Act of Love: A Strange, Wonderful Visual Dictionary of Animal Courtship

in Biology, Comedy, Dance, Life, Science | April 15th, 2016

As var­i­ous nature doc­u­men­taries over the years have made explic­it, the ani­mal king­dom pos­sess­es courtship rit­u­als of such yearn­ing and grace, they can make the erot­ic fum­blings of our species seem a very clum­sy dance indeed.

The above spot for Japan’s first con­dom man­u­fac­tur­er, Saga­mi Indus­tries, offers a vision of how humans might bring a lit­tle ani­mal feel­ing to their ten­der moments.

(It’s worth not­ing that while this delight is spon­sored by a con­dom com­pa­ny, humans are the only ani­mal to take pro­phy­lac­tic mea­sures to ward off sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases and unwant­ed preg­nan­cies.)

Like actress Isabel­la Rosselli­ni, cre­ator of the mar­velous Green Porno series, direc­tor Greg Brunk­alla has an eye for both the fas­ci­nat­ing and the absurd.

But with­out Rossellini’s plain­spo­ken nar­ra­tion, this Act of Love remains mys­te­ri­ous, until the end, when the iden­ti­ty of the crea­tures the human dancers are embody­ing is revealed. Those of us who aren’t zool­o­gists will like­ly find that their cloth­ing pro­vides the clear­est clues up until that point.

Bisex­u­al behav­ior is ram­pant in the ani­mal world, but out­side of a not par­tic­u­lar­ly kinky-seem­ing pink-clad group, the five cou­ples in the ad are all het­ero­sex­u­al.

Sagami’s Eng­lish web­site takes a broad­er view, with in-depth reports on the sex­u­al prac­tices of 73 dif­fer­ent beasts, birds and insects. Tax­on­o­my, habi­tat, and size range are not­ed — a sci­en­tif­ic approach to what could very well serve as non-human online dat­ing pro­files.

Australia’s Superb Fairy Wrens are into open rela­tion­ships.

Lioness­es’ unabashed pref­er­ence for vir­ile young males gets them dubbed “true cougars.”

And E.B. White fans may find them­selves shocked by the vig­or of cou­pling orb weavers, seem­ing­ly the one fact of spi­der life Char­lotte refrained from explain­ing to her piglet friend, Wilbur :

After mat­ing, the male sud­den­ly sev­ers the mat­ing thread so that both he and the female end up dan­gling at sep­a­rate ends. This may look like a very abrupt part­ing of ways, but not so fast! The male imme­di­ate­ly re-strings his mat­ing thread and resumes his strum­ming. And despite hav­ing been cast off so sud­den­ly, the female again falls under the spell of his courtship vibra­tions, trans­fer­ring to the new mat­ing thread to mate a sec­ond time. As soon as they do so, the male sev­ers the thread once more so that the two spi­ders can go through the whole rou­tine again…and again and again and again. 

Explore Sagami’s entire col­lec­tion of not-so-pri­vate ani­mal lives here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Isabel­la Rosselli­ni Embody the Ani­mal Kingdom’s Most Shock­ing Mater­nal Instincts in Mam­mas

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

in Music | April 14th, 2016

What’s that? Exile on Main Street’s in your top 20 favorite albums of all time? Yeah, me too. How about Trout Mask Repli­ca? A lit­tle weird, that one, right? The Base­ment Tapes? Cool… So, uh, how about Bohemi­an-Mora­vian Bands? No? Nev­er heard of it? Seri­ous­ly?

Me nei­ther.

But there it is, the music of “Czech-Bavar­i­an bands that land­ed in Texas… music both sour and bit­ter, and picante, and float­ing above itself like steam over the ket­tle… like a wheel about to go off the road all the time… the most lilt­ing lit­tle waltz… accor­dion, sopra­no sax, clar­inet, bass, ban­jo and per­cus­sion.”

Sounds like the kind of thing Tom Waits would lis­ten to.

And that’s because it is, num­ber 12 on his list of top 20, to be exact, described with just a tiny taste of his idio­syn­crat­ic music writ­ing cour­tesy of The Guardian, who pub­lished his list in 2005 as part of a series “in which the great­est record­ing artists reveal their favourite records.”

Sure, Exile is on Waits’ list, as is the Cap­tain Beef­heart and Bob Dylan. And also Frank Sina­tra, nat­u­ral­ly, and Thelo­nious Monk, Lounge Lizards, Lit­tle Richard, James Brown…

Waits com­pares the expe­ri­ence of see­ing the God­fa­ther of Soul live to a “mass at St. Patrick’s Cathe­dral on Christ­mas… You’d been changed, your life is changed now… every­body want­ed to step down, step for­ward, take com­mu­nion, take sacra­ment… get close to the stage and be anoint­ed with his sweat, his cold sweat.”

He names a com­e­dy album by the late, great Bill Hicks, who was “like a rev­erend wav­ing a gun around.” Leonard Cohen “is a poet, an Extra Large one.” Marc Ribot is “a pros­thet­ic Cuban.” The Pogues “play like sol­diers on leave… whim­si­cal and blas­phe­mous, sea­sick and sac­ri­le­gious….” Sound like some­one you know? It sounds a bit like Tom Waits.

Put his top 20 in a blender and out comes Real Gone. Sort of.

In giv­ing us his list, he gives a dou­ble gift—an inspired col­lec­tion of music root­sy, avant-garde, jazz/blues/Americana, and Oth­er; and a series of mini-essays on the mer­its of each album, each one a mas­ter­ful exer­cise in con­ci­sion and ellip­ti­cal wit. See the full list below, and stop by The Guardian to read Waits’ com­men­tary on each album.

1 In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sina­tra
2 Solo Monk by Thelo­nious Monk
3 Trout Mask Repli­ca by Cap­tain Beef­heart
4 Exile On Main Street by the Rolling Stones
5 The Sink­ing of the Titan­ic by Gavin Bry­ers
6 The Base­ment Tapes by Bob Dylan
7 Lounge Lizards by Lounge Lizards
8 Rum Sodomy and the Lash by the Pogues
9 I’m Your Man by Leonard Cohen
10 The Spe­cial­ty Ses­sions by Lit­tle Richard
11 Star­time by James Brown
12 Bohemi­an-Mora­vian Bands by Texas-Czech
13 The Yel­low Shark by Frank Zap­pa
14 Pas­sion for Opera Aria
15 Rant in E Minor by Bill Hicks
16 Prison Songs: Mur­der­ous Home Alan Lomax Col­lec­tion
17 Cubanos Pos­ti­zos by Marc Ribot
18 Houndog by Houndog
19 Pur­ple Onion by Les Clay­pool
20 The Deliv­ery Man by Elvis Costel­lo

We’ve added a Spo­ti­fy playlist with many of his favorite albums below. And if you dig Waits’ musi­cal taste, check out this list of his favorite art films.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits, Play­ing the Down-and-Out Barfly, Appears in Clas­sic 1978 TV Per­for­mance

The Tom Waits Map: A Map­ping of Every Place Waits Has Sung About, From L.A. to Africa’s Jun­gles

Tom Waits Names 14 of His Favorite Art Films: Felli­ni, David Lynch & More

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

Radiooooo: A Musical Time Machine That Lets You Hear What Played on the Radio in Different Times & Places

in Music, Radio | April 14th, 2016

The con­cept is pret­ty self explana­to­ry. Go to Radiooooo.com, pick a coun­try, pick a decade (from 1900 to Now), and then Radiooooo.com will rev up its time machine and serve up songs from that time and place. Instant­ly you can hear the radio music of 1930s Sudan, 1970s Rus­sia, and 1990s Brazil.

To learn more about Radiooooo.com, read the Indiegogo page that helped fund the orig­i­nal project. And one word of cau­tion, Radiooooo.com can take a lit­tle time to load and process things. So if you make your selec­tions and noth­ing hap­pens, give things a few moments, and all should work out.

via Boing Boing

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!

Iggy Pop & Josh Homme Walk You Through How They Wrote Their New Song, “American Valhalla”

in Music, Podcasts | April 14th, 2016

For those who love to explore the minu­tia of song writ­ing and pro­duc­tion, Hrishikesh Hirway’s Song Exploder pod­cast is a god­send, and shows off the poten­tial and pow­er of this new media. Where else could one song get a 15 minute explo­ration of its mean­ing, writ­ing, and record­ing, and from–as per this episode–Iggy Pop and Josh Homme them­selves?

Iggy Pop, now 68 years old and with a voice more sepul­chral than ever, has returned with Post Pop Depres­sion, his 23rd album, his 17th as a solo artist. And accord­ing to this inter­view, it might just be his last. Homme, Queens of the Stone Age’s front­man, co-wrote and pro­duced the album with Pop, and it is fair to say the col­lab­o­ra­tion is sim­i­lar to those between David Bowie and Pop dur­ing the ‘70s. The instru­ment choice is odd and cre­ative, with rock clichés avoid­ed by two musi­cians who know them well.

In this episode, the two walk through the cre­ation of the album’s cen­ter­piece track “Amer­i­can Val­hal­la,” start­ing with Homme’s “Shit­ty Demo” (lit­er­al­ly the title of the instru­men­tal he sent to Pop) and delv­ing into the lyric writ­ing, Pop’s thoughts about vet­er­ans, mor­tal­i­ty, the after­life, and that final line, “I’ve noth­ing but my name.” Sure, Pop says it’s a char­ac­ter speak­ing, but it sounds a bit like an epi­taph.

There’s many more sur­pris­es in this mini doc that we won’t spoil. Be sure to check out Song Exploder’s oth­er episodes as well. Even if you’ve nev­er heard of the song at the begin­ning, you’ll know it inside out by the end.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

From The Stooges to Iggy Pop: 1986 Doc­u­men­tary Charts the Rise of Punk’s God­fa­ther

Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whit­man in Col­lab­o­ra­tions With Elec­tron­ic Artists Alva Noto and Tar­wa­ter

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Watch 50+ Documentaries on Famous Architects & Buildings: Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, Hadid & Many More

in Architecture, Film | April 13th, 2016

At its best, archi­tec­ture can show us a way out of the rigid, rou­tinized think­ing that keeps us pac­ing the same social and cul­tur­al mazes decade after decade. A rad­i­cal redesign of the way we use space can her­ald a re-imag­in­ing of our inter­re­la­tions, hier­ar­chies, and polit­i­cal dynam­ics. Con­sid­er the inspir­ing work, for exam­ple, of vision­ary futur­ist Buck­min­ster Fuller. (Or con­sid­er the very dif­fer­ent career of recent­ly depart­ed Zaha Hadid, who “built the unbuild­able,” writes one for­mer stu­dent, and “defied grav­i­ty.”) At its worst, archi­tec­ture impris­ons us, lit­er­al­ly and oth­er­wise, mind­less­ly pop­u­lat­ing the built envi­ron­ment with drab, pre­fab­ri­cat­ed box­es, and repro­duc­ing con­di­tions of repres­sion, pover­ty, and medi­oc­rity. The way we build deter­mines in great degree the way we live.

But the influ­ence of an indi­vid­ual archi­tect or school will always exceed the design­ers’ inten­tions. Per­haps the most famous of 20th cen­tu­ry mod­ern archi­tec­ture and design move­ments, Wal­ter Gropius’ Bauhaus school, con­tributed a vocab­u­lary of sim­pli­fied geo­met­ri­cal designs and pri­ma­ry col­or schemes that pushed Euro­pean aes­thet­ics out of a sti­fling tra­di­tion­al­ism.

And yet, their mod­ernist insis­tence on box­i­ness, on mate­ri­als like steel, con­crete, and glass, and on a near total lack of orna­ment, helped bring into being the strip mall and the office park. Like­wise, the urban utopi­an archi­tect Le Cor­busier delib­er­ate­ly sought to engi­neer social improve­ment through build­ing design, and also helped birth a depress­ing­ly bleak land­scape of hous­ing projects and “struc­tures that rein­force dete­ri­o­rat­ing social effects.”

So what dis­tin­guish­es good archi­tec­ture from bad? And where did the post­mod­ern mélange of styles that make up the typ­i­cal urban envi­ron­ment come from? Ask 100 archi­tects the first ques­tion, and you might get 100 dif­fer­ent answers. But you can go a long way toward answer­ing the sec­ond ques­tion by learn­ing the his­to­ry of the many great build­ings that have direct­ly or indi­rect­ly inspired mil­lions of imi­ta­tors world­wide. And you can do that for free at the Youtube chan­nel ACB (Art and Cul­ture Bureau), which fea­tures over 50 doc­u­men­taries, writes Arch Dai­ly, “devot­ed to the most sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments of archi­tec­ture, its begin­nings, and the lat­est cre­ations of the great archi­tects of today.”

Maybe begin with the Bauhaus film, at the top of the post, an almost thir­ty-minute his­to­ry of the fas­ci­nat­ing post-WWI move­ment, school, and build­ing in Dessau, Ger­many. Be sure to also catch films on Paris’ Georges Pom­pi­dou Cen­tre, the 17th cen­tu­ry Tomb of Iti­mad-ud-Daulah (called the “baby Taj Mahal”), Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Con­vent of La Tourette, and Zaha Hadid’s Phaeno sci­ence cen­ter, among many, many more. All of the films are direct­ed by Richard Copans and some of them have inter­views with the archi­tects them­selves. See the full list of doc­u­men­taries here.

These films will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Arch Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books & Jour­nals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandin­sky, Moholy-Nagy & More

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

How the Sound Effects on 1930s Radio Shows Were Made: An Inside Look

in Business, Film, Radio | April 13th, 2016

“Jam” Handy (1886–1983) was known for two things: 1.) par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 1904 and 1924 Olympics (quite a feat if you think about the gap in time), and 2.) mak­ing thou­sands of edu­ca­tion­al train­ing films for Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions, schools and the US armed forces. A guru of cin­e­mat­ic adver­tis­ing, he shot films for Gen­er­al Motors, DuPont, Chevro­let, Coca-Cola and U.S. Steel, from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Above you can watch Back of the Mike, a film shot for Chevro­let in 1938. Like oth­er films in this genre, this piece of cin­e­mat­ic adver­tis­ing offers us an enter­tain­ing, if not edu­ca­tion­al, look at how old-time radio shows cre­at­ed their sound effects–all while help­ing mar­ket a prod­uct, the Chevro­let that helps the good guys win in the end. If the film makes you want to buy a Chevy, we can’t help you there. But if Back of the Mike gives you a han­ker­ing to lis­ten to old time radio plays, then you’ve come to the right place. We’ve got a few good items list­ed for you in the Relat­eds below.

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!

via VA Viper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Free: Lis­ten to 298 Episodes of the Vin­tage Crime Radio Series, Drag­net

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon and the Orig­i­nal Radio Show

The Largest Ever Analysis of Film Dialogue (Over 4 Million Lines in 2,000 Scripts) Reveals Gender Bias Built Into Cinema

in Film, Gender | April 13th, 2016

By their col­or palettes, by their dra­mat­ic struc­tures, by their shot lengths, by the fre­quen­cy and vari­ety of their char­ac­ters’ swear­ing: film enthu­si­asts have found ways to ana­lyze just about every aspect of film. But only recent­ly has the world of film analy­sis seen a large-scale study of dia­logue by gen­der and age — in fact, the largest-scale study of dia­logue by gen­der and age yet — under­tak­en by a new site called Poly­graph, “a pub­li­ca­tion that explores pop­u­lar cul­ture with data and visu­al sto­ry­telling.” They want­ed to put to the data test part of the notion, wide­ly expressed in opin­ion pieces, that “white men dom­i­nate movie roles.”

“We Googled our way to 8,000 screen­plays and matched each character’s lines to an actor,” write Poly­graph’s Han­nah Ander­son and Matt Daniels. “From there, we com­piled the num­ber of words spo­ken by male and female char­ac­ters across rough­ly 2,000 films, arguably the largest under­tak­ing of script analy­sis, ever.” They present their quan­ti­ta­tive results with great visu­al clar­i­ty, and you can view them for three dis­tinct areas of cin­e­ma ter­ri­to­ry: just the 2,000 screen­plays the study focused on; only high-gross­ing films at the Amer­i­can box office; and only Dis­ney movies (known, of course, for their abun­dance of princess­es, with or with­out many lines).

“Across thou­sands of films in our dataset,” they write, “it was hard to find a sub­set that didn’t over-index male. Even roman­tic come­dies have dia­logue that is, on aver­age, 58% male. For exam­ple, Pret­ty Woman and 10 Things I Hate About You both have lead women (i.e., char­ac­ters with the most amount of dia­logue). But the over­all dia­logue for both films is 52% male, due to the num­ber of male sup­port­ing char­ac­ters.” And as far as age, “dia­logue avail­able to women who are over 40 years old decrease sub­stan­tial­ly. For men, it’s the exact oppo­site: there are more roles avail­able to old­er actors.”

Depend­ing on what kind of films you watch, this may well jibe with your view­ing expe­ri­ence: main­stream sto­ries have long tend­ed to favor macho and often mature pro­tag­o­nists, and the antag­o­nists they defeat in man-to-man com­bat have some­times reached advanced ages indeed (all the more time, pre­sum­ably, in which to have mas­tered the art of vil­lainy, espe­cial­ly of the one-last-grand-speech-before-I-destroy-the-world vari­ety). The women, and usu­al­ly young women, fea­tured in such pic­tures, when they appear at all, have to do much of their com­mu­ni­ca­tion non­ver­bal­ly.

This all sup­ports a com­plaint I’ve long had about the movies, main­stream or oth­er­wise: over a cen­tu­ry in exis­tence, and they’ve hard­ly touched the vast cre­ative space avail­able to them. The all-female Ghost­busters com­ing this sum­mer will sure­ly do its small part to rec­ti­fy the lack of woman-deliv­ered dia­logue on the sil­ver screen, but the depth of the defi­cien­cy, as revealed by Poly­graph, sug­gests we could do with a few all-female Glen­gar­ry Glen Rosses as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

85 Com­pelling Films Star­ring and/or Direct­ed By Women of Col­or: A List Cre­at­ed by Direc­tor Ava DuVer­nay & Friends on Twit­ter

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Willie Nelson–Young, Clean-Shaven & Wearing a Suit–Sings Early Hits at the Grand Ole Opry (1962)

in Music | April 12th, 2016

On an ordi­nary after­noon, a group of friends sit around lis­ten­ing to records. Some­one puts on a Willie Nel­son album, and there is a knock at the door. It’s an old­er man, mak­ing a deliv­ery. He paus­es behind his clip­board, hear­ing the music from inside the house. “Is that Red Head­ed Stranger,” he asks? Yes. He asks if he can come in and lis­ten. And for the next thir­ty min­utes, no one says a word as the album tells its mourn­ful tale of betray­al and bloody revenge, a sto­ry, writes All­mu­sic “about a preach­er on the run after mur­der­ing his depart­ed wife and her new lover.” It’s an album that remains—with its “brief song-poems and utter­ly min­i­mal backing”—perhaps “the strangest block­buster coun­try pro­duced.”

That 1975 album of tear-jerk­ers and mur­der bal­lads, which estab­lished Nel­son as a “super­star record­ing artist,” is so “old-fash­ioned” it sounds “like a tale told around a cow­boy camp­fire.” And it is for that rea­son mil­lions of fans can’t tear them­selves away from its com­pelling nar­ra­tive and aching­ly sad, home­spun laments—including myself, a few friends, and a stranger on a sched­ule who came to the door. And if Red Head­ed Stranger is an unlike­ly block­buster, Nel­son is an unlike­ly super­star, full of con­tra­dic­tions. He’s a gen­tle out­law; an old-fash­ioned coun­try trou­ba­dour who has remained on the pro­gres­sive activist edge; and an unas­sum­ing, tra­di­tion­al artist who hap­pens to be loved across the spec­trum of gen­er­a­tions, polit­i­cal per­sua­sions, and musi­cal styles.

But before Nel­son became an inter­na­tion­al super­star he appeared on the coun­try music cir­cuit clean-shaven, short-haired, and in the nat­ty suit and tie you see him wear in the clip above from a tele­vised 1962 Grand Ole Opry per­for­mance. Close your eyes and you’ll hear that it’s undoubt­ed­ly Nelson’s famil­iar warble—though not so weath­ered with age as we’ve grown used to. But when you look, it’s hard to see the griz­zled tax-evad­ing, pot-smok­ing out­law hip­pie hero we know and love in this fresh-faced gent. Nel­son had only just moved to Nashville two years pri­or, and he strug­gled to make an impres­sion at first. But when coun­try singer Faron Young heard him sing his “Hel­lo Walls” at a bar next to the Opry, his for­tunes changed. Young sent the song into the top 40, and Nel­son became, as the host above calls him, “the Mick­ey Man­tle of coun­try music,” writ­ing hit after hit.

By ’62, he had record­ed his first LP, And Then I Wrote, singing many songs he’d giv­en to oth­er artists. He opens above with “Hel­lo Walls,” and he clos­es with his oth­er mas­sive hit from the peri­od, “Crazy,” Pat­sy Cline’s sig­na­ture tune. In-between, Nel­son sings anoth­er song from his debut album, Bil­ly Walker’s “Fun­ny How Time Slips Away,” and works in “Night Life,” a blues song he wrote for Ray Price. Only eight years after this TV appear­ance, Nel­son decid­ed to retire from music and pack it in, feel­ing like his career had run its course. It wasn’t until a cou­ple years later—after he’d become part of Austin’s eclec­tic music scene and re-invent­ed him­self musi­cal­ly with 1973’s Shot­gun Willie—that the out­law bal­ladeer we know and love was born.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Willie Nel­son Audi­tions for The Hob­bit Film Sequel, Turns 80 Today

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings

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

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Trujillo Plays Metallica Songs Flamenco-Style, Joined by Rodrigo y Gabriela

in Music | April 12th, 2016

Heavy Met­al has always had its baroque non-met­al ele­ments. It seems that no mat­ter how hard and fast a met­al band rocks, they’re even­tu­al­ly going to slip into some form of medieval Scan­di­na­vian folk music, Teu­ton­ic opera, Tolkienesque fan­ta­sy con­cept album song cycle, or at least—on the bub­blegum end of the spectrum—soft rock bal­lad…. (You’re prob­a­bly already pic­tur­ing tiny Stone­henge on the Spinal Tap stage.) Such ref­er­ences have been in the genre’s DNA since the days of met­al fore­fa­thers Led Zep­pelin and Deep Pur­ple.

Metal­li­ca, and the oth­er three of the big four founders of thrash metal—Anthrax, Megadeath, and Slayer—emerged as an anti­dote to metal’s occa­sion­al pre­ten­tious­ness and grandios­i­ty. Much clos­er to punk and hard­core (they once cov­ered campy hor­ror punks The Mis­fits) than to the bom­bas­tic span­dex and hair­spray indus­try met­al became, ear­ly Metal­li­ca prid­ed them­selves on vio­lent­ly aggres­sive music and imagery, and a com­plete absence of sub­tle­ty. (See the orig­i­nal title and cov­er for their debut album Kill ‘em All.)

But they soft­ened in time, as we know, and even­tu­al­ly intro­duced some some non-met­al into their songwriting—most notably in the grim acoustic bal­ladry of megahit “One.” Now, thanks to new (-ish) bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo, the met­al leg­ends can add a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent acoustic style to their repertoire—“flamingo,” as lead singer James Het­field describes Trujillo’s fla­men­co gui­tar chops in the video above. And, as if to prove his bona fides in the fla­men­co world, Tru­jil­lo got to jam with the reign­ing king and queen of Nue­vo Fla­men­co gui­tarists, Mex­i­can duo Rodri­go y Gabriela—two play­ers whose speed and vir­tu­os­i­ty match those of the best met­al shred­ders, but whose roots come from a much old­er tra­di­tion. (See them rip through “Tama­cun” below.)

In the video at the top of the post, Tru­jil­lo and his low-slung bass join the acoustic duo on stage dur­ing their encore at a Red Rocks con­cert in 2014 for a fla­men­co-style med­ley of Metal­li­ca clas­sics, includ­ing “Ori­on,” “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” “The Frayed Ends of San­i­ty,” and “Bat­tery.” It some­how seems like a per­fect fit for the ver­sa­tile Tru­jil­lo, who grew up as inspired by jazz fusion bassist Jaco Pas­to­rius and funk and Motown play­ers (he opens his guest spot above with the “Jun­gle Boo­gie” bass riff) as he was by Black Sab­bath. He brought many of these influ­ences to pre­vi­ous bands like Sui­ci­dal Ten­den­cies and Infec­tious Grooves. And now—in addi­tion to “flamingo”—he’s brought to Metal­li­ca some­thing else pre­vi­ous­ly unheard-of in met­al: slap bass solos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

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

Free MIT Course Teaches You to Watch Movies Like a Critic: Watch Lectures from The Film Experience

in Film, Online Courses | April 12th, 2016

We all have our favorite film crit­ics. Maybe we grav­i­tat­ed to them because they write well or because they share our tastes, but the very best of them — the crit­ics we read even on gen­res and direc­tors we oth­er­wise would­n’t care about — make us see movies in a new way. Specif­i­cal­ly, they make us see them the way they do, and the point of view of a pro­fes­sion­al crit­ic steeped in cin­e­ma his­to­ry and the­o­ry (not to men­tion the thou­sands and thou­sands of hours of actu­al film they’ve watched) will always have a rich­ness that the casu­al movie­go­er can’t hope to enjoy on his/her own.

Unless, of course, you take The Film Expe­ri­ence, a 23-lec­ture course from the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. And you don’t need to enroll at MIT — or even show up and sur­rep­ti­tious­ly audit — to take it, since the school has made those lec­tures, their accom­pa­ny­ing mate­ri­als, and even sup­ple­men­tal media (just like the DVD extras that have inspired a gen­er­a­tion of cinephiles) free on their Open­Course­Ware site. They’ve also assem­bled the videos, star­ring MIT’s Film and Media Stud­ies pro­gram found­ing pro­fes­sor David Thor­burn, into a sin­gle Youtube playlist.

Thor­burn’s lec­tures begin with the intro­duc­tion to film as a cul­tur­al form at the top of the post, which itself begins with the ques­tion “What is film?” He then launch­es into a jour­ney through film his­to­ry, from the silent come­dies of Buster Keaton and Char­lie Chap­lin (see also our Keaton and Chap­lin col­lec­tions) to the Hol­ly­wood stu­dio era and Alfred Hitch­cock (for whom we’ve got a col­lec­tion as well) to Amer­i­can film in the 1970s and Ital­ian neo­re­al­ism to François Truf­faut and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. When you come out of the course pos­sess­ing a new­ly height­ened abil­i­ty to decode the lan­guage of film, you may or may not hear the call­ing to become a crit­ic your­self — but at least it’ll make your next trip to the mul­ti­plex more inter­est­ing.

The Film Expe­ri­ence will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

Take a Free Course on Film Noir; Then Watch Oodles of Free Noir Films Online

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online

22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.