30 Renowned Writers Speaking About God & Reason

in Books, Literature, Religion | January 30th, 2012

This past sum­mer, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham, a neu­ro­sur­geon in Lon­don, cre­at­ed a mon­tage of 100 renowned aca­d­e­mics, most­ly all sci­en­tists, talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. (Find it in two parts here and here.) Now’s he back with a new video, 30 Renowned Writ­ers Speak­ing About God. It runs 25 min­utes, and it offers as much a cri­tique of ortho­dox reli­gious belief as it does a lit­er­ary trib­ute to human­ism and ratio­nal­ism. Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, Salman Rushdie (who kind­ly tweet­ed us this week­end), Mar­garet Atwood, Philip Roth — they all make an appear­ance. The full list of writ­ers appears below the jump.

And, before we close, let me say this. When­ev­er we post videos like these, we get the ques­tion. Why the occa­sion­al focus on atheism/rationalism/humanism? And the sim­ple answer comes down to this: If you cov­er writ­ers, aca­d­e­mics and sci­en­tists, the think­ing skews in that direc­tion. Yes, there are excep­tions, but they are in short­er sup­ply. But if some­one pulls them togeth­er and makes a mon­tage, we’ll like­ly fea­ture it too. H/T RichardDawkins.net

Note: As you may have noticed, we have been expe­ri­enc­ing inter­mit­tent out­ages over the past cou­ple of days. Our host, Dreamhost, has been stum­bling more than we’d like. So we’re fig­ur­ing out alter­na­tives and hope­ful­ly mak­ing a move soon. Our apolo­gies for the incon­ve­nience!

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The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore: An Oscar-Nominated Film for Book Lovers

in Animation, Books, Film | January 27th, 2012

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.

For more ani­mat­ed bib­lio­phil­ia, don’t miss:

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Bib­lio­philes

Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

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Christopher Walken Reads The Three Little Pigs, The Raven, and a Little Lady Gaga

in Books, Comedy, Film | January 20th, 2012

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 .….

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Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson (NSFW)

in Books, Film, Literature | January 14th, 2012

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by the Hell’s Angels

John­ny Depp Nar­rates New Kei­th Richards Auto­bi­og­ra­phy (and How to Snag a Free Copy)

Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary: a ‘Warped Casablan­ca’

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Underground Cartoonist R. Crumb Introduces Us to His Rollicking Album Cover Designs

in Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons, Music | January 11th, 2012

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:

  1. “Sing Song Girl” by Leroy Sheild (1930)
  2. “Some of these Days” by Cab Cal­loway (1930)
  3. “Lind­berg Hop” by the Mem­phis Jug Band (1928)
  4. “Down On Me” by Eddie Head and His Fam­i­ly (1930)
  5. “Chasin’ Rain­bows” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders (1976)
  6. “Singing in the Bath­tub” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders (1978)
  7. “So Sor­ry Dear” by Eden & John’s East Riv­er String Band, fea­tur­ing R. Crumb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

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The Joy of Books

in Animation, Books | January 10th, 2012

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:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

A Secret Book­store in New York City

Books Savored in a Lov­ing  Stop Motion Film

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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The Zen of Steve Jobs: A New Graphic Novel

in Apple, Art, Books | January 5th, 2012

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


1 FREE Audiobook RISK-FREE from Audible

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Free Philip K. Dick: Download 13 Great Science Fiction Stories

in Audio Books, Books, e-books, Sci Fi | January 3rd, 2012

Although he died when he was only 53 years old, Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 short sto­ries dur­ing his life­time and solid­i­fied his posi­tion as arguably the most lit­er­ary of sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers. His nov­el Ubik appears on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els, and Dick is the only sci­ence fic­tion writer to get hon­ored in the pres­ti­gious Library of Amer­i­ca series, a kind of pan­theon of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.

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.

eTexts 

Audio

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

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