Orson Welles Reads Moby Dick

in Literature | March 26th, 2010

Welles is read­ing just a short intro­duc­tion here. But if you want a com­plete audio down­load of Moby Dick, let me tell you how to get one. You can down­load a free read­ing of Melville’s clas­sic at Lib­rivox. The full mp3 zip file is right 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!

The Wilhelm Scream is Back

in Film | March 24th, 2010

The Wil­helm Scream, named after Pri­vate Wil­helm, a char­ac­ter in the 1953 West­ern film The Charge at Feath­er Riv­er, has appeared in over 140 Hol­ly­wood films, includ­ing Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reser­voir Dogs, and oth­ers. (See full list here.) Now the scream is com­ing back. Accord­ing to the LA Times, the scream will again echo through cin­e­mas with the May 7 release of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2. Above, you can watch a mon­tage of The Wil­helm Scream. Nat­u­ral­ly, the ur-scream comes first. Thanks Veron­i­ca for the tip on this one!

Amazon Releases Kindle App for the iPad & Mac OS X

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | March 21st, 2010

A quick fyi: Ama­zon has released an app that will let you read Kin­dle texts on your Mac (final­ly!) and the upcom­ing iPad. If you’re look­ing for free Kin­dle texts, we’ve pro­duced a long list here, includ­ing many great clas­sics. You can find Kin­dle apps (all free) for oth­er devices below.

• Kin­dle for Tablet Com­put­ers (this includes the iPad)
• Kin­dle for iPhone
• Kin­dle for PC
• Kin­dle for Black­Ber­ry

Thanks Wes for the info…

Open Video Coming to Wikipedia

in Wikipedia | March 20th, 2010

Wikipedia is now open­ing the online ency­clo­pe­dia to video, giv­ing con­trib­u­tors a new way to con­vey infor­ma­tion in a rich­er way. And they’re mak­ing a point of using video in an open for­mat (Ogg The­o­ra).

Among the con­flu­ence of fac­tors com­ing togeth­er in 2010 are: 1) the grow­ing aware­ness that video is the dom­i­nant medi­um of the web and that video can help make Wikipedia arti­cles even rich­er; 2) the devel­op­ment of open source play­ers and codecs (alter­na­tives to Flash, Quick­time, Win­dows Media, and H.264, 3); the intro­duc­tion of pub­lic brows­er tools—Firefox’s Fire­fogg exten­sion, for example—for upload­ing and play­ing non­pro­pri­etary video for­mats; 4) the will­ing­ness of non­prof­its like the Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Cul­ture Foun­da­tion and the Open Video Alliance and for-prof­its like Kaltura and Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion to ded­i­cate them­selves to open video; and the pro­vi­sion of strate­gic fund­ing from the Mozil­la Foun­da­tion and Ford Foun­da­tion, among oth­ers, to sup­port devel­op­ers, pro­gram­mers, and activists.  As Wikipedia board mem­ber S. J. Klein explains in a recent Open Video Alliance video short, the day is fast com­ing where video will be as easy for users to write, edit, anno­tate, and remix as text is today. (You can find more details on the cam­paign here and here.)

What are the rec­om­men­da­tions for video con­tributed to Wikipedia? They should be relat­ed to cur­rent arti­cles, short and under 100 MB, free, and avail­able to share and reuse (offered under a Cre­ative Com­mons BY-SA or equiv­a­lent license). In com­ing weeks new videos are expect­ed to pro­lif­er­ate and new strate­gies will be unfurled for work­ing with edu­ca­tion­al repos­i­to­ries of lega­cy video.

This post was con­tributed by Peter Kauf­man, the CEO and pres­i­dent of Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion, who shares our pas­sion for thought­ful media.

Cannes for Free!

in Film | March 18th, 2010

Right in time for the week­end… Work­ing in part­ner­ship with Stel­la Artois, TheAuteurs.com is now fea­tur­ing a selec­tion of its favorite films that have played at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val.

The line­up, includ­ing many prize win­ners, fea­tures movies by Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (Amar­cord), Wong Kar-wai (Hap­py Togeth­er), Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni (L’avven­tu­ra), Jacques Tati (Mon oncle), and oth­ers. There are nine movies in total, filmed between 1958 and 2008. And they’re free until June. These films should be avail­able world­wide, but reg­is­tra­tion is required. Kick back and start watch­ing here.

For more great clas­sics, see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

New Magazine & Video Archives Coming Online

in Media | March 18th, 2010

Lots of new archives have been com­ing online late­ly. So, why not give them a quick men­tion.

CSPAN: This week, the Amer­i­can cable net­work final­ly com­plet­ed the dig­i­ti­za­tion of its vast video archive. What does that mean for you? It means you can access online every C‑SPAN pro­gram aired since 1987. 160,000 hours of video in total, cov­er­ing 23 years of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal his­to­ry. The Times has more on this sto­ry.

Pop­u­lar Sci­ence: Thanks to Google, you can now freely access a 137-year archive  of Pop­u­lar Sci­ence. As Pop­Sci, found­ed in 1872, writes, “Each issue appears just as it did at its orig­i­nal time of pub­li­ca­tion, com­plete with peri­od adver­tise­ments. It’s an amaz­ing resource that beau­ti­ful­ly encap­su­lates our ongo­ing fas­ci­na­tion with the future, and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy’s incred­i­ble poten­tial to improve our lives.” If you spend some time with Brain Pick­ing’s recent post, you’ll see why the Pop­Sci archive holds so much inter­est. As a side note, you can also find a vast archive of Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics via Google Books. Just click here and, as Wired put it, “let the nerdgas­mic loss of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty com­mence.”

Spin Mag­a­zine: Google Books has also added to its vir­tu­al mag­a­zine shelf every issue of Spin, the music mag­a­zine Bob Guc­cione Jr. found­ed in 1985. As Boing­Bo­ing men­tions today, it’s inter­est­ing to see “how awful­ly dat­ed the design of the mag­a­zine is.”

Salman Rushdie: Now this isn’t a pub­licly avail­able archive, but it’s worth know­ing about. Archivists at Emory have been work­ing with the dig­i­tal assets of Salman Rushdie and devel­op­ing a new field — “dig­i­tal archae­ol­o­gy” — that will help schol­ars pre­serve and method­i­cal­ly study the dig­i­tal remains (text doc­u­ments, emails, brows­er logs and files) of writ­ers and artists. You can watch Rushdie talk about the project, its chal­lenges and ben­e­fits. (There’s anoth­er clip of him speak­ing here.) Then you have the archivists them­selves talk­ing about how they’re pre­serv­ing Rushdie’s lit­er­ary remains, down to the yel­low sticky notes he attached to his com­put­er. (Note: The Times has a piece on this project this week.)

The Greatest Film Scenes Ever Shot

in Film | March 14th, 2010

This week­end, The Guardian film crit­ic and select film­mak­ers list­ed their favorite movie scenes of all time. It starts with the icon­ic show­er scene from Hitch­cock­’s Psy­cho (above). No sur­prise there. And then what? The very long car chase from The French Con­nec­tion, Robet DeNiro’s talk­ing to the mir­ror scene in Taxi Dri­ver, the mem­o­rable last min­utes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the fight­ing skele­tons in Jason and the Arg­onauts, Bri­an DePal­ma’s “blood at the prom” scene in Car­rie, and some oth­er mem­o­rable ones.

Iceland!

in Random | March 13th, 2010

via The Dai­ly Dish

Christopher Hitchens Revises the Ten Commandments

in Religion | March 11th, 2010

Christo­pher Hitchens — he’s an irri­tant to the left (a big defend­er of the bun­gled Iraq war) and to the right (an athe­ist who wrote the con­tro­ver­sial best­seller God is Not Great). He’s an equal oppor­tu­ni­ty polemi­cist. Now, in the April edi­tion of Van­i­ty Fair, he’s back. This time, he’s decon­struct­ing the Ten Com­mand­ments and offer­ing his own updat­ed set of com­mand­ments for our mod­ern times. I’m nor­mal­ly not the biggest Hitchens fan. But, I’m on board with the gist of his guid­ing prin­ci­ples.

via @KirstinButler

Twilight Zone Radio: Download Free Episodes

in Sci Fi, Theatre | March 11th, 2010

The Twi­light Zone aired between 1959 and 1964, and it became one of Amer­i­ca’s icon­ic tele­vi­sion shows. Although the pro­gram end­ed long ago, the show lives on today … on the radio. Air­ing on 200 sta­tions across the US, Twi­light Zone Radio dra­ma­tizes Rod Ser­ling’s clas­sic scripts for today’s radio audi­ences. And it does it with help of actor Sta­cy Keach, the show’s host, and celebri­ties (Jason Alexan­der, Ed Beg­ley Jr., etc.) play­ing lead roles in the dra­mas. You can catch the show on the radio (find your local radio sta­tion here). Or, right now, you can down­load three free episodes of past shows. Each runs about 40 min­utes, and, if you find your­self hun­ger­ing for more, you can always pur­chase indi­vid­ual episodes from the Twi­light Zone Radio archive for $1.95.

On a relat­ed note, be sure to see our pre­vi­ous post: Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio