Buenos Aires has endured a lot – financial crises, social protests, dictatorship and beyond. The award-winning documentary: ¿Sería Buenos Aires? (Maybe Buenos Aires?) takes a hard look at how the Argentines responded to dislocations created by forces beyond their control. It’s a universal story that touches on problems we all face today. Greece is just the latest unfortunate reminder of this. You can find this film, and 125 other high quality movies, in our collection of Free Movies Online.
Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider: A Look Back
The actor Dennis Hopper died this morning. You know him from Apocalypse Now and Blue Velvet. But, more than any other film, his legacy is tied to Easy Rider. Hopper directed, co-wrote, and co-starred in the counterculture classic, which won the top prize at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival. Drugs, motorcycles, hippies, communal living – Easy Rider captured the spirit of the counterculture movement, and now, 40 years later, it serves as something of a memorial to the Woodstock generation. Above, we feature the 1999 documentary Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage, which looks back at the making of the cult film. It includes interviews with Dennis Hopper and his co-star Peter Fonda. Part 1 appears above. You can access the remaining parts here: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7
Spring: A Short Film Based on Hemingway’s Memoir
British filmmaker Temujin Doran may be better known for his strong, highly opinionated views on democracy and politics, but his adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast, is something else entirely.
Though still narrated in Doran’s characteristically urgent, restless tone, Spring offers a quiet tribute to Parisian urbanity and the richness of seasonality, captured with cinematic minimalism and eerily indulgent aesthetic austerity.
Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of eclectic interestingness and indiscriminate curiosity. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine, BigThink and Huffington Post, and spends a disturbing amount of time curating interestingness on Twitter.
Iron Man: The Science in Science Fiction
As Robert Bly noted in his book, The Science in Science Fiction, some of the most intriguing scientific ideas have originated not in labs, but in sci-fi books and movies. With Iron Man 2 hitting the screens, Sidney Perkowitz, a physicist at Emory University, talks about whether the science in the new pop movie has any roots in scientific reality – or, for that matter, whether it might inspire any new scientific thinking down the road. He offers his thoughts above. In addition to writing Hollywood Science: Movies, Science and the End of the World, Perkowitz sits on the advisory board of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a National Academy of Sciences program that tries to bring more scientific accuracy to mass market entertainment.
Thanks Nicole for the tip on this one.
David Lynch Debuts Lady Blue Shanghai
David Lynch is no stranger to commercials. In the past, he lent his filmmaking talents to Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani and others (watch the ads here). And now it’s Dior. Shot in Shanghai, Lynch’s internet movie, Lady Blue Shanghai, runs 16 minutes and stars the Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard. Although largely given free reign here, Lynch had to include a few basic elements: images of a Dior bag, Old Shanghai, and the Pearl Tower. The short movie is the third in a series of mini-features launched on christiandior.com. You can watch the first part above, the second part here.
You can now find Lady Blue Shanghai in our collection of Free Movies Online, along with several other short David Lynch films.
Lawrence of Arabia Remembered with Rare Footage
Seventy-five years ago today, on the morning of May 13, 1935, a 46-year-old retired British army officer was riding his motorcycle home from the post office, when he swerved to avoid hitting two boys on bicycles. He was thrown onto the road and sustained head injuries, then died six days later in a provincial hospital. It was a mundane circumstance for the death of an extraordinary man.
Thomas Edward (T. E.) Lawrence was an intellectual and adventurer who became known to the world as “Lawrence of Arabia.” Lawrence could read books by the age of four. He attended Oxford on scholarship and spent one of his summer vacations hiking 1,100 miles through Syria, Palestine and Turkey to survey crusader castles for a thesis on military architecture. He spoke Arabic, Turkish, German, French, Latin and Greek. When World War I broke out in 1914, he was recruited into the British army for his extensive first-hand knowledge of the Middle East. During the course of the war, Lawrence became one of the architects and leaders of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks – a remarkable adventure that was retold in David Lean’s 1962 film, Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif and Alec Guinness.
Lawrence was an intensely private man who, as Lowell Thomas famously put it, “had a genius for backing into the limelight.” When the war was over, however, he succeeded in staying out of the limelight by refusing a knighthood and serving out his military career under assumed names. He translated Homer and wrote a memoir of the Arab Revolt, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And he had a penchant for fast motorcycles, including the custom-made Brough Superior SS100 which he rode into town on a mundane errand 75 years ago today.
Today, to mark the 75th anniversary of his tragic motor cycle accident, we feature some of the only known footage of T.E. Lawrence above.
Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man, A Free Documentary on the Argentine Writer
He was Argentina’s favorite son, one of the great South American writers of the last century (along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa), and the winner of 46 national and international literary prizes. We’re talking about Jorge Luis Borges, the master of the postmodern short story. Borges was born in 1899, and to celebrate his 100th birthday (though he died in 1986), Philippe Molins directed the documentary, Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man. The film’s major strength (as one reviewer put it) is that it’s a “bit of everything – part biography, part literary criticism, part hero-worship, part book reading, and part psychology.” It runs 47 minutes and includes a fair amount of archival footage. (You can watch it in a larger format on Vimeo here.)
A big thanks goes to Mike for sending The Mirror Man our way. If you have your own great piece of cultural media to share with us and your fellow OC readers, please feel free to send it along.
Lena Horne Sings Stormy Weather (1943)
Sad to note the passing of Lena Horne, one of the first black talents to break the color barrier in Hollywood. Here we have her singing her signature song “Stormy Weather” in 1943. Thanks to @wesalwan, a regular contributor, for flagging this vintage piece.
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