The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978): It’s Oh So Kitsch

in Sci Fi, Television | December 28th, 2011

Let’s do the time warp today and revis­it the Not-S0-Gold­en Age of Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion. The year was 1978. Star Wars fever still gripped Amer­i­ca, and the Vari­ety Show TV for­mat would­n’t say die. So, pro­duc­ing The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial was a no-brain­er. The two-hour show takes you inside the domes­tic world of Chew­bac­ca and his fam­i­ly — his father Itchy, his wife Mal­la, and his son Lumpy — and fea­tures guest appear­ances by Jef­fer­son Star­ship, Har­vey Kor­man and Bea Arthur, plus a lit­tle stock footage of Alec Guin­ness. As for the pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty and spe­cial effects? They’re all text­book kitsch.

You’ve heard enough to know that this was­n’t the finest hour for the Star Wars fran­chise. One crit­ic called it the “the worst two hours of tele­vi­sion ever.” And, when he’s will­ing to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of the TV spe­cial, George Lucas read­i­ly admits that turn­ing Star Wars into a vari­ety show “was­n’t the smartest thing to do.” But because the show only aired once in its entire­ty, the hol­i­day spe­cial has gained some­thing of a cult sta­tus and cir­cu­lates “under­ground” on the web. Van­i­ty Fair has more on this mis­ad­ven­ture in tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming here. H/T goes to Dan­ger­ous Minds.

Relat­ed Star Wars Good­ies:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

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Incredible Mental Math Gymnastics on “Countdown”

in Math, Television | December 14th, 2011

Count­down is a British TV game show revolv­ing around words and num­bers. In the num­bers round, con­tes­tants select six of twen­ty-four shuf­fled tiles with num­bers on them. Next, a com­put­er gen­er­ates a ran­dom three-dig­it tar­get num­ber and the con­tes­tants have thir­ty sec­onds to get as close to that num­ber as pos­si­ble by com­bin­ing the six num­bers through addi­tion, sub­trac­tion, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and divi­sion. This mem­o­rable episode of Count­down aired in March 1997 and starred James Mar­tin and his rather unusu­al way of arriv­ing at the tar­get num­ber of 952.

One YouTube user sug­gest­ed a dif­fer­ent way: 6 x 75 = 450; 450 ÷ 50 = 9; 100 + 3 = 103; 9 x 103 = 927; 927 + 25 = 952

I found yet anoth­er way: 100 + 3 = 103; 103 x 6 = 618; 618 x 75 = 46,350; 46,350 ÷ 50 = 927; 927 + 25 = 952

What about you? Any more sug­ges­tions?

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Math Cours­es

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion: The Vedic Way

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Spike Jonze’s Imaginative TV Ads

in Film, Television | December 13th, 2011

Spike Jonze has made a name for him­self as a wild­ly inven­tive direc­tor of music videos and fea­ture films, like Being John Malkovich and Adap­ta­tion. He has also cre­at­ed some of the most dis­tinc­tive tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials of the past decade. Today we bring you a few of his great­est hits.

In late 2002 Jonze cre­at­ed a stir with his IKEA com­mer­cial, “Lamp” (above). The 60-sec­ond spot went on to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al Adver­tis­ing Fes­ti­val. Boards mag­a­zine list­ed “Lamp” as one of the top 10 com­mer­cials of the decade, writ­ing:

Spike Jonze’s incred­i­bly human direct­ing touch cre­at­ed a believ­able ten­der­ness between a woman and her new Ikea light­ing, elic­it­ing pure empa­thy for a lone­ly, dis­card­ed object, left to suf­fer curb­side in the rain, and then shat­tered it all with one bril­liant stroke of cast­ing that abrupt­ly and brusque­ly brought us all back to real­i­ty.

Jonze’s star­tling Gap com­mer­cial, “Dust,” (above) became a YouTube sen­sa­tion imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing its release in 2005, but the com­pa­ny pulled the 90-sec­ond ad after test­ing it in only a few cities. Per­haps the spec­ta­cle of a cor­po­rate brand exu­ber­ant­ly doing vio­lence to its image was a bit too much for the boys in the board­room. The deci­sion to shelve the ad made the com­pa­ny look even less hip than before. As Seth Steven­son wrote in Slate, “I just can’t under­stand spend­ing all that mon­ey on a big-name direc­tor, and a big-bud­get shoot, and then frit­ter­ing the results away on such a lim­it­ed pur­pose. Did Gap not see the pos­si­bil­i­ties? Were they too scared to go for broke?”

Anoth­er ground-break­ing Jonze com­mer­cial from 2005, “Hel­lo Tomor­row,” (above) was made to intro­duce a self-adjust­ing, “intel­li­gent” sneak­er from Adi­das. The spot uses spe­cial effects to cre­ate the impres­sion of a lucid dream. The music was cre­at­ed by Jonze’s broth­er, Sam “Squeak E. Clean” Spiegel (Jonze’s birth name is Adam Spiegel) and sung by his girl­friend at the time, Karen O of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The ad received many awards, includ­ing two Gold Lions at Cannes. The sneak­er was dropped by Adi­das in 2006, but the com­mer­cial lives on.

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The Rolling Stones Sing Jingle for Rice Krispies Commercial (1964)

in Music, Television | November 10th, 2011

Kel­log­g’s first start­ed mar­ket­ing Rice Krispies way back in 1928, and, ever since, we’ve grown accus­tomed to whole­some adver­tis­ing cam­paigns that fea­ture the car­toon mas­cots Snap, Crack­le and Pop. (See ad from 1939.) For a brief moment in 1964, all of this whole­some­ness was put aside when the J. Wal­ter Thomp­son ad agency worked with the Rolling Stones to cre­ate a hip­per, more inspired jin­gle. The result­ing com­mer­cial aired briefly only in the UK…

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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Kim Kardashian Gets Divorced; Salman Rushdie Writes Limerick

in Literature, Poetry, Television | November 3rd, 2011

Per­haps you know the back­sto­ry; per­haps you don’t. This week, socialite and real­i­ty “star” Kim Kar­dashi­an announced that her 72-day mar­riage to Kris Humphries will end in divorce. In response, the tabloids buzzed … and famed author Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Chil­dren, The Satan­ic Vers­es and The Moor’s Last Sigh) took to Twit­ter and offered up a nice lit­tle lim­er­ick. It starts with the blue sec­tion and moves up the page…

Fol­low the author at @SalmanRushdie, and us at @openculture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Salman Rushdie on Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

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The Fabric of the Cosmos, Exploring Mysteries of Physics, Kicks Off with Live Webcast Tonight

in Physics, Television | November 2nd, 2011

The­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Bri­an Greene returns to PBS, this time pre­sent­ing The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos, a four-part look at the “mind-bog­gling real­i­ty beneath the sur­face of our every­day world.” The first seg­ment, “What Is Space?,” airs tonight at 9pm. Then come the remain­ing install­ments — “The Illu­sion of Time” (11/9), “Quan­tum Leap” (11/16), and “Uni­verse or Mul­ti­verse?” (11/23). If you can’t catch the episodes on TV, they will be streamed online too at video.pbs.org.

Bonus: At 10 pm east­ern time tonight, PBS will host a live, inter­ac­tive web­cast with Bri­an Greene and some spe­cial guests: renowned the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Leonard Susskind (watch his the­o­ret­i­cal physics cours­es online) and Saul Perl­mut­ter, win­ner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Togeth­er, they will “explore how sci­en­tists are piec­ing togeth­er the most com­plete pic­ture yet of space, time, and the uni­verse.” Get more details on the live event here.

Unre­lat­ed bonus: Tonight, at 6 pm east­ern time, MoMA will stream online “The Lan­guage of Objects,” a con­ver­sa­tion fea­tur­ing Ken­neth Gold­smith, poet; Ben Green­man, author and edi­tor, The New York­er; Leanne Shap­ton, illus­tra­tor, author, and pub­lish­er; and Cin­tra Wil­son, cul­ture crit­ic. Get more infor­ma­tion and watch here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Marshall McLuhan on the Stupidest Debate in the History of Debating (1976)

in History, Music, Politics, Television | October 13th, 2011

In Sep­tem­ber 1976, Jim­my Carter and Ger­ald Ford squared off in a pres­i­den­tial debate, and the fol­low­ing day, the leg­endary com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the TODAY show, then host­ed by Tom Brokaw, to offer some almost real-time analy­sis of the debate. The first tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate was famous­ly held in 1960, and it pit­ted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. Six­teen years lat­er, pun­dits and cit­i­zens were still try­ing to make sense of the for­mat. Was the tele­vised debate a new and vital part of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy? Or was it a care­ful­ly con­trolled act of polit­i­cal per­for­mance? For McLuhan, there was still some ide­al­is­tic sense that tele­vised debates could enhance our democ­ra­cy, assum­ing the mes­sage was suit­ed to the medi­um. But McLuhan came away dis­il­lu­sioned, call­ing the Carter/Ford spec­ta­cle “the most stu­pid arrange­ment of any debate in the his­to­ry of debat­ing” and chalk­ing up tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties (watch them here) to the medi­um rag­ing against the mes­sage.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

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Sir Ian McKellen Reads Manual for Changing Tires in Dramatic Voice

in Film, Television | October 13th, 2011

Sir Ian McK­ellen shows why he has been nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award not once, but two times. The actor (Lord of the Rings, King Lear) reads a tire repair man­u­al in dra­mat­ic voice  … and, of course, pulls it off — shades of Peter Sell­ers per­form­ing The Bea­t­les in Shake­speare­an mode and Richard Drey­fuss giv­ing a dra­mat­ic read­ing of the iTunes End-user license agree­ment. And, oh, let us not for­get Christo­pher Walken’s hilar­i­ous read­ing of Lady Gaga’s Pok­er Face.

H/T @matthiasrascher

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!

Ian McK­ellen Stars in King Lear

Sir Ian McK­ellen Puts on a Daz­zling One-Man Shake­speare Show

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

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