Take Big History: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Billion Years of History, Funded by Bill Gates

in History, Online Courses | October 14th, 2014

Last month, The New York Times Mag­a­zine pub­lished a long piece called “So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a His­to­ry Class …”, which begins with these very words:

In 2008, short­ly after Bill Gates stepped down from his exec­u­tive role at Microsoft, he often awoke in his 66,000-square-foot home on the east­ern bank of Lake Wash­ing­ton and walked down­stairs to his pri­vate gym in a bag­gy T‑shirt, shorts, sneak­ers and black socks yanked up to the mid­calf. Then, dur­ing an hour on the tread­mill, Gates, a self-described nerd, would pass the time by watch­ing DVDs from the Teach­ing Company’s “Great Cours­es” series. On some morn­ings, he would learn about geol­o­gy or mete­o­rol­o­gy; on oth­ers, it would be oceanog­ra­phy or U.S. his­to­ry.

As Gates was work­ing his way through the series, he stum­bled upon a set of DVDs titled “Big His­to­ry” — an unusu­al col­lege course taught by a jovial, ges­tic­u­lat­ing pro­fes­sor from Aus­tralia named David Chris­t­ian. Unlike the pre­vi­ous DVDs, “Big His­to­ry” did not con­fine itself to any par­tic­u­lar top­ic, or even to a sin­gle aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline. Instead, it put for­ward a syn­the­sis of his­to­ry, biol­o­gy, chem­istry, astron­o­my and oth­er dis­parate fields, which Chris­t­ian wove togeth­er into noth­ing less than a uni­fy­ing nar­ra­tive of life on earth.

Cap­ti­vat­ed by Dr. Chris­tian’s abil­i­ty to con­nect big and com­plex ideas, Gates thought to him­self, “God, every­body should watch this thing!” And, soon enough, the phil­an­thropist con­tact­ed the pro­fes­sor and sug­gest­ed mak­ing “Big His­to­ry” avail­able as a course in high schools across the US (with Bill foot­ing the bill.)

In 2011 the Big His­to­ry Project, a course with a sig­nif­i­cant dig­i­tal com­po­nent, was pilot­ed in five high schools. Now, a few years lat­er, it’s being made freely avail­able, says the Times, “to more than 15,000 stu­dents in some 1,200 schools, from the Brook­lyn School for Col­lab­o­ra­tive Stud­ies in New York to Green­hills School in Ann Arbor, Mich., to Gates’s alma mater, Lake­side Upper School in Seat­tle. And if all goes well, the Big His­to­ry Project will be intro­duced in hun­dreds of more class­rooms by next year and hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, more the year after that, scal­ing along toward the vision Gates first expe­ri­enced on that tread­mill.”

Why do I tell you this? Part­ly because the Big His­to­ry Project is open to you as well. On the Big His­to­ry web­site, you will find a pub­lic course, offer­ing a four-to-six hour tour of Big His­to­ry. It’s an abbre­vi­at­ed intro­duc­tion to 13.8 bil­lion years of his­to­ry. I could think of less effi­cient ways to spend an after­noon.

After you’re done, if you want to fill in a few gaps, don’t miss our col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. It cov­ers his­to­ry, biol­o­gy, physics and all of the rest.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Free Down­load of The His­to­ry Man­i­festo: His­to­ri­ans New Call for Big-Pic­ture Think­ing

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

Photos of Hiroshima by Hiroshima Mon Amour Star Emmanuelle Riva (1958)

in Film, History, Photography | October 14th, 2014

Hiroshi­ma Mon Amour, Alain Resnais’s land­mark 1960 med­i­ta­tion on war and mem­o­ry, was Emmanuelle Riva’s first star­ring role. She plays a mar­ried actress (catch a scene here) who, while mak­ing a movie in Japan, has an affair with a Japan­ese archi­tect played by Eiji Oka­da. Screen­writer Mar­guerite Duras chis­els away at the actress’s Gal­lic reserve over the course of the film as mem­o­ries of the war, not to men­tion guilt over the affair, over­whelm her. Resnais lingers on Riva’s face as she comes apart. Her per­for­mance is as brave as it is exact. French film crit­ic Jean Domarchi once stat­ed, “Hiroshi­ma is a doc­u­men­tary on Emmanuelle Riva.”

As it turns out, Riva was doc­u­ment­ing Hiroshi­ma too. While film­ing on loca­tion, she took a series of pho­tographs of every­day life of a city still recov­er­ing from the war. They are a fas­ci­nat­ing slice of life from a Japan that has long dis­ap­peared. The Hiroshi­ma Riva cap­tured was still dom­i­nat­ed by dirt roads and wood­en build­ings. Peo­ple still reg­u­lar­ly wore tra­di­tion­al geta wood­en shoes.

Chil­dren seemed to be a favorite sub­ject for Riva. She pho­tographs a flock of ele­men­tary school stu­dents walk­ing to school; a pair of boys fish­ing before the gen­baku dome – ground zero for the bomb; and a gag­gle of kids star­ing agog into the lens, no doubt curi­ous at the sight of a styl­ish French woman with an expen­sive cam­era.

Years lat­er, Riva’s pic­tures were col­lect­ed into a book called Hiroshi­ma 1958, which, sad­ly, seems to be avail­able only in Japan. Riva, of course, went on to a cel­e­brat­ed act­ing career, includ­ing an Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed turn in Michael Haneke’s har­row­ing love sto­ry Amour.

via RocketNews24

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Alain Resnais’ Short, Evoca­tive Film Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

The Distortion of Sound: A Short Film on How We’ve Created “a McDonald’s Generation of Music Consumers”

in Music | October 13th, 2014

It’s an old joke at this point—the hipster’s retro-obses­sion with vinyl is an affec­ta­tion as bogus as lou­vered sun­glass­es and high-waist­ed acid washed jeans, right? Well, there are plen­ty of peo­ple who buy records and lis­ten to them, too. There are even peo­ple who buy and lis­ten to cas­sette tapes, imag­ine that! You can count me in both camps, and it isn’t because—or only because—I love the look and feel of these ana­log cul­tur­al arti­facts or that I’m nos­tal­gic for sim­pler times. It’s because I love the sound. Even cheapo cas­sette tapes can often sound bet­ter to me than the medi­um of music we’ve all grown so accus­tomed to over the last decade or so—the MP3.

Begin­ning in the CD era, the so-called “Loud­ness Wars” more or less killed the dynam­ics of record­ed music, push­ing every sound to the absolute limit—from the most del­i­cate­ly plucked acoustic gui­tar string to a black met­al singer’s most demon­ic roar. With­out the pleas­ing push-pull of musi­cal dynam­ics, songs lose their depth and pow­er. Once the music is released as prod­uct, it suf­fers anoth­er indig­ni­ty in the data com­pres­sion of MP3s and stream­ing ser­vices, for­mats that—according to high-end audio com­pa­ny Harmon—“have dimin­ished the qual­i­ty and flat­tened the emo­tion” of music. In the short film above, The Dis­tor­tion of Sound, Har­mon brings togeth­er a num­ber of engi­neers, pro­duc­ers, and musi­cians, includ­ing big names like Quin­cy Jones, Slash, Hans Zim­mer, and Snoop Dogg to dis­cuss what Har­mon acoustic engi­neer Dr. Sean Olive, calls “the val­ley of sound qual­i­ty” we’ve sup­pos­ed­ly reached in the last five years.

Harmon’s Chief Engi­neer Chris Lud­wig claims that data com­pres­sion (not audio compression—a dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy), “removes up to 90% of the orig­i­nal song.” With our low-qual­i­ty MP3s and cheap, tin­ny ear­buds and lap­top speak­ers, says Zim­mer, we’ve become “a McDonald’s gen­er­a­tion of music con­sumers.” It’s a depress­ing real­i­ty for audio­philes and musi­cians, but Har­mon has the solu­tion and Dis­tor­tion of Sound is essen­tial­ly an adver­tise­ment for it. Whether or not you buy in is your call, but along the way, you’ll get an inter­est­ing intro­duc­tion to the record­ing process and the his­to­ry of record­ed music. Scroll down to the bot­tom of the “Dis­tor­tion of Sound” page to see how Har­mon is “bring­ing sound qual­i­ty back.” They aren’t doing it with tape decks and turnta­bles.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gad­get That Will Save Music

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

What Happens When You Take a Nobel Prize Through Airport Security

in Random | October 13th, 2014

Win­ning a Nobel Prize has its perks. When you talk, peo­ple lis­ten. And you end up doing a lot of talk­ing. And trav­el­ling.

Reflect­ing on how the Nobel Prize changed his life, Wal­ter Gilbert (1980 win­ner in Chem­istry) com­ment­ed, “You can find your­self spend­ing years trav­el­ling and talk­ing right after win­ning.”

And what if you want to take your Nobel Prize on the road with you? Accord­ing to astro­physi­cist Bri­an Schmidt (win­ner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics), that can present its own chal­lenges. He recent­ly told an audi­ence in New York:

‘There are a cou­ple of bizarre things that hap­pen. One of the things you get when you win a Nobel Prize is, well, a Nobel Prize. It’s about that big, that thick [about the size of an Olympic medal], weighs a half a pound, and it’s made of gold.”

“When I won this, my grand­ma, who lives in Far­go, North Dako­ta, want­ed to see it. I was com­ing around so I decid­ed I’d bring my Nobel Prize. You would think that car­ry­ing around a Nobel Prize would be unevent­ful, and it was unevent­ful, until I tried to leave Far­go with it, and went through the X‑ray machine. I could see they were puz­zled. It was in my lap­top bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X‑rays—it’s com­plete­ly black. And they had nev­er seen any­thing com­plete­ly black.”

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s some­thing in your bag.’
I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’
They said, ‘What’s in the box?’
I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.
So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’
I said, ‘gold.’
And they’re like, ‘Uhh­hh. Who gave this to you?’
‘The King of Swe­den.’
‘Why did he give this to you?’
‘Because I helped dis­cov­er the expan­sion rate of the uni­verse was accel­er­at­ing.’
At which point, they were begin­ning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main ques­tion was, ‘Why were you in Far­go?’”

So just a word of cau­tion to Jean Tirole, who won the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics today, if you’re ever vis­it­ing grand-mère…

via Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

Jean-Paul Sartre Rejects the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 1964: “It Was Mon­strous!”

Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

Take a Free Course on the Finan­cial Mar­kets with Robert Shiller, Win­ner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics

Watch the Rare Reunions of Pink Floyd: Concerts from 2005, 2010 & 2011

in Music | October 13th, 2014

How many reunions will it take before we’ve final­ly seen the end of Pink Floyd? I’m not com­plain­ing, mind you, but mar­veling at how durable an out­fit the band has been for their fifty-year, on again, off again his­to­ry. Yet aside from the occa­sion­al char­i­ty show, they’ve most­ly been off, hav­ing sup­pos­ed­ly called it quits after 1994’s Divi­sion Bell. As the A.V. Club reminds us, “Pink Floyd has not real­ly exist­ed since Pulp Fic­tion was in the­aters.” Now, after twen­ty years of dor­man­cy, they’re back with a new album, The End­less Riv­er—David Gilmour and Nick Mason’s rework­ing of Divi­sion Bell sessions—due out Novem­ber 10th (see a track­list and hear teasers here). “It’s a shame,” Gilmour tells Rolling Stone, “but this [album] is the end.”

Yeah, we’ve heard that before. This time, it’ll prob­a­bly stick. Key­boardist Richard Wright died in 2008 (the new album is a trib­ute to him), Gilmour and Roger Waters have had a most­ly icy rela­tion­ship, and drum­mer Nick Mason has chan­neled his pas­sion, and for­tune, into clas­sic cars. But it does seem like­ly that they’ll take the stage again, at least for a one-off per­for­mance, as they have a hand­ful of times through­out the years.

Today in trib­ute to their longevi­ty, or their refusal to fade away, we bring you a few of those reunion shows, begin­ning at the top with their Live 8 reunion con­cert in London’s Hyde Park in 2005, a ben­e­fit orga­nized by their old friend Bob Geld­of to coin­cide with the G8 sum­mit. This con­cert is the last time all four mem­bers would play on stage togeth­er, joined by a host of guest musi­cians, and they sound amaz­ing. Gilmour ruled out any fur­ther shows after this, but then two years lat­er, he joined Waters onstage at an event for the Hop­ing Foun­da­tion to ben­e­fit Pales­tin­ian chil­dren. See them play for an inti­mate crowd of just 200 in the video above.

While Roger Waters offi­cial­ly left the band in 1985 on acri­mo­nious terms, he has con­tin­ued to tour both his solo mate­r­i­al and his Floyd music, per­form­ing a solo ver­sion of the The Wall Live to huge audi­ences in North Amer­i­ca and Europe since 2010. At one of those shows, in 2011 at London’s O2 Are­na, Gilmour joined him onstage—atop the wall—for “Com­fort­ably Numb” (above), then returned with a man­dolin, and Nick Mason with a tam­bourine, for “Out­side the Wall” (below).

It seems cyn­i­cal to call the remain­ing mem­bers’ occa­sion­al appear­ances togeth­er oppor­tunis­tic since they gen­er­al­ly only occur at char­i­ty events. But giv­en how long it’s been since they’ve released any­thing new, we might well ask, as the title of their 2011 remas­ter project has it, “Why Pink Floyd?” Why new music, and why now? Since their spaced-out psy­che­del­ic debut, they’ve made increas­ing­ly thought­ful, fine­ly-craft­ed albums for very patient lis­ten­ers, veer­ing into rock opera, stretch­ing out into space opera, becom­ing more and more cin­e­mat­ic in scope. It’s those long, com­plex arrange­ments (like Wish You Were Here and 1977’s Ani­mals), tied togeth­er by Gilmour’s soar­ing gui­tar lines and Wright’s moody key­boards, that hold up best, I think, at least for devot­ed fans, and that’s exact­ly what we can expect from The End­less Riv­er. See Gilmour and Mason dis­cuss the new album, and hear some stun­ning audio sam­ples, at the band’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

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

Quentin Tarantino Directs a 1995 Episode of ER: Brings Cinematic Virtuosity to TV

in Film, Television | October 13th, 2014

Just as no list of the most 1990s-defin­ing film­mak­ers could do with­out Quentin Taran­ti­no, no list of the most 1990s-defin­ing tele­vi­sion shows could do with­out ER. The long-run­ning, award-laden med­ical dra­ma made more than a few dar­ing moves over its fif­teen years, not least its choic­es of guest direc­tors. Ear­ly in its very first sea­son (which pre­miered a month before the release of Pulp Fic­tion), ER snagged Taran­ti­no to direct the episode “Moth­er­hood,” which aired on May 11, 1995 — three days before Moth­er’s Day. “The rat­ings for ER, which are usu­al­ly through the roof, should be through the moon tonight,” wrote the Bal­ti­more Sun’s David Zurawik, “And there is enough Taran­ti­no to war­rant a bit of a buzz. One weird scene involv­ing a fight between female gang mem­bers as they are being wheeled into the emer­gency room might even be con­sid­ered inspired when judged against the usu­al stan­dards of doc­tor dra­ma. But be warned: It’s ultra-bloody.”

That quote comes from a roundup of con­tem­po­rary write-ups of the episode at Chrono­log­i­cal Snob­bery, which gets into impres­sive detail on the sto­ry behind, the plot of, the hype sur­round­ing, and the Taran­tin­ian imagery in “Moth­er­hood,” and it also offers a brief inter­view with for­mer child actor Abra­ham Ver­duz­co, who “played Palmer, one of the eight Ranger Scouts with diar­rhea.” Taran­ti­no fans of the type who would fre­quent the Quentin Taran­ti­no Archive will have rec­og­nized Ver­duz­co from his ear­li­er appear­ance in Robert Rodriguez’s Taran­ti­no-fea­tur­ing Des­per­a­do. “The episode boasts the usu­al inter­twined sto­ries of bleed­ing gang­sters, rela­tion­ship trou­ble, fam­i­ly dra­ma, preg­nan­cies, drug abuse and for­bid­den love,” says the QTA. “What makes this episode so inter­est­ing to Taran­ti­no fans are all the QT trade­marks that one can spot through the episode.” Some of these, aside from a pen­chant for vin­tage shades (“Quentin picked out the sun­glass­es and was adamant we wear them,” said actress Julian­na Mar­guiles), include:

• Dr. Lewis wears a Yosemite Sam t‑shirt
• Pulp Fic­tion’s Angela Jones appears as Michelle
• A Bea­t­les song (“Black­bird”) accom­pa­nies a birth
• The Ranger Scouts act like the Three Stooges, and Dr. Carter calls the con­stel­la­tion of the stars by the names Moe, Lar­ry, and Curly
• A girl cuts anoth­er girl’s ear off

And a more than bit of cin­e­mat­ic vir­tu­os­i­ty comes right up front in the form of the episode’s much-dis­cussed (as recent­ly as last week, on Metafil­ter) sin­gle-take open­ing. You can see a cou­ple seg­ments of the episode right here, and for the whole thing — not to men­tion video qual­i­ty supe­ri­or to that which you get above, and for which we apol­o­gize — you need only to find disc four of the ER sea­son one DVD col­lec­tion. It makes me wish 1990s tele­vi­sion had done as much to bring auteurs into the fold at 21st-cen­tu­ry tele­vi­sion has; what I would­n’t give for a Hal Hart­ley-direct­ed episode of Sein­feld, say, or a Kevin Smith X‑Files.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

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

Bill Murray, the Struggling New SNL Cast Member, Apologizes for Not Being Funny (1977)

in Comedy, Television | October 13th, 2014

In 1977, after a few under­whelm­ing months as the first new guy in Sat­ur­day Night Live’s then-brief his­to­ry, a 26-year-old Bill Mur­ray reached out to home view­ers with the emo­tion­al equiv­a­lent of a Kick­starter cam­paign. The audi­ence expect­ed the Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers to be fun­ny, and in every­day life, Mur­ray claims above, he was. It just wasn’t com­ing togeth­er in front of the cam­eras yet.

It didn’t help that he was replac­ing audi­ence favorite, Chevy Chase.

He was also an unknown quan­ti­ty in the eyes of the writ­ers. Rather than entrust their pre­cious mate­r­i­al to a guy who’d yet to prove him­self, they saved their plum assign­ments for the likes of  John Belushi  and Dan Aykroyd.

Mur­ray was rel­e­gat­ed to the sort of pal­lid sup­port­ing roles that require no par­tic­u­lar talent—“the sec­ond cop, the sec­ond FBI agent, the guy hold­ing the mop…” is how he described them to Howard Stern in an inter­view last week. It’s a sto­ry that’s also recount­ed in the book, Live From New York: The Com­plete, Uncen­sored His­to­ry of Sat­ur­day Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writ­ers, and Guests.

Back in ’77, he wise­ly chose not to blame the mate­r­i­al.

Instead he cur­ried favor with ref­er­ences to his late father, his hard work­ing mom, and his nine sib­lings, one of whom was a nun. (Anoth­er had polio, but he left that out. Appar­ent­ly, some things are sacred.)

Lat­er in his career, he’d become cel­e­brat­ed for his smirk­ing insin­cer­i­ty, but his direct appeal, as pro­duc­er Lorne Michaels dubbed it, had none of that.

He wasn’t look­ing for view­ers to write in on his behalf, just an assur­ance that they’d root for him (and his large, father­less Catholic fam­i­ly) dur­ing his tenure at Rock­e­feller Plaza (“New York City, New York 10020”).

It’s doubt­ful whether a sim­i­lar gam­bit would’ve paid off for Gar­rett Mor­ris or Laraine New­man. Com­e­dy, like life, is not fair.

Now that he’s rich and famous, he advis­es peo­ple who dream of sim­i­lar glo­ries to check if the first part alone won’t be suf­fi­cient to cov­er the bulk of their fan­tasies.

But we, the pub­lic, need Bill Mur­ray to be famous, too, in order to crash our par­ties, and help us under­stand Shake­speare, and read poet­ry to con­struc­tion work­ers.

Turns out he’s not the only one to reap long term med­i­c­i­nal ben­e­fits from those two “table­spoons of humil­i­ty” he swal­lowed live on air, all those years ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Sings the Poet­ry of Bob Dylan: Shel­ter From the Storm

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Twain’s Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1996)

Watch Bill Mur­ray Per­form a Satir­i­cal Anti-Tech­nol­o­gy Rant (1982)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the cre­ator of The Mer­maid­’s Legs, a trau­ma-filled Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen reboot debut­ing in the shad­ow of Rock­e­feller Cen­ter in less than two weeks. See it! And fol­low her @AyunHalliday

2nd Graders Eat at Fancy French Restaurant, Daniel; Acclaimed Director Captures Their Reactions

in Food & Drink | October 12th, 2014

For its fall Food issue, The New York Times mag­a­zine took six sec­ond graders from Brook­lyn to din­ner at Daniel, the fan­cy French restau­rant locat­ed on the Upper East Side of Man­hat­tan. There, the kids each enjoyed a $220, sev­en-course tast­ing menu, which includ­ed Maine Lob­ster Sal­ad, Squash Ravi­o­li with Pork Bel­ly, Smoked Papri­ka Cured Hamachi, Crispy Japan­ese Snap­per, and Wagyu Beef Rib-Eye. Jef­frey Blitz fit­ting­ly cap­tured the kids’ reac­tions. He’s the direc­tor of the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary Spell­bound, which fol­lowed eight teenagers on their quest to win the 1999 Nation­al Spelling Bee. These young kids have style, and cer­tain­ly not the most finicky taste I’ve ever seen.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus 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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Michelangelo’s Hand­writ­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List

Coleman Hawkins’ Landmark Recording of “Body and Soul” Turns 75 This Week

in Music | October 11th, 2014

The jazz stan­dard “Body and Soul” was first per­formed live in Lon­don by singer Gertrude Lawrence in 1930, and then record­ed lat­er that year by the great Louis Arm­strong. But Cole­man Hawkins cut the most his­toric ver­sion on Octo­ber 11, 1939 — exact­ly 75 years ago today. The Mis­souri-born musi­cian made the record­ing almost by acci­dent, on a spur-of-the-moment-deci­sion, and he had no inkling that he had cre­at­ed the first com­mer­cial hit of a pure jazz record­ing.

He lat­er mused,“It’s fun­ny how it became such a clas­sic.” “Even the ordi­nary pub­lic is crazy about it. It’s the first and only record I ever heard of that all the squares dig as well as the jazz peo­ple, and I don’t under­stand how and why, because I was mak­ing notes all the way. I was­n’t mak­ing a melody for the squares. I thought noth­ing of it. I did­n’t even both­er to lis­ten to it after­wards.”

For jazz his­to­ri­ans, the song is rec­og­nized as one of the “ear­ly tremors of bebop.” That’s large­ly because “Hawkins hints at the song’s melody dur­ing his first six bars, but he is impro­vis­ing right from the start, nev­er actu­al­ly stat­ing the theme,” writes Ken­ny Berg­er in The Oxford Com­pan­ion to Jazz.

In 2004, the Library of Con­gress placed Hawk­in’s record­ing into the Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry. Above, you can lis­ten to the land­mark 1939 ver­sion and also watch Hawkins per­form “Body and Soul” live in 1967 at Nor­man Granz’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic.

A spe­cial thanks goes to Michael for flag­ging this anniver­sary for us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Great Per­for­mances From 10 Leg­endary Jazz Artists: Djan­go, Miles, Monk, Coltrane & More

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

The Empire Strikes Back Uncut: A New Fan-Made, Shot-for-Shot Remake of the 1980 Sci-Fi Classic

in Film, Sci Fi | October 11th, 2014

In 2010, devot­ed Star Wars fans released Star Wars Uncut, a mashup, scene-by-scene remake of the very first Star Wars movie.

Now comes The Empire Strikes Back Uncut. Here’s the gist:

With more than 480 fan-made seg­ments culled from over 1,500 sub­mis­sions, The Empire Strikes Back Uncut (also known as ESB Uncut) fea­tures a stun­ning mash-up of styles and film­mak­ing tech­niques, includ­ing live action, ani­ma­tion, and stop-motion. The project launched in 2013, with fans claim­ing 15-sec­ond scenes to reimag­ine as they saw fit – result­ing in sequences cre­at­ed with every­thing from action fig­ures to card­board props to stun­ning visu­al effects. Helmed by Casey Pugh, who over­saw 2010’s Emmy-win­ning Star Wars Uncut, the new film has a won­der­ful home­made charm, stands as an affec­tion­ate trib­ute to The Empire Strikes Back, and is a tes­ta­ment to the tal­ent, imag­i­na­tion, and ded­i­ca­tion of Star Wars fans.

ESB Uncut was just released yes­tery, right in time for the week­end. Below we have some more cre­ative takes on the Star Wars films to keep you enter­tained.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars Gets Dubbed into Nava­jo: a Fun Way to Pre­serve and Teach a Fad­ing Lan­guage