Although British director Peter Greenaway is best known for feature films like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Prospero’s Books, and The Pillow Book, he has also completed several highly respected projects for television, including this 53-minute exploration of the life and work of Charles Darwin.

This gorgeous video of a cymbal (shot with a Phantom at 1,000 frames per second) made our morning. And then Kottke’s find below — brilliant footage of vibrating guitar strings — made our afternoon.

Hope you enjoy them as much as we did, and have a great weekend!
Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer.

The Paris Review blog, which just gets better and better each week, posted Andrew David Watson’s lovely video yesterday about Michael Seidenberg, who moved his shop, Brazenhead Books, into his New York City apartment after his bookshop rent skyrocketed.

Congratulations to the comedian Louis C.K. whose half-hour F/X show Louie was just nominated for an Emmy Award (full list of nominees here). To celebrate, here’s one of our favorite of his riffs from a 2009 appearance on the Conan O’Brien show. (Speaking of Conan, don’t miss his Dartmouth graduation address.

We love the design and overall layout of The Illuminated Playlists by Brooklyn-based designer Adam Parks, but the real delight of the website is its sound, not its look.

We want to be excited about the latest film version of Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis (get free etext here), especially because it’s an indie production, and we just can’t see the existential drama of Gregor Samsa’s journey from human to insect surviving a major studio adaptation.

You’ve heard him read Lady Gaga, you’ve seen him reminisce with his fellow lov-ahs on Saturday Night Live, and you’ve heard him sub in for Leonard Lopate on the radio. But we’re not sure if any of Christopher Walken’s appearances can beat his demented spin on “The Three Little Pigs.” Mr.

E.B. White, beloved author of Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and the classic English writing guide The Elements of Style (with William Strunk), would have been 102 today.

Almost 35 years ago, sometime in the late 70s, the filmmakers Errol Morris and Werner Herzog made a bet. Correction: At the time, Herzog was a filmmaker, and already a star, but Errol Morris was just a guy obsessed with the idea of making a film about a pet cemetery. ‘I don’t believe you have the guts,’ Herzog told Morris.

Canadian “geek rapper” Baba Brinkman first garnered popular attention with a well-received, well-reviewed rap adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (To get a sense of the project, check out this brief scene from “The Pardoner’s Tale.