Bono, Glen Hansard & Friends Busk For Charity on Grafton Street

in Music | December 27th, 2011

Shop­pers on Grafton Street in Dublin were treat­ed to a rare street per­for­mance on Christ­mas Eve by some of Ire­land’s most illus­tri­ous pop musi­cians. U2 front­man Bono, oscar-win­ning singer/songwriter Glen Hansard, Liam O’ Maon­lai of Hot­house Flow­ers, Mundy, and Declan O’Rourke gath­ered on the famous shop­ping street to spread hol­i­day cheer and raise mon­ey for the home­less.

It was the third straight year of Christ­mas Eve busk­ing for Bono and Hansard. A large group of fans showed up in antic­i­pa­tion, hav­ing been tipped off the day before by Hansard. “Busk­ing with some friends tomor­row on Grafton St.,” he wrote on Twit­ter. “Come and throw a coin in the box for Simon Com­mu­ni­ty and the Peter McVer­ry trust.” The crowd grew so big that the police moved the per­for­mance to the gate of St. Stephen’s Green, at the end of the street.

The group per­formed a rous­ing, sing-along ver­sion of the Mic Christo­pher song “Hey­day” (above), and some hol­i­day favorites, includ­ing the 1960s hit “Christ­mas (Baby Please Come Home),” which can be seen on YouTube here and here.

Wanna Achieve Linguistic Immortality? Not So Fast Cautions Animated NPR Video

in English Language | December 26th, 2011

Have you ever dreamed of becom­ing a word? NPR’s Adam Cole has, and he’s writ­ten a song about the immor­tal­i­ty that comes from hav­ing your name turned into a noun. But as his col­league Robert Krul­wich points out, many of the peo­ple whose names are now in dic­tio­nar­ies would be hor­ri­fied. Joseph Guil­lo­tine, for exam­ple, hat­ed the death penal­ty. And James Thomas Bru­denell, sev­enth earl of Cardi­gan, must be turn­ing over in his grave: “Here’s a brave cav­al­ry offi­cer, who led the Charge of the Light Brigade dur­ing the Crimean War, watched his men cut down, butchered by the ene­my, a man of action, a sol­dier, and what do we remem­ber him for,” writes Krul­wich on his blog? “Yup, by some trick of fate, he is now a sweater with but­tons down the front. I mean, real­ly…”

Christopher Hitchens Gets Contrarian on Christmas from the Grave (Plus Some Tom Lehrer)

in Music, Religion | December 25th, 2011

Back in 1959, Tom Lehrer, the Har­vard lec­tur­er and satirist, record­ed “A Christ­mas Car­ol” before a live audi­ence at the Sanders The­ater in Cam­bridge, Mass. The song, offer­ing an ear­ly com­men­tary on the com­mer­cial­ism of Christ­mas, pro­vides the jump­ing off point for Christo­pher Hitchens’ arti­cle “Forced Mer­ri­ment: The True Spir­it of Christ­mas,” which has been pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in this week­end’s Wall Street Jour­nal. Even from the grave, Hitchens goes on being Hitch: blunt, bound to make the major­i­ty bris­tle, but also brim­ming with some con­trar­i­an insights…

But the thing about the annu­al cul­ture war that would prob­a­bly most sur­prise those who want to “keep the Christ in Christ­mas” is this: The orig­i­nal Puri­tan Protes­tants regard­ed the whole enter­prise as blas­phe­mous. Under the rule of Oliv­er Cromwell in Eng­land, Christ­mas fes­tiv­i­ties were banned out­right. The same was true in some of the ear­ly Pil­grim set­tle­ments in North Amer­i­ca.

Last year I read a recent inter­view with the priest of one of the old­est Roman Catholic church­es in New York, locat­ed down­town and near Wall Street. Tak­ing a stand in favor of Imam Rauf’s “Ground Zero” project, he point­ed to some parish records show­ing hos­tile pick­et­ing of his church in the 18th cen­tu­ry. The pious pro­tes­tors had been voic­ing their sus­pi­cion that a pro­fane and Popish cer­e­mo­ni­al of “Christ Mass” was being con­duct­ed with­in.

and some humor.…

In their already dis­crepant accounts of the mirac­u­lous birth, the four gospels give us no clue as to what time of year—or even what year—it is sup­posed to have tak­en place. And thus the iconog­ra­phy of Christ­mas is ridicu­lous­ly mixed in with rein­deer, hol­ly, snow scenes and oth­er phe­nom­e­na pecu­liar to north­ern Euro­pean myth. (Three words for those who want to put the Christ back in Christ­mas: Jin­gle Bell Rock.) There used to be an urban leg­end about a Japan­ese depart­ment store that tried too hard to sym­bol­ize the Christ­mas spir­it, and to show itself acces­si­ble to West­ern vis­i­tors, by mount­ing a dis­play of a San­ta Claus fig­ure nailed to a cross. Unfound­ed as it turned out, this would­n’t have been off by much.

You can read Hitchens’ unabridged piece in WSJ here. H/T goes to @opedr

Chet Baker’s Soulful Version of ‘Time After Time’

in Music | December 23rd, 2011

The jazz trum­peter and singer Chet Bak­er was born on this day in 1929. Ear­li­er we fea­tured Let’s Get Lost, Bruce Weber’s doc­u­men­tary of the musi­cian’s trou­bled life. Today we take you back to 1964, when Bak­er was 34, as he per­forms a melan­choly inter­pre­ta­tion of the Sam­my Cahn and Jule Styne stan­dard, “Time After Time.”

The scene is from a Bel­gian tele­vi­sion pro­gram. Bak­er is joined by French pianist Rene Urtreger, Bel­gian flautist Jacques Pelz­er, and an Ital­ian rhythm sec­tion of Lui­gi Trussar­di on bass and Fran­co Manzec­chi on drums. Bak­er sings and plays the flugel­horn. The Bel­gian TV show, along with a per­for­mance 15 years lat­er in Nor­way, are pre­served in the Jazz Icons DVD Chet Bak­er Live in ’64 and ’79. In the lin­er notes, Rob Bow­man writes:

Beau­ty comes in many forms. In music, it can be the result of a per­fect­ly con­struct­ed melod­ic line, a har­mon­ic voic­ing that sends shiv­ers down your spine, a groove that some­how cap­tures the joy of being alive, or a tim­bre so sen­su­ous­ly rich that it makes your body quiver from head to toe. In the case of Chet Bak­er, a jazzman capa­ble of spin­ning out some of the most aching­ly beau­ti­ful music human beings have ever known, beau­ty was a result of find­ing the poignan­cy in sor­row, in deploy­ing pitch inflec­tion, melod­ic arc and a vibra­to­less tim­bre to con­jure up some­thing of rar­efied val­ue in a life of addic­tion and end­less dis­ap­point­ment. There are many vir­tu­osic tech­ni­cians in the his­to­ry of jazz. Few of them could cap­ture the pathos of the human con­di­tion in the way that Bak­er did.

MIT to Offer Certificates to Students Taking Free Courses on the Web

in MIT, Online Courses, Stanford | December 20th, 2011

It hap­pens at least a few times a day. Stu­dents look through our list of 400 Free Online Cours­es, and ask us whether they can get a cer­tifi­cate for tak­ing a class. And, unfor­tu­nate­ly, our answer has been no — no, you can’t. But that may be about to change.

Ear­li­er this fall, Stan­ford launched a high­ly-pub­li­cized series of free cours­es that offer stu­dents some­thing nov­el: the abil­i­ty to take tests and receive a “state­ment of accom­plish­ment” from the instruc­tor — though not the school itself — if they pass the class. (Stan­ford will launch 14 more cours­es start­ing in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. Click link for details.)

Now, MIT wants to up the ante on the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of free cours­es. Start­ing next spring, the uni­ver­si­ty, already famous for its Open­Course­Ware project, will launch MITx, an e‑learning ini­tia­tive that will offer cer­tifi­cates to stu­dents demon­strat­ing mas­tery of free MIT cours­es. Accord­ing to a new set of FAQs, the cer­tifi­cates won’t bear MIT’s name. Rather, “MIT plans to cre­ate a not-for-prof­it body with­in [MITx] that will offer cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for online learn­ers of MIT course­work. That body will car­ry a dis­tinct name to avoid con­fu­sion.” The cours­es will be free; the cer­tifi­cates will cost just a “mod­est” sum. It’s all a big step in the right direc­tion.

UPDATE: You can find a list of free cours­es offer­ing cer­tifi­cates from great uni­ver­si­ties here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Intro­duces Com­plete Cours­es to Open­Course­Ware Project

Down­load The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Cre­den­tial (Free eBook)

Free Audio: Download the Complete Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

in Audio Books, Literature | December 19th, 2011

Before the days of Har­ry Pot­ter, gen­er­a­tions of young read­ers let their imag­i­na­tions take flight with The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, a series of sev­en fan­ta­sy nov­els writ­ten by C. S. Lewis. Like his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis served on the Eng­lish fac­ul­ty at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and took part in the Inklings, an Oxford lit­er­ary group ded­i­cat­ed to fic­tion and fan­ta­sy.

Pub­lished between 1950 and 1956, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia has sold over 100 mil­lion copies in 47 lan­guages, delight­ing younger and old­er read­ers world­wide. The sev­en vol­umes in the series include:

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Prince Caspi­an: The Return to Nar­nia
• The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er
• The Sil­ver Chair
• The Horse and His Boy
• The Magi­cian’s Nephew
• The Last Bat­tle

Now, with the appar­ent bless­ing of the C.S. Lewis estate, the sev­en vol­ume series is avail­able in a free audio for­mat. There are 101 audio record­ings in total, each aver­ag­ing 30 min­utes and read by Chris­si Hart. Down­load the com­plete audio via the web or RSS Feed. Or start lis­ten­ing to the open­ing chap­ters of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe right below.

We have added The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia record­ings to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, where you will find many oth­er great clas­sics. h/t metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load Copy of New Steve Jobs Biog­ra­phy

Free Audio: Down­load George Orwell’s 1984 and Ani­mal Farm for Free

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Tuileries: A Short, Slightly Twisted Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

in Film | December 16th, 2011

They call Paris the City of Love. It’s also the birth­place of the Mar­quis de Sade. Behind the roman­tic post­card facade, there’s some­thing a bit more com­pli­cat­ed going on. In Tui­leries, a short film by Joel and Ethan Coen from the 2006 anthol­o­gy, Paris Je T’Aime, Steve Busce­mi plays a mild-man­nered tourist caught com­plete­ly out of his ele­ment. What tran­spires is a rather bizarre five-minute cul­tur­al les­son they won’t teach you at Berlitz. It’s now added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Tur­tur­ro Reads Ita­lo Calvino’s Ani­mat­ed Fairy Tale

World Cin­e­ma: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Play­ful Homage to Cin­e­ma His­to­ry

RIP Christopher Hitchens: Stephen Fry Pays Tribute, Hitch Rejects the Deathbed Conversion

in Life, Politics, Religion | December 16th, 2011

18 months after being diag­nosed with oesophageal can­cer, the polem­i­cal writer Christo­pher Hitchens has died at the age of 62. His fans began to fear the worst last month when Hitchens, sud­den­ly hos­pi­tal­ized with pneu­mo­nia, could­n’t attend a wide­ly-pub­li­cized debate in Lon­don. The pro­mot­ers of the event, Intel­li­gence², quick­ly turned the debate into a cel­e­bra­tion of Hitchens’ life. Stephen Fry played host, and Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Buck­ley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Mar­tin Amis, James Fen­ton and Sean Penn all paid trib­ute. Above, we’re high­light­ing the poignant video once again.

Also fit­ting­ly, we’re bring­ing back anoth­er clip that fea­tures Hitchens dis­cussing how his strug­gle with can­cer affect­ed his views on the ques­tion of an after­life. “I would say it frac­tion­al­ly increas­es my con­tempt for the false con­so­la­tion ele­ment of reli­gion and my dis­like for the dic­ta­to­r­i­al and total­i­tar­i­an part of it,” he respond­ed. “It’s con­sid­ered per­fect­ly nor­mal in this soci­ety to approach dying peo­ple who you don’t know but who are unbe­liev­ers and say, ‘Now are you gonna change your mind?’ That is con­sid­ered almost a polite ques­tion.” Dur­ing the event taped last Feb­ru­ary (watch the full pro­gram here), Hitchens made his views pret­ty clear: No deathbed con­ver­sion for me, thanks, but it was good of you to ask.

And final­ly we cap things off with a mon­tage of 22 com­ments from Christo­pher Hitchens. When you add them all up, you get some vin­tage Hitchens — every­thing that made him some­times loved, some­times hat­ed but always respect­ed.

If you have nev­er spent time read­ing Hitch, we’re going to rec­om­mend his last piece for Van­i­ty Fair — his reflec­tion on Niet­zsche’s famous line “What­ev­er doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It was pub­lished last week, and it’s quite the coda.

Helen Mirren Tells Us Why Wassily Kandinsky Is Her Favorite Artist (And What Acting & Modern Art Have in Common)

in Art | December 16th, 2011

Russ­ian abstract painter and art the­o­rist Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky was born in Moscow on Decem­ber 16, 1866 (Decem­ber 4 on the Julian cal­en­dar), and raised in Odessa, where he took an ear­ly inter­est in music. As a young man he stud­ied eco­nom­ics and law, but in 1895 his life was for­ev­er changed when he attend­ed a Moscow exhi­bi­tion of paint­ings by the French Impres­sion­ists. Kandin­sky was deeply struck by one of Mon­et’s paint­ings from the series Haystacks at Giverny. He lat­er recalled his epiphany:

That it was a haystack the cat­a­logue informed me. I could not rec­og­nize it. This non-recog­ni­tion was painful to me. I con­sid­ered that the painter had no right to paint indis­tinct­ly. I dul­ly felt that the object of the paint­ing was miss­ing. And I noticed with sur­prise and con­fu­sion that the pic­ture not only gripped me, but impressed itself inerad­i­ca­bly on my mem­o­ry. Paint­ing took on a fairy-tale pow­er and splen­dor.

Kandin­sky quit his job as a law pro­fes­sor and ded­i­cat­ed him­self to paint­ing. He emi­grat­ed, first to France and then to Ger­many, where he moved fur­ther and fur­ther away from fig­u­ra­tive paint­ing. He was among the first to cre­ate works that were com­plete­ly abstract, or non-objec­tive. In his 1910 trea­tise, Con­cern­ing the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, Kandin­sky declares that the ele­ments with­in a paint­ing should not cor­re­spond to any out­er object, but only to the artist’s “inner need.”

In obser­vance of the artist’s 145th birth­day, we present two videos with dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on his work. Above, actress Helen Mir­ren talks with the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art about what Kandin­sky, and art, mean to her. Below, a trio of scholars–Beth Har­ris, Juliana Kreinik and Steven Zucker–discuss Kandin­sky’s 1913 mas­ter­piece, “Com­po­si­tion VII,” for the Khan Acad­e­my’s Smarthis­to­ry series. “Com­po­si­tion VII” was paint­ed by Kandin­sky in Munich over a peri­od of four days–but only after he had made more than 30 prepara­to­ry sketch­es, water­col­ors and oil stud­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent

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Jack­son Pol­lock: Lights, Cam­era, Paint! (1951)

John Berger’s Ways of See­ing: The TV Series

The Godfather Without Brando?: Coppola Explains How It Almost Happened

in Film | December 16th, 2011

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.” Above, Cop­po­la and co-star James Caan explain how the execs were even­tu­al­ly cajoled into chang­ing their minds, and how the clas­sic film fell into place. As you watch this, also keep in mind that Para­mount ini­tial­ly asked two oth­er direc­tors (Ser­gio Leone and then Peter Bog­danovich) to make The God­fa­ther before approach­ing Cop­po­la, plus they lat­er want­ed Robert Red­ford or Ryan O’Neal to play Michael Cor­leone. But Cop­po­la, who threat­ened to quit the pro­duc­tion, got his way and put the rel­a­tive­ly unknown Al Paci­no into the film. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

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