Comedian Reggie Watts Teaches Students Bad Science in 70s Sitcom-Style Show, Teach

in Comedy, Education, Television | February 9th, 2014

Not since Gabe Kaplan’s Mr. Kot­ter has there been such a hip, big-haired, TV teacher to “help make you smart and lis­ten to your feel­ings, too.”

Does it real­ly mat­ter if come­di­an, musi­cian, and now web series star Reg­gie Watts’ Teach is deeply unclear on the sci­ence he’s impart­ing, if the kids in his class­room are learn­ing impor­tant life lessons? Why it’s uncool to bul­ly sin­gle-celled organ­isms, for instance. (“You might be mul­ti­cel­lu­lar but there’s no need to be cel­lulist.”)

As we all know, the best teach­ers awak­en their stu­dents’ curios­i­ty, send them bound­ing off in pur­suit of knowl­edge, rather than spoon-feed­ing them cor­rect answers.

That’s exact­ly what Mr. Watts did for—or pos­si­bly to—me when he talked about ‘tons: pro­tons, con­tons, decep­ti­cons, and tauntauns.  Had he said, “That last one refers to a species of imag­i­nary omniv­o­rous rep­tomam­mals from the 3rd high­est gross­ing fran­chise in film his­to­ry,” I would’ve spelled it “ton­tons” with­out a sec­ond thought. But because he delib­er­ate­ly left things a lit­tle vague, ask­ing, “How many of you have seen The Empire Strikes Back?” I was moti­vat­ed to do a lit­tle research. Star Wars was nev­er my bag…

It bog­gles the mind how much more I would’ve learned had the Inter­net exist­ed back when I was in high school. (Teach’s class­room is most def­i­nite­ly a blast from the past—not an iPad in sight and the over­head pro­jec­tor restored to its place of hon­or. The quick­ly uptilt­ed flask is, of course, time­less.)

The open­ing cred­its sug­gest that we should look for­ward to an edu­ca­tion in Lit­er­a­ture, Music, and His­to­ry in upcom­ing episodes.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cal Come­di­an Reg­gie Watts Rein­vents Van Halen’s Clas­sic, “Pana­ma”

Free Com­ic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s graph­ic nov­el, Peanut, is a Young Adult Library Ser­vices Asso­ci­a­tion 2014 Quick for Reluc­tant Young Read­ers. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Reader: A Touching South African TV Commercial Celebrates Literacy and Scotch

in Food & Drink, Television | February 8th, 2014

In the world of adver­tis­ing, books and booze rarely go togeth­er, espe­cial­ly if you’re sell­ing beer in Amer­i­ca. But when it comes to scotch and whisky, you’ll find some excep­tions. Last year, Dewars chan­neled the ghost of Charles Bukows­ki to sell its scotch. And now Bells, a British Whisky mak­er, aired a com­mer­cial in South Africa show­ing an elder­ly man learn­ing to read — all so that, touch­ing­ly, he could read a book authored by his own son. You can watch a behind-the-scenes, mak­ing-of video here.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dewars Chan­nels the Ghost of Charles Bukows­ki to Sell Scotch

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

500 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

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William S. Burroughs on Saturday Night Live, 1981

in Literature, Television | February 5th, 2014

Today marks the 100th birth­day of beat writer William S. Bur­roughs (1914–1997). Grab a bot­tle of wine … prefer­ably cheap wine … and let’s trav­el back to Novem­ber 7, 1981. That’s when Bur­roughs made his first appear­ance on Amer­i­can nation­al tele­vi­sion. And quite appro­pri­ate­ly, it was on the irrev­er­ent, late-night com­e­dy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live. As you’ll see, actress Lau­ren Hut­ton made the intro­duc­tion, set­ting up Bur­roughs to read from Naked Lunch (1959) and Nova Express (1964). The clip itself is an out­take from the open­ing scene of Bur­roughs, a 1983 doc­u­men­tary by Howard Brookn­er, which is cur­rent­ly get­ting restored.  We orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured this video back in ear­ly 2012. Since then we’ve brought you many oth­er intrigu­ing posts on Bur­roughs, whose life and art pro­vides so much to talk about. See some of our favorites below:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs’ The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

“The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Read by William S. Bur­roughs and Shot by Gus Van Sant

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs’ Free Short Course on Cre­ative Read­ing

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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The Greatest Jazz Films Ever Features Classic Performances by Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Billie & More

in Film, Music, Television | February 5th, 2014

Though both have their roots in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, jazz and cin­e­ma came of age as 20th cen­tu­ry art forms, and they very often did so togeth­er (though not always in the most taste­ful ways). Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer intro­duced the world to talkies. Cabaret, Lady Sings the Blues, The Cot­ton Club are all well-known fic­tion­al films that near­ly any­one might name if asked about the sub­ject. And though Ken Burns’ Jazz may seem like a defin­i­tive state­ment in jazz doc­u­men­tary, for decades, film­mak­ers have made jazz musi­cians their cen­tral sub­ject—for exam­ple, in jazz fan-favorites like Min­gus and Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er. Before these excel­lent, if some­times painful, por­traits, there were short films like Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili’s 1944 Jam­min’ the Blues with Lester Young and oth­er bop stal­warts, and 1950’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic, a selec­tion of clips fea­tur­ing Cole­man Hawkins, Char­lie Park­er, Lester Young, Bud­dy Rich, Ella Fitzger­ald, and oth­ers per­form­ing at Nor­man Granz’s leg­endary series of con­certs.

You’ll see excerpts from both Jam­min’ the Blues and Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic above in The Great­est Jazz Films Ever, a two-disc DVD set that appears to be out of print. (New copies cur­rent­ly retail on Ama­zon for any­where from $259.00 to almost $4,000, but you can watch it free online.) This great­est hits col­lec­tion also includes high­lights from sev­er­al tele­vi­sion spe­cials like Be Bop’s Nest—a rare Char­lie Park­er appear­ance with Dizzy Gille­spie on the short-lived vari­ety show Stage Entrance—and “The Sound of Miles Davis,” a 1959 episode of tele­vi­sion show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater that show­cased one of Davis’ most cel­e­brat­ed ensem­bles.

You’ll also see excerpts from The Sound of Jazz, which Fresh Sound Records calls “one of the great glo­ri­ous moments on tele­vi­sion,” and which con­tains per­for­mances from Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lester Young, Thelo­nious Monk, the Count Basie Orches­tra, and more. Final­ly, we get excerpts from a 1959 tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Jazz From Stu­dio 61, fea­tur­ing the orig­i­nal Ahmad Jamal Trio with the Ben Web­ster Quin­tet. The Great­est Jazz Films Ever is an impres­sive and endur­ing col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments from the gold­en age of jazz. While the empha­sis here is gen­er­al­ly on musi­cian­ship, not film­mak­ing, it’s a col­lec­tion that also demon­strates jazz’s close rela­tion­ship to film and tele­vi­sion in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. All­mu­sic has a com­plete track­list of the col­lec­tion. And for a detailed break­down of each clip, you won’t want to pass up a scroll through this help­ful French site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Jam­min’ the Blues,’ by Gjon Mili

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Ridley Scott on the Making of Apple’s Iconic “1984” Commercial, Aired on Super Bowl Sunday in 1984

in Technology, Television | February 2nd, 2014

“I like to claim that I bought the sec­ond Mac­in­tosh com­put­er ever sold in Europe,” writes actor, come­di­an, writer, wit, and die-hard Apple enthu­si­ast Stephen Fry in a Tele­graph essay mark­ing the Mac­in­tosh com­put­er’s 30th anniver­sary. “My friend and hero Dou­glas Adams was in the queue ahead of me. For all I know some­one some­where had bought one ten min­utes ear­li­er, but these were the first two that the only shop sell­ing them in Lon­don had in stock on the 24th Jan­u­ary 1984, so I’m stick­ing to my sto­ry.”

Fry had found the only com­put­er that made him want to write; “I couldn’t wait to get to it every morn­ing,” he remem­bers. He did­n’t even need con­vinc­ing from “1984,” Rid­ley Scot­t’s “leg­endary com­mer­cial” above, which he did­n’t see “until it crept onto Eng­lish tele­vi­sion screens way past its dra­mat­ic Super Bowl debut.”

Now that we’ve come upon the 30th anniver­sary of that dra­mat­ic Super Bowl debut, why not get a lit­tle insight from the man who direct­ed it? In the clip just above, Scott, who by that time already had the rich and trou­bling futur­is­tic visions Alien and Blade Run­ner under his belt, talks about his expe­ri­ence bring­ing the sto­ry­boards — auda­cious by the tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial stan­dard of the era, let alone for per­son­al com­put­ers — onto the screen. He dis­cuss­es look­ing to the past for his “slight­ly deca­dent-look­ing” future, hang­ing jet engines on the set as an act of “good dra­mat­ic bull­shit,” putting out a “fright­en­ing” cast­ing call for a back­ground full of skin­heads, get­ting the total­i­tar­i­an text for Big Broth­er to intone, and find­ing a young lady who could swing a ham­mer. And what would he have done with an even big­ger bud­get? “Not very much. I think we nailed it.” As, Fry and his fel­low user-enthu­si­asts agree, did Apple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

Mar­tin Scors­ese Appears in New Apple Ad with Siri, Plays on His Chill­ing Cameo in Taxi Dri­ver

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Rid­ley Scott Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­board­ing (and How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Project)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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New York’s Famous Chelsea Hotel and Its Creative Residents Revisited in a 1981 Documentary

in History, Television | January 31st, 2014

Last year, we fea­tured a clip of Nico singing “Chelsea Girls” at the Hotel Chelsea, the much-mythol­o­gized Man­hat­tan insti­tu­tion that, at one time or anoth­er, housed a range of cul­tur­al fig­ures includ­ing Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas, Charles Bukows­ki, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Pat­ti Smith, Robert Map­plethor­pe, Allen Gins­berg, Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, Iggy Pop, Gaby Hoff­mann, Sid Vicious, and Arthur Miller. “The Chelsea in the Six­ties seemed to com­bine two atmos­pheres,” writes Miller in a 1978 essay on his time there. “A scary opti­mistic chaos which pre­dict­ed the hip future, and at the same time the feel of a mas­sive, old-fash­ioned, shel­ter­ing fam­i­ly. That at least was the myth one nursed in one’s mind, but like all myths it did not alto­geth­er stand inspec­tion.” That era more than arguably marked the Chelsea’s social and cul­tur­al hey­day.

A few years lat­er, in 1981, BBC’s arts doc­u­men­tary series Are­na made its way to New York to inves­ti­gate the his­to­ry and then-cur­rent state of this ver­i­ta­ble coun­ter­cul­ture incu­ba­tor. The film spends time with cur­rent Chelsea res­i­dents, for­mer Chelsea res­i­dents, and Chelsea habitués notable, cre­ative, and oth­er­wise — the notably cre­ative Andy Warhol, William Bur­roughs, and Quentin Crisp all make appear­ances. It also talks to the hotel’s staff and fol­lows a tour guide as he leads a curi­ous group through its sto­ried cor­ri­dors. “With all my mis­giv­ings about the Chelsea,” Miller reflects, “I can nev­er enter it with­out a cer­tain quick­en­ing of my heart­beat. There is an inde­scrib­ably home­like atmos­phere which at the same time lacks a cer­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty. It is some kind of fic­tion­al place, I used to think. As in dreams things are out front that are con­cealed in oth­er hotels.”

For more, you might want to spend time with “An Oral His­to­ry of the Chelsea Hotel: Where the Walls Still Talk,” which appeared in Van­i­ty Fair last Octo­ber.

Find the doc­u­men­tary above list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 625 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

Charles Bukows­ki Takes You on a Very Uncon­ven­tion­al Tour of Hol­ly­wood

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Beatles Perform a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1964)

in Music, Television | January 6th, 2014

Before Bri­an Epstein dis­cov­ered The Bea­t­les in 1961, they looked noth­ing like the British mop-top mods of their ear­ly six­ties pop phase. As the Quar­ry­men, they aped the looks of Amer­i­can fifties rock­ers (see a slideshow in this fan-made video of “In Spite of All the Dan­ger”): Some­times they dressed like folk revival­ists in check­ered shirts and jeans, some­times like a Carl Perkins rock­a­bil­ly band in match­ing suits and skin­ny ties, and some­times like pom­padoured greasers straight out of West Side Sto­ry.

But even after the band acquired its dis­tinc­tive look and wrote a cache of orig­i­nal songs, they were still “com­pet­ing for increased expo­sure just like every­body else.” This meant numer­ous goofy pub­lic­i­ty stunts, every one of which they seemed to thor­ough­ly love. In one such affair, the four­some taped a tele­vi­sion spe­cial called “Around the Bea­t­les,” a ref­er­ence to the the­ater-in-the-round stu­dio set­up. In the first part of the pro­gram, they donned yet anoth­er cos­tume, Shake­speare­an dress, and staged a spoof of Act V, Scene I of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream in hon­or of Shakespeare’s 400th anniver­sary. (See the orig­i­nal black-and-white BBC broad­cast from April 28, 1964 above. The show was broad­cast in Amer­i­ca on ABC that Novem­ber, in col­or.)

After some fan­fare, “Around the Bea­t­les” opens on Ringo, in hose and dou­blet, fir­ing a can­non. Then we get the oblig­a­tory hoard of scream­ing teenage fans singing the prais­es of each Bea­t­le and march­ing into the stu­dio with signs and ban­ners. After anoth­er trum­pet fan­fare, the play begins, and we’re off into slap­stick British com­e­dy, with a mug­ging Paul as Pyra­mus, sneer­ing John as This­be, smirk­ing George as Moon­shine, and a scene-chew­ing Ringo as Lion. The heck­lers in the box seats were script­ed, most­ly (one yells “go back to Liverpool!”—probably not a plant). Over­all the sil­ly skit con­firms what I’ve always main­tained: if the Bea­t­les’ hadn’t made it as musi­cians, they’d have done well to stay togeth­er as a com­e­dy troupe.

The sec­ond part of the spe­cial fea­tured musi­cal per­for­mances from sev­er­al oth­er acts and, of course, from the Bea­t­les them­selves. See the band bop along to a med­ley of “Love Me Do”/ “Please Please Me”/ “From Me to You”/ “She Loves You”/ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” above. They pre­re­cord­ed the music on April 19th and mimed the per­for­mances, as you can sure­ly tell from the total lack of ampli­fiers onstage. This was, as it is again, the way of things in pop music on tele­vi­sion. But if you are one of those who think The Bea­t­les didn’t put on a good live show, Col­in Flem­ing at The Atlantic begs to dif­fer, with a thor­ough expli­ca­tion of rare record­ings from an Octo­ber 1963 per­for­mance in Stock­holm.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Mode

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Find Shakespeare’s Col­lect­ed Works in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books Col­lec­tions

Down­load Shake­speare Cours­es from our Col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Laurence Olivier, Liv Ullmann and Christopher Plummer’s Classic Polaroid Ads

in Film, Photography, Technology, Television, Theatre | January 5th, 2014

Before Urban Out­fit­ters and Project Impos­si­ble, before the adorable bick­er­ing ubiq­ui­ty of spokes­peo­ple James Gar­ner and Mari­ette Hart­ley, Polaroid kept things classy by entrust­ing its rep­u­ta­tion to the most seri­ous of seri­ous actors.

Take Lau­rence Olivi­er. Who else could have made the phrase “Polaroid SX-70 Land Cam­era” sound like Shake­speare? Seri­ous­ly. He could’ve tacked the string of superla­tives he unleash­es against a black back­ground above onto the end of Hen­ry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech and I would have been none the wis­er.

(And gen­tle­men in Eng­land now a‑bed

Shall think them­selves accursed they were not here,

And hold their man­hoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day -

Pock­et sized, fold­ing, elec­tron­i­cal­ly con­trolled, motor dri­ven…)

Accord­ing to the late Peter Wens­berg, a for­mer Polaroid exec and author of Land’s Polaroid, A Com­pa­ny and the Man Who Invent­ed It, Sir Lau­rence agreed to the 1972 spot on the con­di­tion that it would­n’t be shown in Eng­land. (YouTube would­n’t be found­ed for anoth­er thir­ty years.)

Sir Lar­ry was fol­lowed in 1979 by actress Liv Ull­mann, solemn­ly prais­ing the  SX70 Sonar OneStep’s moment-cap­tur­ing abil­i­ties. Is there a Polaroid some­where in the Ing­mar Bergman Archive of his and Ull­man­n’s 12-year-old daugh­ter Linn, stand­ing at the sink, wash­ing dish­es? Or has YouTube become the sole reli­quary for these pre­cious moments?

Christo­pher Plum­mer’s 1980 spot seems down­right loose by con­trast, as he kicks back on a beach, aim­ing his SX70 Sonar OneStep at a Gold­en Retriev­er and a canoe’s worth of kids. (Sir Lar­ry’s sub­ject was a rather fussy porce­lain clock.)

Giv­en their his­to­ry, it’s easy to think of Polaroid’s instant cam­eras as a gim­mick or a fad, but such not­ed pho­tog­ra­phers as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Hel­mut New­ton, and Walk­er Evans were fans of the SX-70.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Amer­i­can Film­mak­ers in Japan­ese Ads: Quentin Taran­ti­no Sells Cell Phones, Orson Welles Hawks Whisky

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has the sort of vision that screams out for an unlim­it­ed sup­ply of free dig­i­tal shots. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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