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B.B. King Changes a Broken Guitar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, and Doesn’t Miss a Beat (1985), Spin the 17th-Century Death Roulette Wheel & Find Out What Would Have Killed You in 1665 ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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The video above from YouTuber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost certainly seen more than a few of them. Battleship Potemkin, Dumbo, Rear Window, Dr. No, The Godfather, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Top Gun, Braveheart, Gladiator, Inception: we’re not talking about obscurities here. Whether or not you count them among your personal favorites, these motion pictures have all become near-universally known for good (and/or Oscar-related) reasons, some of which may come back to mind as you watch the history of cinema visually retold through a feature-length string of their especially recognizable scenes.
Though genre pictures dominate, “I have not selected those films that marked the development of a genre or film stream,” Day writes. “I have selected the most popular and better known ones by people. That’s why I’ve included so many American movies and less of other countries, because a lot of the most famous movies throughout history are from the U.S.” (Hence, for example, the absence of Hideo Nakata’s influential piece of “J‑horror” Ringu and the presence of Ringu, its Hollywood remake from a few years later.) No matter where […]
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The scene is Farm Aid, 1985, attended by a crowd of 80,000 people. The song is “How Blue Can You Get.” And the key moment comes at the 3:10 mark, when the blues legend B.B. King breaks a guitar string, then manages to replace it before the song finishes minutes later. All the while,…
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A common historical misconception holds that, up until a few centuries ago, everyone died when they were about 40. In fact, even in antiquity, one could well make it to what would be considered an advanced age today — assuming one survived the great mortal peril of childhood, and then all the dangers…
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Andy Warhol did for art what the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) did for wrestling. He made it a spectacle. He made it something the “everyman” could enjoy. He infused it with celebrity. And, some would say, he cheapened it too.
Looking back, it makes perfect sense that Warhol frequented wrestling shows at Madison Square Garden…
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A foreign traveler road-tripping across Europe might well feel a wave of trepidation before driving a fully loaded modern automobile over a more than 2,000-year-old bridge. But it might also be balanced out by the understanding that such a structure has, by definition, stood the test of time — and, for those with a grasp…
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