Did Bach’s Wife Compose Some of “His” Masterpieces? A New Documentary Says Yes

in Film, Music | October 30th, 2014

You may have heard of, or indeed read, Aus­tralian con­duc­tor Mar­tin Jarvis’ 2011 book Writ­ten By Mrs. Bach, which inves­ti­gates the ques­tion of whether Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s “cel­lo suites were com­posed by the Ger­man musi­cian’s sec­ond wife, Anna Mag­dale­na Bach.” Now, the book has become a doc­u­men­tary — adding the no doubt enrich­ing ele­ment of sound to the pro­ceed­ings — whose trail­er you can watch above. In it, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post, “a pro­fes­sor of music, a com­pos­er and an Amer­i­can expert in doc­u­ment foren­sics advance the case.”

“Prof Jarvis said he aims to over­turn the ‘sex­ist’ con­ven­tion that recog­nised com­posers were always a ‘sole male cre­ator,’ to final­ly rein­state Mrs Bach into the his­to­ry books,” writes the Tele­graph’s Han­nah Fur­ness. “While Anna is known to have tran­scribed for Bach in his lat­er years, researchers found the hand­writ­ing did not have the ‘slow­ness or heav­i­ness’ usu­al­ly attrib­uted to some­one who is mere­ly copy­ing, but was like­ly to have flowed from her own mind,” bol­stered by “numer­ous cor­rec­tions to scores writ­ten in her hand, sig­nalling she is like­ly to have been com­pos­ing it as she went along.” A ter­ri­bly intrigu­ing ques­tion, but as with the ques­tion of Shake­speare­an author­ship, who held the pen now mat­ters less than what came out of it.

The works under scruti­ny here include “Bach’s unac­com­pa­nied cel­lo suites, of which there are six — the first of them pop­u­lar­ized as the theme of the film Mas­ter and Com­man­der: The Far Side of the World”; “the aria that begins and ends per­haps the most famous key­board work of all time, The Gold­berg Vari­a­tions”; and “a por­tion of the two-book mas­ter­work orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for the harp­si­chord known as the The Well-Tem­pered Clavier.” That infor­ma­tion comes from the Post, who also offer clips of these pieces. We’ve embed­ded them here for you to enjoy — and, no mat­ter who wrote them, you cer­tain­ly will. How often in his­to­ry, after all, do you encounter both man and wife who can com­pose for the ages?

via The Wash­ing­ton Post

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Per­for­mances of 1080 Bach Com­po­si­tions Online

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Video: Glenn Gould Plays the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions by J.S. Bach

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.

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Charlie Chaplin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Modern Times (1936)

in Film | October 30th, 2014

When you think of drug movies, flicks like Easy Rid­er, Drug­store Cow­boy and pret­ty much every­thing by Cheech and Chong might spring to mind. Add to this list Char­lie Chap­lin’s mas­ter­piece Mod­ern Times. In the movie, Chaplin’s icon­ic Lit­tle Tramp char­ac­ter does a whole lot of blow and ends up a bet­ter man for it. You can see a clip above.

After get­ting mis­tak­en for a Com­mu­nist demon­stra­tor, the Tramp is thrown in the clink. In the prison mess hall, a hulk­ing pris­on­er sit­ting next to him refus­es to let him have any of the com­mu­nal bread. Mean­while, the shifty look­ing guy on the oth­er side of him dumps a bunch of “nose pow­der” into a salt­shak­er before get­ting hauled away by the prison guards. Chap­lin sprin­kles lib­er­al amounts of this “salt” on his meal and soon he starts show­ing all of the tell­tale symp­toms of cocaine use – bugged out eyes, exces­sive ener­gy and unshake­able self-con­fi­dence. He also shows some less com­mon side effects like com­pul­sive twirling and a propen­si­ty to jam food in his ear.

With his new­found chem­i­cal courage, Chap­lin not only faces down this thug­gish neigh­bor but he also sin­gle-hand­ed­ly thwarts a prison break. The author­i­ties are so pleased with Chaplin’s coke-addled hero­ics that they release him. So remem­ber, kids, drugs can get you out of (and more like­ly back into) jail.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time that Chap­lin depict­ed drug use in his movies. In his clas­sic short Easy Street, Chaplin’s love inter­est, a vir­ginal pastor’s daugh­ter, gets locked in a base­ment with a remark­ably ener­getic hero­in addict. You can watch it below. And if you’re jonesing for some more Chap­lin, there are 65 Free Chap­lin Movies you can watch right here.

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Watch Luis Buñuel’s Surreal Travel Documentary A Land Without Bread (1933)

in Film | October 29th, 2014

You don’t get the warm fuzzies from a Luis Buñuel movie. The most famous moment from his first film — Un Chien andalou, co-direct­ed with Sal­vador Dalí — is a woman get­ting her eye slashed with a straight razor. While on clos­er inspec­tion the gut­ted eye is from a dead don­key, the image still has the pow­er to shock 85 years lat­er. Though the movie was a col­lab­o­ra­tion, you can dis­cern Buñuel’s vision in this ear­ly work — shots of ants com­ing out of bod­i­ly ori­fices is pure Dalí; the caus­tic satire against the cler­gy is pure Buñuel. Dalí’s images are strange and beau­ti­ful. Buñuel’s are sub­ver­sive.

Though Dalí and Buñuel worked togeth­er again on the scorch­ing­ly anti-Catholic L’Age d’or, their col­lab­o­ra­tion fell apart in pre-pro­duc­tion. Dalí just want­ed to tweak those in pow­er. Buñuel, a com­mit­ted left­ist, want­ed to under­mine the whole bour­geoisie.

Land With­out Bread (Las Hur­des: Tier­ra Sin Pan) is Buñuel’s first movie with­out Dalí. Though lack­ing many of the overt sur­re­al­ist flour­ish­es of his ear­li­er movies – no ocu­lar muti­la­tion here – this 1933 film is much more unset­tling. Osten­si­bly a doc­u­men­tary about the Las Hur­des region locat­ed in a remote cor­ner of Spain, the film is in fact a lac­er­at­ing par­o­dy of trav­el doc­u­men­taries. Nov­el­ist Gra­ham Greene, in a review of the movie for Night and Day mag­a­zine, called it “an hon­est and hideous pic­ture.” You can watch it above.

Las Hur­des is poor but not as com­i­cal­ly awful as Buñuel depicts it. He paints the pic­ture of unleav­ened wretched­ness. Dis­ease, depri­va­tion and grind­ing despair are in just about every frame of the movie. And if the images weren’t mis­er­able enough, Buñuel had no prob­lem with cre­at­ing a lit­tle of his own mis­ery. In one noto­ri­ous scene, a don­key is stung to death by a swarm of angry bees. Buñuel accom­plished this by hav­ing the doomed beast slathered with hon­ey and placed next to a cou­ple of downed hives. Anoth­er scene sought to illus­trate that the moun­tain pass­es in Las Hur­des were treach­er­ous by show­ing a moun­tain goat tum­bling off a crag­gy slope to cer­tain death. Only the goat wasn’t clum­sy, it was wound­ed. If you look close­ly at the low­er right of the frame in that scene, you can see a puff of smoke from a crewmember’s gun. Buñuel, obvi­ous­ly, was not a mem­ber of PETA.

He jux­ta­pos­es these grim images with a monot­o­ne voice over that heaps dis­dain and con­de­scen­sion onto its sub­ject. Yet the nar­ra­tion is so height­ened, so pre­pos­ter­ous, so cru­el that you find your­self ques­tion­ing its verac­i­ty. Below is a par­tic­u­lar­ly infa­mous pas­sage of the movie’s nar­ra­tion.

Dwarfs and morons are very com­mon in the upper Hur­danos moun­tains. Their fam­i­lies employ them as goat herders if they’re not too dan­ger­ous. The ter­ri­ble impov­er­ish­ment of this race is due to the lack of hygiene, under nour­ish­ment and con­stant inter­mar­riage. The small­est one of these crea­tures is 28 years old. Words can­not express the hor­ror of their mirth­less grins as they play a sort of hide and go seek.

All this places the view­er into a very uncom­fort­able posi­tion. Buñuel’s por­tray­al of the locals makes them seem so alien that empa­thy is all but impos­si­ble. All that you are left with is, aside from revul­sion, an abstract­ed form of pity. It’s not all that dif­fer­ent from the Oh Dearism you get from watch­ing a news report on a par­tic­u­lar­ly blight­ed cor­ner of the Third World. The dif­fer­ence is that Buñuel, unlike the news, makes you acute­ly, uncom­fort­ably aware of your priv­i­leged posi­tion in rela­tion to the movie’s sub­ject.

Land With­out Bread will be added to our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Read Film­mak­er Luis Buñuel’s Recipe for the Per­fect Dry Mar­ti­ni, and Then See Him Make One

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

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The Fall of the House of Usher: Poe’s Classic Tale Turned Into 1928 Avant Garde Film, Scripted by e.e. cummings

in Film, Literature | October 28th, 2014

Last week, in def­er­ence to the approach of Hal­loween, we fea­tured the com­plete works of Edgar Allan Poe as Free eBooks and Free Audio Books. If you give them a read, a lis­ten, or both, you’ll dis­cov­er that few cre­ators, using noth­ing more than the writ­ten word, can dis­turb quite so effec­tive­ly as Poe. But his writ­ten words have also pro­vid­ed inspi­ra­tion to fright­en­ing works in oth­er media, includ­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured 1953 British ani­ma­tion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and, today, the short-film ver­sion of “The Fall of the House of Ush­er.” That 1839 sto­ry per­haps most per­fect­ly (and most vis­cer­al­ly) real­izes such pet themes of Poe’s as ill­ness, dread, and live bur­ial, and as such has served as mate­r­i­al to a great many film­mak­ers as defi­ant­ly low­brow as Roger Cor­man and as uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly idio­syn­crat­ic as Jan Švankma­jer. But here we offer you one of the most inter­est­ing cin­e­mat­ic “Usher“s ever made: James Sib­ley Wat­son and Melville Web­ber’s 13-minute avant-garde adap­ta­tion, script­ed in part by poet e.e. cum­mings.

“Despite their impor­tance as lead­ing fig­ures in the film world,” writes Tara Trav­isano, “Wat­son and Web­ber’s work is often over­looked and not giv­en suf­fi­cient cred­it.” Though they got their shoot­ing script from the mod­ernist-influ­enced cum­mings, the film­mak­ers, “not fans of mod­ernism,” “pre­ferred to have their films described as ama­teur.” Their Fall of the House of Ush­er, the best-known work they ever pro­duced, “hard­ly fol­lows a nar­ra­tive, but is val­ued for its cre­ative use of rep­e­ti­tion and vari­a­tion and for the film’s dra­mat­ic light­ing.” And don’t wor­ry if you haven’t read the orig­i­nal sto­ry in a while; accord­ing to Trav­isano, Wat­son and Web­ber chose to film it because they them­selves had­n’t read it in a while, and thus “would be free of its influ­ence.” But after expe­ri­enc­ing the brief but unset­tling cin­e­mat­ic dream they man­aged to make out of this half-remem­bered Poean mate­r­i­al, you may want to seek out its influ­ence by going back and read­ing it again — or lis­ten­ing to it, or try­ing to sleep and re-dream it for your­self.

You can find Fall of the House of Ush­er in our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Christo­pher Walken, Iggy Pop, Deb­bie Har­ry & Oth­er Celebs Read Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

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.

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David Lynch’s Photographs of Old Factories

in Film, Photography | October 28th, 2014

lynch factory 1

David Lynch’s break out movie, Eraser­head, is the sort of movie that will seep into your uncon­scious and stay with you for days or weeks – like a par­tic­u­lar­ly unnerv­ing night­mare. Shot in inky black and white, the film achieves its uncan­ny pow­er in part because of its set­ting — a rot­ting indus­tri­al moon­scape bereft of nature. Much of the film’s sound­track is filled with the clank­ing of dis­tant machines and the hiss­ing of steam escap­ing pipes.

Lynch’s obses­sion with the rem­nants of the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion have punc­tu­at­ed much of his work since — from the grimy, claus­tro­pho­bic Vic­to­ri­an streets in The Ele­phant Man to the open­ing titles of Twin Peaks to his 1990 avant-garde mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­gan­za Indus­tri­al Sym­pho­ny No. 1.

“Well…if you said to me, ‘Okay, we’re either going down to Dis­ney­land or we’re going to see this aban­doned fac­to­ry,’ there would be no choice,” said Lynch once in an inter­view. “I’d be down there at the fac­to­ry. I don’t real­ly know why. It just seems like such a great place to set a sto­ry.”

Ear­li­er this year, Lynch exhib­it­ed at a Lon­don gallery a series of pho­tographs he shot of, yes, rot­ting fac­to­ries around New York, Eng­land and par­tic­u­lar­ly Poland. The sub­jects of the pho­tos are pret­ty mun­dane – a door, a win­dow, a wall – but he imbues them with this odd tone of fore­bod­ing and men­ace. In oth­er words, Lynch makes them seem Lynchi­an.

“It’s an incred­i­ble mood,” Lynch told Dazed Mag­a­zine. “I feel like I’m in a place that’s just mag­i­cal, where nature is reclaim­ing these derelict fac­to­ries. It’s very dreamy. Every place you turn, there’s some­thing so sen­sa­tion­al and sur­pris­ing – it’s the Bea­t­les’ Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour. All the cities are look­ing more and more the same. The real trea­sures are going away; the mood they cre­ate is going away.”

See more pho­tos below and, if you’re so inclined, you can buy the book to the exhib­it here.

A door in Lodz, Poland
lynch factory 2.2

A win­dow and a real estate oppor­tu­ni­ty in Lodz

david lynch factory 3

A fac­to­ry. Lodz, Poland.

david lynch factory 4

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

Young Stan­ley Kubrick’s Noirish Pic­tures of Chica­go, 1949

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

 

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Young Stanley Kubrick’s Noirish Pictures of Chicago, 1949

in Film, History, Photography | October 25th, 2014

Men, probably commuters, walking along a platform next to a train

When Stan­ley Kubrick was a mere high school stu­dent in April 1945, just after FDR died, he snapped a pic­ture of a news ven­dor framed on either side by posters announc­ing the president’s death. He was so excit­ed by the pic­ture that he skipped school to devel­op it and then marched right into the office of Look mag­a­zine. Pho­to edi­tor Helen O’Brian offered to buy the pho­to for $25. Dis­play­ing his trade­mark cock­i­ness, Kubrick told her that he want­ed to see what price he could get from The New York Dai­ly News. They only offered $10, so Kubrick went with Look. With­in a few months, at the age of 17, Kubrick became a staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er for the pub­li­ca­tion.

Below you can see some pho­tographs that Kubrick took in 1949 while on assign­ment in Chica­go. Using the same noirish high-con­trast, low-light look that marked his first three movies, he doc­u­ment­ed all dif­fer­ent stra­ta of soci­ety from floor traders, to lin­gerie mod­els, to meat pack­ers to impov­er­ished African-Amer­i­can fam­i­lies. Click  on the images to view them in a larg­er for­mat. Find a more exten­sive gallery of images here. To take a clos­er look at Kubrick­’s pho­tog­ra­phy, see the 2018 Taschen book Stan­ley Kubrick Pho­tographs: Through a Dif­fer­ent Lens and also Stan­ley Kubrick: Dra­ma & Shad­ows.

Men work­ing the floor at the Chica­go Board of Trade

Men working the floor at the Chicago Board of Trade

Lin­gerie mod­el, wear­ing a gir­dle and strap­less bra, smok­ing in an office; in the back­ground a woman sits at a desk

Lingerie model, wearing a girdle and strapless bra, smoking in an office; in the background a woman sits at a desk

Butch­er hold­ing slab of beef in a meat lock­er

Butcher holding slab of beef in a meat locker

African Amer­i­can moth­er and her four chil­dren in their ten­e­ment apart­ment

African American mother and her four children in their tenement apartment

Over­head view of the “L” ele­vat­ed rail­way

Overhead view of the "L" elevated railway in Chicago, Illinois

via Mash­able

Relat­ed Con­tent

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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

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Louis CK Crashes Zach Galifianakis & Brad Pitt’s Very Awkward Interview

in Comedy, Film | October 23rd, 2014

Appar­ent­ly, the bad part about scor­ing an inter­view with the Pres­i­dent is it kind of makes you blasé for sit­ting down with any­body else. Not that Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis of Between Two Ferns deserved his tete-a-tete with Oba­ma, or for that mat­ter Bart Pit … Bradley Pitts … Brad Pitt, star of 2013’s 12 Years a Salve (sic).

(The Onion’s fic­tion­al “Out­side Scoop” enter­tain­ment colum­nist, Jack­ie Har­vey, has noth­ing on the almost-as-fic­tion­al Gal­i­fi­anakis when it comes to mur­der­ing names)

Yes, this inter­view­er is pet­ty, com­bat­ive, and utter­ly lack­ing in grace, but his inter­vie­wee, the celebri­ty who turns stone-faced and sullen almost imme­di­ate­ly is no prize either.

Everyone’s mis­er­able, even come­di­an Louis CK, whom Gal­i­fi­anakis sum­mons with a few bars of his pop­u­lar sitcom’s theme song. Moods seem on the verge of lift­ing when Gal­i­fi­anakis brings up Pitts’ star­ring role in “Ben­jamin But­tons,” but it doesn’t last. Inevitably, there are ref­er­ences to Pitt’s famous wife, as well as his ex, an ear­li­er Between Two Ferns guest. (She’s no Tila Tequi­la…)

This is a dif­fer­ent dynam­ic than the one Borat shared with cer­tain incred­u­lous, intel­li­gent sub­jects. It’s a giv­en that Pitt’s in on the joke. And it would seem that both gen­tle­men have some­thing they’d like to get across regard­ing the dirty busi­ness of celebri­ty inter­views.

Jour­nal­ist Jan­ice Turn­er, took a sim­i­lar posi­tion when she wrote of her night­mar­ish 2013 inter­view with actor Rhys Ifans for the Lon­don Times:

The game is you lis­ten polite­ly while they plug their film, bang on about their ‘method’, the bril­liance of their co-stars and direc­tors etc. Then in return you hope they will offer up — with­out you hav­ing to prod and pester like some celebri­ty stalk­er — the tini­est nugget of anec­dote, a shard of light upon their real selves.

Because they hate the game too, and par­tic­u­lar­ly since it is main­ly con­duct­ed in hotel suites, you feel as if you’re engaged in an odd form of pros­ti­tu­tion, one where it remains unclear who is the hook­er and who the john.

Her per­spec­tive brings a cer­tain puri­ty to the Gal­i­fi­anakis-Pitt Ferns stand-off. Cer­tain­ly, nei­ther of them is play­ing the game.

If you want to learn how to con­duct a hor­ri­ble inter­view, watch Gal­i­fi­anakis.

If you want tips on how to make it worse, watch Pitt.

And if you want to be a movie star, seek ways to laugh at your­self with­out break­ing char­ac­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Awkward/NSFW Inter­view with Nir­vana Pro­duc­er Steve Albi­ni (Plus B‑52 Front­man Fred Schnei­der)

Hear Bob Dylan’s Unedit­ed & Bewil­der­ing Inter­view With Nat Hentoff for Play­boy Mag­a­zine (1965)

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith on The Mon­kees (1967)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the cre­ator of The Mermaid’s Legs, a trau­ma-filled Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen reboot play­ing this week in NYC. See it! And fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Werner Herzog, Morgan Spurlock & Other Stars Explain Economic Theory in 20 Short Films

in Economics, Film | October 23rd, 2014

Mor­gan Spur­lock is a film­mak­er who has long found catchy ways of get­ting his point across. For his break­out movie, Super Size Me (avail­able on Hulu), he sought to illus­trate just how tru­ly awful fast food is for you by sub­sist­ing sole­ly on McDonald’s for a month. His diet lit­er­al­ly almost killed him. Not long after the movie came out, McDonald’s start­ed adding more healthy options to its menu. In POM Won­der­ful Presents: The Great­est Movie Ever Sold, Spur­lock looked to make a doc­u­men­tary about prod­uct place­ment in movies by financ­ing the doc entire­ly through prod­uct place­ment. (That movie gets pret­ty meta fast.)

And most recent­ly, Spur­lock has launched We The Econ­o­my: 20 Short Films You Can’t Afford To Miss. As you might sur­mise, the series tries to explain eco­nom­ics to the mass­es by releas­ing 20 short films made by a host of dif­fer­ent stars and film­mak­ers, includ­ing Amy Poehler, Tony Hale, Sarah Sil­ver­man and Maya. The whole project will be released in the­aters and on VOD but the shorts have also been released in advance on Youtube. You can watch Spurlock’s seg­ment, called “Cave-o-nomics,” above. Seek­ing to answer the ques­tion “What is an econ­o­my?” Spur­lock dress­es up as a cave­man strug­gling to increase his mate­r­i­al wealth by swap­ping spears for meat.

The clear stand out of the bunch, how­ev­er, is Ramin Bahrani’s “Lemon­ade War.” Baha­mi tack­les the poten­tial­ly drea­ry issue of busi­ness reg­u­la­tion by telling a tale of two rival lemon­ade stands. One is run by a cor­rupt slob – played by Pat­ton Oswalt — and the oth­er is run by a whip smart ten-year-old girl. Though the girl doesn’t have the mon­ey or con­nec­tions that her rival has, she more than makes up for it with mox­ie and busi­ness acu­men. This, sad­ly, proves to be not enough. When she calls the gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tor about some of her rival’s tru­ly unhy­gien­ic prac­tices, she dis­cov­ers the reg­u­la­tor is in her competition’s pock­et and soon she’s dri­ven out of busi­ness. Things look hope­less for her until a neigh­bor­hood hero, played by none oth­er than Wern­er Her­zog (!), comes to her res­cue. With the lit­tle girl in tow, he con­fronts the slob and reg­u­la­tor with his trade­mark malev­o­lent Teu­ton­ic lilt. “If Mr. Smith could go to Wash­ing­ton today,” he declares, “he would fil­i­buster you back into your big bang worm­hole you have slith­ered out of.” The two sim­ply cow­er in the face of Herzog’s Old Tes­ta­ment wrath. If only Her­zog could deliv­er sim­i­lar fusil­lades against the board of Gold­man Sachs.

You can watch more seg­ments of We The Econ­o­my here — or find them in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mor­gan Spurlock’s Doc­u­men­tary on the 15-Year-Old Who Invent­ed a New Way to Detect Ear­ly Stage Pan­cre­at­ic Can­cer

Mor­gan Spur­lock: The Great­est TED Talk Ever Sold

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

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

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