Guns N’ Roses Meet Two Cellos: Monday Mashup

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | June 13th, 2011

You may rec­og­nize Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser, aka 2CELLOS, from their rock­ing arrange­ment of Michael Jack­son’s Smooth Crim­i­nal ear­li­er this year. This time, the clas­si­cal­ly-trained musi­cians have done them­selves one bet­ter, with a fre­net­ic, hard-hit­ting take on GNR’s “Wel­come To The Jun­gle” that would give Slash him­self a run for his hard­core cred.

2CELLOS are cur­rent­ly tour­ing with Elton John, and you can pre-order their debut CD, which includes cov­ers of Nir­vana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” and U2’s “With or With­out You.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gui­tar Prodi­gy from Karachi

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

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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Chaplin Meets Inception: The Final Speech of The Great Dictator

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | June 2nd, 2011

Char­lie Chap­lin is said to have added his 4 1/2 minute final speech to The Great Dic­ta­tor (1940) only after Hitler’s inva­sion of France. The speech both show­cas­es the actor’s con­sid­er­able dra­mat­ic gifts and makes a pre­scient, elo­quent plea for human decen­cy. So the idea of adding any kind of extra music, espe­cial­ly a com­po­si­tion by the fre­quent­ly bom­bas­tic Hans Zim­mer, might seem like first gild­ing the lily and then dous­ing it with lysol and neon paint. But we think this Zim­mer track from the 2010 sci-fi head trip hit Incep­tion actu­al­ly kin­da works. Give it a look/listen and let us know what you think.

You can find The Great Dic­ta­tor and many oth­er Chap­lin films in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via @stevesilberman

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 Musalman: The Last Handwritten Newspaper in the World

in Video - Arts & Culture | May 30th, 2011

Tucked away in the crowd­ed south­ern Indi­an city of Chen­nai, in the shad­ow of the Wal­la­jah Mosque, is an unflat­ter­ing build­ing. But what hap­pens inside the build­ing is remark­able. Every day since 1927, a ded­i­cat­ed team has worked tire­less­ly to cre­ate a hand­writ­ten news­pa­per, The Musalman (in Urdu: مسلمان). Today, there’s a team of six work­ers who work on the news­pa­per dai­ly. Four of the work­ers are known as kat­i­bs, writ­ers ded­i­cat­ed to the ancient art of Urdu cal­lig­ra­phy. They have the most mod­est of facil­i­ties: two wall fans, three light bulbs, and one tube light in an 800-square-foot build­ing. But watch­ing the video, you learn how this news­pa­per has sur­vived for three gen­er­a­tions — every­one who works there is absolute­ly devot­ed to the task. In fact, they are pre­pared to work on The Musalman until their “last breath,” an unde­ni­able pas­sion.

In the mod­ern era where almost every pub­lished work is cre­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly, it is refresh­ing to see the tra­di­tion of cal­lig­ra­phy endure with The Musalman. We can only hope the rest of us can appre­ci­ate The Musalman’s his­to­ry and its efforts to sur­vive as much as its ded­i­cat­ed read­ers do.

To learn more about The Musalman, read this Times of India sto­ry. For more about the world’s hand­writ­ten news­pa­pers, please see this post on Brain­Pick­ings.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Sir Anthony Hopkins Reads Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

in Poetry, Video - Arts & Culture | May 27th, 2011

The great actor Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins is well versed in the work of fel­low Welsh­man Dylan Thomas — so much so he even direct­ed the crit­i­cal­ly laud­ed film Dylan Thomas: The Return Jour­ney in 2006. Here, he is read­ing one of Thomas’ best-known poems, “Do not go gen­tle into that good night.” (If any­one knows when this video was made, please drop us a line.)

There is, of course, no read­er of Thomas’ poet­ry equal to Thomas him­self. Just lis­ten to this BBC record­ing from 1951, the year the beloved vil­lanelle was first pub­lished. But if dul­cet tones and min­i­mal­ist record­ings aren’t your thing, then you might want to check out this John Cale ver­sion.

And then, because it’s Fri­day, don’t for­get Rod­ney Dan­ger­field.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

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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3 Dreams of Black: A Mind-blowing Interactive Music Video

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | May 20th, 2011

So this is def­i­nite­ly not your grand­ma’s MTV. The clip we’ve post­ed above explains the mak­ing of “3 Degrees of Black,” an inter­ac­tive video made for your brows­er, which was the prod­uct of a col­lab­o­ra­tion between the mul­ti-hyphen­at­ed artist/filmmaker Chris Milk and a group of 20-some­thing genius­es at Plan­et Google. But before you delve into the (admit­ted­ly fas­ci­nat­ing) back­sto­ry, be sure to expe­ri­ence the video for your­self and move your mouse around a bit.

“Three Dreams of Black” is a song from the new album “Rome,” itself a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Amer­i­can pro­duc­er Dan­ger Mouse and Ital­ian com­pos­er Daniel Lup­pi, fea­tur­ing Jack White and Norah Jones. The song is a per­fect choice for a trip­py, mul­ti-faceted project like this, which com­bines video, 2D and 3D graph­ics, and the user her­self. And yes, we know the whole “exper­i­ment” is basi­cal­ly just an adver­tise­ment for Google Chrome, but after spend­ing some time in their dream­scape, we’re cool with that.

via Metafil­ter

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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Jon Stewart & Bill O’Reilly Debate Rapper’s Visit to the White House

in Current Affairs, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | May 17th, 2011

The cul­ture wars wage on. Almost twen­ty years after the great Mur­phy Brown debate, we’re still going at it. But now, instead of debat­ing the pros and cons of sin­gle moth­er­hood, the focus has turned to whether Michelle Oba­ma erred in invit­ing the rap­per Com­mon to the White House Poet­ry Night last week. (See his actu­al per­for­mance here.) Crit­ics point to this 2007 YouTube video, A Let­ter to the Law, though they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lis­ten until the very end. And they also flag his sym­pa­thet­ic words direct­ed toward Joanne Ches­i­mard (aka Assa­ta Shakur), an ex-Black Pan­ther, con­vict­ed of killing a New Jer­sey police offi­cer in 1973. This all built up to the lat­est Jon Stew­art — Bill O’Reil­ly face­off, which drilled down to the ques­tion: Did the First Lady make a major gaffe? Or is this anoth­er case of selec­tive out­rage? Part 1 is above; Part II is here…

via @Frauenfelder

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The City Limits: Beautiful Time Lapse of Five Cities

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | May 13th, 2011

In this superb time lapse video, Dominic Boudreault presents five urban cities — Mon­tre­al, Que­bec City, Chica­go, Toron­to, and New York City — and what he calls the “the dual­i­ty between city and nature.”

Most fas­ci­nat­ing is the high van­tage point from which much of the footage was shot: watch the col­or­ful lights adorn­ing the Empire State Build­ing, and just a minute lat­er, cars shoot­ing down the free­way next to Lake Michi­gan in snowy Chica­go. The City Lim­its was shot in late 2010, ear­ly 2011.

Relat­ed: if you’re a fan of time lapse videos, don’t miss this one of the Big Apple.

via Curios­i­ty Counts

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Keith Richards Interviewed at The New York Public Library

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | May 13th, 2011

For a cer­tain kind of per­son (that means you, Dan C.), a straight hour of Rolling Stones gui­tarist Kei­th Richards expound­ing on the rock n’ roll life is about as close to heav­en as one can get with­out mag­i­cal­ly trans­form­ing into Richards’ favorite gui­tar. Here is the 66-year old leg­end being inter­viewed at the New York Pub­lic Library, fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of his crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed mem­oir Life, which no less severe a judge than Michiko Kaku­tani called “elec­tri­fy­ing.”

In the inter­view (see the remain­ing parts here, here and here) Richards comes off as wit­ty, artic­u­late, and espe­cial­ly elo­quent when speak­ing about his pas­sion for Amer­i­can blues, but one of the most charm­ing ear­ly moments comes thanks to his inter­locu­tor, Antho­ny DeCur­tis. DeCur­tis is some­thing of a rock star in his own field, but he fights a los­ing bat­tle with his nat­ur­al fan­dom for the first 15 min­utes of the con­ver­sa­tion, then final­ly starts to implode at about the 22:2o mark. His mini-melt­down is imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by Richards’ hilar­i­ous riff on the Stones’ ear­ly Bea­t­les-envy, and it all just gets bet­ter from there, cul­mi­nat­ing in the expect­ed wild applause at the end of the hour.

A foot­note: Richards’ col­lab­o­ra­tor on Life is the respect­ed British jour­nal­ist named James Fox. Fox spent five years work­ing with the gui­tarist, or rather, chas­ing him from con­ti­nent to con­ti­nent, record­ing hun­dreds of hours of their con­ver­sa­tions, and then shap­ing those hours into a book that is not mere­ly coher­ent or inter­est­ing but gen­uine­ly lit­er­ary. He deserves a round of applause as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Bud­dy Hol­ly

Pat­ti Smith at the New York Pub­lic Library

via NYPL

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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