Whose Line Is It Anyway? The Complete Improv Series Now Free Online

in Comedy, Television | September 5th, 2011

The improv/comedy series Whose Line Is It Any­way? aired on British tele­vi­sion for a good decade, from 1988 to 1998. Then it made its way to Amer­i­ca and enjoyed an eight-sea­son run. Thanks to some ded­i­cat­ed fans, you can now watch the com­plete US and UK series online. Find Sea­son One of the UK series here, and the first sea­son of the US series here. Or the rest along the top nav­i­ga­tion bar of the site.

Need an intro­duc­tion to the show? How about we get you start­ed with an ear­ly appear­ance by British actor and writer Stephen Fry, some­one we have hap­pi­ly fea­tured here on many oth­er occa­sions. Enjoy.

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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Archive of 9/11 TV Coverage Launches with 3,000+ Hours of Video

in History, Media, Television | August 25th, 2011

The dra­ma of 9/11 unfold­ed before the world on TV. Even many New York­ers, myself includ­ed, watched the trau­mat­ic events on CNN rather than wit­ness­ing them first­hand. Dur­ing the days that fol­lowed, we were bom­bard­ed with end­less replays — the planes hit­ting the build­ings, the tow­ers aflame and col­laps­ing, the piles of smok­ing debris left behind. Then, mer­ci­ful­ly, the cov­er­age dis­ap­peared.

Almost a decade lat­er, the Inter­net Archive has launched a 9/11 Tele­vi­sion News Archive, a resource for schol­ars, jour­nal­ists, and any­one inter­est­ed in the his­tor­i­cal record cre­at­ed by tele­vi­sion. The archive brings togeth­er more than 3,000 hours of tele­vi­sion cov­er­age from 20 US and inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ers, and the cov­er­age can be seg­ment­ed by day, time and news provider.

Yet one more rea­son why we con­sid­er the Inter­net Archive one of the most valu­able sites on the web.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Jerry Leiber, Writer of Enduring Rock Classics, on What’s My Line? (1958)

in Music, Television | August 23rd, 2011

Jer­ry Leiber died yes­ter­day at the age of 78. Leiber was­n’t a house­hold name dur­ing most of his career. But his com­po­si­tions are known world­wide. Along with his part­ner Mike Stoller, Leiber wrote “Hound Dog,” “Jail­house Rock,” and “Treat Me Nice,” among oth­ers songs made famous by Elvis Pres­ley dur­ing the 1950s. They also com­posed “Stand by Me,” a tune sung by Ben E. King in 1960, then cov­ered count­less times. (We par­tic­u­lar­ly like this ver­sion.)

The clip above takes you back to 1958, when Leiber and Stoller appeared on the long-run­ning tele­vi­sion show What’s My Line?. If you’ve watched some of these vin­tage episodes, you’ll know that the pan­el usu­al­ly wore blind­folds lest the iden­ti­ty of the guest be imme­di­ate­ly revealed. But there was no risk of that in the case of Leiber & Stoller. And, by the way, it’s worth men­tion­ing that Vin­cent Price made a spe­cial guest appear­ance on the pan­el that night.

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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.

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 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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