Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebastian Bach (1962)

in Music, Television | October 16th, 2012

The Cana­di­an pianist Glenn Gould was one of the most bril­liant and idio­syn­crat­ic inter­preters of the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. In this 1962 spe­cial for the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, Gould reveals the same bril­liance and idio­syn­crasy in his under­stand­ing of Bach’s place in his­to­ry.

Bach, says Gould, was not so much ahead of his time as out­side it. “For Bach, you see, was music’s great­est non-con­formist, and one of the supreme exam­ples of that inde­pen­dence of the artis­tic con­science that stands quite out­side the col­lec­tive his­tor­i­cal process.”

“Glenn Gould on Bach,” was first broad­cast in Cana­da on April 8, 1962, two years before Gould’s retire­ment from per­form­ing and only two days fol­low­ing his con­tro­ver­sial Carnegie Hall con­cert with the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, in which Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bra­hams D‑minor piano con­cer­to was so eccen­tric that Leonard Bern­stein felt com­pelled to make a dis­claimer to the audi­ence. The cen­ter­piece of the Bach broad­cast is a per­for­mance of the Can­ta­ta BWV 54 fea­tur­ing the Amer­i­can coun­tertenor Rus­sell Ober­lin. “Glenn Gould on Bach” is a fas­ci­nat­ing and enter­tain­ing half hour–essential view­ing for lovers of Baroque and Clas­si­cal music.

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Free Bach Music:

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

A Big Bach Down­load: The Com­plete Organ Works for Free

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Amazing Fact: Spaghetti and Ukulele Strings Actually Grow on Trees

in Comedy, Television | October 16th, 2012

Back in 1957, on April Fools Day, the British tele­vi­sion pro­gram Panora­ma report­ed on “a bumper spaghet­ti har­vest” in south­ern Switzer­land. The boun­ti­ful crop could be attrib­uted to the mild pre­ced­ing win­ter and the dis­ap­pear­ance of the nasty spaghet­ti wee­vil. After the broad­cast, hun­dreds of peo­ple called the BBC, want­i­ng to know how they could grow their own spaghet­ti trees. The BBC replied, “Place a sprig of spaghet­ti in a tin of toma­to sauce and hope for the best.”

If spaghet­ti can grow on trees, then why can’t ukulele strings do the same? In North­ern Italy, they’ve appar­ent­ly been grow­ing uke strings on “string wil­lows” since at least the 16th cen­tu­ry. It all comes down to find­ing the right bal­ance between sun and rain. That’s what ensures that the strings are nei­ther too soft nor too brit­tle, pro­duc­ing the fine tone that lets Jake Shimabukuro play his uke ever so beau­ti­ful­ly.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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How Political Commitment Led Lucy Lawless (AKA Xena, the Warrior Princess) to Study Philosophy

in Philosophy, Podcasts, Politics, Television | October 8th, 2012

It’s cer­tain­ly not uncom­mon for celebri­ties to take up polit­i­cal caus­es, though this does not usu­al­ly lead to them get­ting arrest­ed for hol­ing up in a high tow­er oil-drilling ship for four days. What’s less com­mon is for this inter­est to bur­geon into a full-on obses­sion with all things philo­soph­i­cal, but that’s exact­ly what hap­pened to Lucy Law­less (best known as Xena, the War­rior Princess).

“I went to the UN sum­mit on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment after get­ting involved in the whole… big oil protest… and I saw all of these peo­ple work­ing very hard but seem­ing­ly at cross-pur­pos­es about how do we cre­ate a just soci­ety.” On a full two-hour episode of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast (which she claims was large­ly respon­si­ble for turn­ing her on to phi­los­o­phy), she describes how this polit­i­cal inter­est drove her to look at the foun­da­tions and his­to­ries of the­o­ries of jus­tice, and even­tu­al­ly decide to go back to school to study phi­los­o­phy, which she’s now doing in New Zealand between flights to the states to film TV spots such as her recent appear­ance on NBC’s Parks and Recre­ation.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life inter­view with Law­less is a five-per­son, round­table dis­cus­sion of Tom Payne’s 2010 book, Fame: What the Clas­sics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebri­ty. You can lis­ten here:

The the­sis of the book is that celebri­ties serve as an out­let for soci­ety’s aggres­sive instincts. Draw­ing on canon­i­cal texts about reli­gious anthro­pol­o­gy like James Fraz­er’s The Gold­en Bough, the author com­pares the treat­ment of mod­ern celebri­ties to ancient rites where young maid­ens were lav­ish­ly bestowed with finer­ies and then sac­ri­fied. Lucy thinks this well match­es her own expe­ri­ences, and talks about the exis­ten­tial weird­ness involved with being and deal­ing with the famous.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life has also cov­ered relat­ed top­ics of Freud’s Civ­i­liza­tion and its Dis­con­tents and Niet­zsche’s Geneal­o­gy of Morals. You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast on iTunes.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. 

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How to Make Better Decisions, a Thought-Provoking Documentary by the BBC

in Life, Psychology, Television | September 28th, 2012

“In this pro­gram,” says nar­ra­tor Peter Capal­di at the out­set, “we’re going to show you how to be more ratio­nal, and deal with some of life’s biggest deci­sions.” It’s a pret­ty big claim, and you may doubt that it’s true (espe­cial­ly dur­ing the sil­ly open­ing scene involv­ing a group of nerds try­ing to score a date) but give this 2008 BBC Hori­zon pro­gram a lit­tle time and you might come away with a few things to think about. How to Make Bet­ter Deci­sions takes us inside cog­ni­tive sci­ence lab­o­ra­to­ries and out on the streets to demon­strate how the emo­tion­al part of our brain gets the bet­ter of the ratio­nal part. The film intro­duces a num­ber of intrigu­ing con­cepts, includ­ing Prospect The­o­ry,  “the fram­ing effect,” and “prim­ing.” More con­tro­ver­sial­ly, it high­lights some research that sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty that our intu­ition may have some­thing to do with an abil­i­ty to sense future events. How to Make Bet­ter Deci­sions is 49 min­utes long, and we’ve decid­ed to add it to our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Neu­ro­science and Free Will

Dan Ariely’s Ani­mat­ed Talk on How and Why We’re Dis­hon­est

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Eisenhower Answers America: The First Political Advertisements on American TV (1952)

in Politics, Television | September 28th, 2012

Going into the 1952 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the Democ­rats had held the White House for near­ly twen­ty years. FDR took office in 1933, begin­ning the first of twelve years in office. Then Har­ry S. Tru­man led the nation for near­ly anoth­er eight years. Dur­ing that time, Amer­i­ca endured a lot. War, eco­nom­ic depres­sion, and more war — some hot, some cold. By the time the 1950s rolled around, Amer­i­cans were tired and ready for a change.

In the 1952 elec­tion, we find Adlai Steven­son, the reluc­tant Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, squar­ing off against Dwight D. Eisen­how­er, the war hero who had led Amer­i­can troops to vic­to­ry in Europe, instant­ly becom­ing the “most admired liv­ing Amer­i­can” (accord­ing to opin­ion polls). Eisen­how­er, it turns out, knew how to win elec­tions as well as wars. In ’52, Ike aired the first ad cam­paigns on tele­vi­sion. Called Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca, the ads fea­tured “every­day” Amer­i­cans ask­ing ques­tions about the issues of the day — the war in Korea, infla­tion, high tax­es, etc. PBS has a well-researched intro­duc­tion to this inno­va­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, while the nice­ly-curat­ed web site, The Liv­ing Room Can­di­date, offers a rich col­lec­tion of cam­paign com­mer­cials aired between 1952 and 2008.

You can watch a playlist of ads from the Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca cam­paign below.

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Samuel L. Jackson Stars in “Wake the F**ck Up for Obama,” a NSFW Political Children’s Tale

in Comedy, Law, Politics, Television | September 27th, 2012

Last sum­mer, Samuel L. Jack­son delight­ed lis­ten­ers when he nar­rat­ed the audio ver­sion of Adam Mans­bach’s twist­ed lit­tle chil­dren’s bed­time sto­ry, Go the F**k to Sleep. Now, Jack­son returns with Wake the F**ck Up for Oba­ma. Accord­ing to the New York Post (if they say it, it must be true!), Mans­bach wrote the Dr. Seuss­ian script for the polit­i­cal ad. And it was appar­ent­ly fund­ed by the Jew­ish Coun­cil for Research and Edu­ca­tion, a lib­er­al super PAC fund­ed by George Soros’ 25-year-old son. Until today, I thought that Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, the SCOTUS deci­sion that unleashed a tor­rent of Super PAC ads on our air­waves, did more to under­mine Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy than any for­eign threat. But when the video hit the 2:44 mark, you start to have your doubts.

via Gal­ley Cat

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David Lynch Teaches Louis C.K. How to Host The David Letterman Show

in Comedy, Television | September 24th, 2012

As Sea­son 3 of Louie winds to a close, we find things look­ing up for the hap­less Louis CK. The head of CBS invites Louie to his office and gives him a career-defin­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, the chance to take over the Late Show from a retir­ing David Let­ter­man. But that is all pred­i­cat­ed on one thing — the schlumpy come­di­an becom­ing a pol­ished late-night talk show host in a few short months. And the man tasked with help­ing Louie make the tran­si­tion is none oth­er than David Lynch, play­ing the role of “Jack Dahl.” Jer­ry Sein­feld, Chris Rock, and Jay Leno all make appear­ances in this episode. But make no mis­take, it’s Lynch, the only non-come­di­an of the bunch, who pro­vides the biggest laughs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qob3FTPJ7cM

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

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Martin Scorsese Brings “Lost” Hitchcock Film to Screen in Short Faux Documentary

in Film, Television | September 18th, 2012

Alfred Hitch­cock fans should enjoy this 2007 com­mer­cial by Mar­tin Scors­ese. It was com­mis­sioned by the Cata­lan sparkling wine mak­er Freix­enet for the com­pa­ny’s annu­al Christ­mas cam­paign, with the con­cept of mak­ing a short film that would some­how weave the Freix­enet brand into the plot. Scors­ese respond­ed with a nine-minute homage to the mas­ter of sus­pense.  “Hitch­cock is one of my guid­ing lights,” he told El País at the film’s Decem­ber 2007 pre­mier in Madrid. “It’s a satire of my own movie mania. It has to do with my love of cin­e­ma, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of pos­sess­ing it.”

The com­mer­cial is struc­tured as a faux doc­u­men­tary, with Scors­ese appear­ing as him­self. With amus­ing­ly frac­tured log­ic, he explains to an inter­view­er his dis­cov­ery of a three-and-a-half minute frag­ment from an unpro­duced Hitch­cock script and his obses­sion with bring­ing it to the screen. “It’s one thing to pre­serve a film that has been made,” Scors­ese says. “It’s anoth­er to pre­serve a film that has not been made.”

The “pre­served” frag­ment, The Key to Reser­va, is pre­sent­ed as a film with­in the film. Bernard Her­man­n’s omi­nous music from North By North­west sets the tone. The roman­tic leads look some­thing like Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. Hitch­cock afi­ciana­dos will spot ref­er­ences to a num­ber of the mas­ter’s clas­sic films from the 1950s, includ­ing Rear Win­dow, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Ver­ti­go. The Key to Reser­va was filmed by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Har­ris Savides and edit­ed by Scors­ese’s long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er. The sto­ry is set in Carnegie Hall but the crew was unable to film there, so the his­toric con­cert hall had to be cre­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly from pho­tographs. Ben Gross­mann of The Syn­di­cate won a Gold Clio award for visu­al effects.

If you’re won­der­ing whether Hitch­cock would have been pleased by any of this, be sure to stay with the film until it’s amus­ing con­clu­sion. For more of Scors­ese pok­ing fun at his own movie mania, see our fea­ture from yes­ter­day, “Always the Direc­tor: Mar­tin Scors­ese Spoofs Him­self in Two Com­mer­cials.” And if you want to see some real Hitch­cock films, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 20 Free Alfred Hitch­cock Films Online.

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