Decay: Zombies Invade the Large Hadron Collider in Movie Made by Ph.D. Students

Though far from the most astute schol­ar of physics or zom­bie cin­e­ma, I have to believe that this marks the first time physi­cists have made a con­tri­bu­tion to the field. But per­haps only they would think to set their movie inside the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, the Euro­pean Orga­ni­za­tion for Nuclear Research’s par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor of record-set­ting size and pow­er. (Hands up if you even knew one could go inside it.) The device has received much press for its poten­tial to either prove or dis­prove the exis­tence of a pre­dict­ed ele­men­tary par­ti­cle called the Hig­gs boson, and Decay spec­u­lates about one par­tic­u­lar con­se­quence of this high-pro­file sci­en­tif­ic quest: what if the Hig­gs boson turns peo­ple into zom­bies? Doing his Ph.D. at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter, writer-direc­tor Luke Thomp­son real­ized that — and here I quote the press release — “the tun­nels under CERN would be ide­al for a zom­bie film.” £2000, a cou­ple bor­rowed cam­eras, and a great deal of scav­enged props and impro­vised film­mak­ing gear  lat­er, we can watch the whole thing free online.

Thomp­son’s entry into the zom­bie canon fol­lows “a small group of stu­dents (played by physi­cists) after a dis­as­trous mal­func­tion in the world’s biggest par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor. As they try des­per­ate­ly to escape from the under­ground main­te­nance tun­nels, they are hunt­ed by the remains of a main­te­nance team, who have become less than human.” This use of actu­al young physi­cists run­ning around the actu­al nooks and cran­nies of CERN lends the project a scrap­py real­ism, and the prac­tice of mak­ing do with any resource at hand has a proud his­to­ry in zom­bie film­mak­ing. Recall that George A. Romero, shoot­ing the genre-defin­ing Night of the Liv­ing Dead (also free to watch on the inter­net), could only raise $6,000 at a time, which forced him to find hor­ror wher­ev­er he could. Like every strong zom­bie pic­ture, Decay not only oper­ates on mea­ger resources but per­forms a cer­tain social satire as well, in this case to do with how the non­sci­en­tif­ic world per­ceives sci­ence. But no need to take it too seri­ous­ly: “This film has not been autho­rized or endorsed by CERN,” reads the first title card. “It is pure­ly a work of fic­tion.” Whew.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Night of the Liv­ing Dead, the Sem­i­nal Zom­bie Movie, Free Online

Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the Mak­er of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

The Large Hadron Col­lid­er Rap, Yo

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Fill Your New Kindle, iPad, iPhone with Free eBooks, Movies, Audio Books, Online Courses & More

San­ta left a new Kin­dle, iPad or oth­er media play­er under your tree. He did his job. Now we’ll do ours. We’ll tell you how to fill those devices with free intel­li­gent media — great books, movies, cours­es, and all of the rest. And if you did­n’t get a new gad­get, fear not. You can access all of these mate­ri­als on the good old fash­ioned com­put­er. Here we go:

Free eBooks: You have always want­ed to read the great works. And now is your chance. When you dive into our Free eBooks col­lec­tion you will find 375 great works by some clas­sic writ­ers (Dick­ens, Dos­to­evsky, Shake­speare and Tol­stoy) and con­tem­po­rary writ­ers (F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asi­mov, and Kurt Von­negut). The col­lec­tion also gives you access to the 51-vol­ume Har­vard Clas­sics.

If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the down­load process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kin­dle and Nook users will gen­er­al­ly want to click the “Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats links” to down­load ebook files, but we’d sug­gest watch­ing these instruc­tion­al videos (Kin­dle –Nook) before­hand.

Free Audio Books: What bet­ter way to spend your free time than lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est books ever writ­ten? This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books, includ­ing works by Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and more recent writ­ers — Ita­lo Calvi­no, Vladimir Nabokov, Ray­mond Carv­er, etc. You can down­load these clas­sic books straight to your gagdets, then lis­ten as you go.

[Note: If you’re look­ing for a con­tem­po­rary book, you can down­load one free audio book from Audible.com. Find details on Audi­ble’s no-strings-attached deal here.]

Free Online Cours­es: This list brings togeth­er over 600 free online cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged cours­es range across all dis­ci­plines — his­to­ryphysicsphi­los­o­phypsy­chol­o­gy and beyond. Most all of these cours­es are avail­able in audio, and rough­ly 75% are avail­able in video. You can’t receive cred­its or cer­tifi­cates for these cours­es (click here for cours­es that do offer cer­tifi­cates. But the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment you will derive is immea­sur­able.

Free Movies: With a click of a mouse, or a tap of your touch screen, you will have access to 500 great movies. The col­lec­tion hosts many clas­sics, west­erns, indies, doc­u­men­taries, silent films and film noir favorites. It fea­tures work by some of our great direc­tors (Alfred Hitch­cock, Orson Welles, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stan­ley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch) and per­for­mances by cin­e­ma leg­ends: John Wayne, Jack Nichol­son, Audrey Hep­burn, Char­lie Chap­lin, and beyond. On this one page, you will find thou­sands of hours of cin­e­ma bliss.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Per­haps learn­ing a new lan­guage is high on your list of 2013 New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 40 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish, Yid­dish and Esperan­to. These lessons are all free and ready to down­load.

Free Text­books: And one last item for the life­long learn­ers among you. We have scoured the web and pulled togeth­er a list of 150 Free Text­books. It’s a great resource par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re look­ing to learn math, com­put­er sci­ence or physics on your own. There might be a dia­mond in the rough here for you.

Thank San­ta, maybe thank us, and enjoy that new device.…

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‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire’: Nat King Cole Sings ‘The Christmas Song,’ 1957

It is, arguably, the most beau­ti­ful ver­sion of the most pop­u­lar hol­i­day tune: Nat King Cole singing “The Christ­mas Song” in his vel­vety-smooth bari­tone voice. Cole actu­al­ly record­ed the song four times between 1946 and 1961, but it’s the last record­ing that is most often played on the radio and in stores dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son.

“The Christ­mas Song” was writ­ten on a swel­ter­ing sum­mer day in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia by the croon­er Mel Tor­mé and his writ­ing part­ner, Robert Wells. Tor­mé and Wells had been hired to write a pair of movie scores. Com­plain­ing about the heat one day, the two men began talk­ing about win­ter at high­er lat­i­tudes. Wells jot­ted down a few men­tal images. “I saw a spi­ral pad on his piano with four lines writ­ten in pen­cil, “writes Tor­mé in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy It Was­n’t All Vel­vet. “They start­ed, ‘Chest­nuts roast­ing … Jack Frost nip­ping … Yule­tide car­ols … Folks dressed up like Eski­mos.’ Bob did­n’t think he was writ­ing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse him­self in win­ter, he could cool off.”

When the song was com­plet­ed, Tor­mé imme­di­ate­ly thought of his friend Cole, accord­ing to Ace Collins in his book Sto­ries Behind the Great­est Hits of Christ­mas. The two song­writ­ers drove to Cole’s house in Los Ange­les and played it for him. Cole liked the song, and asked the writ­ers to hold it for him while he made arrange­ments to record it. Cole first record­ed “The Christ­mas Song” with his jazz trio in New York on June 14, 1946. Lat­er arrange­ments includ­ed strings and grew pro­gres­sive­ly more lush. The scene above is from the very last episode of The Nat King Cole Show, broad­cast live on Decem­ber 17, 1957. Cole is accom­pa­nied by Nel­son Rid­dle and his orches­tra.

For those cel­e­brat­ing today, we can think of no bet­ter way to send you our greet­ings than with this mov­ing per­for­mance, which ends with the mem­o­rable lines:

And so I’m offer­ing this sim­ple phrase
To kids from one to nine­ty-two
Although it’s been said many times
Many ways, Mer­ry Christ­mas to you

All You Need is Love: The Beatles Vanquish Pastor Terry Jones in the Big Apple

New York­ers go out of their way to avoid Times Square, espe­cial­ly at this time of year. What­ev­er the sea­son, it’s sure to be a mob scene of slow mov­ing tourists, mis­er­able Elmos, and loose screw loud­mouths preach­ing mes­sages of intol­er­ance. In this milieu, Flori­da pas­tor Ter­ry Jones is noth­ing spe­cial, and cer­tain­ly less pho­to­genic than the Naked Cow­boy.

Film­mak­ers Hei­di Ewing and Rachel Grady trailed the Quran-burn­ing, effi­gy-hang­ing, failed Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date there any­way, to cap­ture his “mes­sage to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty” on the 10th anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11.

Bystanders roll their eyes and hus­tle past, but only one young woman attempts to engage him direct­ly, smil­ing as if she knows that Jones’ is the sort of shell game you can’t win.

That is until one man breaks into a spon­ta­neous ren­di­tion of All You Need Is Love, the lyrics pulled up on his smart­phone. Was this brave per­for­mance moti­vat­ed in part by the pres­ence of a film crew? Who cares, as ran­dom pedes­tri­ans and staffers from the near­by TKTS booth join in, pro­vid­ing a fine alter­na­tive sound­track to the hate spew­ing from the bull pul­pit. In Ewing and Grady’s edit, the Bea­t­les are a force strong enough to drown him out.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day would like to teach the world to sing in per­fect har­mo­ny.

 

An Animated Christmas Fable by Maurice Sendak (1977)

Today we say mer­ry Christ­mas the Open Cul­ture way, by bring­ing in a piece of work from the late Mau­rice Sendak, the chil­dren’s author and illus­tra­tor who with every­thing he wrote and drew evad­ed the lim­i­ta­tions of that label. Though most of us remem­ber his books Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen from child­hood, when­ev­er our child­hoods hap­pened to be, few­er of us have seen his ani­mat­ed work. Above you’ll find a bit of it rel­e­vant to this time of year: Sendak’s open­ing sequence for Sim­ple Gifts. In it we wit­ness a shoe­less waif’s meta­mor­pho­sis into a Christ­mas tree which attracts and com­forts a pair of sim­i­lar­ly dis­pos­sessed tots. The 1977 anthol­o­gy film col­lect­ed six short films, all on the theme of Christ­mas. But only this first minute and a half comes from the inim­itable mind belong­ing to the man Time called “the Picas­so of chil­dren’s books.” The video then fea­tures Sim­ple Gifts’ open­ing remarks from Colleen Dewhurst, who reflects on and draws a les­son from this brief ani­mat­ed tale: “A per­son gives noth­ing who does not give of him­self.”

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Ani­ma­tion of Mau­rice Sendak’s Sur­re­al and Con­tro­ver­sial Sto­ry, In the Night Kitchen

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

David Bowie and Bing Crosby Sing “The Little Drummer Boy”: A Chestnut From 1977

In 1977, just a short month before Bing Cros­by died, the 40s croon­er host­ed David Bowie, the glam rock­er, on his Christ­mas show. The awk­ward­ness of the meet­ing is pal­pa­ble. An old­er, crusty Cros­by had no real famil­iar­i­ty with the younger, androg­y­nous Bowie, and Bowie was­n’t crazy about singing The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. So, short­ly before the show’s tap­ing, a team of writ­ers had to fran­ti­cal­ly retool the song, blend­ing the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas song with a new­ly-writ­ten tune called Peace on Earth. After one hour of rehearsal, the two singers record­ed The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth and made an instant lit­tle chest­nut. The Wash­ing­ton Post has the back­sto­ry on the strange Bing-Bowie meet­ing. We hope you enjoy revis­it­ing this clas­sic clip with us. Hap­py hol­i­days to you all.

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Two Prison Concerts That Defined an Outlaw Singer: Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Folsom (1968–69)

As a life­long John­ny Cash fan, raised on coun­try, gospel, blues and folk and all their out­law cousins, I spent my ado­les­cence lis­ten­ing to 1969’s Live from San Quentin and imag­in­ing the scene: Cash, who nev­er served hard time, singing about prison life to hard­ened men who greet­ed him as kin­dred. Lit­tle did I know, won­ders of the Inter­net to behold, that there is actu­al footage of the con­cert online. And so there it is above, and it’s great. John­ny mocks the guards, gets the­atri­cal­ly bel­liger­ent, and rocks out out­law coun­try style with “San Quentin,” voic­ing every prisoner’s griev­ances with his grav­el­ly deliv­ery. His glare is hyp­not­ic, and the song plays over footage of armed guards on the fences and inmates marched in herds.

Of course, there’s no San Quentin with­out Cash’s first prison con­cert, 1968’s At Fol­som Prison. The doc­u­men­tary below (with Swedish sub­ti­tles) opens with inter­views from coun­try stal­warts Mar­ty Stu­art and Cash’s daugh­ter Roseanne; it’s an hour-long explo­ration of the Fol­som prison con­cert and its import.

Cash loved giv­ing these con­certs, and he loved the men inside, not because he was one of them but because he knew he could have been if music hadn’t saved him. He gave anoth­er con­cert in 1977 at the Ten­nessee State Prison, but this record­ing nev­er had the impact that those first two did. Cash’s appear­ances at Fol­som and San Quentin in some ways defined his career as a writer and singer of out­law songs who cared about the men who paid the price for law and order.

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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.

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Michael Pollan Presents an Edible Education, A Free Online Course From UC Berkeley

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When seized with the desire to learn where their food comes from, many of today’s read­ers turn to Michael Pol­lan, author of books like The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma, In Defense of Food, and Food Rules. Per­haps you know him as the guy who pop­u­lar­ized the guid­ing words, “Eat food. Not too much. Most­ly plants.” If you’ve stud­ied at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, you might also know him as a pro­fes­sor at their Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism. Pos­sessed of both a jour­nal­ist’s curios­i­ty about sources and process­es and a pro­fes­sor’s abil­i­ty to explain — not to men­tion based in the same con­scious­ly hedo­nis­tic city that gave rise to Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse — Pol­lan has posi­tioned him­self well to remain Amer­i­ca’s fore­most pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al of the edi­ble. Who else would UC Berke­ley want to lead their Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion cours­es?

Above you’ll find Pol­lan’s open­ing ses­sion for the lat­est Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion lec­ture series, “Telling Sto­ries About Food and Agri­cul­ture.” Open to mem­bers of the pub­lic as well as Berke­ley stu­dents, the course exam­ines the real and poten­tial effects of the way we eat food and how that food gets to us in the first place. Oth­er lec­tur­ers include the­atre direc­tor Peter Sel­l­ars, radio pro­duc­ers the Kitchen Sis­ters, and “rock star of social jus­tice writ­ing” Raj Patel. Hav­ing “passed” the class, look into our archives and you’ll find the ide­al fol­low-up for next semes­ter: Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Sci­ence and Cook­ing: From Haute Cui­sine to the Sci­ence of Soft Mat­ter, also free online. Nev­er before has a prac­ti­cal edu­ca­tion on our every­day food been so eas­i­ly acces­si­ble — or as live­ly.

Both cours­es men­tioned above appear in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Michael Pollan’s Book, Food Rules, Brought to Life with Ani­ma­tion

Michael Pol­lan on Sus­tain­able Food

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.