Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Film

in Film, Literature | March 28th, 2011

Due to its styl­is­tic and lin­guis­tic com­plex­i­ty, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake ranks among the most dif­fi­cult works of fic­tion. And that is why vir­tu­al­ly no film­mak­er has ever tried to adapt Joyce’s final work for the screen. But after Mary Man­ning Howe adapt­ed pas­sages from the book for the stage (lis­ten to her read­ing from Finnegans Wake here), Amer­i­can ani­ma­tor Mary Ellen Bute accept­ed the chal­lenge and turned Man­ning’s play into a film.

Sad­ly, Mary Ellen Bute’s short films are almost for­got­ten today, but from the 1930s to 1950s her abstract musi­cal shorts were known to a wide audi­ence. Don’t miss her first col­or film from 1938.

Between 1965 and 1967, Bute cre­at­ed her last film, and only fea­ture film, Pas­sages from Finnegans Wake. The movie was screened at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and named Best Debut of the Year (1965). The video above shows only the open­ing sequence, but the whole film can be enjoyed online cour­tesy of UbuWeb.

Bonus: You can read Roger Ebert’s 1968 review of Bute’s film here. He admits that he did­n’t enjoy it too much, but con­cedes this may have been because he had­n’t actu­al­ly read the book.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Biology That Makes Us Tick: Free Stanford Course by Robert Sapolsky

in Online Courses, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | March 28th, 2011

First thing you need to know: Before doing any­thing else, you should sim­ply click “play” and start watch­ing the video above. It does­n’t take long for Robert Sapol­sky, one of Stan­ford’s finest teach­ers, to pull you right into his course. Bet­ter to watch him than lis­ten to me.

Sec­ond thing to know: Sapol­sky is a MacArthur Fel­low, a world renowned neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist, and an adept sci­ence writer best known for his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Much of his research focus­es on the inter­play between the mind and body (how biol­o­gy affects the mind, and the mind, the body), and that rela­tion­ship lies at the heart of this course called “Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy.”

Now the third: Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy is avail­able on YouTube and iTunes for free. The course, con­sist­ing of 25 videos span­ning 36 hours (watch them all below), is oth­er­wise list­ed in the Biol­o­gy sec­tion of our big list of Free Online cours­es (now 1,700 cours­es in total).

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Athe­ist Stan­ford Biol­o­gist Robert Sapol­sky Explains How Reli­gious Beliefs Reduce Stress

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Robert Sapol­sky Explains the Bio­log­i­cal Basis of Reli­gios­i­ty, and What It Shares in Com­mon with OCD, Schiz­o­phre­nia & Epilep­sy

How Bud­dhism & Neu­ro­science Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Best­selling Author Robert Wright

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Free Grateful Dead Concert Archive

in Internet Archive, Music | March 26th, 2011

“One More Sat­ur­day Night” for your Sat­ur­day night.

If this vin­tage clip filmed in Copen­hagen in 1972 reawak­ens your inner Dead Head, then you can always wade your way into the Inter­net Archive’s Grate­ful Dead col­lec­tion, which hosts dozens of Dead shows from the 1970s through the 1990s. Some con­certs (usu­al­ly record­ed by mem­bers of the audi­ence) can be down­loaded. Oth­er audio (usu­al­ly tak­en from the sound­board) can be streamed. All togeth­er, you will find hun­dreds of hours of free con­cert record­ings.

A few items worth sam­pling include: Live at the Boston Gar­den (May 7, 1977); Live at the RFK Sta­di­um (June 10, 1973); or Live at Madi­son Square Gar­den (Sep­tem­ber 4, 1979).

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David Lynch “Directs” Duran Duran Concert in L.A.

in Film, Music | March 25th, 2011

This past Wednes­day, YouTube streamed a web­cast of the lat­est install­ment of the Unstaged con­cert series. Arcade Fire kicked off the series last August in New York City. Now we cut to the Mayan The­ater in Los Ange­les, where Duran Duran took the stage. The 80s band is still around, still mak­ing music. And they’re smart­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with David Lynch, who cre­at­ed visu­als that were dou­ble-exposed over the live per­for­mance. Huff­Po inter­viewed Lynch about the col­lab­o­ra­tion (and more) here, and you can always head to YouTube to find videos of indi­vid­ual songs played dur­ing the show.

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Blinky™: A Touching Short Film About A Killer Robot

in Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture | March 25th, 2011

That’s right, touch­ing.

From Blade Run­ner to Ter­mi­na­tor to at least 30 per­cent of what made Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca great, vio­lent robot revolt is noth­ing new. But 27-year old Irish film­mak­er Ruairi Robin­son, who was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar for his ani­mat­ed short Fifty Per­cent Grey, tweaks the for­mu­la by shrink­ing the are­na: This bat­tle­field isn’t a galaxy, a solar sys­tem or even a plan­et; it’s just the lone­ly sub­ur­ban home of a boy whose par­ents fight all day.

Max Record (Where the Wild Things Are) is fine as the angry son who hopes a new toy will solve all of his prob­lems, but this movie belongs to the robot: More WALL‑E than cylon, more R2-D2 than ED-209, and priced at just $999.99, Blinky is a machine the whole fam­i­ly can love. He catch­es, he cleans, he plays hide and seek, he’ll wait for you in the rain, and he just wants to be your friend.…Until he does­n’t.

A warn­ing here: Even though at its best Blinky speaks direct­ly to the bloody-mind­ed fifth-grad­er in all of us, we sug­gest watch­ing the whole thing before show­ing it to chil­dren, or even squea­mish adults.

(Vis­it the always excel­lent io9 for more free sci­ence fic­tion film rec­om­men­da­tions.)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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The Wire as Great Victorian Novel

in Books, Literature, Television | March 25th, 2011

A while back, W. Daniel Hillis made the case that The Wire may rise to the lev­el of – if not sur­pass – Tol­stoy’s War & Peace. Writ­ing for the Edge.org, Hillis went so far as to say:

As much as I liked War and Peace, I prob­a­bly got more out of The Wire. And why should that be sur­pris­ing? More human effort can be put into a tele­vi­sion series than a nov­el and more time is spent con­sum­ing it. If both are exe­cut­ed to their high­est stan­dards, with equal care, skill and insight, we might well expect less from the book.

If we can men­tion The Wire in the same breath as Tol­stoy, then why not anoth­er giant of nine­teenth cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture, Charles Dick­ens? Yes, The Wire has been called “Dick­en­sian” too, and this week the Hood­ed Util­i­tar­i­an has re-imag­ined The Wire as a seri­al­ized Vic­to­ri­an nov­el. The premise? Imag­ine The Wire writ­ten in 60 install­ments over the course of six years, start­ing in 1846, by Hor­a­tio Buck­les­by Ogden, a Dick­ens con­tem­po­rary who wrote with a “nuance and atten­tion to detail that Dick­ens nev­er achieved.” Each install­ment ran 30 pages and sold for one shilling apiece.

The Hood­ed Util­i­tar­i­an has­n’t actu­al­ly print­ed these 60 install­ments (because they don’t actu­al­ly exist). But they have pro­duced a few won­der­ful mock pages, and writ­ten a faux piece of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism to accom­pa­ny them. A great job by Joy Delyr­ia and Sean Michael Robin­son.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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The New York Philharmonic Opens Digital Archives to the Public

in Music | March 24th, 2011

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The New York Phil­har­mon­ic recent­ly unveiled its dig­i­tal archives to the pub­lic. They haven’t fin­ished the archive quite yet, but they have com­plet­ed the Leonard Bern­stein years, also known as the  “Inter­na­tion­al Era.” You can find busi­ness cor­re­spon­dence, hand­writ­ten notes, 3,200 pro­grams, and gems like this Mahler score, full of nota­tions and com­ments in Bern­stein’s hand. As a recent New York Times arti­cle points out, the Bern­stein years (1942–70) saw some of the most tumul­tuous events in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, and in no way was the Phil­har­mon­ic immune from its upheavals.

In the archives, one finds the orches­tra hir­ing women for the first time, scout­ing for African-Amer­i­can musi­cians (in 1969 they had just one), and even doing its bit to man­age U.S.-Soviet rela­tions with sev­er­al attempts to invite Shostakovich – unsuc­cess­ful­ly. Fans of Glenn Gould might par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy read­ing the min­utes of a meet­ing in which mem­bers of the board, out­raged over Gould’s famous­ly con­tro­ver­sial Brahms per­for­mance just one month ear­li­er, argued to release him from his con­tract. Bern­stein him­self also hat­ed Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tion, but had nonethe­less defend­ed it before the audi­ence in an his­toric speech about the pianist’s artis­tic integri­ty and judge­ment. (The video above is of a hap­pi­er col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two mas­ters just two years ear­li­er.)

Also: On March 17, the NYPhil post­ed this video of a per­for­mance of Toru Takemit­su’s “Requiem for Strings,” to raise aware­ness of the plight in Japan and encour­age dona­tions.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Evgeny Morozov Animated: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

in Current Affairs, Politics, Technology | March 24th, 2011

RSA has released its lat­est ani­mat­ed video, and this time it fea­tures Evge­ny Moro­zov, the Belarus-born researcher, who takes the con­trar­i­an posi­tion that the inter­net can often inhib­it (rather than pro­mote) democ­ra­cy, espe­cial­ly with­in author­i­tar­i­an con­texts like Chi­na and Iran. And what fol­lows (above) is a more sober­ing talk about how author­i­tar­i­an regimes use the web to sup­press civic engage­ment and fledg­ling democ­ra­cy move­ments. This clip is part of a longer 27 minute lec­ture (see full ver­sion here) that peers into “the dark side of inter­net free­dom,” a phrase that hap­pens to be the sub­ti­tle of Moro­zov’s new book.

Moro­zov is cur­rent­ly a vis­it­ing schol­ar in the Lib­er­a­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­gram at Stan­ford, and if you’re won­der­ing how he looks at tech­nol­o­gy and the role it played in Egyp­t’s rev­o­lu­tion, you can watch a quick clip here.

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