James Dean at 80

in Film, Television | February 8th, 2011

James Dean starred in only three major films – Rebel With­out a Cause, East of Eden, and Giant – before per­ish­ing in a car acci­dent on Route 466, near Cholame, Cal­i­for­nia in Sep­tem­ber 1955. (A free doc­u­men­tary cov­ers that.) A star died at 24. Mean­while, a leg­end for­ev­er embody­ing youth was born.

Jim­my Dean would have turned 80 today. Amaz­ing to say it. And, to mark the occa­sion, we’re fea­tur­ing a slide show show­cas­ing the pho­tog­ra­phy and voice of Den­nis Stock, the Mag­num pho­tog­ra­ph­er who took many icon­ic pho­tos of Dean, includ­ing Dean’s famous walk through a rainy Times Square with a cig­a­rette propped in mouth and hands in pock­ets. Stock­’s images shaped Dean’s pub­lic per­sona, and the work you’re see­ing here fig­ures into a more com­pre­hen­sive pre­sen­ta­tion of Stock­’s oeu­vre on the Mag­num web­site.

PS Today is also Jules Verne’s 183rd birth­day. If you’re look­ing for his clas­sics – Around the World in 80 Days or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – you can find them in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

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Discovering Sherlock Holmes

in Books, History, Literature, Stanford | February 7th, 2011

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first con­ceived of Sher­lock Holmes in 1887, he prob­a­bly did­n’t antic­i­pate that the “con­sult­ing detec­tive” would become the world’s favorite fic­tion­al inves­tiga­tive logi­cian and even­tu­al­ly infil­trate every­thing from aca­d­e­m­ic cur­ric­u­la to Hol­ly­wood. Just last year, the BBC pro­duced a fan­tas­tic three-part mod­ern­iza­tion of the clas­sic, which accord­ing to many crit­ics eclipsed Guy Ritchie’s effects-dri­ven block­buster of the same name, released sev­er­al months ear­li­er.

So mas­sive and wide-reach­ing is the cult of Holmes that Stan­ford ded­i­cat­ed an entire project to the study of Sher­lock Holmes. Dis­cov­er­ing Sher­lock Holmes fea­tures 12 of the great­est sto­ries of the Sher­lock Holmes canon from The Strand Mag­a­zine, where Sher­lock first made his appear­ance, down­load­able as free anno­tat­ed, illus­trat­ed PDF’s. A his­tor­i­cal essay on Holmes’ epoch con­tex­tu­al­izes the sto­ries and fea­tures rare vin­tage art­work by Sid­ney Paget, the orig­i­nal Sher­lock illus­tra­tor.

Note: You can also find The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes in Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks. Plus, the Free Movies col­lec­tion hous­es three vin­tage Sher­lock Holmes films — Dressed to Kill (1941), Sher­lock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) and Ter­ror by Night (1946).

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Footage of the World’s Last Uncontacted Tribe, Deep in the Brazilian Amazon

in Video - Arts & Culture | February 7th, 2011

Here we have the first aer­i­al footage of an uncon­tact­ed tribe liv­ing in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon – a peo­ple liv­ing entire­ly apart from civ­i­liza­tion as we know it. The short clip, filmed for the BBC show Human Plan­et, fol­lows Jose Car­los Meirelles, who works on behalf of the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment to safe­guard the coun­try’s indige­nous peo­ple. The liveli­hood of these indige­nous peo­ples is con­stant­ly threat­ened by ille­gal min­ing and log­ging. And it’s Meirelles’s mis­sion to pro­tect this pop­u­la­tion by pub­li­ciz­ing their exis­tence. This footage was filmed at 1 KM dis­tance with a long tele­pho­to lens to min­i­mize dis­tur­bance. To learn more about this and oth­er uncon­tact­ed tribes, vis­it http://www.uncontactedtribes.org.

via @AlyssaMilano

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875 TEDTalks in a Neat Spreadsheet

in TED Talks | February 6th, 2011

A quick fyi for TED heads in our audi­ence: Right here, you can find an online spread­sheet that lists 875 TEDTalks, with handy links to each indi­vid­ual video. This evolv­ing Google doc will give you access to more than 265 hours of “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple.” Because the page is updat­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, you’ll def­i­nite­ly want to book­mark it and keep tabs on the new addi­tions.

On a relat­ed note, TED has also just rolled out TED­Books, a new dig­i­tal book series that deliv­ers pow­er­ful ideas in 20,000 words or less. That’s about 1/3 the length of a tra­di­tion­al book. TED­Books are cur­rent­ly being sold for $2.99 through Ama­zon as “Kin­dle Sin­gles.” You can learn more about the ini­tia­tive on TED’s blog or via Brain­Pick­ings, or sim­ply vis­it Ama­zon to pre­view the first three books in the series:

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What if Tarantino Directed the Super Bowl Broadcast?

in Film, Television | February 4th, 2011

What would it look like if our great direc­tors took cre­ative con­trol over the Super Bowl broad­cast? Slate imag­ines it, show­ing you how Quentin Taran­ti­no, David Lynch, Wes Ander­son, Wern­er Her­zog and Jean-Luc Godard would put their cin­e­mat­ic stamp on the broad­cast. The clip gets bet­ter as it moves along…

Enjoy the big game. And, if movies are more your thing, don’t for­get to vis­it our big list of 340 Free Movies Online. Films by some of the great direc­tors men­tioned above appear on the list.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter!

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Watch Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse (A Little NSFW)

in Comedy | February 4th, 2011

What to do after the Apoc­a­lypse? This lit­tle pub­lic infor­ma­tion film was made (wink, wink) by the “Aus­tralian Board of Civ­il Defence” dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s. Found some­where in an old uni­ver­si­ty archive, the film, now new­ly dust­ed off, is being shown for the first time. Note: It’s a tad unsafe for work…

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:

Duck and Cov­er: The 1950s Film That Taught Mil­lions of School­child­ren How to Sur­vive a Nuclear Bomb

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

Hiroshi­ma After the Atom­ic Bomb in 360 Degrees

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Wunderkind Fun

in Literature, Music, Science | February 3rd, 2011

Only 2 years old, ‘lil Rose from Seat­tle aces her Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments game. Next up, a play date with 3 year old Jonathan who con­ducts the 4th move­ment of Beethoven’s 5th for laughs, and anoth­er pal, Samuel, who recites the poet­ry of Bil­ly Collins and Lord Alfred Ten­nyson. I’m feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter about our future…

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Paris Underground

in History | February 3rd, 2011

The Eif­fel Tow­er, Notre Dame, the Lou­vre – these famous mon­u­ments draw mil­lions of tourists to Paris every year, to the part of the city that lives above ground. Few tourists get to the oth­er part of the city, the part that lives and breathes beneath the sur­face. This month, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic has ded­i­cat­ed its fea­ture arti­cle and pho­to gallery to sub­ter­ranean Paris, tak­ing you into the caves and cat­a­combs that twist and turn beneath the city streets. Pro­duced by NPR and Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, the video above fol­lows “cat­aphiles” who trav­el through the dark side of the City of Light.

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