The Long Lost Video Game of Paris Review Editor George Plimpton?

in Literature, Random | June 8th, 2011

At first we thought it was either an Onion sto­ry or a joke: Mul­ti-tal­ent­ed author, actor, sports enthu­si­ast and Paris Review edi­tor George Plimp­ton (1927–2003) also achieved con­sid­er­able suc­cess in anoth­er medi­um: video games.

The Mil­lions points us to George Plimp­ton’s video “Fal­con­ry,” the game Plimp­ton helped devel­op for Cole­co­V­i­sion in the ear­ly 80’s. You can play it here, but first be sure to catch up on the back­sto­ry (click “Back­sto­ry” but­ton below the “Play” but­ton), which may or may not involve high stakes dou­ble-cross­es, hard­core sleuthings, and the child­hood obses­sions of fre­quent Dai­ly Show guest John Hodg­man. Max­i­mum Fun has also post­ed an old com­mer­cial for the game, which we’ve repost­ed above. (Our apolo­gies for the poor qual­i­ty. It was appar­ent­ly ripped from an old VHS tape).

If it turns out that we’ve been punked, it was worth it, if only for the joys of typ­ing the words “Plimp­ton,” “Fal­con­ry” and “Cole­co­V­i­sion” all in one sen­tence. The game isn’t bad either.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Nelson Algren, the Exiled King

in Literature | June 3rd, 2011

In 1975 Nel­son Algren left Chica­go for good. The famed writer had gone to Pater­son, New Jer­sey on a mag­a­zine assign­ment to cov­er the Rubin “Hur­ri­cane” Carter mur­der case and decid­ed to stay. This rare video footage was appar­ent­ly made dur­ing his brief return to the Windy City to gath­er his things. We watch as anoth­er of Chicago’s lit­er­ary icons, Studs Terkel, cor­ners his friend and demands an expla­na­tion. Algren, famous for his wit, responds by mock­ing Frank Sina­tra’s anthem to Chica­go: Pater­son, says Algren, is “my kind of town.”

In truth, Algren felt bit­ter toward his native city. Ernest Hem­ing­way had once said of Algren’s writ­ing, “you should not read it if you can­not take a punch,” and many in the city’s civic and lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment could not take the punch Algren deliv­ered in books like Chica­go: City on the Make. By the time he decid­ed to move on, many of Algren’s books–which include such clas­sics as The Man with the Gold­en Arm, A Walk on the Wild Side, and The Neon Wilder­ness– were not even avail­able in Chica­go libraries. Algren exposed a side of Amer­i­ca that many Amer­i­cans did­n’t want to know about. “He broke new ground,” wrote Kurt Von­negut, “by depict­ing per­sons said to be dehu­man­ized by pover­ty and igno­rance and injus­tice as being gen­uine­ly dehu­man­ized, and dehu­man­ized quite per­ma­nent­ly.”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly Algren was more pop­u­lar over­seas, where the punch was felt less direct­ly.  Jean-Paul Sartre trans­lat­ed his works into French, and Simone de Beau­voir became his lover. (The unlike­ly affair may soon be the sub­ject of a film, fea­tur­ing Vanes­sa Par­adis as Beau­voir and John­ny Depp as Algren.) By the time he moved to the East Coast, many of Algren’s books were out of print, and he had become like the peo­ple he wrote about: poor and for­got­ten. In 1981, at the age of 72, Algren died of a heart attack in Sag Har­bor, New York. Arrange­ments for a pau­per funer­al were made by the play­wright and nov­el­ist Joe Pin­tau­ro, who lat­er reflect­ed on Algren’s treat­ment: “He’d got­ten a life­time of kicks in the teeth from some crit­ics because he refused to side­step the ugli­ness of life, the gnarled, stringy under­side of the tapes­try, the part too many artists turn their backs on, the part even God seems not to have cre­at­ed. By reject­ing Nel­son’s world, too many crit­ics left him alone in it, a prophet­ic, raggedy, exiled king.”

Chaplin Meets Inception: The Final Speech of The Great Dictator

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | June 2nd, 2011

Char­lie Chap­lin is said to have added his 4 1/2 minute final speech to The Great Dic­ta­tor (1940) only after Hitler’s inva­sion of France. The speech both show­cas­es the actor’s con­sid­er­able dra­mat­ic gifts and makes a pre­scient, elo­quent plea for human decen­cy. So the idea of adding any kind of extra music, espe­cial­ly a com­po­si­tion by the fre­quent­ly bom­bas­tic Hans Zim­mer, might seem like first gild­ing the lily and then dous­ing it with lysol and neon paint. But we think this Zim­mer track from the 2010 sci-fi head trip hit Incep­tion actu­al­ly kin­da works. Give it a look/listen and let us know what you think.

You can find The Great Dic­ta­tor and many oth­er Chap­lin films in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via @stevesilberman

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

The Arctic Light

in Art | June 1st, 2011

Last month, Ter­je Sorgjerd gave us a jaw-drop­ping video of El Tei­de, Spain’s high­est moun­tain, and home to one of the world’s best obser­va­to­ries. This month, he returns to his native land and films the Lofoten arch­i­pel­ago, sit­u­at­ed at the 68th and 69th par­al­lels of the Arc­tic Cir­cle in north­ern Nor­way. Filmed between April 29 and May 10, Sorgjerd cap­tures what he calls “The Arc­tic Light,” a pro­fu­sion of col­or that nat­u­ral­ly occurs two to four weeks before you see The Mid­night Sun. Yes, it’s yet anoth­er time lapse video, but oh is it pret­ty …

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!

Gil Scott-Heron, Godfather of Rap, Rest in Peace

in Music, Poetry | May 27th, 2011

Gil Scott-Heron, some­times called the “God­fa­ther of Rap,” passed away in New York today. He was 62 years old.

Scott-Heron start­ed set­ting poet­ry to rhyth­mic jazz dur­ing the late 60s and and gained fame when he record­ed The Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tele­vised in 1971. Almost 40 years lat­er, he released his final album, I’m New Here, which includ­ed a track called Where Did the Night Go that’s fea­tured above. That same year, the New York­er pub­lished a pro­file – New York Is Killing Me: The unlike­ly sur­vival of Gil Scott-Heron – that takes you through a life that knew hard­ship from begin­ning to end, but which brimmed with cre­ativ­i­ty in between.

If this is your first intro­duc­tion to Scott-Heron’s record­ings, let us refer you to The Bot­tle, Win­ter in Amer­i­ca, Johan­nes­burg, and Ain’t No Such Thing As Super­man…

Don’t miss us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

John Banville: Art is a Minority Sport

in Books, Literature | May 27th, 2011

The Franz Kaf­ka Soci­ety announced yes­ter­day that it was award­ing the pres­ti­gious Franz Kaf­ka Prize for 2011 to the Irish writer John Banville, who has built a rep­u­ta­tion for being one of the finest prose styl­ists work­ing in English–and for being a bit dif­fi­cult.

First, there are the books them­selves. “In their archi­tec­ture and their style,” wrote Belin­da McK­eon in the intro­duc­tion to Banville’s 2009 Paris Review inter­view, “his books are like baroque cathe­drals, filled with elab­o­rate pas­sages and some­times over­whelm­ing to the casu­al tourist.” And then there is the per­son­al­i­ty. When Banville won the 2005 Man Book­er Prize for his nov­el The Sea, he pro­claimed, “it is nice to see a work of art win the Book­er Prize.” As he explained lat­er to The Vil­lage Voice, “the Book­er Prize and lit­er­ary prizes in gen­er­al are for mid­dle-ground, mid­dle­brow work, which is as it should be. The Book­er Prize is a prize to keep peo­ple inter­est­ed in fic­tion, in buy­ing fic­tion. If they gave it to my kind of book every year, it would rapid­ly die.”

Art may not be for every­one, but for those who have read his books–16 nov­els pub­lished under his own name, four crime nov­els under the pen name Ben­jamin Black, and one col­lec­tion of short stories–there is no doubt that Banville is an artist. “It all starts with rhythm for me,” Banville told the Paris Review. “I love Nabokov’s work, and I love his style. But I always thought there was some­thing odd about it that I could­n’t quite put my fin­ger on. Then I read an inter­view in which he admit­ted he was tone deaf. And I thought, that’s it–there’s no music in Nabokov, it’s all pic­to­r­i­al, it’s all image-based. It’s not any worse for that, but the prose does­n’t sing. For me, a line has to sing before it does any­thing else. The great thrill is when a sen­tence that starts out being com­plete­ly plain sud­den­ly begins to sing, ris­ing far above any expec­ta­tion I might have had for it. That’s what keeps me going on those dark Decem­ber days when I think about how I could be liv­ing instead of writ­ing.”

For an exam­ple of Banville’s singing prose, we leave off where The Sea begins:

They depart­ed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide. All morn­ing under a milky sky the waters in the bay had swelled and swelled, ris­ing to unheard-of heights, the small waves creep­ing over parched sand that for years had known no wet­ting save for rain and lap­ping the very bases of the dunes. The rust­ed hulk of the freighter that had run aground at the far end of the bay longer ago than any of us could remem­ber must have thought it was being grant­ed a relaunch. I would not swim again, after that day. The seabirds mewled and swooped, unnerved, it seemed, by the spec­ta­cle of that vast bowl of water bulging like a blis­ter, lead-blue and malig­nant­ly agleam. They looked unnat­u­ral­ly white, that day, those birds. The waves were deposit­ing a fringe of soiled yel­low foam along the water­line. No sail marred the high hori­zon. I would not swim, no, not ever again.

Orson Welles Performs a Magic Trick

in Film, Random | May 27th, 2011

We can’t say enough good things about Bib­liok­lept, and not only because they find so many lit­er­a­ture-relat­ed gems. (A few recent exam­ples: Ray­mond Carver’s cor­re­spon­dence with edi­tor Gor­don Lish, Melville’s Pass­port Appli­ca­tion, A Post-Rap­ture Read­ing List). They also find great mate­r­i­al from oth­er art forms — for exam­ple this clip of Orson Welles doing a mag­ic trick, tak­en from the 1995 doc­u­men­tary Orson Welles: The One Man Band.

Watch to the end. As you might expect, the mas­ter upstages his co-star, flap­ping wings and all.

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:

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio

Orson Welles’ The Stranger: The Full Movie

Free­dom Riv­er: A Para­ble Told by Orson Welles

Sir Anthony Hopkins Reads Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

in Poetry, Video - Arts & Culture | May 27th, 2011

The great actor Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins is well versed in the work of fel­low Welsh­man Dylan Thomas — so much so he even direct­ed the crit­i­cal­ly laud­ed film Dylan Thomas: The Return Jour­ney in 2006. Here, he is read­ing one of Thomas’ best-known poems, “Do not go gen­tle into that good night.” (If any­one knows when this video was made, please drop us a line.)

There is, of course, no read­er of Thomas’ poet­ry equal to Thomas him­self. Just lis­ten to this BBC record­ing from 1951, the year the beloved vil­lanelle was first pub­lished. But if dul­cet tones and min­i­mal­ist record­ings aren’t your thing, then you might want to check out this John Cale ver­sion.

And then, because it’s Fri­day, don’t for­get Rod­ney Dan­ger­field.

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:

Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

Tom Hanks Addresses the Yale Class of 2011

in Life, Yale | May 27th, 2011

For Class Day 2011, Har­vard had come­di­an Amy Poehler, and Yale had Tom Han­ks — two fig­ures who have a whole lot more enter­tain­ment val­ue than the speak­er at my grad­u­a­tion — the Assis­tant Coun­ty Coro­ner. Dead seri­ous! Pun only halfway intend­ed. Any­way, I digress. Today, we’re fea­tur­ing Tom Han­ks, the two-time win­ner of the Acad­e­my Award for Best Actor, who starts fun­ny, but then turns a lit­tle seri­ous, remind­ing grad­u­ates, à la F.D.R., that essen­tial­ly “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Not a bad talk over­all, but we’re still most par­tial to Steve Job’s Stan­ford talk from 2005. Our hands-down favorite…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yale Rolls Out 10 New Cours­es — All Free

Ali G at Har­vard; or How Sacha Baron Cohen Got Blessed by America’s Cul­tur­al Estab­lish­ment

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

E. chromi: Designer Bacteria

in Biology, Science, Video - Science | May 26th, 2011

E. chro­mi, a short film about a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion between design­ers and biol­o­gists has won the best doc­u­men­tary award at Bio:Fiction, the world’s first syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy film fes­ti­val, held ear­li­er this month in Vien­na.
E. chro­mi tells the sto­ry of a project unit­ing design­ers Alexan­dra Daisy Gins­berg and James King with a team of under­grad­u­ate biol­o­gy stu­dents at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. Using genes from exist­ing organ­isms, the team designed cus­tom DNA sequences, called Bio­Bricks, and insert­ed them into E. coli bacteria.The new E. coli—dubbed “E. chromi”—were pro­grammed to express a rain­bow of col­ors when exposed to var­i­ous chem­i­cals.

Gins­berg and King helped the young biol­o­gists dream up a vari­ety of pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions for the invention.For exam­ple, E. chro­mi could be used to test the safe­ty of drink­ing water–turning red if a tox­in is present, green if it’s okay. Or it might  be used as an ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem for dis­ease: a per­son would ingest some yogurt con­tain­ing E. chro­mi, then watch out for tell-tale col­ors at the oth­er end of the diges­tive process.

The E. chro­mi team was award­ed the grand prize at the 2009 Inter­na­tion­al Genet­i­cal­ly Engi­neered Machine (iGEM) com­pe­ti­tion at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. For more films on syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, see the Bio:Fiction web­site.