The Mother of All Funk Chords

in Media, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | September 30th, 2010

Who said there’s not an art to remix­ing? The Israeli artist Ophir Kutiel, oth­er­wise known as Kuti­man, cre­at­ed this video by weav­ing togeth­er scenes and tracks from 22 sep­a­rate music videos, all found ran­dom­ly on YouTube. (Find the full list below the jump.) First he lay­ered in the drums, then the bass and the gui­tar. And it’s hard to argue that the total isn’t greater than the sum of the parts. The video fig­ures into Kuti­man’s larg­er remix project called ThruY­OU, which TIME called one of the 50 best inven­tions of last year. Vis­it the ThruY­OU site to watch more remix videos in Kuti­man’s trade­mark style.

Thanks Evan for flag­ging this for us…

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Neil Young’s Film “Le Noise” Debuts Online

in Film, Music | September 30th, 2010

It’s a dou­ble shot of Neil Young. This week, the Cana­di­an singer-song­writer released his lat­est album, Le Noise, along with an accom­pa­ny­ing 38 minute black & white film. Direct­ed by Adam Vol­lick, the movie fea­tures a live per­for­mance of the full album record­ed at the stu­dios of Daniel Lanois in Los Ange­les. The film offi­cial­ly debuts tonight, but you can catch it online right now. And please note: the album itself can be freely streamed online on NPR’s First Lis­ten site for a lim­it­ed amount of time.

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!

The Adventures of Philip Marlowe: Hear the Classic Radio Episodes (1947–1951)

in Radio | September 29th, 2010

Dur­ing the 1930’s and 1940’s, Ray­mond Chan­dler gave life to the detec­tive Philip Mar­lowe, per­haps the most mem­o­rable char­ac­ter of the hard­boiled crime fic­tion tra­di­tion. Mar­lowe took cen­ter stage in Chan­dler’s influ­en­tial nov­els, The Big Sleep and The Long Good­bye. And, before too long, he start­ed appear­ing in adap­ta­tions for radio and cin­e­ma. Humphrey Bog­a­rt played Mar­lowe in 1946, and Elliot Gould tack­led the char­ac­ter in 1973. Mean­while, The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe took to the radio air­waves in the sum­mer of 1947.

The ini­tial episodes did­n’t quite gel and NBC quick­ly yanked the show. But, a year lat­er, CBS revived the radio pro­duc­tion with new writ­ers and actors, and, by 1949, the show had the largest radio audi­ence in the US. Thanks to the Inter­net Archive, The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe can now be accessed online for free. Find them on the IA site, or stream them below. We’ve also embed­ded of YouTube playlist of 72 episodes above. Each episode runs about 25 min­utes. Find them added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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:

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Beloved Sci-Fi Sto­ries as Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays:War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More

Hear 90+ Episodes of Sus­pense, the Icon­ic Gold­en Age Radio Show Launched by Alfred Hitch­cock

David Simon, Creator of The Wire, Named 2010 MacArthur Fellow

in Art, Film, Television | September 27th, 2010

The 2010 MacArthur Fel­lows were named today. The lat­est “genius” grants go to 23 recip­i­ents, includ­ing David Simon, the cre­ator of The Wire, the long run­ning HBO show that was real­ly (Simon once said) “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” Above, Simon talks more about the thread run­ning through his work. The Wire, Treme and Gen­er­a­tion Kill – they’re all ulti­mate­ly about the end of the Amer­i­can Empire, and the cit­i­zens that get left behind. Like the oth­er grant win­ners, Simon will receive $500,000 over the next five years to spend how­ev­er he sees fit …

Jason Schwartzman Introduces New Yorker iPad App

in iPad, Media | September 27th, 2010

The New York­er iPad app. It’s final­ly out, and they have actor Jason Schwartz­man tak­ing the wraps off in a wit­ty video. Give The New York­er points for cre­ativ­i­ty.

Now the big ques­tion. Will read­ers pay $4.99 to have the plea­sure of read­ing each week­ly issue on the iPad? That’s $234 over a year. Or will you be stick­ing with the print sub­scrip­tion that runs a cool­er $1.00 per week? You’ll find me in the lat­ter camp until they work out a more sen­si­ble annu­al pric­ing scheme — some­thing that, accord­ing to recent reports, may be right around the bend.

David Bowie Standup

in Comedy, Music | September 22nd, 2010

For a brief moment yes­ter­day, the inter­net was abuzz. David Bowie? Now doing standup com­e­dy? Bowie him­self seemed to con­firm it on Twit­ter. But then the truth came out. It was all a hoax, the work of come­di­an Ed Schrad­er. Lis­ten below:

Relat­ed: Don’t miss lit­tle this video of a 3 year old hav­ing a “Want David Bowie” melt­down. Watch video here, and stay with it until the 1:30 mark…

Waiting for Superman (to Fix America’s Broken School System)

in Education, Film | September 20th, 2010

Davis Guggen­heim, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning direc­tor of An Incon­ve­nient Truth, has issued a new clar­i­on call for our times: Wait­ing for Super­man, a new film that takes a hard look at Amer­i­ca’s fail­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem, the chil­dren it’s leav­ing behind, and the reform­ers try­ing to turn things around. Above, you can watch the offi­cial trail­er for the movie being released in select US the­aters. And, right now, if you pledge to pur­chase a tick­et, you can also direct a dona­tion to a class­room of your choice.

Some­where down the line (and ide­al­ly soon­er than lat­er), I hope that Guggen­heim and Para­mount Pic­tures will decide to make this film freely avail­able to the pub­lic. It always struck me that the film­mak­ers lim­it­ed the impact of An Incon­ve­nient Truth by keep­ing it behind a pay wall. Hope­ful­ly, this time, they will recoup their mon­ey and give the film the free­dom to spread an impor­tant mes­sage. There’s gen­er­al­ly not a moral imper­a­tive to make films free. But, in this case, it seems a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.

Note for edu­ca­tion blog­gers: The Huff­in­g­ton Post will be screen­ing the film nation­al­ly, and they invite you to attend. Get details here.

The Unseen Sea: San Francisco Natural Beauty in HD

in Art, Life | September 19th, 2010

The San Fran­cis­co Bay Area hard­ly needs any dress­ing up. Its nat­ur­al beau­ty speaks for itself. But this short HD film by Simon Chris­ten, a pro­fes­sion­al ani­ma­tor and aspir­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er, cer­tain­ly gives artis­tic expres­sion to the allur­ing land­scape of this coastal region. Clouds take on the appear­ance of waves, and lights look like lava, as the col­lec­tion of time laps­es roll by. The film (which you can catch in a strik­ing large for­mat here) comes to us via @AndrewHazlett. Nick Cave pro­vides the accom­pa­ny­ing music — “Mary’s Song” from the sound­track of Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James.

Free Online: The Original Superman Cartoon Series in Technicolor (1941–1943)

in Art, Film, Television | September 16th, 2010

Ear­li­er this week, we flagged a dig­i­tal archive of com­ic books from the Gold­en Age. Now we stum­ble upon this nugget from the same era: A video archive that show­cas­es the com­plete Super­man ani­mat­ed car­toon series from the ear­ly 40’s, all in Tech­ni­col­or. Based on the orig­i­nal DC Comics char­ac­ter, these 17 episodes appeared on Amer­i­can movie screens (before the show­ing of fea­ture films) between 1941 and 1943. And they were tak­en seri­ous­ly as an art form. The first episode, com­mon­ly known as “The Mad Sci­en­tist” (watch above), was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar in 1942, and, in case you some­how missed it, it spells out the whole premise/backstory of the Super­man saga. These episodes – all now in the pub­lic domain – can be viewed on Youtube. Wikipedia pro­vides some oth­er options for watching/downloading these vin­tage bits of Amer­i­cana media.

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!

Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Online

in Literature | September 15th, 2010

Togeth­er, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and King’s Col­lege Lon­don are lead­ing a three year effort to unite in one dig­i­tal archive the sur­viv­ing man­u­scripts of Jane Austen’s fic­tion. Since 1845, these texts have been dis­persed among libraries and pri­vate col­lec­tions. Now, they’re get­ting back togeth­er, at least vir­tu­al­ly. When fin­ished, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion will include every man­u­script Austen pro­duced, start­ing dur­ing her youth (around 11 years old) and end­ing with her death at age 41. You can start review­ing some of the first man­u­scripts brought online here, and get more back­ground on the project here. Good find by Kot­tke.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

Dominic West (aka Jim­my McNul­ty) Reads Jane Austen