James Dean starred in only three major films – Rebel With­out a Cause, East of Eden, and Giant – before per­ish­ing in a car acci­dent on Route 466, near Cholame, Cal­i­for­nia in Sep­tem­ber 1955. (A free doc­u­men­tary cov­ers that.) A star died at 24. Mean­while, a leg­end for­ev­er embody­ing youth was born.

Jim­my Dean would have turned 80 today. Amaz­ing to say it. And, to mark the occa­sion, we’re fea­tur­ing a slide show show­cas­ing the pho­tog­ra­phy and voice of Den­nis Stock, the Mag­num pho­tog­ra­ph­er who took many icon­ic pho­tos of Dean, includ­ing Dean’s famous walk through a rainy Times Square with a cig­a­rette propped in mouth and hands in pock­ets. Stock­’s images shaped Dean’s pub­lic per­sona, and the work you’re see­ing here fig­ures into a more com­pre­hen­sive pre­sen­ta­tion of Stock­’s oeu­vre on the Mag­num web­site.

PS Today is also Jules Verne’s 183rd birth­day. If you’re look­ing for his clas­sics – Around the World in 80 Days or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – you can find them in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

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!

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.

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