Watch Episode #5 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: Unlocking the Mysteries of Light (US Viewers)

in Astronomy, Science, Television | April 7th, 2014

Episode 5 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos series aired last night on Fox. Thanks to Hulu, US view­ers can now watch it online. The episode, called “Hid­ing the Light,” explores the wave the­o­ry of light. It moves across 2000+ years of his­to­ry and even­tu­al­ly gets into the sci­en­tif­ic work of Isaac New­ton, William Her­schel and Joseph von Fraun­hofer, before wind­ing up in mod­ern times and touch­ing on big ques­tions con­tem­plat­ed by astronomers. (For a deep­er dive into this mate­r­i­al, see our col­lec­tion of Free Astron­o­my Cours­es.) If you need to catch up on ear­li­er episodes, you can find them below.

Pre­vi­ous Episodes:

Episode #1: “Stand­ing Up in the Milky Way”

Episode #2: “Some of the Things That Mol­e­cules Do”

Episode #3: “When Knowl­edge Con­quered Fear“

Episode #4: “A Sky Full of Ghosts”

Notebook on Cities and Culture’s In-Depth Podcast Tour of South Korea Kickstarts Today

in Podcasts | April 7th, 2014

When not writ­ing here at Open Cul­ture, I host and pro­duce Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture (iTunes link), a globe-trav­el­ing pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to in-depth con­ver­sa­tion with cul­tur­al cre­ators, inter­na­tion­al­ists, and observers of the urban scene about the work they do and the world cities they do it in. Through Kick­starter, I’ve fund­ed the show’s first four sea­sons, with inter­views record­ed in places like Los Ange­les, Osa­ka, Van­cou­ver, Mex­i­co City, Copen­hagen, and Lon­don. Today, a new Kick­starter dri­ve begins to fund the show’s lat­est and most ambi­tious ven­ture: the Korea Tour, a sea­son of con­ver­sa­tions record­ed all around the most fas­ci­nat­ing coun­try in Asia today.

You may well have already enjoyed the con­sid­er­able and often sur­pris­ing fruits of mod­ern Kore­an cul­ture through its film (Hong Sang­soo’s work first pulled me in, and boy, does it con­tin­ue to), its music (which, I can assure you, goes well beyond Girls’ Gen­er­a­tion and “Gang­nam Style”), its tele­vi­sion (which, by the same token, offers more than all report­ed­ly addic­tive melo­dra­mas), or its food (the expe­ri­ence of which does­n’t start and end at bar­be­cue joints). On Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture’s Korea Tour, you’ll go much deep­er, hear­ing from a wide vari­ety of inter­est­ing peo­ple based in Korea, out­side as well as in the vast and undoubt­ed­ly excit­ing cap­i­tal of Seoul. I’ll talk to as wide a range as pos­si­ble of Kore­ans and for­eign­ers alike, includ­ing the lit­er­ar­i­ly, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, culi­nar­i­ly, and cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly inclined — to name but a few of their many incli­na­tions.

If you’d like to make the Korea Tour hap­pen, please do vis­it its Kick­starter page with­in the week, dur­ing which we’ll need to raise its $5000 bud­get. Should you decide to become a backer, rewards include post­cards from Korea, men­tions of your project or mes­sage on the show, and copies from the very-lim­it­ed-indeed print run of my tex­tu­al and pho­to­graph­ic Korea Diary. 여러분, 읽어 주셔서 감사합니다. 한국에 갑시다!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture,” a World­wide In-Depth Inter­view Pod­cast, Kick­start­ing Now

A Wealth of 20th-Cen­tu­ry Kore­an Cin­e­ma, Free Online from the Kore­an Film Archive

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.

Free Online Shakespeare Courses: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Harvard, Berkeley & More

in Literature, Online Courses | April 7th, 2014

I had the great good for­tune of hav­ing grown up just out­side Wash­ing­ton, DC, where on a fifth grade class trip to the Fol­ger Library and The­ater, I fell in love with Shake­speare. This expe­ri­ence, along with a few vis­its to see his plays per­formed at near­by Wolf­trap, made me think I might go into the­ater. Instead I became a stu­dent of lit­er­a­ture, but some­how, my love of Shake­speare on the stage didn’t trans­late to the page until col­lege.  While study­ing for a sopho­more-lev­el “His­to­ries & Tragedies” class, I sat, my Nor­ton Shake­speare open, in front of the TV—reading along while watch­ing Ken­neth Branagh’s styl­ish film adap­ta­tion of Ham­let, which draws on the entire text of the play.

Only then came the epiphany: this lan­guage is music and mag­ic. The rhyth­mic beau­ty, depths of feel­ing, humor broad and inci­sive, extra­or­di­nary range of human types.… If we are to believe pre-emi­nent Shake­speare schol­ar Harold Bloom, Shake­speare invent­ed mod­ern human­i­ty. If this seems to go too far, he at least cap­tured human com­plex­i­ty with greater inven­tive skill than any Eng­lish writer before him, and pos­si­bly after. Is there any shame in final­ly “get­ting” Shakespeare’s lan­guage from the movies? None at all. One of the most excel­lent qual­i­ties of the Bard’s work—among so many rea­sons it endures—is its seem­ing­ly end­less adapt­abil­i­ty to every pos­si­ble peri­od, cul­tur­al con­text, and medi­um.

While engage­ment with any of the innu­mer­able Shake­speare adap­ta­tions and per­for­mances promis­es reward, there’s lit­tle that enhances appre­ci­a­tion of the Bard’s work more than read­ing it under the tute­lage of a trained schol­ar in the playwright’s Eliz­a­bethan lan­guage and his­to­ry. Uni­ver­sal though he may be, Shake­speare wrote his plays in a par­tic­u­lar time and place, under spe­cif­ic influ­ences and work­ing con­di­tions. If you have not had the plea­sure of study­ing the plays in a col­lege setting—or if your mem­o­ries of those long-ago Eng­lish class­es have faded—we offer a num­ber of excel­lent free online cours­es from some of the finest uni­ver­si­ties. See a list below, all of which appear in our list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er list of 875 Free Online Cours­es.

Also, speak­ing of the Fol­ger, that ven­er­a­ble insti­tu­tion has just released all of Shakespeare’s plays in free, search­able online texts based on their high­ly-regard­ed schol­ar­ly print edi­tions. And though some beg to dif­fer, I still say you can’t go wrong with Branagh.

• Approach­ing Shake­speare – Free iTunes Audio — Free Online Audio -Emma Smith, Oxford
• Shake­speare After All: The Lat­er Plays – Free Course in Mul­ti­ple For­mats – Mar­jorie Gar­ber, Har­vard
• Shakespeare’s Prin­ci­pal Plays — Free iTunes Audio – Free Online Audio — Ralph Williams, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan
• Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays — Free Online Audio – William Flesch, Bran­deis
• Not Shake­speare: Eliz­a­bethan and Jacobean Pop­u­lar The­atre –Free iTunes Audio — Free Online Audio — Mul­ti­ple profs, Oxford
• Shake­speare — Free iTunes Audio — Free Online Audio — Charles Altieri, UC Berke­ley

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

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

Batman Stars in an Unusual Cartoon Adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature | April 7th, 2014

On Fri­day, Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment topped our crowd­sourced list of Books Intel­li­gent Peo­ple Should Read.  If you haven’t read Dos­toyevsky’s clas­sic nov­el of mur­der and guilt, you should give it a go. But if you’re look­ing for a lighter, more play­ful take on the nov­el, we give you Dos­toyevsky Comics, a short car­toon adap­ta­tion that some­how inserts Bat­man into the Russ­ian tale. The com­ic was authored by R. Siko­ryak, who spe­cial­izes in cre­at­ing com­ic par­o­dies of lit­er­ary clas­sics. You can pur­chase his Mas­ter­piece Comics on Ama­zon here.

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:

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Free Com­ic Books Turn Kids Onto Physics: Start with the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained a Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946) 

Bat­girl Fights for Equal Pay in a 1960s Tele­vi­sion Ad Sup­port­ing The Equal Pay Act

Soviet Artists Envision a Communist Utopia in Outer Space

in Art, Astronomy | April 7th, 2014

Sovi­et artists had been toil­ing for years on a cre­ative, col­lec­tive future vision by the time David Bowie got around to launch­ing Major Tom into out­er space.

As Vincze Mik­lós reports on io9, their efforts extend­ed the hope of a “work­er’s Utopia on Earth” to des­ti­na­tions in the solar sys­tem.

In 1965, film­mak­er Pavel Klushant­sev’s Stantsi­ia “Luna” (Sta­tion Moon) treat­ed chil­dren to a high­ly sat­is­fy­ing vision of the lunar sur­face as a bustling con­struc­tion site.

Work­ers, hell. It’s not hard to imag­ine Andrei Sokolov, whose paint­ings were exhib­it­ed aboard the Mir sta­tion, pro­duc­ing high qual­i­ty ren­der­ings for Mad Men’s Don Drap­er to show high-rolling Mar­t­ian clients.

And pop sci­ence mag Tekhni­ka Molodezhi (“Tech­nol­o­gy for the Youth”) pro­mot­ed the space race with pages of intrigu­ing four-col­or images. The doll­house-like cross sec­tion (above) of a com­mu­nal res­i­dence below the moon’s crust is prac­ti­cal­ly scream­ing Wes Ander­son’s name.

Those who’ve nev­er had much stom­ach for the Jet­sons’ prim­i­tive aes­thet­ic might find this lush Sovi­et vision much eas­i­er to swal­low.

More images can be found at io9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Glo­ry to the Con­querors of the Uni­verse!”: Pro­pa­gan­da Posters from the Sovi­et Space Race (1958–1963)

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Enjoy 15+ Hours of the Weird and Won­der­ful World of Post Sovi­et Russ­ian Ani­ma­tion

“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impos­si­ble to Fake the Moon Land­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Old Books Bound in Human Skin Found in Harvard Libraries (and Elsewhere in Boston)

in Books, History | April 6th, 2014

For at least a decade now, the “death of print” has seemed all but inevitable. Amidst all the nos­tal­gia for print­ed lit­er­a­ture, it’s easy to for­get that mass-pro­duced books and media, and a lit­er­ate pop­u­la­tion, are fair­ly recent phe­nom­e­na in human his­to­ry. Books—whether print­ed or hand-copied—had a totemic sta­tus for thou­sands of years, giv­en that they were kept under the pro­tec­tion of an edu­cat­ed elite, who were among the few able to read and inter­pret them. Even after the age of print­ing, books were rare and hard to come by, large­ly too expen­sive for most peo­ple to afford until the advent of paper­backs.

A gris­ly reminder of the book’s sta­tus as an almost mag­i­cal object sur­faced in Harvard’s rare book col­lec­tion a few years ago. In 2006, librar­i­ans dis­cov­ered at least three vol­umes bound in human skin—and as trav­el site Road­trip­pers reports, “in one case, skin har­vest­ed from a man who was flayed alive.” Grue­some as all this seems, the prac­tice of skin-bind­ing was appar­ent­ly not the sole province of ser­i­al killers:

As it turns out, the prac­tice of using human skin to bind books was actu­al­ly pret­ty pop­u­lar dur­ing the 17th cen­tu­ry. It’s referred to as Anthro­po­der­mic bib­liop­e­gy and proved pret­ty com­mon when it came to anatom­i­cal text­books. Med­ical pro­fes­sion­als would often use the flesh of cadav­ers they’d dis­sect­ed dur­ing their research.

The book sup­pos­ed­ly made of flayed skin is a Span­ish law text from the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry titled Prac­ti­carum quaes­tion­um cir­ca leg­es regias (above). Despite an inscrip­tion nam­ing the deceased and claim­ing his skin as the bind­ing, this vol­ume has actu­al­ly just been iden­ti­fied as sheepskin—according to a Har­vard Law Library blog post from yesterday—“thanks to a tech­nique for iden­ti­fy­ing pro­teins that was devel­oped in the last twen­ty years.” Spec­u­lates the Law Library post:

Per­haps before it arrived at HLS [Har­vard Law School] in 1946, the book was bound in a dif­fer­ent bind­ing at some point in its his­to­ry. Or per­haps the inscrip­tion was sim­ply the prod­uct of someone’s macabre imag­i­na­tion.

Nev­er­the­less, oth­er human skin-bound books exist—as far as librar­i­ans and sci­en­tists can deter­mine. For­mer direc­tor of libraries for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ken­tucky Lawrence S. Thomp­son claims that the prac­tice dates as far back as a 13th cen­tu­ry French Bible and became more com­mon in the 16th and 17th cen­turies. A 1933 Crim­son arti­cle men­tioned anoth­er skin-bound book in a col­lec­tion of minia­ture books, includ­ing this graph­ic detail: “removal of 20 square inch­es of skin from his back failed to impair the health of its donor, who is still alive and in the best of con­di­tion.”

Anoth­er skin-bound vol­ume, which Thomp­son calls “the most famous of all anthro­po­der­mic bind­ings,” resides across the riv­er from Har­vard at inde­pen­dent library the Boston Athenaeum. Called The High­way­man: Nar­ra­tive of the Life of James Allen alias George Wal­ton (above), the book is a mem­oir of the tit­u­lar out­law. The author, reports the Crim­son, “was impressed by the courage of a man whom he once attacked, and when Wal­ton was fac­ing exe­cu­tion, he asked to have his mem­oir bound in his own skin and pre­sent­ed to the brave man.” Thumb through (so to speak) a dig­i­tal copy of Walton’s 1837 mem­oir above, and imag­ine being the recip­i­ent of such a gift.

via Road­trip­pers

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

How a Book Thief Forged a Rare Edi­tion of Galileo’s Sci­en­tif­ic Work, and Almost Pulled it Off

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

The Books You Think Every Intelligent Person Should Read: Crime and Punishment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

in Books | April 6th, 2014

While I nor­mal­ly try not to get involved with com­ments on web sites (you know what I mean), I’d rather get involved with the com­ments of some web sites than oth­ers. I doubt that under­neath any Youtube video, for exam­ple,  you’d find dozens and dozens of well-con­sid­ered sug­ges­tions for the canon of books every intel­li­gent per­son should read, as we did here at Open Cul­ture when we put the ques­tion to you on Wednes­day. In the com­ments to that post as well as on our Face­book Page, we received a host of respons­es scat­tered sat­is­fy­ing­ly across the tex­tu­al map: every­thing from Michel Fou­cault to Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum, Gib­bon’s His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to Bryson’s Short His­to­ry of Near­ly Every­thing, 18th-cen­tu­ry Ger­man philoso­pher Immanuel Kant to rep­til­ian con­spir­a­cy-envi­sion­ing ex-foot­baller David Icke. The top-rank­ing vol­ume? Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment (avail­able, inci­den­tal­ly, in our free eBook col­lec­tion: Kin­dle from Ama­zon – Read Online), fol­lowed by Her­man Melville’s Moby-Dick (avail­able there too: iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats). Let none say that Open Cul­ture read­ers shy away from weighty lit­er­a­ture.

Oth­er, short­er nov­els pop­u­lar­ly sug­gest­ed include Voltaire’s Can­dide (iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats), Joseph Con­rad’s Heart of Dark­ness (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats), and George Orwell’s 1984 (Read Online). We also received a num­ber of votes for books famous­ly pored over for thou­sands upon thou­sands of hours by their enthu­si­asts, such as the Bible, Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats), and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. (Giv­en the for­mi­da­ble inter­net pres­ence of Rand’s read­ers, I expect­ed more of an inun­da­tion of her titles, but they must not have turned out in force this time.) Such clas­sic and decep­tive­ly uni­ver­sal guides to strat­e­gy as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Read Online) and Nic­colò Machi­avel­li’s The Prince (iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats) also placed well, as did books like Pla­to’s Repub­lic (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online), Hen­ry David Thore­au’s Walden (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats), and Her­mann Hes­se’s Sid­dartha (Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats) — the ones you prob­a­bly got assigned once, but that you may not then have under­stood why you should actu­al­ly read. 

The rec­om­men­da­tions fas­ci­nate, but so do their jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. (My per­son­al favorite: “It’s a book about shaman­ism, although it’s not what you would expect from a social­ly accept­ed descrip­tion of shaman­ism.”) Jo Stafford calls Crime and Pun­ish­ment and Moby-Dick, the two big win­ners, “per­fect exam­ples of how great fic­tion can pose the ‘big ques­tions’, par­tic­u­lar­ly around what it means to act moral­ly.” Moira pitch­es Robert M. Pir­sig’s Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance as a “mod­ern study of the schism between clas­si­cist and roman­ti­cist think­ing.” Nick Williams says Can­dide “still feeds the inner cyn­ic,” and Jason con­sid­ers Walden “a bet­ter les­son on cap­i­tal­ism than The Wealth of Nations.” Arthur McMil­lan rec­om­mends Julian Barnes’ A His­to­ry of the World in 10½ Chap­ters by hold­ing out the promise that it “encap­su­lates the sheer futil­i­ty of everything[ness].” Anoth­er read­er sug­gests William Godwin’s Polit­i­cal Enquiry “to be remind­ed what books inspired us to be: free.” Wise words indeed, Mr. Beer N. Hock­ey.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

575 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

What Books Should Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

See Nobel Lau­re­ate Joseph Brodsky’s Read­ing List For Hav­ing an Intel­li­gent Con­ver­sa­tion

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.

Is the Lecture Hall Obsolete?: Thought Leaders Debate the Question

in Education | April 5th, 2014

Update: The debate streamed live ear­li­er this week on our site can now be replayed in its entire­ty. So if you missed it the first time around, here’s your sec­ond chance…

Tonight, at 6:45 East Coast time, you can watch a free, live streamed debate host­ed by Intel­li­gence Squared US. The ques­tion to be debat­ed: “Is the Lec­ture Hall Obso­lete?” Argu­ing for the motion will be Anant Agar­w­al, Pres­i­dent of edX and Pro­fes­sor at MIT, and Ben Nel­son, Founder and CEO of the Min­er­va Project; argu­ing against are Jonathan Cole, Provost and Dean Emer­i­tus of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, and Rebec­ca Schu­man, colum­nist for Slate and the Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion.

You can watch the debate above, or over at FORA.TV. More infor­ma­tion can be found here.

You can also find MOOCs being offered by edX start­ing in April over at our mas­sive col­lec­tion of MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Watch The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain on the 20th Anniversary of the Musician’s Suicide

in Music | April 5th, 2014

There are few things more fraught for a writer or artist than approach­ing a sub­ject that has already passed into pop­u­lar leg­end and myth. This is sure­ly the case with Kurt Cobain, who—deservedly or not—attained a sta­tus as cul­tur­al icon unsur­passed by any mem­ber of his gen­er­a­tion. Cobain com­mit­ted sui­cide an almost unbe­liev­able twen­ty years ago today, and some recent approach­es to his mem­o­ry have been, well, awk­ward to say the least. First, there is the ama­teur­ish com­mem­o­ra­tive stat­ue in Cobain’s home­town of Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton. Var­i­ous­ly described as “bizarre,” “hideous,” and resem­bling a “cry­ing wino,” the mawk­ish statue’s exis­tence is made even more pathet­ic by the fact that Cobain’s home­town didn’t care much for him in life, and the feel­ing was mutu­al. Now Aberdeen wants to cash in, declar­ing a “Kurt Cobain Day.” Aberdeen May­or Bill Simp­son hopes the stat­ue will become “just as big as Grace­land, even­tu­al­ly.” Cobain had a mor­bid sense of humor, but I doubt know­ing he’d be turned into a kitschy tourist des­ti­na­tion would have light­ened the despair of his last days.

As exhib­it B, I offer the media’s cultish fas­ci­na­tion with new­ly-released police pho­tos of Cobain’s death scene. The cov­er­age prompt­ed a CNN arti­cle with what Dead­spin spin-off The Con­course called “The Worst Kurt Cobain Lede Ever” (they go on to mock said lede mer­ci­less­ly, and deserved­ly). Atro­cious though such cov­er­age may be, there’s good rea­son beyond nos­tal­gia, hero-wor­ship, or sick fas­ci­na­tion to revis­it Cobain’s lega­cy. On April 10, Michael Stipe will induct Nir­vana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for­mal­ly enshrin­ing the once scruffy out­siders in the hal­lowed com­pa­ny of ulti­mate rock insid­er-dom. This ges­ture might make some peo­ple (maybe it’s just me) feel a lit­tle con­flict­ed. After all, wasn’t it pre­cise­ly the grandiose, pop­u­lar-kid cul­ture of halls of fame that drove Cobain to the mar­gins, where he did his best work, and ulti­mate­ly drove him to hate what he’d become—a star? In his strange sui­cide note, we see Cobain beat­ing him­self up for being unable to live up to the hype—unable, as he put it, to be a “Fred­dy Mer­cury” and “rel­ish in the love and ado­ra­tion from the crowd.” There’s some­thing, per­haps, almost trag­i­cal­ly insen­si­tive, how­ev­er well-inten­tioned, in posthu­mous­ly turn­ing Kurt Cobain into Elvis.

One might con­sid­er such things while watch­ing the 2006 BBC doc­u­men­tary above, The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain. In con­trast to the sen­sa­tion­al­ism of most Cobain-relat­ed media, its tone is dry and unaf­fect­ed as it can­vass­es the reluc­tant rock star’s life and death, inter­view­ing fel­low rock stars, band mem­bers, and jour­nal­ists, as well as reg­u­lar Joes and Janes who knew and inter­act­ed with him dur­ing his trou­bled youth in Aberdeen. Much more than its title sug­gests, the hour and twen­ty minute doc works well as a biog­ra­phy of Cobain and a brief his­to­ry of Nir­vana and the Seat­tle scene that birthed them. An Aus­tralian mag­a­zine accu­rate­ly describes the film thus:

The doc­u­men­tary includes inter­views with Nir­vana band mem­bers, friends, and wit­ness­es of his where­abouts dur­ing that dread­ful week. The DVD also focus­es on his incred­i­ble tal­ents, show­ing the mak­ing of the track Drain You, excerpts from Smells Like Teen Spir­it, In Bloom, Come As You Are and more. Also fea­tured is the sto­ry behind the con­tro­ver­sial Nev­er­mind cov­er and an inter­view with the star. 

Opin­ion on the film’s qual­i­ty is, unsur­pris­ing­ly, strong­ly divid­ed among Nir­vana fans on Youtube. But as you sure­ly know, with all such wide­ly sen­sa­tion­al­ized sub­jects on the inter­net, it’s gen­er­al­ly best if you don’t read the com­ments.

You can find The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

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

35 Years of Prince’s Hairstyles in 15 Glorious Seconds!

in Art, Comedy, Life, Music | April 5th, 2014

Any­one who’s suf­fered through the hell of grow­ing out a short style or spent a pre-awards show after­noon get­ting sewn into exten­sions will appre­ci­ate the brisk pace of Lon­don-based illus­tra­tor Gary Card’s “Prince Hair Chart” slideshow.

It’s only 15 sec­onds long, but seri­ous­ly, can you name anoth­er Prince with coif­fures amor­phous enough to mer­it such pro­longed gaze?  Cer­tain­ly, not Charles, or even the com­pelling­ly flame-haired Har­ry.

As this chrono­log­i­cal speed-through of 35 years of hair­dos attests, musi­cal chameleon Prince (aka  Love Sym­bol #2, Prince Rogers Nel­son) has nev­er shied from stand­ing out in a crowd. Thir­ty-six looks shim­mer and writhe atop his laven­der pate, as he stares cooly ahead, more man­tis than Medusa.

Not all of them worked. If we were play­ing Who Wore It Bet­ter, I’d have to go with Liza Minel­li (1985) and  Jen­nifer Anis­ton (1990), but the slideshow is rich­er (and a cou­ple of frac­tions of a sec­ond longer) due to such silli­ness.

Doubt­less Prince will have rearranged his locks before the doves can cry again. His lat­est look, as evi­denced by a recent guest cameo oppo­site Zooey Deschanel on the TV com­e­dy, ‘New Girl’, is a return to roots, a la 1978.

via Kot­tke

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Prince tweet­ed about Gary Card’s hair­do overview… so per­haps it’s in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty that he’ll be the next to squawk in her direc­tion  @AyunHalliday