Elizabeth Taylor on “What’s My Line?” (1954)

in Film, Television | March 23rd, 2011

Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, a star for sev­en decades, died ear­li­er today of con­ges­tive heart fail­ure. She was 79 years old. To pay quick trib­ute, we’re high­light­ing Tay­lor’s 1954 appear­ance on “What’s My Line?,” the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry (1950 — 1967). A good way to remem­ber Tay­lor – hav­ing a lit­tle fun in her prime.

The film men­tioned at the end of the scene – The Last Time I Saw Paris stars – also hap­pens to be avail­able at the Inter­net Archive for free. Enjoy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”

Faith: Time-Lapse from Mecca

in Art, Film, Religion | March 16th, 2011

Mec­ca — Muham­mad’s birth­place and the heart of Islam – beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tured by Hosain Hadi, using just his Canon 5D mark ll.

H/T @MatthiasRascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mid­dle East­ern His­to­ry: Free Cours­es

The Birth of a Word: Deb Roy at TED

in MIT, Science, TED Talks | March 16th, 2011

Deb Roy is the direc­tor of the Cog­ni­tive Machines group at the MIT Media Lab. For the first few years of his son’s life, Roy installed cam­eras in every room of the fam­i­ly home. Now he jokes that he has the “largest home video col­lec­tion ever made” – rough­ly 90,000 hours of images and footage of the grow­ing baby’s world. The pur­pose was to con­sid­er and ana­lyze all the fac­tors impact­ing his son’s first words, includ­ing the 7 mil­lion words that the boy heard from his father, moth­er, nan­ny, and oth­er vis­i­tors to the house.

Roy’s talk made one of the biggest splash­es at TED this year, not only for what he learned about ear­ly lan­guage acqui­si­tion, but also for his breath­tak­ing data visu­al­iza­tion maps. Even by TED stan­dards, it’s an idea-packed 20 min­utes: Impres­sive. And when you con­sid­er that Roy is now on sab­bat­i­cal and employed by the AI com­pa­ny Bluefin Labs, work­ing on, among oth­er things, social media and mar­ket research, it all becomes more than a lit­tle bit fright­en­ing.

On a brighter note, Roy’s son turned out to be an ear­ly talk­er.

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

Forget the Films, Watch the Titles

in Literature | March 16th, 2011

Some watch the Super Bowl for just the com­mer­cials. Oth­ers watch films for the title designs. Title sequences begin and end every movie. They can be “engag­ing or wild­ly enter­tain­ing … or sim­ply drop dead beau­ti­ful.” They can “ooze with visu­al poet­ry and sophis­ti­cat­ed imagery.” And they can put the audi­ence in the right mood for the movie, or close it in the right way. The ins-and-outs of title design get lov­ing­ly cov­ered by a web­site called For­get the Films, Watch the Titles, and today we’re fea­tur­ing the clos­ing moments of Lemo­ny Snick­et’s A Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events, a 2004 black humor film. This five minute ani­mat­ed sequence is the work of Jamie Caliri, a direc­tor with a self-described pas­sion for visu­al sto­ry telling. Not too long ago, we high­light­ed the ani­ma­tion con­cepts he devel­oped for The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay. And, here, Caliri sits down for an inter­view with For­get the Films, Watch the Titles and talks about his art­ful approach to title design…

Rachmaninov Had Big Hands

in Comedy, Music | March 15th, 2011

Igudes­man & Joo are a musical/comedy duo per­form­ing in the US and Cana­da this spring. This clip, “Rach­mani­noff Had Big Hands,” starts out a lit­tle slow­ly but gets enter­tain­ing fair­ly quick­ly. If you like com­bin­ing com­e­dy and clas­si­cal music, then don’t miss anoth­er pro­gram recent­ly high­light­ed on Open Cul­ture: Bill Bai­ley’s Remark­able Guide to the Orches­tra.

Thanks to Sara for send­ing this our way…

Who Is the World’s Most Typical Person?

in Current Affairs, Life | March 15th, 2011

In a world of 7 bil­lion peo­ple, who is the most “typ­i­cal”? That’s the ques­tion Nation­al Geo­graph­ic asks (and answers) in a visu­al­ly engag­ing video that kicks off a year-long look at glob­al pop­u­la­tion issues. Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s web­site now hosts a fea­ture arti­cle that pref­aces the series and also an accom­pa­ny­ing pho­to gallery.

On a rather relat­ed note, we’re all watch­ing the news in Japan go from bad to worse. First an earth­quake. Then a tsuna­mi. Now a poten­tial nuclear dis­taster. If you want to give a hand, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to the Japan­ese relief effort. Char­i­ty­Nav­i­ga­tor will help you eval­u­ate spe­cif­ic char­i­ties oper­at­ing in Japan and avoid scams. A decent place to begin…

via Brain Pick­ings

Teens Ponder Meaning of Contemporary Art

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | March 14th, 2011

In 2009, Tate Liv­er­pool dis­played four works of con­tem­po­rary art in dif­fer­ent loca­tions around the city. Acclaimed film direc­tor Mike Fig­gis was asked to turn the reac­tions of Liv­er­poodlians to these sculp­tures into short films. The video above shows teenagers dis­cussing Jeff Koon­s’s “Three Ball Total Equi­lib­ri­um Tank.” Anoth­er short film cap­tures the views of stu­dents when one of Dan Flav­in’s instal­la­tions called “Unti­tled” was dis­played at their school for one day.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Harvard Thinks Big

in Harvard, TED Talks | March 14th, 2011

10 Har­vard pro­fes­sors. 10 fas­ci­nat­ing ideas. 10 min­utes each. That was the gist of Har­vard Thinks Big, a TED-esque event held on Feb­ru­ary 11th. Now fast for­ward sev­er­al weeks, and the talks all appear online for free. Find them on YouTube, iTunes, or Har­vard’s ded­i­cat­ed web site.

Of all the 10 talks, we decid­ed to fea­ture one: Daniel Gilbert, a psych pro­fes­sor known for his book Stum­bling On Hap­pi­ness, presents a talk called “It’s the End of the World as We Know it, and I Feel Fine.” (Yes, a nod to R.E.M.) And it tries to make sense of a baf­fling ques­tion. Our plan­et is on the brink of an eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe and we’re calm­ly sit­ting here watch­ing videos. Humans have thrived because we take threats seri­ous­ly. But why not this one?

Oth­er speak­ers at the event include Steven Pinker, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Wrang­ham, and Elaine Scar­ry – some well known Har­vard names. One fig­ure not present was Michael Sandel. But here we have his TED Talk from 2010: The Lost Art of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Debate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es

What’s the Right Thing to Do?: Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course Now Online

Inception Redone in 60 Seconds

in Art, Film | March 12th, 2011

As Car­toon Brew explains it: “Wolf­gang Mat­zl remade Incep­tion with vin­tage paper cut-outs, shot frame-by-frame on his dig­i­tal cam­era, for the Done In 60 Sec­onds com­pe­ti­tion (where entrants recre­ate a movie in no more than a minute). His film was one of the 10 final­ists in Berlin, Ger­many.” You can watch oth­er short­list­ed films here…

via Boing Boing

Bobby McFerrin Shows the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 11th, 2011

The jazz vocal­ist and ten-time Gram­my win­ner Bob­by McFer­rin turns 61 today. To cel­e­brate, we’re post­ing this clip from the 2009 World Sci­ence Fes­ti­val, in which McFer­rin leads an impromp­tu audi­ence sing-a-long in order to demon­strate the pow­er of the pen­ta­ton­ic scale. We bet you’ve nev­er seen music the­o­ry taught quite like this.

McFer­rin, by the way, is shar­ing the stage with sev­er­al sci­en­tists, includ­ing Daniel Lev­itin, McGill pro­fes­sor and author of the book This is Your Brain on Music. If this clip hap­pens to awak­en your inner croon­er instead of your inner neu­ro­sci­en­tist, you can also check out a short singing les­son with McFer­rin on Qtv.

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