Who Says Music Doesn’t Make a Difference?

Out in remix cul­ture, one is nev­er sure what one will find. Take this video for exam­ple. If you watched Amer­i­can TV dur­ing the 1980s, you’re like­ly to remem­ber Dif­f’rent Strokes, a sit­com that had a kind of far-fetched premise: a rich white wid­ow­er adopts two African-Amer­i­can chil­dren from Harlem, and they live hap­pi­ly togeth­er in a pent­house with the wid­ow­er’s bio­log­i­cal daugh­ter and maid. The show’s open­ing cred­its were accom­pa­nied by an upbeat lit­tle jin­gle (watch it here). Now watch what hap­pens above when some­one lay­ers Hitch­cock style music over the orig­i­nal. How we inter­pret the video sud­den­ly does a com­plete 180. The mes­sage that leaps out is not one that we’re mak­ing light of. Not at all. We’re sim­ply fea­tur­ing the clip because it demon­strates so well how music shades the mean­ing we give to images.

PS Read­ers have added some oth­er intrigu­ing exam­ples in the com­ments below.

Peter Kauf­man comes to us from Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion.

The Australian Screen Archive

The Aus­tralian Nation­al Film and Sound Archive pro­vides free and world­wide access to over 1,000 film and tele­vi­sion titles – a trea­sury of down-under video 100 years in the mak­ing. In a part­ner­ship with the major net­works and oth­er learn­ing orga­ni­za­tions, the Archive has com­mis­sioned expert cura­tors to anno­tate the hold­ings, which pro­vides for a rich and con­tex­tu­al­ized experience—whether one is watch­ing unique home movies of Bal­lets Russ­es stars from the 1930s or Aus­tralian films about the sav­agery of World War I. Carve out a good chunk of time and enjoy explor­ing this free resource.

Note: This is the first post by Peter Kauf­man, who heads up Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion and shares our pas­sion for thought­ful media. Peter will be bring­ing you intel­li­gent media in the days, weeks, and months ahead. And we’ve also got some oth­er cool projects in mind. More on that lat­er. In the mean­time, keep an eye out for Peter.

Watch Super Size Me and Other Feature Films on YouTube

Mor­gan Spur­lock­’s 2004 doc­u­men­tary, Super Size Me, is avail­able on YouTube for all to watch. Spend 30 days eat­ing noth­ing but McDon­ald’s fast food and what hap­pens? It’s not pret­ty. But you’ll get the pic­ture in an enter­tain­ing 100 min­utes. Super Size Me was nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award, and won prizes at Sun­dance and else­where. Give it a watch. And note that you can now watch oth­er fea­ture-length films on YouTube here. You’ll find some good ones in the doc­u­men­tary & biog­ra­phy sec­tion.

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J.G.Ballard on Sensation

J.G. Bal­lard, the author of Crash and Empire died at 78 this week­end. Here we have a short inter­view from 1986 where he talks about how vio­lent sen­sa­tions now lubri­cate our mod­ern world. It’s this line of think­ing that finds its way into Crash, a con­tro­ver­sial book that David Cro­nen­berg brought to the big screen in 1996.

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Women in Film

Eggman913 on YouTube has a pret­ty neat schtick. He takes artis­tic images, then morphs them togeth­er in pret­ty cre­ative ways.  The piece above plays with images of famous actress­es from dif­fer­ent moments in Amer­i­can film his­to­ry. Eggman913 has also cre­at­ed a mon­tage called Women in Art, which we’ve fea­tured here before. (It has only 9.2 mil­lion views on YouTube.) Then there are pieces that have fun with the art of Picas­so and Mon­et, plus a com­pan­ion clip called Men in Film. The actress­es shown in the video above include:  

Mary Pick­ford, Lil­lian Gish, Glo­ria Swan­son, Mar­lene Diet­rich, Nor­ma Shear­er, Ruth Chat­ter­ton, Jean Har­low, Katharine Hep­burn, Car­ole Lom­bard, Bette Davis, Gre­ta Gar­bo, Bar­bara Stan­wyck, Vivien Leigh, Greer Gar­son, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hay­worth, Gene Tier­ney, Olivia de Hav­il­land, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Craw­ford, Gin­ger Rogers, Loret­ta Young, Deb­o­rah Kerr, Judy Gar­land, Anne Bax­ter, Lau­ren Bacall, Susan Hay­ward, Ava Gard­ner, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, Grace Kel­ly, Lana Turn­er, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, Kim Novak, Audrey Hep­burn, Dorothy Dan­dridge, Shirley MacLaine, Natal­ie Wood, Rita Moreno, Janet Leigh, Brigitte Bar­dot, Sophia Loren, Ann Mar­gret, Julie Andrews, Raquel Welch, Tues­day Weld, Jane Fon­da, Julie Christie, Faye Dun­away, Cather­ine Deneuve, Jacque­line Bis­set, Can­dice Bergen, Isabel­la Rosselli­ni, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, Susan Saran­don, Jes­si­ca Lange, Michelle Pfeif­fer, Sigour­ney Weaver, Kath­leen Turn­er, Hol­ly Hunter, Jodie Fos­ter, Angela Bas­sett, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Salma Hayek, San­dra Bul­lock, Julianne Moore, Diane Lane, Nicole Kid­man, Cather­ine Zeta-Jones, Angeli­na Jolie, Char­l­ize Theron, Reese With­er­spoon, Halle Berry.

Classic Oscar Moments

On the Oscar Chan­nel on YouTube, you can flip through some clas­sic prize-win­ning moments. Above, we fea­ture Rober­to Benig­ni’s speech upon receiv­ing The Acad­e­my Award for best actor (Life is Beau­ti­ful) in 1998. You can also see vin­tage speech­es by Mar­lon Bran­doAudrey Hep­burnFrank Sina­traFed­eri­co Felli­ni, and oth­ers. Per­haps a ques­tion­able call, The Oscar Chan­nel has been added to our page, Intel­li­gent YouTube: The Best Smart Video Col­lec­tions.

Orson Welles’ Final Moments

Above, you can watch Orson Welles’ last inter­view and pub­lic appear­ance. The clip brings you back to Octo­ber 10, 1985, when the great film­mak­er, then 70 years old, appeared on the Merv Grif­fin show and talked a good deal about aging and his aging gen­er­a­tion. Just two hours lat­er, Welles would die of a heart attack at his Los Ange­les home. The clip is added to our YouTube Favorites in a sen­ti­men­tal kind of way.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation

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Sita Sings the Blues

Nina Paley, a self-taught ani­ma­tor, released in 2008 an 82-minute ani­mat­ed film, Sita Sings the Blues, that min­gles the clas­sic Indi­an myth, The Ramayana, with con­tem­po­rary auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal events, and it’s all set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Han­shaw. The film, which launched the San Fran­cis­co Inter­na­tion­al Ani­ma­tion Fes­ti­val (and was also recent­ly fea­tured in the MoMA’s series “Best Film Not Play­ing at a The­ater Near You”) has won awards and gath­ered a lot of fans. In late Feb­ru­ary, Paley hand­ed the film over to the pub­lic, releas­ing it under a Cre­ative Com­mons license (down­load it here). You can now take it and pret­ty much do what­ev­er you want with it (broad­cast it, share it, remix it, etc.). The only thing you can’t do is copy­right the film or attach dig­i­tal rights man­age­ment to it.

You can read more in the NYTimes about Sita Sings the Blues. The film will be added to our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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