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Below, you’ll find a list of 25 fine cinema/film blogs, all for the cinema buff. This list figures into a larger collection of Culture Blogs that we’re putting together over time. It’s a work in progress, so watch it grow. If you feel that we’re missing some extraordinary blogs, please feel free to **@******re.com/”>email us and let us know.
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On Monday night faith and atheism got a verbal workout. Famously vitriolic columnist Christopher Hitchens (a former liberal best-known in recent years for his staunch support of the war in Iraq) faced off against Reverend Al Sharpton in a discussion moderated by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg. Hitchens is a vehement non-believer and the new author of God is not Great (also available on iTunes). Suffice to say that the debate between him and Sharpton was colorful. That should come as no surprise–what makes it worth listening to is that it was also reasoned and intelligent.
You can read a transcript or listen to the debate (RealAudio only), which was held at the New York Public Library.
The two celebrity pundits saved their best moment for last:
“I’d encourage people to buy the book,” Mr. Sharpton said. “I don’t
believe what it says, but it’s well written. He’s a very eloquent and
well-versed person.”“That’s extremely handsome of you,” Mr. Hitchens replied.
As an aside, Hitchens recently appeared on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight. In the interview above, you can get a little more insight into Hitchens’ thinking.
Below, you’ll find a list of 20 fine literary blogs. Like our podcast collections, this list will grow over time. In fact, it will become part of a larger list of great culture blogs. Over the coming weeks, we’ll roll out new installments and then mash them together into one larger list. Stay tuned for more.
If you feel that we’re missing some extraordinary blogs, please feel free to **@******re.com/”>email us.
Stay tuned for more to come!
The Supreme Court has long taken heat for being in the technological arrière-garde, a criticism that has seemed fair given its unwillingness to even allow cameras into its oral arguments.
Slowly, however, that perception may be about to change. According to the ABA Journal eReport, the Court has stuck a small toe into the technology waters by providing web access to videotaped evidence that figured into a recent case, Scott v. Harris. The url for the video gets referenced within the written opinion for the case, and a link is provided from the Court’s opinions web page. (You’ll need Real Player to watch it.)
The video itself is nothing special. It features very low quality footage of a car chase taken from the dashboard of a police car, and it’s essentially the same scenario that America has seen played out for almost 20 years on Fox’s COPS. As you watch the video, you can’t help but feel that this landmark moment for the court is a non-moment. But that’s perhaps to be expected when a tradition-bound institution banally enters a brave new world.
When Bill Moyers returned to PBS two weeks ago, his first program took a careful look at how the mainstream media has fallen down on the job when it comes to asking tough questions to politicians. Given this starting point, it seemed logical for Moyers to speak next (iTunes — Feed) with John Stewart, host of The Daily Show. That’s because adversarial journalism is now found more readily on Comedy Central than on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, etc. The interview with Stewart, which is quite substantive and worth a listen, makes reference to John McCain’s recent appearance on The Daily Show and also to Steven Colbert’s famous/infamous roast of President Bush in 2006. You can watch both below.
American television shows have been satirizing politicians for a long time. That’s not new. But what’s new with Stewart is that he’s upending the whole point of television satire. Whether you look at Jay Leno’s tame humor, or the more biting humor of Saturday Night Live, the point of the satire has always been to get a laugh. For Stewart, something else is going on. Watch the McCain interview and you see that the joke is essentially a prop, a convenient means of getting at something much more serious, a way of having a blunt, no nonsense conversation, precisely the kind of conversation that the mainstream media has been largely unwilling, if not downright afraid, to have with our leaders.
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The hydrogen-filled Hindenburg went down in remarkable flames exactly 70 years ago in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Below, we’ve posted the dramatic historical footage. You can read here a decent account of what happened on that day, plus interviews with still living survivors. |
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Spiderman 3 came to movie theaters yesterday, making May 4 the single biggest-grossing day in box office history. You can read interviews with Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and most of the other principal “names” in the movie here. Don’t forget to read the spoilers and immerse yourself in the lore at the sequel’s extensive Wikipedia page. But if the lines are long, what else can you do to spend some time with America’s favorite arachnid hero? Fortunately, today is Free Comic Book Day. Thousands of specialty store are handing out four-color fun to anyone who walks in the door. Look up participating stores near you here. Salon has a great guide for comic newbies looking to get in on the action. If you’re more into audio, check out this free music from the Spiderman 3 soundtrack. Or you can buy the new game (which has gotten at least one good review) on just about any game platform you might own, from the PlayStation 3 to the Nintendo DS. And if all else fails, at least you can watch the trailer at home (watch all of them here): |
This web page doesn’t look like much, but it houses a great deal. Put simply, the page plugs you into an archive of 135
vintage American radio shows, spanning from the 1930s to the 1950s. This was the height of America’s radio days. And when you listen to the recordings, it won’t take long to realize that America was a very different country then (politically, socially and culturally) than what it is today. The list features some well-known classics. Take for example, the Abbott and Costello Show, Bob and Ray Show, Bob Hope Show, Burns and Allen Show, Mel Blanc Show and Milton Berle Show (detect a pattern yet?). Then, you can also listen in on episodes of Gunsmoke, Jack Benny, The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, Father Knows Best and the Adventures Of Philip Marlowe. For those who want to experience the classics of old-time American radio, or what mainstream American entertainment used to be, this audio archive should keep you busy for a good long while.
Related Website: Another collection of vintage radio audio clips can be found here.
Related Article: Radio fans should look back at our article on the famous Orson Welles radio broadcast from 1938 — The War of the Worlds. Readers can access here an audio file of the original broadcast that sent the US into hysterics. It’s well worth a listen if you haven’t heard it before.
Seed Magazine has an hour-long video conversation with David Byrne (“Rock’s renaissance man”) and Daniel Levitin (neuroscientist) about the connections between music and cognition. Check out the highlights above or view the full interview here. Daniel Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music came out last year, as did David Byrne’s Arboretum.
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Over the past couple weeks, our readers have sent some new links our way. Here’s some of the good stuff that they’ve had to offer:
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The PEN American Center just wound up World Voices 2007, a conference featuring a slew of major authors, including Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Neil Gaiman, and many more. One of the panels this year featured some literary heavy hitters reading works to raise awareness for environmental issues: Billy Collins, Jonathan Franzen, Moses Isegawa, Pico Iyer, Geert Mak, Marilynne Robinson, Roxana Robinson, Salman Rushdie, Gary Shteyngart, Janne Teller and Colson Whitehead all participated (mp3). The PEN organization works for literary freedom worldwide, and the conference keynote (mp3) features Israeli author David Grossman and Nobel Prize-winner Nadine Gordimer discussing the “Freedom to Write.” Considering the news in Turkey these days, you may also want to give last year’s lecture with Orhan Pamuk and Margaret Atwood a listen (mp3). The Center also has an iTunes podcast series and an audio archive, but since the conference just ended it will probably take some time for them to process the latest audio. iTunes Feed Site
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