Watch Isabella Rossellini Embody the Animal Kingdom’s Most Shocking Maternal Instincts in Mammas

in Biology, Comedy, K-12, Science | May 13th, 2013

Moth­er’s Day can elic­it com­pli­cat­ed emo­tions in the human ani­mal. Not so Moth­er Ham­ster. While you were out to brunch, she was mat­ter-of-fact­ly devour­ing the run­ti­est of her lit­ter. And not because he failed to present her with a bou­quet and flow­ery card. “It’s a good morsel to recoup some of the vit­a­mins and pro­tein that are lost dur­ing child­birth,” she explains with a shrug.

This heart­warm­ing vignette is but one of the rev­e­la­tions in Mam­mas, the lat­est web series from the inquis­i­tive and extreme­ly game Isabel­la Rosselli­ni. Hav­ing embod­ied a vari­ety of insects, arach­nids, and marine life in the sci­ence-based Green Porno and its fol­low-up Seduce Me, the moth­er of two is cur­rent­ly suit­ing up to play some of the Ani­mal King­dom’s most noto­ri­ous moth­ers, from the oppor­tunis­tic Cuck­oo to the self-sac­ri­fic­ing Aus­tralian sub­so­cial crab spi­der (Diaea ergan­dros).

The com­i­cal­ly inven­tive cos­tumes are an added bonus, par­tic­u­lar­ly for any human moth­er (or father) with an aver­sion to dress­ing their ani­mal-lov­ing off­spring in store bought dis­guis­es, come Hal­loween. Catch the com­plete series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wild King­dom: Brought to You by Mutu­al of Oma­ha (and YouTube)

Film­ing a Sprint­ing Chee­tah at 1,200 Frames Per Sec­ond

Rainn Wil­son Talks About Life’s Big Ques­tions in His Web Series Meta­phys­i­cal Milk­shake

Ayun Hal­l­i­day thinks Isabel­la Rosselli­ni is the bee’s knees, espe­cial­ly when her glass legs are filled with beer. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Record-a-Poem for Mother’s Day

in Poetry | May 11th, 2013

Moth­er’s Day is tomor­row, and you haven’t got­ten Mom a present yet. No wor­ries, head over to poetryfoundation.org, where you can find a selec­tion of Moth­er’s Day poems — or search for your own. You can even fol­low the direc­tions here to join the Record-a-Poem group on Sound­cloud and then share your poem with Mom. It’ll be bet­ter than any Hall­mark card, that’s for sure.

Kristin Gecan is the media asso­ciate at the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion, which is the pub­lish­er of Poet­ry mag­a­zine and an inde­pen­dent lit­er­ary orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to a vig­or­ous pres­ence for poet­ry in our cul­ture.

How Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive Will Preserve the Infinite Information on the Web

in Archives, Internet Archive, Technology, TED Talks, Web/Tech | May 11th, 2013

Brew­ster Kahle is an unas­sum­ing man. But as an inter­net pio­neer and dig­i­tal librar­i­an, he may right­ly be called a found­ing father of the Open Cul­ture ethos. In 1996, Kahle began work on the Inter­net Archive, a tremen­dous­ly impor­tant project that acts as a safe­ty net for the mem­o­ry hole prob­lem of Inter­net pub­lish­ing. Kahle devel­oped tech­nol­o­gy that finds and aggre­gates as much of the inter­net as it is able in his mas­sive dig­i­tal library.

Along with the archive, which Open Cul­ture has drawn from many a time, comes Kahle’s “Way­back Machine,” named for the time-trav­el­ing device in a Rocky and Bull­win­kle seg­ment fea­tur­ing the genius dog Mr. Peabody and his pet boy Sher­man (the car­toon spelled it as an acronym: WABAC). The “Way­back Machine,” as you prob­a­bly know, logs pre­vi­ous ver­sions of web­sites, hold­ing on to the web’s past like clas­sic paper libraries hold on to an author’s papers. (Here’s what we looked like in 2006.)

In the ani­mat­ed adven­tures of Peabody and Sher­man, the Way­back Machine was a mon­strous con­trap­tion that occu­pied half of Peabody’s den. And while we often think of Inter­net space as lim­it­less and dis­em­bod­ied, Kahle’s Inter­net Archive is also phys­i­cal­ly housed, in a for­mer Chris­t­ian Sci­ence church now lined with tow­er­ing servers that store dig­i­tized books, music, film and oth­er media for free access. It’s an impres­sive space for an impres­sive project that will like­ly expand past its phys­i­cal bound­aries. As Kahle says above, “it turns out there is no end; the web is, in fact, infi­nite.”

Kahle is deeply invest­ed in data. The chal­lenges of main­tain­ing the Inter­net Archive are immense, includ­ing trans­lat­ing old, unplayable for­mats to new ones. But what Kahle calls the great­est chal­lenge is the peren­ni­al threat to all libraries: “they burn.” And he’s com­mit­ted to design­ing for that even­tu­al­i­ty by mak­ing copies of the archive and dis­trib­ut­ing them around the world. If you’re inter­est­ed in what moti­vates Kahle, you should watch his 2007 TED talk above. He frames the busi­ness of archiv­ing the inter­net as one of mak­ing avail­able “the best we have to offer” to suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. “If we don’t do that,” Kahle warns, “we’re going to get the gen­er­a­tion we deserve.” It’s a warn­ing worth heed­ing, I think.

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:

10 Clas­sic Films from the Inter­net Archive

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive, Explored by the New York­er

Kids (and Less Savvy Mar­keters) Imag­ine the Inter­net in 1995

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

Listen to The John Bonham Story, a Radio Show Hosted by Dave Grohl

in Music, Radio | May 10th, 2013

Rock and roll bands do have a ten­den­cy to burn through drum­mers. The phe­nom­e­non has been so notice­able over the years that Spinal Tap did a mem­o­rable par­o­dy of it. But when Led Zep­pelin’s pow­er­house of a drum­mer John Bon­ham died unex­pect­ed­ly at the age of 32 on Sep­tem­ber 25, 1980, there would be no replac­ing him. Bon­ham’s dis­tinc­tive play­ing was such an inte­gral part of the Led Zep­pelin sound that it was hard to imag­ine any­one else fill­ing his shoes. A few months after his death, the drum­mer’s grief-strick­en band­mates issued a state­ment announc­ing the break-up of the group. With­out Bon­ham, they said, “we could not con­tin­ue as we were.”

The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, first broad­cast on BBC radio in 2010, is an engag­ing one-hour pro­gram host­ed by Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl, for­mer drum­mer of Nir­vana and a life­long fan of Bon­ham. The show (above, in its entire­ty) includes musi­cal per­for­mances, many of them rare, along with inter­views of the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Led Zeppelin–Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones–and oth­ers who knew Bon­ham well, like Vanil­la Fudge drum­mer Carmine Appice, Bad Com­pa­ny singer Paul Rodgers, Bon­ham’s younger sis­ter Deb­o­rah and his son Jason. The John Bon­ham Sto­ry is a nice­ly pro­duced pro­gram, a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the life and music of the man who is wide­ly thought of as the quin­tes­sen­tial rock and roll drum­mer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Bon­ham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zep­pelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Kash­mir”

Steven Soderbergh Writes Twitter Novella After His Retirement From Filmmaking

in Film, Literature, Twitter | May 8th, 2013

How does one read Twit­ter lit­er­a­ture? Your thoughts are as good as mine. I sup­pose I’ll have to learn or end up in the ash heap of old-timey turn­ers of pages. Because Twit Lit is upon us, man­i­fest­ed by Jen­nifer Egan and now, under the twit­ter han­dle “Bitchu­a­tion,” by mer­cu­r­ial film­mak­er Steven Soder­bergh. Hav­ing announced his retire­ment from film­mak­ing in 2011, Soder­bergh made anoth­er announce­ment at the San Fran­cis­co Film Fes­ti­val on the State of Cin­e­ma (video above, tran­script here). The fol­low­ing day, Soderbergh’s Twit­ter novel­la Glue began with the lacon­ic April 28 tweet “I will now attempt to tweet a novel­la called GLUE.”

Some unique fea­tures of Twit Lit: Soder­bergh can twit­pic an estab­lish­ing shot—which he does, of Ams­ter­dam—along with pics of oth­er loca­tions (or just vague­ly sug­ges­tive images). The indi­vid­ual tweets often read like Horse ebooks absur­di­ties. He’s up to Chap­ter Four­teen now. The lat­er tweets repli­cate screen­play dia­logue, with copi­ous inser­tions of BEAT to sig­ni­fy dra­mat­ic paus­es. Tak­en togeth­er, I sup­pose there’s coher­ence, though as I admit­ted above, I have not mas­tered the abil­i­ty to pull tweets togeth­er into longer text in my mind, Twit­ter being where I go when my atten­tion span is spent.

I leave it to savvi­er, more patient read­ers to judge the suc­cess of Soderbergh’s attempt. It may suf­fice to say that his pes­simism about the state of film does not apply to Twit­ter Lit. Or maybe he’s just pass­ing time before he makes movies again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read, Hear, and See Tweet­ed Four Sto­ries by Jen­nifer Egan, Author of A Vis­it from the Goon Squad

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

Revisit Martin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Storyboards for Taxi Driver

in Film | May 6th, 2013

Any­one who’s watched Mar­tin Scors­ese’s Taxi Dri­ver sure­ly remem­bers, or has remained haunt­ed by, many images from the film, most of which — if not all— began as hum­ble pen­cil draw­ings. Like many major motion pic­tures, Taxi Dri­ver began not just as a script but also as a sto­ry­board, the piece of com­ic book-like sequen­tial art film­mak­ers use to plan shots, cam­era move­ments, and char­ac­ter place­ments. Some direc­tors, like Rid­ley Scott, spend time craft­ing detailed sto­ry­boards, while oth­ers, like the thor­ough­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al Wern­er Her­zog, don’t use them at all. Scors­ese falls some­where in between, sketch­ing out sto­ry­board pan­els that feel more like brief notes to him­self and his clos­est col­lab­o­ra­tors. You can see them along­side the Taxi Dri­ver scenes they pro­duced in the video above.

“Sto­ry­boards express what I want to com­mu­ni­cate,” Scors­ese told Phaidon in 2011 for an arti­cle on the exhi­bi­tion “Between Film and Art: Sto­ry­boards from Hitch­cock to Spiel­berg.” “They show how I would imag­ine a scene and how it should move to the next.” And the effect on his process of using as seem­ing­ly flim­sy a tool as a pen­cil? “The pen­cil line leaves lit­tle impres­sion on the paper, so if the sto­ry­board is pho­to­copied it los­es some­thing. I refer back to my orig­i­nal draw­ings in order for me to con­jure up the idea I had when I saw the pen­cil line made.” Every film­mak­er has their own way of doing things, and as you can see when the video lines up these pen­cil draw­ings with (mil­lions of dol­lars lat­er) the fin­ished sequences, Scors­ese’s method gets results. “These sto­ry­boards are not the only means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for what I imag­ine,” the direc­tor adds at the arti­cle’s end, “but they are the point where I begin.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Mar­tin Scors­ese Presents The Blues: A Film Trib­ute to America’s Great Musi­cal Tra­di­tion

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

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.

Listen to Recordings of Allen Ginsberg & Other Poets on Phone-a-Poem, the 1970s Poetry Hotline

in Harvard, Poetry | May 2nd, 2013

Much of what we once used the tele­phone for, we now use the inter­net for. Con­verse­ly, some tasks to which the inter­net now seems per­fect­ly suit­ed were once per­formed, imper­fect­ly, through the phone. Take the case of hear­ing poet­ry read aloud. Today, online poet­ry resources are read­i­ly avail­able; you can hear a vari­ety of poets read­ing their work with a few well-direct­ed clicks of the mouse (see our list below). But in 1976, you’d have had to rely on Phone-a-Poem. Oper­at­ed out of Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts by poet Peter Pay­ack, the hot­line offered read­ings by his well-known col­leagues, includ­ing Allen Gins­berg, Denise Lev­er­tov, Don­ald Hall, Charles Bern­stein, For­rest Gan­der, and Anne Wald­man.

Pay­ack mailed these famous poets blank cas­settes to fill with poems and then return; into Pay­ack­’s answer­ing machine the tapes would go for eager dialers to hear auto­mat­i­cal­ly played back. “I gave the aver­age per­son a chance to hear a poem, and if they didn’t like it, they could just hang up,” Pay­ack said to the Har­vard Gazette’s Col­in Man­ning. “Usu­al­ly, if you want­ed to hear the poet’s voice you had to go to poet­ry read­ings, which can be intim­i­dat­ing. But this allowed peo­ple to hear the poet’s voice in their own home, so it wouldn’t be intim­i­dat­ing.” Phone-a-Poem went out of com­mis­sion in 2001, but after a recent exhi­bi­tion of Pay­ack­’s cas­settes at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, you can still hear its poems toll free on, yes, the inter­net, through the playlist embed­ded above.

H/T via @kirstinbutler; image via Har­vard Gazette

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl

Sylvia Plath Reads “Dad­dy”

Rare 1930s Audio: W.B. Yeats Reads Four of His Poems

“PoemTalk” Pod­cast, Where Impre­sario Al Fil­reis Hosts Live­ly Chats on Mod­ern Poet­ry

Bill Mur­ray Reads Wal­lace Stevens Poems — “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts”

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.

John Cage Plays Amplified Cacti and Plant Materials with a Feather (1984)

in Music | May 2nd, 2013

On Jan­u­ary 1, 1984, 25 mil­lion view­ers tuned in to watch Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell!, a live satel­lite pro­gram cre­at­ed by the Kore­an-born video artist, Nam June Paik. Accord­ing to reports in The New York Times, Paik cre­at­ed the pro­gram with the hope of prov­ing that tele­vi­sion could be “an instru­ment for inter­na­tion­al under­stand­ing rather than an omi­nous means of thought con­trol,” as George Orwell warned in 1984. And Paik made his pitch with the help of names you’ll rec­og­nize from the 1980s cul­tur­al scene (assum­ing your mem­o­ry goes back that far) — Peter Gabriel, Lau­rie Ander­son, George Plimp­ton, Oin­go Boin­go, Philip Glass, the Thomp­son Twins, Mer­ce Cun­ning­ham and Allen Gins­berg.

Above, we’re fea­tur­ing one mem­o­rable per­for­mance from Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell!, which aired on PBS sta­tions across the US: the avant-garde com­pos­er John Cage play­ing ampli­fied cac­ti and plant mate­ri­als with noth­ing but a feath­er. Joined on stage by fel­low com­pos­er Take­hisa Kosu­gi, Cage per­forms an impro­vi­sa­tion that could have accom­pa­nied a Mer­ce Cun­ning­ham dance. Mean­while, George Plimp­ton, a founder of The Paris Review and the host of Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell!, pro­vides some nar­ra­tion.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Unbound: A New Dig­i­tal Archive Pre­sent­ed by The New York Pub­lic Library

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

The Con­tro­ver­sial Sounds of Silence: John Cage’s 4’33″ Per­formed by the BBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

The Finland Wartime Photo Archive: 160,000 Images From World War II Now Online

in Archives, History, Photography | May 1st, 2013

From the The Finnish Defence Forces comes the Finnish Wartime Pho­to­graph Archive, a col­lec­tion of 160,000 pho­tographs tak­en dur­ing World War II when Fin­land fought to free itself from Nazi Ger­many and the Sovi­et Union. Pre­served in their orig­i­nal state, the pic­tures “por­tray life on the home front, ruins from bomb­ings, the war indus­try and events that hap­pened behind the front lines.” As you can imag­ine, some of the pho­tos can be dis­turb­ing.

On a brighter note, let me add this. You can down­load each and every pho­to, and use them for edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es. The archive only asks that you give prop­er attri­bu­tion by men­tion­ing “SA-kuva” as the source. And, indeed, “SA-kuva” should be giv­en cred­it for the image above.

You can enter the com­plete archive here.

via Petapix­el

Steven Spielberg’s Obama, Starring Daniel Day Lewis as the President

in Comedy, Film | April 30th, 2013

Sarah Palin did­n’t like the 2013 White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner. In a cranky tweet, she wrote: “That #WHCD was pathet­ic. The rest of Amer­i­ca is out there work­ing our ass­es off while these DC ass­clowns throw them­selves a #nerd­prom.” But I have to dis­agree with Amer­i­ca’s most dis­tin­guished half-term gov­er­nor. Some­where in Wash­ing­ton, a hard-work­ing writer imag­ined Barack Oba­ma play­ing Daniel Day Lewis play­ing Barack Oba­ma and had the gump­tion to fol­low the joke entire­ly through. Who­ev­er’s respon­si­ble for real­iz­ing that com­ic moment, we salute you.

Spiel­berg’s Oba­ma aired dur­ing the Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner. You can watch Conan O’Brien’s full com­e­dy rou­tine at the WHCD here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Spiel­berg on the Genius of Stan­ley Kubrick

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

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

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator