s Oscar-Winning Adventures in Music

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Propaganda Films: Your Job in Germany (1945) and Our Job in Japan(1946)

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.