Logorama: The Oscar Winning Animated Short Now Online

in Film | March 10th, 2010

Note: Some lan­guage is NOT safe for work…

This past week­end, François Alaux and Herve de Cre­cy’s 17 minute film, Logo­ra­ma, won the Oscar for the best Short Film (Ani­mat­ed). The plot comes basi­cal­ly boils down to this: “In a world made up entire­ly of trade­marks and brand names, Miche­lin Man cops pur­sue a crim­i­nal Ronald McDon­ald.” Obvi­ous­ly, there is some com­men­tary here on how cor­po­ra­tions per­me­ate Amer­i­can soci­ety. The film has been brought online by GarageTV. For more films, check out our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via @dylanschenkler and theflickcast.com

GoodReads

in Books, Literature | March 9th, 2010

A quick heads up for book lovers: Goodreads is a large social net­work for read­ers, with over 3,000,000 mem­bers who review, rec­om­mend and swap books. The site also fea­tures “book-give-aways” for its mem­bers. This month you can enter to win a free copy of If You Fol­low Me, a nov­el by Male­na Watrous, a tal­ent­ed col­league of mine at Stan­ford. About the book one review­er said: It’s “the kind of book you fin­ish and then clutch to your heart as you run around telling every­one you know that they have to read it.” The book is hit­ting the book­store shelves today, and you can sign up to win a free copy until March 16.

PS Male­na will be teach­ing an online writ­ing course through Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies this spring. The course, called The Cre­ative Writ­ing Coach, is open to all. Mean­while, we’re also pilot­ing our first online human­i­ties course, a phi­los­o­phy course called Envi­sion­ing the Good Life. Watch the video intro­duc­tion for the course here.

Great Theatre for Free

in Theatre | March 8th, 2010

A quick pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment:

Begin­ning Sat­ur­day, March 13, L.A. The­atre Works Radio The­atre Series will air Fall­en Angels by Noel Cow­ard, star­ring Annette Ben­ing, Har­ri­et Har­ris, Judith Ivey, Joe Man­teg­na, John Rubin­stein, and Kristof­fer Tabori. The broad­cast can be heard local­ly in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia on Sat­ur­day from 10 pm to mid­night on 89.3 KPCC, and can also be streamed on demand at http://www.latw.org/.

LA The­atre Works stages numer­ous audio plays each year, fea­tur­ing lead­ing actors and actress­es. You can access their oth­er recent pro­duc­tions here: iTunes – Web Site

The Milky Way in Time-Lapse Video

in Astronomy, Science | March 8th, 2010

This hum­bling footage of the Milky Way was filmed on Mau­na Kea in Hawaii, the same loca­tion that recent­ly gave us footage of stars orbit­ing a black hole. This is, of course, not a coin­ci­dence. Mau­na Kea hosts the world’s largest obser­va­to­ry for opti­cal, infrared, and sub­mil­lime­ter astron­o­my. Thanks Robert for send­ing this our way.

via The Huff­in­g­ton Post

Alice in Wonderland: The Original 1903 Film Adaptation

in Film | March 6th, 2010

Alice in Won­der­land has a long tra­di­tion in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. You can find ver­sions from 2010, 1972, and 1951. You’ll even find a silent ver­sion dat­ing all the way back to 1903. Thanks to the British Film Insti­tute (BFI), you can watch online this silent ver­sion of Lewis Car­rol­l’s clas­sic tale for the first time. Pro­duced just eight years after the birth of cin­e­ma, the film, orig­i­nal­ly run­ning 12 min­utes, was “the longest film pro­duced in Eng­land at that time.” The ver­sion above is unfor­tu­nate­ly incom­plete, run­ning just 9 and a half min­utes. But it has been recent­ly restored (to the best extent pos­si­ble). BFI offers more infor­ma­tion about this ear­ly cin­e­ma gem here. Final­ly, you can down­load a free copy of Lewis Car­rol­l’s clas­sic, Alice in Won­der­land, with­in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

For more vin­tage movies, vis­it our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­to of the Real Alice in Won­der­land Cir­ca 1862

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

See Ralph Steadman’s Twist­ed Illus­tra­tions of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land on the Story’s 150th Anniver­sary

Best Free Movies Online

in Film | March 5th, 2010

With the Oscars com­ing up, Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media re-aired today our inter­view from last Novem­ber. Here, we tell radio lis­ten­ers about the wealth of great movies avail­able online for free. You can lis­ten to the inter­view below (or here), and explore our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, which includes films by Hitch­cock, Polan­s­ki, Cop­po­la, David Lynch and many oth­ers. It also includes a long list of sites where you can freely watch movies online, includ­ing clas­sics, indies, doc­u­men­taries and beyond. Thanks to Jon Gor­don and Future Tense for talk­ing with me and help­ing get the word out.

Become a fan on Face­book or get extra cul­tur­al good­ies on Twit­ter!

Stars Orbiting Black Holes

in Astronomy, Physics | March 2nd, 2010

Above, we bring you what astro­physi­cist Daniel Holz calls “one of the coolest movies in all of sci­ence.” What you see here is not exact­ly straight­for­ward. But it’s the work of UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez, and it essen­tial­ly shows stars orbit­ing around a super­mas­sive black hole at the cen­ter of our galaxy over the past 15 earth years. Accord­ing to Holz, these orbits, filmed with the largest tele­scopes in the world on Mau­na Kea, are sim­ply “one of the best ways (short of the detec­tion of grav­i­ta­tion­al waves from black hole merg­ers) of con­firm­ing that black holes exist.” And it’s quite right­ly an “incred­i­ble feat of obser­va­tion­al astron­o­my.” For more, read Holz’s piece on Dis­cov­er’s Cos­mic Vari­ance blog. Anoth­er big thanks to Mike for pass­ing this one our way…

Henry Miller on New York

in Books, Film, Literature | February 28th, 2010

(NOTE: some strong lan­guage here...)

Back in 1975, film­mak­er Tom Schiller (only 20 years old at the time) made a short doc­u­men­tary on the nov­el­ist Hen­ry Miller (Trop­ic of Can­cer, Trop­ic of Capri­corn). In the scene above, Miller, then 81 years old, rem­i­nisces about his dif­fi­cult ear­ly life in New York, and it all takes place on the set used to shoot the movie Hel­lo, Dol­ly!. Schiller’s com­plete film, Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake, can be watched for free on Snag­films. (It’s also avail­able at Ama­zon on DVD here.) The run time is 34 min­utes. Excel­lent find by Mike.

Note: We’ve added Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake to our grow­ing film col­lec­tion: Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Film Noir, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Lawrence Lessig Speech Streamed Live Today

in Law, Politics | February 25th, 2010

A quick heads up…

Flu­mo­tion and the Open Video Alliance will be stream­ing a live event on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 25^th fea­tur­ing Lawrence Lessig, the foun­da­tion­al voice of the free cul­ture move­ment. The 45-minute speech will be deliv­ered live from Har­vard Law School via Flumotion’s Stream­ing Plat­form, and will explore the rela­tion­ship between copy­right, fair use, pol­i­tics and online video. The speech takes place at 6:00 PM local time (23:00 GMT) and [can be watched live here.]

Get more details from Flu­mo­tion here.

PS On a relat­ed note, TEDxNYED will stream talks live on March 6th.  Speak­ers will include Lawrence Lessig, Hen­ry Jenk­ins, Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wesch and oth­ers. Looks like a great event. Get more details here.

Blowin’ in the Wind

in Music | February 24th, 2010

The BBC brings you Folk Amer­i­ca, a three-part doc­u­men­tary series on Amer­i­can folk music, “trac­ing its his­to­ry from the record­ing boom of the 1920s to the folk revival of the 1960s.” We fea­ture above the third seg­ment, Blowin’ in the Wind, which takes you straight to the 1960s, when Bob Dylan and Joan Baez hit the stage. The oth­er two seg­ments that make up Folk Amer­i­ca include Birth of a Nation and This Land is Your Land.

via Metafil­ter