Milky Way Panorama (with a Backstory)

in Astronomy, Science | May 16th, 2011

Nick Risinger, an ama­teur astronomer from Seat­tle, quit his day job last year, packed his bags and cam­eras, and began a 60,000 mile jour­ney, mov­ing across the Amer­i­can West and down to the west­ern Cape of South Africa (twice). His voy­age would end with a 5000-megapix­el pho­to­graph of the entire night sky, pro­duced from 37,440 sep­a­rate expo­sures, and it yields a stag­ger­ing 360-degree view of the Milky Way. Even bet­ter, the image now lives online in an inter­ac­tive for­mat, giv­ing you the abil­i­ty to wan­der through the cos­mos.

For more on this, be sure to vis­it Pho­topic Sky Sur­vey. Here Risinger gives you the per­son­al and tech­ni­cal back­sto­ry on his project, and also gives you the chance to pur­chase pho­tos, or even lend finan­cial sup­port to the sky sur­vey.

via The Mail Online

The Book Trailer as Self-Parody: Stars Gary Shteyngart with James Franco Cameo

in Books, Comedy, Literature | May 16th, 2011

What can we say about Gary Shteyn­gart? The nov­el­ist appeared last year in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 Fic­tion Issue (which list­ed authors “who cap­ture the inven­tive­ness and the vital­i­ty of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can fic­tion.”) He teach­es writ­ing at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and counts James Fran­co as one of his stu­dents. And he’s will­ing to hus­tle a lit­tle to sell a book. When his nov­el Super Sad True Love Sto­ry came out last sum­mer (find NYTimes review here), the quirky Leningrad-born author (key to under­stand­ing what comes next) released a satir­i­cal, self-dep­re­cat­ing trail­er to pro­mote his book. Jef­frey Eugenides, Jay McIn­er­ney, Edmund White, Mary Gait­skill and Fran­co him­self all get in on the joke … which gets bet­ter as it goes along.

Shteyn­gart’s book just came out in paper­back last week. To mark the occa­sion, Fresh Air re-aired an inter­view with him (sans accent) last week. His book is also avail­able as an audio down­load via Audible.com, and here’s how you can snag a free copy…

Relat­ed:

Review­ing Jonathan Franzen’s “Free­dom” with Wit

Bob Dylan Answers China Charges

in Current Affairs, Music | May 14th, 2011

Just last month, Bob Dylan played his first con­cert in Chi­na at the Worker’s Gym­na­si­um in Bei­jing. It was­n’t exact­ly a big show. Rough­ly 2,000 peo­ple attend­ed, but it became a big affair at home when NYTimes colum­nist Mau­reen Dowd wrote a caus­tic op-ed, accus­ing Dylan of play­ing a cen­sored set stripped of his rev­o­lu­tion­ary anthems. In short, she declared, Dylan went to Chi­na and sold out his 60s soul:

Icon­ic songs of rev­o­lu­tion like “The Times They Are a‑Changin,’ ” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” wouldn’t have been an appro­pri­ate sound­track for the 2,000 Chi­nese appa­ratchiks in the audi­ence tak­ing a relax­ing break from repres­sion.

Spooked by the surge of democ­ra­cy sweep­ing the Mid­dle East, Chi­na is con­duct­ing the harsh­est crack­down on artists, lawyers, writ­ers and dis­si­dents in a decade. It is cen­sor­ing (or “har­mo­niz­ing,” as it euphem­izes) the Inter­net and dis­patch­ing the secret police to arrest willy-nil­ly, includ­ing Ai Wei­wei, the famous artist and archi­tect of the Bird’s Nest, Beijing’s Olympic sta­di­um.

Dylan said noth­ing about Weiwei’s deten­tion, didn’t offer a reprise of “Hur­ri­cane,” his song about “the man the author­i­ties came to blame for some­thing that he nev­er done.” He sang his cen­sored set, took his pile of Com­mu­nist cash and left.

Now, in a note to fans, Dylan took the rare step of respond­ing to these (and oth­er) accu­sa­tions in a short let­ter pub­lished yes­ter­day. He writes:

As far as cen­sor­ship goes, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment had asked for the names of the songs that I would be play­ing. There’s no log­i­cal answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the pre­vi­ous 3 months. If there were any songs, vers­es or lines cen­sored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intend­ed to play.

I’m guess­ing this response will only part­ly sat­is­fy Dowd. Per­haps Dylan did­n’t change his set to please the appa­ratchiks. But did he miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make the right state­ment? Just maybe. But no mat­ter, we’re putting this behind us and get­ting ready for Dylan’s 70th birth­day on May 24. We still love him, warts and all…

The Next-Generation Digital Book

in Books, e-books, Technology | May 12th, 2011

There will be a day — maybe it’s already here; maybe it was always here — when the Kin­dle will look incred­i­bly retro. Mike Matas, once a design­er of user inter­faces at Apple and now co-founder of Push Pop Press, may make that day of visu­al reck­on­ing come soon­er rather than lat­er. The demo above (which is eas­i­ly worth a thou­sand words) lets you peer into the near future.. Text, images, audio, video and inter­ac­tive graph­ics — they’ll come togeth­er in a seam­less read­ing expe­ri­ence, mak­ing the tra­di­tion­al ebook look entire­ly one dimen­sion­al. You can down­load the book on dis­play, Al Gore’s “Our Choice,” on iTunes here.

64 Years of Posters for the Cannes Film Festival

in Art, Film | May 11th, 2011

The 64th Annu­al Cannes Film Fes­ti­val opens tonight, and the cineast­es among you have prob­a­bly already book­marked the film site MUBI, where you can find all things Cannes (and all things inter­na­tion­al cin­e­ma, for that mat­ter) at the site’s blog: the MUBI Dai­ly.

Edit­ed by Daniel Kas­man, the MUBI Dai­ly fea­tures stel­lar writ­ers, includ­ing Glenn Ken­ny, Ignatiy Vish­n­evet­sky, and the won­der­ful David Hud­son, whom you may rec­og­nize from his days at Greencine and IFC.  You’ll find review round-ups, com­men­tary, inter­views, updates, trail­ers for many films at Cannes, and final­ly, quirky entries like this one: Con­trib­u­tor Adri­an Cur­ry’s com­men­tary on a L’Ex­press col­lec­tion of 64 year’s worth of offi­cial Cannes Fes­ti­val posters. Cur­ry high­lights the best and worst of the lot (along with a spe­cial wince d’or for 1995’s pas­tel night­mare of a seascape, to which design­er Ryszard Horowitz may as well have added rain­bows and uni­corns).

The site is def­i­nite­ly worth keep­ing tabs on, espe­cial­ly this week, when they’ll be offer­ing a vir­tu­al tick­et to the south of France, minus the lines, mobs, and high like­li­hood of lap­top theft.

A last note: you can find sev­er­al prize-win­ning films from the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val (includ­ing two by Andrei Tarkovksy) in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via MUBI and A Life in Film

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

via

The Existential Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vader

in Film, Philosophy | May 10th, 2011

A few weeks ago we direct­ed you to a won­der­ful three-part BBC doc­u­men­tary about mod­ern phi­los­o­phy called Human, All Too Human, adding that we con­sid­ered the chap­ter on Jean-Paul Sartre the most sat­is­fy­ing of the three.

Now we give you a light-heart­ed chas­er for that doc­u­men­tary’s strong spir­its: The French philoso­pher’s teach­ings as inter­pret­ed by the sci­ence fic­tion over­lord Darth Vad­er. Per­haps more than any oth­er 20th cen­tu­ry supervil­lain, the dis­graced Jedi knight trag­i­cal­ly and per­fect­ly embod­ies the Sar­tri­an notion that “Free­dom is what you do with what has been done to you.”

For those who might con­sid­er the Jok­er a bet­ter can­di­date, we humbly sub­mit that with the Jok­er, it’s more of a Niet­zschean thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

via Roger Ebert’s Jour­nal

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

A Daily Dose of Jerry Seinfeld

in Comedy | May 9th, 2011

Jer­ry Sein­feld has decid­ed to go on tour, and as if to remind us that his stand-up life pre­ced­ed his decade-plus dom­i­nance of net­work TV, he’s also archived the best bits from a com­e­dy career that now spans over 25 years. (He first appeared on nation­al tele­vi­sion in 1977.) The new site/archive will fea­ture just a few clips, mak­ing new ones avail­able each day. It’s a smart move; the steady trick­le of new jokes will no doubt keep fans hun­gry.

For a reminder of the days when it was Sein­feld him­self who was hun­gry, here’s a set from 1981, his first appear­ance on HBO. He’s being pre­sent­ed by the pitch-per­fect Smoth­ers Broth­ers, who intro­duce the bare­ly known come­di­an as “Jer­ry Ste­in­feld.”

via NYT

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

Orson Welles’ Birthday Bash: Three Movies, One Radio Classic, and Two Great Narrations

in Film, Radio | May 6th, 2011

96 years ago today, Orson Welles, the “ulti­mate auteur,” was born in Kenosha, Wis­con­sin. Hence his ear­ly nick­name, The Kenosha Kid. Nowa­days, we remem­ber Welles as arguably the great­est direc­tor of the 20th cen­tu­ry, a superb actor on stage and screen, and a pio­neer­ing radio drama­tist. To cel­e­brate his 96th birth­day, we have dipped into our archives and pulled togeth­er some of Welles’ finest artis­tic works, all now freely avail­able online:

The Stranger

Welles’ third film, The Stranger, a 1946 film noir thriller, was a com­mer­cial suc­cess upon release. The same could­n’t be said for Cit­i­zen Kane. The Stranger fea­tures Edward G. Robin­son hunt­ing a Nazi fugi­tive (Welles him­self) who mar­ries the daugh­ter (Loret­ta Young) of a Supreme Court jus­tice. The film, now avail­able online in its entire­ty, is one of the first post WWII films to show footage of con­cen­tra­tion camps. You can find this film, and oth­ers men­tioned below, in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

The Third Man

The Third Man by crazedig­i­tal­movies

Welles famous­ly starred in The Third Man, a must-see noir film, which won the Grand Prix at the 1949 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and an Acad­e­my Award for Best Black and White Cin­e­matog­ra­phy in 1950. A half cen­tu­ry lat­er, the British Film Insti­tute named The Third Man the best British film of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Quite a state­ment. You can watch it here.

Free­dom Riv­er

Almost 40 years (and sev­en pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tions) have passed since Orson Welles nar­rat­ed Free­dom Riv­er. And although the ani­ma­tion shows some age, the para­ble, a com­men­tary on Amer­i­ca, still res­onates today. Or, at least I sus­pect many view­ers will think so. You can get the back­sto­ry on this intrigu­ing lit­tle project here.

The War of the Worlds

Back in the late 1930s, Orson Welles launched The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air, a radio pro­gram ded­i­cat­ed to bring­ing dra­mat­ic pro­duc­tions to the Amer­i­can air­waves. The show had a fair­ly short run. It last­ed from 1938 to 1941. But it made its mark. Dur­ing these few years, The Mer­cury The­atre aired The War of the Worlds, an episode nar­rat­ed by Welles that led many Amer­i­cans to believe their coun­try was under Mar­t­ian attack. The leg­endary pro­duc­tion was based on H.G. Wells’ ear­ly sci-fi nov­el, and you can lis­ten to it here. We have more links to Mer­cury The­atre pro­duc­tions here.

Welles Reads Moby Dick

He only gives you two tan­ta­liz­ing min­utes. And he’s para­phras­ing more than read­ing the text itself. But it’s vin­tage Welles. You can find him read­ing anoth­er pas­sage from Melville’s clas­sic here…

Celebrate Carnegie Hall Anniversary with Jascha Heifetz Playing Tchaikovsky

in Music | May 5th, 2011

Today Carnegie Hall cel­e­brates its 120th anniver­sary. Designed by archi­tect William Bur­net Tuthill and financed by phil­an­thropist Andrew Carnegie, the famed con­cert venue opened its doors in 1891, right between West 56th and 57th Streets in New York City. Since then, Carnegie Hall has gained a rep­u­ta­tion for its unri­valed acoustics (some have called it the “Stradi­var­ius of the Con­cert World”) and pret­ty much every impor­tant musi­cal fig­ure of the 20th cen­tu­ry played there.

The hall will cel­e­brate its anniver­sary with a gala fea­tur­ing Yo-Yo Ma. But we’re tak­ing anoth­er tack and high­light­ing a vin­tage clip from the 1947 film Carnegie Hall.  Direct­ed by Edgar Ulmer, this sequence gives you Jascha Heifetz, the famed vio­lin­ist, play­ing the first move­ment of Tchaikovsky’s vio­lin con­cer­to. Heifetz played Carnegie Hall for the first time in 1917, when he was only 16 years old. This clip, filmed 30 years lat­er at the same great con­cert hall, has been viewed 1.5 mil­lion times…

Seth Godin: The Wealth of Free (Semi-Animated)

in Books, e-books | May 4th, 2011

Every idea has to begin some­where. And, back in 2000, Seth Godin start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with a fair­ly rad­i­cal pub­lish­ing mod­el. Inspired by Mal­colm Glad­well, Godin wrote Unleash­ing the Ideav­irus, which essen­tial­ly argued that free ideas spread quick­er than ideas that cost mon­ey. And it’s the ideas that spread the quick­est that win. So what was the log­i­cal next step? Mak­ing the book avail­able for free (get the ebook here) and see­ing what hap­pened.

The video above tells you the rest of the sto­ry. What it does­n’t tell you is that Godin has since writ­ten a steady stream of best­sellers (find free ecopies here), while author­ing the most wide­ly-read mar­ket­ing blog and found­ing Squidoo. The art­work accom­pa­ny­ing God­in’s talk was cre­at­ed by Stu­art Lang­field.

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:

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