Streaming Movies Online: The Future is Almost Now

in Video - Arts & Culture | June 27th, 2009

Accord­ing to Net­flix’s CEO, the DVD is done, and the future is all about stream­ing movies online. (Read the Wall Street Jour­nal piece on that.) This segues nice­ly to a list that we have com­piled that con­tains 1) over 100 high qual­i­ty films that you can watch online for free, and 2) 35 web sites where you can watch free movies online. The col­lec­tion is called Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Film Noir, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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Exploring the Spiritual Side of Tibet

in Religion, Video - Arts & Culture | June 10th, 2009

The film above takes you inside the spir­i­tu­al walls of Lhasa, Tibet’s cap­i­tal, which hosts the Pota­la Palace, “the tra­di­tion­al win­ter home of the Dalai Lama and a pil­grim­age des­ti­na­tion for thou­sands of Bud­dhists.” The video runs 9+ min­utes, and it’s one of many films pro­duced by Explore.org, a web site sup­port­ed by the Annen­berg Foun­da­tion that com­bines phil­an­thropy, trav­el, and learn­ing. Offer­ing glob­al cov­er­age, Explore.org also brings you to Africa, India, the Mid­dle East, Cos­ta Rica and beyond. You can find their full col­lec­tion of films here, and they have also been added to our col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dalai Lama’s Intro­duc­tion to Bud­dhism

The Future of Tibet: Does It Have One?

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Where Do You Go for Intelligent Video?

in Video - Arts & Culture | May 28th, 2009

Folks, it’s time for a new group project. Last year, I asked you to tell us about your Life-Chang­ing Books, and we pulled togeth­er an excel­lent list that many read­ers have enjoyed. Now we want to know: where do you go for intel­li­gent video? If you list the sites that you like best — TED, Fora.TV, YouTube EDU, Snag­Films, Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth, etc. — we’ll pull togeth­er a big list and present it next week. My hope is that the list will include some well-known names and some less well-known names. If there’s a site where you find intel­li­gent video, we want want to know about, and your fel­low read­ers will thank you for it. Feel free to email me your picks at ma**@*********re.com, or write them in the com­ments below. Thanks all!

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John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Buddy Holly

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 6th, 2009

This week marks the 50th anniver­sary of “the day the music died.” That’s Don McLean’s way of talk­ing about the 1959 air­plane crash that cut short the bud­ding lives and careers of Bud­dy Hol­ly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bop­per” Richard­son. In ’59, Bud­dy Hol­ly’s musi­cal career was just get­ting start­ed, but his influ­ence was already being felt far and wide. Case in point, The Bea­t­les, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys all cov­ered Hol­ly songs dur­ing their ear­ly careers. Here you can watch the Stones sing Not Fade Away in 1964. And, above, you can watch rare footage of John Lennon mov­ing from a Lead Bel­ly tune (“Rock Island Line”) to a lit­tle Bud­dy Hol­ly med­ley that includes “Maybe Baby” and “Peg­gy Sue.” (The Bea­t­les’ take on “Words of Love” can be lis­tened to here as well.) Enjoy.

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Beethoven Symphony No. 5, Arturo Toscanini, 1952

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | January 31st, 2009

Here’s a nice vin­tage clip that comes out of a YouTube Chan­nel called The Great Per­form­ers, which we’ve added to our page: Best YouTube Col­lec­tions. The video fea­tures Arturo Toscani­ni con­duct­ing Beethoven’s 5th at Carnegie Hall in 1952. You can find the sec­ond move­ment here.

For more clas­si­cal music see:

Free Beethoven and Mozart Record­ings via Pod­cast

Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 9 — Kara­jan or Mup­pet Style

The Ten Best Clas­si­cal Music Record­ings of 2008

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Salvador Dali on “What’s My Line?”

in Television, Video - Arts & Culture | January 22nd, 2009

What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, mak­ing it the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured hun­dreds of celebri­ties & VIPs. Above, you can watch Sal­vador Dali in action. You can also rewind the video tape and check out Alfred Hitch­cock, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Grou­cho Marx, Carl Sand­burg, among oth­ers. For more oldies and good­ies, check out Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio & The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Visit the Prado Art Collection with Google Earth

in Art, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | January 14th, 2009

Thank­ful­ly, it’s not all bad news here in Sil­i­con Val­ley. Yes­ter­day, Google and the Pra­do (the major art muse­um in Madrid) announced that you can launch Google Earth from wher­ev­er you live, trav­el vir­tu­al­ly to Spain, and then take a close look at four­teen of the muse­um’s finest paint­ings. And, by “close,” I mean close. Accord­ing to a Google spokesman said: “The paint­ings have been pho­tographed in very high res­o­lu­tion and con­tain as many as 14,000 mil­lion pix­els (14 gigapix­els).” “With this high lev­el res­o­lu­tion you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (by Rubens), del­i­cate tears on the faces of the fig­ures in The Descent from the Cross (by Roger van der Wey­den) and com­plex fig­ures in The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights (by El Bosco).” The four­teen paint­ings include pieces by Fran­cis­co de Goya, Diego Velázquez and Hierony­mus Bosch. You can begin the tour (and get Google Earth soft­ware) from this land­ing page. The video below also offers a nice visu­al illus­tra­tion of what this project is all about. (A quick tip: if you have Google Earth, make sure that you have “3D Build­ings” checked off under “Lay­ers.” Then do a search for “Pra­do” and click on “Museu del Pra­do.” From there, click on the image of the muse­um. Next, you should see a series of paint­ings that you can begin to explore.)

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“Stand By Me” Sung By Musicians Around the World

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | January 13th, 2009

What hap­pens when you take Ben King’s 1961 hit, Stand By Me, and then trav­el around the world, hav­ing dif­fer­ent inter­na­tion­al artists offer their own inter­pre­ta­tions, and final­ly you stitch them all togeth­er in one seam­less tune?  The clip below starts in Cal­i­for­nia, moves to New Orleans, then heads off to Ams­ter­dam, France, Brazil, Moscow, Venezuala, South Africa and beyond. And I’m will­ing to bet that you’ll like how it turns out.  The clip comes from the doc­u­men­tary, “Play­ing For Change: Peace Through Music.” Thanks Jil­lian for the heads up on this one, and, you guessed it, this one’s added to our YouTube Favorites.

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