Freebies from The New York Times

in Random | October 7th, 2010

Bucks, The New York Times blog ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing con­sumers make the most of their mon­ey, took things a step fur­ther today. They went beyond telling you how to save mon­ey. They told you how to get 10 things for free. Free tech sup­port, pass­port pho­tos, work­outs, med­i­cine, and also free ebooks, free online cours­es from great uni­ver­si­ties, for­eign lan­guage lessons, and movies. And they kind­ly includ­ed two of our col­lec­tions on the list. So if you’re look­ing to save a buck, here you go…

Star Wars Retold with Paper Animation

in Art, Film | October 7th, 2010

It’s hard not to enjoy this. Artist Eric Pow­er retells the basic sto­ry of the Star Wars tril­o­gy, using cut-paper ani­ma­tion. The film runs a very quick 2:40, and Jere­my Messer­smith’s ‘Tatooine’ pro­vides the sound­track. (You can down­load the song here for what­ev­er price you want.) More ani­mat­ed films by Pow­er appear on his web­site: www.ericpowerup.net

Watch a Hair-Raising 1954 Animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” Narrated by James Mason

in Film, Literature | October 6th, 2010

In 1849, the great Amer­i­can writer Edgar Allan Poe met a strange death in Bal­ti­more. If you recall, Poe was dis­cov­ered, either in a state of delir­i­um or uncon­scious (accounts dif­fer) and appar­ent­ly wear­ing some­one else’s tat­tered clothes, out­side a tav­ern. He was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal where he remained, unable to explain what had hap­pened to him, until he died. (A post in our archive breaks down the strange cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his death pret­ty well.)

To mark the admit­ted­ly grim occa­sion, we are high­light­ing today the 1953 ani­mat­ed film ver­sion of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by James Mason. Upon its release, the film was giv­en a bizarre recep­tion. In the UK, the British Board of Film Cen­sors gave the film an “x” rat­ing, deem­ing it unsuit­able for adult audi­ences. Mean­while, “The Tell-Tale Heart” was nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film in the US, though it ulti­mate­ly lost to a Dis­ney pro­duc­tion. The film runs a short 7:24, and now appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Bonus: You can also down­load a free text ver­sion of Poe’s clas­sic via Project Guten­berg, and then a free audio ver­sion from our list of Free Audio Books.

Many thanks to Mike S. for send­ing this our way. Have a great piece of Open Cul­ture to share with your fel­low read­ers? Get in touch here.

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:

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Johnny Depp: A Voom Portrait by Robert Wilson

in Art | October 6th, 2010

The New York Times has described Robert Wil­son, the avant-garde artist, as “a tow­er­ing fig­ure in the world of exper­i­men­tal the­ater and an explor­er in the uses of time and space onstage.” Known for break­ing con­ven­tions and weav­ing togeth­er sound, images and text in evoca­tive ways, Wil­son cre­at­ed a series of “Voom” por­traits in 2007. As he explains in this inter­view (lis­ten here), the Voom series rein­vents the por­trait by pre­sent­ing fig­ures (includ­ing many celebri­ties) in high-def video rather than the tra­di­tion­al still image. And although the fig­ures remain still (per the con­ven­tion), there’s nonethe­less a cer­tain life and motion to them. Above, we fea­ture the Voom por­trait of actor John­ny Depp. Metafil­ter gives you links to 12 oth­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Sie liebt dich: The Beatles in German

in Music | October 4th, 2010

In a bit of his­tor­i­cal irony, the British Inva­sion hit Ger­many before it reached the UK or any­where else. From 1960 — 1962, the Bea­t­les played the grit­ty night­clubs of Ham­burg and real­ly learned to play togeth­er as a band. There, they final­ized the cast: John, Paul, George and then Ringo. And there they refined their live act, play­ing 281 con­certs, some last­ing as long as 12 hours. Need­less to say, The Bea­t­les built up a fan­base in Ger­many, and they lat­er nur­tured it by re-record­ing some ear­ly hits in Ger­man. Above, we have “She Loves You” reworked as “Sie Liebt Dich” (Jan­u­ary 1964). Oth­er Ger­man record­ings includ­ed “Komm, gib mir deine Hand” (“I Want to Hold Your Hand”) and the rather amus­ing Geh raus (“Get Back”).

PS Look­ing to learn some Ger­man? Don’t for­get about our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons.

via Metafil­ter

Zooming into Italian Masterpieces

in Art | October 3rd, 2010

This past week, an Ital­ian web site (Hal­tadefinizione) placed online six mas­ter­pieces from the famous Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, all in super high res­o­lu­tion. Each image is packed with close to 28 bil­lion pix­els, a res­o­lu­tion 3,000 times greater than your nor­mal dig­i­tal pho­to. And this gives art con­nais­seurs every­where the abil­i­ty to zoom in and explore these paint­ings in exquis­ite­ly fine detail – to see strokes and details not nor­mal­ly seen even by vis­i­tors to the Uffizi. The paint­ings fea­tured here include Bot­ti­cel­li’s The Birth of Venus; Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Annun­ci­a­tion and The Last Sup­per; The Bap­tism of Christ by Ver­roc­chio and da Vin­ci; Car­avag­gio’s Bac­chus; and the Por­trait of Eleono­ra of Tole­do by Bronzi­no. These mas­ter­pieces will remain online for free until Jan­u­ary 29. For more details on the project, look here. Thanks Clau­dia for the great heads up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

in Books, Literature, Most Popular | October 1st, 2010

To com­mem­o­rate Banned Books Week, the always great Inter­net Archive has opened up access to 74 banned books. The col­lec­tion fea­tures some seri­ous pieces of lit­er­a­ture (James Joyce’s Ulysses, F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Ten­der is the Night, Hux­ley’s Brave New World, etc.); some tra­di­tion­al chil­dren’s clas­sics (Win­nie the Pooh); and some sin­is­ter books of unques­tion­able his­tor­i­cal impor­tance (Mein Kampf). These books can be down­loaded in mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal for­mats, includ­ing some­times ePub and Kin­dle for­mats. This gives you the abil­i­ty to read the the works on the Kin­dle, iPad, Nook and oth­er main­stream ebook read­ers. (See note below.) But the old fash­ioned com­put­er will also do the job.

Cen­sor­ship remains a seri­ous prob­lem in the US and beyond. The Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion record­ed 460 attempts in 2009 to restrict books in US schools and libraries. But they esti­mate that this rep­re­sents only 20–25% of actu­al attempts to cen­sor. All of this cen­sor­ship is neat­ly (and rather specif­i­cal­ly) tracked on Google Maps.

NOTE: Please see our pre­vi­ous post describ­ing how to add files to the Kin­dle. Mean­while this page describes how to trans­fer ePub files to the iPad.

John Waters: The Point of Contemporary Art

in Art, Film | September 28th, 2010

If con­tem­po­rary art baf­fles you, if you’ve ever looked at con­tem­po­rary art and won­dered “what’s the point?,” then give some­times con­tro­ver­sial film­mak­er John Waters four min­utes of your time. He’ll break it down for you in sim­ple, if not crude, terms: “Con­tem­po­rary art’s job is to wreck what­ev­er came before it. And from the very begin­ning after the Old Mas­ters, from then on, each gen­er­a­tion wrecked that. That some­thing is pret­ty and beau­ti­ful is prob­a­bly the worst thing that you could say today in con­tem­po­rary art about some­thing, unless it’s so pret­ty it’s nau­se­at­ing.”

You can watch more seg­ments of his Big Think inter­view here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth Is Life With­out A*Holes

John Waters Takes You on a Com­i­cal Tour of His Apart­ment (1986)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Ira Glass Cameo on The Simpsons

in Media | September 28th, 2010

If you did­n’t watch the sea­son pre­miere of The Simp­sons this week­end, here is what you missed: The host of This Amer­i­can Life, Ira Glass, mak­ing a brief cameo appear­ance and pok­ing some fun at his ever pop­u­lar show. Watch above.

Mean­while, speak­ing of Ira Glass, be sure to get his thoughts on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time. He offers some excel­lent advice for any­one work­ing in a cre­ative field…

Dick Tracy: The Original Film Series Online

in Film | September 27th, 2010

Chester Gould first intro­duced Dick Tra­cy, the leg­endary police detec­tive, to the Amer­i­can pub­lic in 1931, back when he launched his syn­di­cat­ed com­ic strip — a strip that he would con­tin­ue writ­ing until 1977. The char­ac­ter res­onat­ed imme­di­ate­ly, and soon enough, Dick Tra­cy took to the air­waves (lis­ten to radio episodes here) and then even­tu­al­ly the sil­ver screen. In 1937, Repub­lic Pic­tures released a Dick Tra­cy film series com­prised of 15 episodes/chapters, each run­ning about 22 min­utes on aver­age. And, thanks to Film Annex, you can now revis­it them (for free) online at DickTracyTV.com. Above we have fea­tured a video that gives you the entire series in one handy clip. It runs rough­ly 4 and a half hours (got an after­noon to spare?), and, please note, the large file takes some time to load. You can also watch, or even down­load, this file at The Inter­net Archive.

If you’re look­ing for more vin­tage movies, def­i­nite­ly vis­it our big col­lec­tion Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Film Noir, Doc­u­men­taries & More