A ‘Lil Bob Dylan Christmas

in Music | December 24th, 2010

The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. Ani­mat­ed. Off of Dylan’s 2009 Christ­mas album. Have a joy­ful and safe hol­i­day…

My Blackberry Is Not Working!

in Comedy, Most Popular, Technology | December 23rd, 2010

Clas­sic… This fruity sketch just aired on the BBC pro­gram The One Ron­nie. Great work by Ron­nie Cor­bett and Har­ry Enfield.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Conan O’Brien @ Google
The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match Revis­it­ed
Father Gui­do Sarducci’s Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty

Neil Gaiman’s Dark Christmas Poem Animated

in Books, Literature, Random | December 22nd, 2010

39 Degrees North, a Bei­jing motion graph­ics stu­dio, start­ed devel­op­ing an uncon­ven­tion­al Christ­mas card this year. And once they got going, there was no turn­ing back. Above, we have the end result – an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the uber dark Christ­mas poem (read text here) writ­ten by Neil Gaiman, the best­selling author of sci-fi and fan­ta­sy short sto­ries. The poem was pub­lished in Gaiman’s col­lec­tion Smoke and Mir­rors.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Recites “Ode to a Nightingale”

in Literature, Poetry | December 21st, 2010

70 years ago today, F. Scott Fitzger­ald died an untime­ly death, his life cut short by alco­holism, tuber­cu­lo­sis, and even­tu­al­ly a series of heart attacks. He was only 44 years old. Today, we remem­ber Fitzger­ald with some vin­tage audio – the author of The Great Gats­by recit­ing John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightin­gale” from mem­o­ry. Fitzger­ald devi­ates sev­er­al times from the text before going com­plete­ly off the rails. And then the poem, a med­i­ta­tion on mor­tal­i­ty and the tran­sience of beau­ty, cuts off abrupt­ly halfway through. A rather fit­ting metaphor for Fitzger­ald’s own life.

Accord­ing to Park Buck­er, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, the record­ing was like­ly made around 1940, dur­ing Fitzger­ald’s last year, per­haps in a self-record­ing phono­graph booth in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. When Fitzger­ald died, he was liv­ing in Los Ange­les, a washed-up Hol­ly­wood screen­writer, hop­ing to write one last great nov­el. In her Paris Review inter­view, Dorothy Park­er described Fitzger­ald’s bleak last days: “It was ter­ri­ble about Scott; if you’d seen him you’d have been sick. When he died no one went to the funer­al, not a sin­gle soul came, or even sent a flower. I said, ‘Poor son of a bitch,’ a quote right out of The Great Gats­by, and every­one thought it was anoth­er wise­crack. But it was said in dead seri­ous­ness.”

You can find sev­er­al texts by Fitzger­ald in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books (1936)

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

The Vimeo Video School

in Film | December 21st, 2010

You all know and love Vimeo videos. (We’ve fea­tured many here before.) Now Vimeo will teach you how to make your own videos. The new Vimeo Video School includes some nuts-and-bolts lessons (i.e., how to cap­ture good sound or improve your fram­ing & com­po­si­tion). And then there are some extra tuto­ri­als cre­at­ed by mem­bers of the Vimeo com­mu­ni­ty. Above, we give you a short intro­duc­tion to sto­ry­board­ing (part of a larg­er series on the sub­ject), which hap­pens to fea­ture orig­i­nal draw­ings from Mar­tin Scors­ese’s Taxi Dri­ver. And yes, by the way, Amer­i­can view­ers can watch Taxi Dri­ver online (for free) right here.

Note: The mak­er of Flip video cam­eras has also pro­duced a series of instruc­tion­al videos. You can find them on YouTube right here. Thanks to @TechSoup for the fyi…

Richard Dawkins Plays the Piano: “Earth History in C Major”

in Science | December 20th, 2010

Oxford’s renowned biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins puts the his­to­ry of life on earth in per­spec­tive, using sim­ply a piano. This short video is a great jump­ing off point for this bril­liant lec­ture Dawkins gave back in 1991. It’s called “Wak­ing Up in the Uni­verse, Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse,” and the 57-minute video pulls you deep­er into some big ques­tions. What’s the ori­gin of life? Where do we fall in the scheme of life on plan­et Earth? What’s our role in the larg­er uni­verse? And how lucky are we to have the brains and tools to under­stand the awe­some won­ders that sur­round us? Thanks to “Con­stant­line” for send­ing today’s video along.

Watch “Ryan,” Winner of an Oscar and 60 Other Awards

in Art, Film | December 20th, 2010

Chris Lan­dreth turned to ani­ma­tion as a sec­ond career and even­tu­al­ly land­ed an Oscar with Ryan (2004), a short ani­mat­ed film based on the life of Ryan Larkin, an artist who pro­duced influ­en­tial ani­mat­ed films dur­ing the 1960s, before falling into a per­son­al down­ward spi­ral. You can revis­it two of Lark­in’s ani­mat­ed films (both ref­er­enced in the film above) on NFB.CA. Start with the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed short, Walk­ing, from 1969, and then turn to Street Musique (1972). And don’t for­get to down­load NFB’s free iPad app where you can watch Ryan in a portable yet visu­al­ly com­pelling for­mat.

The Landreth/Larkin films men­tioned above have been added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

200+ Films by Indige­nous Direc­tors Now Free to View Online: A New Archive Launched by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da Launch­es Free iPad App

Werner Herzog Reads Twas The Night Before Christmas

in Comedy, Film | December 17th, 2010

Right in time for the hol­i­day sea­son. Faux Wern­er Her­zog reads an uber dark and satir­i­cal ver­sion of Twas The Night Before Christ­mas. Oth­er fun clips in this video series fea­ture Faux Her­zog read­ing Curi­ous George, Made­line, and Mike Mul­li­gan and His Steam Shov­el. via @eacion

The Most Amazing Science Images Of 2010

in Science | December 16th, 2010

Not to miss. Pop­Sci has pulled togeth­er a gallery of “The Most Amaz­ing Sci­ence Images of 2010.” It fea­tures 72 pho­tos in total, includ­ing the image above – an E. Coli Sculp­ture that fig­ures into artist Luke Jer­ram’s “Glass Micro­bi­ol­o­gy” series of por­traits. Find a short video his Malar­ia sculp­ture right here.

Water Drop Filmed in 10,000 Frames Per Second

in Random, Science | December 15th, 2010

The folks at MIT show you a drop of water like you’ve nev­er seen it before. A great lit­tle out­take from the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel pro­gram “Invis­i­ble Worlds In The Water.” This video appears in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

via All­top