J.R.R. Tolkien Reads From The Two Towers, the Second Book of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

in Literature | July 30th, 2013

Tolkien fans, tell me: were you dis­ap­point­ed with the first install­ment of Peter Jackson’s Hob­bit film tril­o­gy? Did you find it as lum­ber­ing and clum­sy as a trio of cock­ney trolls, or as ugly as a bug-eyed and be-wat­tled gob­lin king? Pin­ing away for the days when The Lord of the Rings films were the go-to pop-cul­ture fan­ta­sy references—before, say, Twi­light harshed that buzz? Well, I could rec­om­mend to you some of the fan-made films that stepped in to fill the LOTR void in recent years. There’s the not-very-good Born of Hope and the very much bet­ter The Hunt for Gol­lum. I’ve seen them both because, well…. I just need­ed to is all.

But there is anoth­er way. I know it’s per­verse, pos­si­bly sub­ver­sive, and maybe, just maybe, even dan­ger­ous. Turn off the com­put­er and open the books up again—your yel­lowed, crumbly paper­backs, your Barnes & Noble econ­o­my re-issue edi­tions (I won’t judge), hell, turn on the Kin­dle. Savor the lan­guages Tolkien invent­ed and the Eng­lish that he re-invent­ed, immerse your­self in a lit­er­ary world at once utter­ly fan­tas­tic and per­fect­ly moral­ly seri­ous. Do that, and your crav­ing for spec­ta­cle may van­ish, maybe replaced by a crav­ing for more Tolkien—like his retelling of events in the Norse Edda saga in his Leg­end of Sig­urd and Gudrun.

And while you’re read­ing up on that one, lis­ten to the audio above of Tolkien him­self read­ing from Chap­ter IV of The Two Tow­ers. The rich­ness of his Eng­lish voice makes me wish we had record­ings of him read­ing all three nov­els, but we must work with what we’ve got, and it is good. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Now I Know My LSD ABCs: A Trippy Animation of the Alphabet

in Animation, Creativity, Design, English Language, Music | July 29th, 2013

Many inter­ests have spurred cre­ative alpha­bet col­lec­tions: New York City. Geek­dom. Food snob­bery. Child­hood calami­ty. And now?

Actu­al­ly, LSD ABC, defies neat cat­e­go­riza­tion. Beyond the fact that they’re both spelled out using let­ters, what could Dim Sum pos­si­bly have in com­mon with VHS? Not much pri­or serv­ing as inspi­ra­tional prompts for graph­ic design­ers Lau­rent & Françoise (oth­er­wise known as Lau­ra Sicouri and Kadavre Exquis). Now they’re 1/13th of a delight­ful­ly twist­ed ani­mat­ed whole, one of those dead­line-free pet projects that goes on to spawn a lim­it­ed edi­tion vinyl album.

The duo is prone to fetishiz­ing the anachro­nis­tic tech­nolo­gies of the recent past, in a man­ner slight­ly more ele­gant than come­di­ans Tim Hei­deck­er and Eric Ware­heim. They toss in a foot sim­i­lar to the one Ter­ry Gilliam used to such effect on Mon­ty Python. H and S are sub­ject­ed to the sort of indig­ni­ties Wile E. Coy­ote used to suf­fer at the hands of the Road Run­ner. It’s all tied togeth­er with AT&T Lab’s decid­ed­ly unnat­ur­al-sound­ing Nat­ur­al Voice text-to-speech nar­ra­tion.

While it’s dif­fi­cult to pick a favorite from such a mind bend­ing array, I’m going to have to go with P…for Pet Piano, natch. You?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is stymied by the lack of Ys on cer­tain Euro­pean key­boards. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Are the Rich Jerks? See the Science

in Economics, Psychology, UC Berkeley | July 24th, 2013

F. Scott Fitzger­ald was right. The rich real­ly are dif­fer­ent from you or me. They’re more like­ly to behave uneth­i­cal­ly.

That’s the find­ing of a group of stud­ies by researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. The research shows that peo­ple of high­er socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus are more like­ly to break traf­fic laws, lie in nego­ti­a­tions, take val­ued goods from oth­ers, and cheat to increase chances of win­ning a prize. The result­ing paper, “High­er Social Class Pre­dicts Increased Uneth­i­cal Behav­ior,” [PDF] was pub­lished last year in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

Per­haps most sur­pris­ing, as this sto­ry by PBS New­sHour eco­nom­ics reporter Paul Sol­man shows, is that the ten­den­cy for uneth­i­cal behav­ior appears not only in peo­ple who are actu­al­ly rich, but in those who are manip­u­lat­ed into feel­ing that they are rich. As UC Berke­ley social psy­chol­o­gist Paul Piff says, the results are sta­tis­ti­cal in nature but the trend is clear. “While hav­ing mon­ey does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make any­body any­thing,” Piff told New York mag­a­zine, “the rich are way more like­ly to exhib­it char­ac­ter­is­tics that we would stereo­typ­i­cal­ly asso­ciate with, say, ass­holes.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Video: Bob Marley Plays a Soccer Match in Brazil, 1980

in Music, Sports | July 23rd, 2013

“Foot­ball is a whole skill to itself. A whole world. A whole uni­verse to itself. Me love it because you have to be skill­ful to play it! Free­dom! Foot­ball is free­dom.”

Bob Mar­ley spoke those lines in 1979, two years before his life was cut short by melanoma, reveal­ing his pas­sion for the world’s game, or what we call “soc­cer” here in Amer­i­ca. Casu­al fans might not know this, but Mar­ley fol­lowed Brazil­ian foot­ball close­ly, revered Pele, made the sport part of his dai­ly rou­tine, and when he trav­eled to Rio de Janeiro in 1980, he took part in a now leg­endary match on musi­cian Chico Buarque’s pri­vate pitch. Team A con­sist­ed of Mar­ley, Junior Mar­vin (mem­ber of the Wail­ers), Paulo César Caju (mem­ber of the Brazil 1970 squad), Toquin­ho (Brazil­ian musi­cian), Chico Buar­que and Jacob Miller (lead singer of Inner Cir­cle). Team B fea­tured Alceu Valença (Brazil­ian musi­cian), Chicão (mem­ber of Jorge Ben’s band) and four staff mem­bers from Island Records, recalls Russ Slater in Sounds and Colours. The short clip above shows Mar­ley scor­ing a goal, despite being well into his bat­tle with melanoma.

In the sec­ond clip above, you can watch footage of Mar­ley drib­bling the ball a lit­tle more. At Retro­naut, you’ll find umpteen pho­tos of Mar­ley in his foot­ball glo­ry.

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:

Watch “The Secret Tour­na­ment” & “The Rematch,” Ter­ry Gilliam’s Star-Stud­ded Soc­cer Ads for Nike

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match: The Greeks v. the Ger­mans

Amaz­ing Flip­book Ani­ma­tion Shows Off the Skills of Ronald­in­ho

The Way Too Philosophical Pop Song

in Comedy, Music, Philosophy | July 23rd, 2013

Sec­ond City has giv­en us many great improv com­e­dy sketch­es and come­di­ans over the decades … and now com­ic videos on YouTube too. From this video col­lec­tion comes the “Too Philo­soph­i­cal Pop Song,” whose open­ing lines resem­ble the hack­neyed lyrics of so many con­tem­po­rary pop tunes.

We’ve got to be young while we live, and live while we are young.
We’ve got to live for tonight because tomor­row won’t come.

We’ve all heard these exis­ten­tial clichés before, right? But then, the “Too Philo­soph­i­cal Pop Song” gets, well, too philo­soph­i­cal, swerv­ing dark­ly of course.

We have to par­ty like we’ll nev­er see tomor­row, there­by destroy­ing the intrin­sic val­ue of this moment and our­selves.
The cer­tain­ty of death inval­i­dates our actions tonight.
We’re thrown into this uni­verse with no pur­pose, com­pelled to fab­ri­cate mean­ing.
There is no good, there is no right, and our morals are craft­ed out of rea­son.

Makes it a lit­tle hard to get your groove on … unless you’re a UVA grad stu­dent or one of those heady guys at Par­tial­lyEx­am­inedLife. Don’t miss their pod­cast.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Rap­ping About Sci­ence: Watch High School Senior Jabari John­son Talk Physics with Poet­ic Lyrics

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Watch Pitch Tar Finally Drip in One of World’s Oldest, Slowest-Moving Experiments

in Physics | July 22nd, 2013

Let’s take a lit­tle break from our fast-mov­ing world and watch one of the world’s old­est and slow­est-mov­ing exper­i­ments in action. Begun in Octo­ber 1944 at Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin’s School of Physics, the Tar Drop exper­i­ment has attempt­ed to mea­sure the vis­cos­i­ty of pitch tar, a poly­mer that seems sol­id at room tem­per­a­ture. The goal of the exper­i­ment? To demon­strate that pitch tar actu­al­ly flows and to cap­ture a drop falling from a fun­nel — some­thing that hap­pens about once a decade. Above, you can watch a time­lapse video of all the excit­ing action. It marks the first time a pitch drop has ever been cap­tured on film.

It’s worth not­ing that the The Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land has its own Pitch Drop Exper­i­ment going. It start­ed back in 1927. And it’s cur­rent­ly list­ed in the Guin­ness Book of World Records as the world’s longest-run­ning lab­o­ra­to­ry exper­i­ment.

In the seg­ment below, Radi­o­lab offers a primer on the famous exper­i­ment.

via CNET

Richard Wright Stars as Bigger Thomas in a 1951 Screen Test for Native Son

in English Language, Film, Literature | July 22nd, 2013

Stick to what you know goes the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. Author Richard Wright won acclaim doc­u­ment­ing the African-Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the 30’s and 40’s. Lit­er­ary stand­ing in the bag, he could have explored any num­ber of avenues through his writ­ing, or cho­sen to delve deep­er into the rich ter­ri­to­ry from which his career had been mined.

Or, you know, he could’ve starred in a 1951 film adap­ta­tion of Native Son, his best sell­ing Book of the Month Club selec­tion.

Which only real­ly counts as stick­ing with what one knows when one has the act­ing chops to back it up —some­thing the 40 year old Wright, play­ing a char­ac­ter 20 years younger than him­self, did not. It does­n’t help that the peri­od dia­logue sounds stilt­ed to mod­ern ears, and Buenos Aires makes a bizarre geo­graph­ic sub­sti­tute for the orig­i­nal’s Chica­go loca­tion. In the age of the dig­i­tal con­nec­tion, his turn in the lit­tle seen pro­duc­tion assumed train wreck sta­tus.

A cur­so­ry online search reveals a long line of ama­teur crit­ics bust­ing on Wright’s ulti­mate­ly ill-advised cel­lu­loid for­ay. Let us come at things from a slight­ly adjust­ed angle. Most of us have seen, if not been, an imag­i­na­tive child at play, whis­per­ing invent­ed lines for favorite dolls and action fig­ures’ spur of the moment sce­nar­ios.

Could­n’t we hold that that is what Wright is up to here? He may not be the most con­vinc­ing han­dling of a prop gun, but he still bests your aver­age 7‑year-old believ­er. Those will­ing to over­look an untrained actor’s less-than-Oscar inter­pre­ta­tion-cal­iber might be reward­ed with insight…

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing Tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can Folk Song “Mule on the Mount” (1939)

James Bald­win Bests William F. Buck­ley in 1965 Debate at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Ralph Elli­son Reads from His Nov­el-in-Progress, June­teenth, in Rare Video Footage (1966)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day remem­bers the 80’s adap­ta­tion, star­ring Oprah Win­frey. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Watch 25 Alfred Hitchcock Trailers, Exciting Films in Their Own Right

in Film | July 19th, 2013

“Mur­der!” exclaims the first word in the trail­er above. “Mys­tery!!” the next con­tin­ues. “Treach­ery!!! Romance!!!!” Before these claims can rack up a fifth excla­ma­tion point, we learn the plight of the pro­tag­o­nist — “hound­ed by spies,” “hunt­ed by police,” and “dou­ble-crossed by the woman he loves.” The film? Alfred Hitch­cock­’s The 39 Steps, (watch free online here) his 1935 British thriller star­ring Robert Donat and Madeleine Car­roll. The film has tak­en so many crit­i­cal lau­rels since its release that the way this trail­er bal­ly­hoos it like a pot­boil­er comes as a shock. “It STARTS with a MURDER,” “and ENDS in a THRILL” — not to men­tion a cer­tain cin­e­mat­ic craft in between.

If you sim­ply let the video run, it will treat you to 24 more trail­ers in a row for var­i­ous Hitch­cock fea­tures, from 1940’s For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent, “the thrill spec­ta­cle of the year,” to 1946’s Noto­ri­ous, “dar­ing­ly direct­ed by that mas­ter of sus­pense,” to 1976’s Fam­i­ly Plot, by which point breath­less onscreen text had gone out of style, replaced by sil­ly gags.  These come cour­tesy of archive.org, which main­tains an Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­er Col­lec­tion. Their rep­e­ti­tious promis­es of thrills, sus­pense, mys­tery, and intrigue of all stripes reminds us that, for all his pure film­mak­ing skill, Hitch­cock also act­ed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as his own best sales­man: or rather, his pic­tures, pre­sent­ed in these tan­ta­liz­ing con­densed forms, sell them­selves. Can we assume that, like every­thing else about a Hitch­cock movie, this did­n’t hap­pen by chance?

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:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Making of a Steinway Grand Piano, From Start to Finish

in Music | July 17th, 2013

Hen­ry Engel­hard Stein­way, a Ger­man immi­grant, found­ed Stein­way & Sons in 1853, in a loft locat­ed at 85 Var­ick Street in New York City. With­in a decade, Stein­way pianos were win­ning major awards and find­ing them­selves in high demand. By 1900, fac­to­ries in New York and Ham­burg, Ger­many were pro­duc­ing 3,500 hand-craft­ed pianos per year, rough­ly the same num­ber being made today. Then, as now, each Stein­way grand piano took a year to build, and it involved the work of many skilled crafts­peo­ple.

Sev­er­al decades ago, John H. Stein­way (the great-grand­son of Hen­ry E. Stein­way) nar­rat­ed an audio tour of the New York fac­to­ry, where he described the gen­er­a­tions-old process of mak­ing a Stein­way grand piano.

In 2011 Ben Niles, the pro­duc­er behind the doc­u­men­tary film Note by Note, synced the audio tour with present-day footage of the Stein­way fac­to­ry, giv­ing us a glimpse of what goes into mak­ing the piano played by Arthur Rubin­stein in the vin­tage footage below. Here Rubin­stein plays an excerpt from “Rhap­sody on a Theme of Pagani­ni” by Sergei Rach­mani­noff.

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:

What Does the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Per­for­mance on a 1720 Cristo­fori Piano

Ital­ian Pianist Ludovi­co Ein­au­di Plays a Grand Piano While Float­ing in the Mid­dle of the Arc­tic Ocean

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

Watch a Whimsical Animation of Italo Calvino’s Short Story “The Distance of the Moon”

in Animation, Literature | July 15th, 2013

“What was Ita­lo Calvi­no?,” asks sci-fi doyenne Ursu­la K. Le Guin in a Guardian review of the Ital­ian author’s col­lec­tion of short sto­ries Cos­mi­comics. “A pre­post­mod­ernist? Maybe it’s time to dis­pense with mod­ernism and all its pre­fix­es.” Calvi­no cer­tain­ly exists in a cat­e­go­ry all of his own. In short nov­els like Invis­i­ble Cities and his numer­ous sto­ry col­lec­tions, the “prepostmodernist”—or whatever—created a voice as won­drous and indi­vid­ual as his con­tem­po­rary, Borges. Calvi­no coined his own genre, which he called “Cos­mi­comics,” and which Le Guin describes as “a sub­species of sci­ence fic­tion [which] con­sists typ­i­cal­ly of the state­ment of a sci­en­tif­ic hypoth­e­sis (most­ly gen­uine, though some­times not cur­rent­ly accept­ed) which sets the stage for a nar­ra­tive, in which the nar­ra­tor is usu­al­ly a per­son called Qfwfq.”

One of the sto­ries from the col­lec­tion, “The Dis­tance of the Moon,” gets an ani­mat­ed treat­ment in the video above, scored by Erik Satie’s “Gnossi­enne No. 1.” The fan­tas­tic sto­ry, nar­rat­ed by the mys­te­ri­ous Qfwfq, also includes char­ac­ters like Cap­tain Vhd Vhd and Xlth­lx, and, like all of Calvino’s work, it com­bines a child-like won­der with his play­ful, myth­ic imag­i­na­tion and sci­en­tif­ic intel­li­gence. The ani­ma­tion, nar­rat­ed in Hebrew with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trates the strange whim­sy of the sto­ry with stop-motion cut-outs. And in the audio above, you can hear actor Liev Schreiber explain the sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry behind Calvino’s sto­ry, then read the sto­ry itself. The read­ing took place at a live event host­ed by Radi­o­lab and orig­i­nal­ly aired on WNYC and PRI’s show “Select­ed Shorts.”

And if this leaves you desir­ing more ani­mat­ed Calvi­no, then don’t miss our pre­vi­ous post: John Tur­tur­ro Reads Ita­lo Calvino’s Ani­mat­ed Fairy Tale, The False Grand­moth­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Piotr Dumala’s Won­der­ful Ani­ma­tions of Lit­er­ary Works by Kaf­ka and Dos­to­evsky

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, Ani­mat­ed in Two Min­utes

Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea Ani­mat­ed Not Once, But Twice

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness