What if Tarantino Directed the Super Bowl Broadcast?

in Film, Television | February 4th, 2011

What would it look like if our great direc­tors took cre­ative con­trol over the Super Bowl broad­cast? Slate imag­ines it, show­ing you how Quentin Taran­ti­no, David Lynch, Wes Ander­son, Wern­er Her­zog and Jean-Luc Godard would put their cin­e­mat­ic stamp on the broad­cast. The clip gets bet­ter as it moves along…

Enjoy the big game. And, if movies are more your thing, don’t for­get to vis­it our big list of 340 Free Movies Online. Films by some of the great direc­tors men­tioned above appear on the list.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter!

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Evidence, Godfrey Reggio’s Short Film on What TV Does to Kids’ Brains

in Film, Television | November 16th, 2010

Between 1982 and 2002, direc­tor God­frey Reg­gio shot his well known Qat­si tril­o­gy — Koy­aanisqat­si, Powaqqat­si, and Naqoyqat­si. Some­where between the 2nd and 3rd install­ment, Reg­gio took a lit­tle detour and direct­ed a short eight minute film called Evi­dence. The main char­ac­ters? Kids watch­ing car­toons (Dum­bo, actu­al­ly) and look­ing “drugged,” “like the patients of a men­tal hos­pi­tal,” he writes on his web site.

The vil­lain? “Tele­vi­sion tech­nol­o­gy,” which “is eat­ing the sub­jects who sit before its gaze.” The weapon? Tele­vi­sion again. That “radi­a­tion gun aimed at the view­er” “holds its sub­jects in total con­trol.” A lit­tle house of hor­rors, to be sure. We have added Koy­aanisqat­si (fea­tur­ing the music of Philip Glass) and Evi­dence to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via @katciz, the direc­tor of the new inter­ac­tive film Out My Win­dow.

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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Donald Duck Discovers Glenn Beck: A Remix

in Art, Current Affairs, Television | October 3rd, 2010

This week, Jonathan McIn­tosh (of Rebel­lious Pix­els) released a new cartoon,“Right Wing Radio Duck,” that remix­es dozens of clas­sic Walt Dis­ney car­toons from the 1930s to 1960s. The artis­tic work is seam­less. The video is down­right fun to watch. And the under­ly­ing mes­sage is entire­ly con­tem­po­rary. A la Col­bert: Keep Fear Alive.

The new video is released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, and, accord­ing to the artist, this trans­for­ma­tive remix “con­sti­tutes a fair-use of any copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al as pro­vid­ed for in sec­tion 107 of the US copy­right law.” Will Dis­ney, a com­pa­ny that exer­cis­es enor­mous pow­er over Amer­i­can copy­right law, agree? That remains to be seen.

To Glenn Beck fans who dou­ble as OC read­ers (if we have any), I apol­o­gize in advance.

via Alec Couros (aka @courosa)

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David Simon, Creator of The Wire, Named 2010 MacArthur Fellow

in Art, Film, Television | September 27th, 2010

The 2010 MacArthur Fel­lows were named today. The lat­est “genius” grants go to 23 recip­i­ents, includ­ing David Simon, the cre­ator of The Wire, the long run­ning HBO show that was real­ly (Simon once said) “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” Above, Simon talks more about the thread run­ning through his work. The Wire, Treme and Gen­er­a­tion Kill – they’re all ulti­mate­ly about the end of the Amer­i­can Empire, and the cit­i­zens that get left behind. Like the oth­er grant win­ners, Simon will receive $500,000 over the next five years to spend how­ev­er he sees fit …

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Free Online: The Original Superman Cartoon Series in Technicolor (1941–1943)

in Art, Film, Television | September 16th, 2010

Ear­li­er this week, we flagged a dig­i­tal archive of com­ic books from the Gold­en Age. Now we stum­ble upon this nugget from the same era: A video archive that show­cas­es the com­plete Super­man ani­mat­ed car­toon series from the ear­ly 40’s, all in Tech­ni­col­or. Based on the orig­i­nal DC Comics char­ac­ter, these 17 episodes appeared on Amer­i­can movie screens (before the show­ing of fea­ture films) between 1941 and 1943. And they were tak­en seri­ous­ly as an art form. The first episode, com­mon­ly known as “The Mad Sci­en­tist” (watch above), was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar in 1942, and, in case you some­how missed it, it spells out the whole premise/backstory of the Super­man saga. These episodes – all now in the pub­lic domain – can be viewed on Youtube. Wikipedia pro­vides some oth­er options for watching/downloading these vin­tage bits of Amer­i­cana media.

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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Nelson Mandela’s First-Ever TV Interview (1961)

in History, Politics, Television, Video - Politics/Society | July 28th, 2010

Note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured on our site in 2010. In light of the news that Nel­son Man­dela has passed away at age 95, we’re bring­ing this vin­tage clip back to the fore. Here you can see a young Man­dela mak­ing his­to­ry, and with­out per­haps real­iz­ing it, build­ing the remark­able lega­cy that remains with us today.

In 1962, Nel­son Man­dela was arrest­ed on alle­ga­tions of sab­o­tage and oth­er charges and sen­tenced to life in prison, where he spent 27 years before becom­ing South Africa’s first pres­i­dent elect­ed in a ful­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. His sto­ry, among mod­ern his­to­ry’s most pro­found­ly inspi­ra­tional, is beau­ti­ful­ly and poet­i­cal­ly cap­tured in Clint East­wood’s 2009 gem, Invic­tus. But what East­wood’s account leaves out are the events that pre­ced­ed and led to Man­de­la’s arrest.

In May of 1961, a 42-year-old Man­dela gave his first-ever inter­view to ITN reporter Bri­an Wid­lake as part of a longer ITN Rov­ing Report pro­gram about Apartheid. At that point, the police are already hunt­ing for Man­dela, but Wid­lake pulls some strings and arranges to meet him in his hide­out. When the reporter asks Man­dela what Africans want, he prompt­ly responds:

“The Africans require, want the fran­chise, the basis of One Man One Vote – they want polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence.”

But per­haps more inter­est­ing is the dia­logue towards the end of the inter­view, where Man­dela explores the com­plex rela­tion­ship between peace and vio­lence as protest and nego­ti­a­tion tac­tics. We’re left won­der­ing whether his seem­ing­ly sud­den shift from a com­plete­ly peace­ful cam­paign strat­e­gy up to that point towards con­sid­er­ing vio­lence as a pos­si­bil­i­ty may be the prod­uct of South African police going after him with full force that week. Vio­lence, it seems, does breed vio­lence even in the best and noblest of us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­dela Archive Goes Online (With Help From Google)

The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive Goes Online

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

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Mike Wallace and Bennett Cerf (Founder of Random House) Talk Censorship

in Books, Television | July 27th, 2010

Long before 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace host­ed his own talk show, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1957 — 1960), where he asked prob­ing ques­tions to celebri­ties of the day. The com­plete archive – now avail­able via the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas (access it here) – fea­tures inter­views with Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Sal­vador Dali, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, and Hen­ry Kissinger, to name a few. In anoth­er notable inter­view, Wal­lace talked with Ben­nett Cerf (watch here), co-founder of the pub­lish­ing giant Ran­dom House, and even­tu­al­ly the con­ver­sa­tion turned to cen­sor­ship. Cer­f’s com­ments date back more than 50 years, but the issue nev­er real­ly goes away. File under: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

WALLACE: Well, yet you say, one of the great­est threats fac­ing book pub­lish­ing and the entire coun­try is cen­sor­ship.

CERF: That’s right.

WALLACE: What is the… Who does the cen­sor­ing, and what is the motive of those who cen­sor?

CERF: Well, now that would take a lot of explo­ration Mike. I think there are an awful lot of peo­ple in this coun­try, who are not sat­is­fied to gov­ern them­selves and their own fam­i­lies. Or the peo­ple who belong to the same cult that they do, but who have tak­en upon them­selves, to tell every­body else what they should read, what they should see, and what they should think.

WALLACE: For what rea­son do they do it?

CERF: I guess, they think it will make them more sure of get­ting to heav­en. I don’t know why they do it. I think they’re sell­ing short, the good taste of the Amer­i­can pub­lic.

WALLACE: Who are these peo­ple, who would like to inflict this kind of cen­sor­ship upon the Amer­i­can pub­lic? What are the groups?

CERF: Self-appoint­ed snoop hounds.

WALLACE: Such as… such as…

CERF: They come from all… walks of life, er… in all the way back to colo­nial days, and in times of the Puri­tans. There were peo­ple who were telling oth­ers, what they most think, how they must behave, and what their morals must be. These peo­ple can­not resist butting in.

via Richard S.

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Ingmar Bergman Visits The Dick Cavett Show, 1971

in Film, Television | July 21st, 2010

Run­ning from 1968 to 1982, “The Dick Cavett Show” some­times brought heady cul­ture to the Amer­i­can air­waves. In this par­tic­u­lar case, Cavett gave Amer­i­cans a close up view of Ing­mar Bergman, the influ­en­tial Swedish direc­tor so admired by Woody Allen. (Allen once called Bergman “prob­a­bly the great­est film artist, all things con­sid­ered, since the inven­tion of the motion pic­ture cam­era.”) Cavet­t’s wide-rang­ing, 60 minute inter­view appears above. Thanks Rober­ta for the lead on this one.

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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