Free Download of A Confederacy of Dunces

in Audio Books, Literature | December 11th, 2009

A quick note: Audi­ble is cur­rent­ly run­ning a nice deal. Click here to get a free down­load of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize win­ning nov­el, A Con­fed­er­a­cy of Dunces. (Move quick­ly, it’s prob­a­bly avail­able for just a short time.) You can also down­load pret­ty much any audio­book you want from Audi­ble, with no strings attached. I’ve includ­ed more info on that stand­ing offer here.

Stream Neil Young’s New Album Online

in Music | December 10th, 2009

A lit­tle some­thing for Neil Young fans. Right now, you can stream online (click and scroll down) his new album, Dreamin’ Man Live ’92. It’s a live per­for­mance of Young’s 1992 album Har­vest Moon, which itself returned to the sounds of Har­vest, Young’s clas­sic 1972 record­ing. A good find by About.com.

Charles Bukowski “Bluebird”

in Literature, Poetry | December 10th, 2009

Get the text here. Thanks @sethharwood!

Great Movie Directors During Wartime: Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, John Huston, Billy Wilder & Their World War II Films

in Film | December 9th, 2009

Frank Capra, Alfred Hitch­cock, Howard Hawks, John Ford and John Hus­ton. They were some of the most impor­tant film­mak­ers dur­ing Hol­ly­wood’s Gold­en Age. And they were also part of “The Great­est Gen­er­a­tion,” the gen­er­a­tion that scraped and strug­gled to bring vic­to­ry to the Allies dur­ing World War II. Like many oth­ers, these direc­tors put com­mer­cial aspi­ra­tions aside for a while, and worked with the gov­ern­ment to pro­duce pro­pa­gan­da films that gal­va­nized sup­port for the war at home. You can find these films host­ed at the Inter­net Archive with­in the Cin­emoc­ra­cy sec­tion, and below we have high­light­ed some of the more impor­tant ones. For many more clas­sic films, don’t for­get to see our long list of Free Movies Online:

• Frank Capra brought us some of Amer­i­ca’s great feel good films: It Hap­pened One Night (1934), Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton (1939), and It’s a Won­der­ful Life (1946). But, once WW II broke out, he was com­mis­sioned by the US gov­ern­ment to direct a sev­en episode series of films called “Why We Fight.” This includ­ed Pre­lude to War, The Nazis Strike, War Comes to Amer­i­ca and oth­ers.
• John Hus­ton — The Mal­tese Fal­con (1941), The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948) — served in the U.S. Army Sig­nal Corps in 1943 and direct­ed an Acad­e­my Award win­ning doc­u­men­tary, Report from the Aleu­tians. The film, which Hus­ton helped nar­rate, fol­lows the dai­ly lives of Amer­i­can sol­diers serv­ing in the Aleut­ian Islands (off the shores of Alas­ka). Hus­ton also direct­ed anoth­er wartime film, The Bat­tle of San Pietro (1945).
• John Ford, famous for his west­erns Stage­coach (1939) and The Searchers (1956) and for his adap­ta­tion of Stein­beck­’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), also got into the act of shoot­ing wartime films, direct­ing The Bat­tle of Mid­way, an account of the Japan­ese attack on Amer­i­can ships at Mid­way. The film uses most­ly authen­tic footage from the bat­tle and is nar­rat­ed by Hen­ry Fon­da (who starred in The Grapes of Wrath). The oth­er notable pro­duc­tion was Decem­ber 7th, a film doc­u­ment­ing the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor.

Of course, it was­n’t just Amer­i­can direc­tors who made these pro­pa­gan­da films. The great Alfred Hitch­cock was the force behind Bon Voy­age and L’aven­ture Mal­gache (1944), two French lan­guage films backed by the British Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion. Both were trib­utes to the French resis­tance move­ment. And then there’s Death Mills (1945), the dis­turb­ing Ger­man-lan­guage doc­u­men­tary direct­ed by Bil­ly Wilder (Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty, Sun­set Boule­vard and Some Like it Hot) that showed Ger­many the hor­rors the Allies encoun­tered when they lib­er­at­ed Nazi exter­mi­na­tion camps. Some of these films can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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!

Hear John Lennon’s 3‑Hour Interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, 1970

in Music | December 8th, 2009

Image by Roy Ker­wood, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The anniver­sary of John Lennon’s death jogged my mem­o­ry, remind­ing me of this lengthy 1970 inter­view. Con­duct­ed by Jann Wen­ner, the founder of Rolling Stone mag­a­zine, this impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion was record­ed short­ly after The Bea­t­les’ bit­ter breakup.

Run­ning over 3 hours, it is one of Lennon’s most exten­sive inter­views, touch­ing not just on the breakup, but also on art and pol­i­tics, drugs, Yoko, pri­mal ther­a­py and more. It’s not always flat­ter­ing, but it gives you a good feel for the man and the great artist.

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!

Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture: Text Here

in Literature | December 8th, 2009

A quick note: Her­ta Müller, who won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, deliv­ered her lec­ture in Stock­holm yes­ter­day. You can now read the full text online; the video should be com­ing soon.

My grand­fa­ther had been a sol­dier in the First World War. He knew what he was talk­ing about when he said, often and embit­tered, in ref­er­ence to his son Matz: When the flags start to flut­ter, com­mon sense slides right into the trum­pet. This warn­ing also applied to the fol­low­ing dic­ta­tor­ship, which I expe­ri­enced. Every day you could see the com­mon sense of the prof­i­teers, both big and lit­tle, slid­ing right into the trum­pet. The trum­pet I decid­ed not to blow.

Would You Pay $3.99 for a Short Story?

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | December 7th, 2009

The Atlantic Month­ly and Amazon/Kindle are hop­ing so…

PS Note that the “Best­sellers in Kin­dle” (look in the right col­umn of linked page) all cur­rent­ly cost $0.00.

The World’s Smallest Writing Ever. Going Subatomic at Stanford.

in Science, Stanford | December 7th, 2009

Vis­it Stan­ford’s YouTube Chan­nel here.

Google to Provide Virtual Tours of 19 World Heritage Sites

in Google, History | December 5th, 2009

On Fri­day, I men­tioned that you can now vis­it the Roman ruins at Pom­peii, Stone­henge and Ver­sailles via Google Street View. What I did­n’t real­ize is that this looks to be part of a larg­er ini­tia­tive, a larg­er attempt to pro­vide dig­i­tal tours of impor­tant world her­itage sites. Accord­ing to this UNESCO announce­ment, 19 his­tor­i­cal sites will be includ­ed, and I’ve list­ed them below. The video above offers more details.

“Spain: San­ti­a­go de Com­postela (Old Town); Old Town of Cáceres; His­toric Walled Town of Cuen­ca; Old City of Sala­man­ca; Old Town of Ávi­la with its Extra-Muros Church­es; Old Town of Segovia and its Aque­duct; His­toric City of Tole­do France: Palace and Park of Ver­sailles; Paris, Banks of the Seine Italy: Archae­o­log­i­cal Areas of Pom­pei, Her­cu­la­neum and Torre Annun­zi­a­ta; His­toric Cen­tre of Siena; His­toric Cen­tre of Urbino; His­toric Cen­tre of San Gimignano Nether­lands: Mill Net­work at Kinderdijk-Elshout Czech Repub­lic: Holy Trin­i­ty Col­umn in Olo­mouc; His­toric Cen­tre of Český Krumlov; His­toric Cen­tre of Prague Unit­ed King­dom: Stone­henge, Ave­bury and Asso­ci­at­ed Sites; Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens, Kew”

U. Michigan iPhone Orchestra

in Music | December 4th, 2009

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan now offers a course designed to help stu­dents turn their iPhones into musi­cal instru­ments. The video above shows footage from one of their prac­tice ses­sions held in Novem­ber. A final con­cert will be held on Decem­ber 9. You can read more about this project here. Also see Stan­ford stu­dents play­ing the iPhone here.

via TUAW.com