David Lynch on His Favorite Movies and Filmmakers

in Film | December 22nd, 2008

In a quick 59 sec­onds, David Lynch tells you the films and film­mak­ers that he likes best (see below). In equal­ly suc­cinct videos, though with a bit more salty lan­guage (read: lan­guage that’s not ide­al for work), Lynch also gives you his thoughts on prod­uct place­ment and the whole con­cept of watch­ing a movie on an iPhone. 

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Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 — Karajan or Muppet Style

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | December 21st, 2008

A cou­ple of big blogs recent­ly high­light­ed a clip of the Mup­pets doing Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth. It’s cute, and I was hard­ly sur­prised that the video logged 3.6 mil­lion views on YouTube.

Not far behind, at 3.2 mil­lion views, is a long video show­ing Her­bert Von Kara­jan lead­ing a live per­for­mance of Beethoven’s Ninth. The fact that Kara­jan, one of the world’s best-known con­duc­tors, lags behind a bunch of pup­pets is unfor­tu­nate, no doubt. But it’s also heart­en­ing in some ways. It tells me that high cul­ture is still com­pet­ing for an audi­ence. So here it goes. Kara­jan in action:

(You can get Part 2 here, and we’ve added both clips to our YouTube Favorites. Also you can find more vin­tage Beethoven/Karajan footage in this guy’s video col­lec­tion.)

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It’s a Wonderful (Scratch That, Miserable) Life

in Film | December 19th, 2008

About the Christ­mas clas­sic, “It’s a Won­der­ful Life,” a New York Times op-ed had this to say today:

It “is any­thing but a cheery hol­i­day tale.” It “is a ter­ri­fy­ing, asphyx­i­at­ing sto­ry about grow­ing up and relin­quish­ing your dreams, of see­ing your father dri­ven to the grave before his time, of liv­ing among bit­ter, small-mind­ed peo­ple. It is a sto­ry of being trapped, of com­pro­mis­ing, of watch­ing oth­ers move ahead and away, of becom­ing so filled with rage that you ver­bal­ly abuse your chil­dren, their teacher and your oppres­sive­ly per­fect wife. It is also a night­mare account of an end­less home ren­o­va­tion.”

And, with that, we present the 1947 film direct­ed by Frank Capra and star­ring James Stew­art:

 
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Top Ten Versions of Leonard Cohen’s Classic “Hallelujah”

in Music | December 18th, 2008

Hat tip to Bob for tip­ping us off to this col­lec­tion put togeth­er by The Mir­ror in the UK. They take  Leonard Cohen’s clas­sic “Hal­lelu­jah” (lis­ten below) and then bring you the ten best cov­er ver­sions. On the list, you’ll find ver­sions by Bob Dylan, John Cale (founder of The Vel­vet Under­ground), Rufus Wain­wright, Jeff Buck­ley, among oth­ers.

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Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | December 14th, 2008

Ayn Rand’s clas­sic gets dust­ed off and humor­ous­ly brought into 2008 over at McSweeney’s. Worth a read. 

As a side note, you may want to revis­it the New York Times 2007 piece, Ayn Rand’s Lit­er­a­ture of Cap­i­tal­ism, which talks about the influ­ence that Atlas Shrugged (and its free mar­ket phi­los­o­phy) has had on For­tune 500 CEOs and par­tic­u­lar­ly Alan Greenspan, the for­mer head of the Fed­er­al Reserve, who helped archi­tect the dereg­u­lat­ed bank­ing sys­tem that’s now unwind­ing around us. Belat­ed­ly, Greenspan would acknowl­edge a “flaw in the mod­el” that he “per­ceived is the crit­i­cal func­tion­ing struc­ture that defines how the world works” — which is a fan­cy way of say­ing “on sec­ond thought, maybe the free mar­kets don’t always reg­u­late them­selves.” And there we have it, anoth­er utopi­an ide­ol­o­gy col­lides with real­i­ty. Not the first, and it won’t be the last.

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40 Inspirational Film Speeches in 2 Minutes

in Film | December 12th, 2008

Let’s ease into the week­end on a high note:

via Life­hack­er via Over­thinkin­git

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Woody Allen on The Dick Cavett Show Circa 1970

in Comedy, Television | December 11th, 2008

Bad clothes, real­ly bad TV sets, not so good hair, and some briefly good com­e­dy — that’s what you get when Woody Allen hits the Dick Cavett Show in or around 1970. Watch it below, and get oth­er seg­ments here, here, and here. And find it on our YouTube Favorites.

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Animated Aurora Borealis

in Science, Video - Science | December 10th, 2008

While work­ing on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, Astro­naut Don Pet­tit cre­at­ed this remark­able video of the auro­ra bore­alis (oth­er­wise known as The North­ern Lights). How? By stitch­ing togeth­er a large sequence of still images that he took from space. It makes for some good view­ing.

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via NYTimes DotEarth

Google Brings Magazines To The Web

in Google, Media | December 10th, 2008

Just last month, Google announced that it was bring­ing the mas­sive LIFE Mag­a­zine pho­to archive online. Two mil­lion pho­tos are already uploaded, and anoth­er 8 mil­lion will be com­ing online soon.

This week, they’ve made a new announce­ment. The upshot? Google has reached an agree­ment with mag­a­zine pub­lish­ers to dig­i­tize their his­tor­i­cal archives. This will bring mil­lions of arti­cles to the web, and you’ll be able to access them through Google Book Search. Old media keeps com­ing over to new media.

Among the titles, you’ll find New York Mag­a­zine, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence, Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics, Moth­er Jones, Run­ners World, Ebony, Men’s Health, Veg­e­tar­i­an Times and more.

PS Google has also post­ed the top search terms of 2008. It’s a win­dow into the Zeit­geist. Have a look.

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A Short Introduction to The Great Depression & The New Deal

in Current Affairs, History | December 9th, 2008

Eric Rauch­way, an Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an at UC-Davis (and an old grad school col­league of mine), pub­lished a time­ly book ear­li­er this year, The Great Depres­sion and the New Deal: A Very Short Intro­duc­tion. And it sets him up per­fect­ly to talk about an his­tor­i­cal moment that’s now back on our minds.

Rauch­way appeared last week on Econ­Talk (iTunes — Feed — MP3), a pod­cast that’s get­ting some play late­ly, and spent a good hour sur­vey­ing the eco­nom­ic cri­sis that all oth­ers will be mea­sured against. The con­ver­sa­tion starts with the after­math of World War I, where John May­nard Keynes saw the eco­nom­ic prob­lems begin­ning. (Read online his 1919 book, The Eco­nom­ic Con­se­quences of the Peace.) Then, it moves through the 1920s, the stock mar­ket crash, Hoover’s attempts to restore sta­bil­i­ty (which weren’t as bungling as his his­tor­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion now sug­gests) and final­ly FDR’s New Deal and the effects of World War II. If you have an hour, you’ll learn a good deal.

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