Open Culture Beat No. 2

You gave “Open Culture Beat” a collective thumbs up. So it continues. This edition serves up 20 culture links from around the web, starting with a series of beautiful photos from 1890s Italy. Want more culture links served up daily? Give our Twitter stream a follow.

• Monochromatic photos of Venice, Rome, Florence, Torino. Circa 1890. Courtesy of The Library of Congress.

• Malcolm McDowell and Leon Vitali Talk About Clockwork Orange on the 40th Anniversary.

• Ma France: The BBC offers 24 video podcasts that will teach you French. Part of our collection How to Learn Languages for Free: Spanish, English, Chinese & 37 Other Languages. It features lessons in 40 languages in total.

• How to stream classical music live from the world’s greatest orchestras and opera companies.

• 20 Films Made Before 1900. A video roundup

• Cannes gives Jean-Paul Belmondo the Palme d’Or  50+ years after “Breathless”

• “The Book of Mormon” Liner Notes. You’ll have to wait until June 7 to read elsewhere. Playbill hosts them here.

• John Grisham: How I became a writer. Video.

• The Conan O’Brien Guide To Creativity. Courtesy of Fast Company.

• Robert Pinsky Reads From “Selected Poems”

• Bioluminescence: The weird and wonderful world. A TEDTalk by Edith Widder.

• New exhibit of post-bomb Hiroshima photos with annotated captions.

• The Beatles Complete on Ukulele is running at full strength again.

• Ebony Magazine: Every issue of Ebony Magazine from 1959 to 2008 is now online.

• Tom Hanks addresses the Yale Class of 2011 this past weekend.

• Denzel Washington delivers commencement address at The University of Pennsylvania.

• How Does A Book Go Viral?: The children’s book Go The Fuck To Sleep has sold 100,000 pre-sale copies.

• London’s Astoria gets dismantled in timelapse video.

• Terry Gross interviews author of new book on Area 51. Fascinating, particularly the part about the famous Roswell landing and its relationship to the famous martian landing broadcast by Orson Welles.

• Frank Capra: 5 Essential Films for his birthday last week.

• The Gospel According to Mark.” Written by Borges and Read by Paul Theroux. MP3.

Sources for this week’s culture links: @brainpicker,  @webacion,  @matthiasrascher,  @opedr,  @pourmecoffee,  @maudnewton,  @sheerly