Product placement — it became commonplace during the 1980s, but it has a much longer history, one that goes right back to the beginning of film. Oliver Noble’s video lightly (emphasis on lightly) traces the evolution of conspicuous product placement in film. A little tale of the not-so-good, the bad and the ugly…
Arduino Documentary: Open Source Hardware is Here
Open Source, it’s not just for software. It’s for hardware too. The new film, Arduino: The Documentary, revisits a project launched in the Italian town of Ivrea back in 2005. The challenge? To develop cheap, easy-to-use electronics components for design students. (You can get into the technical side of things here.) The message? Geek.com summarizes it well: “we are about to see an explosion of hardware devices that come from bedroom tinkerers and student projects.” Note: A Spanish version of the film is available here, and they’re all released under a Creative Commons license.
Arduino: The Documentary will be added to our collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More
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Two Men: A Kafka Inspired Short Film
Two Men, a short film directed by Dominic Allen, takes an old philosophical story by Franz Kafka, one set in Europe of course, and adapts it to a contemporary Aboriginal Australian context, using indigenous “non actors.” In reworking Kafka’s tale (read the original text here), Allen hoped to “affirm an element of humanity’s commonality” … and “reinforce Kafka’s point that it’s impossible to ever truly know another’s motivations.” Made in 2009, the film has since been screened at film festivals in New York, Prague, London, and Sydney, and the film earned Allen the “Emerging Australian Filmmaker Prize” at the Melbourne International Film Festival last year.
Related Content:
Franz Kafka: The Animated Short Film
Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport
Disney’s Oscar-Winning Adventures in Music
Back in 1953, Walt Disney Productions released two short and cutting-edge music education films. The initial film, Melody, was the first cartoon ever filmed in 3D. (Unfortunately, current versions only appear in 2D). Then came the sequel, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, which proved innovative in its own way. The short film, tracing the evolution of the horn, flute, guitar and drum, was the first cartoon filmed and shown in widescreen CinemaScope. It won the 1954 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) and was later voted #29 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time. Given these creds, you will find Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom in our collection 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.
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14 Actors Acting: A Gallery of Classic Screen Types
A few weeks back, The New Times Magazine presented a video gallery featuring actors & actresses doing what they do best — “performing in vignettes that represent classic screen types.” Directed by Solve Sundsbo with music scored by Arcade Fire’s Owen Pallet, the videos (now available on YouTube) feature performers – all important figures in today’s cinema – acting out scenes without the benefit of dialogue. Above, we have Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker) in a chase scene reminiscent of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. You can also catch Robert Duvall shaving in a moment of reflection; Natalie Portman disrobing and seducing; Michael Douglas scheming; and Jennifer Lawrence doing another Hitchcock-inspired scene from Psycho. You can watch all 14 scenes on the NYTimes web site, or again on YouTube.
And speaking of Hitchcock, you will find 15 of his films, mostly early ones, in our collection of 275 Free Movies Online.
Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree: The Animated Film Narrated by Shel Himself (1973)
Back in 1964, Shel Silverstein wrote The Giving Tree, a widely loved children’s book now translated into more than 30 languages. It’s a story about the human condition, about giving and receiving, using and getting used, neediness and greediness, although many finer points of the story are open to interpretation. Today, we’re rewinding the videotape to 1973, when Silverstein’s little book was turned into a 10 minute animated film (now added to our free movie collection). Silverstein narrates the story himself and also plays the harmonica.… which brings us to his musical talents. Don’t miss Silverstein, also a well known songwriter, appearing on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970, and the two singing “A Boy Named Sue.” Silverstein wrote the song, and Cash made it famous. Thanks to Mark, co-editor of the philosophy blog/podcast The Partially Examined Life for sending these along.
Related Content:
Shel Silverstein Reads His Poem ‘Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too’ in Animated Video
Studs Terkel Interviews Bob Dylan, Shel Silverstein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove
The Beauty of Pixar
Earlier this year, Leandro Copperfield spent days re-watching the films of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers. Then, using 500+ scenes from 17 movies, he developed a montage tribute called Tarantino vs Coen Brothers, which nicely complements his other short tribute, Kubrick vs Scorsese. Now comes something a little different – a montage celebrating the films of Pixar Animation Studios. This mashup brings together moments from 11 Pixar films made between 1995 and 2010, starting with Toy Story, moving to Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc and The Incredibles, and ending with Toy Story 3. The Young Turks, Louis Armstrong, Randy Newman and Peter Garbriel power the soundtrack…
How Large is the Universe?
For centuries, humanity has been utterly transfixed by the cosmos, with generations of astronomers, philosophers and everyday ponderers striving to better understand the grand capsule of our existence. And yet to this day, some of the most basic, fundamental qualities of the universe remain a mystery. How Large is the Universe? is a fascinating 20-minute documentary by Thomas Lucas and Dave Brody exploring the universe’s immense scale of distance and time.
“Recent precision measurements gathered by the Hubble space telescope and other instruments have brought a consensus that the universe dates back 13.7 billion years. Its radius, then, is the distance a beam of light would have traveled in that time – 13.7 billion light years. That works out to about 1.3 quadrillion kilometers. In fact, it’s even bigger – much bigger. How it got so large, so fast, was until recently a deep mystery.”
For more on the subject, see these five fascinating ways to grasp the size and scale of the universe.
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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