Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Free Movies, eBooks and Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, e-books, Film, Literature | February 7th, 2012

Today is the 200th birth­day of Charles Dick­ens. He was born in Portsmouth, Eng­land on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1812, the sec­ond of eight chil­dren. When he was 12 years old his father was sent to debtors’ prison, along with most of his fam­i­ly, and Charles went to live with a friend of the fam­i­ly, an impov­er­ished old lady. He was forced to quit school and work in a black­ing fac­to­ry, where he past­ed labels on jars of shoe pol­ish.

Dick­ens nev­er for­got those ear­ly trau­mas. He incor­po­rat­ed his expe­ri­ences and obser­va­tions of social injus­tice into his works, includ­ing David Cop­per­field, Oliv­er Twist and A Christ­mas Car­ol. (Find free nov­els below.) He was the most pop­u­lar writer of Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, a vir­tu­al rock star in the days before record­ed music and movies. His sto­ries, pub­lished seri­al­ly in mag­a­zines, were eager­ly await­ed by the pub­lic. Most have remained in print ever since.

The Dick­ens bicen­te­nary is being cel­e­brat­ed with spe­cial events around the world, includ­ing a wreath-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny this morn­ing at Poets’ Cor­ner in West­min­ster Abbey, where actor and film­mak­er Ralph Fiennes, author Claire Toma­lin, and two of Dick­en­s’s descen­dants are sched­uled to give read­ings. For a list­ing of events today and through­out the year, go to Dickens2012.org. Also take a look at the short ret­ro­spec­tive of Dick­ens-inspired movies (above) from the British Film Insti­tute.

To help cel­e­brate, we have gath­ered togeth­er some of the best Dick­ens mate­r­i­al from across the Web:

Films (see our com­plete list of Free Movies):

  • Oliv­er Twist: Anoth­er clas­sic by David Lean, this 1948 film stars John Howard Davies as Oliv­er and Alec Guin­ness as Fagin. In 1999 it was ranked 46th on the BFI’s list of the top 100 British films of all time.
  • A Tale of Two Cities: The 1958 film by Ralph Thomas, star­ring Dirk Bog­a­rde as Syd­ney Car­ton and Dorothy Tutin as Lucie Manette. The film was shot in France’s Loire Val­ley, with sev­er­al thou­sand U.S. sol­diers, post­ed in near­by Orleans, cast as extras.
  • A Christ­mas Car­ol: George C. Scott gives an excel­lent per­for­mance as Ebenez­er Scrooge in this crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed 1984 film direct­ed by Clive Don­ner. It pre­miered in Amer­i­ca on CBS tele­vi­sion, and was released the­atri­cal­ly in Great Britain.
  • David Cop­per­field: A 2000 U.S.-Irish tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion star­ring Hugh Dan­cy as David Cop­per­field, Michael Richards as Wilkins Micaw­ber and Sal­ly Field as Bet­sey Trot­wood.
  • The Pick­wick Papers: A 1952 film, adapt­ed and direct­ed by Noel Lan­g­ley and star­ring James Hayter as Samuel Pick­wick.

eBooks (see our com­plete list of Free eBooks)

Audio Books (see our com­plete list of Free Audio Books)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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Koyaanisqatsi at 1552% Speed

in Film, Technology | February 7th, 2012

Koy­aanisqat­si: Life Out of Bal­ance — God­frey Reg­gio direct­ed the 1982 film, and Philip Glass com­posed the music. Lat­er, Reg­gio said that the film is wide open to inter­pre­ta­tion, that “the view­er can take for her­self what the film means.” “For some peo­ple it’s an envi­ron­men­tal film, for some peo­ple it’s an ode to tech­nol­o­gy, for some peo­ple it’s a piece of shit, for oth­er peo­ple it moves them deeply.” And for Wyatt Hodg­son, it’s a film worth watch­ing in a com­pressed, five-minute for­mat, maybe because (as one view­er sug­gest­ed) it high­lights “one of the main dimen­sions of the film: the break­neck speed of our (crazy) world.”

Hodg­son’s ver­sion strips out Glass’ orig­i­nal sound­track, replac­ing it with music by the Art of Noise. But some crafty indi­vid­ual found a way to repro­duce Glass’ com­po­si­tion at 1552% speed. You can lis­ten below.

h/t Kot­tke

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!

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A Roundup of David Lynch’s Surreal Commercials: Sony PlayStation, Calvin Klein, Georgia Coffee & More

in Film, Television | February 1st, 2012

The films of David Lynch seem any­thing but “com­mer­cial.” Dis­turb­ing, incom­pre­hen­si­ble, they shine a flash­light into the dark­est regions of the sub­con­scious mind. When you walk out of a the­ater after watch­ing a David Lynch film you feel like you just woke up from a vivid and unset­tling dream.

But Lynch has been lead­ing a dou­ble life. While mak­ing uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly artis­tic works for the movie the­aters, he has been direct­ing com­mer­cials for tele­vi­sion and oth­er media on the side. Why does he do it? “Well,” Lynch told Chris Rod­ley in Lynch on Lynch, “they’re lit­tle bit­ty films, and I always learn some­thing by doing them.”

Lynch began receiv­ing offers to make com­mer­cials after the crit­i­cal suc­cess of Blue Vel­vet in 1986. His first project was a series of four 30-sec­ond spots for Calvin Klein’s Obses­sion fra­grance in 1988, each with a pas­sage writ­ten by a famous nov­el­ist. The ad above quotes Ernest Hem­ing­way’s The Sun Also Ris­es. You can also watch com­mer­cials fea­tur­ing F. Scott Fitzger­ald and D.H. Lawrence, but the fourth one, fea­tur­ing Gus­tave Flaubert, is cur­rent­ly unavail­able.

Lynch has com­plet­ed many adver­tis­ing assign­ments over the years, always man­ag­ing to retain some­thing of his unique vision in the process. We’ve select­ed some of the most strik­ing­ly “Lynchi­an” of the com­mer­cials. Scroll down and enjoy.

When Lynch was asked a few years ago how he felt about prod­uct place­ment in movies, his video­taped answer went viral on YouTube: “Bull­shit. That’s how I feel. Total fuck­ing bull­shit.” So it’s strange to think that Lynch once agreed to place the entire fic­tion­al world of one of his most famous cre­ations, Twin Peaks, at the ser­vice of a Japan­ese cof­fee com­pa­ny. But that’s what he did in 1991, for Geor­gia Cof­fee. In Lynch on Lynch, the film­mak­er was asked whether he was con­cerned about what the com­mer­cials might do to the Twin Peaks image. “Yes,” he replied. “I’m real­ly against it in prin­ci­ple, but they were so much fun to do, and they were only run­ning in Japan and so it just felt OK.”

The four com­mer­cials, each only 30 sec­onds long, fol­low FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er (Kyle McLach­lan) as he solves the mys­tery of a miss­ing Japan­ese woman in the town of Twin Peaks, all the while man­ag­ing to enjoy plen­ty of “damn fine” Geor­gia Cof­fee. Alas, the Japan­ese com­mer­cials were not as suc­cess­ful as the Amer­i­can TV series. “We were sup­posed to do a sec­ond year, and do four more 30-sec­ond spots,” Lynch said, “but they did­n’t want to do them.”

You can watch the first episode, “Lost,” above, and fol­low the rest of the sto­ry through these links: Episode Two: “Cher­ry Pie,” Episode Three: “The Mys­tery of ‘G’ ” and Episode Four: “The Res­cue.”


In 1991 Lynch made one of the creepi­est pub­lic ser­vice mes­sages ever (above) con­cern­ing New York City’s rat prob­lem. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is by Lynch’s long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Fred­er­ick Elmes.

“Who is Gio” (above) was shot for Geor­gio Armani in Los Ange­les in ear­ly 1992, right when sev­er­al Los Ange­les police offi­cers were acquit­ted in the video­taped beat­ing of black motorist Rod­ney King–a ver­dict that sparked may­hem in the streets. “We were shoot­ing the big scene with the musi­cians and the club the night the riots broke out in LA,” Lynch told Chris Rod­ley. “Inside the club we were all races and reli­gions, get­ting along so fan­tas­ti­cal­ly, and out­side the club the world was com­ing apart.”

Of all his ear­ly adver­tis­ing clients, Lynch said, Armani gave him the most free­dom. The two-and-a-half-minute ver­sion above is an exten­sion of the orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast 60-sec­ond com­mer­cial.

One of the most bizarre of Lynch’s com­mer­cials is his 1998 con­tri­bu­tion (above) to the “Parisi­enne Peo­ple” cam­paign. The Swiss cig­a­rette mak­er Parisi­enne invit­ed famous direc­tors to make short com­mer­cials for screen­ing in movie the­aters across Switzer­land. To see how oth­ers han­dled the same assign­ment, fol­low these links: Roman Polan­s­ki, Robert Alt­man, Jean-Luc Godard (with wife Anne-Marie Miéville), Giuseppe Tor­na­tore, and Ethan and Joel Coen.

Lynch’s sur­re­al 2000 com­mer­cial for Sony Playsta­tion (above), called “The Third Place,” is wide open for inter­pre­ta­tion. Writer Greg Olson takes a hero­ic stab at it in his book, David Lynch: Beau­ti­ful Dark:

For six­ty sec­onds we pro­ceed through a labyrinth of Lynchi­an themes and motifs visu­al­ized in black and white, thus sig­ni­fy­ing the bifur­ca­tion of the world into two polar­i­ties. A man in a black suit and a white shirt encoun­ters eerie pas­sage­ways, sud­den flames, bar­ren trees, fac­to­ry smoke, a woman who won’t speak her secrets, a wound­ed fig­ure wrapped in ban­dages. The man meets his own dou­ble, and a man with a duck­’s head. A source­less voice asks, “Where are we?” The dual­is­tic duck-man, who syn­the­sizes ani­mal instinct and human learn­ing, knows: “Wel­come to the third place.”

Yes. The duck-man knows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Debuts Lady Blue Shang­hai

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

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We Were Wanderers on a Prehistoric Earth: A Short Film Inspired by Joseph Conrad

in Film, Literature | January 27th, 2012

“We were wan­der­ers on a pre­his­toric earth,” says the nar­ra­tor Mar­low in Joseph Con­rad’s Heart of Dark­ness, “on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown plan­et. We could have fan­cied our­selves the first of men tak­ing pos­ses­sion of an accursed inher­i­tance, to be sub­dued at the cost of pro­found anguish and of exces­sive toil.”

The pal­pa­ble men­ace that per­me­ates Con­rad’s clas­sic novel­la has been edit­ed out of the nar­ra­tion in this short film, made for Tourism Malaysia by British film­mak­er James W. Grif­fiths. What remains is a poet­ic sense of won­der for a nat­ur­al world that is no longer fright­en­ing, no longer in need of being sub­dued. In the orig­i­nal, the twist­ing and turn­ing sen­tences are like a micro­cosm of a jour­ney up the wind­ing Con­go Riv­er, into the metaphor­i­cal dark­ness that lies at the heart of all men. Out of the still­ness of the page, Con­rad’s imag­i­na­tion wash­es over us in a rolling wave of words:

The great wall of veg­e­ta­tion, an exu­ber­ant and entan­gled mass of trunks, branch­es, leaves, boughs, fes­toons, motion­less in the moon­light, was like a riot­ing inva­sion of sound­less life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crest­ed, ready to top­ple over the creek, to sweep every lit­tle man of us out of his lit­tle exis­tence. And it moved not.

Grif­fiths can per­haps be for­giv­en for defang­ing Con­rad. We Were Wan­der­ers on a Pre­his­toric Earth is a beau­ti­ful lit­tle film, a qui­et med­i­ta­tion on the unspoiled rain­for­est of West Malaysia shot in Novem­ber by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Christo­pher Moon, who also col­lab­o­rat­ed with Grif­fiths on last year’s award-win­ning Nokia cell­phone film Splitscreen. The music is by Lennert Busch, the sound design is by Mauri­cio d’Orey, and Con­rad’s words are spo­ken by Ter­ry Burns.

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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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Before Brokeback: The First Same-Sex Kiss in Cinema (1927)

in Film | January 26th, 2012

Brain­Pick­ings recent­ly high­light­ed the first kiss in cin­e­ma his­to­ry. That takes you back to 1896, to a film brought to you by Thomas Edi­son. Now we rewind the video­tape and present the first same-sex kiss in film his­to­ry (or at least one of the ear­li­est known ones). This Broke­back-before-Broke­back moment took place in the 1927 film Wings — the first and only silent film to win the Acad­e­my Award for Best Pic­ture. Bud­dy Rogers and Richard Arlen star in the film, play­ing two com­bat pilots who vie for the affec­tion of the same woman (Clara Bow). That’s the sto­ry­line. But nei­ther, as writer Kevin Ses­sums writes, “shows as much love for her … as they do for each oth­er.”

Find more clas­sics in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Andrew Sul­li­van

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Watch Sunday & Wild Life: Two Animated Shorts Just Nominated for an Oscar

in Animation, Film | January 25th, 2012

When the 2012 Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions were announced yes­ter­day, there must have been plen­ty of smiles at the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da. For the eighth time, the Cana­di­an film producer/distributor scored a dou­ble nom­i­na­tion in the same cat­e­go­ry. In this case, Sun­day by Patrick Doy­on, and Wild Life by Aman­da For­bis and Wendy Til­by, were select­ed as final­ists for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film.

Thanks to the NFB, you can watch Sun­day (above) and Wild Life (below) online for a lim­it­ed time, along with the NFB’s nine Oscar-win­ning films. The film provider also makes hun­dreds of free movies avail­able via the web and the iPad — some­thing to keep in mind for a good rainy day.

More great films can be found in our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Movies Online.

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Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncovered by AT&T: Watch Online

in Film, Technology | January 25th, 2012

Before Jim Hen­son joined Sesame Street in 1969, the great pup­peteer took on var­i­ous projects dur­ing the 60s, some­times cre­at­ing exper­i­men­tal films (for exam­ple, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed short Time Piece), oth­er times pro­duc­ing primers on pup­pet mak­ing, and then pur­su­ing the occa­sion­al com­mer­cial project — like the one just uncov­ered by AT&T.

Back in 1963, Hen­son was asked to cre­ate a short film for a Bell Data Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sem­i­nar held in Chica­go. The con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers sent a three-page memo to Hen­son out­lin­ing the main themes of the con­fer­ence — one being the strange and some­times fraught rela­tion­ship between man and machine. Hen­son’s film only runs three min­utes, but it gets the mes­sage across … and then some.

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:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

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