Star Trek Celebrities, William Shatner and Wil Wheaton, Narrate Mars Landing Videos for NASA

in Astronomy, Sci Fi, Television | July 31st, 2012

NASA and Star Trek — they’ve been joined at the hip for decades. Back in 1972, when NASA launched its very first space shut­tle, they called it the Enter­prise, a clear nod to the star­ship made famous by the 1960s TV show. In 2011, NASA brought the space shut­tle pro­gram to a close, and they fit­ting­ly asked William Shat­ner to nar­rate an 80 minute film doc­u­ment­ing the his­to­ry of the auda­cious space pro­gram. (Watch it here.)

Now we’re one week away from anoth­er NASA mile­stone — the land­ing of the rover Curios­i­ty on Mars — which can mean only one thing. William Shat­ner’s back, and he’s pre­view­ing the action that lies ahead. First the Curios­i­ty’s dif­fi­cult land­ing, the so-called Sev­en Min­utes of Ter­ror. And then the rover’s mis­sion on the Red Plan­et. Shat­ner’s clip will give geeks north of 40 a lit­tle nerdgasm. For younger geeks (said affec­tion­ate­ly), NASA has Wil Wheaton, the star of Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion, read­ing the same script. You can watch it below.

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Wim Wenders Creates Ads to Sell Beer (Stella Artois), Pasta (Barilla), and More Beer (Carling)

in Film, Television | July 30th, 2012

Few would call Wim Wen­ders, the auteur behind Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, The Bue­na Vista Social Club, and last year’s doc­u­men­tary Pina, a “com­mer­cial” direc­tor. Yet he has, now and again, put in time as a direc­tor of com­mer­cials — adver­tise­ments, that is, for beer, food, and cam­eras. His per­son­al hymn to Leica’s crafts­man­ship aside (“As a boy,” he nar­rates, “I looked at my father’s Leica like a sacred object”), these spots don’t imme­di­ate­ly betray the iden­ti­ty of the man at the helm. Even if you’ve seen many of Wen­ders’ fea­ture films, you might not guess that he made these com­mer­cials if you just hap­pened upon them; you would, though, feel their dif­fer­ence in sen­si­bil­i­ty from the ads sur­round­ing them. The Stel­la Artois clip above includes sev­er­al atten­tion-draw­ing tele­vi­sion tropes like a pic­turesque Euro­pean coast, fast cars and motor­cy­cles, vin­tage musi­cal instru­ments, alco­hol, and fem­i­nin­i­ty, but it approach­es them in a non­stan­dard way — one that, con­se­quen­tial­ly, actu­al­ly stands a chance of draw­ing your atten­tion.

“There’s a cer­tain amount of objects that men like a lot,” says Wen­ders in a short doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of the com­mer­cial, “and they like them so much that they give them their girl­friends’ names.” We see first a motor­cy­cle named Sophie, then a con­vert­ible named Vic­to­ria, then a gui­tar named Valerie, then a beer — Stel­la. We nev­er see any actu­al women, or, for that mat­ter, any men; just places and things. Wen­ders imbues the sequence with human­i­ty through the cam­er­a’s gaze, and the behind-the-scenes footage shows it as no easy task, requir­ing take after pre­cise­ly lit take shot with cam­eras mount­ed on elab­o­rate mechan­i­cal arms that look more expen­sive than the trea­sured objects them­selves. (It also requires the direc­tor to issue instruc­tions in no few­er than three lan­guages, though I under­stand that as busi­ness as usu­al on a Wen­ders set.) For an entire­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on beer, watch his spot for Car­ling that involves bicy­cling over a water­fall. For a more epic take on the rela­tion­ship between mankind and machin­ery, watch what he put togeth­er for food con­glom­er­ate Bar­il­la’s 125th anniver­sary.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Conan O’Brien Writes Chicago Blues Songs With School Kids

in Comedy, Music, Television | July 27th, 2012

Here’s a lit­tle some­thing to end your week with a smile: Conan O’Brien impro­vis­ing the blues with a group of first graders. The seg­ment was taped in Chicago–home of the elec­tric blues–during the Conan show’s one-week stand there last month. O’Brien and his band­leader, Jim­my Vivi­no, brought their gui­tars to the Frances Xavier Warde ele­men­tary school on the city’s Near West Side to inves­ti­gate what a group of six- and sev­en-year-olds might be blue about. The result is the sad, sad, “No Choco­late Blues.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Conan O’Brien Does Standup @ Google

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

 

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Martin Scorsese Appears in New Apple Ad with Siri, Plays on His Chilling Cameo in Taxi Driver

in Business, Film, Television | July 25th, 2012

In 1976, Mar­tin Scors­ese made a chill­ing cameo appear­ance in his thriller, Taxi Dri­ver. Per­haps you remem­ber the scene: Play­ing a beard­ed, name­less char­ac­ter, Scors­ese enters a cab, boss­es the dri­ver around for a while, then pro­ceeds to explain, in an uncom­fort­ably mat­ter of fact way, how he plans to kill his wife. It’ll make your hair stand on end. In a new com­mer­cial for Apple, Scors­ese plays a bossy back-seat rid­er again. But this time, there’s no killing involved, just shilling. It’s an ad for Apple’s iPhone, and it’s the lat­est in a new series of ads fea­tur­ing celebs like Zooey Deschan­nel, Samuel Jack­son and John Malkovich.

Of course, the par­al­lel between the Siri ad and the 1976 film was spot­ted by Roger Ebert. All props to him.

P.S.: In case you think we’re see­ing a par­al­lel that does­n’t actu­al­ly exist, it’s worth not­ing that both cabs have the same num­ber. Great spot by @sinyc.

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John Cleese Explains the Brain

in Comedy, Television | July 25th, 2012

We all know John Cleese can be fun­ny, but watch his dis­cus­sion of the human brain above and wit­ness how adroit­ly he can rise to the occa­sion when it comes to a seri­ous sub­ject. The clip comes from a video pod­cast in which he starred from 2006 to 2009, and which dealt with the big top­ics: sci­ence, God, the monar­chy, and air­line ser­vice, to name but four. (He fol­lowed it up with the Head­cast.) Here, Cleese dons a lab coat to solemn­ly explain, in an eru­dite and high­ly tech­ni­cal man­ner, the work­ings of our gray mat­ter. I mean, I assume that’s what he’s explain­ing; being untrained in neu­ro­science, I sup­pose there’s a chance I can’t tell whether he might sim­ply be engag­ing in that rich British satir­i­cal tra­di­tion of appear­ing to say a great deal of the utmost impor­tance while actu­al­ly say­ing noth­ing at all, in lan­guage bare­ly even rec­og­niz­able as made up of words.

You can see Cleese in a dif­fer­ent mode in anoth­er van­ish­ing­ly short-form video, the new DirecTV com­mer­cial. Speak­ing with blunt sim­plic­i­ty, he pitch­es the satel­lite tele­vi­sion provider’s ser­vice pack­age in the char­ac­ter of a wealthy Eng­lish­man engaged in a vari­ety of increas­ing­ly absurd wealthy-Eng­lish­man activ­i­ties: sit­ting fire­side in a volu­mi­nous smok­ing jack­et, receiv­ing a mas­sage on the hood of his Bent­ley, prac­tic­ing indoor archery, din­ing upon a lob­ster the size of the table. As an exam­i­na­tion of the aris­toc­ra­cy, Grand Illu­sion it ain’t; it does, how­ev­er, shed some light on Cleese’s dis­tinc­tive comedic skills. In both of these videos, Cleese uses a seri­ous demeanor to his advan­tage, but his decades of expe­ri­ence allow him to use dif­fer­ent nuances of seri­ous­ness appro­pri­ate to each per­for­ma­tive occa­sion. He has his fun­ni­est moments when he assumes the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the per­fect­ly humor­less, hav­ing mas­tered and long resided in that lim­i­nal state between laugh­ter and stul­ti­fi­ca­tion, irony and straight­for­ward­ness, that the most respect­ed British come­di­ans have made their own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

John Cleese on the Ori­gin of Cre­ativ­i­ty

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: Jerry Seinfeld’s News Series Debuts on the Web

in Comedy, Television | July 23rd, 2012

You watched all 180 episodes of Sein­feld, not once but six times. You laughed your way through anoth­er 80 episodes of Curb Your Enthu­si­asm. You’re crav­ing more — more Jer­ry, more Lar­ry. You need anoth­er dose of their spe­cial brand of com­e­dy. At last, some relief. Last Fri­day, Jer­ry Sein­feld’s new series, Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee debuted on the web, and it’s entire­ly free — just the way we like it. You don’t have to pay HBO, Com­cast, or Net­flix for a laugh. It’s all gratis, thanks to the show’s spon­sor Crack­le.

You can watch the long pro­mo for the series above, and then dive right into the new­ly-released first episode “Lar­ry Eats a Pan­cake.” It runs 13 min­utes (watch here or below) and com­bines Curb Your Enthu­si­asm’s ciné­ma vérité style with Sein­feld’s fas­ci­na­tion with noth­ing. What more could you want?

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Einstein’s Big Idea: E=mc²

in Physics, Television | July 17th, 2012

E=mc²: We’ve all heard of it. But what does it mean?

Ein­stein’s Big Idea, a film from the PBS Nova series, attempts to shed a lit­tle light on Albert Ein­stein’s equa­tion by break­ing it down into its com­po­nent parts and telling a sto­ry behind the devel­op­ment of each one. Nar­rat­ed by actor John Lith­gow, the film is based on David Bodanis’s 2000 best­seller E=mc²: A Biog­ra­phy of the World’s Most Famous Equa­tion. It pre­miered in 2005, the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s Annus Mirabilis–the “mirac­u­lous year” when the 26-year-old patent clerk pub­lished five papers with­in a six-month peri­od that would rev­o­lu­tion­ize 20th cen­tu­ry physics. Among those five were Ein­stein’s paper out­lin­ing what lat­er became known as the Spe­cial The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, and a short fol­low-up paper deriv­ing his for­mu­la for the equiv­a­lence of mass and ener­gy, which he first stat­ed as m=E/c².

Does Ein­stein’s Big Idea actu­al­ly explain the equa­tion? Alas, no. Not even close. Appar­ent­ly, the film­mak­ers’ “big idea” was that they might be able to evoke empa­thy among young view­ers and stim­u­late inter­est in sci­ence by por­tray­ing Ein­stein as a rebel­lious young man with a healthy sex dri­ve. The movie fea­tures dra­mat­ic depic­tions of events, not only in Ein­stein’s ear­ly life, but in the lives of sev­er­al oth­er impor­tant fig­ures in the his­to­ry of sci­ence:  the 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish­man Michael Fara­day, whose exten­sive exper­i­ments and intu­itive the­o­ries in elec­tric­i­ty and mag­net­ism led direct­ly to James Clerk Maxwell’s for­mal dis­cov­ery that light was an elec­tro­mag­net­ic wave;  the 18th cen­tu­ry French chemist Antoine Lavoisi­er, whose dis­cov­ery of the con­ser­va­tion of mass had to be re-for­mu­lat­ed as the con­ser­va­tion of mass-ener­gy in the wake of Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty The­o­ry; the 18th cen­tu­ry French trans­la­tor of Isaac New­ton, Emi­lie du Châtelet, who used the empir­i­cal find­ings of Willem Gravesande to change New­ton’s for­mu­la for ener­gy from E=mv to the one favored by Got­tfried Wil­helm Leib­niz, E=mv²; and the Aus­tri­an-born physi­cist Lise Meit­ner, whose ground­break­ing research into nuclear fis­sion in the 1930s helped con­firm the accu­ra­cy of Ein­stein’s equa­tion. Togeth­er, the scenes depict the his­to­ry of sci­ence as a roman­tic strug­gle of extra­or­di­nary indi­vid­u­als against the resis­tance of less­er minds.

To learn more about Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and E=mc², here are some free online resources:

“On the Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics of Mov­ing Bod­ies”, Ein­stein’s famous paper from the June 30, 1905 edi­tion of Annalen der Physik, out­lin­ing the Spe­cial The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Avail­able as HTML or PDF.

“Does the Iner­tia of a Body Depend on Its Ener­gy Con­tent?”, Ein­stein’s three-page fol­low-up to the paper above, deriv­ing his famous equa­tion from the prin­ci­ples laid out in the ear­li­er work. It was pub­lished in Annalen der Physik on Sep­tem­ber 27, 1905 and is avail­able online as a PDF.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: The Spe­cial and Gen­er­al The­o­ry, Ein­stein’s clas­sic guide for the lay read­er, writ­ten in 1916 and avail­able free in var­i­ous for­mats at Project Guten­berg.

The ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, Bertrand Rus­sel­l’s very acces­si­ble 1925 book, avail­able in an abridged audio edi­tion through links in our Feb. 18 post.

Cours­es on Ein­stein can be found in the Physics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Online Cours­es. And don’t miss Ein­stein for the Mass­es, a lec­ture giv­en by Rama­mur­ti Shankar, Pro­fes­sor of Physics & Applied Physics at Yale.

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Before Mad Men: Familiar and Forgotten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

in Business, History, Media, Television | July 12th, 2012

Before com­ing up with the slo­gan “Utz Are Bet­ter Than Nuts!” for the real-world Utz pota­to chip com­pa­ny on Mad Men, Don Drap­er and his crew had to study the com­pe­ti­tion, like this ad for Beech Nut or this one with Andy Grif­fith for Gen­er­al Foods.

Today we’re sat­u­rat­ed with ads, more than the ad men that inspired Draper’s char­ac­ter could have ever imag­ined. They’re everywhere—on the dark inte­ri­ors of tun­nels as we speed along in light rail trains, in the games we let our kids play on smart phones—and they reveal a lot to us about our­selves.

Duke University’s John W. Hart­man Cen­ter for Sales, Adver­tis­ing & Mar­ket­ing His­to­ry put togeth­er Adviews, a col­lec­tion that brings togeth­er thou­sands of his­toric com­mer­cials from the 1950s to 1980s. Col­lect­ed or cre­at­ed by the D’Arcy Masius Ben­ton & Bowles adver­tis­ing agency, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion is avail­able online and on iTune­sU as a free archive. It’s also found at the Inter­net Archive, where ads can be down­loaded as MP4 videos.

Watch Ster­ling Cooper’s (fic­tion­al) ad for Utz pota­to chips and then com­pare it to this goofy com­mer­cial for Dad­dy Crisp chips above.

Vis­it the amaz­ing world of con­ve­nience foods that made house­wives cheer and mir­a­cle fibers that made clean-up a snap.

We may have grown more savvy and sus­pi­cious of prod­ucts that promise bet­ter health and effi­cien­cy, but if any­thing we’re more fas­ci­nat­ed by adver­tis­ing than ever. Since launch­ing the archive in 2009, the com­mer­cials have logged 2.5 mil­lion down­loads.

And for y’all who miss Andy Grif­fith, there’s a wealth of great stuff.

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