Willie and the Hand Jive, by the Late Great Johnny Otis

in Music | January 20th, 2012

One of the catchi­est grooves from the rhythm and blues of the late 1950s is “Willie and the Hand Jive,” by John­ny Otis. In this live­ly scene from his ear­ly TV show, Otis per­forms the song as Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy demon­strate the hand jive. Lionel Hamp­ton joins in on the vibra­phone.

Otis, known as “the god­fa­ther of rhythm and blues,” died Tues­day at the age of 90. The son of Greek immi­grants, he grew up in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black neigh­bor­hood of Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, and devel­oped an ear­ly affin­i­ty for African Amer­i­can cul­ture. “Genet­i­cal­ly, I’m pure Greek,” Otis said in 1994. “Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, envi­ron­men­tal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, by choice, I’m a mem­ber of the black com­mu­ni­ty.”

As a band­leader in the 1950s, Otis helped bring rhythm and blues to a main­stream audi­ence. He dis­cov­ered a num­ber of impor­tant artists, includ­ing Big Mama Thorn­ton (Otis pro­duced her orig­i­nal 1952 record­ing of “Hound Dog”) and the great Etta James, who died this morn­ing.

“Willie and the Hand Jive,” with its infec­tious Bo Did­dley beat, was a top 10 pop hit for Otis in 1958, and was cov­ered by a vari­ety of well-known artists, includ­ing Eric Clap­ton. Otis con­tin­ued to per­form into his 80s, and worked at var­i­ous times as a disc jock­ey, an ordained min­is­ter and an organ­ic farmer. You can read more about his remark­able life in the New York Times obit­u­ary.

You can also watch the com­plete half-hour episode of The John­ny Otis Show (below) from which the clip above was tak­en. The John­ny Otis Show was broad­cast on KTLA in Los Ange­les from 1954 to 1961. This episode fea­tures great per­for­mances by Lionel Hamp­ton (with the mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Otis join­ing in on drums) and oth­er artists, includ­ing more from Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy.

Christopher Walken Reads The Three Little Pigs, The Raven, and a Little Lady Gaga

in Books, Comedy, Film | January 20th, 2012

Here we go again. We’re get­ting meta with read­ings by the great Christo­pher Walken. It all starts with the actor appear­ing on a 1993 broad­cast of the British TV series “Sat­ur­day Zoo” host­ed by Jonathan Ross, and he’s read­ing and riff­ing on the beloved fairy tale, The Sto­ry of the Three Lit­tle Pigs. The poten­tial­ly ter­ri­fy­ing sto­ry is unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly jol­ly. Walken goes for laughs, not chills. The same can’t be said for the next tale.

We’re not clear on the back­sto­ry of this read­ing. But we do know Walken is read­ing Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven, and stays true to the orig­i­nal text pub­lished in 1845. The Raven made Poe famous then, and it remains influ­en­tial today — so much so they named a foot­ball team after the poem. How many oth­er sports teams can make such a claim?

And then we come full cir­cle again. Almost 16 years after Walken’s read­ing of The Three Lit­tle Pigs, the star returned to anoth­er show host­ed by Jonathan Ross (BBC’s Fri­day Night) and served up a sec­ond com­ic read­ing. This time it’s “Pok­er Face” by the inescapable Lady Gaga.

Walken read­ing Where the Wild Things Are by Mau­rice Sendak? If only, if only .….

How Film Was Made in 1958: A Kodak Nostalgia Moment

in History, Photography | January 18th, 2012

Before pix­els there were sil­ver halide crys­tals, and before mem­o­ry cards, film. Lit­tle yel­low box­es clut­tered the lives of pho­tog­ra­phers every­where, and the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny was vir­tu­al­ly syn­ony­mous with pho­tog­ra­phy.

Things have real­ly changed. With the recent news that Kodak is tee­ter­ing on the brink of Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy, many are feel­ing nos­tal­gia for those lit­tle yel­low box­es and the rolls of sil­ver gelatin film inside. To indulge this nostalgia–and per­haps learn some­thing new about an old technology–we offer a fas­ci­nat­ing 1958 doc­u­men­tary from Kodak enti­tled How Film is Made.

The doc­u­men­tary is in Dutch, but mem­bers of the Ana­log Pho­tog­ra­phy Users Group launched a project to cre­ate Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. You can read more about the project on Dutch mem­ber Mar­co Boeringa’s web­site. And you can watch the 18-minute film start­ing above and con­clud­ing below.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

What is Wrong with SOPA?

in Current Affairs, Media, Politics, Technology | January 18th, 2012

Some of the big web­sites are going black today to protest SOPA, the Stop Online Pira­cy Act, that has been wind­ing its way through Con­gress. We’re going to han­dle things in our own way — by illu­mi­nat­ing the mat­ter with a lit­tle intel­li­gent media.

Backed by the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca, SOPA is designed to debil­i­tate and effec­tive­ly shut down for­eign-based web­sites that sell pirat­ed movies, music and oth­er goods. That all sounds fine on the face of things. But the leg­is­la­tion, if enact­ed, would car­ry with it a series of unex­pect­ed con­se­quences that could change the inter­net as we know it. Among oth­er things, the law could be used to shut down Amer­i­can sites that unwit­ting­ly host or link to ille­gal con­tent — and with­out giv­ing the sites due process, a real day in court. Big sites like YouTube and Twit­ter could fall under pres­sure, and so could count­less small sites. Need­less to say, that could have a seri­ous chill­ing effect on the open­ness of the web and free speech.

To give a quick exam­ple: It could con­ceiv­ably be the case that Stan­ford might object to my fea­tur­ing their video above, file a claim, and shut the site down with­out giv­ing me notice and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to remove the mate­r­i­al (as exists under cur­rent law). It’s not like­ly. But it is pos­si­ble, and the risk increas­es with every post we write. If this law pass­es, the amount of mate­r­i­al we could tru­ly safe­ly cov­er would become ludi­crous­ly small, so much so that it would­n’t be worth run­ning the site and using the web as an edu­ca­tion­al medi­um.

The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has come out against SOPA and PIPA, sidelin­ing the leg­is­la­tion for now. But you can almost guar­an­tee that revi­sions will be made, and the bills will return soon. So, while oth­er sites go black, we’re going to do what we do best. We’re fea­tur­ing video of an event held in Decem­ber by the Stan­ford Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety (SCIS). What’s Wrong with SOPA brings togeth­er a series of informed oppo­nents to SOPA, includ­ing Stan­ford law pro­fes­sors and busi­ness lead­ers with­in Sil­i­con Val­ley. (Find their bios below the jump.) Some of the most inci­sive com­ments are made by Fred von Lohmann, a Google lawyer, start­ing at the 19:10 mark.

Note: If you’re look­ing to under­stand the debate from the per­spec­tive of copy­right hold­ers, then we’d rec­om­mend you spend time watch­ing, Fol­low the Mon­ey: Who Prof­its from Pira­cy?, a video that tracks the theft of one movie, mak­ing it a micro­cosm of a larg­er prob­lem.

Madeline 365: A Year in the Life

in Art, Life | January 17th, 2012

Remem­ber Jeff Har­ris? He’s the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who has doc­u­ment­ed every day of his life with a self-por­trait since 1999. Now meet Made­line Schich­tel, a young pro­duc­tion assis­tant liv­ing in LA. She record­ed her dai­ly life in 2011 with a Canon Pow­er­shot, then edit­ed each day down to a mean­ing­ful one-sec­ond shot, cre­at­ing the video mon­tage “This is What Made­line Did.” Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man (aka @SteveSilberman) found the video unex­pect­ed­ly charm­ing, and we have to agree. “All My Friends,” by LCD Soundsys­tem, serves as the sound­track for this endear­ing lit­tle film.

Copyright Policy

in | January 15th, 2012

Open Cul­ture, LLC (“Open Cul­ture,” “we” or “us” or “our”) respects artist and con­tent own­er rights. It is our pol­i­cy to ful­ly respond and com­ply with all alleged infringe­ment notices that com­ply with the Dig­i­tal Mil­len­ni­um Copy­right Act of 1998 (“DMCA”) by tak­ing such mate­r­i­al down for our site.

Please note that Open Cul­ture does not pro­duce or host any of the audio or video appear­ing on the site. Such mate­r­i­al is pro­duced and host­ed by third par­ty providers, and those providers should be con­tact­ed under the same DMCA pro­vi­sions.

If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that con­sti­tutes copy­right infringe­ment and is acces­si­ble via the Ser­vice, please noti­fy our copy­right agent as set forth in the DMCA.  For your com­plaint to be valid under the DMCA, you must pro­vide us with the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion in writ­ing:

1.  An elec­tron­ic or phys­i­cal sig­na­ture of a per­son autho­rized to act on behalf of the copy­right own­er;

2.  Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the spe­cif­ic copy­right­ed work that you claim has been infringed;

3.  Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the spe­cif­ic mate­r­i­al that is claimed to be infring­ing and where it is locat­ed on the Ser­vice;

4.  Infor­ma­tion rea­son­ably suf­fi­cient to per­mit Open Cul­ture to con­tact you, such as your address, tele­phone num­ber, and, e‑mail address;

5.  A state­ment that you have a good faith belief that use of the mate­r­i­al in the man­ner com­plained of is not autho­rized by the copy­right own­er, its agent, or law; and

6.  A state­ment, made under penal­ty of per­jury, that the above infor­ma­tion is accu­rate, and that you are the copy­right own­er or are autho­rized to act on behalf of the own­er.

The above infor­ma­tion must be sub­mit­ted to the fol­low­ing DMCA Agent via email at the fol­low­ing email address: ma**@*********re.com

NOTE: Please put “DMCA” in the sub­ject line of the email.

UNDER FEDERAL LAW, IF YOU KNOWINGLY MISREPRESENT THAT ONLINE MATERIAL IS INFRINGING, YOU MAY BE SUBJECT TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION FOR PERJURY AND CIVIL PENALTIES, INCLUDING MONETARY DAMAGES, COURT COSTS, AND ATTORNEYS’ FEES.

Please note that this pro­ce­dure is only the noti­fy­ing pro­ce­dure for Open Cul­ture and its affil­i­ates that your copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al has been infringed.  The pre­ced­ing require­ments are intend­ed to com­ply with our oblig­a­tions under the DMCA, includ­ing 17 U.S.C. §512©, but do not con­sti­tute legal advice.  It may be advis­able to con­tact an attor­ney regard­ing your rights and oblig­a­tions under the DMCA and oth­er applic­a­ble laws.

In fur­ther com­pli­ance with the DMCA and oth­er applic­a­ble law, Open Cul­ture reserves the right to ter­mi­nate, in appro­pri­ate cir­cum­stances, Users who are deemed to be repeat infringers. Open Cul­ture may also at its sole dis­cre­tion lim­it access to the Ser­vice and/or ter­mi­nate the accounts of any Users who infringe any intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights of oth­ers, whether or not there is any repeat infringe­ment.

Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen and Others in the Post 9/11 “New York Miracle” TV Commercials

in Television | January 12th, 2012

In the imme­di­ate after­math of the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks, when New York and much of the world were still in a state of shock, a group of top-flight actors, direc­tors and oth­er cre­ative work­ers donat­ed their time and tal­ents for a spe­cial project to lure tourists back to the Big Apple. The “New York Mir­a­cle” ads were unveiled only two months after the tragedy, and fea­tured stars like Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen, Ben Stiller and Bil­ly Crys­tal. The com­mer­cials were as much a boost to the city’s morale as they were an invi­ta­tion to tourists. At the end of each seg­ment, May­or Rudy Giu­liani intones: “The New York Mir­a­cle. Be a part of it.”

The video above offers a look back at all nine ads. They appear in the fol­low­ing order:

1. “Deli,” star­ring Ben Stiller and Kevin Bacon.
2. “Turkey,” star­ring Robert DeNiro and Bil­ly Crys­tal; direct­ed by Bar­ry Levin­son.
3. “The­atre,” star­ring Bar­bara Wal­ters; direct­ed by Bryan Buck­ley.
4. “Skat­ing,” star­ring Woody Allen; direct­ed by Joe Pyt­ka.
5. “Yan­kee Sta­di­um,” star­ring Hen­ry Kissinger; direct­ed by Joe Pyt­ka.
6. “Phil­har­mon­ic,” star­ring Yogi Berra; direct­ed by Joe Pyt­ka.
7. “New York Giants Kick­er,” star­ring Vanes­sa Williams.
8. “Marathon,” star­ring Al Roker.
9. “San­ta,” star­ring Christo­pher Walken.

via @webacion

Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials

in Film, Television | January 10th, 2012

Last month we brought you some lit­tle-known soap com­mer­cials by Ing­mar Bergman. Today we present a series of lyri­cal tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments made by the great Ital­ian film­mak­er Fed­eri­co Felli­ni dur­ing the final decade of his life.

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Felli­ni agreed to make a minia­ture film fea­tur­ing Cam­pari, the famous Ital­ian apéri­tif. The result, Oh, che bel pae­sag­gio! (“Oh, what a beau­ti­ful land­scape!”), shown above, fea­tures a man and a woman seat­ed across from one anoth­er on a long-dis­tance train.

The man (played by Vic­tor Polet­ti) smiles, but the woman (Sil­via Dion­i­sio) averts her eyes, star­ing sul­len­ly out the win­dow and pick­ing up a remote con­trol to switch the scenery. She grows increas­ing­ly exas­per­at­ed as a sequence of desert and medieval land­scapes pass by. Still smil­ing, the man takes the remote con­trol, clicks it, and the beau­ti­ful Cam­po di Mira­coli (“Field of Mir­a­cles”) of Pisa appears in the win­dow, embell­ished by a tow­er­ing bot­tle of Cam­pari.

“In just one minute,” writes Tul­lio Kezich in Fed­eri­co Felli­ni: His Life and Work, “Felli­ni gives us a chap­ter of the sto­ry of the bat­tle between men and women, and makes ref­er­ence to the neu­ro­sis of TV, insin­u­ates that we’re dis­parag­ing the mirac­u­lous gifts of nature and his­to­ry, and offers the hope that there might be a screen that will bring the joy back. The lit­tle tale is as quick as a train and has a remark­ably light touch.”

Also in 1984, Felli­ni made a com­mer­cial titled Alta Soci­eta (“High Soci­ety”) for Bar­il­la riga­toni pas­ta (above). As with the Cam­pari com­mer­cial, Felli­ni wrote the script him­self and col­lab­o­rat­ed with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ennio Guarnieri and musi­cal direc­tor Nico­la Pio­vani. The cou­ple in the restau­rant were played by Gre­ta Vaian and Mau­r­izio Mau­ri. The Bar­il­la spot is per­haps the least inspired of Fellini’s com­mer­cials. Bet­ter things were yet to come.

In 1991 Felli­ni made a series of three com­mer­cials for the Bank of Rome called Che Brutte Not­ti or “The Bad Nights.” “These com­mer­cials, aired the fol­low­ing year,” writes Peter Bon­danel­la in The Films of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, “are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, since they find their inspi­ra­tion in var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books dur­ing his career.”

In the episode above, titled “The Pic­nic Lunch Dream,” the clas­sic damsel-in-dis­tress sce­nario is turned upside down when a man (played by Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio) finds him­self trapped on the rail­road tracks with a train bear­ing down on him while the beau­ti­ful woman he was din­ing with (Anna Falchi) climbs out of reach and taunts him. But it’s all a dream, which the man tells to his psy­cho­an­a­lyst (Fer­nan­do Rey). The ana­lyst inter­prets the dream and assures the man that his nights will be rest­ful if he puts his mon­ey in the Ban­co di Roma.

The oth­er com­mer­cials, which are cur­rent­ly not avail­able online, are called “The Tun­nel Dream” and “The Dream of the Lion in the Cel­lar.” (You can watch Rober­to Di Vito’s short, untrans­lat­ed film of Felli­ni and his crew work­ing on the project here.)

The bank com­mer­cials were the last films Felli­ni ever made. He died a year after they aired, at age 73. In Kezich’s view, the deeply per­son­al and imag­i­na­tive ads amount to Fellini’s last tes­ta­ment, a brief but won­drous return to form. “In Fed­eri­co’s life,” he writes, “these three com­mer­cial spots are a kind of Indi­an sum­mer, the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.”

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

The Joy of Books

in Animation, Books | January 10th, 2012

Last year, “crazedad­man” and his wife reor­ga­nized a small book­shelf and record­ed the project in an endear­ing stop motion film. This year, they took things to the next lev­el, spend­ing “sleep­less nights mov­ing, stack­ing, and ani­mat­ing books at Type book­store in Toron­to.”  The rest speaks for itself. Don’t miss oth­er videos for book lovers right below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

A Secret Book­store in New York City

Books Savored in a Lov­ing  Stop Motion Film

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

Harvard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Environment Profs

in Current Affairs, Harvard, Science, Video - Science | January 10th, 2012

On Decem­ber 8th, six “all-star envi­ron­men­tal pro­fes­sors” came togeth­er at an event called “Har­vard Thinks Green” and pre­sent­ed short, TED-style talks about the envi­ron­ment and strate­gies for revers­ing cli­mate change. The event start­ed with James McCarthy (Pro­fes­sor of Bio­log­i­cal Oceanog­ra­phy) ask­ing the ques­tion (see above), “Is it too late to avoid seri­ous impacts of cli­mate change?” A good ques­tion to ask giv­en that 2010 wit­nessed the biggest annu­al jump in glob­al car­bon emissions—5.9%. This set the stage for Richard Lazarus (Pro­fes­sor of Law) to dis­cuss ways that our polit­i­cal sys­tem could become more respon­sive to the cri­sis. (Did you know that Barack Oba­ma only men­tioned cli­mate change once in pub­lic last year? Just once?) And then Rebec­ca Hen­der­son (Co-Direc­tor of the Busi­ness and Envi­ron­ment Ini­tia­tive) tries to make the dif­fi­cult case that mon­ey-mak­ing and sav­ing the world can go hand-in-hand — that cap­i­tal­ism can become envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able. You can watch the remain­ing talks online here, or on iTunes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Thinks Big 2010

Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard Teach-In Pro­vide Answers

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive