Portside

General Ripper explains to Mandrake the importance of preserving his 'precious bodily fluids.'

General Ripper, unfortunately, is very relevant to politics today.

This Friday Nite Videos is devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the release of The Freewheelin Bob Dylan. Nearly 50 years after Dylan's album, Andy Rein produces a cover that sticks with self-accompanying guitar and harmonica and clear vocals.

This Friday Nite Videos is devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the release of The Freewheelin Bob Dylan. Here's Eric Clapton at the 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration for Bob Dylan in 1993. Notice the electric guitar? And nobody's booing.

This Friday Nite Videos is devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the release of The Freewheelin Bob Dylan. 'Hard Rain' seems as perfectly suited to Jimmy Cliff, reggae master indomitable voice of The Harder They Come, as Cliff does to Hard Rain.

This Friday Nite Videos is devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Eddie, Mike and GE Smith performing a stunning rendition of the Dylan classic at the Dylan 30th anniversary concert.

This Friday Nite Videos is devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the release of The Freewheelin Bob Dylan. Peter, Paul and Mary created one of the most widely played versions of this civil right song. This performance is on Tonight in Person (BBC 1966).

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British director Steve McQueen adapts Solomon Northup's remarkable account of being kidnapped and sold into slavery for a dozen years in the middle of the 19th century. The material is inherently suspenseful and harrowing, since Northup provides a detailed account of slavery's brutal nature in the Deep South. But it's Fassbender's penchant for creating disquieting atmosphere that's well positioned to make this spectacular survival tale come to life and possibly provide one of the more accurate recreations of slavery life in America. (Take that, "Django Unchained." [Eric Kohn, indiewire.com]

Flash mob in Amsterdam department store De Bijenkorf. The music is from Giuseppe Verdi's (1813 - 1901) opera La Traviata. From Dutch TV program NTR Podium (2-10-2011).