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in | June 4th, 2012

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The Ghosts of Père Lachaise

in Animation, Music | June 3rd, 2012

Père Lachaise — it’s the ceme­tery of the celebri­ties in Paris. Jim Mor­ri­son, Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, Balzac, Proust, Delacroix, Molière, Yves Mon­tand, and Edith Piaf are all buried there. (Vis­it each grave with this vir­tu­al tour.) So, too, is Frédéric Chopin, who gets chan­neled in this short ani­mat­ed film by Guil­laume Rio and Antoine Colomb. Enjoy.

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Breathdeath by Stan Vanderbeek (1963)

in | June 1st, 2012

Dur­ing the mid-1950s, Stan Van­der­beek began shoot­ing sur­re­al­ist col­lage films that, as NPR put it, “used clip­pings from mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers to cre­ate whim­si­cal but point­ed com­men­tary.” If you think this sounds famil­iar, you’re right. It’s pre­cise­ly this approach that sur­faces lat­er in Ter­ry Gilliam’s own work. And if one film pro­vid­ed par­tic­u­lar inspi­ra­tion, it was Vanderbeek’s 1963 film Breathdeath.

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!

Red Hot Riding Hood: A Landmark Animated Film by Tex Avery

in | June 1st, 2012

Tex Avery pro­duced car­toons dur­ing the Gold­en Age of Hol­ly­wood ani­ma­tion, most­ly for Warn­er Bros. and Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er stu­dios, and cre­at­ed some mem­o­rable char­ac­ters along the way — Daffy Duck, Bugs Bun­ny, Droopy dog and the rest. In 1943, Avery ani­mat­ed Red Hot Rid­ing Hood, which amount­ed to a rebel­lious retelling of the clas­sic Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood tale. 50 years lat­er, ani­ma­tors ranked it 7th on their list of The 50 Great­est Car­toons. Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam, Avery’s work deliv­ers this:

The mag­ic of Tex Avery’s ani­ma­tion is the sheer extrem­i­ty of it all. The clas­sic Avery image is of some­one’s mouth falling open down to their feet, wham, their eyes whoop­ing out and their tongue unrolling for about half a mile: that is the most won­der­ful­ly lib­er­at­ing spec­ta­cle.… There is also a child­like sense of immor­tal­i­ty and inde­struc­tibil­i­ty in his work; peo­ple get squashed, mashed, bashed, bent out of shape, what­ev­er, and they bounce back. In essence, it is like the myth of eter­nal life.

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!

The Mascot, Pioneering Stop Animation Film, by Wladyslaw Starewicz

in | June 1st, 2012

The Mas­cot is a 1934 film by the Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Wla­dys­law Starewicz. The film pio­neered a num­ber of stop ani­ma­tion tech­niques, mak­ing it a sem­i­nal film in the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion. About Starewicz’s film, the great ani­ma­tor Ter­ry Gilliam wrote:

His work is absolute­ly breath­tak­ing, sur­re­al, inven­tive and extra­or­di­nary, encom­pass­ing every­thing that Jan Svankma­jer, Waler­ian Borow­czyk and the Quay Broth­ers [see below] would do sub­se­quent­ly…. It is impor­tant, before you jour­ney through all these mind-bend­ing worlds, to remem­ber that it was all done years ago, by some­one most of us have for­got­ten about now. This is where it all began.

You can find The Mas­cot in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big 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!

The Best Animated Films of All Time, According to Terry Gilliam

in Animation, Film | June 1st, 2012

Ter­ry Gilliam knows some­thing about ani­ma­tion. For years, he pro­duced won­der­ful ani­ma­tions for Mon­ty Python (watch his cutout ani­ma­tion primer here) , cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es. Giv­en these bona fides, you don’t want to miss Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time.

It was pub­lished in The Guardian back in 2001, before the advent of YouTube, which makes things feel a lit­tle spare. So, today, we’re reviv­ing Gilliam’s list and adding some videos to the mix. Above, we start with The Mas­cot, a 1934 film by the Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Wla­dys­law Starewicz. The film pio­neered a num­ber of stop ani­ma­tion tech­niques, mak­ing it a sem­i­nal film in the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion. About Starewicz’s film, Gilliam wrote:

His work is absolute­ly breath­tak­ing, sur­re­al, inven­tive and extra­or­di­nary, encom­pass­ing every­thing that Jan Svankma­jer, Waler­ian Borow­czyk and the Quay Broth­ers [see below] would do sub­se­quent­ly.… It is impor­tant, before you jour­ney through all these mind-bend­ing worlds, to remem­ber that it was all done years ago, by some­one most of us have for­got­ten about now. This is where it all began.

Tex Avery pro­duced car­toons dur­ing the Gold­en Age of Hol­ly­wood ani­ma­tion, most­ly for Warn­er Bros. and Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er stu­dios, and cre­at­ed some mem­o­rable char­ac­ters along the way — Daffy Duck, Bugs Bun­ny, Droopy dog and the rest. In 1943, Avery ani­mat­ed Red Hot Rid­ing Hood, which amount­ed to a rebel­lious retelling of the clas­sic Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood tale. 50 years lat­er, ani­ma­tors ranked it 7th on their list of The 50 Great­est Car­toons. Accord­ing to Gilliam, Avery’s work deliv­ers this:

The mag­ic of Tex Avery’s ani­ma­tion is the sheer extrem­i­ty of it all. The clas­sic Avery image is of some­one’s mouth falling open down to their feet, wham, their eyes whoop­ing out and their tongue unrolling for about half a mile: that is the most won­der­ful­ly lib­er­at­ing spec­ta­cle.… There is also a child­like sense of immor­tal­i­ty and inde­struc­tibil­i­ty in his work; peo­ple get squashed, mashed, bashed, bent out of shape, what­ev­er, and they bounce back. In essence, it is like the myth of eter­nal life.

Dur­ing the mid-1950s, Stan Van­der­beek began shoot­ing sur­re­al­ist col­lage films that, as NPR put it, “used clip­pings from mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers to cre­ate whim­si­cal but point­ed com­men­tary.” If you think this sounds famil­iar, you’re right. It’s pre­cise­ly this approach that sur­faces lat­er in Gilliam’s own work. And if one film pro­vid­ed par­tic­u­lar inspi­ra­tion, it was Van­der­beek’s 1963 film Breathdeath (right above).

About Waler­ian Borow­czyk and his 1964 film Les Jeux des Anges, Gilliam writes:

Borow­czyk was a twist­ed man whose films were infused with a unique cru­el­ty and weird­ness. He start­ed out mak­ing extra­or­di­nary ani­ma­tions, grad­u­at­ed to direct­ing clas­sics such as Goto, Island of Love and La B te… Les Jeux des Anges was my first expe­ri­ence of ani­ma­tion that was utter­ly impres­sion­is­tic. It did­n’t show me any­thing spe­cif­ic, just sound and move­ment from which you cre­ate a world of your own.

Jan Svankma­jer is a sur­re­al­ist Czech ani­ma­tor whose work has influ­enced Tim Bur­ton, The Broth­ers Quay, and Ter­ry Gilliam him­self. In his Guardian list, Gilliam points us to one film, Svankma­jer’s stun­ning 1982 clay­ma­tion short, Dimen­sions of Dia­logue, in part because the film “has moments that evoke the night­mar­ish spec­tre of see­ing com­mon­place things com­ing unex­pect­ed­ly to life.”

Based on a short nov­el writ­ten by Bruno Schulz, Street of Croc­o­diles is a 1986 stop-motion ani­ma­tion direct­ed by the Broth­ers Quay, two Amer­i­can broth­ers who migrat­ed to Eng­land in 1969, short­ly after Gilliam, also Amer­i­can born, became a British cit­i­zen. In 2002, crit­ic Jonathan Rom­ney called Street of Croc­o­diles one of the ten best films of all time — sure­ly enough to make you give it a view.

Oth­er films men­tioned in Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, include:

Out of the Inkwell by Dave Fleis­ch­er (1938)

Pinoc­chio by Hamil­ton Luske and Ben Sharp­steen (1940)

Knick Knack by John Las­seter (1989)

South Park: Big­ger, Longer and Uncut by Trey Park­er (1999)

Some films list­ed above will appear in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!

The New Yorker’s Fiction Podcast: Where Great Writers Read Stories by Great Writers

in Literature, Podcasts | June 1st, 2012

Each major print pub­li­ca­tion expands into pod­cast­ing dif­fer­ent­ly. Some, hav­ing failed to find a suit­able form for the audio com­pan­ion to their text, scale the oper­a­tion way back and declare pod­cast­ing dead or dying. Oth­ers, through tri­al and error, even­tu­al­ly hap­pen upon a way of pod­cast­ing that clicks with both their own sen­si­bil­i­ty as well as their read­ers’ lis­ten­ing fas­ci­na­tions. The New York­er’s fic­tion pod­cast stands as an exam­ple of the lat­ter, trad­ing on more than one of the mag­a­zine’s strengths. As one of the longest-run­ning and last remain­ing venues for the short sto­ry, the New York­er has access to a wealth of fic­tion that one can read out loud with­in a com­fort­able pod­cast run­time. Giv­en their count­less con­nec­tions to respect­ed writ­ers, they’ve also got access to plen­ty of inter­est­ing peo­ple to do the read­ing.

Here’s the big inno­va­tion: these writ­ers don’t read their sto­ries out loud; they read their favorite sto­ries by oth­er writ­ers out loud. This has brought us pod­casts from, to name a few pair­ings:

• Richard Ford read­ing John Cheev­er
• Jhumpa Lahiri read­ing William Trevor
• Joyce Car­ol Oates read­ing Eudo­ra Wel­ty
• Paul Ther­oux read­ing Jorge Luis Borges

In the past year, we’ve also heard Alle­gra Good­man read John Updike, Salman Rushdie read John Barthelme, and Matthew Klam read Charles D’Am­bro­sio. (A new episode appears every month.) The read­ers also have a brief dis­cus­sion about the sto­ry they’ve select­ed with the New York­er’s fic­tion edi­tor Deb­o­rah Treis­man. Being writ­ers them­selves, they talk about the pieces with a much dif­fer­ent sort of scruti­ny than you might remem­ber from all those hours of short-sto­ry analy­sis in Eng­lish class. They engage, to put it broad­ly, more with the writ­ing’s craft than with its testable mechan­ics. Some pod­cast-lis­ten­ers won­der aloud about the place of fic­tion in this new form; the New York­er has devel­oped a place for it by look­ing back to an old one.

The record­ings above have been indexed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Bill Evans Trio in London, 1965: Two Sets by the Legendary Combo

in Music | May 31st, 2012

On March 19, 1965, the Bill Evans Trio stopped by the BBC stu­dios in Lon­don to play a pair of sets on Jazz 625, the now-leg­endary pro­gram host­ed by the British trum­peter Humphrey Lyt­tel­ton. The combo–which fea­tured Evans on piano, Chuck Israels on bass and Lar­ry Bunker on drums–played two sets, includ­ing most of the songs from their just-com­plet­ed album, Trio ’65. The two 35-minute pro­grams (shown con­sec­u­tive­ly in the video above) take us back in time to see and hear one of the most bril­liant and influ­en­tial jazz pianists of all time, at work in a tight­ly inte­grat­ed trio.

Set One:

1. “Five,” by Bill Evans
2. “Elsa,” by Earl Zin­dars
3. “Sum­mer­time,” by George Gersh­win
4. “Come Rain or Come Shine,” by Harold Arlen
5. “My Fool­ish Heart,” by Vic­tor Young
6. “Re: Per­son I Knew,” by Bill Evans
7. “Israel,” by John­ny Carisi
8. “Five,” by Bill Evans (reprise)

Set Two:

1. “Five,” by Bill Evans
2. “How My Heart Sings,” by Earl Zin­dars
3. “Nardis,” by Miles Davis
4. “Who Can I Turn To?” by Antho­ny New­ley and Leslie Bricusse
5. “Some­day My Prince Will Come,” by Frank Churchill
6. “How Deep is the Ocean?” by Bill Evans
7. “Five,” by Bill Evans (reprise)

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz

Thelo­nious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Clas­sic Jazz 625 Show

Neil deGrasse Tyson Delivers the Greatest Science Sermon Ever

in Astronomy, Physics, Religion | May 29th, 2012

Just when you think you’ve had enough Neil deGrasse Tyson, anoth­er not-to-miss video comes along. This one comes from the 2006 Beyond Belief Con­fer­ence, and it fea­tures the astro­physi­cist giv­ing what’s been called the “great­est sci­ence ser­mon ever.” As a young­ster, Tyson stepped into the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um (the insti­tu­tion he now runs) and he felt an unshak­able call­ing to study the uni­verse. It was­n’t unlike the feel­ing some­one under­goes when they’re reli­gious­ly born again. And ever since, Tyson has expe­ri­enced rev­e­la­tion after rev­e­la­tion, epiphany after epiphany, when study­ing the uni­verse, and espe­cial­ly when­ev­er he’s remind­ed that, chem­i­cal­ly speak­ing, we are in the uni­verse, and the uni­verse is in us. We’re all made of the same star­dust. How can that not leave us with an incred­i­bly spir­i­tu­al feel­ing?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson & Richard Dawkins Pon­der the Big Enchi­la­da Ques­tions of Sci­ence

The Open Goldberg Variations: J.S. Bach’s Masterpiece Free to Download

in Music | May 29th, 2012

First pub­lished in 1741, J.S. Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions is often con­sid­ered the most ambi­tious com­po­si­tion ever writ­ten for harp­si­chord. As this con­ver­sa­tion at NPR notes, the piece begins “with an ini­tial melody, the Aria, fol­lowed by 30 short but bril­liant vari­a­tions built on eight notes that Bach appears to have bor­rowed from Han­del.” It’s an impres­sive exam­ple of musi­cal one-upman­ship — so impres­sive that the demand­ing piece still cap­tures our often divid­ed atten­tion today.

Now, with no fur­ther delay, let me direct your atten­tion to The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, the first Kick­starter-fund­ed, open source record­ing of Bach’s mas­ter­piece, avail­able entire­ly for free. If you click here, you can down­load and share the new­ly-released record­ing by Kimiko Ishiza­ka, per­formed on a Bösendor­fer 290 Impe­r­i­al piano in Berlin. You can do pret­ty much what­ev­er you want with the record­ing because it’s released under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, which auto­mat­i­cal­ly puts things in the pub­lic domain.

You can also stream the Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions below, and don’t miss this very relat­ed item: How to Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free. And then this bonus: Glenn Gould’s Per­for­mance of the Gold­berg Vari­a­tion’s online.