Andrew.heavens

The “British Invasion” as a historical phenomenon, has achieved a status almost like that of Paul Revere’s ride, a watershed moment condensed to a singular image: The Stones, or—if you’re more inclined, The Beatles—step onto the tarmac, young girls scream, cameras flash, microphones jostle… suits abound. We remember the scenery, and the haircuts, but the history disappears. The all important context when the British landed in the mid sixties has to do with another invasion at the same time on England’s shores, of black American blues artists who toured the UK and performed on British TV, beginning in 1963: Howlin’ Wolf, Big Joe Williams, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins… and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

If Keith Richards has credited Chuck Berry for his chops, saying he “listened to every lick he played and picked it up,” he could perhaps say something similar about Sister Tharpe, as could dozens of other guitarists who watched her strut across the stage, picking out hot, countrified blues licks on her Gibson SG. “Nobody—not Chuck Berry, not Scotty Moore, not James Burton, not Keith Richards—played wilder or more primal rock ‘n’ roll guitar than this woman who gave her life to God and would have celebrated her 100th birthday on 20 March,” writes The Guardian. And yet, perhaps because of her religiosity, or her race, or her gender, Sister Tharpe has long remained unsung as a hero of both early rock ‘n’ roll and country.

A pioneering crossover artist from the gospel world, Tharpe came from Cotton Plant, Arkansas, a town on the banks of the Mississippi. Born to musical parents, she toured the country with her mother in revival performances across the south and made her first record at the age of 23. By the time she took the Manchester stage to sing “Didn’t it Rain” in the video at the top of the post, Tharpe was 49 years old and a highly seasoned, confident performer who could captivate any audience with her powerful voice and phenomenal playing. Just above, see a younger Tharpe play some jazz-inflected blues in “That’s All,” a sexy-sounding song about tolerance for sinful men. Sister Tharpe worked clean, but she could get down with the best of ‘em.

Like most rock pioneers, Rosetta didn’t have an easy road to stardom, and like many women in the music business, her story involves a fair amount of exploitation and abuse. But Tharpe rose above it, moved to the big city, and pitched her southern gospel tent in the heart of electric blues territory. Learn about Rosetta Tharpe’s life and career in the 2014 documentary above, The Godmother of Rock & Roll. It’s a title Tharpe well deserves, as well as some long overdue recognition from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Related Content:

Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Other American Blues Legends Perform in the UK (1963-66)

Hail! Hail! Chuck Berry, the Father of Rock & Roll, Is 85

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

On Her 100th Birthday, Watch Rock Pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Wow Audiences With Her Gospel Guitar is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The post On Her 100th Birthday, Watch Rock Pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Wow Audiences With Her Gospel Guitar appeared first on Open Culture.

DjangoCon is an annual convention for people who code in Django, which powers websites like Instagram and Pinterest (and can also be used in games development). Its European version was supposed to go down in June, but then a boy band happened, and everything went to shit.

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A good resume can land you that job interview, so you want to stand out. If formatting a resume isn't your thing, Hloom has 275 free Microsoft Word templates to download.

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When someone at Reuters designed this, they probably didn't expect that it would be interpreted as a Venn diagram. But once you see it that way, it's impossible to unsee. Just what are its values? [Reddit]

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What is Film Noir? Ask that question to the Film Noir Foundation and this is what they’ll tell you:

Film noir is one of Hollywood’s only organic artistic movements. Beginning in the early 1940s, numerous screenplays inspired by hardboiled American crime fiction were brought to the screen, primarily by European émigré directors who shared a certain storytelling sensibility: highly stylized, overtly theatrical, with imagery often drawn from an earlier era of German “expressionist” cinema. Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, and Otto Preminger, among others, were among this Hollywood vanguard.

During and immediately following World War II, movie audiences responded to this fresh, vivid, adult-oriented type of film — as did many writers, directors, cameramen and actors eager to bring a more mature world-view to Hollywood product. Largely fueled by the financial and artistic success of Billy Wilder’s adaptation of James M. Cain’s novella Double Indemnity(1944), the studios began cranking out crime thrillers and murder dramas with a particularly dark and venomous view of existence.

In 1946 a Paris retrospective of American films embargoed during the war clearly revealed this trend toward visibly darker, more cynical crime melodramas. It was noted by several Gallic critics who christened this new type of Hollywood product “film noir,” or black film, in literal translation.

Few, if any of the artists in Hollywood who made these films called them “noir” at the time. But the vivid co-mingling of lost innocence, doomed romanticism, hard-edged cynicism, desperate desire, and shadowy sexuality that was unleashed in those immediate post-war years proved hugely influential, both among industry peers in the original era, and to future generation of storytellers, both literary and cinematic.

If you want to get another angle on the question, you can always take into consideration Roger Ebert’s 10 Essential Characteristics of Noir Films. But our suggestion, especially on a long Sunday afternoon, is to spend some time watching the classic movies gathered in our collection of 50 Free Noir Films. The collection features public domain films by John Huston, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles and other celebrated directors. Here’s a quick sample of what’s in the archive:

• Beat the Devil – Free – Directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, the film is something of a comic and dramatic spoof of the film noir tradition. (1953)
• D.O.A. - Free - Rudolph Maté’s classic noir film. Called “one of the most accomplished, innovative, and downright twisted entrants to the film noir genre.” (1950)
  Five Minutes to Live - Free - Memorable bank heist movie stars Johnny Cash, Vic Tayback, Ron Howard, and country music great, Merle Travis. (1961)
• Quicksand - Free - Peter Lorre and Mickey Rooney star in a story about a garage mechanic’s descent into crime. (1950)
• Scarlet Street - Free - Directed by Fritz Lang with Edward G. Robinson. A film noir great. (1945)
• The Hitch-Hiker - Free  - The first noir film made by a woman noir director, Ida Lupino. (1953)
• The Stranger - Free - Directed by Orson Welles with Edward G. Robinson. One of Welles’s major commercial successes. (1946)

We recently added another 15 films to the collection of free noir films. So even if you’ve perused the list in the past, there’s now something new to enjoy.

Related Content:

25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time: A List by “Noirchaelogist” Eddie Muller

100 Greatest Posters of Film Noir

700 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc.

50 Free Noir Films: An Easy Way to Sample a Great Cinematic Tradition is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The post 50 Free Noir Films: An Easy Way to Sample a Great Cinematic Tradition appeared first on Open Culture.

I was fortunate enough to be invited last week to a preview screening (essentially where they drum up intereste from possible distributors etc) for the film Promakhos, which I have already written about previously here.

The event was well attended, with Stephen Fry giving his thoughts on it afterwards and leadng a question & answer session with the two directors.

Marbles Reunited has already done a very good writeup of the event – so I won’t try & repeat their work, but will just give a summary of my own thoughts on the film.

Styled as a legal thriller, it follows the story of one person’s fight to use the courts to secure the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece. There are many dramatic scenes in it, and perhaps the most memorable part is where Paul Debevec’s superlative three-dimensional model of the Parthenon is broght to life in the room, as the people wander around it, stepping into a rebuilt past through the use of virtual reality glasses.

As you can imagine, things do not always proceed smoothly – yet the film’s protagonist manages to maintain his vision & despite the ups & downs remains focussed on the goal of securing the return of the sculptures.

The cinematography is magnificent, and for anyone who has ever spent time in Athens, prefectly manages to capture the spirat of the city, through othersise unremarkable details, in a way that perhaps holds far more of its modern day charm than many films, that only see things through the eyes of a tourist. There are various allusions throught the film to ancient Greece & aspects of mythology, helping to further anchor the present day story into the ethos of ancient Athens & to show the importance of the Parthenon Sculptures to Greeks.

The film is set against the backdrop of the financial crisis & the unrest that followed in Athens – and as such is very much of its time. However, that it just because it takes place now – the story that it is telling could largely be transplanted to any other time in the campaign for the return of the sculptures & would continue to make sense. It is not something that the British Museum can just ignore with the hope that it goes away.

There are a few amusing moments too – particularly, when during the cases, others highlight their own countries requests for the return of arterfacts from the British Museum.

The film is not on display publicly anywhere yet – in the meantime though, you can watch the trailer, to give you a flavour of what it is about.

Stephen Fry with one of the directors at the preview screening of Promakhos

The post Preview screening of Promakhos – a film about the Parthenon Marbles appeared first on Elginism.

Like with nuclear war, a water balloon fight isn't about pinpoint accuracy. What's most important is raining down as much soakage on your opponent as quickly as possible. Which means that the Bunch O Balloons, which promises to let you make 100 throw-ready water balloons every minute, could be the most important addition to your summertime arsenal.

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Interval training, as we've mentioned before, is one of the most efficient ways to exercise. Yesterday we shared a routine that gives you a full-body workout with 12 exercises in 7 minutes. By request, here are videos that show how to do each of those exercises properly.

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It finally happened. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a bit of a Gawker groupie and I’ve been waiting for the rollout of Kinja on all of their sites. Not because I am an avid commenter (that requires more dedication than I can give), but because I wanted to see how it was going to work from the sidelines. I have mixed feelings.

 1) Mobile Layouts 

I know that everyone keeps saying that mobile is the future, and it is, of course. Fine. But I still don’t know how I’m supposed to work on a tablet. The old Gawker layout was optimized for a desktop experience, with the main blog post and a scroll down menu of new and trending posts. You could pick and choose, hop around the site before getting back to whatever you were avoiding before you came to Gawker in the first place.

The new Kinja layout is clean, sleek and modern. Everything you want a digital experience to be — except that you have to scroll around too much. I find myself reading many of the blurbs without actually clicking on a story. And when you do click into a story, that’s it. You have to work to browse. 

On a tablet, the Kinja reading experience makes more sense. Video and ads and posts all come together in one, non-annoying, continuous roll. My reaction to reading the new Gawker on my laptop is the first time I ever felt old. And why can’t you Tweet single posts? What’s the deal, Denton?   continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

One might rejoice at today’s news about the Christie’s owner François Pinault’s offer to return two bronze animal heads to China, a “cause célèbre for Chinese nationalists” has garnered start-studded attention from Ai Weiwei to Jackie Chan, Yves Saint Laurent, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Dalia Lama and now the head of the PPR, maker of luxury fashion goods, husband of movie start Salma Hayek. Or, one might ask if this is really a cause for celebration.

Since our 2009 post on the subject stating that since the objects were taken before current laws were in place, China’s “only recourse so far has been to purchase these antiquities back whenever they surface on the antiquities market,” Pinault has found another way. Purchasing the bronzes then “donating” them back to China, “their rightful home”, Pinault has found another solution, and a  way to improve business and diplomatic relations with a nation that boasts an impressive purchasing power by showing respect for its cultural heritage. The sculptures are of two animals in the Chinese zodiac, and were part of Beijing’s Yuanmingyuan 圓明園 (Imperial Summer Palace), sacked by French and British troops in the 19th century. China’s mission to track down the many other artifacts looted at that time has been widely published and sometimes criticized.

We will never know if Pinault’s act of generosity would take place if China had not emerged as PPR’s “fastest-growing market for its luxury goods” and if the celebrities had not shown their keen interest. What we do know, is that the return of these sculptures is the right thing to do, even if—and perhaps particularly—when the case of the animal heads is not a legal but a moral issue. For this, we applaud Pinault.

Yet, on the eve of the decision whether to renew restrictions on the importation of certain categories of Chinese antiquities into the US, SAFE believes it is time to focus on China’s “other” looting problem, and we think, the most important problem: the plunder of its numerous ancient sites yet to be excavated. In her testimony in support of China’s request for a bilateral agreement that calls for import restrictions, SAFE Founder Cindy Ho said in 2005:

One of the biggest archaeological mysteries in China is the joint tomb of China’s only Empress Wu Zetian, and her husband Emperor Li Zhi. Called Qianling, it is the only tomb in China that holds two emperors and the only Tang tomb that has not been looted. It has yet to be excavated because for half a century, the proper time to excavate Qianling has been heavily debated. While the Chinese government is concerned about security and looting, archaeologists are eager to study the buried artifacts, which are tantamount to completing our knowledge of the Tang Dynasty. Attempted robberies—although presumably thwarted—have made everyone uneasy.

What is buried in Qianling will remain forever unknown if the pillage in China continues. We will never know what the ancient bamboo tablets with ancient inscriptions had to tell us just as the stories of daily life are lost when cylinder seals from Ancient Mesopotamia are looted.  Nor will we ever understand the history of the ancient Northern People, the Chu Culture, much like the Vicús people of Peru, whose culture we know little about because of the illicit antiquities trade.

Nearly 10 years later, the official word is: no excavation of Qianling is considered for at least another 50 years, citing “preservation of the integrity of the tomb site and maintaining the environment of surrounding areas” as the top concern.

Authentic pieces of Yuanmingyuan may not resurface on the auction block any time soon, given the recent notoriety of the case of the animal heads and China’s continued rise as a formidable negotiator in the global arena. But the kind of plunder in the case of Yuanmingyuan is quite different from the kind of looting SAFE is most concerned about: the destruction of intact evidence of our undiscovered past, humanity’s most precious non-renewable resource.

Since January 2009, the US has decided to join with the international response to curbing looting and the illicit antiquities trade by granting China’s request for help in preserving its cultural heritage, our cultural heritage by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). As long as knowledge about our past cannot be revealed because of the threat of looting to feed the antiquities trade, SAFE supports import restrictions as an effective deterrent to looting. As long as another alternative to the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970 (UNESCO) and the Cultural Property Implementation Act has yet to emerge, we urge the Department of State and the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to recommend to the President to continue to abide by the US obligations as a member state of UNESCO and reaffirm its commitment to shared global cultural heritage by renewal the MoU for another five years.

This is why until media pressure focuses on the “other” looting problem: the plunder of sites to feed the black market trade of antiquities, we could celebrate the repatriation of the the rabbit and the rat only with cautious optimism and hope that the US would also do the right thing, as Pinault has.

Did you get a nice shiny new Paperwhite Kindle to replace your old one? (I haven’t yet. I’m waiting until the inevitable moment when I drop my Kindle Touch and break the screen; I’m currently on my third.) If you did, you might be interested to learn that when you’re not using it to read books or jailbreaking it so you can change the wallpaper, you can use your Paperwhite as a wireless, ultra low-power display for your Raspberry Pi.

We featured the original Kindleberry Pi hack from Ponnuki back in September. That hack required cables, and only worked on the old Kindle 3 (the version with the keyboard), not any later versions – plus, it looked a bit odd because to keep the screen in landscape mode you had to turn the whole assembly on its side, so the keyboard was rotated by 90 degrees. The new Kindle 5 (the Paperwhite) has no keyboard, a faster refresh rate, and a backlight that can be turned on in dark conditions. So Max Ogden has polished Ponnuki’s original Kindleberry Pi idea, and produced a really tidy piece of kit: a Raspberry Pi with a Paperwhite display, a wireless keyboard and a tiny wireless router. He says:

The advantages of the Kindleberry are pretty desirable for me:

• Week-long battery life: the Pi and the Kindle both have low power ARM processors so you can use any USB charger to power them
• The Kindle screen is designed for use in direct sunlight
• The whole setup is small enough to carry around in a pouch inside my normal backpack along with my normal laptop. I work from coffee shops in Oakland and often move around by bicycle during the day — now I can work from almost anywhere and still be at least a little productive.

Here at the Foundation, we’re watching the development of e-ink products with great interest. At the moment it’s nigh-on impossible to buy an e-ink display as a consumer unless it comes bundled as part of an e-reader like a Kindle or a Nook; and that makes them very expensive. The technology has all kinds of potential for applications we want to see the Pi being used for: the low energy requirement makes an e-ink screen a perfect choice for places where you’re off the grid or reliant on solar power. We’re looking forward to seeing prices come down and displays becoming more easily available to consumers.

Obviously, you’re not going to be watching video on an e-ink display any time soon; the refresh rates just aren’t there yet, and if they ever do get there, it won’t be for many years. But for everything else, e-ink’s a great choice. Max says that the Paperwhite’s refresh rate added to the tiny lag that you get using a wireless keyboard means that he sees a ~200ms screen delay when using the Kindleberry Pi, but that this is barely noticeable when typing.

Max has made code and a list of required hardware available at his website.