The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore offers a modern tribute to an old world. Made with an animation style that blends stop motion with computer animation and traditional hand-drawing, the silent film pays homage to a bygone era when elegantly printed books inhabited our world. The 15-minute short is the first made by Moonbot Studios, a fledgling animation shop in Shreveport, Louisiana. For their efforts, Moonbot’s founders (William Joyce, Brandon Oldenburg and Lampton Enochs) received an Oscar-nomination this week (Best Animated Short), putting them in competition with two other films featured on Open Culture: Sunday and Wild Life.
We recommend watching The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore in “Couch mode” on Vimeo, or downloading it for free in HD from iTunes. iPad owners will also want to consider buying the related app ($4.99) that turns the film into an interactive narrative experience.
Here we go again. We’re getting meta with readings by the great Christopher Walken. It all starts with the actor appearing on a 1993 broadcast of the British TV series “Saturday Zoo” hosted by Jonathan Ross, and he’s reading and riffing on the beloved fairy tale, The Story of the Three Little Pigs. The potentially terrifying story is uncharacteristically jolly. Walken goes for laughs, not chills. The same can’t be said for the next tale.
We’re not clear on the backstory of this reading. But we do know Walken is reading Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven, and stays true to the original text published in 1845. The Raven made Poe famous then, and it remains influential today — so much so they named a football team after the poem. How many other sports teams can make such a claim?
And then we come full circle again. Almost 16 years after Walken’s reading of The Three Little Pigs, the star returned to another show hosted by Jonathan Ross (BBC’s Friday Night) and served up a second comic reading. This time it’s “Poker Face” by the inescapable Lady Gaga.
Walken reading Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak? If only, if only .….
Back in 1998, Hunter S. Thompson’s most famous piece of Gonzo journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was brought to the silver screen, with Johnny Depp playing a lead role. From this point forward, Depp and Thompson became fast friends. Indeed, Depp would end up paying for Thompson’s elaborate funeral, which involved shooting the writer’s ashes out of a cannon to the tune of Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky and Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man.
Above we feature Johnny reading aloud some letters he received from Hunter. The letters are very Thompson-esque, which means, among things, they’re NOT SAFE for work! Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 here.
Music and comic book art are the two passions of Robert Crumb’s creative life. In this video from W.W. Norton, Crumb talks about his obsessive interest in the old-time blues, folk and country music of the 1920s and 1930s. “I think it’s neurological,” he says. “Some quirky types of nervous systems are just attracted to that old music.”
As one of the pioneers of the underground comix movement in the late 1960s, Crumb’s work often related in some way to his love of music. His famous “Keep on Truckin’ ” comic of 1968 was inspired by the lyrics of Blind Boy Fuller’s song, “Truckin’ My Blues Away.” That same year Janis Joplin, who was singing with Big Brother & the Holding Company, asked Crumb to design the cover of the band’s album Cheap Thrills.
Since then, Crumb has designed hundreds of album covers and music posters. His new book, R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection, brings together all the covers and many related works. The book contains portraits of famous artists like Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie, along with works featuring obscure artists with names like “Ukelele Ike” and “Big John Wrencher and his Maxwell Street Blues Boys.” There are also covers and posters made for Crumb’s own band, the Cheap Suit Serenaders.
Crumb is a banjo and mandolin player. One group he has sat in with in recent years is Eden & John’s East River String Band. This video was directed by the group’s co-leader, John Heneghan, and includes appearances by himself and his partner Eden Brower. The video features the following songs:
“Sing Song Girl” by Leroy Sheild (1930)
“Some of these Days” by Cab Calloway (1930)
“Lindberg Hop” by the Memphis Jug Band (1928)
“Down On Me” by Eddie Head and His Family (1930)
“Chasin’ Rainbows” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders (1976)
“Singing in the Bathtub” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders (1978)
“So Sorry Dear” by Eden & John’s East River String Band, featuring R. Crumb
Last year, “crazedadman” and his wife reorganized a small bookshelf and recorded the project in an endearing stop motion film. This year, they took things to the next level, spending “sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto.” The rest speaks for itself. Don’t miss other videos for book lovers right below:
Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Steve Jobs (click image below to get a free audio copy) covers a lot of ground in 571 pages. By design, it’s broad and comprehensive, but it doesn’t always go deep. One facet of Steve Jobs’ life that doesn’t get much coverage here was his relationship with Kobun Chino Otogawa (1938–2002), a Buddhist priest who taught Jobs the way of Zen and shared his passion for art and design. The two became close — close enough that Kobun presided over the Steve Jobs-Laurene Powell wedding in 1991. This relationship receives a fuller treatment in The Zen of Steve Jobs, a new 80-page graphic novel that uses stripped down dialogue and bold calligraphic panels to tell this story. The book was authored by Forbes writer Caleb Melby, and the artwork provided by the creative agency JESS3. The video above gives you a good introduction to the imaginative work. h/t BoingBoing
If you’re not intimately familiar with his novels, then you assuredly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darklyand Minority Report. Today, we bring you another way to get acquainted with his writing. We’re presenting a selection of Dick’s stories available for free on the web. Below we have culled together 11 short stories from our collections. Some of the stories collected here have also found their way into the recently-published book, Selected Stories by Philip K. Dick, which features an introduction by Jonathan Lethem.
Before we rush headlong into a new year, it’s worth pausing, ever so briefly, to consider the ground we covered in 2011. What topics resonated with you … and jazzed us? Today, we’re highlighting 10 thematic areas (and 46 posts) that captured the imagination. Chances are you missed a few gems here. So please join us on our brief journey back into time. Tomorrow, we start looking forward again.
1) Universities Offer More Free Courses, Then Start Pushing Toward Certificates: The year started well enough. Yale released another 10 stellar open courses. (Find them on our list of 400 Free Courses). Then other universities started pushing the envelope on the open course format. This fall, Stanford launched a series of free courses that combined video lectures with more dynamic resources — short quizzes; the ability to pose questions to Stanford instructors; feedback on your overall performance; a statement of accomplishment from the instructor, etc. A new round of free courses will start in January and February. (Get the full list and enroll here.) Finally, keep your eyes peeled for this: In 2012, MIT will offer similar courses, but with one big difference. Students will get an official certificate at the end of the course, all at a very minimal charge. More details here.
3) Books Intelligent People Should Read: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s list “8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read” ended up generating far more conversation and controversy than we would have expected. (Users have left 83 comments at last count.) No matter what you think of his rationale for choosing these texts, the books make for essential reading, and they’re freely available online.
4) Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry: Christopher Hitchens left us this past month. And, until his last day, Hitchens was the same old Hitch — prolific, incisive, surly and defiant, especially when asked about whether he’d change his position on religion, spirituality and the afterlife. All of this was on display when he spoke at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles last February. We covered his comments in a post called, No Deathbed Conversion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask. And even from the grave, Hitchens did more of the same, forcing us to question the whole modern meaning of Christmas.
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