The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: Animation Concepts

in Art, Books, Film, Literature | February 18th, 2011

Michael Chabon pub­lished The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay in 2000, and the next year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion. The film ver­sion of the nov­el has been locked in “devel­op­ment hell” for a good decade now. (The pro­duc­er Scott Rudin has a rep­u­ta­tion for option­ing high-pro­file nov­els and sit­ting on them for a long time; he also holds the film rights to Jonathan Franzen’s The Cor­rec­tions.) Any­way, some­where in the devel­op­ment process, the direc­tor Jamie Caliri was asked to explore ani­ma­tion con­cepts, and here’s what he came up with: a fun inter­twin­ing of live action and ani­ma­tion.

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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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Don’t You Eva Interrupt Me While I’m Reading a Book!

in Books, Comedy, Random | January 26th, 2011

This is for every read­er out there who gets the basic sen­ti­ment. A bit of ran­dom silli­ness, cour­tesy of YouTu­ber Julian Smith.

via The New York­er

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Raymond Chandler & Ian Fleming in Conversation (1958)

in Books, Literature | January 12th, 2011

We take you back to 1958 when Ian Flem­ing, cre­ator of the great spy­mas­ter char­ac­ter James Bond, meets up with Ray­mond Chan­dler, Amer­i­ca’s fore­most writer of hard-boiled detec­tive fic­tion. The two authors, who read and admired each oth­er’s work, sat down for drinks one day and got down to talk­ing about vil­lains (real and imag­ined) and their icon­ic lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. The BBC cap­tured it all on audio (above). You can also find a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion on page 30 of this PDF. The con­ver­sa­tion, which has a free flow­ing qual­i­ty to it, runs 25 min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe: The Radio Episodes

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

James Bond in Drag For Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day

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Neil Gaiman’s Dark Christmas Poem Animated

in Books, Literature, Random | December 22nd, 2010

39 Degrees North, a Bei­jing motion graph­ics stu­dio, start­ed devel­op­ing an uncon­ven­tion­al Christ­mas card this year. And once they got going, there was no turn­ing back. Above, we have the end result – an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the uber dark Christ­mas poem (read text here) writ­ten by Neil Gaiman, the best­selling author of sci-fi and fan­ta­sy short sto­ries. The poem was pub­lished in Gaiman’s col­lec­tion Smoke and Mir­rors.

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Introducing the New Google eBookstore (with Free Classics)

in Books, e-books, Google | December 6th, 2010

This morn­ing, Google offi­cial­ly opened up the new Google eBook­store, which gives con­sumers access to three mil­lion ebooks, includ­ing many free clas­sics. Tak­ing a page out of Ama­zon’s play­book, Google now lets you pur­chase books at com­pet­i­tive ebook prices and read them across mul­ti­ple plat­forms – mean­ing you can start read­ing a nov­el on your com­put­er’s web brows­er, then seam­less­ly switch to the iPad, Kin­dle, or smart­phone. And the con­tent will stay in sync, all in the cloud. (Get instruc­tions and apps here.) Anoth­er plus: you’re not forced to buy books from just Google. The new book­store is open to inde­pen­dent book­sellers and retail part­ners, which gives these small­er play­ers a chance to play (and per­haps even thrive) in the ebook mar­ket. You can get more infor­ma­tion on the new book­store on the Google Books blog, and don’t miss our Free eBooks col­lec­tion, which comes packed with many clas­sics.

Note: the Google eBook­store is cur­rent­ly lim­it­ed to the US mar­ket.

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David Sedaris and Ian Falconer Introduce “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk”

in Audio Books, Books, Comedy | November 18th, 2010

David Sedaris’ new col­lec­tion of com­ic sto­ries, Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk: A Mod­est Bes­tiary, was recent­ly released with an accom­pa­ny­ing video that fea­tures the voice of Sedaris and the art­work of Ian Fal­con­er.

If you’re not famil­iar with him, Fal­con­er has drawn over 30 cov­ers for The New York­er (see exam­ple here), while also cre­at­ing the amaz­ing Olivia the Pig series for chil­dren. (Be sure to watch this Olivia Goes to Venice clip for a quick primer.) If this video whets your appetite, then let me direct your atten­tion to Sedaris read­ing the actu­al sto­ry “The Squir­rel and the Chip­munk.” It orig­i­nal­ly aired on This Amer­i­can Life.

Or, as reg­u­lar read­ers know, you can snag a free audio copy of Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk – Sedaris does some of the nar­ra­tion! – if you reg­is­ter for a 14-day free tri­al of Audible.com. 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 entire­ly yours.

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Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

in Art, Books | November 11th, 2010

This won­der­ful stop motion film makes you pine for the good old fash­ioned print­ed book, per­haps because we all real­ize that Guten­berg’s gift will even­tu­al­ly give way to the Kin­dle and oth­er devices. The three minute film (offi­cial­ly enti­tled This is Where We Live) was shot over three weeks in autumn 2008 to cel­e­brate the 25th anniver­sary of 4th Estate Pub­lish­ers. No less than 20 ani­ma­tors took part in the project, and no less than 1000 books were put to use.

Designrelated.com takes a lit­tle clos­er look at the mak­ing of the nos­tal­gia-induc­ing film. Big thanks to Mike for the good find…

Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book!

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