Darwin: A 1993 Film by Peter Greenaway

in Film, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | July 18th, 2011

Although British direc­tor Peter Green­away is best known for fea­ture films like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Pros­per­o’s Books, and The Pil­low Book, he has also com­plet­ed sev­er­al high­ly respect­ed projects for tele­vi­sion, includ­ing this 53-minute explo­ration of the life and work of Charles Dar­win. Dar­win is struc­tured around 18 sep­a­rate tableaux, each focus­ing on anoth­er chap­ter in the nat­u­ral­ist’s life, and each con­sist­ing of just one long unin­ter­rupt­ed shot. Oth­er than the nar­ra­tor’s voiceover, there is no dia­logue.

As with most Green­away films, the visu­al com­po­si­tion of indi­vid­ual scenes in Dar­win reflects the direc­tor’s fas­ci­na­tion with Renais­sance paint­ing (he was first trained as a mural­ist).  In 2006, Green­away even embarked on an ambi­tious series of video instal­la­tions called Nine Clas­sic Paint­ings Revis­it­ed, in which he applied his often con­tro­ver­sial vision to The Last Sup­per, The Wed­ding at Cana and oth­er famous art­works. You can watch an inter­view with the film­mak­er about The Last Sup­per here. Even bet­ter, watch his 2010 UC-Berke­ley lec­ture on the inspi­ra­tion and phi­los­o­phy behind the entire project, which we’ve includ­ed in our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons. We’ve also added Dar­win to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via Bib­liok­lept

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Billie Holiday Sings “Strange Fruit”

in Music | July 17th, 2011

Before the week­end slips away, we want to remem­ber Bil­lie Hol­i­day who was born 98 years ago today. To this day, Hol­i­day is wide­ly con­sid­ered the great­est jazz vocal­ist of all time, known for her dis­tinc­tive phras­ing and melan­choly voice. Above, we bring you her per­for­mance of “Strange Fruit,” a song record­ed in 1939 that protest­ed the lynch­ing of African Amer­i­cans in the South. The com­po­si­tion intro­duced Hol­i­day to a main­stream audi­ence, giv­ing her career a big break. Down the line, Hol­i­day closed every con­cert with the song, which con­tin­u­al­ly grew in cul­tur­al impor­tance. By 1999, TIME called “Strange Fruit” the song of the cen­tu­ry, solid­i­fy­ing its place in the Amer­i­can song­book.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

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Good Vibrations: Guitar and Cymbal Caught on Video

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Science | July 15th, 2011

This gor­geous video of a cym­bal (shot with a Phan­tom at 1,000 frames per sec­ond) made our morn­ing. And then Kot­tke’s find below — bril­liant footage of vibrat­ing gui­tar strings — made our after­noon.

Hope you enjoy them as much as we did, and have a great week­end!

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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David Lynch and Interpol Team Up on Short Film

in Film, Music | July 15th, 2011

Three years ago, the mem­bers of the band Inter­pol sat down with film­mak­er David Lynch. It was a casu­al meet­ing, an “ice break­er,” that paved the way for a future col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Skip ahead to 2010, and the col­lab­o­ra­tion begins. Inter­pol wants to devel­op visu­als to accom­pa­ny their per­for­mance at the 2011 Coachel­la Fes­ti­val, and Lynch agrees to take on the job. The result: “I Touch a Red But­ton Man,” a short ani­mat­ed film that accom­pa­nies Inter­pol’s song “Lights.” The film (orig­i­nal­ly shown at Coachel­la) was offi­cial­ly released online yes­ter­day at Huff­Po, where the band also talked about the gen­e­sis of the project in their own words.

You can find this film list­ed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

 

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A Secret Bookstore in New York City

in Books, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | July 14th, 2011

The Paris Review blog, which just gets bet­ter and bet­ter each week, post­ed Andrew David Wat­son’s love­ly video yes­ter­day about Michael Sei­den­berg, who moved his shop, Brazen­head Books, into his New York City apart­ment after his book­shop rent sky­rock­et­ed. “It’s a con­tin­u­a­tion of just me being a book­seller in the way that I want to be… If it’s all about mon­ey, there’s just bet­ter things to sell. Just sell crack. That’s a much bet­ter busi­ness.” As for where he’s locat­ed, he says “My name is in the phone­book, and any­one can call me… I’m hid­ing in plain sight. Come find me, vis­it me, and I’m yours.”

A spe­cial h/t to Rachel Rosen­felt and The New Inquiry for first intro­duc­ing Wat­son (and us) to Brazen­wood Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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In Honor of Louis C.K.‘s Well-Deserved Emmy Nomination

in Comedy | July 14th, 2011

Con­grat­u­la­tions to the come­di­an Louis C.K. whose half-hour F/X show Louie was just nom­i­nat­ed for an Emmy Award (full list of nom­i­nees here). To cel­e­brate, here’s one of our favorite of his riffs from a 2009 appear­ance on the Conan O’Brien show. (Speak­ing of Conan, don’t miss his Dart­mouth grad­u­a­tion address.)

We love Louis for many rea­sons, not the least of which is that he can build a killer, harangue-free rant around lines like “the foun­da­tions of cap­i­tal­ism are crum­bling.” Enjoy.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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The Gas Station Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

in Architecture | July 14th, 2011

The town of Clo­quet lies in north­ern Min­neso­ta along the St. Louis Riv­er. It has a pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 11,000 res­i­dents, and sev­er­al of its most famous res­i­dents play for the NHL. The town also hap­pens to be home to the R.W. Lind­holm Ser­vice Sta­tion – a gas sta­tion designed by none oth­er than Frank Lloyd Wright.

In the ear­ly 1930s, Wright began devel­op­ing con­cepts for Broad­acre City, a city spread out to the point where it would be ‘every­where and nowhere,’ kind of like what we would even­tu­al­ly call ‘sub­ur­bia.’ The design for the Lind­holm gas sta­tion came direct­ly from this con­cep­tu­al project, and it was built in 1956. The sta­tion remains open and ful­ly oper­a­tional today, and it’s cur­rent­ly get­ting restored to its orig­i­nal con­di­tion. The video above gives you the best out­side view of the Wright cre­ation, and this sec­ond one gives you a clos­er look at some of the fin­er details.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

Gehry’s Vision for Archi­tec­ture

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Name That Painting!

in Art, History, Music | July 14th, 2011

In Feb­ru­ary 2010, the Paris-based band Hold Your Hors­es! released a music video to go with their song “70 Mil­lion,” which became an imme­di­ate suc­cess. In the video, the band mem­bers recre­at­ed famous paint­ings, tak­ing the view­er on an enter­tain­ing tour through art his­to­ry. Try to iden­ti­fy as many paint­ings as pos­si­ble, then com­pare your results with the list of the actu­al paint­ings below the jump. Enjoy — and let us know your scores! And, of course, Hap­py Bastille Day.

(more…)

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.