“The Wire” @ Harvard

in Current Affairs, Life, Television | November 3rd, 2009

bubblesDavid Simon once called his HBO series, The Wire, “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” Think of it as a five sea­son, 3600 minute, artis­tic depic­tion of the esca­lat­ing break­down of urban soci­ety. The show is art. But it is also life in the biggest sense. And it’s why some thinkers have likened the epic series to (or even ele­vat­ed it above) Tol­stoy’s War & Peace. Now comes this… Accord­ing to The Har­vard Crim­son, William J. Wil­son, a Har­vard soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, will teach a new course that uses The Wire as “a case study for pover­ty in Amer­i­ca,” say­ing that “The Wire has done more to enhance our under­stand­ing of the sys­temic urban inequal­i­ty that con­strains the lives of the poor than any pub­lished study.” If you haven’t seen this series, and if this whets your appetite, you can find a nice deal on Ama­zon. The full series now goes for $125.00, 50% off the list price.

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Film Version of Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire Now Online

in Science, Television | October 31st, 2009

Michael Pol­lan’s best-sell­ing book, Botany of Desire, is now a film, and you can watch it online, cour­tesy of PBS. (Click to watch com­plete film.) The film takes you inside our rela­tion­ship with the plant world, and shows “how four famil­iar species — the apple, the tulip, cannabis and the pota­to — evolved to sat­is­fy our yearn­ings for sweet­ness, beau­ty, intox­i­ca­tion and con­trol.” Accord­ing to a piece in The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, it took eight years to pull togeth­er the fund­ing for the film, and that’s sim­ply because mar­i­jua­na was in the mix. The film runs close to two hours. The pre­view is above, the full film is here. For more films, please vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Dick Cavett Show

in Music, Television | October 9th, 2009

A lit­tle birth­day present. John Lennon would have been 69 years old today. This mem­o­rable inter­view, record­ed in 1971, fea­tures John and Yoko in a can­did, relaxed and wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion with one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing talk show hosts at the time. To watch the full inter­view, see  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. These inter­views, and oth­er Lennon inter­views with Cavett, are all part of a DVD that you pur­chase at Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les Remas­tered: An Inside Look

What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts from Yes­ter­day

The Grey Video: Mix­ing the Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

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PBS and NPR Launch the Forum Network, Offering Free Online Lectures

in Education, Media, Television | October 6th, 2009

News from the Wired Cam­pus Blog:

PBS and NPR are now post­ing taped inter­views and videos of lec­tures by aca­d­e­mics, adding to the grow­ing num­ber of free lec­tures online.

Their site, called Forum Net­work, says it makes thou­sands of lec­tures avail­able, includ­ing the Har­vard pro­fes­sor Michael Sandel’s take on cal­cu­lat­ing hap­pi­ness in a lec­ture called “How to Mea­sure Plea­sure,” and a dis­cus­sion by a North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, Nicholas Daniloff, about the dif­fi­cul­ties of report­ing in Rus­sia in a lec­ture called “Of Spies and Spokes­men: The Chal­lenge of Jour­nal­ism in Rus­sia.”

The Forum Net­work is now hap­pi­ly added to our col­lec­tion, Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites. (You will find about 50 intel­li­gent video sites here.) For more free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, be sure to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es. It now fea­tures 200 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, and you can down­load them all to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er.

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The 10 Best Twilight Zone Episodes

in Television | October 5th, 2009



Last Fri­day marked the 50th anniver­sary of The Twi­light Zone’s debut on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, a big occa­sion for fans of sci-fi, hor­ror and sus­pense. To cel­e­brate the anniver­sary, TV Squad pulled togeth­er a list of the 10 best episodes of Rod Ser­ling’s show. At the top, you might put the episode called “Eye of the Behold­er,” which we’ve post­ed above. For the remain­ing nine, vis­it the TV Squad list and also see the inter­views with Rod Ser­ling toward the end of their page. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties

Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”

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Digital Archive of Vintage Television Commercials

in Television | September 23rd, 2009

adviewsThanks to Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, you can now access a dig­i­tal archive of vin­tage tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials dat­ing from the 1950s to the 1980s. Even­tu­al­ly, this col­lec­tion will fea­ture close to 12,000 dig­i­tized com­mer­cials, and it will let you see how Amer­i­ca’s tra­di­tion­al brands (IBM, Maxwell House, Amer­i­can Express, Avis, etc) evolved through the medi­um of main­stream com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion. You can learn more about this col­lec­tion called Adviews with this intro­duc­to­ry video or via the Adviews web­site, and you can watch the vin­tage com­mer­cials through iTunes. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t see a way to access these clips via oth­er means. Sor­ry about that.) Via @LibrarySecrets

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Aus­tralian Screen Archive

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties …

The Free Music Archive

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Dominic West (aka Jimmy McNulty) Reads Jane Austen

in Literature, Television | July 5th, 2009

If you’ve watched The Wire, you know him as Jim­my McNul­ty, the smart, booz­ing Bal­ti­more cop that likes an occa­sion­al romp and goes rogue here and there. Now, here’s your chance to see anoth­er side of Dominic, the side that’s more at home, at least geo­graph­i­cal­ly speak­ing. Here we have, as Ed tells us, the British actor, an Eton prod­uct, “read­ing Pride and Prej­u­dice (he’s a first-rate read­er) and then smirk­ing before he game­ly sips some Carte Noire cof­fee.” Watch it here, and thanks Ed for the tip.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Moy­ers with The Wire’s David Simon

The Cre­ator of the Wire on Amer­i­can Urban Decline

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David Carradine: Rewind the Videotape

in Television | June 4th, 2009

As many may now know, David Car­ra­dine was found dead this morn­ing in Thai­land. Above, we fea­ture him act­ing in the pop­u­lar 1970’s tele­vi­sion series Kung Fu. “In this clip from the pilot episode of Kung Fu, Caine (David Car­ra­dine) is dis­cussing life with a fel­low expa­tri­ate. Their dis­cus­sion touch­es on the uni­ty of oppo­sites, which is sym­bol­ised in Tao­ism as the yin-yang. The yin-yang is the most impor­tant con­cept in Tao­ism.” The Guardian has also assem­bled a nice col­lec­tion of clips trac­ing Car­radine’s act­ing career. Find it here.

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