The Bloody Olive: A Wickedly Fun Homage to the Film Noir Tradition

in Film | January 4th, 2012

Short­ly after fin­ish­ing film school, the young Bel­gian direc­tor Vin­cent Bal shot The Bloody Olive (1996), a 10 minute film based on a com­ic book by the French artist Lewis Trond­heim. It was an instant hit, win­ning over 20 awards at film fes­ti­vals world­wide. Want­i­ng to keep things spoil­er-free around here, let us just say this: the short film pays a fun lit­tle trib­ute to the film noir tra­di­tion — its aes­thet­ic, con­ven­tions and all of the rest.

For more film noir fun, don’t miss Key Lime Pie, a 2007 ani­mat­ed film in the noir tra­di­tion, or our col­lec­tion of 31 Free Noir Films. The noir col­lec­tion fea­tures clas­sics by John Hus­ton, Elia Kazan, Fritz Lang, Ida Lupino, Otto Pre­minger, Orson Welles and oth­ers. You can find great clas­sics from oth­er gen­res with­in our list of Free Movies Online.

Lawrence Krauss on the Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions

in Physics | January 4th, 2012

In the world of every­day expe­ri­ence we con­ceive of three dimen­sions of space. Through any point, no more than three per­pen­dic­u­lar lines may pass. The notion that there might be more than three dimen­sions has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the domain of sci­ence fic­tion shows like The Twi­light Zone.

In this engag­ing lec­ture (click image above to watch), the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Lawrence Krauss explains the grow­ing respectabil­i­ty of extra-dimen­sion­al the­o­ries in physics, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of the idea from Pla­to’s cave through Edwin A. Abbot­t’s Flat­land, and from Ein­stein-Minkows­ki space­time through Kaluza-Klein the­o­ry, on into mod­ern-day string the­o­ry.

Titled “Hid­ing in the Mir­ror: The Mys­te­ri­ous Allure of Extra Dimen­sions,” Krauss’s pre­sen­ta­tion was giv­en in Sep­tem­ber at a con­fer­ence in Oslo, Nor­way, orga­nized by the Fritt Ord Foun­da­tion. The speech lasts about an hour and is fol­lowed by a ques­tion-and-answer ses­sion.

via Richard Dawkins

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Uni­verse From Noth­ing’

Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star

Free Physics Cours­es (From our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es)

A Young Frank Zappa Turns the Bicycle into a Musical Instrument on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

in Music, Television | January 3rd, 2012

Last week we gave you John Cage per­form­ing his avant-garde com­po­si­tion Water Walk on the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret” in 1960. Now, this week, we’re fol­low­ing up with a nice com­ple­ment — Frank Zap­pa bring­ing his own brand of off­beat music to the Amer­i­can air­waves in 1963. Only 22 years old and not yet famous, Zap­pa appeared on The Steve Allen Show and made music with some drum­sticks, a bass bow, and two gar­den-vari­ety bicy­cles — and noth­ing more.

The video above gives you most­ly the pre­lude to the actu­al music. Then, in the first video below, Zap­pa gives a demo of the instru­ments. Next comes the Con­cer­to for Two Bicy­cles, which fea­tures the show’s house orches­tra join­ing the cacoph­o­nous fun. The clips run a good 15 min­utes.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Gets Sur­prised & Ser­e­nad­ed by the U.S. Navy Band at the San Fran­cis­co Air­port (1980)

Ani­mat­ed: Frank Zap­pa on Why the Cul­tur­al­ly-Bereft Unit­ed States Is So Sus­cep­ti­ble to Fads (1971)

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

Frank Zappa’s Amaz­ing Final Con­certs: Prague and Budapest, 1991

The Best of Open Culture 2011

in Art, Books, Education, Film, Music, Online Courses | January 2nd, 2012

Before we rush head­long into a new year, it’s worth paus­ing, ever so briefly, to con­sid­er the ground we cov­ered in 2011. What top­ics res­onat­ed with you … and jazzed us? Today, we’re high­light­ing 10 the­mat­ic areas (and 46 posts) that cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion. Chances are you missed a few gems here. So please join us on our brief jour­ney back into time. Tomor­row, we start look­ing for­ward again.

1) Uni­ver­si­ties Offer More Free Cours­es, Then Start Push­ing Toward Cer­tifi­cates: The year start­ed well enough. Yale released anoth­er 10 stel­lar open cours­es. (Find them on our list of 400 Free Cours­es). Then oth­er uni­ver­si­ties start­ed push­ing the enve­lope on the open course for­mat. This fall, Stan­ford launched a series of free cours­es that com­bined video lec­tures with more dynam­ic resources — short quizzes; the abil­i­ty to pose ques­tions to Stan­ford instruc­tors; feed­back on your over­all per­for­mance; a state­ment of accom­plish­ment from the instruc­tor, etc. A new round of free cours­es will start in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. (Get the full list and enroll here.) Final­ly, keep your eyes peeled for this: In 2012, MIT will offer sim­i­lar cours­es, but with one big dif­fer­ence. Stu­dents will get an offi­cial cer­tifi­cate at the end of the course, all at a very min­i­mal charge. More details here.

2) Cul­tur­al Icons at Occu­py Wall Street: OWS was a big nation­al sto­ry, and we were always intrigued by its cul­tur­al dimen­sion — by the cul­tur­al fig­ures who cham­pi­oned the move­ment. You can revis­it performances/speeches by: Philip Glass & Lou Reed; Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie; David Cros­by and Gra­ham Nash; Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig; Noam Chom­sky; and Slavoj Zizek. Also check out: 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard and Artis­tic Posters From Occu­py Wall Street.

3) Books Intel­li­gent Peo­ple Should Read: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s list “8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read” end­ed up gen­er­at­ing far more con­ver­sa­tion and con­tro­ver­sy than we would have expect­ed. (Users have left 83 com­ments at last count.) No mat­ter what you think of his ratio­nale for choos­ing these texts, the books make for essen­tial read­ing, and they’re freely avail­able online.

Tyson’s list dove­tails fair­ly nice­ly with anoth­er list of essen­tial texts — The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume set that’s avail­able online. Accord­ing to Charles W. Eliot, the leg­endary Har­vard pres­i­dent, if you were to spend just 15 min­utes a day read­ing these books, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. And that could part­ly apply to anoth­er list we pulled togeth­er: 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books — the great lit­er­ary clas­sics taught in class­rooms all across Amer­i­ca, all free…

4) Christo­pher Hitchens and Stephen Fry: Christo­pher Hitchens left us this past month. And, until his last day, Hitchens was the same old Hitch — pro­lif­ic, inci­sive, surly and defi­ant, espe­cial­ly when asked about whether he’d change his posi­tion on reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the after­life. All of this was on dis­play when he spoke at the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les last Feb­ru­ary. We cov­ered his com­ments in a post called, No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask. And even from the grave, Hitchens did more of the same, forc­ing us to ques­tion the whole mod­ern mean­ing of Christ­mas.

Dur­ing Hitch’s final days, Stephen Fry emceed a large trib­ute to his friend in Lon­don, an event that brought togeth­er Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Buck­ley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Mar­tin Amis, poet James Fen­ton and actor Sean Penn. It’s well worth a watch. But you also should­n’t miss some oth­er great videos fea­tur­ing the wis­dom of Mr. Fry — his intro­duc­tion to the strange world of nanoscience, his ani­mat­ed debate on the virtues (or lack there­of) of the Catholic Church, and his thought­ful reflec­tion, What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18.

5) Four for the Fab Four: John, Paul, Ringo and George. We sneak them in when­ev­er we can. A sprin­kling here and there. This year, we served up an ever-pop­u­lar post, Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, and a no less pop­u­lar free­bie: Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook. Trail­ing right behind are two oth­er good Bea­t­les picks: All Togeth­er Now: Every Bea­t­les Song Played at Once and The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig.

6) Wis­dom from Great Philoso­phers: Want the chance to take cours­es from great philoso­phers? Here’s your oppor­tu­ni­ty. Our meta post brought togeth­er courses/lectures from Bertrand Rus­sell, Michel Fou­cault, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel. You could get lost in this for days. Also while you’re at it, you should check out The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps, an ongo­ing pod­cast cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son (King’s Col­lege Lon­don) that moves from the Ancients to the Mod­erns. Plus we’d encour­age you to revis­it: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er in 1971.

7) Vin­tage Film Col­lec­tions: Scour­ing the web for vin­tage films. It’s some­thing we love to do. In 2011, we brought you 22 films by Alfred Hitch­cock, 25 West­erns with John Wayne, 32 Film Noir clas­sics, and a series of films by the great Russ­ian direc­tor Andrei Tarkovsky. All are list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

8) Back to the Future: We had fun going back — way back — and see­ing how past gen­er­a­tions imag­ined the future. Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dict­ed the Future in 1964 … And Pret­ty Much Nailed It. Before that, Amer­i­can fash­ion design­ers looked rough­ly 70 years into the future and guessed how women might dress in Year 2000. Turns out fash­ion design­ers aren’t the best futur­ists. And, even before that (cir­ca 1922), we get to see the world’s first mobile phone in action. Seri­ous­ly!

9) Ani­mat­ed Films: 2011 start­ed off on exact­ly the right note. On Jan­u­ary 1, we fea­tured Shel Sil­ver­stein’s ani­mat­ed ver­sion of The Giv­ing Tree. Then some oth­er gems fol­lowed: Des­ti­no, the Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney col­lab­o­ra­tion that start­ed in 1946 and fin­ished in 1999; Spike Jonze’s Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side), a short stop motion film set inside the famous Parisian book­store, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny; John Tur­tur­ro nar­rat­ing an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Ita­lo Calvino’s fairy tale, “The False Grand­moth­er;” and a series of ani­mat­ed films fea­tur­ing the voice of Orson Welles. Also let’s not for­get these splen­did ani­ma­tion con­cepts for The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay and, just for good mea­sure, Ter­ry Gilliam’s vin­tage primer on mak­ing your own cut-out ani­ma­tion.

10) New Archives & Art on the Web: Last but not least — 2011’s new archival projects that brought great cul­ture to the web.

• Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You
• Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online
• Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Res­o­lu­tion)
• The Smith­son­ian Launch­es Wildlife Pho­to Archive
• Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

And now onward into 2012.…

John Lennon Sums Up Elvis, Yoko & Howard Cosell in One Word

in Life, Music | December 30th, 2011

In 1976 a youth­ful fan named Stu­art sent John Lennon a six-page list of ques­tions. The for­mer Bea­t­le respond­ed with answers, along with a child-like draw­ing of a lamb stand­ing on a cloud, say­ing, “Hi Stu­art.”

Stu­art want­ed to know a few things, like what sort of album Lennon was work­ing on. “Until it’s been on tape,” Lennon replied, “I nev­er know what it will be.” He also won­dered if the famous musi­cian was writ­ing any­thing, like per­haps an auto­bi­og­ra­phy. “Yes, I have been writ­ing, but not an auto­bi­og­ra­phy. I’ve noticed that peo­ple tend to DIE after writ­ing their life sto­ry.”

The young fan includ­ed a list of words and names, along with the ques­tion: How would you char­ac­ter­ize the fol­low­ing fig­ures in one word?

• John: “Great”
• Paul: “Extra­or­di­nary”
• George: “Lost”
• Ringo: “Friend”
• Elvis: “Fat”
• Yoko: “Love”
• Howard Cosell: “Hum”

Lennon signed off with, “It was a plea­sure, hope ya dig it/John Lennon.”

via Lists of Note

Drinking with William Faulkner: The Writer Had a Taste for The Mint Julep & Hot Toddy

in Food & Drink, Literature | December 29th, 2011

“Civ­i­liza­tion begins with dis­til­la­tion,” William Faulkn­er once said, and like many of the great writ­ers of the 20th cen­tu­ry — Ernest Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, James Joyce — the bard of Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi cer­tain­ly had a fond­ness for alco­hol.

Unlike many of the oth­ers, though, Faulkn­er liked to drink while he was writ­ing. In 1937 his French trans­la­tor, Mau­rice Edgar Coin­dreau, was try­ing to deci­pher one of Faulkn­er’s idio­syn­crat­i­cal­ly baroque sen­tences. He showed the pas­sage to the writer, who puz­zled over it for a moment and then broke out laugh­ing. “I have absolute­ly no idea of what I meant,” Faulkn­er told Coin­dreau. “You see, I usu­al­ly write at night. I always keep my whiskey with­in reach; so many ideas that I can’t remem­ber in the morn­ing pop into my head.”

Every now and then Faulkn­er would embark on a drunk­en binge. His pub­lish­er, Ben­nett Cerf, recalled:

The mad­den­ing thing about Bill Faulkn­er was that he’d go off on one of those ben­ders, which were some­times delib­er­ate, and when he came out of it, he’d come walk­ing into the office clear-eyed, ready for action, as though he had­n’t had a drink in six months. But dur­ing those bouts he did­n’t know what he was doing. He was help­less. His capac­i­ty was­n’t very great; it did­n’t take too much to send him off. Occa­sion­al­ly, at a good din­ner, with the fine wines and brandy he loved, he would mis­cal­cu­late. Oth­er times I think he pre­tend­ed to be drunk to avoid doing some­thing he did­n’t want to do.

Wine and brandy were not Faulkn­er’s favorite spir­its. He loved whiskey. His favorite cock­tail was the mint julep. Faulkn­er would make one by mix­ing whiskey–preferably bourbon–with one tea­spoon of sug­ar, a sprig or two of crushed mint, and ice. He liked to drink his mint julep in a frosty met­al cup. (See image above.) The word “julep” first appeared in the late 14th cen­tu­ry to describe a syrupy drink used to wash down med­i­cine. Faulkn­er believed in the med­i­c­i­nal effi­ca­cy of alco­hol. Lil­lian Ross once vis­it­ed the author when he was ail­ing, and quot­ed him as say­ing, “Isn’t any­thin’ Ah got whiskey won’t cure.”

On a cold win­ter night, Faulkn­er’s med­i­cine of choice was the hot tod­dy. His niece, Dean Faulkn­er Wells, described the recipe and rit­u­al for hot tod­dies favored by her uncle (whom she called “Pap­py”) in The Great Amer­i­can Writ­ers’ Cook­book, quot­ed last week by Maud New­ton:

Pap­py alone decid­ed when a Hot Tod­dy was need­ed, and he admin­is­tered it to his patient with the best bed­side man­ner of a coun­try doc­tor.

He pre­pared it in the kitchen in the fol­low­ing way: Take one heavy glass tum­bler. Fill approx­i­mate­ly half full with Heav­en Hill bour­bon (the Jack Daniel’s was reserved for Pap­py’s ail­ments). Add one table­spoon of sug­ar. Squeeze 1/2 lemon and drop into glass. Stir until sug­ar dis­solves. Fill glass with boil­ing water. Serve with pothold­er to pro­tect patien­t’s hands from the hot glass.

Pap­py always made a small cer­e­mo­ny out of serv­ing his Hot Tod­dy, bring­ing it upstairs on a sil­ver tray and admon­ish­ing his patient to drink it quick­ly, before it cooled off. It nev­er failed.

h/t The Migrant Book Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artists Under the Influ­ence

William Faulkn­er Audio Archive Goes Online

William Faulkn­er Reads from As I Lay Dying

Errol Morris: Two Essential Truths About Photography

in Art, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | December 29th, 2011

In this video cre­at­ed by the Guardian, writer and award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris talks about the nature of truth, art, and pro­pa­gan­da in pho­tog­ra­phy. He draws exam­ples from the pho­tographs of Abu Ghraib and the Crimean War, both cit­ed in his book Believ­ing is See­ing, and he asks the view­er to con­sid­er a most fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: how does a pho­to­graph relate to the phys­i­cal world? Unlike a ver­bal or writ­ten state­ment, a pho­to­graph can­not be true or false. It sim­ply is.

Then comes anoth­er argu­ment worth con­sid­er­ing — the idea that all pho­tographs are posed. By way of exam­ple, Mor­ris cites an instance where a pho­tog­ra­ph­er (in this case Roger Fen­ton) omits an ele­phant stand­ing out­side the frame. And it leads Mor­ris to sug­gest  that we should­n’t take pho­tos at face val­ue. Rather we should do our due dili­gence to find out whether there isn’t always a metaphor­i­cal ele­phant loom­ing beyond the frame. As Mor­ris states, a pho­to­graph decon­tex­tu­al­izes every­thing. It reveals to us a two dimen­sion­al real­i­ty that’s “been torn out of the fab­ric of the world.”

This video is part of the Guardian’s “Com­ment is Free” series, in which the world’s top thinkers, news­mak­ers, and peo­ple with sto­ries to tell are inter­viewed. For more med­i­ta­tions on pho­tog­ra­phy, give some time to Errol Mor­ris’ speech at the Har­vard Book­store. Find the tran­script here.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Los­es a Bet to Errol Mor­ris, and Eats His Shoe (Lit­er­al­ly)

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

The Blade Runner Sketchbook Features The Original Art of Syd Mead & Ridley Scott (1982)

in Art, Books, Film | December 29th, 2011

Coin­cid­ing with the release of Blade Run­ner in 1982, David Scrog­gy pub­lished the Blade Run­ner Sketch­book, a book with 100+ pro­duc­tion draw­ings and art­work for Rid­ley Scot­t’s clas­sic sci-fi film. The sketch­book fea­tures visu­al work by Scott him­self, artist Men­tor Hueb­n­er, and cos­tume design­er Charles Knode, but most notably a slew of draw­ings by artist, futur­ist, and illus­tra­tor Syd Mead.

As Comics Alliance notes, this sketch­book has been out of print for years and scant few paper copies remain avail­able for pur­chase. So dig­i­tal ver­sions have filled the void online, and now comes this: a ver­sion that lets you rev­el in the Blade Run­ner art­work in full-screen mode. Enter the sketch­book by click­ing the image above or below. (The book itself is host­ed at Isuu.com). Once you get there, click the images and they’ll fill your screen.

Enjoy, and while you’re at it, don’t miss some relat­ed items:

The Mak­ing of Blade Run­ner

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

More Free eBooks

The Mind & Art of Maurice Sendak: A Video Sketch

in Art, Literature | December 28th, 2011

Like the chil­dren in his books, Mau­rice Sendak, at age 83, is doing the best he can to nav­i­gate a fright­en­ing and bewil­der­ing world. “We all have to find our way,” Sendak says in this reveal­ing lit­tle film from the Tate muse­ums. “If I could find my way through pic­ture-mak­ing and book illus­tra­tion, or what­ev­er you want to call it, I’d be okay.”

In books like In the Night Kitchen, Where the Wild Things Are and Out­side, Over There, Sendak has explored the wonders–and terrors–of child­hood. “No one,” wrote Dave Eggers recent­ly in Van­i­ty Fair, “has been more uncom­pro­mis­ing, more idio­syn­crat­ic, and more in touch with the unhinged and chiaroscuro sub­con­scious of a child.”

Sendak’s own child­hood in Brook­lyn, New York, was a time of emo­tion­al trau­ma. His par­ents were Pol­ish immi­grants who had trou­ble adjust­ing to life in Amer­i­ca. On the day of Sendak’s bar­mitz­vah, his father learned that his entire fam­i­ly had been killed in the Holo­caust. He remem­bered the sad­ness of look­ing through fam­i­ly scrap­books. “The shock of think­ing I would nev­er know them was ter­ri­ble,” Sendak told the Guardian ear­li­er this year. “Who were they?”

This ear­ly sense of the pre­car­i­ous­ness of life car­ried over into his work. As the play­wright Tony Kush­n­er wrote of Sendak in 2003:

Mau­rice, among the best of the best, shocks deeply, touch­ing on the mor­tal, the insup­port­ably sad or unjust, even on the car­nal, on the pri­mal rather than the mere­ly prim­i­tive. He pitch­es chil­dren, includ­ing aged chil­dren, out of the famil­iar and into mys­tery, and then into under­stand­ing, wis­dom even. He pitch­es chil­dren through fan­ta­sy into human adult­hood, that rare, hard-won and, let’s face it, trag­ic con­di­tion.

David Lynch in Four Movements: A Video Tribute

in Film | December 27th, 2011

Last year, Richard Vez­i­na cre­at­ed a pop­u­lar video trib­ute to Stan­ley Kubrick (A Stan­ley Kubrick Odyssey). Now he returns with David Lynch in Four Move­ments. Accom­pa­nied by musi­cal pieces from Ange­lo Badala­men­ti & David Lynch, each move­ment revolves around a dis­tinc­tive theme or visu­al trend in Lynch’s works. Here’s how the 20 minute video unfolds:

• First Move­ment: Melan­choly and Sad­ness — Ques­tions In A World Of Blue
• Sec­ond Move­ment: Action, Vio­lence, and Sex — The Pink Room
• Third Move­ment: Dreams and Night­mares — Into The Night
• Fourth Move­ment: Love and Hope — Mys­ter­ies of Love

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

David Lynch on his Favorite Movies and Film­mak­ers

David Lynch Debuts Lady Blue Shang­hai