The Big Ideas Behind Andy Warhol’s Art, and How They Can Help Us Build a Better World

in Art | October 29th, 2015

Mul­ti­col­ored Mar­i­lyn Mon­roes, a can of Camp­bel­l’s soup, that sil­ver wig, some vague but impor­tant role in the for­ma­tion of the Vel­vet Under­ground — how much, apart from a scat­ter­ing of cul­tur­al scraps such as these, does any of us real­ly know about Andy Warhol, one of the defin­ers of art in the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry? Ear­li­er this year, we fea­tured a video from John Green and Sarah Urist Green’s The Art Assign­ment that made the case for Andy Warhol in three min­utes. Assum­ing you accept its argu­ment, where to look next to cul­ti­vate a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion of the man who pro­duced those Mar­i­lyns and Camp­bel­l’s soup cans, wore that sil­ver wig, and presided over the envi­ron­ment in which the likes of the Vel­vet Under­ground could take shape?

Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life, not just an insti­tu­tion but a pro­lif­ic mak­er of edu­ca­tion­al videos, has dou­bled down on the case for Andy Warhol with a six-minute video of their own, which comes as the first in their series of short primers on fig­ures from art and archi­tec­ture. (See a com­plete playlist of those videos below.) “Andy Warhol was the most glam­orous fig­ure of 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can art,” de Bot­ton unequiv­o­cal­ly states, adding that his “great achieve­ment was to devel­op a gen­er­ous and help­ful view of two major forces in mod­ern soci­ety: com­merce and celebri­ty.”

With­in this frame­work, the les­son finds “four big ideas behind Andy Warhol’s work, which can teach us a more inspired way of look­ing at the world and prompt us to build a bet­ter soci­ety” — and which, in this tech­no­log­i­cal age of which Warhol him­self could only dream, have become more eas­i­ly imple­mentable than ever.

These ideas, on which the video elab­o­rates ver­bal­ly and visu­al­ly, have to do with (1) appre­ci­at­ing life by exam­in­ing the stuff of it — such as a hum­ble soup can — more close­ly, (2) improv­ing the work­ings of soci­ety by dis­trib­ut­ing glam­or dif­fer­ent­ly, grant­i­ng high­er sta­tus to maids and show­ing the nation the Pres­i­dent clean­ing a toi­let once in a while, (3) approach­ing busi­ness as a par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing form of art while dis­trib­ut­ing art more wide­ly by approach­ing it as a busi­ness, and (4) using an open and non-vin­dic­tive per­son­al­i­ty as a kind of “brand” to unite seem­ing­ly dis­parate artis­tic and com­mer­cial ven­tures into a coher­ent whole. Will any of this get you shop­ping for a Mar­i­lyn print of your own? It may or may not, but you won’t come away with­out a bit of inspi­ra­tion for how to take your own pur­suits to a new, more Warho­lian lev­el.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Min­utes

Watch the Uncen­sored Andy Warhol-Direct­ed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hel­lo Again” (NSFW)

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Andy Warhol’s 1965 Film, Vinyl, Adapt­ed from Antho­ny Burgess’ A Clock­work Orange

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

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

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An Animated Bill Murray on the Advantages & Disadvantages of Fame

in Animation | October 28th, 2015

I could watch Bill Mur­ray in pret­ty much any film. And, for that mat­ter, any ani­ma­tion too.

So let’s queue up the brand new ani­mat­ed video from Blank on Blank, and watch Mur­ray riff on the pros and cons of being rich & famous.

Pro: You get to buy your moth­er a nice new car.

Con: When her car breaks down, she does­n’t just get the car towed. She whips out your Amex card and buys the tow truck too. And so it goes.

The inter­view from this Blank on Blank episode was record­ed in 1988 by writer T.J. Eng­lish, while writ­ing a pro­file on Bill Mur­ray for Irish Amer­i­ca mag­a­zine. Find more Blank on Blank ani­ma­tions list­ed in the Relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joni Mitchell Talks About Life as a Reluc­tant Star in a New Ani­mat­ed Inter­view

New Ani­ma­tion: Hunter S. Thomp­son Talks with Studs Terkel About the Hell’s Angels & The Out­law Life

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

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Stream the Complete Works of Bach & Beethoven: 250 Free Hours of Music

in Music | October 28th, 2015

Beethoven_Bach

Has the end­less dis­trac­tion of mod­ern life destroyed our abil­i­ty to sit with the sym­phonies of Beethoven and Bach? Do we no longer have the atten­tion span to read nov­els? These are the kinds of ques­tions schol­ar Alan Jacobs asks in books like The Plea­sures of Read­ing in an Age of Dis­trac­tion, and they’re ques­tions he admits—on his blog Text Pat­terns—may obtain dif­fer­ent answers depend­ing on the age of whom you ask. In a post from this past August, Jacobs wrote of his need to coun­ter­act social media with “the more peace­able and order­ly music of Bach and Mozart and Han­del,” and pon­dered the emo­tion­al resilience of younger peo­ple exposed pret­ty much dai­ly to videos of real-life vio­lence online. “It occurs to me,” he con­cludes, “maybe Twitter—maybe social media more generally—really is a young person’s thing after all. Intrin­si­cal­ly, not just acci­den­tal­ly.”

I admit, Jacobs’ post res­onat­ed with me because of the dif­fi­cul­ty I some­times have as I get old­er in dis­con­nect­ing from the con­stant stream of hor­ror and triv­i­al­i­ty on social media—and of get­ting lost in a good book or a mov­ing piece of music after wit­ness­ing spec­ta­cle after spec­ta­cle online. Per­haps it is a func­tion of age, as Jacobs sur­mis­es, and the young are bet­ter equipped to bounce right back. Or per­haps our dai­ly expo­sure to end­less con­flict has all of our ner­vous sys­tems frayed raw, leav­ing us unable to appre­ci­ate the “coun­ter­vail­ing forces” of music and lit­er­a­ture that demands sus­tained atten­tion. The Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlist blog seems to sug­gest as much in quot­ing Pol­ish com­pos­er Witold Lutoslaws­ki’s claim, “peo­ple whose sen­si­bil­i­ty is destroyed by music in trains, air­ports, lifts, can­not con­cen­trate on a Beethoven Quar­tet.” Sub­sti­tute “Twit­ter tsuna­mi” and “24-hour cable news” for “music in trains, air­ports, lifts” and the point may apply to our cur­rent cul­tur­al con­di­tion.

So you may think of the Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists of all of Beethoven and all of Bach fea­tured here as exer­cis­es in increas­ing your men­tal sta­mi­na, or as ther­a­peu­tic “cop­ing mech­a­nisms” as Jacobs writes, to keep “emo­tion­al bal­ance.” You may think of them as ways to con­nect ful­ly with com­posers who lived in a world very dif­fer­ent from ours, one that moved much more slow­ly and demand­ed much less of our over­taxed sens­es.

Or you can choose not to apply any kind of frame­work, and sim­ply rev­el in the fact that thanks to the internet—be it over­all a scourge or a boon to human life—you can now enjoy all of the works of Beethoven and Bach, each in chrono­log­i­cal order; 250 hours of enthralling clas­si­cal music, for free. So enjoy. And learn more about how these playlists were com­piled at the the Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal blog. And if you need Spo­ti­fy soft­ware, get it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Per­for­mances Online

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

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

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New Film Extraordinary Tales Animates Edgar Poe Stories, with Narrations by Guillermo Del Toro, Christopher Lee & More

in Animation, Film, Literature | October 28th, 2015

Edgar Allan Poe cre­at­ed a body of work that will seem­ing­ly nev­er go out of style, espe­cial­ly around Hal­loween time. Not only do his sto­ries and poems still inspire dread in the 21st cen­tu­ry, but so also do the many hun­dreds of Poe retellings and adap­ta­tions cre­at­ed in the 166 years since the author’s mys­te­ri­ous death. But, we might ask, after so many film adap­ta­tions from so many clas­sic hor­ror actors and direc­tors, whether we need yet anoth­er one? You’ll have to make up your own mind, but if you’re any­thing like me, you’ll watch the trail­er above for Lion King and Aladdin ani­ma­tor Raul Garcia’s Poe anthol­o­gy Extra­or­di­nary Tales and answer “Yes!” and “More please!” And you can see more, in the clips below from Garcia’s incred­i­ble-look­ing film, hit­ting the­aters on Octo­ber 23rd.

One rea­son the new treat­ment of the five sto­ries Gar­cia ani­mates seems to work so well is that they draw on the tal­ents of actors and direc­tors who have pre­vi­ous­ly deliv­ered clas­sic Poe retellings. For exam­ple, “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” above, is nar­rat­ed by the late, great Christo­pher Lee, who joins hor­ror leg­end Vin­cent Price as one of the great­est read­ers of Poe’s “The Raven.” The voice-over is Lee’s last role, and it’s hard to think of a more fit­ting final act for the ven­er­a­ble hor­ror maven. (Lee was also at the time record­ing “a heavy-met­al-rock-opera based on Charlemagne’s life”—one of many met­al albums he record­ed.)

Gar­cia has cre­at­ed a unique look for each fea­turette. For “Ush­er,” he tells Car­los Aguilar at Indiewire, “the idea was for the char­ac­ters to look as if they were carved out of wood, like if they were fig­ures that belonged to Czech ani­ma­tor Jirí Trn­ka.” Just hear­ing Lee above intone the phrase “an unex­pect­ed sense of insuf­fer­able gloom” is enough to con­vince me I need to see the rest of this film.

Just above, we have a clip from a much less famous Poe sto­ry, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valde­mar,” a chill­ing detec­tive tale about a man mes­mer­ized in artic­u­lo mor­tis—at the moment of death. Nar­rat­ed by Eng­lish actor Julian Sands, who has made his own appear­ances in sev­er­al hor­ror films, the ani­ma­tion style comes direct­ly out of clas­sic E.C. hor­ror comics like Tales From the Crypt, which drew many an idea from Poe, bas­ing one sto­ry “The Liv­ing Death!” on “M. Valde­mar.” The “mauve, yel­low and mossy green com­ic-book pan­els,” writes a New York Times review, “prove that you don’t need fan­cy tech­nol­o­gy to achieve a third dimen­sion.”

You’ll notice the unmis­tak­able vis­age of Vin­cent Price in the char­ac­ter of the mes­merist, and you’ll like­ly know of Price’s own turn as Poe him­self in An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe. Price also starred in Roger Cor­man’s many Poe adap­ta­tions—begin­ning with House of Ush­er—and Gar­cia has tapped the leg­endary Cor­man’s voice for Extra­or­di­nary Tales, as well as con­tem­po­rary hor­ror direc­tor extra­or­di­naire Guiller­mo Del Toro. And if this weren’t hor­ror roy­al­ty enough, Garcia’s ani­mat­ed take on “The Tell-Tale Heart” fea­tures none oth­er than Bela Lugosi, in an archival read­ing of the sto­ry the Drac­u­la actor made some­time before his death in 1956. Read more about how Gar­cia found the Lugosi audio and con­ceived of Extra­or­di­nary Tales in his inter­view here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Vin­cent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries (1970)

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Clas­sics Sto­ries by Edgar Allan Poe Nar­rat­ed by James Mason in a 1953 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Ani­ma­tion & 1958 Dec­ca Album

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise 166 Years Ago Today

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

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Free Documentary View from the Overlook: Crafting The Shining Looks at How Kubrick Made “the World’s Scariest Movie”

in Film | October 28th, 2015

Only three days remain until Hal­loween, the evening on which every­one loves a scary movie. If you watch one your­self this Hal­loween, why set­tle for a scary movie when you could watch the world’s scari­est movie? Or rather, when you could watch what result­ed when one of the most vision­ary auteurs in cin­e­ma his­to­ry put his mind to craft­ing the world’s scari­est movie: The Shin­ing. Whether or not you think it holds that par­tic­u­lar title, Stan­ley Kubrick­’s adap­ta­tion — or, more accu­rate­ly, total cin­e­mat­ic re-envi­sion­ing — of Stephen King’s nov­el has, since its ini­tial release in 1980, tran­scend­ed the realm of the “scary movie” and tak­en a place in the zeit­geist as some­thing more com­plex, more icon­ic, and more per­sis­tent­ly haunt­ing.

Undead twin girls want­i­ng to play, blood flow­ing from ele­va­tors, a man­u­script con­sist­ing of a sin­gle phrase cease­less­ly repeat­ed, “REDRUM” scrawled on a door, a dog-cos­tumed Jazz Age deca­dent, Jack Nichol­son wield­ing an axe: how did Kubrick and com­pa­ny man­age to lodge so per­ma­nent­ly into our sub­con­scious these deeply trou­bling images? Gary Lev­a’s half-hour doc­u­men­tary View from the Over­look: Craft­ing the Shin­ing tries to answer that ques­tion, bring­ing in a group of inter­vie­wees includ­ing Kubrick­’s biog­ra­phers, his col­leagues in film­mak­ing like Syd­ney Pol­lack and William Fried­kin, and his col­lab­o­ra­tors like The Shin­ing’s exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Jan Har­lan, pro­duc­tion design­er Roy Walk­er, and screen­writer Diane John­son. (Jack Nichol­son also makes an insight­ful and non-scary — or at least less scary — appear­ance as him­self.)

View from the Over­look reveals that the vis­cer­al impact of The Shin­ing, a form­less unease that trans­forms into sharp-edged hor­ror as the film goes on, came as a result of (and this will sur­prise no fan of Kubrick­’s) hard, delib­er­ate work, from the dis­man­tling and rebuild­ing of King’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, to the con­struc­tion of the Over­look Hotel out of a mix­ture of real loca­tions and elab­o­rate sets mod­eled on real loca­tions, to the use of new kinds of cam­era rigs (cam­era oper­a­tor Gar­rett Brown hav­ing invent­ed the Steadicam, a device this pro­duc­tion more than put through its paces), and Kubrick­’s infa­mous, actor-break­ing take after take after take. I did­n’t know about any of this, of course, when I first saw The Shin­ing, pop­ping in a VHS copy late at night dur­ing a junior-high Hal­loween par­ty. But now I won’t for­get it — or any­thing else about this (quite pos­si­bly) scari­est movie ever made.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of The Shin­ing

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing Reimag­ined as Wes Ander­son and David Lynch Movies

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

Saul Bass’ Reject­ed Poster Con­cepts for The Shin­ing (and His Pret­ty Excel­lent Sig­na­ture)

The Hedge Maze from The Shin­ing Gets Recre­at­ed by Mythbuster’s Adam Sav­age

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

Down­load & Play The Shin­ing Board Game

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

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55 Covers of Vintage Philosophy, Psychology & Science Books Come to Life in a Short Animation

in Animation, Art, Books, Design | October 27th, 2015

We all know that toys come alive at night, but what about mid-cen­tu­ry vin­tage paper­back cov­ers, such as you might find in the psy­chol­o­gy or phi­los­o­phy sec­tions of a dim­ly-lit used book­store?

Watch­ing 55 min­i­mal­ist cov­ers from graph­ic and motion design­er Hen­ning M. Led­er­er’s 2200 title-strong col­lec­tion begin to spin, drift, and seethe in the short ani­ma­tion above, I got the impres­sion that they were the ones dic­tat­ing the terms. Or per­haps Led­er­er is the ves­sel through which the inten­tions of the orig­i­nal design­ers—Rudolph de Harak and John + Mary Con­don to name a few—flow. Cov­ers is not an act of reimag­i­na­tion or crowd-pleas­ing irrev­er­ence, but rather one log­i­cal motion, ele­gant­ly applied.

Habitués of used book­stores may find their usu­al brows­ing habits slight­ly altered by the hyp­not­ic results.

Led­er­er makes no bones about judg­ing books by their cov­ers. Strong graph­ics, not con­tent, are the pri­ma­ry deter­min­ing fac­tor as to which titles he acquires. The state­ly geo­met­rics set in motion here are relics from anoth­er age, but the unclut­tered abstracts so favored by 60s era pub­lish­ers are not the only genre to catch his eye.

Shame Drifter, Dusky Desire, and Sin­sur­ance are some of the decid­ed­ly non-min­i­mal­ist titles spic­ing up his collection’s online gallery. After all of those arrows, angles, and spheres, Led­er­er might have craved ani­mat­ing some­thing with a bit more…personality.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

Illus­tra­tions for a Chi­nese Lord of the Rings in a Stun­ning “Glass Paint­ing Style”

Loli­ta Book Cov­ers: 100+ Designs From 37 Coun­tries (Plus Nabokov’s Favorite Design)

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her post-dig­i­tal, pre apoc­a­lyp­tic dark com­e­dy, Fawn­book, is now play­ing in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Compelling Poems

in Audio Books, Poetry | October 27th, 2015

No mat­ter how casu­al a rela­tion­ship you’ve had with 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can poet­ry, you’ve heard the name Sylvia Plath. Maybe you’ve already dared to expe­ri­ence her dark but com­pelling lit­er­ary world, or maybe you just know a few of the basic ele­ments of her life and career: her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el The Bell Jar, her famous­ly har­row­ing poet­ry col­lec­tion Ariel, her stormy mar­riage to British poet lau­re­ate Ted Hugh­es, her death by her own hand at the age of thir­ty. But what bet­ter day than today, the 83rd anniver­sary of Plath’s birth, to get bet­ter acquaint­ed with her work?

And what bet­ter way than to hear that work read in Plath’s own voice? Sure, you could just pick up one of the many yel­lowed mass-mar­ket paper­back copies of Ariel you see on book­shelves all across Amer­i­ca and plunge in, but you might first con­sid­er turn­ing to our archives, which con­tain a 2013 post in which we fea­tured Plath read­ing fif­teen poems that would appear in the Ariel col­lec­tion that, pub­lished two years after her death (“left sit­ting on the kitchen table to be found along with her body,” not­ed Josh Jones), would raise her poet­ic rep­u­ta­tion to new heights. You can hear the first part of these read­ings, record­ed in 1962, at the top of this post, and the rest at this orig­i­nal post.

We might feel lucky that, in her short life, she left even those per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty, but there’s more: last year, we fea­tured Sylvia Plath read­ing her poet­ry, the 1977 record released by pio­neer­ing pre-audio­book label Caed­mon which con­tains 23 poems Plath com­mit­ted to tape as ear­ly as 1959. Find all of the read­ings here.

If these two audio col­lec­tions give you a taste for the poet biog­ra­ph­er Carl Rollyson called “the Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe of mod­ern lit­er­a­ture,” have a lis­ten to Cre­do Records’ album Sylvia Plath, which offers some mate­r­i­al you’ll have heard along­side some you won’t have. Hav­ing lis­tened to all this, you’ll hard­ly asso­ciate the adjec­tive “cel­e­bra­to­ry” with Plath’s work — but that does­n’t mean that, on what would have been her 83rd birth­day, poet­ry-lovers can’t cel­e­brate it.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Sylvia Plath Reads Her Poet­ry: 23 Poems from the Last 6 Years of Her Life

Sylvia Plath, Girl Detec­tive Offers a Hilar­i­ous­ly Cheery Take on the Poet’s Col­lege Years

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

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See Galileo’s Famous Gravity Experiment Performed in the World’s Largest Vacuum Chamber, and on the Moon

in Physics, Science | October 27th, 2015

It is one of the most famous exper­i­ments in all of sci­ence his­to­ry, but there’s sig­nif­i­cant doubt about whether it actu­al­ly took place. Did Galileo drop objects of dif­fer­ing mass from the Lean­ing Tow­er of Pisa in 1589 to demon­strate the the­o­ries pro­posed in his unpub­lished text De motu (“Of Motion”)? Rice University’s Galileo Project notes that schol­ars have long thought Galileo’s ref­er­ences to exper­i­ments he con­duct­ed “were only rhetor­i­cal devices.” As PBS’s NOVA writes, “it’s the kind of sto­ry that’s easy to imag­ine, easy to remem­ber, but whether he ever per­formed the exper­i­ment at the tow­er is debat­able.” That’s not to say Galileo didn’t test any of his ideas while he taught at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pisa dur­ing 1589 and 1592, only that his most famous the­o­ry about the effects of grav­i­ty on free-falling objects rests main­ly on a con­cep­tu­al thought exper­i­ment.

In fact, it would have been impos­si­ble for Galileo to ful­ly demon­strate his the­o­ry because of the effects of air resis­tance. Sub­tract the atmos­phere, how­ev­er, and we can eas­i­ly con­firm Galileo’s hypoth­e­sis that any two objects, regard­less of weight, shape, or mate­r­i­al of com­po­si­tion, will fall at exact­ly the same rate when dropped. One of the most mem­o­rable times this exper­i­ment did take place was not in Italy or any­where else on earth, but on the Moon, when astro­naut David Scott, com­man­der of the Apol­lo 15 mis­sion, dropped a geo­log­ic ham­mer and a falcon’s feath­er at the same time in 1971 (above).

As cool as Com­man­der Scott’s exper­i­ment is, it’s still not as dra­mat­ic as the ver­sion of the exper­i­ment at the top of the post, con­duct­ed at NASA’s Space Pow­er Facil­i­ty in Ohio in the world’s largest vac­u­um cham­ber. A great deal of the dra­ma comes cour­tesy of physi­cist Bri­an Cox, who presents the exper­i­ment for BBC Two’s Human Uni­verse, explain­ing the his­to­ry and con­struc­tion of the vac­u­um cham­ber, which sim­u­lates the con­di­tions of out­er space. Then we’ve got the mul­ti­ple cam­era angles and dra­mat­ic music… typ­i­cal TV show stuff, effec­tive nonethe­less at set­ting us up for the big drop. Even though we “know how the exper­i­ment will end,” points out io9, and may have seen it per­formed before—on the Moon even—this demon­stra­tion is some­thing spe­cial.

First, we get an anti­cli­mac­tic drop of the objects—a bowl­ing ball and a feather—while the cham­ber is still full of air. As expect­ed, the ball plum­mets, the feath­ers gen­tly drift. Then, in a sequence right out of a sci-fi film, engi­neers seal off the enor­mous cham­ber, and the three-hour removal of air is tele­scoped into a few sec­ond mon­tage of push­ings of but­tons and mum­blings into inter­coms. What hap­pens next will… well, you know the click­bait ver­biage. But it cer­tain­ly sur­pris­es Cox and a room­ful of NASA engi­neers. Cox goes on to explain, using Einstein’s the­o­ry of gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty, that the rea­son the objects fall at the same rate is “because they’re not falling; they’re stand­ing still.” The sci­ence may be com­mon knowl­edge, but see­ing it in action is indeed pret­ty mind blow­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Physics Intro­duces the Dis­cov­er­ies of Galileo, New­ton, Maxwell & Ein­stein

Galileo’s Moon Draw­ings, the First Real­is­tic Depic­tions of the Moon in His­to­ry (1609–1610)

Bohemi­an Grav­i­ty: String The­o­ry Explored With an A Cap­pel­la Ver­sion of Bohemi­an Rhap­sody

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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

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The First Horror Film, Georges Méliès’ The Haunted Castle (1896)

in Film | October 27th, 2015

In lit­er­a­ture, graph­ic descrip­tions of men­ace and dis­mem­ber­ment by mon­sters are as old as Beowulf and much, much old­er still, though it wasn’t until Horace Walpole’s 18th cen­tu­ry nov­el The Cas­tle of Otran­to inspired the goth­ic romance nov­el that hor­ror-qua-hor­ror came into fash­ion. With­out Wal­pole, and bet­ter-known goth­ic inno­va­tors like Mary Shel­ley and Bram Stok­er, we’d like­ly nev­er have had Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Love­craft, or Stephen King. But nowa­days when we think of hor­ror, we usu­al­ly think of film—and all of its var­i­ous con­tem­po­rary sub­gen­res, includ­ing creepy psy­cho­log­i­cal twists on good-old-fash­ion mon­ster movies, like The Babadook.

But from whence came the hor­ror film? Was it 1931, a ban­ner hor­ror year in which audi­ences saw both Boris Karloff in James Whale’s Franken­stein and Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s Drac­u­la? Cer­tain­ly clas­sic films by mas­ters of the genre, but they did not orig­i­nate the hor­ror movie. There is, of course, F.W. Murnau’s ter­ri­fy­ing silent Nos­fer­atu from 1922 (and the real life hor­ror of its deceased director’s miss­ing head).

And what about Ger­man expres­sion­ism? “A case can be made,” argued Roger Ebert, that Robert Weine’s 1920 The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari “was the first true hor­ror film”—a “sub­jec­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal fan­ta­sy” in which “unspeak­able hor­ror becomes pos­si­ble.” Per­haps. But even before Weine’s still-effec­tive­ly-dis­ori­ent­ing cin­e­mat­ic work dis­turbed audi­ences world­wide, there was Paul Wegener’s first, 1915 ver­sion of The Golem, a char­ac­ter, writes Penn State’s Kevin Jack Hagopi­an, that served as “one of the most sig­nif­i­cant ances­tors to the cin­e­mat­ic Franken­stein of James Whale and Boris Karloff.“ Even ear­li­er, in 1910, Thomas Edi­son pro­duced an adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s mon­ster sto­ry.

So how far back do we have to go to find the first hor­ror movie? Almost as far back as the very ori­gins of film, it seems—to 1896, when French spe­cial-effects genius Georges Méliès made the three plus minute short above, Le Manoir du Dia­ble (The Haunt­ed Cas­tle, or the Manor of the Dev­il). Méliès, known for his silent sci-fi fan­ta­sy A Trip to the Moon—and for the trib­ute paid to him in Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hugo—used his inno­v­a­tive meth­ods to tell a sto­ry, writes Mau­rice Bab­bis at Emer­son Uni­ver­si­ty jour­nal Latent Image, of “a large bat that flies into a room and trans­forms into Mephistophe­les. He then stands over a caul­dron and con­jures up a girl along with some phan­toms and skele­tons and witch­es, but then one of them pulls out a cru­ci­fix and the demon dis­ap­pears.” Not much of a sto­ry, grant­ed, and it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly scary, but it is an excel­lent exam­ple of a tech­nique Méliès sup­pos­ed­ly dis­cov­ered that very year. Accord­ing to Earlycinema.com,

In the Autumn of 1896, an event occurred which has since passed into film folk­lore and changed the way Méliès looked at film­mak­ing. Whilst film­ing a sim­ple street scene, Méliès cam­era jammed and it took him a few sec­onds to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem. Think­ing no more about the inci­dent, Méliès processed the film and was struck by the effect such a inci­dent had on the scene — objects sud­den­ly appeared, dis­ap­peared or were trans­formed into oth­er objects.

Thus was born The Haunt­ed Cas­tle, tech­ni­cal­ly the first hor­ror film, and one of the first movies—likely the very first—to delib­er­ate­ly use spe­cial effects to fright­en its view­ers.

The Haunt­ed Cas­tle has been added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films: Kubrick, Hitch­cock, Tourneur & More

Watch 8 Clas­sic Cult Films for Free: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Plan 9 from Out­er Space & More

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Watch 10 Clas­sic Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Fritz Lang’s M to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

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

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Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Freddie Mercury’s Final Video Performance

in Music | October 26th, 2015

How­ev­er you feel about Bri­an May and Roger Tay­lor of Queen reform­ing recent­ly under the band’s name with Amer­i­can Idol run­ner-up Adam Lam­bert on vocals, the band has stat­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions that they nev­er intend­ed to replace Fred­die Mer­cury. “[Lam­bert] inter­prets the songs the way he inter­prets them which is won­der­ful,” May has remarked, “We want­ed him to be him­self.” Fair enough. But even if Queen had want­ed to replace Mer­cury after his death from AIDS com­pli­ca­tions in 1991, the task would have proved impos­si­ble. No one sounds like Fred­die Mer­cury, no one com­mands a stage like he did, and no one writes like him either, with his unique mix of raunchy, fun­ny, quirky, can­did, and deeply heart­felt lyri­cism.

“Moth­er Love,” the last song Mer­cury record­ed—at the band’s Mon­treux stu­dio—con­tains some of the most painful of Mercury’s lyrics, an expres­sion of his desire “for peace before I die.” In what we can’t help but hear in hind­sight as a direct ref­er­ence to his ill­ness, Mer­cury sings, “My body’s aching, but I can’t sleep… I’m com­ing home to my sweet / Moth­er love.” The inher­ent pathos of “Moth­er Love,” per­vades the posthu­mous­ly-released 1995 album Made in Heav­en, but the song that most seemed to define Fred­die Mer­cury imme­di­ate­ly after his death is also a rumi­na­tion on mor­tal­i­ty. Shot through with nos­tal­gia, remorse, and expres­sions of the brevi­ty of life, “These Are the Days of Our Lives”—from Innu­en­do, the last album the band released dur­ing Mercury’s lifetime—laments, “you can’t turn back the clock, you can turn back the tide.” Long­ing for child­hood lost, Mer­cury sings, “the rest of my life’s been just a show.” Maybe so, but what a show it was, even in the band’s final video, above, shot in black-and-white to hide Mercury’s frail con­di­tion.

At the top of the post, you can see behind-the-scenes footage of Mer­cury from the “These Are the Days of Our Lives” video shoot, dis­cov­ered, writes The Inde­pen­dent, “dur­ing a five-year trawl through the Queen archives by Rhys Thomas, the com­e­dy actor,” who co-pro­duced the BBC Two doc­u­men­tary, Queen: Days of Our Lives. “The footage of Fred­die in his final video,” says Thomas, “is shock­ing. He is so frail, he needs two hands to hold a cham­pagne glass. But he knows he is being filmed and wants to show peo­ple what he was going through.” Bri­an May remem­bers Mer­cury spend­ing “hours and hours in make-up sort­ing him­self out so it’d be OK. He actu­al­ly says a kind of good­bye in the video.”

A con­sum­mate per­former to the end, Mer­cury was deter­mined to work until he couldn’t, record­ing new mate­r­i­al until days before his death. In the full-col­or film from the “These Are the Days of Our Lives” shoot, we see him study­ing and cri­tiquing footage of him­self, ful­ly engaged in the cre­ation of what he like­ly knew would be his final per­for­mance. He had cer­tain­ly come a long way from the shy school­boy he was before Queen brought him inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty and acclaim. In the poignant video above, we see what is like­ly the first footage of the young man then known as Fred­die Bul­sara. The film shows Mer­cury in 1964—the year his fam­i­ly migrat­ed to Eng­land from Zanzibar—with school mates at Isle­worth Poly­tech­nic (new West Thames Col­lege). It would be anoth­er six years before Mer­cury would meet May and Tay­lor and form the band that defined the rest of the days of his life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fred­die Mer­cury, Live Aid (1985)

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

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

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Mr. Rogers Goes to Congress and Saves PBS: Heartwarming Video from 1969

in Education, History, K-12, Politics, Television | October 26th, 2015

What kind of delu­sion­al self-aggran­diz­er, called to tes­ti­fy before a Unit­ed States Sen­ate Sub­com­mit­tee, uses it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to quote the lyrics of a song he’s writ­ten… in their entire­ty!?

Sounds like the work of a cer­tain rapper/prospective polit­i­cal can­di­date or per­haps some daffy buf­foon as brought to life by Ben Stiller or Will Fer­rell.

Only children’s tele­vi­sion host Fred Rogers could pull such a stunt and emerge unscathed, nay, even more beloved, as he does above in doc­u­men­tary footage from 1969.

Mis­ter Rogers’ impulse to recite What Do You Do With the Mad That You Feel to then-chair­man of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Sen­a­tor John Pas­tore, was ulti­mate­ly an act of ser­vice to the Cor­po­ra­tion for Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing and its child view­ers.

New­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon opposed pub­lic tele­vi­sion, believ­ing that its lib­er­al bent could only under­mine his admin­is­tra­tion. Deter­mined to strike first, he pro­posed cuts equal to half its $20 mil­lion annu­al oper­at­ing bud­get, a mea­sure that would have seri­ous­ly hob­bled the fledg­ling insti­tu­tion.

Mr. Rogers appeared before the Com­mit­tee armed with a “philo­soph­i­cal state­ment” that he refrained from read­ing aloud, not wish­ing to monop­o­lize ten min­utes of the Committee’s time. Instead, he sought Pas­tore’s promise that he would give it a close read lat­er, speak­ing so slow­ly and with such lit­tle out­ward guile, that the tough nut Sen­a­tor was moved to crack, “Would it make you hap­py if you did read it?”

Rather than tak­ing the bait, Rogers touched on the ways his show’s bud­get had grown thanks to the pub­lic broad­cast­ing mod­el. He also hipped Pas­tore to the qual­i­ta­tive dif­fer­ence between fre­net­ic kid­die car­toons and the vast­ly more thought­ful and emo­tion­al­ly healthy con­tent of pro­gram­ming such as his. Mr. Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood was a place where such top­ics as hair­cuts, sib­ling rela­tion­ships, and angry feel­ings could be dis­cussed in depth.

Rogers’ emo­tion­al intel­li­gence seems to hyp­no­tize Pas­tore, whose chal­leng­ing front was soon dropped in favor of a more respect­ful line of ques­tion­ing. By the end of Rogers’ heart­felt, non-musi­cal ren­di­tion of What Do You Do… (it’s much pep­pi­er in the orig­i­nal), Pas­tore has goose­bumps, and the Cor­po­ra­tion for Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing has its 2 mil’ back in the bag.

What do you do with the mad that you feel

When you feel so mad you could bite?

When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong…

And noth­ing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?

Do you pound some clay or some dough?

Do you round up friends for a game of tag?

Or see how fast you go?

It’s great to be able to stop

When you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong,

And be able to do some­thing else instead

And think this song:

I can stop when I want to

Can stop when I wish.

I can stop, stop, stop any time.

And what a good feel­ing to feel like this

And know that the feel­ing is real­ly mine.

Know that there’s some­thing deep inside

That helps us become what we can.

For a girl can be some­day a woman

And a boy can be some­day a man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Price­less Primer from 1969

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s new play, Fawn­book, debuts as part of the Bad The­ater Fes­ti­val in NYC tomor­row night. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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