This Is Your Brain on Exercise: Why Physical Exercise (Not Mental Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

in Health, Neuroscience | November 3rd, 2015

brain exercise

In the Unit­ed States and the UK, we’ve seen the emer­gence of a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar brain train­ing indus­try, premised on the idea that you can improve your mem­o­ry, atten­tion and pow­ers of rea­son­ing through the right men­tal exer­cis­es. You’ve like­ly seen soft­ware com­pa­nies and web sites that mar­ket games designed to increase your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. And if you’re part of an old­er demo­graph­ic, wor­ried about your aging brain, you’ve per­haps been inclined to give those brain train­ing pro­grams a try. Whether these pro­grams can deliv­er on their promis­es remains an open question–especially see­ing that a 2010 sci­en­tif­ic study from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and the BBC con­clud­ed that there’s “no evi­dence to sup­port the wide­ly held belief that the reg­u­lar use of com­put­erised brain train­ers improves gen­er­al cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in healthy par­tic­i­pants…”

And yet we should­n’t lose hope. A num­ber of oth­er sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies sug­gest that phys­i­cal exercise–as opposed to men­tal exercise–can mean­ing­ful­ly improve our cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, from child­hood through old age. One study led by Charles Hill­man, a pro­fes­sor of kine­si­ol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ty health at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, found that chil­dren who reg­u­lar­ly exer­cise, writes The New York Times:

dis­played sub­stan­tial improve­ments in … exec­u­tive func­tion. They were bet­ter at “atten­tion­al inhi­bi­tion,” which is the abil­i­ty to block out irrel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and con­cen­trate on the task at hand … and had height­ened abil­i­ties to tog­gle between cog­ni­tive tasks. Telling­ly, the chil­dren who had attend­ed the most exer­cise ses­sions showed the great­est improve­ments in their cog­ni­tive scores.

And, heart­en­ing­ly, exer­cise seems to con­fer ben­e­fits on adults too. A study focus­ing on old­er adults already expe­ri­enc­ing a mild degree of cog­ni­tive impair­ment found that resis­tance and aer­o­bic train­ing improved their spa­tial mem­o­ry and ver­bal mem­o­ry. Anoth­er study found that weight train­ing can decrease brain shrink­age, a process that occurs nat­u­ral­ly with age.

If you’re look­ing to get the gist of how exer­cise pro­motes brain health, it comes down to this:

Exer­cise trig­gers the pro­duc­tion of a pro­tein called brain-derived neu­rotroph­ic fac­tor, or BDNF, which helps sup­port the growth of exist­ing brain cells and the devel­op­ment of new ones.

With age, BDNF lev­els fall; this decline is one rea­son brain func­tion dete­ri­o­rates in the elder­ly. Cer­tain types of exer­cise, name­ly aer­o­bic, are thought to coun­ter­act these age-relat­ed drops in BDNF and can restore young lev­els of BDNF in the age brain.

That’s how The Chica­go Tri­bune sum­ma­rized the find­ings of a 1995 study con­duct­ed by researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-Irvine. You can get more of the nuts and bolts by read­ing The Tri­bune’s recent arti­cle, The Best Brain Exer­cise May be Phys­i­cal. (Also see Can You Get Smarter?)

You’re per­haps left won­der­ing what’s the right dose of exer­cise for the brain? And guess what, Gretchen Reynolds, the phys ed colum­nist for The Times’ Well blog, wrote a col­umn on just that this sum­mer. Although the sci­ence is still far from con­clu­sive, a new study con­duct­ed by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Cen­ter found that small dos­es of exer­cise could lead to cog­ni­tive improve­ments. Writes Reynolds, “the encour­ag­ing take­away from the new study … is that briskly walk­ing for 20 or 25 min­utes sev­er­al times a week — a dose of exer­cise achiev­able by almost all of us — may help to keep our brains sharp as the years pass.”

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via New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

New Research Shows How Music Lessons Dur­ing Child­hood Ben­e­fit the Brain for a Life­time

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

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Listen to Ira Glass’ 10 Favorite Episodes of This American Life

in Radio | November 3rd, 2015

American Life Titles

Even when one is a long­time, jad­ed denizen of a major city, celebri­ty sight­ings can still induce a thrill. Dur­ing my tenure in New York City, I ran across my share of famous names, though I’ve nev­er been one to both­er a stranger, world famous or no. This almost changed when I ran past Ira Glass one evening and found myself sore­ly tempt­ed to chat him up. I’m sure he’d be glad I resist­ed the urge, but hav­ing heard his voice on the radio every week for well over a decade… well, I felt like I knew him.

Since 1995, Glass has host­ed This Amer­i­can Life, per­haps the most pop­u­lar pub­lic radio show ever pro­duced and—before its huge­ly suc­cess­ful spin-off Ser­i­al—the most pop­u­lar pod­cast in the U.S. The show is quick­ly approach­ing its twen­ty-year anniver­sary (its first episode aired Novem­ber 17th; hear it here), and in hon­or of that mile­stone, we revis­it anoth­er: the show’s 500th episode, which aired in 2013. For that occa­sion, Buz­zfeed vis­it­ed with Glass for a reveal­ing inter­view.

Though he respond­ed to episode 500 with typ­i­cal understatement—saying it felt “more like an odome­ter rolling over than any­thing else”—many fans of the show, myself includ­ed, felt a great deal more enthu­si­asm, as did Los Ange­les’ KPCC, who brings us the list below of Glass’ top ten episodes (includ­ing one two-parter). Glass not­ed that his top picks also hap­pen to be fan favorites as well. You can hear all of his favorites at the links below:

  • Notes on Camp
  • Harp­er High School One and Two
  • The Giant Pool of Mon­ey
  • Some­where in the Ara­bi­an Sea — “I love how fun­ny and human-sized every­one is in this show. It’s a sur­pris­ing­ly fun­ny show about the war on ter­ror,” Glass writes.
  • Switched at Birth — Glass: “The struc­ture of this show — where the whole episode you won­der how a mom could know for decades she was rais­ing the wrong baby and final­ly, she answers it in the end — is per­fect.”
  • Break-Up — “The stand­out sto­ry is Star­lee Kine’s essay on breakup songs, which includes an inter­view with Phil Collins that’s so men­schy and real, it changed how I saw him for­ev­er.”
  • Babysit­ting — “Espe­cial­ly the inter­view with Myron Jones, which is the best inter­view I’ve ever done, main­ly because he had so much grace and humor talk­ing about his past. Any ques­tion I could think of, he’d come back with an amaz­ing sto­ry, which is rare.”
  • My Big Break — “David Segal takes a turn in the mid­dle of this sto­ry that’s one of my favorite reveals in any radio sto­ry ever.”
  • Harold Wash­ing­ton — “How can you go wrong when the cen­tral fig­ure in your sto­ry is fun­ny and can­tan­ker­ous and big­heart­ed and ide­al­is­tic and utter­ly prag­mat­ic and on top of all that, total­ly charis­mat­ic? If you don’t know who Harold is, be pre­pared for a treat.”
  • Heretics — “Carl­ton Pear­son, like Harold, is some­one they should make a movie about, for lots of the same rea­sons. An ide­al­is­tic preach­er whose ide­al­ism costs him pret­ty much every­thing: the church he runs, his rep­u­ta­tion, his for­tune, near­ly his fam­i­ly.”

As a spe­cial treat, Glass also shared with Buz­zfeed the doc­u­ment at the top of the post, a page of ideas for alter­nate titles for the show orig­i­nal­ly called Your Radio Play­house. Before renam­ing the show in March of 1996, Glass and his crew con­sid­ered such titles as the unin­spir­ing “Amer­i­can What­ev­er,” weird “Mouth Noise,” and goofy “Ira Glass and his Radio Cow­boys.”

I kind of wish they’d gone with the lat­ter, but it’s hard to imag­ine the show we know as This Amer­i­can Life could ever have been called any­thing else. (See it pen­ciled in almost as an after­thought above.) The show’s title per­fect­ly sums up the breadth and scope of a pro­gram that tack­les every­thing from the triv­ial to the high­ly con­se­quen­tial, often back-to-back in the same themed hour. Though Glass would sure­ly balk at such high praise, I think his show has done more to help Amer­i­cans know and under­stand our­selves over the last twen­ty years than near­ly any­thing else on radio, TV, or the pod­cast­ing world.

via KPCC

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass’ Advice on Achiev­ing Cre­ative Excel­lence Pre­sent­ed in Two Art­ful, Typo­graph­ic Videos

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

This Amer­i­can Life Demys­ti­fies the Amer­i­can Health­care Sys­tem

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Jean-Paul Sartre’s Philosophy Can Empower You to Live the Life You Truly Want

in Animation, Philosophy | November 2nd, 2015

The lat­est install­ment from The School of Life’s ani­mat­ed video series intro­duces us to Jean-Paul Sartre’s con­cept of bad faith, a con­cept inte­gral to his phi­los­o­phy, Exis­ten­tial­ism. As Mark Lin­sen­may­er, one of the founders of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast, explained on our site back in 2011, “bad faith” is a ten­den­cy we have to “dis­as­so­ci­ate our­selves from our actions,” or more com­mon­ly, to claim we have “more lim­it­ed choic­es [in life] than we actu­al­ly do.” He went on to say:

Bad faith is pos­si­ble because of the nature of the self… There is no pre­de­ter­mined ‘human nature’ or ‘true you,’ but instead you are some­thing built over time, by your own freely cho­sen actions, too often using the roles and char­ac­ter­is­tics oth­ers assign to you.

As is their wont, The School of Life takes Sartre’s notion of bad faith and applies it to every­day life, show­ing how it can help you cre­ate the life you want to live–from enter­ing into more sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ships, to get­ting out of dead-end jobs.

For any­one look­ing to get a fair­ly acces­si­ble intro­duc­tion to Sartre’s phi­los­o­phy, you might want to start with his 1946 lec­ture, Exis­ten­tial­ism is a Human­ism. And down below, in the Relat­eds sec­tion, we have more help­ful intro­duc­tions to Sartre’s lib­er­at­ing phi­los­o­phy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intel­lec­tu­als

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Doc­u­men­tary Presents Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

Down­load Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Mod­ern Thought (1960)

140+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

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Hear All of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia Novels as Free Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature, Religion | November 2nd, 2015

NarniaMap-e1324285473899

I have not seen the sec­ond two of a promised sev­en films based on the nov­els in C.S. Lewis’ The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia series. But I tend to agree with sev­er­al crit­ics of the first filmed adap­ta­tion, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “The PG-rat­ed movie feels safe and con­strict­ed,” Peter Tra­vers observed, “in a way the sto­ry nev­er does on the page.” Although Lewis “did noth­ing to hide his devout Chris­tian­i­ty” in his alle­gor­i­cal Nar­nia books for young adults, nor in his grown-up sci-fi fan­ta­sy series, The Space Tril­o­gy, Lewis on the page comes across as a rig­or­ous writer first and a Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist sec­ond. Except, I’d argue, for his work of explic­it­ly pop­ulist, and rather facile, apolo­get­ics, Mere Chris­tian­i­ty (orig­i­nal­ly a series of radio lec­tures), his fic­tion and pop­u­lar non-fic­tion alike present readers—whatever their beliefs—with chal­leng­ing, inven­tive, wit­ty, and mov­ing ways to think about the human con­di­tion.

Lewis’ immer­sion in Euro­pean Medieval and Renais­sance lit­er­a­ture in his day-job role as an Oxford don—and his ecu­meni­cal, almost Jun­gian, approach to lit­er­a­ture generally—gives his fic­tion a seri­ous arche­typ­al depth that most mod­ern reli­gious nov­el­ists lack, mak­ing him, along with fel­low “Inkling” J.R.R. Tolkien, some­thing of a lit­er­ary saint in mod­ern Chris­tian­i­ty. Though it may offend the ortho­dox to say so, Lewis’ nov­els cap­ture a “deep mag­ic” at the heart of all mytho­log­i­cal and lit­er­ary tra­di­tions. And they do so in a way that makes explor­ing heavy, grown-up themes excit­ing for both chil­dren and adults. Though I’ve per­son­al­ly left behind the beliefs that ani­mat­ed my first read­ings of his books, I can still return to The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia and find in them deep mag­ic and mys­tery.

There’s no deny­ing the enor­mous influ­ence these books have had on children’s fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture, from Har­ry Pot­ter to Lewis’ athe­ist antag­o­nist Philip Pull­man. I look for­ward to shar­ing his books with my daugh­ter, what­ev­er she ends up mak­ing of their reli­gios­i­ty. I’ve still got my tat­tered paper­back copies, and I’ll glad­ly read them to her before she can tack­le them her­self, but I’m also grate­ful for the com­plete audio record­ings of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, avail­able free online and read by Eng­lish child psy­chol­o­gist and author Chris­si Hart. In install­ments of two chap­ters at a time, Hart reads all sev­en of the Nar­nia books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspi­an, The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er, The Sil­ver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Bat­tle.

You can hear the first two chap­ters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe above, and stream or down­load the remain­ing chap­ters, and the remain­ing six books, at Ancientfaith.com. Although Hart and the Ancient Faith site who host her read­ings clear­ly approach the nov­els from an explic­it­ly Ortho­dox per­spec­tive, I don’t think read­ers need to share their beliefs, or Lewis’, to enjoy and appre­ci­ate the sto­ry­telling mag­ic of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia.

And it should be not­ed that CS Lewis Pte. Ltd. grant­ed per­mis­sion to put these record­ings online, accord­ing to the Ancient Faith web site. The record­ings are there­fore list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Watch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. Lewis

The Only Known Record­ings of C.S. Lewis (1944–1948)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Spellbinding Supercut of the First & Final Frames of 70 Iconic Films, Played Side by Side

in Creativity, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | November 2nd, 2015

Film­mak­er Jacob T. Swin­ney’s First and Final Frames, Part II, above, is a rare sequel that upholds the qual­i­ty of the orig­i­nal.

As he did in its pre­de­ces­sor, Swin­ney screens the open­ing and clos­ing shots of dozens of recent and icon­ic films side by side, pro­vid­ing view­ers with a crash course in the edi­to­r­i­al eye.

What is being com­mu­ni­cat­ed when the clos­ing shot replicates—or inverts—the open­ing shot?

Will the open­ing shot become freight­ed with por­tent on a sec­ond view­ing, after one has seen how the film will end?

(Shake­speare would say yes.)

Swin­ney is deeply con­ver­sant in the non­ver­bal lan­guage of film, as evi­denced by his numer­ous com­pi­la­tions and video essays for Slate on such top­ics as the Kubrick Stare and the facial expres­sions of emo­tion­al­ly rev­e­la­to­ry moments.

Most of the films he choos­es for simul­ta­ne­ous cra­dle-and-grave-shot replay qual­i­fy as art, or seri­ous attempts there­at. You’d nev­er know from the for­mal­ism of its open­ing and clos­ing shots that Jim Jarmusch’s Mys­tery Train at the 1:00 mark is a com­e­dy.

To be fair, Clint Mansell’s uni­ver­sal­ly applied score could cloak even Ani­mal House in a veil of wist­ful, cin­e­mat­ic yearn­ing.

Giv­en the com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty Swinney’s brought to such super­cuts as a Con­cise Video His­to­ry of Teens Climb­ing Through Each Oth­ers’ Win­dows  and a Tiny His­to­ry of Shrink­ing Humans in Movies, I’m hop­ing there will be a third install­ment where­in he con­sid­ers the first and final moments of come­dies.

Any you might rec­om­mend for inclu­sion? (Hold the Pink Flamin­gos, por favor…)

Films fea­tured in First and Final Frames, Part II in order of appear­ance:

Sun­shine

Snow­piercer

Biu­ti­ful

21 Grams

The Pres­tige

All is Lost

Take Shel­ter

The Impos­si­ble

Unit­ed 93

Vanil­la Sky

Ex Machi­na

Inside Llewyn Davis

Dead Man

Mys­tery Train

Melvin and Howard

Fury

Full Met­al Jack­et

A Clock­work Orange

Eyes Wide Shut

Eraser­head

The Ele­phant Man

The Fall

The Thin Red Line

The New World

Road to Perdi­tion

Snow Falling on Cedars

The Bourne Ulti­ma­tum

The Imi­ta­tion Game

Flight

Hard Eight

Inher­ent Vice

World War Z

Wild

The Dou­ble

The Machin­ist

Born on the Fourth of July

Brideshead Revis­it­ed

Maps to the Stars

The Skele­ton Twins

Mom­my

A Scan­ner Dark­ly

10 Years

Milk

Lost High­way

Box­car Bertha

Bad­lands

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samu­rai

Rat­catch­er

Ida

Raise the Red Lantern

Gat­ta­ca

Kun­dun

Bring­ing Out the Dead

A Most Want­ed Man

The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton

The Social Net­work

Jack Goes Boat­ing

Sub­ma­rine

Half Nel­son

Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind

Babel

Djan­go Unchained

True Grit

Ver­ti­go

Old­boy

Apoc­a­lyp­to

Dawn of the Plan­et of the Apes

Glad­i­a­tor

Mad Max: Fury Road

World’s Great­est Dad

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Super­cut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, is now play­ing at The Brick The­ater in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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A Young David Lynch Talks About Eraserhead in One of His First Recorded Interviews (1979)

in Film | November 2nd, 2015


“One of the first video record­ings of a David Lynch inter­view dates from 1979,” writes The New York­er’s Den­nis Lim. “The twen­ty-minute black-and-white seg­ment was pro­duced for a tele­vi­sion course at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les, and con­duct­ed in the oil fields of the Los Ange­les Basin, one of the loca­tions that con­sti­tut­ed the bar­ren waste­land of his first fea­ture, Eraser­head (1977).” And it is Eraser­head these UCLA stu­dents, in what Lim calls “the moment of Lynch’s first brush with cult fame,” want to know about, putting a vari­ety of ques­tions to the young film­mak­er, and putting his abil­i­ty to answer them con­crete­ly to the test.

You may well learn more about Eraser­head in the the­ater-lob­by audi­ence respons­es col­lect­ed for the video, where­in the view­ers — view­ers, remem­ber, from a now hard-to-imag­ine time when the name David Lynch car­ried no mean­ing at all — exit­ing a screen­ing express reac­tions rang­ing from great plea­sure (some of them boast of hav­ing seen it as many as eight times already) to pre­dictable bewil­der­ment (“I’ve got­ta think about it for a while”) and even more pre­dictable dis­taste: “The weird­est thing I’ve ever seen.” “It’s ter­ri­ble. I did­n’t like it.” “Some inane, bizarre per­son with a dis­turbed mind wrote that film.” But does the man stand­ing there sub­mit­ting to a stu­dent inter­view in the mid­dle of an oil field seem so bizarre, so dis­turbed?

Some of Lynch’s answers, as when he describes Eraser­head as “not like thrown-togeth­er abstract” but “meant-to-be-that-way abstract,” may strike you as inane at first, but cer­tain­ly noth­ing he says cross­es the line from inani­ty to insan­i­ty. In the almost 40 years since the film’s first show­ing, Eraser­head has grown more artis­ti­cal­ly divi­sive even as its fan base spans a wider and wider range of gen­er­a­tions and nation­al­i­ties. Both its pro­mot­ers and its detrac­tors may some­times won­der if even Lynch him­self under­stands it, but to my mind, this ear­ly inter­view hints that he does. He made what he calls “an open-feel­ing film,” a fount of an infini­tude of inter­pre­ta­tions, and for that rea­son an endur­ing work of art. And he meant it to be that way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paint­ings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Other Artists Put Online by Norway’s National Museum of Art

in Art | October 30th, 2015

NOR Skrik, ENG The Scream

Next time I make it to Oslo, the Nation­al Muse­um of Art, Archi­tec­ture and Design ranks high on my to-do list. The next time I make it to Oslo will also count as the first time I make it to Oslo, since the ten­den­cy of the city itself to rank high on the world’s-most-expen­sive places lists (and at the very top of some of those lists) has thus far scared me off of book­ing a flight there. But if you can han­dle Oslo’s for­mi­da­ble cost of liv­ing, the Nation­al Muse­um’s branch­es only charge you the equiv­a­lent of five bucks or so for admis­sion. And now they’ve offered an even cheap­er alter­na­tive: 30,000 works of art from their col­lec­tion, view­able online for free.

NOR Melankoli, ENG Melancholy

If it all seems over­whelm­ing, you can view the Nation­al Muse­um’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion in sec­tions of high­lights: one of pre-1945 works, one of post-1945 works, and one of Edvard Munch. While few of us could con­fi­dent­ly call our­selves experts in Nor­we­gian art, all of us know the work of Munch — or at least we know a work of Munch, 1893’s The Scream (Skrik), whose black-garbed cen­tral fig­ure, clutch­ing his gaunt fea­tures twist­ed into an expres­sion of pure agony, has gone on to inspire count­less homages, par­o­dies, and iron­ic greet­ing cards. But Munch, whose career last­ed well over half a cen­tu­ry and involved print­mak­ing as well as paint­ing, did­n’t become Nor­way’s best-known artist on the strength of The Scream alone.

NOR Pikene på broen, ENG The Girls on the Bridge

The Nation­al Muse­um’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion offers per­haps your best oppor­tu­ni­ty to begin to get a sense of the scope of Munch’s art. There you can take an up-close look at (and even down­load) such pieces as the less ago­nized Melan­choly (Melankoli), paint­ed one year before The Scream; 1901’s The Girls on the Bridge, a more placid treat­ment of a sim­i­lar set­ting; and even, so you can get to know the artist bet­ter still, Munch’s 1895 self-por­trait with a cig­a­rette. He may not exact­ly look hap­py in it, but at least he has­n’t become a visu­al short­hand for all-con­sum­ing pain like the poor fel­low he paint­ed on the bridge. (If you want my guess as to what made the sub­ject of The Scream so unhap­py, I’d say he just fin­ished look­ing into aver­age Oslo rents.)

NOR Selvportrett med sigarett, ENG Self-Portrait with Cigarette

A big thanks to Joakim for mak­ing us aware of this col­lec­tion. If any oth­er read­ers know of great resources we can fea­ture on the site, please send us a tip here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing The Scream Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Musician Plays Signature Drum Parts of 71 Beatles Songs in 5 Minutes: A Whirlwind Tribute to Ringo Starr

in Music | October 30th, 2015

Kye Smith, a drum­mer based in New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia, recent­ly hauled his drum kit to a near­by rooftop (an homage to The Bea­t­les’ 1969 rooftop gig?) and start­ed bang­ing out a pret­ty won­der­ful trib­ute to Ringo Starr, play­ing drum parts from 71 Bea­t­les songs in 5 quick min­utes. Smith moves chrono­log­i­cal­ly, play­ing the songs in the order they were released (not record­ed). We start in 1962, move through 1969, and even momen­tar­i­ly vis­it 1995. On his Face­book page, Smith had this to say:

Way before I found out about punk rock or even knew what a snare drum was I spent my child­hood play­ing vinyl records at my grand­par­ents place spin­ning artists such as Slim Dusty, ELVIS PRESLEY and The Bea­t­les.

This chronol­o­gy called for some spe­cial treat­ment and got me out of the stu­dio and onto the rooftop of The Great North­ern Hotel — New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia for a pret­ty stun­ning view of New­cas­tle, New South Wales in the back­ground.

Thanks to every­one at The Great North­ern for let­ting me make some noise up there and to Elu­mi­nate for help­ing me shoot it and lug heaps of gear up 7 storeys of stairs!

Below the jump, you can find the list of songs that appear in the video, com­plete with cor­re­spond­ing time stamps. And keep in mind that Smith, as he men­tions on Youtube, is “avail­able for stu­dio and live work and will be open­ing up some slots for drum lessons short­ly.” Con­tact him here.

PS: If you can name one of the drum parts that was orig­i­nal­ly played by Paul McCart­ney, you get bonus points.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. 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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Watch the Cult Classic Horror Film Carnival of Souls (1962)

in Film | October 30th, 2015

carnival of souls

Herk Har­vey had a suc­cess­ful career as a direc­tor and pro­duc­er of edu­ca­tion­al and indus­tri­al movies in Lawrence, Kansas, but he longed for some­thing more. After all, fel­low Kansas film­mak­er Robert Alt­man had made the leap from indus­tri­al flicks to Hol­ly­wood, so why couldn’t he?

The result­ing movie, Car­ni­val of Souls (1962), became a cult clas­sic influ­enc­ing the likes of George Romero, James Wan and David Lynch. Mary (played by Can­dace Hilligoss, the only trained actor in the cast) mys­te­ri­ous­ly sur­faces after an ill-fat­ed drag race sends her car off a bridge and into a deep riv­er. Unmoored and unable to remem­ber what hap­pened, she flees her home­town and ends up in Salt Lake City where she takes a gig as a church organ­ist. She tries to make a life there but is plagued by an oth­er­world­ly stranger with a paper white mask of evil (played by Har­vey him­self.)

Now in the pub­lic domain, Car­ni­val is a slow burn of dread that relies on few cheap jumps and lit­tle gore. Instead, Har­vey cre­ates a sparse world of alien­ation and creep­ing hys­te­ria like an Edward Hop­per paint­ing gone psy­chot­ic. Harvey’s inspi­ra­tions were clear­ly more art house than Ham­mer hor­ror. Echoes of F. W. Mur­nau, Ing­mar Bergman and Jean Cocteau abound. Yet the curi­ous­ly som­nam­bu­late act­ing exhib­it­ed by most of the cast along with the movie’s freaky organ sound­track gives the film the vibe of a par­tic­u­lar­ly night­mar­ish Ed Wood movie.

Car­ni­val made a mod­est show­ing on the dri­ve-in cir­cuit when it came out but it didn’t become a cult clas­sic until lat­er in the 60s when it start­ed play­ing on late-night TV. Har­vey, how­ev­er, nev­er made anoth­er fea­ture.

You can watch the com­plete movie above, or find it in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Out­er Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ulti­mate Cult Flick,” or Both?

The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari: See the Restored Ver­sion of the 1920 Hor­ror Clas­sic with Its Orig­i­nal Col­or Tint­ing

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films: Kubrick, Hitch­cock, Tourneur & More

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The Artist as Artist’s Model: Au Naturel Portraits of Frida Kahlo Taken by Art Patron Julien Levy (1938)

in Art, Museums, Photography | October 30th, 2015

Frida-2

Fri­da Kahlo’s lega­cy is def­i­nite­ly informed by her care­ful hus­bandry of own image. She under­stood its cur­ren­cy, and how to lever­age it. Even when caught out of uni­form or hav­ing a seem­ing­ly unaware laugh, she stayed true to what in mod­ern par­lance would be called her brand.

So it is with gallery own­er Julien Levy’s 1938 (tech­ni­cal­ly not-safe-for-work) pho­tographs of the artist, tak­en the year before he host­ed her first solo show, an event that caused Time mag­a­zine to rhap­sodize that “the flut­ter of the week in Man­hat­tan was caused by the first exhi­bi­tion of paint­ings by famed mural­ist Diego Rivera’s…wife, Fri­da Kahlo.”

Rivera’s wife was also Levy’s lover, as these art­ful­ly posed, semi-clad pho­tos sug­gest. They show a less pub­lic side of Kahlo, to be sure, but one that’s in keep­ing with the face she pre­sent­ed to the world.

Frankly, the rev­e­la­tion of her par­tial­ly loosed hair seems more inti­mate than her disha­bille.

Click here to see the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art’s col­lec­tion of Levy’s Kahlo por­traits, both with and with­out rebo­zo.

To learn a lit­tle more about Julien Levy (“a gallery own­er who com­mit­ted his charis­ma, con­nec­tions, and per­son­al resources to estab­lish­ing photography’s impor­tance in the field of mod­ern art”) and the col­lec­tion bequeathed to the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art, click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

Fri­da Kahlo’s Col­or­ful Clothes Revealed for the First Time & Pho­tographed by Ishi­uchi Miyako

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, is now play­ing in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” Read by the Great Bela Lugosi (1946)

in Film, Literature | October 30th, 2015

A cou­ple days ago, we fea­tured some intrigu­ing clips from the new ani­mat­ed Edgar Allan Poe film, Extra­or­di­nary Tales. Direct­ed by ani­ma­tor Raul Gar­cia, the film draws on the voice tal­ents of sev­er­al clas­sic hor­ror actors and direc­tors, includ­ing the late Christo­pher Lee, Roger Cor­man, and—in an archival read­ing of Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”—the leg­endary Bela Lugosi. You can hear his read­ing above, a record­ing that seems to date from 1946. The Hun­gar­i­an actor, who strug­gled to find work late in his career, and wres­tled with a mor­phine addic­tion, like­ly “record­ed it for his agent,” writes Ronald L. Smith, “who would have been dep­u­tized to make copies and send them out to any­one inter­est­ed in book­ing Bela’s solo stage act (which includ­ed an enact­ment of the Poe tale).”

All of the great hor­ror stars of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry cut their teeth on Poe, and per­formed his macabre sto­ries through­out their careers. Lugosi was no excep­tion. After his type­cast­ing as an exot­ic vil­lain in the stage adap­ta­tion of Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la in the late 20s, then in Tod Browning’s famous 1931 film, Lugosi would remark, “I am def­i­nite­ly typed, doomed to be an expo­nent of evil.”

He appeared the fol­low­ing year as the mad sci­en­tist in Universal’s adap­ta­tion of Poe’s Mur­ders in the Rue Morgue (watch here). Then, in 1935, Lugosi played yet anoth­er crazed doc­tor, who is obsessed with all things Poe, in The Raven (view here), a film that also fea­tures Universal’s oth­er major hor­ror star of the time, Boris Karloff. The two had teamed up the year pre­vi­ous in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Poe adap­ta­tion, The Black Cat, a huge hit for Uni­ver­sal, in which Lugosi plays yet anoth­er evil doc­tor.

After Lugosi’s suc­cess­es with Poe-inspired films in the thir­ties, his career pre­cip­i­tous­ly declined, and by the for­ties, when he made the “Tell Tale Heart” record­ing at the top of the post, he’d been reduced to play­ing par­o­dies of his Drac­u­la char­ac­ter, notably in 1948’s Abbott and Costel­lo Meet Franken­stein. Lugosi attempt­ed to bank on ear­li­er suc­cess­es with Poe, or Poe-like, char­ac­ters. Before Ed Wood found and res­ur­rect­ed him in now-clas­sic fifties B‑movies like Glen or Glen­da, Bride of the Mon­ster, and—posthumously—Plan 9 from Out­er Space, Lugosi made one final appear­ance onscreen in a Poe adap­ta­tion. Click here and see him in an adap­ta­tion of “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” an episode from tele­vi­sion series Sus­pense. Set in Italy dur­ing World War II, this ver­sion of “Amon­til­la­do” casts Lugosi as Nazi offi­cer “Gen­er­al For­tu­na­to,” whom one fan describes as a “ruth­less, amoral roué, with equal­ly ruth­less storm troop­ers at his beck and call.” It’s not Lugosi’s great­est per­for­mance, but it’s “Bela doing his 1949 best,” and an impor­tant entry in his cat­a­log of Poe per­for­mances, if only because it’s the last of them.

Hap­py Hal­loween!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Film Extra­or­di­nary Tales Ani­mates Edgar Poe Sto­ries, with Nar­ra­tions by Guiller­mo Del Toro, Christo­pher Lee & More

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Out­er Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ulti­mate Cult Flick,” or Both?

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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