16th-Century Amsterdam Stunningly Visualized with 3D Animation

in Art, History | March 5th, 2012

The Ams­ter­dam Muse­um teamed up with the Dutch cre­ative agency Plu­sOne to cre­ate a series of videos for the new Ams­ter­dam DNA exhi­bi­tion — an exhi­bi­tion that offers a three-dimen­sion­al 45-minute jour­ney through Ams­ter­dam’s his­to­ry. Plu­sOne cre­at­ed sev­en videos in total. The clip above comes from the sec­ond film called Revolt Against King and Church, and it obvi­ous­ly brings you back to Ams­ter­dam in the 16th cen­tu­ry. The clip below offers an aes­thet­ic intro­duc­tion to the exhi­bi­tion itself. h/t The Atlantic

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Did Shakespeare Write Pulp Fiction? (No, But If He Did, It’d Sound Like This)

in Film, Poetry | March 5th, 2012

Imag­ine a high school class on the Great Works of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, cir­ca 2400. The teacher shows the stu­dents a selec­tion of films by Quentin Taran­ti­no, that exalt­ed late-20th- and ear­ly-21st-cen­tu­ry drama­tist who worked in the medi­um then known as film. The series cul­mi­nates in Pulp Fic­tion, per­haps, for mod­ern audi­ences, the most endur­ing and acces­si­ble exam­ple of the mas­ter’s art. Yet most of the kids in the room fal­ter on the edge of com­pre­hen­sion, and one even­tu­al­ly explodes in frus­tra­tion. “Why do they all dress like that?” the stu­dent demands, in what­ev­er the Eng­lish lan­guage has evolved into. “And seri­ous­ly, why do they talk that way? Why do we even have to watch this, any­way?” Then the teacher, return­ing to his dry­ing well of patience, his face set­tling into the creas­es worn by decades of sto­ical­ly borne dis­ap­point­ment, explains to his despon­dent charge that Taran­ti­no’s all about the lan­guage. “He used Eng­lish in ways nobody had before,” he says, for noth­ing close to the first nor last time, “and if you put in just a lit­tle more study time, you’d under­stand that.”

Her Majesty’s Secret Play­ers do seem to under­stand that, bring as they will a pro­duc­tion called Pulp Shake­speare (or, A Slur­ry Tale) to its West Coast pre­miere at this sum­mer’s Hol­ly­wood Fringe Fes­ti­val. To view the clip of the show above is to feel at least two sens­es of odd famil­iar­i­ty at once: don’t I know this scene and these char­ac­ters from some­where, and don’t I know these words from some­where? Were you to watch it with­out con­text, you’d prob­a­bly guess that the dia­logue sound­ed Shake­speare­an, and in the first few min­utes, that guess might even take you as far as won­der­ing which of the less­er-known plays this might be. But Pulp Shake­speare offers not Shake­speare’s words but a pas­tiche of Shake­speare through which to watch Pulp Fic­tion, effec­tive­ly bring­ing that 25th-cen­tu­ry class­room sce­nario into the present. Ren­der­ing Taran­ti­no’s dia­logue in Shake­speare­an dra­mat­ic poet­ry both famil­iar­izes Shake­speare’s style and de-famil­iar­izes Taran­ti­no’s, giv­ing strong hints to any­one look­ing to under­stand Shake­speare’s appeal in his day, how his­to­ry might treat Taran­ti­no, and how the two have more in com­mon than we’d have assumed.

(Note to 21st-cen­tu­ry teach­ers: we nonethe­less do not sug­gest you intro­duce Shake­speare as “sort of the Quentin Taran­ti­no of his day.”)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Slavoj Žižek & Pres. Obama Give Their Take on The Wire (and More Culture Around the Web)

in Philosophy, Television | March 5th, 2012

Although HBO’s crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed series, The Wire, end­ed its run in 2008, the show keeps get­ting back into the head­lines. Just last week Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, an acknowl­edged fan of The Wire, was asked dur­ing an audio inter­view with ESPN to name his favorite char­ac­ter on the show, to which he replied “It’s got to be Omar, right? I mean, that guy is unbe­liev­able, right?” And then this oth­er piece of audio sur­faced online — Slavoj Žižek, your favorite Sloven­ian philosopher/cultural crit­ic, pre­sent­ed a talk at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don (2/24/2012) called The Wire or The Clash of Civil­i­sa­tions in One Coun­try. And it takes the show seri­ous­ly as a work of trag­ic, real­ist art. Lis­ten here.

More Cul­ture Around the Web:

How Do You Cite a Tweet in an Aca­d­e­m­ic Paper? The MLA Weighs In.

The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet by famed Bud­dhism Schol­ar Robert Thur­man (father of Uma). Added to our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es.

William Car­los Williams Reads His Poems at 92nd St. Y in NYC  in 1954.

Rev­e­la­tions: Mes­si­aen’s Quar­tet for the End of Time. Writ­ten & pre­miered in a Nazi prison camp, 1941.

Lawrence Lessig’s Free Cul­ture as a Free Audio book.

Louis Menand on What Dr. Seuss Real­ly Taught Us. (2002)

The Guardian Rec­om­mends Silent Films

Tougher Than Leather, 1988. Run-DMC stars in cross between blax­ploita­tion film & spaghet­ti west­ern.

– Get more Cul­ture Links on our live­ly Twit­ter stream, or catch us on Face­book.

Stephen Hawking’s Universe: A Visualization of His Lectures with Stars & Sound

in Physics, Video - Science | March 2nd, 2012

It’s a lit­tle ran­dom. It’s very cool. It’s Jared Fick­lin’s inter­ac­tive art project that takes Stephen Hawk­ing’s Cam­bridge Lec­tures and then uses an algo­rithm to turn the physi­cist’s words into stars. The video pret­ty much explains all that you need to know. I should only add two things. 1.) Fick­lin is one of the speak­ers at the big TED show this week, and 2.) it looks like you can snag The Cam­bridge Lec­tures (or pret­ty much any book you want) as a free audio down­load from Audible.com if you sign up for their 14 day, no-strings-attached, free tri­al. Get more details on that here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Trib­ute to Stephen Hawk­ing, A Brief His­to­ry of Time

Stephen Hawk­ing: Aban­don Earth Or Face Extinc­tion

Free Physics Cours­es (part of our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Online Cours­es)

Pan Am’s 1960s and 70s Travel Films: Visit 11 Places, in 7 Languages

in Travel | March 2nd, 2012

ABC’s peri­od dra­ma Pan Am may have come to an end two weeks ago, but if you look hard enough, you can still find a few Pan Amer­i­can World Air­ways-inspired media. Back in the six­ties and sev­en­ties, at the height of the long hey­day that would cement its place in the lore of Cold War Amer­i­can cul­ture, the air­line com­mis­sioned New Hori­zons, a series of ten- to fif­teen-minute doc­u­men­taries on their var­i­ous exot­ic des­ti­na­tions. Eleven of these short sub­jects have sur­faced on YouTube, so you, too, can feel the mid­cen­tu­ry aspi­ra­tional thrill of motor­ing across the rolling Irish coun­try­side in a pow­der-blue Austin-Healey, han­dling crea­tures snatched fresh from the sea floor by a Fijan div­er, or gaz­ing upon Syd­ney’s impos­ing new mod­ernist apart­ment com­plex­es.

Maybe I’ve made these sound like glo­ri­fied com­mer­cials pitched toward new­ly afflu­ent Amer­i­cans in need of a charm­ing cor­ner of the Earth to loaf their two weeks away. But in that era of sto­ical­ly author­i­ta­tive voiceovers, eth­no­mu­si­co­log­i­cal­ly-spiced orches­tral scores, and col­ors vivid­ly sat­u­rat­ed enough to approach fan­ta­sy, weren’t com­mer­cials some­times glo­ri­ous? And as even this small archive reveals, the New Hori­zons films had audi­ences well out­side the Unit­ed States, the Anglos­phere, and even the West. The pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Pan Am engaged to make these, a cer­tain Movi­etonews, Inc., assem­bled the footage and audio in such a sep­a­rate way as to allow for both easy nar­ra­tion and easy trans­la­tion into oth­er lan­guages.

Forty or fifty years on, this gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy such simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cross-tem­po­ral and cross-cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences as New York in Ital­ian, Hawaii in Por­tuguese, Amer­i­ca’s nation­al parks in Japan­ese, and the Philip­pines in Ger­man. If you hap­pen to get as excit­ed about mid­cen­tu­ry adver­tis­ing, doc­u­men­tary film, lan­guage-learn­ing, and mul­ti-nation­al media as I do, these New Hori­zons will make for rich Fri­day view­ing indeed.

Com­plete list of New Hori­zons films: Fiji and New Cale­do­nia (Eng­lish), Ire­land (Eng­lish), Thai­land (Eng­lish), India (French), Japan (Ger­man), Philip­pines (Ger­man), New York (Ital­ian), Amer­i­ca’s nation­al parks (Japan­ese), Pak­istan (Japan­ese), Hawaii (Por­tuguese), Aus­tralia and New Zealand (Span­ish),

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

75 Free Philosophy Courses

in Philosophy | March 1st, 2012

The Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big Free Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through a major update, and it now lists more than 75 cours­es. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts intro­duc­tion to a time­less dis­ci­pline. You can start with one of sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es.

• Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners – iTunes – Web Video – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford
  
• Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Video — Oxford
• A Romp through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners - iTunes Video –Web Video — Oxford
• Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy – YouTube – iTunes – Web Video — Steven B. Smith, Yale
• The Art of Liv­ing — Web Video – Stan­ford
• The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps - Mul­ti­ple For­mats– Peter Adam­son, King’s Col­lege Lon­don

Then, once you’ve found your foot­ing, you can head off in some amaz­ing direc­tions. As we men­tioned many moons ago, you can access cours­es and lec­tures by mod­ern day, rock star philoso­phers — Michel Fou­cault, Bertrand Rus­sell, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them intro­duce you to the think­ing of Aris­to­tle, Socrates, Pla­to, Hobbes, Hegel, Hei­deg­ger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Niet­zsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es to find top­ics in many oth­er dis­ci­plines — His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valu­able sin­gle page on the web.

The Falcon and the Murmuration: Nature’s Aerial Battle Above Rome

in Random | March 1st, 2012

Last Novem­ber we post­ed a beau­ti­ful video of a shape-shift­ing flock of star­lings, known as a mur­mu­ra­tion, mak­ing pat­terns in the Irish sky. Today we bring you a sim­i­lar­ly beau­ti­ful film, but with an added ele­ment of dra­ma. In a scene from the BBC series “Earth­flight,” nar­rat­ed by David Ten­nant, one of nature’s most fear­some aer­i­al preda­tors, the pere­grine fal­con, swoops down into a dense cloud of birds for what promis­es to be an all-you-can-eat star­ling buf­fet. The out­come may sur­prise you. The aston­ish­ing footage was shot in Rome, where mil­lions of the birds flock every win­ter. For more on the spec­ta­cle of star­lings over Rome, be sure to see the 2007 New York Times audio-visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tur­ing pho­tographs by Richard Barnes, and the accom­pa­ny­ing essay by Jonathan Rosen.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via: 3 Quarks Dai­ly

Ridley Scott Readies a Prequel to Alien; Guy Pearce Gives Its “TED Talk”

in Film, TED Talks | March 1st, 2012

Do you count your­self in that group of cinephiles who have spent years and years patient­ly wait­ing for Rid­ley Scott to get back in the sad­dle? We thrilled to Alien, where pri­mal closed-in pan­ic col­lid­ed with a cast fur­rowed by seem­ing­ly unmar­ketable space-weari­ness, and to Blade Run­ner, whose per­va­sive unclean­li­ness and lin­ger­ing ambi­gu­i­ty sim­i­lar­ly raised it above its futur­is­tic genre trap­pings. When we could­n’t catch a screen­ing of Bar­ry Lyn­don, we even rev­eled in the Napoleon­ic glis­ten of The Duel­lists. But alas, as cer­tain crit­i­cal opin­ions hold, the psy­chic taut­ness ground­ing the elab­o­rate pro­duc­tion of those first few films even­tu­al­ly melt­ed away, inject­ing pock­ets of dis­com­fit­ing empti­ness into a White Squall, or of bloat­ed grandeur into a Glad­i­a­tor. We don’t com­plain that Scott has stopped work­ing; we com­plain that he’s stopped work­ing to our exact­ing (and prob­a­bly unfair) spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

But rumors of a dis­tant Blade Run­ner sequel have sur­faced, and the June release looms of Prometheus, a pre­quel to Alien. Could Scott have found his way back to what­ev­er cre­ative well nour­ished him so rich­ly in the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies? Either way, he’ll ride what looks like a groundswell of renewed inter­est in the Alien uni­verse. In recent weeks, I saw enough mid­night-movie types wear­ing T‑shirts adver­tis­ing an enti­ty called “Wey­land-Yutani” that, with assis­tance from Google, I remem­bered its place as the Alien’s pre­sid­ing force of cor­po­rate amoral­i­ty. Things have come along for the com­pa­ny; where once its brand exist­ed only as a recur­ring crate stamp in Alien’s back­drop, now its CEO is giv­ing a dra­mat­i­cal­ly shot TED talk on the state of mankind.

Could this be a two-in-one shot in the arm for both Scott and TED, an inter­min­gling of real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy that revi­tal­izes both the direc­tor’s and the con­fer­ence enter­prise’s sense of cre­ative risk-tak­ing? CEO Peter Wey­land, as played by Guy Pearce, stirs up his crowd with the bold claim that, what with the intel­li­gence human­i­ty can now cre­ate, per­haps we’ve become the gods. But Wey­land’s talk comes cour­tesy of the future, which is also Alien’s past: “now” means 2023, 62 years before the events of Prometheus. As for how, pre­cise­ly, Wey­land’s prophet­ic grand­stand­ing — a behav­ior not unknown at TED’s events, though at least we now see they’re in on the joke — con­nects with Prometheus and the estab­lished canon of Alien movies we won’t know for a few months. Until then, you can watch the new film’s trail­er and spec­u­late for your­self about whether it can pos­si­bly recap­ture that essence of para­noid iso­la­tion that made the orig­i­nal such an endur­ing cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Blade Run­ner

875 TEDTalks in a Neat Spread­sheet

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Crazy Never Die: Hunter S. Thompson in Rare 1988 Documentary (NSFW)

in Film, Politics | February 29th, 2012

What should we make of Hunter S. Thomp­son today? Only a hard­ened con­trar­i­an could down­play his impor­tance as a chron­i­cler of the col­lapse of six­ties-style utopi­anism in Amer­i­ca. Few read­ers could for­get — or refrain from com­mit­ting to mem­o­ry — the famous pas­sage of Thomp­son’s jour­nal­is­tic and psy­che­del­ic nov­el Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) that looks back on the ruins of hip­piedom from with­in the hang­over of the ear­ly sev­en­ties. With unmatched clar­i­ty, he traces how “the ener­gy of a whole gen­er­a­tion comes to a head in a long fine flash,” the “sense of inevitable vic­to­ry over the forces of Old and Evil,” the feel­ing of “rid­ing the crest of a high and beau­ti­ful wave,” and how, “less than five years lat­er, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave final­ly broke and rolled back.”

In the sev­en­ties, Thomp­son count­ed among his friends San Fran­cis­co pornog­ra­phers the Mitchell broth­ers, best known for pro­duc­ing Behind the Green Door, which hit the zeit­geist the year after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In 1988, the Mitchell broth­ers grabbed their cam­eras and fol­lowed Thomp­son around on a lec­ture tour, to places like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas and Port­land, Ore­gon’s First Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church, col­lect­ing mate­r­i­al for what would become the half-hour doc­u­men­tary The Crazy Nev­er Die. It fol­lows from the title that, since the news of Thomp­son’s hav­ing removed him­self from this mor­tal coil broke sev­en years ago last week, he either did not die, or was not crazy. Though the lat­ter pos­si­bil­i­ty seems more plau­si­ble on its face, those famil­iar with the trap­pings of Thomp­son’s pub­lic per­sona — the “for­ti­fied com­pound,” the rounds unloaded into the type­writer, the pea­cocks — may find the for­mer eas­i­er to swal­low. Just look at the footage cut between the lec­ture seg­ments: Thomp­son spray­ing a makeshift aerosol flamethrow­er, Thomp­son light­ing a can­non, Thomp­son vicious­ly attack­ing the cam­era with a Mex­i­can restau­rant-nap­kin — all rigid­ly in line with his man-out-of-con­trol image.

Wit­ness to the end of the Age of Aquar­ius, drug-fueled bon viveur, sociopo­lit­i­cal crit­ic, flail­ing mani­ac: Thomp­son con­tained mul­ti­tudes. His Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail ’72 remains one of the most inci­sive texts I’ve read on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty — more so than any­thing polit­i­cal sci­ence class­es assigned me — but over the fol­low­ing decades his polit­i­cal posi­tions cur­dled into a sad sort of para­noia. The Crazy Nev­er Die cap­tures Thomp­son in full gad­fly mode, pack­ing hous­es and eas­i­ly enter­tain­ing them, whether on time or (more com­mon­ly) not. But the con­tent of these talks, assum­ing you can fol­low it, seems alto­geth­er less rel­e­vant to the man’s endur­ing appeal than the life and sen­si­bil­i­ty that pro­duced it. He takes the usu­al crowd-pleas­ing swipes at Nixon and Rea­gan, but then delves hap­haz­ard­ly into elab­o­rate the­ses involv­ing Oliv­er North, George H.W. Bush, and Iran. (1988, recall.) He takes par­tic­u­lar excep­tion to Ed Meese, a name I imag­ine very few of Thomp­son’s younger fans rec­og­nize. But when the name of Meese and what­ev­er crimes may or may not be pinned upon it has long fad­ed from liv­ing mem­o­ry — and sure­ly that time is upon us — the name of Thomp­son will keep on res­onat­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing.

(NSFW warn­ing: Stay­ing true to form, the Mitchell broth­ers saw fit to include a few flash­es of nudi­ty through­out this doc­u­men­tary.)

The Crazy Nev­er Die has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our meta list 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by the Hel­l’s Angels

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Wes Anderson from Above. Quentin Tarantino From Below.

in Film | February 29th, 2012

When you watch a direc­tor’s work long enough, you pick up on his/her sig­na­ture tricks — the themes and cam­era work that appear again and again. Last month, a YouTu­ber who goes by the name “Kog­o­na­da” cre­at­ed Wes Ander­son // FROM ABOVE, a mon­tage cap­tur­ing Ander­son­’s pen­chant for the aer­i­al shot, a move that con­tributes to the light­ness, play­ful­ness and quirk­i­ness of his films.

Now “Kog­o­na­da” returns and looks at Quentin Taran­ti­no’s work from a new angle — from below. The view from below has two advan­tages. It puts the actor in a posi­tion of clear dom­i­nance, and it lets the view­er know that vio­lence has tak­en place, with­out actu­al­ly hav­ing to show the dam­age done. For some­one like Taran­ti­no, it’s a handy way to go… H/T @weba­cion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Tarantino’s Favorite Films Since 1992

Crack­ing Taran­ti­no (Award-win­ning Film From Brazil)