Martin Scorsese Documentary on George Harrison Coming This Fall

in Film, Music | August 26th, 2011

Mar­tin Scors­ese (Rag­ing Bull, Taxi Dri­ver, Good­fel­las) has always had a pen­chant for the rock­u­men­tary. In 1978, he direct­ed The Last Waltz fea­tur­ing the farewell con­cert of The Band — a film lat­er called “the great­est rock con­cert movie ever made.” Then, after a hia­tus, Scors­ese returned to music again, shoot­ing No Direc­tion Home: Bob Dylan (2005) and Shine a Light, a trib­ute to the Rolling Stones, in 2008.

If you’re tack­ling Dylan and the Stones, then why not go for the tri­fec­ta and bring your cin­e­mat­ic tal­ents to bear on The Bea­t­les? And so it shall be. On Octo­ber 5th and 6th, HBO will air George Har­ri­son: Liv­ing in the Mate­r­i­al World, a two-part doc­u­men­tary ded­i­cat­ed to the Bea­t­le who long played in the shad­ow of John and Paul. Scors­ese’s lat­est film will fea­ture unseen archival mate­ri­als and inter­views with Paul, Ringo, Eric Clap­ton, Tom Pet­ty, Ter­ry Gilliam, Phil Spec­tor and oth­ers. It will also be co-released with a 400-page hard­cov­er book writ­ten by Olivia Har­ri­son, which uses pho­tographs, let­ters, diaries, and mem­o­ra­bil­ia to trace the arc of George’s life. Can hard­ly wait. H/T Wired

Note: You can find The Last Waltz and Taxi Dri­ver in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Why Music Mat­ters in Two Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les in Shake­speare­an Mode

The Bea­t­les as Teens (1957)

Anselm Kiefer at Work, Creating His “World of Ruination”

in Art | August 25th, 2011

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, a newish film direct­ed by Sophie Fiennes, lets you sit back and watch the Ger­man artist Anselm Kiefer at work, cre­at­ing his large-scale “world of ruina­tion.” The film has no nar­ra­tion, only some musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment. And, more than any­thing, it gives you a direct, unem­bell­ished view of Kiefer’s “alchem­i­cal cre­ative process” that reg­u­lar­ly takes over his stu­dio in south­ern France. Above, Kiefer puts the fin­ish­ing touch­es on, then rais­es, one of his elab­o­rate cre­ations. The clip, along with oth­ers, appears in a larg­er, more com­pelling for­mat on the film’s offi­cial web site. H/T NYRB

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep dai­ly.

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

Biblioburro: Library on a Donkey

in Books, Education | August 25th, 2011

For more than a decade, Luis Sori­ano, a pri­ma­ry school teacher, has trav­eled the rugged ter­rain of Colom­bia by don­key, deliv­er­ing books to chil­dren in hun­dreds of rur­al vil­lages. The project, pow­ered by his two don­keys Alfa and Beto, goes by the name “Bib­liobur­ro.” And it seeks to pro­mote lit­er­a­cy in areas where access to books is not always a giv­en. You can find more infor­ma­tion and pic­tures on the home­page of the Bib­liobur­ro project and also make a small dona­tion. A video update shows what these dona­tions are actu­al­ly used for.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: The clip above is part of a 60-minute PBS doc­u­men­tary avail­able in full here. If you are a teacher and want to work with the film in class, you will appre­ci­ate this relat­ed les­son plan. Bib­liobur­ro has even been cov­ered by The New York Times, and there is now a sim­i­lar project under­way in Ethiopia.

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.

The Brief Wondrous Career of Arthur Rimbaud (1870–1874)

in Poetry | August 25th, 2011

Arthur Rim­baud, once described by Vic­tor Hugo as ‘an infant Shake­speare,’ burst onto the Parisan lit­er­ary scene in 1870, short­ly before he was 16. By the time 1874 rolled around, Rim­baud had bro­ken the con­ven­tions of poet­ry and fash­ioned a new, mod­ern poet­ic lan­guage. He had pub­lished all of his major works — Illu­mi­na­tions, Une sai­son en enfer, etc. – and had his absinthe/hashish-fueled affair with Paul Ver­laine. Then, com­mit­ting an act that still haunts his fans today, the 20 year old renounced poet­ry utter­ly and com­plete­ly and start­ed trav­el­ing the world.

The mys­tery of Rim­baud’s renun­ci­a­tion and his short-lived lit­er­ary career gets revis­it­ed in this week’s edi­tion of The New York­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at Con­struc­tion Site

Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Forensic Linguistics: Finding a Murderer Through Text Messages

in English Language | August 24th, 2011

Mal­colm Coulthard teach­es Foren­sic Lin­guis­tics at Aston Uni­ver­si­ty, Birm­ing­ham. And, in case you’re won­der­ing what this means, foren­sic lin­guis­tics is all about “tak­ing lin­guis­tic knowl­edge, meth­ods and insight, and apply­ing these to the foren­sic con­text of law, inves­ti­ga­tion, tri­al, pun­ish­ment and reha­bil­i­ta­tion.” Or solv­ing crimes, in short.  This may sound rather dry, but when Pro­fes­sor Coulthard talks about his work we get a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse into what foren­sic lin­guis­tics looks like in prac­tice. In the video above, an excerpt from his inau­gur­al lec­ture at Aston Uni­ver­si­ty (watch the full ver­sion here), Coulthard explains how the analy­sis of text mes­sages helped solve a recent mur­der case. This puts him on the new fron­tier of police work.

Mean­while, in an inter­view with the BBC, Tim Grant, Deputy Direc­tor at the Cen­tre for Foren­sic Lin­guis­tics at Aston Uni­ver­si­ty, explains how his team’s analy­sis of doc­u­ments and writ­ings can help police with their inves­ti­ga­tions. The video does not work in all regions, but there is a tran­script below the video.

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.

Jackson Pollock 51: Short Film Captures the Painter Creating Abstract Expressionist Art

in Art, Film | August 24th, 2011

In the sum­mer of 1950, Hans Namuth approached Jack­son Pol­lock and asked the abstract expres­sion­ist painter if he could pho­to­graph him in his stu­dio, work­ing with his “drip” tech­nique of paint­ing. When Namuth arrived, he found:

A drip­ping wet can­vas cov­ered the entire floor. Blind­ing shafts of sun­light hit the wet can­vas, mak­ing its sur­face hard to see. There was com­plete silence.… Pol­lock looked at the paint­ing. Then unex­pect­ed­ly, he picked up can and paint­brush and start­ed to move around the can­vas. It was as if he sud­den­ly real­ized the paint­ing was not fin­ished. His move­ments, slow at first, grad­u­al­ly became faster and more dance­like as he flung black, white and rust-col­ored paint onto the can­vas.

The images from this shoot “helped trans­form Pol­lock from a tal­ent­ed, cranky lon­er into the first media-dri­ven super­star of Amer­i­can con­tem­po­rary art, the jeans-clad, chain-smok­ing poster boy of abstract expres­sion­ism,” one crit­ic lat­er wrote in The Wash­ing­ton Post.

But Namuth was­n’t sat­is­fied that he had real­ly cap­tured the essence of Pol­lock­’s work. He want­ed to cap­ture Pol­lock in motion and col­or, to focus on the painter and paint­ing alike.

Above, you can watch the result of Namuth’s sec­ond effort. The ten-minute film, sim­ply called Jack­son Pol­lock 51 (the 51 being short for 1951), lets you see Pol­lock paint­ing from a unique angle — through glass. The film achieved Namuth’s aes­thet­ic goals, but it came at a price. Appar­ent­ly the film­ing taxed Pol­lock emo­tion­al­ly, and by the evening, the painter decid­ed to pour him­self some bour­bon, his first drink in two years. A blowout argu­ment fol­lowed; Pol­lock nev­er stopped drink­ing again; and it was down­hill from there…

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:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Steven Spiel­berg Admits Swal­low­ing a Tran­sis­tor to Andy Warhol

James Taylor Gives Free Acoustic Guitar Lessons Online

in Music | August 23rd, 2011

James Tay­lor has start­ed to offer free gui­tar lessons online. He is, after all, your Handy Man.

Now let’s get this out of the way: The jury is still out on whether these video lessons will offer seri­ous guid­ance or not. The first video offers a some­what detailed primer on … car­ing for your fin­ger­nails. And it comes cou­pled with a short les­son, “Lit­tle Wheel” in e minor, that is decid­ed­ly short on ped­a­gogy. More lessons will be com­ing soon though. Sign up for JT’s email list, and they’ll ping you when new videos are post­ed online.

What to do in the mean­time? Well, you can always turn to YouTube, which fea­tures a sur­pris­ing num­ber of free video tuto­ri­als. If you sift around, you can learn how to buy an acoustic gui­tar, tune it by ear, play stum pat­terns, fin­ger pick, play var­i­ous chord pro­gres­sions and so on. For more lessons, you can start rum­mag­ing around three help­ful YouTube chan­nels: Rock­on­Good­Peo­ple; Watch & Learn Music Lessons;  and Mar­tyZ­songs. They pro­vide lots of free tuto­ri­als (while also try­ing to pro­mote paid prod­ucts on the side).

via metafil­ter

OK Go Covers The Muppet Show Theme Song (Stream New Album Online)

in Music | August 23rd, 2011

Today marks the offi­cial release of The Green Album, a new com­pi­la­tion fea­tur­ing con­tem­po­rary rock and indie artists cov­er­ing clas­sic Mup­pets songs. OK Go, Weez­er, Andrew Bird, and My Morn­ing Jack­et, they all con­tribute to the album. And, thanks to the good peo­ple at NPR, you can stream the com­plete album online for the remain­der of the week.

Mean­while, if you want to indulge in some more Mup­pet nos­tal­gia, don’t miss the Mup­pet ren­di­tion of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, or Jim Henson’s 15 Minute Primer on Pup­pet Mak­ing from 1969.

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.