Watch the 1953 Animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Narrated by James Mason

in Animation, Film, Literature | October 31st, 2011

Back by pop­u­lar demand, and cer­tain­ly the right video for today’s hol­i­day — the 1953 ani­mat­ed film ver­sion of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by James Mason. Upon its release, the film was giv­en a bizarre recep­tion. In the UK, the British Board of Film Cen­sors gave the film an “x” rat­ing, deem­ing it unsuit­able for adult audi­ences. Mean­while, “The Tell-Tale Heart” was nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film in the US, though it ulti­mate­ly lost to a Dis­ney pro­duc­tion. The film runs a short 7:24, and now appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

And then we have anoth­er small Hal­loween treat — your favorite actor, Christo­pher Walken, read­ing anoth­er clas­sic Poe sto­ry, The Raven. It’s now added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, and don’t miss oth­er read­ings by Walken right below.

Christo­pher Walken Reads “The Three Lit­tle Pigs”

Christo­pher Walken Reads Lady Gaga

James Franco Reads Short Story in Bed for The Paris Review

in Audio Books, Books | October 30th, 2011

James Fran­co gave The Paris Review a hand when he jumped into bed and start­ed read­ing “William Wei,” a short sto­ry pub­lished in a recent edi­tion of the sto­ried lit­er­ary jour­nal. Find a cleaned up audio file here, or in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Last year, the aspir­ing writer and Yale doc­tor­al stu­dent also made a cameo appear­ance in Gary Shteyn­gart’s rather hilar­i­ous video trail­er for his nov­el, Super Sad True Love Sto­ry.

A short sto­ry by Fran­co, “Just Before the Black,” appears in Esquire. His fic­tion col­lec­tion, Palo Alto, can be picked up here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, a Halloween Treat

in Film | October 28th, 2011

Over the years, when Roman Polan­s­ki was asked to name the film he was hap­pi­est with, his answer was sur­pris­ing: The Fear­less Vam­pire Killers.

The film was a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal flop when it was released in 1967, and Polan­s­ki was furi­ous when MGM chopped 20 min­utes out of the movie and changed the title from Dance of the Vam­pires to the far­ci­cal The Fear­less Vam­pire Killers, or Par­don Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck. A review­er for The New York Times pro­nounced the film “as dis­mal and dead as a blood-drained corpse.”

But as the years went by, Polan­s­ki pro­fessed a fond­ness for it. “The film reminds me of the hap­pi­est time of my life,” he told Le Nou­v­el Obser­va­teur in 1984. “It’s Proust’s Madeleine to the pow­er of a thou­sand. All my mem­o­ries come flood­ing back in one shot.” Polan­s­ki fell in with actress Sharon Tate while film­ing on a sound­stage in Eng­land and on loca­tion in the Ital­ian Alps.

Polan­s­ki also liked the film because it was unpre­ten­tious. He told Cahiers du Ciné­ma in 1969, “As a film­mak­er who wants to show some­thing inter­est­ing or new cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly speak­ing, I made Cul-de-sac. But for those peo­ple who want to go to the cin­e­ma for two hours and have a good time, I made The Fear­less Vam­pire Killers.”

Some view­ers have protest­ed that the film is not espe­cial­ly fun­ny or scary. Polan­s­ki said his inten­tion was to cre­ate a kind of cin­e­mat­ic fairy tale, a fan­ta­sy adven­ture. “I want­ed to tell a roman­tic sto­ry that was fun­ny and fright­en­ing at the same time,” he told Posi­tif in 1969. “These are the things we like to see when we’re chil­dren. We go to the fun­fair, sit in the ghost train, and hope to be fright­ened. When we laugh or get goose-pim­ples at the same time it’s a pleas­ant feel­ing because we know there’s no real dan­ger.”

The film tells the sto­ry of the eccen­tric Pro­fes­sor Abron­sius (Jack McGowran) and his young appren­tice Alfred (Polan­s­ki) as they ven­ture into Tran­syl­va­nia in search of vam­pires. They arrive at an iso­lat­ed Jew­ish inn, where a hap­less pro­pri­etor (Alfie Bass) has trou­ble keep­ing tabs on his beau­ti­ful daugh­ter (Tate).

“In the film there’s an East­ern Euro­pean cul­ture which was des­o­lat­ed by the Ger­mans and that’s been killed off for good thanks to Pol­ish Stal­in­ism,” Polan­s­ki told Posi­tif. “It’s the kind of thing that you can see in the work of fig­ures like Cha­gall and Isaac Babel, and also in cer­tain Pol­ish paint­ings. This cul­ture, which nev­er reap­peared after the war, is part of my child­hood mem­o­ries. There just aren’t any tra­di­tion­al Jews in Poland any more.”

There are some beau­ti­ful, dream­like moments in The Fear­less Vam­pire Killers. The open­ing scene, in which the pro­tag­o­nists are pur­sued by a pack of wild dogs, evokes the sort of child­hood night­mare in which we find our­selves unable to call out for help. In anoth­er scene, a hunch­back uses a cof­fin as a sled, glid­ing over the curv­ing hills like a sur­re­al Norel­co San­ta.

The Fear­less Vam­pire Killers is good fun as long as you fol­low the direc­tor’s lead and don’t take it too seri­ous­ly. This ver­sion (which has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies) runs one hour and 43 min­utes. The Amer­i­can the­atri­cal release ran one hour and 28 min­utes, so it appears that most of the miss­ing footage has been restored. Make some pop­corn, turn down the lights and enjoy the film!

Books Come to Life in Classic Cartoons from 1930s and 1940s

in Animation, Books, Film | October 28th, 2011

Remem­ber Spike Jonze’s stop motion film Mourir Auprès de Toi? When we fea­tured it last week, one of our read­ers called it “Slow, bor­ing and unimag­i­na­tive.” He then con­tin­ued:

Warn­er Broth­ers’ ani­ma­tion depart­ment did sev­er­al car­toons based on this con­cept over 50 years ago that packed much more ener­gy and humor into a very few min­utes worth of daz­zling ani­ma­tion.

The read­er was also good enough to point us to one such ear­ly car­toon, which we’re fea­tur­ing today. (See above.)

Released in 1946, the Looney Tunes car­toon Book Revue starts with a scene that may look famil­iar if you watched Jonze’s film: It’s mid­night. The book­store is closed. The lights are off. No crea­tures are stir­ring, not even … Scratch that, the books are stir­ring. They’re com­ing to life. And the hor­mones are run­ning high, a lit­tle too high. You can watch the rest, but we’ll leave you with this tid­bit. In 1994, Book Revue was vot­ed one of the 50 great­est car­toons of all time by a group of 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. We thank Mike for send­ing this our way.

For good mea­sure, let’s also rewind the clock to 1938, when Mer­rie Melodies released Have You Got Any Cas­tles? It may well be the orig­i­nal books-come-to-life car­toon. We start again at mid­night, and the book cov­ers do their thing. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, The Phan­tom of the Opera, and Franken­stein make an appear­ance, along with oth­er famous lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. When TBS re-released this car­toon decades lat­er, sev­er­al char­ac­ters from this orig­i­nal film (Bill “Bojan­gles” Robin­son from The 39 Steps, and Cab Cal­loway singing “I’ve Got Swing For Sale”) were edit­ed out because of the indel­i­cate way that African-Amer­i­cans were car­i­ca­tured here. Tal­ent these 1930s ani­ma­tors had. But also their blindspots too.…

Free: Download Copy of New Steve Jobs Biography

in Apple, Books | October 25th, 2011

Just a few short weeks after the death of Steve Jobs comes a 627 page biog­ra­phy by Wal­ter Isaac­son, the for­mer Man­ag­ing Edi­tor of TIME and CEO of CNN. Isaac­son first dis­cussed writ­ing the book with Jobs sev­en years ago and has since inter­viewed the Apple CEO more than 40 times. Now, appear­ing on 60 Min­utes, he talks pub­licly about the new book sim­ply called Steve Jobs. It hit book­shelves yes­ter­day and already stands atop the Ama­zon Best­seller list.

The 29 minute inter­view (Part 1 here, Part 2 here) gives you a feel for the book that’s will­ing to tell the good, the bad and the some­times ugly of Jobs’ life. If you’re look­ing to get your hands on the biog­ra­phy, give this some thought: If you sign up for a 14-day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load pret­ty much any audio book in Audible’s cat­a­logue for free. And that cat­a­logue now includes Isaac­son’s unabridged biog­ra­phy. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion (as I did), or can­cel it, and still keep the free book. The choice is yours.

Note: CBS did­n’t allow the 60 Min­utes inter­view to appear on exter­nal sites like ours. Hence you will need to watch the inter­view on YouTube itself. We pro­vide the links above.

The Decline of Civilization’s Right Brain: Animated

in Psychology | October 24th, 2011

The mind, they say, is a house divid­ed: The right hemi­sphere of the brain is pre­dom­i­nant­ly intu­itive; the left, pre­dom­i­nant­ly ratio­nal.

In his recent book, The Mas­ter and His Emis­sary: The Divid­ed Brain and the Mak­ing of the West­ern World, the British psy­chi­a­trist and writer Iain McGilchrist looks at the evo­lu­tion of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion through a neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal prism. In McGilchrist’s view our left hemi­sphere has, over the past four cen­turies, pro­gres­sive­ly pushed aside our right hemi­sphere. “My belief,” McGilchrist told The Morn­ing News last year, “is that it has now tak­en over our self-under­stand­ing, for a vari­ety of rea­sons, and is lead­ing us all down the road to ruin.”

McGilchrist is quick to point out that the old left-brain, right-brain clichés of the 1960s and 1970s were great­ly over­sim­pli­fied. Recent research has shown that both sides of the brain are deeply involved in func­tions such as rea­son and emo­tion. But the dichoto­my is still use­ful, McGilchrist says, and should not be aban­doned.

“The right hemi­sphere gives sus­tained, broad, open, vig­i­lant alert­ness, where­as the left hemi­sphere gives nar­row, sharply focused atten­tion to detail,” McGilchrist says in a new RSA Ani­mate fea­ture (see above). “Peo­ple who lose their right hemi­spheres have a patho­log­i­cal nar­row­ing of the win­dow of atten­tion.”  McGilchrist sees this nar­row­ing process occur­ring at the soci­etal lev­el. The left brain, he argues, con­ceives of the world as a set of decon­tex­tu­al­ized, sta­t­ic, mate­r­i­al, abstract things, where­as the right brain holis­ti­cal­ly embraces a world of evolv­ing, spir­i­tu­al, empath­ic, con­crete beings.

Both hemi­spheres are nec­es­sary, McGilchrist says in the Morn­ing News inter­view, “but one is more fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant than the oth­er, and sees more than the oth­er, even though there are some things that it must not get involved with, if it is to main­tain its broad­er, more complete–in essence more truthful–vision. This is the right hemi­sphere, which, as I demon­strate from the neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal lit­er­a­ture, lit­er­al­ly sees more, and grounds the under­stand­ing of the left hemisphere–an under­stand­ing which must ulti­mate­ly be re-inte­gret­ed with the right hemi­sphere, if it is not to lead to error. The left hemi­sphere is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly valu­able as an inter­me­di­ate, but not as a final author­i­ty.”

McGilchrist is not with­out his crit­ics. The British philoso­pher A.C. Grayling writes in the Lit­er­ary Review, “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, if one accepts the log­ic of his argu­ment that our West­ern civil­i­sa­tion has declined from a right-hemi­sphere to a left-hemi­sphere dis­pen­sa­tion, we do not have to imag­ine what the for­mer would be like, because his­to­ry itself tells us: in it most of us would be super­sti­tious and igno­rant peas­ants work­ing a strip farm that we would nev­er leave from cra­dle to grave, under the thumb of slight­ly more left-hemi­spher­ic bul­lies in the form of the local baron and priest.”

After The Mas­ter and His Emis­sary was pub­lished, McGilchrist dis­cov­ered a quo­ta­tion attrib­uted to Albert Ein­stein that he felt neat­ly sup­port­ed his the­sis. He uses this quote at the end of his RSA talk: “The intu­itive mind is a sacred gift and the ratio­nal mind is a faith­ful ser­vant. We have cre­at­ed a soci­ety that hon­ors the ser­vant and has for­got­ten the gift.” But did Ein­stein actu­al­ly say that? The Inter­net is awash with dubi­ous Ein­stein quo­ta­tions, and we were unable to locate the orig­i­nal source of this one. If any read­er can ver­i­fy its authen­tic­i­ty (by cit­ing the orig­i­nal text, speech or con­ver­sa­tion) please leave a note in our com­ments sec­tion. Mean­while, you can watch McGilchrist’s entire half-hour RSA lec­ture here.

via Brain Pick­ings

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

in Art, Books, Film | October 19th, 2011

It all start­ed when film­mak­er Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are) met hand­bag design­er Olympia Le-Tan and asked her to cre­ate a Catch­er in the Rye embroi­dery for his wall. She asked him to col­lab­o­rate on a film in return. And so Jonze and Le-Tan, togeth­er with French direc­tor Simon Cahn, spent six months writ­ing a script, then ani­mat­ing 3,000 pieces of felt cut by Le-Tan her­self. The result is Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side), a short stop motion film set inside the famous Parisian book­store, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, and it fea­tures a skele­ton, his lover, and some famous book cov­ers that spring to life.

For more back­sto­ry, don’t miss this short “Mak­ing of” film, a short inter­view with Olivia Le-Tan, and an inter­view with Spike Jonze. Here, you can also watch Mourir Auprès de Toi (now added to our Free Movie col­lec­tion) in a larg­er for­mat.

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!

Very Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Math Doodling

in Math | October 17th, 2011

Doo­dling — it’s usu­al­ly a sign of bore­dom, an escape from tedi­um. Vi Hart turns it all upside down, and shows how doo­dling can be an engag­ing form of ped­a­gogy. On her web site, you will find oth­er math doo­dling videos called Stars, Snakes + Graphs, Bina­ry Trees, Sick Num­ber Games and Squig­gle Incep­tion. The video above is called Infin­i­ty Ele­phants. Thanks Kim for send­ing this our way.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion: The Vedic Way

The Math Guy Radio Archive

Getz and Gilberto Perform ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ (and the Woman Who Inspired the Song)

in Music | October 17th, 2011

Take a deep breath and watch this 1964 tele­vi­sion per­for­mance of “The Girl from Ipane­ma” by Brazil­ian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilber­to and Amer­i­can jazz sax­o­phon­ist Stan Getz.

The arrange­ment is from the clas­sic album, Getz/Gilberto, which launched the bossa nova craze of the ear­ly 60’s. The album was pri­mar­i­ly a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Getz and Astrud’s hus­band, the gui­tarist and vocal­ist João Gilber­to, but when some­one got the idea of includ­ing an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Anto­nio Car­los Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipane­ma,” Astrud was recruit­ed. She had nev­er sung pro­fes­sion­al­ly before. The record­ings launched her as an inter­na­tion­al sen­sa­tion.

Since then, “The Girl from Ipane­ma” has weath­ered a half-cen­tu­ry of heavy rota­tion on the Hol­i­day Inn lounge cir­cuit and Muzak. (Remem­ber the ele­va­tor scene in The Blues Broth­ers?) So it can be hard to imag­ine just how cool the song must have seemed in 1964 with the release of Getz/Gilberto. That sax­o­phone. That voice. As the per­son who post­ed this video on YouTube put it: “Chill, baby, chill…”

When it’s all said and done, you can also meet Heloisa Pin­heiro, the woman who inspired the song all of those years ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

Bil­lie Hol­i­day Sings “Strange Fruit”

Learn Brazil­ian Por­tuguese and 40 Oth­er Lan­guages for Free

Ai Weiwei and the Seeds of Freedom

in Art | October 12th, 2011

In the state-con­trolled pro­pa­gan­da art of rev­o­lu­tion­ary Chi­na, sun­flow­ers car­ried a blunt sym­bol­ism: Mao Zedong was the sun and the Chi­nese peo­ple were the sun­flow­ers, all fac­ing one direc­tion to receive the nour­ish­ing rays.

A gen­er­a­tion lat­er, in the work of Chi­nese artist Ai Wei­wei, the sym­bol­ism is a bit more sub­ver­sive. In 2010 Ai launched a show called Sun­flower Seeds, where a riot of indi­vid­ual porce­lain seeds–more than a hun­dred mil­lion of them, all hand-painted–were spread across the floor of a large hall at the Tate Mod­ern in Lon­don. Ai want­ed vis­i­tors to move freely across the instal­la­tion, pick­ing the seeds up, mov­ing them around, doing what­ev­er they want­ed — all shown in the video above.

As a cham­pi­on of free­dom and an out­spo­ken crit­ic of Chi­na’s human rights record, Ai has come under heavy pres­sure from the Chi­nese regime. Ear­ly this year his Shang­hai stu­dio was demol­ished and he was lat­er arrest­ed and detained at secret loca­tions for 81 days. Now he is for­bid­den from giv­ing inter­views or using the Inter­net. But before he was arrest­ed, Ai was able to send a video­taped speech to the TED con­fer­ence, out­lin­ing his views. You can watch it below. To learn more about the extra­or­di­nary Sun­flower Seeds 2010 exhib­it, you can watch the “TateShots” film above.