Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii Streaming Free on YouTube Today Only

in Film, Music | April 24th, 2020

Pink Floyd is help­ing you get through the coro­n­avirus by stream­ing free con­cert films on YouTube. First came Pulse, a 22-song set from the 1994 Divi­sion Bell tour. Now comes Pink Floyd: Live at Pom­peii, a 1972 con­cert film fea­tur­ing the band per­form­ing with­in the ancient Roman amphithe­atre at Pom­peii. It’s a clas­sic. Watch it above. And learn more about the film in our pri­or post here.

Note: The film is only stream­ing free on YouTube for 24 hours. So watch it while you can. Once the film goes dark, you can watch out­takes here.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch the First of an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

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10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More

in Film | April 22nd, 2020

In 1913, Ger­many, flush with a new nation’s patri­ot­ic zeal, looked like it might become the dom­i­nant nation of Europe and a real rival to that glob­al super­pow­er Great Britain. Then it hit the buz­z­saw of World War I. After the Ger­man gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in 1918 from the eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al toll of a half-decade of sense­less car­nage, the Allies forced it to accept dra­con­ian terms for sur­ren­der. The entire Ger­man cul­ture was sent reel­ing, search­ing for answers to what hap­pened and why.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism came about to artic­u­late these lac­er­at­ing ques­tions roil­ing in the nation’s col­lec­tive uncon­scious. The first such film was The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari (1920), about a malev­o­lent trav­el­ing magi­cian who has his ser­vant do his mur­der­ous bid­ding in the dark of the night. The sto­ry­line is all about the Freudi­an ter­ror of hid­den sub­con­scious dri­ves, but what real­ly makes the movie mem­o­rable is its com­plete­ly unhinged look. Marked by styl­ized act­ing, deep shad­ows paint­ed onto the walls, and sets filled with twist­ed archi­tec­tur­al impos­si­bil­i­ties — there might not be a sin­gle right angle in the film – Cali­gari’s look per­fect­ly mesh­es with the nar­ra­tor’s dement­ed state of mind.

Sub­se­quent Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies retreat­ed from the extreme aes­thet­ics of Cali­gari but were still filled with a mood of vio­lence, frus­tra­tion and unease. F. W. Mur­nau’s bril­liant­ly depress­ing The Last Laugh (1924) is about a proud door­man at a high-end hotel who is uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly stripped of his posi­tion and demot­ed to a low­ly bath­room atten­dant. When he hands over his uni­form, his pos­ture col­laps­es as if the jack­et were his exoskele­ton. You don’t need to be a semi­ol­o­gist to fig­ure out that the doorman’s loss of sta­tus par­al­lels Germany’s. Fritz Lang’s M (1931), a land­mark of ear­ly sound film, is the first ser­i­al killer movie ever made. But what starts out as a police pro­ce­dur­al turns into some­thing even more unset­tling when a gang of dis­tinct­ly Nazi-like crim­i­nals decide to mete out some jus­tice of their own.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism end­ed in 1933 when the Nazis came to pow­er. They weren’t inter­est­ed in ask­ing uncom­fort­able ques­tions and viewed such dark tales of cin­e­mat­ic angst as unpa­tri­ot­ic. Instead, they pre­ferred bright, cheer­ful tales of Aryan youths climb­ing moun­tains. By that time, the movement’s most tal­ent­ed direc­tors — Fritz Lang and F.W. Mur­nau — had fled to Amer­i­ca. And it was in Amer­i­ca where Ger­man Expres­sion­ism found its biggest impact. Its stark light­ing, grotesque shad­ows and bleak world­view would go on on to pro­found­ly influ­ence film noir in the late 1940s after anoth­er hor­rif­ic, dis­il­lu­sion­ing war. See our col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films here.

You watch can 10 Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies – includ­ing Cali­gari, Last Laugh and M — for free below.

  • Nos­fer­atu — Free — Ger­man Expres­sion­ist hor­ror film direct­ed by F. W. Mur­nau. An unau­tho­rized adap­ta­tion of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la. (1922)
  • The Stu­dent of Prague — Free — A clas­sic of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film. Ger­man writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and Dan­ish direc­tor Stel­lan Rye bring to life a 19th-cen­tu­ry hor­ror sto­ry. Some call it the first indie film. (1913)
  • Nerves — Free — Direct­ed by Robert Rein­ert, Nerves tells of “the polit­i­cal dis­putes of an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­to­ry own­er Herr Roloff and Teacher John, who feels a com­pul­sive but secret love for Rolof­f’s sis­ter, a left-wing rad­i­cal.” (1919)
  • The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari — Free — This silent film direct­ed by Robert Wiene is con­sid­ered one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist films and per­haps one of the great­est hor­ror movies of all time. (1920)
  • Metrop­o­lis — Free — Fritz Lang’s fable of good and evil fight­ing it out in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia. An impor­tant clas­sic. An alter­nate ver­sion can be found here. (1927)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — A fol­low-up to Paul Wegen­er’s ear­li­er film, “The Golem,” about a mon­strous crea­ture brought to life by a learned rab­bi to pro­tect the Jews from per­se­cu­tion in medieval Prague. Based on the clas­sic folk tale, and co-direct­ed by Carl Boese. (1920)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — The same film as the one list­ed imme­di­ate­ly above, but this one has a score cre­at­ed by Pix­ies front­man Black Fran­cis. (2008)
  • The Last Laugh - Free — F.W. Mur­nau’s clas­sic cham­ber dra­ma about a hotel door­man who falls on hard times. A mas­ter­piece of the silent era, the sto­ry is told almost entire­ly in pic­tures. (1924)
  • Faust — Free - Ger­man expres­sion­ist film­mak­er F.W. Mur­nau directs a film ver­sion of Goethe’s clas­sic tale. This was Mur­nau’s last Ger­man movie. (1926)
  • Sun­rise: A Song of Two Humans — Free — Made by the Ger­man expres­sion­ist direc­tor F.W. Mur­nau. Vot­ed in 2012, the 5th great­est film of all time. (1927)
  • M — Free — Clas­sic film direct­ed by Fritz Lang, with Peter Lorre. About the search for a child mur­der­er in Berlin. (1931)

For more clas­sic films, peruse our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2014.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Is Ger­man Expres­sion­ism? A Crash Course on the Cin­e­mat­ic Tra­di­tion That Gave Us Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Expres­sion­ist Dance Cos­tumes from the 1920s, and the Trag­ic Sto­ry of Lavinia Schulz & Wal­ter Holdt

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Netflix Makes Documentaries Free to Stream: Design, Politics, Sports, Sir David Attenborough & More

in Education, Film | April 20th, 2020

Many of us kept indoors by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for days — or rather weeks, or per­haps months — have been imbued with a new sense of won­der about our world. Specif­i­cal­ly, we’re won­der­ing what’s going on in it. At the same time as the glob­al sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles to deter­mine the nature of the new and still poor­ly under­stood virus tak­ing lives and immo­bi­liz­ing economies, we hear dig­i­tal word of con­se­quent phe­nom­e­na also pre­vi­ous­ly unknown in our life­times: wild ani­mals, for instance, mak­ing their way into the streets of major cities. We live, it turns out, in a stranger, more mys­te­ri­ous real­i­ty than we’d imag­ined. For­tu­nate­ly, the inter­net makes it pos­si­ble for us to start get­ting a grip on that real­i­ty here in our homes, not least through free stream­ing Net­flix doc­u­men­taries.

“In the Before Times, Net­flix let teach­ers stream their pro­gram­ming in the class­room,” writes Jason Kot­tke. With schools out of ses­sion, “Net­flix has decid­ed to put some of their edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming on YouTube for free (full playlist here). For instance, they’ve put all 8 episodes of David Attenborough’s nature series Our Plan­et online in their entire­ty.”

Released just last year, that Net­flix debut of the high­ly respect­ed nat­ur­al his­to­ri­an and broad­cast­er cov­ers in great visu­al detail — and, need­less to say, with high­ly evoca­tive nar­ra­tion — every­where from forests and deserts to jun­gles and high seas. If as a start­ing point that all seems a bit epic, as they say, Net­flix has also made free sin­gle-serv­ing doc­u­men­tary shorts on sub­jects like the stock mar­ket, the excla­ma­tion point, and crick­et (the British Empire sport, not the insect).

Those come from the series Explained, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Net­flix and Vox, a site known for its brief “explain­er” videos on cul­ture, sci­ence, and cur­rent events — one of which, on the coro­n­avirus itself, we fea­tured last month here on Open Cul­ture. Net­flix has also made free to stream on Youtube oth­er series like Abstract, which looks at the art of design (and whose debut we fea­tured here a few years ago), and Babies, a five-part jour­ney into the life of the human infant. If you pre­fer a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary expe­ri­ence to a dai­ly view or a binge-watch, you’ll also find on the playlist Ava DuVer­nay’s 13th, Rachel Lears’ Knock Down the House, and Jeff Orlowski’s Chas­ing Coral. When the orders of “stay home” and “social-dis­tance” come to an end, many of us will feel a stronger desire to explore and learn about the world than ever before — in part because of how much of the time indoors we’ve spent stok­ing our curios­i­ty with doc­u­men­taries like these. Access the playlist of doc­u­men­taries here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

265 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

200 Free Doc­u­men­taries: A Super Rich List of Fine­ly-Craft­ed Doc­u­men­taries on the Web

Cours­era Makes Cours­es & Cer­tifi­cates Free Dur­ing Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine: Take Cours­es in Psy­chol­o­gy, Music, Well­ness, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment & More Online

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli Releases Free Backgrounds for Virtual Meetings: Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away & More

in Animation, Art, Film | April 17th, 2020

To a degree that sur­pass­es any oth­er stu­dio in ani­ma­tion his­to­ry, Stu­dio Ghi­b­li has cre­at­ed a real­i­ty of its own. All of its fans around the world appre­ci­ate the artistry of its films, direct­ed by such lumi­nar­ies of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion as Hayao Miyaza­ki and Isao Taka­ha­ta, and many appre­ci­ate it so fer­vent­ly that they’d pre­fer to occu­py any of Ghi­b­li’s worlds to this one. The stu­dio has respond­ed to their desires by not just con­tin­u­ing to pro­duce motion pic­tures — the “retired” Miyaza­ki is now at work on his lat­est, How Do You Live? — but by autho­riz­ing a wide and ever-chang­ing range of mer­chan­dise, and even build­ing a muse­um out­side Tokyo and a theme park out­side Nagoya.

Alas, like most muse­ums, Ghi­b­li’s is tem­porar­i­ly closed. Nei­ther the Ghi­b­li theme park nor How Do You Live? will open any time soon, and even if they could open today, it would hard­ly be an oppor­tune time to do so. With so few of us any­where able to go to movie the­aters, let alone theme parks (though we can now, at long last, stream Ghi­b­li movies online), we have to enter the realm of Ghi­b­li in a dig­i­tal fash­ion.

To make this a bit more pos­si­ble, the stu­dio has offi­cial­ly released a set of eight back­grounds, suit­able for use as back­drops on Zoom or oth­er video-con­fer­enc­ing appli­ca­tions. You’ll find them all at Ghi­b­li’s web site: in Japan­ese only, true to form, but even non-Japan­ese speak­ers can eas­i­ly click and save the images. (For instruc­tions on how to set one as your back­ground, see our pre­vi­ous post on the sub­ject.)

Drawn from the sweep of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s his­to­ry, from Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind to Cas­tle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away, Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle, Ponyo, Arri­et­ty, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, the back­drops show the wide aes­thet­ic range of its work. Some of them depict mem­o­rable set­tings from these films (any Ghi­b­li fan will know exact­ly where you “are” the moment you con­nect) but oth­ers cap­ture a char­ac­ter, an icon, or an atmos­phere.

Whichev­er Ghi­b­li back­ground you pick, it will remind your inter­locu­tors of the for­mi­da­ble imag­i­na­tion exer­cised by each and every one of the stu­dio’s films, whether its char­ac­ters soar across the sky, live beneath the sea, or plunge into an unseen under­world — do any­thing, essen­tial­ly, but stay at home mak­ing calls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Calm Down & Study with Relax­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Cus­tomize Your Zoom Vir­tu­al Back­ground with Free Works of Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Samuel Beckett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

in Film, Literature | April 17th, 2020

Samuel Beck­ett long had a fond­ness for Berlin, from his first trip in the late 1920s–when he fell in love with his cousin while vis­it­ing his uncle on his mom’s side–to his long­time rela­tion­ship with his Ger­man trans­la­tor Eri­ka Tophoven and with the Schiller The­ater, which pro­duced many of his plays.

The above footage shows the 63-year old Beck­ett walk­ing the streets of Berlin, ask­ing for direc­tions, or read­ing the dai­ly paper at a cafe. At one point he is seen walk­ing with a woman (pos­si­bly Tophoven?).

Why was this film shot? It has the feel­ing of sur­veil­lance footage, but the more log­i­cal expla­na­tion is that it was b‑roll for some news fea­ture. Beck­ett was award­ed the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1969, so that might be the rea­son.

How­ev­er, the illog­i­cal but *best* rea­son is that Beck­ett was film­ing the title sequence for his detec­tive show pilot, named, of course, Beck­ett. YouTube user oobleck­boy cre­at­ed this hilar­i­ous rework a few years ago, which we told you about then. But it’s worth anoth­er look, sure­ly.

On a more seri­ous note, Beck­et­t’s main tour of Berlin came long before his jour­ney as a play­wright. Self-taught in the lan­guage and inter­est­ed in the cul­ture, he trav­eled to Berlin right after the 1936 Olympic Games and stayed through 1937. He had lost his job in Dublin, and he had fall­en out with James Joyce, so he was avoid­ing Paris. So Beck­ett trav­eled to Berlin to devour the arts. He knew the dan­gers of the ris­ing Nazi threat and took it seri­ous­ly. Instead he want­ed to see the cul­ture before it dis­ap­peared. (And it would, on one hand through the Nazis and their cam­paign against “degen­er­ate art.” On the oth­er, from the Allies bomb­ing dur­ing the war.) Beck­ett spent count­less hours in muse­ums. He attend­ed operas. He got so flu­ent in the lan­guage he could read Schopen­hauer (for the style, not the con­tent, appar­ent­ly).

But it was such a pri­vate trip that his Ger­man friends from the ‘60s nev­er knew of it. He did not men­tion it to them. The only rea­son we know is because in 1989, his nephew dis­cov­ered his diary from that time–the only diary Beck­ett ever kept–and after years of it being avail­able only to researchers, it was pub­lished in 2011. (Or rather, selec­tions of the 120,000 word jour­nal, were pub­lished.)

Last­ly, it was on one of those Berlin muse­um trips where he saw the paint­ing Two Men Con­tem­plat­ing the Moon by Cas­par David Friedrich. The image would stick in his mind until many years lat­er when it would influ­ence the set design for his most famous play, Wait­ing for Godot. (A coun­try road. A tree. Evening.) You can see the paint­ing here.

via Ubu Web

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

When Robin Williams & Steve Mar­tin Starred in Samuel Beckett’s Wait­ing For Godot (1988)

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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A Vintage Advertising Film Intelligently Satirizes the Selling of the American Dream: Watch The Your Name Here Story (1960)

in Film, History | April 15th, 2020

When did the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca attain peak earnest­ness? It had to have hap­pened some­time in the long 1950s, begin­ning with vic­to­ry in the Sec­ond World War and end­ing with the cul­tur­al shifts of the ear­ly 60s. Though indi­vid­ual Amer­i­cans back then might express dis­con­tent and even cyn­i­cism about the nation, U.S. mass cul­ture kept the dial set to tri­umphant opti­mism. And in mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca there was no cul­tur­al force quite as mass as adver­tis­ing, which broad­cast its mes­sages in not just the media of print, radio, tele­vi­sion, and bill­board, but film as well. This gold­en age of Amer­i­can earnest­ness coin­cides with the gold­en age of the Calvin Com­pa­ny, once the coun­try’s dom­i­nant mak­er of adver­tis­ing, edu­ca­tion­al, and indus­tri­al films.

Found­ed in Kansas City in 1931, the Calvin Com­pa­ny cap­i­tal­ized ear­ly on the adver­tis­ing poten­tial of 16-mil­lime­ter film. At first con­sid­ered suit­able only for “home movies,” the for­mat turned out to be ide­al for sales pitch­es, cor­po­rate train­ing ses­sions, and class­room screen­ings. Calv­in’s client list soon grew to include Gen­er­al Mills, Goodyear, Mon­san­to, West­ing­house, and Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca, as well as the Navy, the Air Force, and the Office of Edu­ca­tion.

That we can still watch some of the com­pa­ny’s many pro­duc­tions today we owe to the efforts of Rick Prelinger, whose epony­mous film archives we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. At the Inter­net Archive you can watch such Calvin clas­sics as Cof­fee Break, Forty Bil­lion Ene­mies, Fifty Years of Pow­ered Flight, The Bright Young New­com­er, and Enforc­ing Rules and Pro­ce­dures.

None have the rep­u­ta­tion of The Your Name Here Sto­ry, pro­duced by Calvin in 1960 as “the first tru­ly all-pur­pose film.” While pre­vi­ous jobs were made to order, painstak­ing­ly tai­lored by an ever-expand­ing staff of film­mak­ers to the needs the com­mis­sion­ing clients, The Your Name Here Sto­ry is com­plete­ly gener­ic. “From the dawn of human his­to­ry, a bet­ter way of life has been man’s dream,” booms its nar­ra­tor, launch­ing into an open­ing whose epic form will be famil­iar to any­one who’s put off writ­ing a term paper until the night before. After telling the sto­ry of civ­i­liza­tion — espe­cial­ly Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion — in a brisk two min­utes, the film arrives in high-tech moder­ni­ty. Alas, “despite the world’s high­est liv­ing stan­dards, the aver­age Amer­i­can remained vague­ly dis­con­tent, aware that his goal of a bet­ter way of life had still not been ful­ly real­ized. There was some­thing miss­ing.”

“Gad, it’s iron­ic,” says a pro­to­typ­i­cal Amer­i­can hus­band of the day, lying awake along­side his wife, both of them sleep­less with dis­sat­is­fac­tion. “With all our tech­nol­o­gy and indus­tri­al know-how, we still don’t have the one thing that could give us a bet­ter way of life.” That “one thing” is any­thing the com­pa­ny that licens­es The Your Name Here Sto­ry hap­pens to make, footage of which they can eas­i­ly insert into the var­i­ous spaces pro­vid­ed through­out the film. “In count­less ways, direct­ly and indi­rect­ly, YOUR PRODUCT HERE serves the nation and its cit­i­zens,” says the nar­ra­tor, cred­it­ing what­ev­er it may be with play­ing a vital role in help­ing them to “achieve suc­cess,” “enjoy health­ful recre­ation,” “grow big­ger crops,” “strength­en our nation­al defense,” and of course “get real smok­ing sat­is­fac­tion.”

Some may now watch most of The Your Name Here Sto­ry before catch­ing on to the film’s satir­i­cal intent. That owes to the fact that the Calvin Com­pa­ny itself defined the look and feel of the orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture of the 1950s, at least as it remains in cul­tur­al mem­o­ry. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a bit of fun for the “Calvin Work­shop,” the com­pa­ny’s annu­al gath­er­ing of indus­tri­al film pro­duc­ers and tech­ni­cians, the film’s spoofs of what Sapi­ens author Yuval Noah Harari has termed the “mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al-sci­en­tif­ic com­plex” almost feel made for audi­ences of the future. Among the Calvin Com­pa­ny’s sur­viv­ing films we also find 1956’s A Mag­ic Bond, direct­ed by no less notable a son of Kansas City than Robert Alt­man. Know­ing what we now do of its self-aware cor­po­rate cul­ture, does it comes as a sur­prise that Calvin would have been the train­ing ground for Hol­ly­wood’s pre-emi­nent smart-aleck?

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Com­mer­cial Ever Shown on Amer­i­can TV, 1941

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

Sell & Spin: The His­to­ry of Adver­tis­ing, Nar­rat­ed by Dick Cavett (1999)

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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365 Free Movies Streaming on YouTube

in Film, YouTube | April 9th, 2020

The wail resounds in every cor­ner of the house, you can­not stop it—the books have all been read, the new releas­es streamed, every video game played to the end mul­ti­ple times. I’m bored… You gave up quar­an­tine home­school weeks ago. Just who did you think you were? Here’s an idea, par­ent at your wit’s end: sit the kids in front of Lone Wolf McQuade or Over the Top.

Tell them how every­thing used to look like that when you were young. No sec­ond or third screen to turn to when you lost inter­est. You’d catch a free movie on a Sun­day afternoon—streaming in real time, as it were—on one of four or five chan­nels. No pause, rewind, or save for lat­er. (Play it up—maybe you didn’t live this, they don’t know that.)

Oh, and there were com­mer­cials every ten min­utes or so—lots and lots and lots of ads. This is a les­son in media history—you’re an edu­ca­tor! They’ll read­i­ly admit how much bet­ter they have it as they watch Chuck Nor­ris and Stal­lone rack up the kills on YouTube, free to stream (and pause, rewind, and save for lat­er), with many few­er ad inter­rup­tions than in your day, and with 363 oth­er films to watch and more to come.

But say you find this con­tent objec­tion­able, or… well, bad. You could cer­tain­ly do much worse, believe me, as you’ll see in a cur­so­ry look at the many fea­ture enter­tain­ments avail­able to stream free with ads on YouTube. But, in all seri­ous­ness, you care about your children’s edu­ca­tion, and with some care­ful dig­ging, you’ll find quite a lot to give them a real cul­tur­al les­son, and to enlight­en the grown-ups, too.

Learn, for exam­ple, about the Wreck­ing Crew, in a doc­u­men­tary of the same name, the famous cohort of stu­dio musi­cians who played on hun­dreds of the best pop, rock, soul, etc. records in the 60s. As the Funk Broth­ers were to Motown, Book­er T. & the MGs to Stax, so were the Wreck­ing Crew to the West Coast Sound (and the sound of Elvis, The Beach Boys, Frank Sina­tra, Nat King Cole, the Mamas and the Papas, Son­ny & Cher, Simon & Gar­funkel, and so on).

And as the Wreck­ing Crew were to the West Coast so was Mus­cle Shoals to the deep South. The tiny Alaba­ma town and its FAME Stu­dios fea­tured some of the great­est R&B, soul, and coun­try rhythm play­ers in the world, major con­trib­u­tors to records by Dylan, the Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aretha Franklin, Wil­son Pick­ett, and so many more. There’s a film about them too. (We can’t embed the full movies here, but you’ll find them in the links below.)

There are many oth­er qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al enter­tain­ments about pop music his­to­ry, like the Dave Grohl-direct­ed Sound City. You’ll also find doc­u­men­taries like Super Size Me, Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Sto­ry, and Freako­nom­ics. (An eco­nom­ics course!) Many oth­er plat­forms have intro­duced free stream­ing movies with ads. In YouTube’s case, as AdAge notes, the move to stream­ing free films comes as a way to recoup adver­tis­ers who increas­ing­ly found their ads run­ning “inside offen­sive videos, some with ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da and hate speech.”

The com­pa­ny is clean­ing up its image, and in the process becom­ing some­thing like the TV chan­nels of old, only with all the dig­i­tal ease that makes stream­ing so con­ve­nient. “They are now a TV net­work,” says an exec­u­tive for one video ad tech­nol­o­gy plat­form, mov­ing away from low-qual­i­ty, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent and toward high dol­lar series and the gold­mine of old movies. Adver­tis­ing is every­thing, so, there’s anoth­er les­son for you—even in the new media busi­ness, his­to­ry repeats.

See a list of rec­om­mend­ed films avail­able to stream free on YouTube, with ads, below. Enter the gen­er­al col­lec­tion here. And feel free to explore our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Super Size Me

The Wreck­ing Crew

Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Sto­ry

Fred­die Mer­cury: The King of Queen

Mus­cle Shoals

Freako­nom­ics

Bob Mar­ley: The Roots of Man

Sound City

All Things Must Pass (Doc­u­men­tary on Tow­er Records)

The Bird Cage

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 99 Movies Free Online Cour­tesy of YouTube & MGM: Rocky, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Four Wed­dings and a Funer­al & More

60 Free Film Noir Movies 

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

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

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The Power of Costuming in Film: Pretty Much Pop #38 with Whitney Anne Adams (Happy Death Day, Great Gatsby)

in Fashion, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 8th, 2020

How does cloth­ing mesh with set design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, sound design, etc. to cre­ate the mood in a film? Whit­ney designed for and dressed leads and crowds on The Great Gats­by, the Hap­py Death Day films and sev­er­al indie flicks. She joins Eri­ca, Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss how clothes on screen relate to clothes in life, design­ing vs. curat­ing, his­toric vs. mod­ern vs. genre, when cos­tumes get dis­tract­ing, her cur­rent TV and film picks for notable cos­tum­ing, and how an inter­est in (or total obliv­i­ous­ness to) clothes affects the watch­ing expe­ri­ence.

Read a few inter­views with Whit­ney about her process:

More arti­cles to make you think about cos­tumes:

Fol­low Whit­ney on Insta­gram @waacostumedesign. She’s also the styl­ist for Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry (i.e. Paper Boi on Atlanta). Some of the indie films she’s worked on that we bring up include Pierc­ing, The Eyes of My Moth­er, and Irre­place­able You.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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