Hear Ray Bradbury’s Beloved Sci-Fi Stories as Classic Radio Dramas

in Literature, Radio | September 30th, 2015

Ray_Bradbury_(1975)_-cropped-

Image by Alan Light released under Cre­ative Com­mons license.

When he passed away in 2012, sci­ence fic­tion mas­ter Ray Brad­bury left us with a num­ber of instant­ly quotable lines. There are apho­risms like “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a cul­ture. Just get peo­ple to stop read­ing them.” There are more humor­ous, but no less mem­o­rable lines he deliv­ers in his advice to writ­ers, such as, “writ­ing is not a seri­ous busi­ness… I want you to envy me my joy.” A seem­ing­ly end­less source of wis­dom and enthu­si­asm, Bradbury’s cre­ative forces seemed in no dan­ger of wan­ing in his lat­er years as he gave impas­sioned talks and inter­views well into his 70s and 80 and his work received renewed appre­ci­a­tion. As one writer declared in 2001, “Ray Brad­bury is on fire!”

Of course Bradbury’s been hot since the fifties. That head­line alludes to his clas­sic 1953 nov­el of futur­is­tic book-burn­ing, Fahren­heit 451, which you’ve like­ly read if you’ve read any Brad­bury at all. Or per­haps you’re famil­iar with Bradbury’s non-sci-fi nov­el of child­hood lost, Dan­de­lion Wine? Both are excel­lent books well-deserv­ing of the awards and praise heaped upon them. But if they’re all you know of Ray Brad­bury, you’re seri­ous­ly miss­ing out.

Brad­bury began his career as a writer of short sci-fi and hor­ror sto­ries that excel in their rich­ness of lan­guage and care­ful plot­ting. So imag­i­na­tive is his work that it war­rant­ed adap­ta­tion into a star-stud­ded tele­vi­sion series, The Ray Brad­bury The­ater. And before that vehi­cle brought Bradbury’s bril­liance into people’s homes, many of those same sto­ries appeared in radio plays pro­duced by shows like NBC’s Dimen­sion X and X Minus One.

From the lat­ter pro­gram, at the top, we bring you Mars is Heav­en!, a dis­turb­ing 1948 tale of inter­stel­lar decep­tion. “When the first space rock­et lands on Mars,” begins the announc­er, “what will we find? Only the ruins of a dead, desert­ed plan­et, or will there be life?” Per­ti­nent ques­tions indeed. Brad­bury spec­u­lat­ed for decades about the mean­ing of Mars. “The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles,” adapt­ed above by Dimen­sion X, used a sto­ry about col­o­niza­tion of the plan­et as an alle­go­ry for humanity’s avarice and fol­ly. Hear many more Dimen­sion X radio plays from The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles col­lec­tion here, and also the sto­ry, “There Will Come Soft Rains.”

The year after 1950’s The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles came 1951’s The Illus­trat­ed Man, a col­lec­tion of shorts that includ­ed the trag­ic, lost-in-space tale “Kalei­do­scope,” dra­ma­tized above by Mind Webs, a series from Madi­son, Wis­con­sin that ran from the 70s through the mid-90s. Though pro­duced well after the gold­en age of radio dra­ma, the series nonethe­less man­aged to per­fect­ly cap­ture the engross­ing sound of that spe­cial­ized form—with omi­nous music, and a bari­tone-voiced nar­ra­tor with some seri­ous voice-act­ing chops.

While region­al pro­duc­tions like Mind Webs have kept the radio dra­ma fires burn­ing in the U.S., the BBC has con­tin­ued to pro­duce high-qual­i­ty radio adap­ta­tions on a larg­er scale. In 1991, they took on eight sto­ries from anoth­er fifties Brad­bury col­lec­tion, The Gold­en Apples of the Sun. The two hour pro­duc­tion dra­ma­tized the title sto­ry and the tales “Hail and Farewell,” “The Fly­ing Machine,” “The Fruit at the Bot­tom of the Bowl,” “A Sound of Thun­der,” “The Mur­der­er,” “The April Witch,” and “The Foghorn.” You can hear them just above. Or stream and down­load the com­plete audio at the Inter­net Archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

X Minus One: More Clas­sic 1950s Sci-Fi Radio from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Hear Radio Dra­mas of Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy & 7 Clas­sic Asi­mov Sto­ries

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

An Animated Tom Waits Talks About Laughing at Funerals & the Moles Under Stonehenge (1988)

in Music | September 29th, 2015

Pop­u­lar music has a rich tra­di­tion of lit­er­ary song­writ­ers, including—to name but a few—Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Pat­ti Smith, Kate Bush, and even Alan Par­sons, who released not one, but two con­cept albums based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. And then there’s the inim­itable Tom Waits, who does­n’t just work in a lit­er­ary vein, but is a suc­ces­sion of pulpy char­ac­ters, each one with the abil­i­ty to light up a stage. Waits proved as much in 1988 when he toured his album Big Time, as alter-ego Frank O’Brien, a char­ac­ter he described as “a com­bi­na­tion of Will Rogers and Mark Twain, play­ing accordion—but with­out the wis­dom they pos­sessed.” The Big Time tour, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, was “like enter­ing a sideshow tent in Tom Wait’s brain.”

In a review of the con­cert film of the same name, also released that year, the New York Times described Waits as a “gang of over­lap­ping per­sonas, a bunch of derelict philoso­pher-kings who rasp out roman­tic metaphors between wise­cracks,” inhab­it­ing “a seedy urban world of pawn­shops and tat­toos, of cig­a­rette butts and poly­ester and triple‑X movies.” It’s hard to know, lis­ten­ing to Waits in the inter­view above from the year of Big Time the album, tour, and film, how many of his per­son­ae emerge from the wood­shed and how many spring from griz­zled voic­es in that sideshow brain, which must sound like a cacoph­o­ny of old-time waltzes and scur­rilous rag­times; boozy big-band num­bers carous­ing in louche cabarets; pianos drunk­en­ly falling down stairs. Waits can tell sto­ries beau­ti­ful and ter­ri­ble, in talk­ing blues, bro­ken bal­lads, and sprechge­sang, rival­ing the best com­po­si­tions of the Delta, the beats, and sailors and hoboes.

Or he can tell stories—as he does above—about moles, build­ing under Stone­henge “the most elab­o­rate sys­tem of mole cat­a­combs,” being reward­ed for “hav­ing the courage to tun­nel under great rivers,” stag­ing exe­cu­tions. Then he shifts the scene to New York, and a Mer­cedes pulls up in a pud­dle of blood. “I think you just write,” says Waits, “and you don’t try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.” Waits gets it in vivid, sur­re­al­ist images, one bizarre and sor­did detail after anoth­er. To hear him speak is to hear him com­pose. You can read the tran­script of the short inter­view, record­ed in Lon­don by Chris Roberts, but the effect of Waits-the-per­former is entire­ly lost. Bet­ter to hear his cracked inflec­tion, his dri­est of com­ic tim­ing, and watch the excel­lent ani­ma­tion of PBS’s Blank on Blank team, who have pre­vi­ous­ly brought us amus­ing car­toon accom­pa­ni­ments for inter­views with B.B. King, Ray Charles, the Beast­ie Boys, and even Fidel Cas­tro. Tom Waits, I think, has giv­en them their best mate­r­i­al yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Tom Waits, Play­ing the Down-and-Out Barfly, Appears in Clas­sic 1978 TV Per­for­mance

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Watch Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

“A Glorious Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecstasy of Feeling Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

in Music | September 29th, 2015

Helen Keller

These days, if you like a piece of music, you might well say that you’re “feel­ing it” — or you might have said it a decade or two ago, any­way. But deaf music-lovers (who, as one may not imme­di­ate­ly assume, exist) do lit­er­al­ly that, feel­ing the actu­al vibra­tions of the sound with not their ears, but the rest of their bod­ies. Not only could the deaf and blind Helen Keller, a pio­neer in so many ways, enjoy music, she could do it over the radio and artic­u­late the expe­ri­ence vivid­ly. We know that thanks to a 1924 piece of cor­re­spon­dence post­ed at Let­ters of Note.

“On the evening of Feb­ru­ary 1st, 1924, the New York Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra played Beethoven’s Ninth Sym­pho­ny at Carnegie Hall in New York,” writes the site’s author Shaun Ush­er. “Thank­ful­ly for those who could­n’t attend, the per­for­mance was broad­cast live on the radio. A cou­ple of days lat­er, the orches­tra received a stun­ning let­ter of thanks from the unlike­li­est of sources: Helen Keller.” The first ecsta­t­ic para­graph of her mis­sive, which you can read whole at the orig­i­nal post, runs as fol­lows:

I have the joy of being able to tell you that, though deaf and blind, I spent a glo­ri­ous hour last night lis­ten­ing over the radio to Beethoven’s “Ninth Sym­pho­ny.” I do not mean to say that I “heard” the music in the sense that oth­er peo­ple heard it; and I do not know whether I can make you under­stand how it was pos­si­ble for me to derive plea­sure from the sym­pho­ny. It was a great sur­prise to myself. I had been read­ing in my mag­a­zine for the blind of the hap­pi­ness that the radio was bring­ing to the sight­less every­where. I was delight­ed to know that the blind had gained a new source of enjoy­ment; but I did not dream that I could have any part in their joy. Last night, when the fam­i­ly was lis­ten­ing to your won­der­ful ren­der­ing of the immor­tal sym­pho­ny some­one sug­gest­ed that I put my hand on the receiv­er and see if I could get any of the vibra­tions. He unscrewed the cap, and I light­ly touched the sen­si­tive diaphragm. What was my amaze­ment to dis­cov­er that I could feel, not only the vibra­tions, but also the impas­sioned rhythm, the throb and the urge of the music! The inter­twined and inter­min­gling vibra­tions from dif­fer­ent instru­ments enchant­ed me. I could actu­al­ly dis­tin­guish the cor­nets, the roll of the drums, deep-toned vio­las and vio­lins singing in exquis­ite uni­son. How the love­ly speech of the vio­lins flowed and plowed over the deep­est tones of the oth­er instru­ments! When the human voice leaped up trilling from the surge of har­mo­ny, I rec­og­nized them instant­ly as voic­es. I felt the cho­rus grow more exul­tant, more ecsta­t­ic, upcurv­ing swift and flame-like, until my heart almost stood still. The wom­en’s voic­es seemed an embod­i­ment of all the angel­ic voic­es rush­ing in a har­mo­nious flood of beau­ti­ful and inspir­ing sound. The great cho­rus throbbed against my fin­gers with poignant pause and flow. Then all the instru­ments and voic­es togeth­er burst forth—an ocean of heav­en­ly vibration—and died away like winds when the atom is spent, end­ing in a del­i­cate show­er of sweet notes.

Keller ends the let­ter by empha­siz­ing her desire to “thank Sta­tion WEAF for the joy they are broad­cast­ing in the world,” and since she first enjoyed the sym­pho­ny on the radio, it makes sense, in a way, that we should enjoy her let­ter on the radio. Not long after Let­ters of Note made its post, NPR picked up on the sto­ry, and Week­end Edi­tion’s Scott Simon read an excerpt over a musi­cal back­drop, which you can hear above. And if we have any deaf read­ers who lis­ten to, say, NPR in Keller’s man­ner, let me say how curi­ous I’d be to hear the details of that expe­ri­ence as well.

And deaf, hear­ing, or oth­er­wise, you’ll find much more of this sort of thing in Let­ters of Note’s immac­u­late­ly designed new print col­lec­tion More Let­ters of Note, about which you can find all the details here. It goes on sale on Octo­ber 1.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Helen Keller & Annie Sul­li­van Appear Togeth­er in Mov­ing 1930 News­reel

Leonard Bern­stein Con­ducts Beethoven’s 9th in a Clas­sic 1979 Per­for­mance

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Human: The Movie Features Interviews with 2,020 People from 60 Countries on What It Means to Be Human

in Environment, Film, Life, Travel | September 29th, 2015

What is it that makes us human? And how best to ensure that we all get our fair say?

For direc­tor, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and envi­ron­men­tal activist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the answers lay in fram­ing all of his inter­view sub­jects using the same sin­gle image lay­out. The for­mal sim­plic­i­ty and unwa­ver­ing gaze of his new doc­u­men­tary, Human, encour­age view­ers to per­ceive his 2,020 sub­jects as equals in the sto­ry­telling realm.

There’s a deep diver­si­ty of expe­ri­ences on dis­play here, arranged for max­i­mum res­o­nance.

The qui­et­ly con­tent first wife of a polyg­a­mist mar­riage is fol­lowed by a polyamorous fel­low, whose uncon­ven­tion­al lifestyle is a source of both tor­ment and joy.

There’s a death row inmate. A lady so con­fi­dent she appears with her hair in curlers.

Where on earth did he find them?

His sub­jects hail from 60 coun­tries. Arthus-Bertrand obvi­ous­ly went out of his way to be inclu­sive, result­ing in a wide spec­trum of gen­der and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions, and sub­jects with dis­abil­i­ties, one a Hiroshi­ma sur­vivor.

Tears, laugh­ter, con­flict­ing emo­tions… stu­dents of the­ater and psy­chi­a­try would do well to book­mark this page. There’s a lot one can glean from observ­ing these sub­jects’ unguard­ed faces.

The project was inspired by an impromp­tu chat with a Malian farmer. The direc­tor was impressed by the frank­ness with which this stranger spoke of his life and dreams:

I dreamed of a film in which the pow­er of words would res­onate with the beau­ty of the world. Putting the ills of human­i­ty at the heart of my work—poverty, war, immi­gra­tion, homophobia—I made cer­tain choic­es. Com­mit­ted, polit­i­cal choic­es. But the men talked to me about every­thing: their dif­fi­cul­ty in grow­ing as well as their love and hap­pi­ness. This rich­ness of the human word lies at the heart of Human. 

In Vol­ume I, above, the inter­vie­wees con­sid­er love, women, work, and pover­ty. Vol­ume II deals with war, for­give­ness, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, fam­i­ly, and the after­life. Hap­pi­ness, edu­ca­tion, dis­abil­i­ty, immi­gra­tion, cor­rup­tion, and the mean­ing of life are the con­cerns of the third vol­ume .

The inter­view seg­ments are bro­ken up by aer­i­al sequences, rem­i­nis­cent of the images in Arthus-Bertrand’s book, The Earth from Above. It’s a good reminder of how small we all are in the grand scheme of things.

Appro­pri­ate­ly, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, and the director’s long­time inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal issues, the film­ing and pro­mo­tion were accom­plished in the most sus­tain­able way, with the sup­port of the Good­Plan­et Foun­da­tion and the Unit­ed Car­bon Action pro­gram. It would be love­ly for all human­i­ty if this is a fea­ture of film­mak­ing going for­ward.

The Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute has a col­lec­tion of relat­ed mate­r­i­al, from the mak­ing of the sound­track to behind-the-scenes rem­i­nis­cences of the inter­view team.

Human will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Fantastic Mr. Fox Meets The Shining in an Animated, Cautionary Tale About Consumerism

in Animation, Business | September 28th, 2015

In this short stop-motion film, Alexan­dra Lemay draws some cre­ative inspi­ra­tion from Wes Ander­son and Stan­ley Kubrick and leaves us with a “cau­tion­ary tale of what hap­pens when we don’t think enough about what we buy.” Pro­duced as part of the Nation­al Film Board of Canada’s Hot­house appren­tice­ship pro­gram, All the Rage fol­lows a mink’s expe­ri­ence shop­ping in a lux­u­ry fur store. It’s per­haps not too much of a spoil­er to say, it does­n’t end well. Lemay tells you more about the mak­ing of the film here. And don’t miss the many great films in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Gabriel García Márquez Describes the Cultural Merits of Soap Operas, and Even Wrote a Script for One

in Film, Literature | September 28th, 2015

The rela­tion­ship between lit­er­ary writ­ers and the film indus­try has giv­en us many a sto­ry of major cre­ative ten­sion or down­ward mobil­i­ty. Most famous­ly, we have Fitzger­ald—who grav­i­tat­ed to Hol­ly­wood like most writ­ers did, includ­ing the more suc­cess­ful Faulkn­er—for mon­ey. When we look at the career of one of Latin Amer­i­ca’s most cel­e­brat­ed writ­ers, how­ev­er, we find a very dif­fer­ent dynam­ic. Although Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez did not have what we might con­sid­er a suc­cess­ful career in the movies, his inter­est in cinema—as a screen­writer, crit­ic, and even as an actor—stemmed from a gen­uine, life­long love of the medi­um, which he con­sid­ered equal to or sur­pass­ing lit­er­a­ture as a form of sto­ry­telling.

“I thought of myself as a writer of lit­er­a­ture,” says Márquez at the begin­ning of the doc­u­men­tary Mar­quez: Tales Beyond Soli­tude, “but it was my con­vic­tion that the cin­e­ma, the image, had more pos­si­bil­i­ties of expres­sion than lit­er­a­ture.” And yet, he goes on…

Films and tele­vi­sion have indus­tri­al, tech­ni­cal and mechan­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions that lit­er­a­ture doesn’t have. That’s why I said once, in a peri­od of falling out with films, “My rela­tion­ship with film has always been that of an uneasy mar­riage. We can’t live togeth­er or apart.” 

Film even­tu­al­ly need­ed Márquez more than he need­ed film. And yet he nev­er dis­dained more pop­u­lar enter­tain­ments, “pro­duc­ing more than twen­ty screen­plays, some of them for tele­vi­sion,” accord­ing to Alessan­dro Roc­co’s Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez and the Cin­e­ma. He even rel­ished the chance to write soap operas. In 1987, he told an inter­view­er, “I’ve always want­ed to write soap operas. They’re won­der­ful. They reach far more peo­ple than books do…. The prob­lem is that we’re con­di­tion [sic] to think that a soap opera is nec­es­sar­i­ly in bad taste, and I don’t believe this to be so.” Márquez felt that the “only dif­fer­ence between La bel­la palom­era” [a TV film based on his Love in the Time of Cholera] and “a bad soap opera is that the for­mer is well writ­ten.” Though his pro­nounce­ments on the cre­ative poten­tial of tele­vi­sion may seem pre­scient today, they did not seem so at the time.

In 1989, Márquez got his chance to write for tele­vi­sion soap operas, with a script, The Tele­graph tells us, “about an Eng­lish gov­erness in Venezuela called I Rent Myself Out to Dream.” In the clip above from Tales Beyond Soli­tude, Márquez gives us his demo­c­ra­t­ic phi­los­o­phy of the arts: “To me music, lit­er­a­ture, film, soap operas are dif­fer­ent gen­res with one com­mon end: to reach peo­ple…. In one sin­gle night, one episode of a TV soap can reach, in Colom­bia alone, 10 to 15 mil­lion peo­ple.” He con­trasts this with his book sales and con­cludes, “it’s only nat­ur­al that some­one who wants to reach peo­ple is attract­ed to TV soap like to a mag­net­ic pole. He can­not resist it.”

Márquez also served as the pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Film and Tele­vi­sion School, in which posi­tion, he said, “I can’t start by being scorn­ful of TV.” And yet the nov­el­ist’s regard for soaps was not sim­ply a mat­ter of pro­fes­sion­al­ism. “For me,” he said, “there’s no divid­ing line between cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion, they’re just images in motion.” Ulti­mate­ly, we can see Gar­cia Márquez’s total faith in the nar­ra­tive poten­tial of all forms of pop­u­lar narrative—film, folk tale, the cher­ished telen­ov­ela—as an essen­tial part of his writer­ly ethos, which has tak­en him from the dai­ly scrum of the news­room to the Nobel cer­e­mo­ny stage in Stock­holm. “Ulti­mate­ly all cul­ture,” he says else­where in the doc­u­men­tary, “is pop­u­lar cul­ture.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Lit­er­ary Remains of Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Will Rest in Texas

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge”: a Striking Supercut of the Vivid Colors in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s Films

in Film | September 28th, 2015

What’s your favorite col­or? A sim­ple ques­tion, sure — the very first one many of us learn to ask — but one to con­sid­er seri­ous­ly if you see a future for your­self in film­mak­ing. Ear­li­er this year, we fea­tured video stud­ies on the use of the col­or red by Wes Ander­son and Stan­ley Kubrick. Yasu­jiro Ozu, as Jonathan Crow points out in that post, “made the jump to col­or movies very reluc­tant­ly late in his career and prompt­ly became obsessed with the col­or red,” and a teaket­tle of that col­or even became his visu­al sig­na­ture. No less an auteur than Krzysztof Kieślows­ki made not just a pic­ture called Red, but anoth­er called Blue and anoth­er called White, which togeth­er form the acclaimed “Three Col­ors” tril­o­gy.

Jean-Luc Godard, nev­er one to be out­done, has also made vivid use through­out his career of not just red but white and blue as well. The video above, “Bleu, Blanc, Rouge — A Godard Super­cut,” com­piles three min­utes of such col­or­ful moments from the Godard fil­mog­ra­phy, draw­ing from his works A Woman Is a Woman, Con­tempt, Pier­rot le Fou, and Made in U.S.A., all of which did much to define 1960s world cin­e­ma, cap­tur­ing with their vivid col­ors per­for­mances by Godar­d­ian icons Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do and Anna Kari­na.

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge” comes from Cin­e­ma Sem Lei, the source of anoth­er aes­thet­i­cal­ly dri­ven video essay we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on how Ger­man Expres­sion­ism influ­enced Tim Bur­ton. This one makes less of an argu­ment than that one did, but tru­ly obses­sive cinephiles may still find them­selves able to con­struct one. An obvi­ous start­ing point: we con­sid­er few film­mak­ers as French as Godard, and which coun­try’s flag has these very col­ors? Well, besides those of Amer­i­ca, Aus­tralia, Cam­bo­dia, Chile, Cuba, Ice­land, North Korea, Lux­em­bourg, Schleswig-Hol­stein, Thai­land, and so on. And in inter­views, Godard has dis­tanced him­self from pure French­ness, pre­fer­ring the des­ig­na­tion “Fran­co-Swiss.” But still, you can start think­ing there. Or you can just enjoy the images.

Relat­ed Content:

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick (1971)

Jean-Luc Godard’s Debut, Opéra­tion béton(1955) — a Con­struc­tion Doc­u­men­tary

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

John Lennon’s “Imagine” & Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” Adapted into Smart, Moving Webcomics

in Comics/Cartoons, Music | September 28th, 2015

Would John Lennon’s “Imag­ine” have been such a big hit if it had come from an unknown singer/songwriter instead of one of the most famous rock stars in the world? Impos­si­ble to say. Maybe a bet­ter ques­tion is: could any­one else have writ­ten the song? “Imag­ine” has become much more than a soft rock anthem since its release in 1971; it has become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. Among the innu­mer­able big events at which the human­ist hymn appears we can include, since 2005, New York’s New Year’s Eve cel­e­bra­tion and, just recent­ly, a per­for­mance by pop star Shaki­ra at the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly just before Pope Fran­cis’ his­tor­i­cal appear­ance.

It seems an odd choice, giv­en the song’s appar­ent anti-reli­gious mes­sage. And yet, though Lennon was no fan of orga­nized reli­gion, he told Play­boy mag­a­zine in a 1980 inter­view that the song was inspired by “the con­cept of pos­i­tive prayer” in a Chris­t­ian prayer book giv­en to him by Dick Gre­go­ry. “If you can imag­ine a world at peace,” said Lennon, “with no denom­i­na­tions of religion—not with­out reli­gion but with­out this my God-is-bigger-than-your-God-thing—then it can be true….” As if to under­score that par­tic­u­lar point in his adap­ta­tion of “Imag­ine” in the video above, car­toon­ist Pablo Stan­ley includes such reli­gious­ly diverse, yet ecu­meni­cal fig­ures as the agnos­tic Albert Ein­stein, Protes­tant Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., Hin­du Mahat­ma Gand­hi, and Rasta­far­i­an Bob Mar­ley, along with less-famous free­dom fight­ers like Har­vey Milk and mur­dered Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Anna Politkovskaya.

Stan­ley’s “Imag­ine” orig­i­nal­ly appeared in web­com­ic form, sans music, on his blog Stanleycolors.com. It seems that sev­er­al peo­ple took excep­tion to an ear­li­er, most­ly black-and-white draft (which also includ­ed what looks like the once-very-South­ern-Bap­tist Jim­my Carter), so Stan­ley issued a mul­ti-point dis­claimer under his revised, full-col­or ver­sion. He states that this “is NOT an anti-reli­gion/athe­ist pro­pa­gan­da comic”—charges also unfair­ly levied at Lennon’s song. Stan­ley does­n’t address the fact that most of the famous peo­ple in his com­ic, includ­ing Lennon, were assas­si­nat­ed, though this blog post offers a sug­ges­tive the­o­ry with inter­view footage from Lennon him­self.

In every respect, the com­ic adap­tion of “Imag­ine” hews pret­ty close­ly to Lennon’s call for world peace. In anoth­er Bea­t­les-penned bal­lad-adap­ta­tion, how­ev­er, things take a much dark­er turn. Stan­ley uses his per­son­al expe­ri­ence of near-sui­ci­dal depres­sion in his com­ic real­iza­tion of Paul McCart­ney’s song of lost love, “Yes­ter­day.” (See a video ver­sion above, web­com­ic ver­sion here.) This is grim stuff, to be sure, but Stan­ley assures us that he “over­came that sit­u­a­tion.” His com­men­tary offers a hope­ful take on the painful end­ing: “Look­ing at the yes­ter­day reminds me that I should thrive for the tomor­row.” I’m sure McCart­ney would agree with the sen­ti­ment.

For many more smart, moving—though non-Beatles-related—comics from Pablo Stan­ley, see his blog, Stan­ley Col­ors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The John Lennon Sketch­book, a Short Ani­ma­tion Made of Lennon’s Draw­ings, Pre­mieres on YouTube

Hear John Lennon’s Final Inter­view, Taped on the Last Day of His Life (Decem­ber 8, 1980)

The Rolling Stone Inter­view with John Lennon (1970)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The World’s Oldest Surviving Pair of Glasses (Circa 1475)

in Technology | September 28th, 2015

oldest pair of glasses

Above, we have what The On-Line Muse­um and Ency­clo­pe­dia of Vision Aids believes is the world’s old­est sur­viv­ing pair of glass­es. Dat­ing back to the 15th cen­tu­ry, the glass­es belonged to the Eighth Shogun, Yoshi­masa Ashik­a­ga, who reigned from 1449 to 1473, dur­ing the Muro­machi peri­od of Japan­ese his­to­ry. Both the glass­es and their accom­pa­ny­ing case were made of hand-carved white ivory.

Glass­es were actu­al­ly first invent­ed, how­ev­er, in Italy (some say Flo­rence, to be pre­cise) in 1286 or there­abouts. In a ser­mon from 1306, a Domini­can fri­ar wrote: “It is not yet twen­ty years since there was found the art of mak­ing eye­glass­es, which make for good vision… And it is so short a time that this new art, nev­er before extant, was dis­cov­ered.” In the mid 14th cen­tu­ry, paint­ings start­ed to appear with peo­ple wear­ing eye­glass­es. (Take for exam­ple Tom­ma­so da Mod­e­na’s 1352 por­trait show­ing the car­di­nal Hugh de Provence read­ing.) A gallery of oth­er his­toric eye­wear can be viewed here.

via Erik Kwakkel

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Syrian Conflict & The European Refugee Crisis Explained in an Animated Primer

in Current Affairs | September 27th, 2015

In a quick six min­utes, the ani­ma­tion above explains the ori­gins of two very relat­ed prob­lems — the Syr­i­an Con­flict & the Euro­pean Refugee Cri­sis. How did the cri­sis first erupt? How did it lead to a refugee cri­sis? And why should we why put xeno­pho­bic fears aside and pro­vide refugees with a safe haven in the West? All of these ques­tions get addressed by “Kurzge­sagt” (“in a nut­shell” in Ger­man), whose time­ly ani­ma­tions you can find on Youtube (includ­ing a sep­a­rate video on the rise of ISIS in Iraq).

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 14 ) |

The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps Podcast, Now at 370 Episodes, Expands into Eastern Philosophy

in Philosophy, Podcasts | September 25th, 2015

m0003 540

Per­haps you’ve heard of a phe­nom­e­non called “pod­fade,” where­in a pod­cast — par­tic­u­lar­ly an ambi­tious pod­cast — begins by putting out episodes reg­u­lar­ly, then miss­es one or two, then lets more and more time elapse between each episode, one day ceas­ing to update entire­ly. It pleas­es us to report that The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, the pod­cast offer­ing just that, on whose progress we’ve kept you post­ed over the past three years, not only shows no signs of pod­fade, but has even broad­ened its man­date to include a greater vari­ety of philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions than before.

For those who haven’t heard the show, The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps comes from Peter Adam­son, phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ians Uni­ver­si­ty Munich and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, and “looks at the ideas, lives and his­tor­i­cal con­text of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.”

The main show has put out 379 episodes so far, begin­ning with the pre-Socrat­ics (specif­i­cal­ly Thales) and most recent­ly exam­in­ing Fran­cis­can pover­ty, and now a new branch has grown, start­ing from Adam­son and col­lab­o­ra­tor Jonar­don Ganer­i’s intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy. (Hear the first episode of the Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy series below.)

Episodes of this new series on the Indi­an tra­di­tion, Adam­son writes, “will appear in alter­nat­ing weeks with episodes on Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy.” He also men­tions a “fur­ther ambi­tion to cov­er the oth­er philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions of Asia (espe­cial­ly Chi­nese) and also African phi­los­o­phy and the phi­los­o­phy of the African dias­po­ra, but of course India will take a while so you’ll have to be patient if you are wait­ing for me to get to that!”

You can sub­scribe to The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps’ Indi­an phi­los­o­phy series on its very own pod­cast RSS feed, or on iTunes here. Philo­soph­i­cal­ly-mind­ed binge-lis­ten­ers beware; you could lose a lot of time to these two shows. “I’ve been doing my laun­dry to it for months and I’m only up to Mai­monides,” says one com­menter on a Metafil­ter thread about the new series. “I am total­ly not ready for this Patañ­jali.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: A Free Course That Explores Phi­los­o­phy from Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast