The Godfather Without Brando?: It Almost Happened

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | November 3rd, 2007

It’s hard to imag­ine The God­fa­ther, the icon­ic 1972 film, with­out Mar­lon Bran­do. But that’s almost how it turned out.

Dur­ing cast­ing, Para­mount exec­u­tives orig­i­nal­ly pushed for Lau­rence Olivi­er. But when he could­n’t take the film, and when the direc­tor, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, asked them to con­sid­er Bran­do, they ini­tial­ly respond­ed: “Mar­lon Bran­do will nev­er appear in this motion pic­ture.” Below, Cop­po­la and co-star James Caan explain how the execs were even­tu­al­ly cajoled into chang­ing their minds, and how film his­to­ry fell into place. As you watch this, also keep in mind that Para­mount orig­i­nal­ly asked two oth­er direc­tors to make The God­fa­ther before approach­ing Cop­po­la, and they lat­er want­ed Robert Red­ford or Ryan O’Neal to play Michael Cor­leone. But Cop­po­la, who threat­ened to quit pro­duc­tion, even­tu­al­ly got his way and put the rel­a­tive­ly unknown Al Paci­no into the film.

FYI: Best Week Ever has a good post on the Top 10 Actor / Direc­tor Tandems In Movie His­to­ry.

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Where to Get Online Music For Free

in Music | November 2nd, 2007

Head over to Wired and you’ll find a “How-To Wiki” that lists web sites where you can stream or down­load music online for free. As you’ll see, Wired is not shy about admit­ting what it’s try­ing to accom­plish here. The wiki page is called “Cheat the Music Indus­try: Nev­er Pay for Music.”

To access more online music, vis­it Life­hack­er’s guide to find­ing free music on the web, and peruse our col­lec­tion of free music pod­casts.

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Watching Wikipedia Get Written in Real Time

in Web/Tech | November 1st, 2007

The cre­ativ­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with Wikipedia nev­er ends. If you click here, a pro­gram called Wikipedi­aV­i­sion will show you a Google map that dis­plays in real time who is writing/editing what Wikipedia entry across the globe. Cool mashup. (Source: The New Scientist.com)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Keep­ing Wikipedia Hon­est
• Track­ing Wikipedia’s Manip­u­la­tions

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Learning Mandarin for Free Online

in Language Lessons | November 1st, 2007

Chi­na is on the upswing polit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly. Accord­ing to Gold­man Sachs, Chi­na’s econ­o­my may out­size every oth­er econ­o­my (except that of the U.S.) by 2016, and it could even sur­pass the Amer­i­can econ­o­my by 2039. Giv­en this, the hottest lan­guage being stud­ied right now by busi­ness trav­el­ers is Man­darin (see this New York Times piece). And, in my work at Stan­ford, we’re see­ing a very sharp increase in young and old stu­dents enrolling in Man­darin cours­es (and oth­er Chi­na-focused cours­es), for both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons.

Learn­ing Man­darin can be cost­ly — some orga­ni­za­tions charge $2500 for a week-long course — but it does­n’t have to be. More rea­son­ably, you can pur­chase CD-Roms that will sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly teach you Man­darin at home, when your sched­ule per­mits, for a much more rea­son­able price (about $200). Roset­ta Stone offers one good exam­ple. Or you can do it even more cheap­ly, if not for free, with the help of pod­casts.

As you’ll see, there’s no short­age of Man­darin lan­guage lessons, and we invite you to peruse the list below. Of all of them, two tend to get par­tic­u­lar­ly high marks from users. The first is called Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Put togeth­er by an Eng­lish speak­er who stud­ied Man­darin Chi­nese for almost 20 years (and who has lived in Bei­jing and Shang­hai for 12 years), the free pod­cast cur­rent­ly offers 90 lessons that last between 20 and 30 min­utes. A sec­ond option, which users also give pos­i­tive feed­back, is Chinesepod.com (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Pro­duced by native speak­ers, these dai­ly audio pod­casts, each run­ning 10–20 min­utes in length, will immerse you in col­lo­qui­al (read: use­ful) Man­darin. Impres­sive­ly, you can now find 100 pieces of audio in Chi­ne­se­pod’s large archive. While both of these pod­casts are free, each offers addi­tion­al learn­ing resources for a rea­son­able fee (though it appears that you can get by with­out them).

For more Chi­nese lessons, please vis­it our col­lec­tion: Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & Beyond

• Chi­nese Learn Online iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A dia­logue-based intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese. Load them on your iPod and get up the Chi­nese curve.
• Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Week­ly lessons in Man­darin that get very strong reviews from iTunes users.
• Chinesepod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A series of well-reviewed lessons that will let you learn Man­darin on your own terms.
• iMandarinPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A more advanced pod­cast, this series of lessons teach­es Chi­nese by talk­ing about Chi­nese cul­ture or what is hap­pen­ing today in Chi­na.
• LearnChinesePod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A Man­darin lan­guage pod­cast taught by Yao in New York City.
• Man­darin Chi­nese Con­ver­sa­tion iTunes Web Site
  • A lan­guage series put togeth­er by TimesOn­line.
• Man­darin Chi­nese Feed Web Site
  • 10 Lessons by the US Peace Corps. Make sure you vis­it the site and down­load the pdf that accom­pa­nies the lessons.
• Sur­vival Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Learn the phras­es you need to get by while trav­el­ing in Chi­na.
• World Learn­er Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Anoth­er in the mix of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Talks from The New Yorker Festival Available as Video Podcasts

in Media | October 30th, 2007

In ear­ly Octo­ber, The New York­er mag­a­zine held its eighth annu­al fes­ti­val in NYC. (Yikes! As I am typ­ing I’m feel­ing my first earth­quake here in Cal­i­for­nia. Appar­ent­ly 5.7 on Richter scale. Details here.) Any­way, the fes­ti­val brings to the stage an impres­sive list of writ­ers & artists (see the full sched­ule here). And while the aver­age New York­er had to pay some­where between $16 and $100 to attend the var­i­ous events, you can now watch a select num­ber of them for free. The free videos fea­ture New York­er edi­tor David Rem­nick speak­ing with Sey­mour Hersh about his inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism and Amer­i­ca’s involve­ment in Iraq and Iran; Nobel Prize win­ner Orhan Pamuk and Salman Rushdie dis­cussing how they approach writ­ing about their respec­tive home­lands, Turkey and India; and Mar­tin Amis and Ian Buru­ma mak­ing sense of his­tor­i­cal “mon­sters” and the psy­chol­o­gy that dri­ves evil. Also Philip Goure­vitch leads a quite thought-pro­vok­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Errol Mor­ris about Abu Ghraib and what did and did not hap­pen there. (Abu Ghraib is the sub­ject of Morris’s next film.) Then, on the lighter side, come­di­an Steve Mar­tin amus­es the crowd by show­ing clips of his stand-up per­for­mances, and film­mak­er Judd Apa­tow talks with film crit­ic David Den­by about his new com­e­dy “Knocked Up.”

You can access these video talks in one of three ways. Watch them online right on The New York­er web site; head over to Itunes where you can down­load them as video pod­casts; or work with the video rss feed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• The New York­er Mag­a­zine Cross­es the Dig­i­tal Divide
• Sat­i­riz­ing Ahmadine­jad: The New York­er Picks Up Where SNL Left Off
• Ani­mat­ed New York­er Car­toons: A Fun­ny Twist on Einstein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty

100 Top Jazz CDs

in Music | October 30th, 2007

If you’re look­ing to build your jazz col­lec­tion, this site offers some sound guid­ance. It fea­tures 100 top jazz CDs. Although inher­ent­ly sub­jec­tive, the list includes many indis­putable clas­sics that belong in any respectable jazz col­lec­tion. (Note: if you click on the link for each album, you’ll find some back­ground infor­ma­tion that’s often worth read­ing.)

For more jazz, check out our col­lec­tion of Music Pod­casts which includes a decent selec­tion of, yes, jazz pod­casts.

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Reading Great Books with The New York Times (Starting with War & Peace)

in Books, Media | October 30th, 2007

Ear­li­er this month, The New York Times Book Review launched an online Read­ing Room that lets read­ers tack­le great books with the help of “an all-star cast of pan­elists from var­i­ous backgrounds—authors, review­ers, schol­ars and jour­nal­ists.” The first read­ing starts with Leo Tol­stoy’s 1200+ page epic, War and Peace (1865–69), and it’s led by book review edi­tor Sam Tanen­haus and a sup­port­ing crew con­sist­ing of Bill Keller (exec­u­tive edi­tor of The Times), Stephen Kotkin (a Russ­ian his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton), Francine Prose (author of Read­ing Like a Writer), and Liesl Schillinger (a reg­u­lar review­er for the Book Review).

At the out­set, Sam Tanen­haus’ intro­duc­tion leaves the impres­sion that the “Read­ing Room” will offer a fair­ly struc­tured read­ing of Tol­stoy’s text. But that’s not exact­ly how things turn out. Often quite frag­men­tary, the con­ver­sa­tion most­ly oper­ates out­side the text itself and veers in many dif­fer­ent, though often intrigu­ing, direc­tions. At one moment, Francine Prose tells us that Tol­stoy’s account of the Napoleon­ic wars reminds her of today’s war in Iraq. For Bill Keller, it evokes the wan­ing days of the Sovi­et Union. And, for Liesl Schillinger, it’s her youth in 1970s Amer­i­ca. (You can get a feel for the flow and focus of the dis­cus­sion here.) Ulti­mate­ly, what you think of this new project depends on what you want to get out of the expe­ri­ence. If it’s a more struc­tured read­ing (as we were hop­ing), then you may not be com­plete­ly engaged. But if it’s a more free-flow­ing con­ver­sa­tion that moves in and around great works, then you’ll want to join the con­ver­sa­tion. And, yes, there’s a role there for the every­day read­er too. Take a look at the Read­ing Room and let us know what you think.

Relat­ed Posts:

• Freako­nom­ics Moves to The New York Times
• The New York Times “Opens Up” at Mid­night
• Book Chap­ters Pre­sent­ed by The New York Times

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Human Species May Split into Two: Life Imitates Art Again?

in Science | October 27th, 2007

Here’s a zinger to mull over: The BBC has post­ed an arti­cle about a the­o­ry advanced by Oliv­er Cur­ry, an “evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­rist” work­ing out of The Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, who sug­gests that human­i­ty may split into two sub-species about 100,000 years down the road. And what we’d be left with is “a genet­ic upper class” rul­ing over “a dim-wit­ted under­class.” This is a sce­nario, of course, that HG Wells laid out in his 1895 clas­sic, The Time Machine (lis­ten to free audio­book on iTunes here). And, if Cur­ry’s the­o­ry holds water, Welles may offer the most extreme exam­ple of sci­ence fic­tion antic­i­pat­ing the shape of the future. Does Cur­ry’s the­o­ry have any­thing to it? We haven’t the fog­gi­est. But does it make for strange­ly com­pelling yet dis­turb­ing read­ing? It sure does.

See our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion as well as our col­lec­tion of Audio­book Pod­casts.

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Timely Talk About Fire

in Books, Current Affairs | October 26th, 2007

It’s been an unspeak­ably bad week through­out much of fire-rav­aged South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. As of Thurs­day, the toll looked liked this: 500,000 acres burned; 1,800 homes destroyed; 57 peo­ple injured and at least six killed. As all of this tran­spires, a new book has come out that gives you an inside look at fire­fight­ers who make their liv­ing bat­tling nat­ur­al wild­fires. On the Fire­line: Liv­ing and Dying with Wild­land Fire­fight­ers is writ­ten by Matthew Desmond, who spent four years tack­ling these blazes. And, in this lengthy free excerpt you get graph­i­cal­ly exposed to the risks and loss­es that they expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly. It cer­tain­ly makes you feel for the fire­fight­ers on the front­lines this week, and we wish them and our fel­low Cal­i­for­ni­ans the best.

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Debating Religion The Dawkins Way

in Religion, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | October 25th, 2007

When debat­ing reli­gion, you can take the low road (e.g., Ann Coul­ter’s recent flir­ta­tion with anti-semi­tism) or the high road. Here’s Richard Dawkins, an avowed athe­ist and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist at Oxford, hav­ing a high-mind­ed con­ver­sa­tion about the exis­tence (or non-exis­tence) of God with Alis­ter McGrath, who is Pro­fes­sor of His­tor­i­cal The­ol­o­gy at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and also has a back­ground in mol­e­c­u­lar bio­physics. We’ve post­ed the video­taped debate below. (And, by the way, you can down­load the video to an iPod by access­ing the video here, look­ing to the right where it says “Down­load to Video iPod” and fol­low­ing these instruc­tions).

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