Woody Allen Talks Life with Priest

As he grows old­er, Woody Allen increas­ing­ly finds him­self posi­tioned as the philoso­pher film­mak­er. Fresh Air host Ter­ry Gross asked him some heavy exis­ten­tial ques­tions in an inter­view last year. (Lis­ten here). And, more recent­ly, we have Allen grap­pling with some big life ques­tions in an inter­view con­duct­ed by Father Robert E. Lauder in the Catholic mag­a­zine, Com­mon­weal. The con­ver­sa­tion begins:

RL: When Ing­mar Bergman died, you said even if you made a film as great as one of his, what would it mat­ter? It doesn’t gain you sal­va­tion. So you had to ask your­self why do you con­tin­ue to make films. Could you just say some­thing about what you meant by “sal­va­tion”?

WA: Well, you know, you want some kind of relief from the agony and ter­ror of human exis­tence. Human exis­tence is a bru­tal expe­ri­ence to me…it’s a bru­tal, mean­ing­less experience—an ago­niz­ing, mean­ing­less expe­ri­ence with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Over­all, it is a bru­tal, bru­tal, ter­ri­ble expe­ri­ence, and so it’s what can you do to alle­vi­ate the agony of the human con­di­tion, the human predica­ment? That is what inter­ests me the most. I con­tin­ue to make the films because the prob­lem obsess­es me all the time and it’s con­sis­tent­ly on my mind and I’m con­sis­tent­ly try­ing to alle­vi­ate the prob­lem, and I think by mak­ing films as fre­quent­ly as I do I get a chance to vent the prob­lems. There is some relief. I have said this before in a face­tious way, but it is not so face­tious: I am a whin­er. I do get a cer­tain amount of solace from whin­ing.

You can read the full inter­view here, and, in case you missed it, you can watch Jean-Luc Godard­’s 1986 movie with Woody Allen enti­tled Meetin’ WA.

Thanks to Mike for the tip on this one.

Bill Murray Reads Poetry at a Construction Site: Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins & More

Anoth­er great New York City moment. In the spring of 2009, con­struc­tion work­ers build­ing the new home for Poets House were treat­ed to a short poet­ry read­ing by the actor Bill Mur­ray. We ini­tial­ly encounter Mur­ray (at the 59 sec­ond mark) read­ing lines from Bil­ly Collins’ Anoth­er Rea­son I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House. Next up? Lorine Niedeck­er’s very pithy poem, Poets Work, and then, of course, a lit­tle Emi­ly Dick­in­son.

For more free poet­ry, vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Watch Bill Mur­ray Per­form a Satir­i­cal Anti-Tech­nol­o­gy Rant (1982)

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Alice In Openland

This year, Tim Bur­ton’s pro­duc­tion of Alice In Won­der­land was wel­comed by a flur­ry of media buzz and a rather polar­ized pub­lic response debat­ing whether the icon­ic direc­tor had butchered or rein­vent­ed the even more icon­ic chil­dren’s clas­sic. But dis­cus­sion of the film’s cre­ative mer­its aside, one thing it did do bril­liant­ly was rekin­dle the pub­lic’s inter­est in what’s eas­i­ly the most beloved work of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture of the past two cen­turies.

So beloved, in fact, that Lewis Car­rol­l’s 1865 nov­el has gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of reprints, film adap­ta­tions and var­i­ous deriv­a­tive works over the years. Many of these works are now avail­able in the pub­lic domain — even a sim­ple search in the Inter­net Archive sends you down a rab­bit hole of adap­ta­tions and remakes, span­ning from land­mark ear­ly cin­e­ma trea­sures to off­beat prod­ucts of con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal cul­ture.

Today, we’ve curat­ed a selec­tion of the most inter­est­ing and cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant — the “curi­ouser and curi­ouser,” if you will — free ver­sions of, trib­utes to, and deriv­a­tives of Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land.

  • The fun­da­men­tals: A Project Guten­berg free dig­i­tal copy of Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land text
  • A 1916 abridged ver­sion intend­ed for younger chil­dren, dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress, is avail­able from the Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library and fea­tures some won­der­ful illus­tra­tion — though, regret­tably, it lacks the Cheshire Cat
  • For a clas­sic with a spin, try this audio ver­sion read by blog­ger extra­or­di­naire, Boing­Bo­ing co-edi­tor, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence colum­nist and vocal free con­tent advo­cate Cory Doc­torow
  • The ear­li­est cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of the book, direct­ed by Cecil Hep­worth in 1903, is a silent film gem, clock­ing in at just 8 min­utes and 19 sec­onds. Watch above.
  • In 1915, W. W. Young direct­ed the sec­ond Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of Alice — a mas­sive six-reel pro­duc­tion that show­cased the rapid evo­lu­tion of film­mak­ing in just a decade since the first pro­duc­tion. Though much of the film is now lost, 42 min­utes of it can be seen at the Inter­net Archive for free
  • A 1966 British adap­ta­tion by direc­tor Jonathan Miller for the BBC fea­tures an ambi­tious cast — includ­ing Peter Sell­ers as the King of Hearts, Sir John Giel­guld as Mock Tur­tle, Michael Red­grave as The Cater­pil­lar and Peter Cook as the Mad Hat­ter — and its sound­track, scored by the leg­endary Ravi Shankar, exudes the bor­der­line folk-psy­che­delia sound of the Wood­stock era. The film, divid­ed into sev­en parts, is avail­able for free on YouTube.
  • This 2‑minute ver­sion of Alice In Won­der­land shot in the vir­tu­al world Sec­ond Life is an eerie tes­ta­ment to just how wide­ly Car­rol­l’s clas­sic res­onates.
  • Per­haps the biggest trea­sure of all, Lewis Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal man­u­script, avail­able from the British Library — 91 pages of pre­cious lit­er­ary his­to­ry, with orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions from artist John Ten­niel. The online gallery also fea­tures a pref­ace telling the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of the Oxford math­e­mati­cian’s real-life inspi­ra­tion for the book and the fate of the real Alice

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

The Best of Ken Loach on YouTube

Ken Loach is Britain’s most famous – and often con­tro­ver­sial – direc­tor, known for his social real­ist direct­ing style and social­ist pol­i­tics. Giv­en his approach, it’s quite fit­ting that he has made some of his finest films avail­able on YouTube – for free. The Ken Loach YouTube chan­nel gives you access to his ear­ly major films, includ­ing Cathy Come Home, a 1966 BBC docu­d­ra­ma that por­trays a young cou­ple grap­pling with pover­ty, unem­ploy­ment, and home­less­ness, and also Kes, a 1970 movie that’s now ranked sev­enth on the British Film Insti­tute’s list of the Top Ten (British) Films.

But you would­n’t want to miss Loach’s more recent films. And the new YouTube col­lec­tion does­n’t dis­ap­point. It fea­tures Hid­den Agen­da (1990), a polit­i­cal thriller that won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val; Riff Raff (1991), anoth­er prize win­ner that takes a hard look at the work­ing class in the UK; and Ae Fond Kiss (2004), which delves into what hap­pens when a young Pak­istani man enters into a rela­tion­ship with a Cau­casian woman in Glas­gow.

We’re adding the Loach YouTube chan­nel to our Smart YouTube col­lec­tion, and his indi­vid­ual films to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

A big thanks goes to Natal­ie in the UK for this great find. And be sure to check out her tea-lov­ing blog at afternoonteatotal.com.

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Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

Filmed in 1986, Meetin’ WA is a short (26 minute) film that not many have seen. What you get is Godard, one of the dri­ving forces behind La Nou­velle Vague, in con­ver­sa­tion with Woody Allen. The trade­mark Godard approach to film, the expect­ed dose of Woody Allen neu­roses — they’re all there. You’ll find this gem and 340+ oth­er films (includ­ing many clas­sics) list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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Gravity Makes Music

This short film is best watched in full screen mode. Just click here to expand.

Thanks to Yoni for send­ing this one along. If you have a great piece of open cul­ture to share with your fel­low read­ers, feel free to con­tact us any time.

Hitler Reacts to Takedown of Hitler Parodies

Note: strong lan­guage in this video.

You have prob­a­bly all seen them — the count­less par­o­dies of the now famous scene from the 2004 Ger­man film, Down­fall, which records the last days of Hitler and the Third Reich. Ear­li­er this week, the fun start­ed com­ing to an end when Con­stan­tin Film, hold­er of the movie’s copy­right, asked YouTube to remove the clips for rea­sons enu­mer­at­ed here. But almost as quick­ly as YouTube took them down, new ones start­ed to pop up. Above, we have one par­o­dy show­ing Hitler respond­ing vio­lent­ly to the take­down request. And, then, tak­ing an entire­ly dif­fer­ent stance, we see him being the mas­ter­mind behind the con­tro­ver­sial purg­ing of videos. The meme lives on … for now. Thanks to @wesalwan for the tip here.

For 100+ free movies, includ­ing many great clas­sics, see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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Nokta .

“Nok­ta” — this short ani­mat­ed film is all about the cre­ation, move­ment, and har­mo­ny of shapes co-exist­ing in space.  Film­mak­er Onur Sen­turk describes Nok­ta, which means “dot” in Turk­ish, as an abstract film project that explores the impro­vi­sa­tion of organ­ic pieces with­in the themes of pow­er, chance, and luck.  The sound design in Nok­ta, craft­ed by ECHOLAB’s Gavin Lit­tle, is a piece of work in itself; it is in per­fect uni­ty with the move­ment and the trans­for­ma­tion of the shapes.  What is great about this ani­ma­tion is that it’s open to end­less inter­pre­ta­tions.  Sen­turk says he used Realflow, 3ds Max, Mud­box, and After Effects to make the film.  For those of you who are curi­ous to learn more about how this film was made, don’t miss the “mak­ing of” video avail­able here.

Eren Gul­fi­dan is a writer, inter­view­er, film pro­gram­mer and dis­trib­u­tor at Film Annex, an online film plat­form and Web TV Net­work that hosts and finances films.  She stud­ied cre­ative writ­ing and film at Franklin & Mar­shall Col­lege and spe­cial­ized in film pro­duc­tion at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  She dis­cov­ers new con­tent and brings it onto the web to be seen by a wide audi­ence. To con­tact her, vis­it https://www.filmannex.com/erengulfidan

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