The Last Surviving Witness of the Lincoln Assassination Appears on a Game Show (1956)

in History, Television | August 4th, 2011

Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1956, to Samuel James Sey­mour’s appear­ance on the CBS tele­vi­sion show, “I’ve Got a Secret.” At 96 years of age, Sey­mour was the last sur­viv­ing per­son present at Ford’s The­ater the night Abra­ham Lin­coln was assas­si­nat­ed by John Wilkes Booth (April 14, 1865).

Only five years old at the time, Mr. Sey­mour trav­eled with his father to Wash­ing­ton D.C. on a busi­ness trip, where they attend­ed a per­for­mance of Our Amer­i­can Cousin. The young­ster caught a quick glimpse of the pres­i­dent, the play began, and the rest … as they say … is his­to­ry.

A quick foot­note: Samuel Sey­mour died two months after his TV appear­ance. His longevi­ty had some­thing to do, I’d think, with declin­ing those Win­stons over the years.

Find cours­es on the Civ­il War in our list of Free His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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The First 10 Videos Played on MTV: Rewind the Videotape to August 1, 1981

in History, Music, Television | August 1st, 2011

On August 1, 1981, MTV took to the U.S. air­waves, for­ev­er chang­ing the land­scape of Amer­i­can music and pop cul­ture. If you were around then, you’ll remem­ber the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing, the astro­naut plant­i­ng the MTV flag on the moon’s sur­face, and then the first apt­ly picked video — the Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Fast for­ward four years, and we were all say­ing, I Want My MTV.

A list of the first ten videos aired on MTV appears below. Click the links to take a walk down mem­o­ry lane.

  1. “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Bug­gles
  2. “You Bet­ter Run” by Pat Benatar
  3. “She Won’t Dance with Me” by Rod Stew­art
  4. “You Bet­ter You Bet” by The Who
  5. “Lit­tle Suz­i’s on the Up” by Ph.D.
  6. “We Don’t Talk Any­more” by Cliff Richard
  7. “Brass in Pock­et” by The Pre­tenders
  8. “Time Heals” by Todd Rund­gren
  9. “Take It on the Run” by REO Speed­wag­on (not orig­i­nal)
  10. “Rockin’ the Par­adise” by Styx (dit­to)

Thanks Robin for the reminder…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Time Cap­sule: The Inter­net in 1995

“Jer­sey Shore” in the Style of Oscar Wilde

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Darwin: A 1993 Film by Peter Greenaway

in Film, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | July 18th, 2011

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, each focus­ing on anoth­er chap­ter in the nat­u­ral­ist’s life, and each con­sist­ing of just one long unin­ter­rupt­ed shot. Oth­er than the nar­ra­tor’s voiceover, there is no dia­logue.

As with most Green­away films, the visu­al com­po­si­tion of indi­vid­ual scenes in Dar­win reflects the direc­tor’s fas­ci­na­tion with Renais­sance paint­ing (he was first trained as a mural­ist).  In 2006, Green­away even embarked on an ambi­tious series of video instal­la­tions called Nine Clas­sic Paint­ings Revis­it­ed, in which he applied his often con­tro­ver­sial vision to The Last Sup­per, The Wed­ding at Cana and oth­er famous art­works. You can watch an inter­view with the film­mak­er about The Last Sup­per here. Even bet­ter, watch his 2010 UC-Berke­ley lec­ture on the inspi­ra­tion and phi­los­o­phy behind the entire project, which we’ve includ­ed in our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons. We’ve also added Dar­win to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via Bib­liok­lept

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.

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Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Commercial for Schick

in Film, Television | July 7th, 2011

The Dzi­ga Ver­tov Group (1968–1972) was a film col­lec­tive co-found­ed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, named after the pio­neer­ing doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Dzi­ga Ver­tov. Anti-auteur, anti-ver­ité, anti-bour­geois and anti-cap­i­tal­ist, the DVG was also the most rad­i­cal of the French film col­lec­tives, and so, of course, it man­aged to land a great adver­tis­ing gig.

But don’t call it a sell­out. Accord­ing to at least one account, Godard and Gorin man­aged to stick it to their ad agency. Fur­ther­more, they deliv­ered full-throt­tle irony: Their Schick com­mer­cial fea­tures a young man and woman argu­ing over a news broad­cast about Pales­tine … and Pales­tine was also the sub­ject of an ill-fat­ed 1970 DGV project called “Until Vic­to­ry.” You can read the fas­ci­nat­ing back-sto­ry of that film here.

And for the movie geeks: Yes, the actress is Godard reg­u­lar Juli­et Berto.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

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.

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William Shatner Narrates Space Shuttle Documentary

in Astronomy, History, Science, Television, Video - Science | July 4th, 2011

After 30 years and 134 flights, Amer­i­ca’s space shut­tle pro­gram draws to a close. And it feels pitch per­fect to wind things down with a doc­u­men­tary nar­rat­ed by William Shat­ner. Of course, you know him as Cap­tain Kirk from Star Trek, the icon­ic sci-fi TV show that ran from 1966 to 1969, smack in the mid­dle of NASA’s hey­day. (Note: Star Trek has just been added to Net­flix’s stream­ing cat­a­logue.)

The 80 minute doc­u­men­tary takes you through the his­to­ry of the Space Shut­tle pro­gram, which first got under­way dur­ing the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion. The film spends ample time look­ing at the design chal­lenges NASA engi­neers faced in try­ing to cre­ate a reusable shut­tle, while also show­ing ear­ly pro­to­types. Once the design phase was com­plete, con­struc­tion began on the first orbiter in June, 1974 and wrapped up two years lat­er. NASA called its first craft Space Shut­tle Enter­prise, pay­ing homage to the fic­tion­al Star­ship Enter­prise. Next, it was time to bold­ly go where no one had gone before.

The doc is now added to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Endeavour’s Launch Viewed from Boost­er Cam­eras

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Stephen Colbert Dishes Out Wisdom & Laughs at Northwestern

in Life, Television | June 19th, 2011

Conan O’Brien’s speech at Dart­mouth’s grad­u­a­tion last week­end — that’s a hard act to fol­low. But Stephen Col­bert put on a very good show Fri­day at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, his alma mater (Class of 1986).

Best Joke:

We did­n’t have cell phones [dur­ing my days at North­west­ern]. If you made plans to meet some­one in a snow storm and they did­n’t show up, you just assumed that they were devoured by wolves and went on with your life. And we could­n’t text, and we cer­tain­ly could­n’t sext each oth­er. If you want­ed to send some­one a pic­ture of your pri­vate parts, you had to fax it. That’s how Kinko’s got its name!

Best Advice:

In my expe­ri­ence, you will tru­ly serve only what you love, because ser­vice is love made vis­i­ble. If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love com­mu­ni­ty, you will serve your com­mu­ni­ty. If you love mon­ey, you will serve your mon­ey. If you love only your­self, you will serve only your­self and you will have only your­self… Try to love oth­ers and serve oth­ers, and hope­ful­ly find those who will love and serve you in return…

H/T @webacion

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The Wild Kingdom: Brought to You by Mutual of Omaha (and It’s Now on YouTube)

in Television, Video - Science | May 18th, 2011

If you’re a Gen-X’er or old­er, this will like­ly dust off some old mem­o­ries, unleash­ing one of those “Yes, I remem­ber that” moments.

From 1963 through 1988, Mar­lin Perkins and Jim Fowler host­ed Mutu­al of Oma­ha’s Wild King­dom, a 30 minute pro­gram that aired Sun­day nights on NBC. An ear­ly pre­cur­sor to Ani­mal Plan­et and The Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, Wild King­dom let Amer­i­can audi­ences trav­el (at least vir­tu­al­ly) to exot­ic des­ti­na­tions and observe wild ani­mals in their nat­ur­al habi­tats. It all hap­pened dur­ing prime time with mil­lions watch­ing. And the show, oth­er­wise cred­it­ed with rais­ing eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, won 41 major awards, includ­ing four Emmys.

There are two ways to revis­it Wild King­dom. One is to pur­chase The Defin­i­tive 50 Episode Col­lec­tion on DVD. The cheap­er option (actu­al­ly, it’s free) is to vis­it Wild King­dom’s Chan­nel on YouTube, which hosts hours and hours of free pro­gram­ming. The episode above takes you into the mys­ter­ies of the Ama­zon. Enjoy…

via metafil­ter

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How TV Ruined Your Life

in Television | May 18th, 2011

The world is in sham­bles. Civ­i­liza­tion is in free fall. And it’s all because of that ubiq­ui­tous elec­tron­ic box spew­ing Snoo­ki and Ozzy and The Don­ald into the homes of inno­cent peo­ple, pol­lut­ing their minds and cor­rupt­ing their souls. Or any­way, that’s what British come­di­an Char­lie Brook­er thinks.

Brook­er is in a posi­tion to know. He makes his liv­ing off the offend­ing medi­um, writ­ing and appear­ing on such caus­tic pro­grams as Char­lie Brooker’s Screen­wipe, his hilar­i­ous and mer­ci­less bit­ing of the hand that feeds. Ear­li­er this year BBC Two pre­sent­ed its fol­low-up to Screen­wipe, a six-part series titled How TV Ruined Your Life. The result is one part social satire, two parts rav­ing luna­cy, as the mis­an­throp­ic Brooker—remote con­trol clenched furi­ous­ly in hand—takes us on a man­ic chan­nel-surf­ing tour of the deprav­i­ty.

In the win­dow above we fea­ture Episode 3: “Aspi­ra­tion.” The oth­er five install­ments can be accessed through the links below. Warn­ing: How TV Ruined Your Life con­tains harsh lan­guage that would not be safe for work. (But then, if you’re watch­ing half-hour com­e­dy shows at the office you’re prob­a­bly skat­ing on thin ice any­way.)

Episode 1: “Fear”
Episode 2: “The Life­cy­cle”
Episode 4: “Love”
Episode 5: “Progress”
Episode 6: “Knowl­edge”

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