James Gandolfini Shows Kinder, Softer, Gentler Side on Sesame Street (2002)

in Life, Television | June 23rd, 2013

When James Gan­dolfi­ni first broke into film, he played Vir­gil, a bru­tal woman-beat­ing mafioso (view­er beware), in the 1993 thriller, True Romance, writ­ten by Quentin Taran­ti­no. In Ter­mi­nal Veloc­i­ty, he was back at it again, play­ing a Russ­ian mob­ster. By the 1999, when The Sopra­nos first aired on HBO, Gan­dolfi­ni had per­fect­ed the mob­ster role. The explo­sive anger, the raw vio­lence, the col­or­ful lan­guage — he had it all down. Of course, this con­tributed to a good gag when Gan­dolfi­ni appeared on Sesame Street in 2002. Now the world had the chance to see the actor as it had­n’t seen him before. Meek, timid, and death­ly afraid of giant talk­ing veg­eta­bles. It’s an endear­ing lit­tle scene.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Philip Glass Com­pos­es for Sesame Street (1979)

Mor­gan Free­man Teach­es Kids to Read in Vin­tage Elec­tric Com­pa­ny Footage from 1971

A Lover’s Spat Set to the Lyrics of 17 Beatles Songs

in Comedy, Music | June 22nd, 2013

Those of us who spent hours sit­ting in front of the record play­er with our dads’ Radio Shack recorders, striv­ing to dupli­cate the hilar­i­ty of Dick­ie Good­man’s nov­el­ty hit 1975 “Mr. Jaws,” will find much to appre­ci­ate in the staged spat above.

Musi­cal pranksters Col­lec­tive Caden­za raid­ed the Bea­t­les’ cat­a­logue for sev­en­teen songs to dri­ve the nar­ra­tive of a sus­pi­cious wife con­fronting her phi­lan­der­ing hus­band. Which hussy sent him that pas­sion­ate text? Lady Madon­na? Julia? Michelle? Eleanor Rig­by seems to have more com­ic poten­tial than a tired ageist dig, and giv­en their high pro­duc­tion val­ues, I’m mys­ti­fied that the cre­ators shied away from hir­ing a real­is­ti­cal­ly hot plumber.

Per­haps I’m over-think­ing things. It’s a lark, that’s all. Don’t expect Shake­speare, and you won’t lose sleep won­der­ing why they failed to include “I Am the Wal­rus.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

Hold Me Clos­er, Tony Dan­za and Oth­er Mis­heard Lyrics for Your Lis­ten­ing Plea­sure

Ayun Hal­l­i­day had a girl­ish crush on Paul, then switched to George, before wis­ing up and going with John. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Watch His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks’ Classic Screwball Comedy Starring Cary Grant, Free Online

in Film | June 21st, 2013

The movies and jour­nal­ism have had a long rela­tion­ship in Amer­i­ca, not least because, in Hol­ly­wood’s hey­day, so many screen­writ­ers began their careers in news­rooms. The pro­lif­ic Ben Hecht, now known as “the Shake­speare of Hol­ly­wood,” start­ed off as a reporter at the Chica­go Jour­nal. His col­lab­o­ra­tor Charles MacArthur first worked over at the Chica­go Tri­bune. They, along with son of the film indus­try Charles Led­er­er, co-wrote His Girl Fri­day, the clas­sic 1940 screw­ball com­e­dy of steely sto­ry-chas­ing and elab­o­rate roman­tic intrigue at The Morn­ing Post. Since the film fell into the pub­lic domain in 1968 — and this being Fri­day, after all — why not get a shot of Cary Grant, Ros­alind Rus­sell, and Howard Hawks free online today?

His Girl Fri­day stands out for many rea­sons, espe­cial­ly by refus­ing, unlike many Hol­ly­wood pic­tures writ­ten by for­mer news­pa­per­men, to instinc­tive­ly glo­ri­fy jour­nal­ism, a mis­take more recent films about the news still make. As the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane wrote about Shat­tered Glass, Bil­ly Ray’s drama­ti­za­tion of the fall of infa­mous New Repub­lic fab­ri­ca­tor Stephen Glass, “Glass may be a rot­ten apple in the bar­rel, but the con­tention of Ray’s film is that the bar­rel itself, the noble call­ing of the reporter, is as stur­dy and as pol­ished as ever. Give me a break. On sec­ond thought, give me His Girl Fri­day. Five min­utes of Howard Hawks’s speedy and cyn­i­cal view of hacks in sharp suits, as they them­selves bend the world to fit the shape of their own cyn­i­cism, is a more brac­ing sight than nine­ty-four min­utes of Stephen Glass and his trag­ic slide from grace.”

His Girl Fri­day appears in our col­lec­tion of 535 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cha­rade, the Best Hitch­cock Film Hitch­cock Nev­er Made, Free Online. Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

26 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Watch The Hitch-Hik­er by Ida Lupino (the Sole Female Direc­tor of a 1950s Noir Film)

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

Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Releases a “Heavy Metal” Song & Video Recalling His Harsh Imprisonment

in Art, Music, Politics | June 18th, 2013

Burly Chi­nese artist and dis­si­dent Ai Wei­wei has nev­er lost his sense of humor, even when fac­ing harsh repres­sion from his gov­ern­ment. But while the idea of 55-year old Ai record­ing a heavy met­al record might seem like a stunt, the source mate­r­i­al for his first sin­gle, “Dum­b­ass” (above), is any­thing but fun­ny. The furi­ous­ly angry, exple­tive-filled song is inspired by Ai’s harsh treat­ment dur­ing his 81-day impris­on­ment in 2011. He’s call­ing the musi­cal project “a kind of self-ther­a­py” and will release six tracks on June 22—the sec­ond anniver­sary of his release—as an album called The Divine Com­e­dy.

Ai sings (or howls, growls, and bel­lows) in Chi­nese. As you can see from the grim images in the video above—with the artist re-enact­ing and re-imag­in­ing his expe­ri­ences in detention—the mem­o­ries of his incar­cer­a­tion are still raw and painful. While he’s called his music “heavy met­al,” The Guardian points out that “it’s not exact­ly Metal­li­ca” (unless you count that Lou Reed col­lab­o­ra­tion). Ai him­self says of his sound:

After I said it would be heavy met­al I ran back to check what heavy met­al would be like. Then I thought, oh my god, it’s quite dif­fer­ent…. So it’s Chi­nese heavy met­al, or maybe Caochang­di [where his stu­dio is based] heavy met­al.

Call it what you want: Chi­nese heavy met­al, prac­ti­cal joke, avant garde per­for­mance piece… it’s still like­ly to get Ai in even fur­ther trou­ble with Chi­nese author­i­ties. As he explained to the New York Times, how­ev­er, he “want­ed to do some­thing impos­si­ble…. I want­ed to show young peo­ple here we can all sing…. It’s our voice.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Ai Weiwei’s Par­o­dy of ‘Gang­nam Style’

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

The Ramones in Their Heyday, Filmed “Live at CBGB” (1977)

in Music | June 17th, 2013

Here’s clas­sic footage of the Ramones in their prime, per­form­ing at a club in 1977. The film’s open­ing title says it was shot on June 10, 1977 at CBGB, but that is appar­ent­ly not true. Singer Joey Ramone tells the audi­ence that the band’s third album, Rock­et to Rus­sia, will be com­ing out “in about two weeks” as the band launch­es into a song from the album. But Rock­et to Rus­sia was­n’t record­ed until late August of 1977, and was released on Novem­ber 4. So per­haps the film was shot dur­ing one of the band’s Octo­ber 1977 shows. What­ev­er the exact date and place, the Ramones were clear­ly at the top of their form when this film was made. In the two clips pre­sent­ed here, they burn through the fol­low­ing songs:

Part one (above)

1. “Blitzkrieg Bop”
2. “Sheena is a Punk Rock­er”
3. “Beat on the Brat”
4. “Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue”

Part two (below):

1. “Rock­away Beach”
2. “Cretin Hop”
3. “Oh,Oh, I Love Her So”
4. “Today Your Love, Tomor­row the World”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ramones Play a New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

Hear Charlton Heston Read Ernest Hemingway’s Classic Story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

in Literature | June 17th, 2013

“ ‘The mar­velous thing is that it’s pain­less,’ he said. ‘That’s how you know when it starts.’

‘Is it real­ly?’

‘Absolute­ly. I’m awful­ly sor­ry about the odor though. That must both­er you.’ ”

Most Amer­i­can read­ers sure­ly rec­og­nize these lines, though it may take a moment to remem­ber where they rec­og­nize them from. They open “The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro,” a short sto­ry by Ernest Hem­ing­way that first ran in Esquire in 1936, then, two years lat­er, appeared in the col­lec­tion The Fifth Col­umn and the First Forty-Nine Sto­ries. (Find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.) Deal­ing with the mem­o­ries and regrets of a writer on safari dying of a gan­grenous thorn wound, the sto­ry has over the past 76 years become one of the most respect­ed works in Hem­ing­way’s oeu­vre and an essen­tial piece of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture. As often hap­pens with essen­tial pieces of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, Hol­ly­wood got to it, adapt­ing it into a 1952 block­buster fea­tur­ing Gre­go­ry Peck, Susan Hay­ward, and Ava Gard­ner. (Find in our col­lec­tion of 535 Free Movies Online.)

Though the star­ring role of Har­ry, the fast-fad­ing rough-and-tum­ble man of let­ters who sees him­self as ruined by afflu­ence and hedo­nism, went to Peck, I could also imag­ine it played by Charl­ton Hes­ton. Even if you could­n’t quite place that bit of dia­logue from “The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro,” you’d be imme­di­ate­ly able to place Hes­ton’s voice read­ing the sto­ry aloud in the record­ing avail­able on this Harper­Au­dio Hem­ing­way site. Lis­ten below and see for your­self if the actor’s deliv­ery, so often asso­ci­at­ed with sil­ver-screen roles meant to project a grand stern­ness, can also deliv­er the bit­ter­ness of Hem­ing­way’s pro­tag­o­nist, who cer­tain­ly shares with his cre­ator the con­vic­tion that “pol­i­tics, women, drink, mon­ey and ambi­tion” bring writ­ers tru­ly low, down to the point where they can declare, as Har­ry so mem­o­rably does, “The only thing I’ve nev­er lost is curios­i­ty.”

• Part one: .au for­mat (5.5 Mb), .gsm for­mat (1 Mb), .ra for­mat (0.6 Mb)
  
• Part two: .au for­mat (5.5 Mb), .gsm for­mat (1 Mb), .ra for­mat (0.6 Mb)
  
• Part three: .au for­mat (5.5 Mb), .gsm for­mat (1 Mb), .ra for­mat (0.6 Mb)
  
• Part four: .au for­mat (5.5 Mb), .gsm for­mat (1 Mb), .ra for­mat (0.6 Mb)
  

Bonus: Here you can also lis­ten to Don­ald Suther­land read an excerpt from Old Man and the Sea.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

The Span­ish Earth, Writ­ten and Nar­rat­ed by Ernest Hem­ing­way

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

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

Google Wants to Provide Internet Access to Remote Parts of the World with Solar-Powered Balloons

in Google, Technology | June 17th, 2013

Per­haps you live in a devel­oped nation, or a pock­et of a devel­op­ing nation, where inter­net access is a rel­a­tive­ly cheap com­mod­i­ty. Count your­self lucky. Right now, 5 bil­lion peo­ple — or two thirds of the world’s pop­u­la­tion — lack access to an afford­able and reli­able Inter­net con­nec­tion. Which means they lack access to crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion — med­ical infor­ma­tion that can save lives; sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion that can improve farm­ing; tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to build a mod­ern econ­o­my; and edu­ca­tion­al resources that can cul­ti­vate young minds.

With Project Loon, Google is launch­ing an auda­cious exper­i­ment that will hope­ful­ly make a dent in this seri­ous prob­lem. The exper­i­ment involves putting a fleet of high-alti­tude bal­loons into the air. Pow­ered sole­ly by the wind and the sun, the bal­loons will fly high into the stratos­phere, well above where com­mer­cial planes fly, and they’ll beam Inter­net access back to the ground “at speeds sim­i­lar to today’s 3G net­works or faster,” claims Google’s main blog. (The clip below explains the gist of the tech­nol­o­gy.) Right now, they’re run­ning a small scale test in New Zealand (in Christchurch and Can­ter­bury, to be exact) and you can mon­i­tor the progress over at Project Loon’s Google Plus page. In the mean­time, we’ll keep our fin­gers crossed and hope the entire world can soon enjoy our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, not to men­tion the oth­er ran­dom curiosi­ties found on the web.

Watch the World Record for the Largest Domino Chain Made of 2,131 Books

in Books, Random | June 16th, 2013

In late May, The Seat­tle Pub­lic Library set a world record for the Longest Book Domi­no Chain, accord­ing to the World Record Acad­e­my. Watch as 2,131 books — all part of an upcom­ing book sale — fall one by one. Appar­ent­ly, it took 27 vol­un­teers sev­en hours — and five failed attempts — to pull off this feat for the ages. h/t Metafil­ter

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man (a 52 minute doc­u­men­tary that pays homage to Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny)

Books Lov­ing­ly Savored in Stop Motion Film

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

Rick Wakeman Tells the Story of the Mellotron, the Oddball Proto-Synthesizer Pioneered by the Beatles

in Music | June 15th, 2013

Image Tobias Aker­boom via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Did you know that the Span­ish gui­tar intro to the Bea­t­les’ “Bun­ga­low Bill” was not played by George Har­ri­son, but rather by an odd elec­tron­ic instru­ment called a Mel­lotron, the same strange pro­to-syn­the­siz­er respon­si­ble for the flute intro to “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er”? You’ll learn quite a bit more about the “rash break­ing out all over pop music” that was the Mel­lotron in the audio sto­ry above, nar­rat­ed by Rick Wake­man.

From the afore­men­tioned Bea­t­les’ songs to The Band’s “This Wheel’s on Fire” to pret­ty much every song in 60s pop and 70s pro­gres­sive rock, as well as in 60s revival­ists like Oasis, the Mel­lotron makes an appear­ance. It even shows up on Skynyrd’s “Free­bird” of all things.

Wake­man sketch­es the his­to­ry of the odd­ball instru­ment, from its hum­ble begin­nings in the garage of Cal­i­for­nia inven­tor Har­ry Cham­ber­lin, to its pop­u­lar­iza­tion by sales­man Bill Fransen, who took Chamberlin’s design and made it his own.

Bear in mind, as we enter the world of Mel­lotron­ics, that the instru­men­tal bits you hear through­out Wakeman’s sto­ry were played by some­one, some­time. The sounds made by this key­board-like thing are in fact actu­al parts from live orches­tras and sundry oth­er musi­cal arrange­ments, record­ed onto tape loops and con­fig­ured in an inge­nious way so that they cor­re­spond to a stan­dard key­board and a vari­ety of pre­sets and knob­by-dial­ly-things.

You might even call it an ana­log sam­pler. The more tech­ni­cal­ly-mind­ed among you may wish to read this Sound on Sound arti­cle for specs. For you enthu­si­asts, key­boardist Mike Pin­dar of the Moody Blues—whose “Nights in White Satin” would nev­er have been with­out the Mellotron—demonstrates the instrument’s inner work­ings in the short video above.

Inven­tor Har­ry Cham­ber­lin orig­i­nal­ly designed the Mel­lotron (which he called, of course, the Cham­ber­lin) to re-cre­ate the sound of an orches­tra at home, or in the local lodge or cabaret, pre­sum­ably. This is the use Paul McCart­ney divines in the funky demon­stra­tion of his Mel­lotron above. Sir Paul, in a cabaret set­ting, does a goofy lounge singer act, then plays the “Straw­ber­ry Fields” intro.

Dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­ers and com­put­ers over­took the Mel­lotron, as they did all ana­log elec­tron­ics. But like all things old, it’s new again, in sim­u­lat­ed form, avail­able to iPhone users via the Manetron app (Mel­lotron also makes a phys­i­cal, dig­i­tal ver­sion of their vin­tage instru­ment). The sto­ry and sound of the Mel­lotron recent­ly inspired a full doc­u­men­tary treat­ment in the 2010 film Mel­lodra­ma: The Mel­lotron Movie, now out on DVD, which may be the most com­pelling doc­u­men­tary about a pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic instru­ment ever made (far bet­ter than 2004’s dis­ap­point­ing Moog). As for­mer Beach Boy Bri­an Wil­son says in the film, “the Mel­lotron stays cool.” And indeed, it does.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

The Genius of Bri­an Eno On Dis­play in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

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

Mick Jagger, 15 Years Old, Shows Off His Rock Climbing Shoes on British TV (1959)

in Music, Television | June 14th, 2013

In the 1950s, Mick Jag­ger (then still called “Mike Jag­ger”) was a mid­dle class kid grow­ing up in Dart­ford, Kent, Eng­land. His moth­er, Eva, was a hair­dress­er; his father, Joe, a PE teacher. Togeth­er, they lived in a nice, order­ly home, with more than enough mon­ey to pay the bills. (His neigh­bor, Kei­th Richards, could­n’t say the same.) In 1957, the elder Jag­ger began con­sult­ing on a week­ly TV show called See­ing Sport, which pro­mot­ed the virtues of sports to British chil­dren. Dur­ing the com­ing years, Mick and his broth­er Chris made reg­u­lar appear­ances on the show, show­ing view­ers how to build a tent, or mas­ter var­i­ous canoe­ing skills. In the 1959 clip above, Mick shows off the footwear need­ed for rock climb­ing. Noth­ing too fan­cy. No moun­taineer­ing boots or any­thing like that. Just a pair of “ordi­nary gym shoes … like the kind Mike is wear­ing.”  The episode was shot in a spot called “High Rocks,” near Tun­bridge Wells. This back­ground info comes to us via Philip Nor­man’s 2012 biog­ra­phy of Mick Jag­ger.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

The Bea­t­les as Teens (1957)

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