Open Culture » Television

Bernstein Breaks Down Beethoven

Dan Colman — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:55:54 +0000

In the mid-1950s, the American composer Leonard Bernstein made several appearances on Omnibus, a television show dedicated to covering the sciences, arts and humanities. During his visits, Bernstein walked audiences through the art of making music. Take for example the clip above where he breaks down the making of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Just how did Beethoven craft it? And what decisions did he need to make along the way? What parts to include? And not to include? (You can see the full program here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, & Part 4). Other episodes focus on the work of Bach, and also the worlds of Jazz, Opera, American Musicals, and the conductor’s craft. Happily, all seven of Bernstein’s appearances have been collected in a newly released DVD collection, which you can find on Amazon. Hat tip to Mike.

via The New York Times

Bernstein Breaks Down Beethoven is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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Carl Sandburg on “What’s My Line?”

Dan Colman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:12:41 +0000

What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, making it the longest-running game show in American television history. During its eighteen seasons, the show featured hundreds of celebrities, including some of America’s leading cultural figures. The clip above dusts off the 1960 appearance made by Carl Sandburg, the poet, writer, and three time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. And now for a video that’s not all fun and games: a virtual movie of Sandburg reading his antiwar poem Grass. (You can also get more free audio recordings of Sandburg’s poetry over at the Internet Archive.)

Carl Sandburg on “What’s My Line?” is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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Rod Serling: Where Do Ideas Come From?

Dan Colman — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:57:47 +0000

Rod Serling, the American screenwriter & television producer best known for The Twilight Zone (watch full episodes here), fielded questions from students about the whole art of writing for television. In the clip above, he gives a rather dramatic response to the question, “Where do ideas come from?” (They come from the Earth… They’re in the air. And, to put them on paper, you bleed!) If you keep watching this YouTube playlist, the conversation with Serling continues for a good while. This contribution was sent to us by Elan, who dates the clip to around 1972. You can always write us and suggest a link here.

Rod Serling: Where Do Ideas Come From? is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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A New TV Guide for Internet Television

Dan Colman — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:32:14 +0000

Today, Clicker.com comes out of beta and promises to become the complete guide to Internet Television. Currently, the site “contains more than 450,000 episodes, from over 6,000 shows, from over 1,200 networks, tens of thousands of movies, and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists.” The content (all apparently legal) is generally supplied by other content providers, and then aggregated by Clicker. Although the content is often quite pop, you can find some university content (Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc.) in the mix, much of it supplied by Academic Earth. Other quality content appears in the Art & Artists section here and the Documentary section here.

Thanks Denise for the tip.

via USA Today

A New TV Guide for Internet Television is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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“The Wire” @ Harvard

Dan Colman — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:54:54 +0000

David Simon once called his HBO series, The Wire, “a political tract masquerading as a cop show.” Think of it as a five season, 3600 minute, artistic depiction of the escalating breakdown of urban society. The show is art. But it is also life in the biggest sense. And it’s why some thinkers have likened the epic series to (or even elevated it above) Tolstoy’s War & Peace. Now comes this… According to The Harvard Crimson, William J. Wilson, a Harvard sociology professor, will teach a new course that uses The Wire as “a case study for poverty in America,” saying that “The Wire has done more to enhance our understanding of the systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the poor than any published study.” If you haven’t seen this series, and if this whets your appetite, you can find a nice deal on Amazon. The full series now goes for $125.00, 50% off the list price.

“The Wire” @ Harvard is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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Film Version of Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire Now Online

Dan Colman — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:14:07 +0000

Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, Botany of Desire, is now a film, and you can watch it online, courtesy of PBS. (Click to watch complete film.) The film takes you inside our relationship with the plant world, and shows “how four familiar species — the apple, the tulip, cannabis and the potato — evolved to satisfy our yearnings for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control.” According to a piece in The San Francisco Chronicle, it took eight years to pull together the funding for the film, and that’s simply because marijuana was in the mix. The film runs close to two hours. The preview is above, the full film is here. For more films, please visit our collection of Free Movies Online.

Film Version of Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire Now Online is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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John Lennon (and Yoko Ono) on the Dick Cavett Show

Dan Colman — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:40:49 +0000

A little birthday present. John Lennon would have been 69 years old today. This memorable interview, recorded in 1971, features John and Yoko in a candid, relaxed and wide-ranging conversation with one of America’s leading talk show hosts at the time. To watch the full interview, see Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. These interviews, and other Lennon interviews with Cavett, are all part of a DVD that you purchase at Amazon.

Related Content:

The Beatles Remastered: An Inside Look

What New Yorkers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

The Beatles: Podcasts from Yesterday

The Grey Video: Mixing the Beatles with Jay-Z

John Lennon (and Yoko Ono) on the Dick Cavett Show is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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PBS and NPR Launch the Forum Network, Offering Free Online Lectures

Dan Colman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:22:47 +0000

News from the Wired Campus Blog:

PBS and NPR are now posting taped interviews and videos of lectures by academics, adding to the growing number of free lectures online.

Their site, called Forum Network, says it makes thousands of lectures available, including the Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s take on calculating happiness in a lecture called “How to Measure Pleasure,” and a discussion by a Northeastern University professor, Nicholas Daniloff, about the difficulties of reporting in Russia in a lecture called “Of Spies and Spokesmen: The Challenge of Journalism in Russia.”

The Forum Network is now happily added to our collection, Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites. (You will find about 50 intelligent video sites here.) For more free educational content, be sure to visit our collection of Free University Courses. It now features 200 free courses from leading universities, and you can download them all to your computer or mp3 player.

PBS and NPR Launch the Forum Network, Offering Free Online Lectures is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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The 10 Best Twilight Zone Episodes

Dan Colman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:32:59 +0000

Last Friday marked the 50th anniversary of The Twilight Zone’s debut on American television, a big occasion for fans of sci-fi, horror and suspense. To celebrate the anniversary, TV Squad pulled together a list of the 10 best episodes of Rod Serling’s show. At the top, you might put the episode called “Eye of the Beholder,” which we’ve posted above. For the remaining nine, visit the TV Squad list and also see the interviews with Rod Serling toward the end of their page. Enjoy.

Rewind the Videotape: Mike Wallace Interviews 1950s Celebrities

Salvador Dali (and Other VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”

The 10 Best Twilight Zone Episodes is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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Digital Archive of Vintage Television Commercials

Dan Colman — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:51:19 +0000

Thanks to Duke University, you can now access a digital archive of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s. Eventually, this collection will feature close to 12,000 digitized commercials, and it will let you see how America’s traditional brands (IBM, Maxwell House, American Express, Avis, etc) evolved through the medium of mainstream commercial television. You can learn more about this collection called Adviews with this introductory video or via the Adviews website, and you can watch the vintage commercials through iTunes. (Unfortunately, I don’t see a way to access these clips via other means. Sorry about that.) Via @LibrarySecrets

Related Content:

The Australian Screen Archive

Rewind the Videotape: Mike Wallace Interviews 1950s Celebrities …

The Free Music Archive

Digital Archive of Vintage Television Commercials is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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