Watch a Witty, Gritty, Hardboiled Retelling of the Famous Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton Duel

in History | February 24th, 2014

Imag­ine Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden being on the receiv­ing end of a vocif­er­ous attack in the press by for­mer Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, Tim Gei­th­n­er. Now, pic­ture Biden demand­ing sat­is­fac­tion, and tak­ing the morn­ing off from his vice pres­i­den­tial duties to set­tle things man-to-man, and Gei­th­n­er wind­ing up in a coma. As unbe­liev­able as this episode may seem today, this kind of affair played out some 200 years ago on a much grander scale when Vice Pres­i­dent Aaron Burr fatal­ly shot Alexan­der Hamil­ton dur­ing a duel. The Burr-Hamil­ton con­fronta­tion remains an infa­mous black mark on Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Burr, serv­ing as VP in Thomas Jefferson’s admin­is­tra­tion, is wide­ly seen as a vil­lain for mur­der­ing Hamil­ton. Hamil­ton, for his part, is beloved as one of the Found­ing Fathers and a vocal cham­pi­on of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. For our non-Amer­i­can read­ers, this adu­la­tion trans­lates to his face now grac­ing the $10 bill.

But were things real­ly so sim­ple? Dana O’Keefe, the film­mak­er behind Aaron Burr, Part 2, answers with a resound­ing no. “His­to­ry is a con­test, not unlike a duel. I end­ed his life. But he ruined mine. I won the duel, but I lost my place in his­to­ry,” Burr declares in the open­ing mono­logue of O’Keefe’s 8‑minute short, and it is pre­cise­ly Burr’s place in his­to­ry that the film seeks to address. In O’Keefe’s mod­ern retelling, Burr emerges as an unfair­ly maligned fig­ure, whose brav­ery in bat­tle has been over­shad­owed by the incom­pe­tence of supe­ri­ors such as Gen­er­als George Wash­ing­ton and Richard Mont­gomery. It’s effec­tive. Mix­ing archival footage of orig­i­nal doc­u­ments with re-enact­ments and present day shots, O’Keefe cre­ates a grit­ty, some­times wit­ty, hard­boiled feel to Bur­r’s sto­ry, and view­ers begin to sym­pa­thize with the dis­par­aged fig­ure. To the sounds of tracks like Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” and some cre­ative use of iPhones, O’Keefe dis­pels the idea that Burr shot Hamil­ton first. Rather, Burr is the hon­or­able par­ty, and Hamil­ton is the scoundrel. It’s well worth a watch.

via The Atlantic

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drunk His­to­ry: An Intox­i­cat­ed Look at the Famous Alexan­der Hamil­ton – Aaron Burr Duel

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

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Watch Boy and Bicycle: Ridley Scott’s Very First Film (1965)

in Film | February 24th, 2014

Alien, Blade Run­ner, Glad­i­a­tor, Prometheus, the Apple Mac­in­tosh 1984 Super Bowl ad, the upcom­ing Bib­li­cal­ly-based (and Bib­li­cal­ly-sized) Exo­dus: if you want a thor­ough­ly through-and-through vision, exe­cut­ed at full scale and tint­ed with more than a touch of dystopi­an grim­ness, you go to Rid­ley Scott. But no direc­tor com­mences his career mak­ing pic­tures like these; most of them have to begin in hum­bler places, pulling togeth­er what­ev­er grant mon­ey, film-school resources, and help­ful acquain­tances they can to real­ize, and in the process often com­pro­mise, their long-incu­bat­ed cin­e­mat­ic dreams. So it went with Scott him­self, who made the short film above, 1965’s Boy and Bicy­cle, while a stu­dent at Lon­don’s Roy­al Col­lege of Art. But even this com­par­a­tive­ly tiny project, with its rich 16-mil­lime­ter images, adept cam­era move­ment, and utter­ly hope­less set­ting, shows signs of what sort of film­mak­er the twen­tysome­thing Scott would become a decade or two lat­er.

Though he received his pho­to­graph­ic edu­ca­tion in Lon­don, Scott took his cam­era out for the Boy and Bicy­cle shoot to West Hartle­pool, where he’d attend­ed art school sev­er­al years ear­li­er. That bit of the soon-to-be-dein­dus­tri­al­ized north of Eng­land pro­vid­ed, espe­cial­ly in the British Steel North Works cool­ing tow­er and blast fur­nace, just the sort of back­ground we’d expect to see in the mature direc­tor’s work. And through this bleak land­scape (which reminds me of noth­ing so much as the inhos­pitable Osa­ka he would por­tray more than twen­ty years lat­er in Black Rain) we have the tit­u­lar boy on the tit­u­lar bicy­cle, played by — clas­sic first-time film­mak­er’s strat­e­gy — the direc­tor’s younger broth­er. In this case, that broth­er would grow up to become Tony Scott, a cel­e­brat­ed if aes­thet­i­cal­ly polar­iz­ing direc­tor (Top Gun, True Romance, Domi­no) in his own right. Not one to waste a res­o­nant image, Rid­ley Scott would a decade lat­er revis­it Boy and Bicy­cle in the beloved adver­tise­ment for Hov­is bread just above.

Oth­er ear­ly short films by great direc­tors can be found below, and in our col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Enjoy a Bluegrass Performance of Elton John’s 1972 Hit, “Rocket Man”

in Music | February 24th, 2014

Last fall, our read­ers loved watch­ing Iron Horse, a blue­grass band from Alaba­ma, per­form­ing a most unusu­al ver­sion of Metal­li­ca’s “Enter Sand­man.” The band’s take on Metal­li­ca’s anthem was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed on the 2003 album, Fade to Blue­grass: Trib­ute to Metal­li­ca, where Iron Horse — with Tony Robert­son on man­dolin, Vance Hen­ry on gui­tar, Ricky Rogers on bass, and Antho­ny Richard­son on ban­jo — played Metal­li­ca hits in blue­grass fash­ion — “or at least as blue­grass as it’s pos­si­ble for Metal­li­ca songs to be.”

This Jan­u­ary, the quar­tet released a new video, this time cov­er­ing “Rock­et Man.” Sung by Elton John in ’72, writ­ten by Bernie Taupin, and inspired by a Ray Brad­bury sto­ry, Rock­et Man has been covered/performed by Cold­play, Kate Bush, My Morn­ing Jack­et and many oth­ers. But, if you have a score­card, you’ll almost cer­tain­ly give Iron Horse top marks for cre­ativ­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty. Hope you enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss Sing Coun­try Ver­sions of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” & “When the Lev­ee Breaks”

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

 

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Crime Jazz: How Miles Davis, Count Basie & Duke Ellington Created Soundtracks for Noir Films & TV

in Film, Music, Television | February 23rd, 2014

When we think of film noir, we tend to think of a mood best set by a look: shad­ow and light (most­ly shad­ow), grim but visu­al­ly rich weath­er, near-depop­u­lat­ed urban streets. You’ll see plen­ty of that pulled off at the height of the craft in the movies that make up “noir­chae­ol­o­gist” Eddie Muller’s list of 25 noir pic­tures that will endure, which we fea­tured last week. But what will you hear? Though no one com­po­si­tion­al style dom­i­nat­ed the sound­tracks of films noirs, you’ll cer­tain­ly hear more than a few sol­id pieces of crime jazz. Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, writ­ing about Rhi­no’s epony­mous com­pi­la­tion album, defines this musi­cal genre as “jazzy theme music from 1950s TV shows and movies in which very bad peo­ple do very bad things.” She links to PopCult’s col­lec­tion of clas­sic crime jazz sound­track album cov­ers, from The Third Man to Cha­rade (the best Hitch­cock film, of course, that Hitch­cock nev­er made), to The Man With the Gold­en Arm, all as evoca­tive as the music itself.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly, movie music meant sweep­ing orches­tral themes or tra­di­tion­al Broad­way-style musi­cals,” says PopCult. “But with the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of bebop and hard bop as the sound of urban cool, stu­dios began latch­ing onto the now beat as a way to make their movies seem grit­ty or ‘street.’ ”

At Jazz.com, Alan Kurtz writes about the spread of crime jazz from straight-up film noir to all sorts of pro­duc­tions hav­ing to do with life out­side the law: “In movies and TV, jazz accom­pa­nied the entire sor­did range of police-blot­ter behav­ior, from gam­bling, pros­ti­tu­tion and drug addic­tion to theft, assault, mur­der and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Get your­self in the spir­it of all those mid­cen­tu­ry degen­era­cies and more with the tracks fea­tured here, all of which will take you straight to an ear­li­er kind of mean street: the theme from The M Squad, “two min­utes of may­hem by Count Basie and his mob of heav­ies”; Miles Davis’ “Au Bar du Petit Bac,” impro­vised by Davis and his Parisian band against Louis Malle’s Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows; and Ray Antho­ny’s “Peter Gunn Theme,” a “quick­ie cov­er” that “beat Hen­ry Mancini’s orig­i­nal to the punch.”

And final­ly we have Duke Elling­ton’s score for Anato­my of a Mur­der, direct­ed by Otto Pre­minger in 1959.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Noir Films

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Harvard Presents Two Free Online Courses on the Old Testament

in Harvard, Religion, Yale | February 22nd, 2014

515px-Targum

A quick note: Shaye J.D. Cohen, a pro­fes­sor of Hebrew Lit­er­a­ture and Phi­los­o­phy at Har­vard, has just released his sec­ond free course on iTunes. The first course was called The Hebrew Scrip­tures in Judaism & Chris­tian­i­ty. The new one, sim­ply titled The Hebrew Bible, “sur­veys the major books and ideas of the Hebrew Bible (also called the Old Tes­ta­ment) exam­in­ing the his­tor­i­cal con­text in which the texts emerged and were redact­ed. A major sub­text of the course is the dis­tinc­tion between how the Bible was read by ancient inter­preters (whose inter­pre­ta­tions became the basis for many icon­ic lit­er­ary and artis­tic works of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion) and how it is approached by mod­ern bible schol­ar­ship.” The new course, fea­tur­ing 25 sets of video lec­tures and lec­ture notes, has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es, a sub­sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1,300 Free Online Cours­es. Oth­er relat­ed cours­es worth explor­ing are Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment and Intro­duc­tion to New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture, both from Yale.

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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“Be All You Can Be. Read”: Peter Max’s 1969 Psychedelic Poster for National Library Week

in Art, Books | February 22nd, 2014

04 - Nat Lib Week 1969

In 1969, Peter Max was cre­at­ing psy­che­del­ic illus­tra­tions that cap­tured the coun­ter­cul­tur­al spir­it of the 1960s. Bright, trip­py, and thought-pro­vok­ing, Max’s art­work fused togeth­er “east­ern yogi phi­los­o­phy, astron­o­my, com­ic books, stud­ies in col­or, and music.” And it cer­tain­ly found an audi­ence. By the late 60s, col­lege dorm rooms across the U.S. were plas­tered with Max’s posters. 72 cor­po­ra­tions — from Gen­er­al Elec­tric to Burling­ton Mills, a man­u­fac­tur­er of socks — licensed his art for com­mer­cial use. Mean­while, in ’69, Max appeared on The Tonight Show, The Ed Sul­li­van Show, and the cov­er of LIFE mag­a­zine (with main arti­cle titled “Peter Max: Por­trait of the artist as a very rich man”).

Even while the cor­po­rate gigs were rolling in, the Ger­man-born illus­tra­tor took on less com­mer­cial projects, like cre­at­ing this poster for Nation­al Library Week, an annu­al event orga­nized by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion. Mea­sur­ing 36 x 24 inch­es, the 1969 poster, aes­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, is vin­tage Max. And it car­ries a mes­sage that sounds as good today as it did then: “Be All You Can Be. Read.” Now dare I steer you toward of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free eBooks? An easy way to make you, a bet­ter you.

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!

via Bib­liok­lept

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The Doors Play Live in Denmark & LA in 1968: See Jim Morrison Near His Charismatic Peak

in Music | February 21st, 2014

Do they look a bit scruffy, the Doors on live Dan­ish TV in 1968? My image of the Doors is for­ev­er col­ored by Oliv­er Stone’s The Doors. But the real Jim Mor­ri­son had even bet­ter hair than his dop­pel­gänger Val Kilmer (“not a case of cast­ing,” quoth Ebert, “but of pos­ses­sion”), even if the above per­for­mance is less Lizard King than lounge lizard. John Dens­more lays back on the beat, gets out the way of Morrison’s free asso­cia­tive poet­ry. Gui­tarist Rob­bie Krieger riffs intent­ly, looks sub­dued. Always the one to watch, the recent­ly depart­ed Ray Man­zarek plays hyp­not­ic base­lines with his left hand while his right dances around melod­ic blue note phras­es. It’s a very cool show, but the lack of an audi­ence is pal­pa­ble.

Mor­ri­son was at his best, and prob­a­bly also worst, before crowds of admir­ers. He has no lack of them in anoth­er ’68 per­for­mance, this time at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. Where the Dan­ish gig is cabaret, this is a shaman­is­tic hap­pen­ing: Mor­ri­son wears some­thing like a sleeve­less toreador’s jack­et and the band plays loud, espe­cial­ly Dens­more, who bash­es his drums like John Bon­ham. Jim Mor­ri­son seems entranced, and real­ly stoned. Dens­more lat­er said he’d just dropped acid: “I could tell once we hit the stage because his move­ments, his per­for­mance, was a lit­tle delib­er­ate; a lit­tle like he was hold­ing it togeth­er. But he was fan­tas­tic.”

The Hol­ly­wood Bowl is the show to see. It was a mag­i­cal night. It was a big deal to play the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. We were all so excit­ed. We’d had din­ner with Mick Jag­ger just before the show and he was right in the front. For any fan of The Doors — young or old — this is real­ly the way it was; this is the way to see what it was all about.

In nei­ther of these con­certs is Mor­ri­son quite the unhinged mani­ac of leg­end, but things, as they say, had already begun to unrav­el. Two years lat­er the band would play its last show with Mor­ri­son at The Ware­house in Decem­ber of 1970. Some believe the Doors peaked in 1967 and nev­er topped their debut (a “stoned, immac­u­late clas­sic” and the dark under­bel­ly of Sgt. Pep­per’s sun­ny psy­che­delia). I don’t buy that at all. But even if these shows catch them on the start of a decline, it was a long slow burn, and beau­ti­ful to watch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Doors Key­boardist Ray Man­zarek (1939–2013) Tells the Sto­ry of the Clas­sic Song, ‘Rid­ers on the Storm’

“The Lost Paris Tapes” Pre­serves Jim Morrison’s Final Poet­ry Record­ings from 1971

A Young, Clean Cut Jim Mor­ri­son Appears in a 1962 Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­mo Film

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

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The Art Assignment: Learn About Art & the Creative Process in a New Web Series by John & Sarah Green

in Art | February 21st, 2014

If you haven’t seen the works of John Green, whose “Crash Course” series on world his­to­ry and Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here, you’ve missed out on first-class exam­ples of the learn­ing expe­ri­ences video tech­nol­o­gy, the inter­net, and burn­ing curios­i­ty have now made pos­si­ble. (An antipa­thy to these sub­jects’ tra­di­tion­al class­room teach­ing meth­ods may also have some­thing to do with them.) PBS, how­ev­er, has not missed out, and in part­ner­ship with Green and his wife Sarah Urist Green, they’ve just come out with The Art Assign­ment, a week­ly web series that “cel­e­brates the cre­ative process” and intro­duces “today’s most inno­v­a­tive artis­tic minds.” An ambi­tious mis­sion, and one you can find out more about in the clip above. But the Greens don’t intend to put togeth­er a sim­ple primer on art. The Art Assign­ment, as Urist Green explains, has them “trav­el­ing around the coun­try, vis­it­ing artists and ask­ing them to give you an art assign­ment.”

The first episode has just become avail­able, and, in it, they pay a vis­it to the Flux Fac­to­ry in Queens, where artists Dou­glas Paul­son and Christo­pher Rob­bins tell the sto­ry of their first “col­lab­o­ra­tion,” which involved their meet­ing at high noon in a lake in the Czech Repub­lic, the exact geo­graph­i­cal mid­point between their then-homes in Copen­hagen and Ser­bia. Their assign­ment? “Find some­one. Draw a line between the two of you, meet exact­ly in the mid­dle. Once you’ve agreed on your meet­ing point, date, and time, you’re not allowed to speak to each oth­er by any means.” John then won­ders if that real­ly counts as art (“On some lev­el, to me, art is paint­ing”), which prompts Sarah to quote artist-the­o­rist Roy Ascott: “Stop think­ing about art works as objects, and start think­ing about them as trig­gers for expe­ri­ences.” The Art Assign­ment will doubt­less put the Greens and their fol­low­ers through some inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The 55 Strangest, Great­est Films Nev­er Made (Cho­sen by John Green)

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 99 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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