North Korea’s Cinema of Dreams

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | March 4th, 2011

Kim Jong-Il, North Kore­a’s leader, is revered as a genius of cin­e­ma by his own peo­ple. Or so the North Kore­an pro­pa­gan­dists would have you believe. In this fas­ci­nat­ing video from Al Jazeera, we fol­low two reporters (Lynn Lee and James Leong) as they gain unprece­dent­ed access to Pyongyang’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Cin­e­mat­ic and Dra­mat­ic Arts, where young actors are picked to serve the mas­sive pro­pa­gan­da machine. Along the way, Lee and Leong encounter two young film stu­dents – Kim Un Bom and Ri Yun Mi – as they rehearse, take music and dance lessons, and call atten­tion to their priv­i­leged lives.

How are films dif­fer­ent in cap­i­tal­ist coun­tries vs. North Korea? Leave it to Ri Yun Mi, the film stu­dent, to explain (3:27 in the video):

“Films made in cap­i­tal­ist coun­tries are com­mer­cial prod­ucts. Movies in our coun­try bring out the ide­ol­o­gy of the peo­ple. We could say we are rep­re­sen­ta­tives of our [Com­mu­nist] Par­ty.”

The young reporters go on to explain the chal­lenges they faced in cre­at­ing this film. They were repeat­ed­ly denied per­mis­sion to film at the Uni­ver­si­ty, and fre­quent­ly told to delete footage when it did­n’t con­form to North Kore­a’s stan­dards. All in all, this film does a good job illu­mi­nat­ing anoth­er hid­den part of North Kore­an life: the cin­e­ma of dreams.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

New David Foster Wallace Story Appears in The New Yorker

in Books, Literature | March 3rd, 2011

A quick heads up: The March 7 edi­tion of The New York­er mag­a­zine fea­tures a pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished sto­ry by David Fos­ter Wal­lace, the cel­e­brat­ed Amer­i­can author who com­mit­ted sui­cide back in 2008. The sto­ry, “Back­bone,” begins:

Every whole per­son has ambi­tions, objec­tives, ini­tia­tives, goals. This one par­tic­u­lar boy’s goal was to be able to press his lips to every square inch of his own body.

His arms to the shoul­ders and most of his legs beneath the knee were child’s play. After these areas of his body, how­ev­er, the dif­fi­cul­ty increased with the abrupt­ness of a coastal shelf. The boy came to under­stand that unimag­in­able chal­lenges lay ahead of him. He was six.

The full sto­ry appears on The New York­er web­site. And per­haps it will whet your appetite for a big­ger lit­er­ary event. On April 15th, Wal­lace’s final (and still not quite com­plete) nov­el, ‘The Pale King’, will be pub­lished. You can already reserve your copy on Ama­zon here. Thanks to @sheerly for the tip…

The Restoration of a Masterpiece, as Narrated by Martin Scorsese

in Film, TED Talks, Video - Arts & Culture | March 2nd, 2011

This week, some of the world’s great­est thinkers (and biggest spenders) are gath­ered in Palm Springs and Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia for TED’s annu­al con­fer­ence. In case your invi­ta­tion to TED2011 got lost in the mail along with ours, you can still keep up with the con­fer­ence through TED’s home­page. Some high­lights so far include an open­ing address beamed in from out­er space, physi­cist Jan­na Lev­in’s dis­cus­sion of what she calls the sound­track of the uni­verse, and final­ly, a stun­ning video doc­u­ment­ing the restora­tion of Luchi­no Vis­con­ti’s 1963 clas­sic film, The Leop­ard. Even bet­ter, the video is nar­rat­ed by Mar­tin Scors­ese, uber-direc­tor, cin­e­ma his­to­ri­an, and founder of The Film Foun­da­tion, one of the many orga­ni­za­tions involved with the restora­tion.

By the way, Scorcese gave a fas­ci­nat­ing talk about film restora­tion last year at LACMA. You can watch it here. For a com­plete list of films his foun­da­tion has been involved in restor­ing or pre­serv­ing, click here.

The Big Apple in Incredible Time Lapse Video

in Video - Arts & Culture | March 1st, 2011

In this beau­ti­ful time lapse video, Josh Owens (aka Min­drel­ic) shows us New York City as we’ve nev­er seen it before. We begin with an unas­sum­ing shot of a boat in a har­bor, but then the action picks up. We pass quick­ly through icon­ic land­marks of the city – Times Square, the Brook­lyn Bridge, the Hol­land Tun­nel, and the New York Stock Exchange – right before see­ing the city from the van­tage point of a pas­sen­ger in an NYC cab.

The footage was shot over mul­ti­ple days using the Canon 5d Mark II dSLR and the fol­low­ing lens­es: Canon 14mm 2.8L, Canon 24mm 1.4L, Canon 50mm 1.2L, and Canon 70–200mm 2.8L. The video is one of the best time laps­es out there, a stun­ning trib­ute to the city that nev­er sleeps.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

Alan Davies: How Long is a Piece of String?

in Comedy, Math, Video - Science | February 28th, 2011

Yes­ter­day’s lack­lus­ter Acad­e­my Awards cer­e­mo­ny may have afford­ed you some unex­pect­ed time for con­tem­plat­ing life’s more urgent ques­tions, such as the one British come­di­an Alan Davies pur­sues above:  How long is a piece of string? Watch Davies, who is also a fre­quent pan­elist on the pop­u­lar Stephen Fry-host­ed quiz show Quite Inter­est­ing, explore the rid­dle’s philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions and inevitable con­nec­tion to string the­o­ry with the help of physics, quan­tum mechan­ics, and final­ly a vis­it with math­e­mati­cian Mar­cus de Sautoy. Fans of the Davies/du Sautoy inter­ac­tion may also want to check out Du Sautoy’s TED talk on Sym­me­try, as well as the debates in that video’s com­ments sec­tion. More docs can be found in our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

The Facebook Obsession

in Life, Technology | February 25th, 2011

Are we obsessed with Face­book? It’s hard to argue with the num­bers pre­sent­ed visu­al­ly in this artis­tic lit­tle video by Alex Trimpe. One data point that struck me (if true): 48% of young Amer­i­cans learn about the news, about what’s hap­pen­ing in the world, through Face­book. A big shift in the way infor­ma­tion gets into peo­ple’s hands.

And that’s part of a trend we’re see­ing here too. More and more, Open Cul­ture fans are join­ing our Face­book page, let­ting our dai­ly posts trick­le into their Face­book News Feeds, then shar­ing the intel­li­gent media with friends. You can join our Face­book Page here, or also fol­low us on Twit­ter where we tweet and re-tweet extra cul­tur­al good­ies 24/7.

Thanks Ian for the heads up on the FB video…

Kasparov Talks Chess, Technology and a Little Life at Google

in Google, Technology | February 23rd, 2011

Gar­ry Kas­parov, still the high­est-rat­ed play­er in the his­to­ry of chess, pulled through Google late last year and field­ed ques­tions from the Googlers. (Don’t miss Conan O’Brien’s hilar­i­ous riff on that term.) As you might expect, the ques­tions often drift­ed back to Kas­parov’s famous 1996–97 match­es against IBM’s Deep Blue (a pre­cur­sor to Wat­son) and more recent bat­tles between humans and com­put­ers. The 65 minute Q&A includes a lot more good chess talk, but it also gets into the cur­rent state of Russ­ian pol­i­tics (Kas­parov has opposed Vladimir Putin and ran for pres­i­dent in 2008), plus the chess mas­ter’s var­i­ous the­o­ries about lead­er­ship and strate­gic think­ing…

PS Be sure to read Kas­parov’s thoughts on Wat­son writ­ten imme­di­ate­ly after watch­ing the much pub­li­cized Jeop­ardy! pro­grams last week.

Teclópolis: Modernity in Stop Motion

in Art, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | February 23rd, 2011

I could­n’t say it much bet­ter than Fes­ti­val­Ge­nius did: This Argen­tine stop motion film (cre­at­ed by Can Can Club) recounts the “strug­gles of an anachro­nis­tic Super 8 cam­era to main­tain rel­e­van­cy in the face of dizzy­ing and over­whelm­ing effects of exces­sive con­sump­tion and waste on an increas­ing­ly plas­tic civ­i­liza­tion.” In 12 min­utes, every­day objects form increas­ing­ly com­plex, almost unimag­in­able land­scapes. A won­der to see. Teclópo­lis was released in 2009.…

via Drag­on Stop Motion

Tim O’Brien & Tobias Wolff Talk “Writing and War”

in Books, Literature, Writing | February 21st, 2011

Last month, two award-win­ning writ­ers and Viet­nam vet­er­ans – Tim O’Brien and Tobias Wolff – met at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty to talk about war and lit­er­a­ture, a tra­di­tion that has giv­en us Tol­stoy’s War and Peace, Remar­que’s All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, Hem­ing­way’s A Farewell to Arms, and Mail­er’s The Naked and the Dead. O’Brien has con­front­ed war in two pre­vi­ous works, If I Die in a Com­bat Zone and Going After Cac­cia­to. But he’s best known for The Things They Car­ried, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that gives lit­er­ary expres­sion to the Viet­nam expe­ri­ence, and that’s now a sta­ple of high school and col­lege lit­er­a­ture cours­es. As for Tobias Wolff, his mem­oir recount­ing his dis­il­lu­sion­ing expe­ri­ence as a sol­dier in Viet­nam – In Pharao­h’s Army – was a Nation­al Book Award final­ist, rank­ing up there with This Boy’s Life and Old School. Their wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion runs 80 min­utes…

The Great Train Robbery: Where Westerns Began

in Film | February 21st, 2011

A great film tra­di­tion – the West­ern – start­ed with The Great Train Rob­bery in 1903. Edwin S. Porter’s 10 minute film com­bined west­ern themes with inno­v­a­tive cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques (nar­ra­tive sto­ry­telling, par­al­lel edit­ing, minor cam­era move­ment, loca­tion shoot­ing, etc.). And the film took its inspi­ra­tion from an event that became the stuff of leg­end: Butch Cas­sidy’s 1900 train heist, which end­ed with Cas­sidy blow­ing open a safe and escap­ing with $5,000 in cash.

Porter’s land­mark film helped spark Amer­i­ca’s love affair with West­ern films. Thou­sands of West­erns flood­ed cin­e­mas through­out the silent era — films like Bron­cho Bil­ly and The Greas­er (1914), Sky High (1922), and West of Hot Dog (1924). And though the West­ern fad­ed briefly with the advent of sound film (cir­ca 1927), the genre staged a major come­back with the release of Stage­coach (1939), a John Ford film that turned John Wayne into one of Hol­ly­wood’s endur­ing stars. And yes, we have cat­a­logued 25 free John Wayne Films right here. To find oth­er free West­erns, vis­it this YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Trip to the Moon: Where Sci Fi Movies Began