Twenty-Five Essential Films of the 2000s

in Film | December 26th, 2009

It’s that time of the year. Or rather that time of the decade. It’s time for “best of” lists — good ones, often banal ones, and some­times bad ones. Here’s one good list that might serve you well next year. Twen­ty-Five Essen­tial Films of the 2000s fea­tures some films that you’ve undoubt­ed­ly seen (The Lord of the Rings, Munich, There Will Be Blood) , but prob­a­bly a good num­ber that you haven’t (Three Times, Fat Girl, The Blind Swords­man: Zato­ichi). If you’re look­ing to replen­ish your Net­flix queue in 2010, it’s not a bad place to begin …

Visages d’Art

in Art | December 22nd, 2009

Anoth­er “eggman913″ mov­ing art spe­cial. (Check out his full col­lec­tion on YouTube.) This time, the images morph in sync with Bach’s Pre­lude And Fugue No. 6 In D Minor BWV 851 — Prae­ludi­um from the Well-Tem­pered Clavier, Book 1 per­formed by Daniel Ben Pien­aar (avail­able at Mag­natune).

Making Money By Giving Your Movie Away (But How Much?)

in Film | November 29th, 2009

Nina Paley cre­at­ed some buzz ear­li­er this year when she decid­ed to give her award-win­ning ani­mat­ed film, Sita Sings the Blues, to the pub­lic, releas­ing it under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. This was anoth­er test of the con­cept that artists can make mon­ey by giv­ing their work away. Today, The Wall Street Jour­nal gives an account­ing of how this the­o­ry played out in prac­tice. Here’s how things break down:

• Total dona­tions from peo­ple who appre­ci­ate her giv­ing out free con­tent: $23,000
• Prof­its from her online store which sells mer­chan­dise and DVDs: $19,000
• The­atri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion rev­enues: $3,000 (out of total box office tal­ly of $22,350)
• Addi­tion­al DVD dis­tri­b­u­tion: $3,000
• Broad­cast tele­vi­sion dis­tri­b­u­tion: $3,000
• Rev­enue from Cen­tral Cin­e­ma in Seat­tle which showed the film: $4,000
• The grand total: $55,000

As the WSJ notes, these num­bers don’t reflect the mon­ey she spent mak­ing the film . (Paley puts the num­ber at $150,000 in hard costs.) They also don’t account for the indi­rect rev­enue that she will gen­er­ate down the line. But putting Sita Sings the Blues in front of so many peo­ple, the world now knows a lot more about Nina Paley and her tal­ents. I have to believe that she can trade on that (if she wants to) when­ev­er she agrees to direct a film, or accepts a speak­ing engage­ment. The WSJ equa­tion does­n’t take this piece into account (it’s admit­ted­ly hard to mea­sure), but it’s prob­a­bly the most impor­tant part of the over­all analy­sis.

You can down­load Sita Sings the Blues here, watch it on YouTube here, or find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How I Sold My Book by Giv­ing It Away: You should all see this sep­a­rate post by Seth Har­wood. It focus­es on sim­i­lar issues, but trans­lat­ed to the book world.

Reader Podcast Picks

in Podcasts | October 22nd, 2009

Ear­li­er this week, one of our read­ers, Scott Dumont, offered up some excel­lent thoughts on a few pod­casts that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked. Since he put things so well, I fig­ured why not pass along his thoughts direct­ly to you. Here they go, and thanks Scott …

I’d like to make three sug­ges­tions for addi­tions to your library. Two polit­i­cal pod­casts and one his­tor­i­cal one. For the polit­i­cal ones, you’re lack­ing in the more inde­pen­dent depart­ment; you’ve got Democ­ra­cy Now, which is good enough but I’d sug­gest adding Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin is a true inde­pen­dent news show, putting the cur­rent pol­i­tics in per­spec­tive and ana­lyz­ing the dis­con­nect between what is pro­pa­gan­da and what is truth. His descrip­tion is:

Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin is a blend of audio com­men­tary and news analy­sis by one of the lead­ing thinkers among today’s polit­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent crowd. Author, reporter and talk show host Dan Car­lin takes a look at the issues in the news through the prism of his tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can “for­ward-think­ing prag­ma­tism” while push­ing a fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, social­ly lib­er­al approach to solv­ing prob­lems. Whether he’s rail­ing against the “Fat Police”, explain­ing the exis­tence of “The Chick­en Lit­tle Gene” or con­tin­u­al­ly bring­ing up his­tor­i­cal events no one has ever heard of, Car­lin man­ages to be enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive in a unique­ly non-par­ti­san way. His style has been com­pared to Sein­feld’s George Costan­za on steroids. Whether that’s true or not, he does often talk real­ly fast. You’ll have to keep up.

If I had to rec­om­mend a few from the ones cur­rent­ly in his feed, I’d say take a lis­ten to the fol­low­ing shows before you decide: “137- A Vote For None”, “143- The Black Dog”, “146- The Con­ti­nu­ity Of Errors”“154- A Con­flict of Inter­est”, “157- Read It and Weep”, “161- Shhh!”. I know it’s a lot, feel free to pick any of those, but those are prob­a­bly var­ied enough for you to get a taste of what he means.

My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics is exact­ly what it sounds like; it puts cur­rent polit­i­cal events in a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and ana­lyzes the his­to­ry to allow us to under­stand our pol­i­tics. For a good sam­pling, just take a look at this most recent stuff. He’s not schiz­o­phrenic like Dan Car­lin and his show is fair­ly for­mu­la­ic, but that’s not to say it’s not infor­ma­tive. (more…)

Justice: Putting a Price Tag on Life & How to Measure Pleasure

in Philosophy | September 29th, 2009

Har­vard has rolled out Week 2 of Michael Sandel’s course on Jus­tice. Cour­tesy of the course web site, here’s a syn­op­sis of what you can expect from Episode 2. New lec­tures are get­ting rolled out week­ly. Check the Har­vard web site for new addi­tions.

Part 1 — PUTTING A PRICE TAG ON LIFE: Sandel presents some con­tem­po­rary cas­es in which cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis was used to put a dol­lar val­ue on human life. The cas­es give rise to sev­er­al objec­tions to the util­i­tar­i­an log­ic of seek­ing “the great­est good for the great­est num­ber.” Is it pos­si­ble to sum up and com­pare all val­ues using a com­mon mea­sure like mon­ey?

Part 2 — HOW TO MEASURE PLEASURE: Sandel intro­duces J. S. Mill, a util­i­tar­i­an philoso­pher who argues that seek­ing “the great­est good for the great­est num­ber” is com­pat­i­ble with pro­tect­ing indi­vid­ual rights, and that util­i­tar­i­an­ism can make room for a dis­tinc­tion between high­er and low­er plea­sures. Sandel tests this the­o­ry by play­ing video clips from three very dif­fer­ent forms of enter­tain­ment: Shakespeare’s Ham­let, the real­i­ty show Fear Fac­tor, and The Simp­sons.

Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Streets of Tehran

in Current Affairs | June 24th, 2009

Bernard-Hen­ri Lévy, one of France’s lead­ing intel­lec­tu­als (you can tell by the way he but­tons his shirt) pays dra­mat­ic homage to the upris­ing in Iran. The rhythm of the speech is vague­ly MLK’esque. But the con­tent is dis­tinct­ly French intel­lo. (Some­how Michel Fou­cault gets worked into an analy­sis of what’s hap­pen­ing on the streets of Tehran.)

via TELOS

Good Novels For Hard Times

in Books | April 11th, 2009

The Gates of Hell

in Art | April 1st, 2009

Let me bring this to your atten­tion. Erwan Bom­stein-Erb, the founder and direc­tor of Canal Edu­catif in Paris, has released a doc­u­men­tary (in Eng­lish) about The Gates of Hell, a mon­u­men­tal project that Auguste Rodin worked on, not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­sis­tent­ly, for 37 years. On its own, this video is worth your time. But you should also know that this is one of ten films about major art­works that Bom­stein-Erb plans to pro­duce in HD. Canal Edu­catif is all about using the inter­net to pro­vide glob­al access to “cul­tur­al cap­i­tal.” A goal that we can whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port. This kind of phil­an­thropic ven­ture is hard to fund, espe­cial­ly dur­ing these dif­fi­cult times. So Bom­stein-Erb is look­ing for spon­sors and part­ners to sup­port his mis­sion. If you would like to get in touch, you can drop him a line through Canal Edu­cat­if’s web site. Last­ly, you should check out the Canal Edu­catif chan­nel on YouTube. Good luck Erwan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art His­to­ry Web Book

The Gates of Hell

in Art | March 31st, 2009

The Tolstoy Bailout, Or Why The Humanities Matter

in History, Life, Literature, Philosophy | March 10th, 2009

Writ­ing in The New Repub­lic, Leon Wieselti­er offers a response to the Feb 25 piece in the NYTimes: In Tough Times, the Human­i­ties Must Jus­ti­fy Their Worth. His argu­ment is worth a read, and here is one lengthy mon­ey quote:

The com­plaint against the human­i­ties is that they are imprac­ti­cal. This is true. They will not change the world. They will change only the expe­ri­ence, and the under­stand­ing, and the eval­u­a­tion, of the world. .… It is worth remem­ber­ing, then, that the cri­sis in which we find our­selves was the work of prac­ti­cal men. The secu­ri­ti­za­tion of mort­gages was not con­ceived by a head in the clouds. No poet cost any­body their house. No his­to­ri­an cost any­body their job. Not even the most pam­pered of pro­fes­sors ever squan­dered $87,000 of some­one else’s mon­ey on a lit­tle rug. The cre­ativ­i­ty of bankers is a lux­u­ry that we can no longer afford. But now I read about “defend­ing the virtues of the lib­er­al arts in a mon­ey-dri­ven world,” as the Times says. I would have thought that in these times the per­spec­tive of mon­ey would be ashamed to show itself. What author­i­ty, real­ly, should the stand­point of finance any longer have for Amer­i­can soci­ety? Who gives a damn what Ken­neth D. Lewis thinks about any­thing? … The study of reli­gion, defend­ing itself to cap­i­tal­ists? …

In tough times, of all times, the worth of the human­i­ties needs no jus­ti­fy­ing. The rea­son is that it will take many kinds of sus­te­nance to help peo­ple through these trou­bles. Many peo­ple will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on out­er ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of mean­ings.… We are in need of fis­cal pol­i­cy and spir­i­tu­al pol­i­cy. And spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, lit­er­a­ture is a bailout, and so is art, and phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry, and the rest.  … Regres­sion analy­sis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of con­sumer behav­ior can teach. These are the hours when the old Pen­guin paper­backs must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.

Very well said, and the log­ic out­lined here could be one rea­son why the con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­gram that I help lead — which is heavy on meat & pota­to human­i­ties cours­es — is so far far­ing quite well.
via the TNR Twit­ter Feed (ours here)