The Best of Open Culture 2011

in Art, Books, Education, Film, Music, Online Courses | January 2nd, 2012

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.

2) Cul­tur­al Icons at Occu­py Wall Street: OWS was a big nation­al sto­ry, and we were always intrigued by its cul­tur­al dimen­sion — by the cul­tur­al fig­ures who cham­pi­oned the move­ment. You can revis­it performances/speeches by: Philip Glass & Lou Reed; Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie; David Cros­by and Gra­ham Nash; Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig; Noam Chom­sky; and Slavoj Zizek. Also check out: 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard and Artis­tic Posters From Occu­py Wall Street.

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.

Tyson’s list dove­tails fair­ly nice­ly with anoth­er list of essen­tial texts — The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume set that’s avail­able online. Accord­ing to Charles W. Eliot, the leg­endary Har­vard pres­i­dent, if you were to spend just 15 min­utes a day read­ing these books, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. And that could part­ly apply to anoth­er list we pulled togeth­er: 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books — the great lit­er­ary clas­sics taught in class­rooms all across Amer­i­ca, all free…

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.

Dur­ing Hitch’s final days, Stephen Fry emceed a large trib­ute to his friend in Lon­don, an event that brought togeth­er Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Buck­ley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Mar­tin Amis, poet James Fen­ton and actor Sean Penn. It’s well worth a watch. But you also should­n’t miss some oth­er great videos fea­tur­ing the wis­dom of Mr. Fry — his intro­duc­tion to the strange world of nanoscience, his ani­mat­ed debate on the virtues (or lack there­of) of the Catholic Church, and his thought­ful reflec­tion, What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18.

5) Four for the Fab Four: John, Paul, Ringo and George. We sneak them in when­ev­er we can. A sprin­kling here and there. This year, we served up an ever-pop­u­lar post, Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, and a no less pop­u­lar free­bie: Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook. Trail­ing right behind are two oth­er good Bea­t­les picks: All Togeth­er Now: Every Bea­t­les Song Played at Once and The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig.

6) Wis­dom from Great Philoso­phers: Want the chance to take cours­es from great philoso­phers? Here’s your oppor­tu­ni­ty. Our meta post brought togeth­er courses/lectures from Bertrand Rus­sell, Michel Fou­cault, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel. You could get lost in this for days. Also while you’re at it, you should check out The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps, an ongo­ing pod­cast cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son (King’s Col­lege Lon­don) that moves from the Ancients to the Mod­erns. Plus we’d encour­age you to revis­it: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er in 1971.

7) Vin­tage Film Col­lec­tions: Scour­ing the web for vin­tage films. It’s some­thing we love to do. In 2011, we brought you 22 films by Alfred Hitch­cock, 25 West­erns with John Wayne, 32 Film Noir clas­sics, and a series of films by the great Russ­ian direc­tor Andrei Tarkovsky. All are list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

8) Back to the Future: We had fun going back — way back — and see­ing how past gen­er­a­tions imag­ined the future. Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dict­ed the Future in 1964 … And Pret­ty Much Nailed It. Before that, Amer­i­can fash­ion design­ers looked rough­ly 70 years into the future and guessed how women might dress in Year 2000. Turns out fash­ion design­ers aren’t the best futur­ists. And, even before that (cir­ca 1922), we get to see the world’s first mobile phone in action. Seri­ous­ly!

9) Ani­mat­ed Films: 2011 start­ed off on exact­ly the right note. On Jan­u­ary 1, we fea­tured Shel Sil­ver­stein’s ani­mat­ed ver­sion of The Giv­ing Tree. Then some oth­er gems fol­lowed: Des­ti­no, the Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney col­lab­o­ra­tion that start­ed in 1946 and fin­ished in 1999; Spike Jonze’s Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side), a short stop motion film set inside the famous Parisian book­store, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny; John Tur­tur­ro nar­rat­ing an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Ita­lo Calvino’s fairy tale, “The False Grand­moth­er;” and a series of ani­mat­ed films fea­tur­ing the voice of Orson Welles. Also let’s not for­get these splen­did ani­ma­tion con­cepts for The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay and, just for good mea­sure, Ter­ry Gilliam’s vin­tage primer on mak­ing your own cut-out ani­ma­tion.

10) New Archives & Art on the Web: Last but not least — 2011’s new archival projects that brought great cul­ture to the web.

And now onward into 2012.…

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The Blade Runner Sketchbook Features The Original Art of Syd Mead & Ridley Scott (1982)

in Art, Books, Film | December 29th, 2011

Coin­cid­ing with the release of Blade Run­ner in 1982, David Scrog­gy pub­lished the Blade Run­ner Sketch­book, a book with 100+ pro­duc­tion draw­ings and art­work for Rid­ley Scot­t’s clas­sic sci-fi film. The sketch­book fea­tures visu­al work by Scott him­self, artist Men­tor Hueb­n­er, and cos­tume design­er Charles Knode, but most notably a slew of draw­ings by artist, futur­ist, and illus­tra­tor Syd Mead.

As Comics Alliance notes, this sketch­book has been out of print for years and scant few paper copies remain avail­able for pur­chase. So dig­i­tal ver­sions have filled the void online, and now comes this: a ver­sion that lets you rev­el in the Blade Run­ner art­work in full-screen mode. Enter the sketch­book by click­ing the image above or below. (The book itself is host­ed at Isuu.com). Once you get there, click the images and they’ll fill your screen.

Enjoy, and while you’re at it, don’t miss some relat­ed items:

The Mak­ing of Blade Run­ner

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

More Free eBooks

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Remembering George Whitman, Owner of Famed Bookstore, Shakespeare & Company

in Books, Film | December 15th, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LaM95pBMM&feature=share&list=PL5E409DFE410A41C6

In 2005, the Sun­dance Chan­nel aired Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man, a 52 minute doc­u­men­tary that pays homage to George Whit­man, the Amer­i­can founder of the most famous inde­pen­dent book­store in Paris, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Whit­man died yes­ter­day, at age 98, in his apart­ment above the store.

Sylvia Beach first opened a book­shop named Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny in 1918, and it soon became a home for artists of the “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” (Hem­ing­way, Pound, Fitzger­ald, Stein, etc.). It also famous­ly pub­lished James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. The shop even­tu­al­ly closed dur­ing the Nazi occu­pa­tion of Paris. Yet a good decade lat­er, George Whit­man came along and estab­lished anoth­er Eng­lish-lan­guage book­store on the Left Bank and even­tu­al­ly rechris­tened it Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Whit­man’s shop gave sanc­tu­ary to Beat writ­ers – Allen Gins­berg, William S. Bur­roughs and the rest. And it’s this incar­na­tion of the fabled book­store that the doc­u­men­tary takes as its sub­ject. Give the doc­u­men­tary some time, and be sure to watch the last five min­utes – unless you already know how to cut your hair with fire. It will give you a lit­tle feel for Whit­man and his well-known eccen­tric­i­ties. RIP.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film Set at Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

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Joan Didion Reads From New Memoir, Blue Nights, in Short Film Directed by Griffin Dunne

in Books, Life, Literature | November 2nd, 2011

A mere twen­ty months after Joan Did­ion’s hus­band, John Gre­go­ry Dunne, died of a heart attack, Did­ion’s only child, Quin­tana Roo Dunne, con­tract­ed pneu­mo­nia, lapsed into sep­tic shock and passed away. She was only 39 years old. Did­ion grap­pled with the first death in her 2005 best­seller, The Year of Mag­i­cal Think­ing. Now, with her new mem­oir Blue Nights, she turns to her child’s pass­ing, to a par­en­t’s worst fear real­ized. In this short film shot by her nephew, direc­tor Grif­fin Dunne, Did­ion reads from Blue Nights. The scene opens with mem­o­ries from her daugh­ter’s wed­ding and ends with some big exis­ten­tial ques­tions and the refrain, “When we talk about mor­tal­i­ty we are talk­ing about our chil­dren.”

This “audio­book for the eyes,” as Grif­fin Dunne calls it, runs six plus min­utes. The actu­al Blue Nights audio book is now avail­able on Audi­ble.

A big thanks goes to @opedr for send­ing the Did­ion clip our way…

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James Franco Reads Short Story in Bed for The Paris Review

in Audio Books, Books | October 30th, 2011

James Fran­co gave The Paris Review a hand when he jumped into bed and start­ed read­ing “William Wei,” a short sto­ry pub­lished in a recent edi­tion of the sto­ried lit­er­ary jour­nal. Find a cleaned up audio file here, or in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Last year, the aspir­ing writer and Yale doc­tor­al stu­dent also made a cameo appear­ance in Gary Shteyn­gart’s rather hilar­i­ous video trail­er for his nov­el, Super Sad True Love Sto­ry.

A short sto­ry by Fran­co, “Just Before the Black,” appears in Esquire. His fic­tion col­lec­tion, Palo Alto, can be picked up here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

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

in Animation, Books, Film | October 28th, 2011

Remem­ber Spike Jonze’s stop motion film Mourir Auprès de Toi? When we fea­tured it last week, one of our read­ers called it “Slow, bor­ing and unimag­i­na­tive.” He then con­tin­ued:

Warn­er Broth­ers’ ani­ma­tion depart­ment did sev­er­al car­toons based on this con­cept over 50 years ago that packed much more ener­gy and humor into a very few min­utes worth of daz­zling ani­ma­tion.

The read­er was also good enough to point us to one such ear­ly car­toon, which we’re fea­tur­ing today. (See above.)

Released in 1946, the Looney Tunes car­toon Book Revue starts with a scene that may look famil­iar if you watched Jonze’s film: It’s mid­night. The book­store is closed. The lights are off. No crea­tures are stir­ring, not even … Scratch that, the books are stir­ring. They’re com­ing to life. And the hor­mones are run­ning high, a lit­tle too high. You can watch the rest, but we’ll leave you with this tid­bit. In 1994, Book Revue was vot­ed one of the 50 great­est car­toons of all time by a group of 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. We thank Mike for send­ing this our way.

For good mea­sure, let’s also rewind the clock to 1938, when Mer­rie Melodies released Have You Got Any Cas­tles? It may well be the orig­i­nal books-come-to-life car­toon. We start again at mid­night, and the book cov­ers do their thing. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, The Phan­tom of the Opera, and Franken­stein make an appear­ance, along with oth­er famous lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. When TBS re-released this car­toon decades lat­er, sev­er­al char­ac­ters from this orig­i­nal film (Bill “Bojan­gles” Robin­son from The 39 Steps, and Cab Cal­loway singing “I’ve Got Swing For Sale”) were edit­ed out because of the indel­i­cate way that African-Amer­i­cans were car­i­ca­tured here. Tal­ent these 1930s ani­ma­tors had. But also their blindspots too.…

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‘Catch-22,’ Joseph Heller’s Darkly Hilarious Indictment of War, is 50

in Books, Literature | October 27th, 2011

This month marks the 50th anniver­sary of Catch-22, Joseph Heller’s exu­ber­ant­ly sur­re­al com­e­dy about the insan­i­ty of war. The nov­el grew out of Heller’s expe­ri­ences as an Air Force bom­bardier in Europe dur­ing World War II. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the author’s own atti­tude toward the war bore lit­tle resem­blance to the views of his immor­tal pro­tag­o­nist, John Yos­sar­i­an.

“I have no com­plaints about my ser­vice at all,” Heller told Allan Gregg of Cana­di­an pub­lic broad­cast­ing in an inter­view (see above) record­ed not long before the author’s death in 1999. “If any­thing, it was ben­e­fi­cial to me in a num­ber of ways.”  Catch-22, he says, was a response to what tran­spired dur­ing the nov­el­’s 15-year ges­ta­tion: the cold war, the McCarthy hear­ings–“the hypocrisy, the bul­ly­ing that was going on in Amer­i­ca.”

As E.L. Doc­torow told a reporter the day after Heller’s death, “When ‘Catch-22’ came out, peo­ple were say­ing, ‘Well, World War II was­n’t like this.’ But when we got tan­gled up in Viet­nam, it became a sort of text for the con­scious­ness of that time.” The nov­el went on to sell more than 10 mil­lion copies, and its title, as The New York Times wrote in Heller’s obit­u­ary, “became a uni­ver­sal metaphor not only for the insan­i­ty of war but also for the mad­ness of life itself.”

In the sto­ry, Yos­sar­i­an strives to get him­self ground­ed from future mis­sions, only to come up against the genius of bureau­crat­ic log­ic:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which spec­i­fied that a con­cern for one’s safe­ty in the face of dan­gers that were real and imme­di­ate was the process of a ratio­nal mind. Orr was crazy and could be ground­ed. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more mis­sions. Orr would be crazy to fly more mis­sions and sane if he did­n’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and did­n’t have to; but if he did­n’t want to he was sane and had to. Yos­sar­i­an was moved very deeply by the absolute sim­plic­i­ty of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respect­ful whis­tle.

Heller went on to write six more nov­els, three plays, two mem­oirs and a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, but none were as suc­cess­ful as his debut nov­el. In lat­er years when Heller was asked why he had­n’t writ­ten anoth­er book like Catch-22, his stock response was: “Who has?”

For more on Heller and his achieve­ment, you can lis­ten to an inter­est­ing NPR inter­view with Christo­pher Buck­ley, a friend of Heller who wrote the intro­duc­tion to the 50th Anniver­sary Edi­tion of Catch-22. And for a quick reminder of the nov­el­’s sen­si­bil­i­ty, watch this excerpt from Mike Nichols’ 1970 film adap­ta­tion star­ring Alan Arkin as Yos­sar­i­an:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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Free: Download Copy of New Steve Jobs Biography

in Apple, Books | October 25th, 2011

Just a few short weeks after the death of Steve Jobs comes a 627 page biog­ra­phy by Wal­ter Isaac­son, the for­mer Man­ag­ing Edi­tor of TIME and CEO of CNN. Isaac­son first dis­cussed writ­ing the book with Jobs sev­en years ago and has since inter­viewed the Apple CEO more than 40 times. Now, appear­ing on 60 Min­utes, he talks pub­licly about the new book sim­ply called Steve Jobs. It hit book­shelves yes­ter­day and already stands atop the Ama­zon Best­seller list.

The 29 minute inter­view (Part 1 here, Part 2 here) gives you a feel for the book that’s will­ing to tell the good, the bad and the some­times ugly of Jobs’ life. If you’re look­ing to get your hands on the biog­ra­phy, give this some thought: If you sign up for a 14-day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load pret­ty much any audio book in Audible’s cat­a­logue for free. And that cat­a­logue now includes Isaac­son’s unabridged biog­ra­phy. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion (as I did), or can­cel it, and still keep the free book. The choice is yours.

Note: CBS did­n’t allow the 60 Min­utes inter­view to appear on exter­nal sites like ours. Hence you will need to watch the inter­view on YouTube itself. We pro­vide the links above.

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