A Massive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alternative Music, in Chronological Order

in Music | March 29th, 2016

In the time it’s tak­en me to grow out of my way­ward 90s youth and into most­ly sol­id cit­i­zen adult­hood, cul­tur­al mem­o­ries of that decade have crys­tal­ized around a few gen­res that have seen some renew­al of late. I’m more than pleased to find cur­rent musi­cians reviv­ing shoegaze, 90s elec­tron­i­ca, and neo-soul. And with so many artists who peaked twen­ty or so years ago still releas­ing records or get­ting back togeth­er for impres­sive reunions, it often seems like the music I grew up with nev­er left, even if a whole raft of stars I couldn’t pick out of a line­up have emerged in the mean­time.

And yet, though the ven­er­a­tion of 90s music has become a thing in recent years, the per­spec­tive of it by peo­ple per­haps not even born when the decade end­ed tends to be some­what lim­it­ed. Per­haps all of us for­get how strange and eclec­tic 90s music was. Even at the time, pop and alter­na­tive cul­tures were almost instant­ly reduced in films, com­pi­la­tion albums, and more-or-less every show on MTV. It was an era when sub­cul­tures were quick­ly com­mod­i­fied, san­i­tized, and sold back to us in the­aters and on record shelves.

To remind our­selves of just how wide-rang­ing the 90s were, we might turn to the expan­sive “giant 90s alt/indie/etc” playlist here, com­piled by Aroon Korv­na (born in 1982, but pre­co­cious­ly “musi­cal­ly con­scious” dur­ing the decade). The jour­ney begins with the nasal cham­ber pop of They Might Be Giants’ “Bird­house in Your Soul”—a clas­sic of DIY dork-rock—and ends with Jay Z’s “Big Pimpin,” a song herald­ing the tri­umph of radio-ready rap and club hits over the decades’ many quirky rock and hip-hop guis­es.

Hear the playlist in three parts: Part I (1990–94) and II (1995–96) above; Part III (1997–99) below. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.) Along the way, we run into for­got­ten songs by under-the-radar bands like The Dwarves, Red House Painters, Guid­ed By Voic­es, The Beta Band, and The Micro­phones; left­field choic­es from one-hit won­ders like Ned’s Atom­ic Dust­bin and Infor­ma­tion Soci­ety; the first stir­rings from now-super­stars like Daft Punk and Jack White; and cuts from just about every oth­er artist on col­lege or alter­na­tive radio through­out the decade.

“The inspi­ra­tion for this playlist,” writes Korv­na, “came from see­ing one too many of those nos­tal­gia-bait pieces aimed at my cohort: ‘You total­ly for­got about these 20 amaz­ing hits from the 90’s.… After the 6th or 7th of these arti­cles all list­ing off the same obvi­ous things, you start to think you real­ly have heard every­thing from the 90s. But we all know that’s not true.”

By doing a bit of inter­net research to fill gaps in mem­o­ry, Korv­na com­piled “a mix of things every­one is famil­iar with, and more obscure arti­facts, the sorts of songs you might have only been famil­iar with if you were, say, lis­ten­ing to col­lege rock in 1991.”

If the 90s is to you an unknown coun­try, you’ll find that this three-part Spo­ti­fy playlist offers a com­pre­hen­sive walk-through of the decades’ diverse musi­cal culture—and it does­n’t just play the hits. If you’re a gen­tle­man or lady of a cer­tain age, it will refresh a few mem­o­ries, make you smile and wince with nos­tal­gia, and per­haps fill you with indig­na­tion over all the songs you think need to be on there but aren’t.

Feel free to leave your sug­ges­tions in the comments—or to make your own 90s playlist. And while you’re at it, you might want to take a look at Flavorwire’s sur­pris­ing list of “105 ‘90s Alter­na­tive Bands that Still Exist.”

via Metafil­ter/Medi­um

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Record­ings to Hear Before You Die: Stream a Huge Playlist of Songs Based on the Best­selling Book

62 Psy­che­del­ic Clas­sics: A Free Playlist Cre­at­ed by Sean Lennon

Radio David Byrne: Stream Free Music Playlists Cre­at­ed Every Month by the Front­man of Talk­ing Heads

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Glass: The Oscar-Winning “Perfect Short Documentary” on Dutch Glassmaking (1958)

in Film | March 29th, 2016

You’ll find many a bold claim on Wikipedia, even on the page for Bert Haanstra’s Glass, a 1958 short doc­u­men­tary on glass­mak­ing in the Nether­lands, which, as of this writ­ing, men­tions that the film “is often acclaimed to be the per­fect short doc­u­men­tary.” Just the sort of thing you’d want to take with a grain of salt, right? But if you watch Glass itself, which won the 1959 Acad­e­my Award for Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject, you might find your­self join­ing in on that sup­posed cho­rus of acclaim.

Prashant Par­vat­neni at The Essen­tial Mys­tery calls Glass “at once a pas­sion­ate cel­e­bra­tion of human labour and crafts­man­ship and a bit­ing cri­tique of the mech­a­nis­tic mass-pro­duc­tion of objects. On the very sur­face this doc­u­men­tary can appear as a demon­stra­tive film keen­ly elu­ci­dat­ing the very basic process­es that go into the mak­ing of hand­made glass­ware and jux­ta­pos­ing it with the process of bot­tle-mak­ing in a mech­a­nised fac­to­ry.

Yet this very jux­ta­po­si­tion cou­pled with a Haanstra’s strong styl­is­tic inter­ven­tion takes the film into a polem­i­cal space.” Tak­ing a slight­ly dif­fer­ent tone, Colos­sal’s Christo­pher Job­son high­lights the jazz of the tra­di­tion­al half, and the “whim­si­cal score of more syn­the­sized music” in the mod­ern half. “Also,” he adds, “there’s a ton of great smok­ing!”

Job­son does­n’t men­tion that these guys also some­how man­age to keep smok­ing even while blow­ing glass — an impres­sive feat indeed, and just one of the impres­sive qual­i­ties on dis­play in Glass’ brief run­time. Even­tu­al­ly, the footage turns back from the fac­to­ry to the work­shop, and soon it begins oscil­lat­ing between the two, cut­ting to the jazzy rhythm and even mak­ing the machines and work­men into musi­cal instru­ments of a kind. The Dutch glass­mak­ing indus­try has sure­ly changed in the past half-cen­tu­ry, but stu­dents of Dutch film can’t ignore the work of Haanstra, who in addi­tion to this and oth­er doc­u­men­taries short and long, direct­ed fea­tures includ­ing Fan­fare, still one of the most pop­u­lar films in the Nether­lands ever. But as any film his­to­ri­an might sus­pect — and here comes anoth­er bold claim — Glass will out­live them all.

Glass will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Man Cre­ates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Look at Cre­ativ­i­ty (1968)

Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short, The Dot and the Line, Cel­e­brates Geom­e­try and Hard Work (1965)

Watch the Funky, Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Music of Herb Alpert & the Tijua­na Brass (1966)

36 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Recalling Albert Camus’ Fashion Advice, Noam Chomsky Pans Glenn Greenwald’s Shiny, Purple Tie

in Comedy, Philosophy | March 29th, 2016

70 years ago this month, Albert Camus made his first and only trip to the Unit­ed States, briefly vis­it­ing Philadel­phia and Boston, but most­ly stay­ing in New York, the city that cap­ti­vat­ed him most. As Jen­nifer Schuessler writes in The New York Times, Camus did­n’t quite know what to make of the city’s “swarm­ing lights” and “fran­tic streets.” But he had to appre­ci­ate the warmth with which he was greet­ed. Dur­ing his 1946 stay, Camus cel­e­brat­ed the Eng­lish pub­li­ca­tion of The Stranger on the rooftop of the Hotel Astor. He sat down for an inter­view with The New York­er and gave a mem­o­rable speech at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. He also became a fash­ion crit­ic for a brief moment, offer­ing this thought on Amer­i­can neck­ties: “You have to see it to believe it. So much bad taste hard­ly seems imag­in­able.”

All of this sets up a lit­tle joke deliv­ered this week­end by Noam Chom­sky, as recalled on Face­book by jour­nal­ist Glenn Green­wald. Green­wald writes:

I arrived last night at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona for my event with Edward Snow­den and Noam Chom­sky. Chom­sky arrived short­ly after I did and, after I greet­ed him, the fol­low­ing dia­logue ensued:

Chom­sky: You know, there’s this inter­est­ing essay by Albert Camus, writ­ten dur­ing his first vis­it to the Unit­ed States, in which he described his sur­prise at what he regard­ed as the poor cloth­ing taste of Amer­i­cans, par­tic­u­lar­ly men’s choic­es of ties.

Me (slight­ly con­fused): Are you shar­ing that anec­dote because you dis­like my tie?

Chom­sky: Yes.

That’s how you receive a fash­ion cri­tique from the world’s great­est pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al.

Ouch.

Note: The 70th anniver­sary of Camus’s trip to New York is being com­mem­o­rat­ed in “Camus: A Stranger in the City,” a month­long fes­ti­val of per­for­mances, read­ings, film screen­ings and events. If you’re in NYC, check it out. The full pro­gram is here.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus: The Mad­ness of Sin­cer­i­ty — 1997 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its the Philosopher’s Life & Work

Sartre Writes a Trib­ute to Camus After His Friend-Turned-Rival Dies in a Trag­ic Car Crash: “There Is an Unbear­able Absur­di­ty in His Death”

Get to Know Socrates, Camus, Kierkegaard & Oth­er Great Philoso­phers with the BBC’s Intel­li­gent Radio Show, In Our Time

Download the Sublime Anatomy Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci: Available Online, or in a Great iPad App

in Art, Science | March 28th, 2016

I’ve always found anatom­i­cal draw­ing fas­ci­nat­ing. At its best, it occu­pies an aes­thet­ic space some­where between mys­ti­cal fine art and cut­ting-edge sci­en­tif­ic observation—a space carved out dur­ing the Ital­ian Renais­sance, when the bound­aries between artis­tic train­ing and sci­en­tif­ic inquiry were per­me­able and often nonex­is­tent.

Famous­ly, the peri­od intro­duced ren­der­ings of the human fig­ure so anatom­i­cal­ly accu­rate that “until about 1500–1510,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the artists’ “inves­ti­ga­tions sur­passed much of the knowl­edge of anato­my that was taught at the uni­ver­si­ties.”

Artists like the great Michelan­ge­lo Buon­nar­roti and Leonar­do da Vinci—as well as less­er-known fig­ures like Anto­nio Pol­laiuo­lo and Bac­cio Bandinelli—undertook “detailed anatom­i­cal dis­sec­tions at var­i­ous points in their long careers,” pro­duc­ing hun­dreds of sketch­es and stud­ies along­side and in prepa­ra­tion for the mus­cu­lar paint­ings and sculp­ture for which they’re best known.

Most Renais­sance artists “became anatomists by neces­si­ty,” the Met points out, “as they attempt­ed to refine a more life­like, sculp­tur­al por­tray­al of the human fig­ure.” Leonardo’s stud­ies in anato­my, how­ev­er, held a sci­en­tif­ic inter­est all their own, akin to his inves­ti­ga­tions into the physics of flight, weapon and bat­tle­ment design, archi­tec­ture, and oth­er pur­suits.

Many of Leonardo’s anatom­i­cal draw­ings con­tain detailed notes on his obser­va­tions, as you can see in the study of a heav­i­ly-mus­cled tor­so and of a human cra­ni­um, fur­ther up. He wrote these notes using his pro­pri­etary right-to-left “mir­ror-writ­ing” tech­nique, which he reserved for his pri­vate note­books. “Only when he was writ­ing some­thing intend­ed for oth­er peo­ple,” Boston’s Muse­um of Sci­ence informs us, “did he write in the nor­mal direc­tion.”

Now we can see sev­er­al dozen of Leonardo’s anatom­i­cal draw­ings of human and ani­mal fig­ures (such as the bear foot above) all in one place, thanks to Buck­ing­ham Palace’s Roy­al Col­lec­tion Trust—who have dig­i­tized their siz­able col­lec­tion. Leonar­do not only stud­ied anatom­i­cal struc­ture, but also per­formed dis­sec­tions in order to under­stand human phys­i­ol­o­gy; he approached the work­ings of the human body as though it were an organ­ic machine, as con­fi­dent in the ratio­nal order­ing of its parts as he was of its priv­i­leged place in the nat­ur­al world. (See just above Leonardo’s well-known draw­ings of a fetus in the womb, with copi­ous notes on human repro­duc­tion on both sides.)

In addi­tion to the many intrigu­ing sketch­es, stud­ies, and detailed illus­tra­tions in the Roy­al Col­lec­tion Trust’s online archive, iPad own­ers can also search and view the col­lec­tion on their devices with the free Leonar­do da Vin­ci Anato­my app (screen­shot above). “For the first time,” writes the descrip­tion, “it is pos­si­ble for any­one with an iPad to own and explore this remark­able tes­ta­ment to Leonardo’s sci­en­tif­ic and artis­tic genius…. All 268 pages from Leonardo’s note­books are pre­sent­ed here at the high­est res­o­lu­tion, opti­mized for the pin-sharp reti­na dis­play of the iPad.” The app includes incred­i­bly help­ful fea­tures like Eng­lish trans­la­tions of the notes, as well as essays and inter­views with experts dis­cussing the sig­nif­i­cance of Leonardo’s dis­cov­er­ies.

Whether you own an iPad or not, you can ben­e­fit immense­ly from this col­lec­tion. The online ver­sion allows view­ers to down­load high-res­o­lu­tion images like the “Head of Judas” sketch in red chalk above (c. 1495). Once on the page, click the down­load arrow to the bot­tom right of the draw­ing and you’ll be tak­en to a larg­er ver­sion of the image. You can zoom in to exam­ine details, like the very fine lines and sub­tle shad­ing that mark each of Leonardo’s illus­tra­tions, from the most util­i­tar­i­an to the most artis­ti­cal­ly-ren­dered, as the spe­cial cre­ations of an extra­or­di­nary artist with a gift­ed sci­en­tif­ic mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (1482)

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Florence Nightingale Saved Lives by Creating Revolutionary Visualizations of Statistics (1855)

in Health, History, Science | March 28th, 2016

I’ve long count­ed myself as a fan of Edward Tufte, the pre­em­i­nent liv­ing expert on the visu­al dis­play of quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion. I like to think this puts me in the com­pa­ny of Flo­rence Nightin­gale, founder of mod­ern nurs­ing as well as a pro­lif­ic writer and still today a house­hold name. Hav­ing lived in the Vic­to­ri­an era, she of course nev­er got to enjoy the work of Tufte him­self, though her own zeal for data and sta­tis­tics, in a time that val­ued such things less than ours, made her, in some sense, a Tufte of her day: the first female mem­ber of the Roy­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Soci­ety and an hon­orary mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Sta­tis­ti­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. The video above, an out­take from Hans Rosling’s The Joy of Stats, offers a brief intro­duc­tion to the sta­tis­ti­cal side of Nightin­gale’s career, and the impor­tant role data visu­al­iza­tion played in her mis­sion to save lives.

“When Flo­rence Nightin­gale arrived at a British hos­pi­tal in Turkey dur­ing the Crimean War, she found a night­mare of mis­ery and chaos,” writes Sci­ence News’ Julie Rehmey­er. “By the time Nightin­gale left Turkey after the war end­ed in July 1856, the hos­pi­tals were well-run and effi­cient, with mor­tal­i­ty rates no greater than civil­ian hos­pi­tals in Eng­land.”

But feel­ing great regret over all the lives lost there to pre­ventable dis­ease, she went on to save even more of them by bring­ing num­bers into play. She specif­i­cal­ly com­piled “vast tables of sta­tis­tics about how many peo­ple had died, where and why. Many of her find­ings shocked her. For exam­ple, she dis­cov­ered that in peace­time, sol­diers in Eng­land died at twice the rate of civil­ians — even though they were young men in their primes.”

Nightin­gale’s most influ­en­tial pre­sen­ta­tion of her data, which she called a “cox­comb,” appears just above. This Is Sta­tis­tics describes “Dia­gram of the Caus­es of Mor­tal­i­ty in the Army in the East” as “sim­i­lar to a pie chart, but more intri­cate. In a pie chart the size of the ‘slices’ rep­re­sent a pro­por­tion of data, while in a cox­comb the length, which the slice extends radi­al­ly from the cen­ter-point, rep­re­sents the first lay­er of data.” Her famous chart “was divid­ed even­ly into 12 slices rep­re­sent­ing months of the year, with the shad­ed area of each month’s slice pro­por­tion­al to the death rate that month. Her col­or-cod­ed shad­ing indi­cat­ed the cause of death in each area of the dia­gram.” She stat­ed the goal of her visu­al­iza­tion clear­ly: “to affect thro’ the Eyes what we fail to con­vey to the pub­lic through their word-proof ears.”

We all try to do the very same thing when we present infor­ma­tion today, though few of us—even armed with a degree of num­ber-crunch­ing and graph­ic design pow­ers that would have seemed mag­i­cal to Nightin­gale and her contemporaries—achieve the kind of results she did. She gal­va­nized sys­temic change in hos­pi­tal design and oper­a­tion as well as prompt­ed a rev­o­lu­tion in san­i­ta­tion which increased Britain’s aver­age nation­al life expectan­cy by 20 years—something to bear in mind when we start to get big ideas about how our Pow­er­point slide shows will change the world.

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!

via @pourmecoffee

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Data Visu­al­iza­tion: How to Tell Com­plex Sto­ries Through Smart Design

Slick Data Visu­al­iza­tion Reveals Sci­en­tif­ic Col­lab­o­ra­tions Tak­ing Place Around the Globe

In Under Three Min­utes, Hans Rosling Visu­al­izes the Incred­i­ble Progress of the “Devel­op­ing World”

Watch a Cool and Creepy Visu­al­iza­tion of U.S. Births & Deaths in Real-Time

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Harvard’s Michael Sandel Launches “The Global Philosopher,” a New Digital Show Exploring Pressing Philosophical Problems

in Philosophy | March 28th, 2016

In 2009, Har­vard phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Michael Sandel broke some ground when he made his pop­u­lar course, “Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?,” avail­able online. A course tak­en by thou­sands of Har­vard under­grads sud­den­ly became a course tak­en by tens of thou­sands of life­long learn­ers world­wide.

Since then, Sandel has con­tin­ued speak­ing to a broad­er audi­ence, first cre­at­ing a BBC pod­cast called “The Pub­lic Philoso­pher,” where he “exam­ines the think­ing behind a cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy.” (Down­load the episodes here.) And now comes a new pro­gram, The Glob­al Philoso­pher, which grap­ples with philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems using an inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal for­mat. Accord­ing to the BBC, the show brings togeth­er “60 par­tic­i­pants from over 30 coun­tries using a pio­neer­ing stu­dio devel­oped by [the] Har­vard Busi­ness School, called HBX Live. Each par­tic­i­pant is able to see and speak to every oth­er con­trib­u­tor, as well as to Pro­fes­sor Sandel, repli­cat­ing the expe­ri­ence of a face-to-face debate.” In the first debate, shown above, “con­trib­u­tors from Amer­i­ca, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Mid­dle East dis­cussed the moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for nation­al bor­ders. Hun­dreds more watched a live video stream and took part by send­ing in text com­ments and vot­ing in straw polls.” This is just the first of more planned install­ments. Down the road, you can find new episodes of The Glob­al Philoso­pher here.

via Har­vard Gazette

Relat­ed Con­tent

What’s the Right Thing to Do?: Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course Now Online

Michael Sandel on the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Talks About the Lim­its of a Free Mar­ket Soci­ety

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Watch the Earliest Surviving Filmed Version of The Wizard of Oz (1910)

in Books, Film | March 28th, 2016

The Tech­ni­col­or Oz that greet­ed Judy Gar­land in 1939 seems a far less col­or­ful place than the one in 1910’s silent short, The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz, above. (A ver­sion with music added can be found below.)

Adapt­ed in part from a 1902 stage ver­sion, this Wiz­ard — the ear­li­est to sur­vive on film — feels quite close to the spir­it of author L. Frank Baum and illus­tra­tor William Wal­lace Denslow’s orig­i­nal cre­ation.

Audi­ence mem­bers who had no famil­iar­i­ty with the source mate­r­i­al must’ve been very, very con­fused. There’s a lot of bang for the buck, but title cards aside, not much in the way of con­text.

No mat­ter. There are plen­ty of spe­cial effects and a crowd-pleas­ing cho­rus of gra­tu­itous beau­ties in tights and bloomers, just as in Georges Méliès’ sem­i­nal A Trip to the Moon.

It’s con­ceiv­able that Jack Haley and Burt Lahr, the MGM version’s Tin Woods­man and Cow­ard­ly Lion, might have been tak­en to see the 13 minute short as chil­dren. (Scare­crow Ray Bol­ger was a mere babe at the time of its release.)

Despite the pres­ence of all the well-known char­ac­ters, includ­ing two Totos, for my mon­ey, the project’s true star is Hank, the scene steal­ing mule.

I think the actor in the mule suit like­ly agreed, though Hank’s role in the Oz pan­theon is minor at best.

It’s unclear to me if the Wizard’s dark make­up is meant to be black­face. Accord­ing to Robin Bernstein’s Racial Inno­cence: Per­form­ing Amer­i­can Child­hood from Slav­ery to Civ­il Rights, the stage play that inspired the film fea­tured min­strel songs and pop­u­lar black­face actors Fred A. Stone and David Mont­gomery as the Scare­crow and Tin Woods­man.

The film cast’s iden­ti­ties have been lost to his­to­ry, though a rumor per­sists that the young actress play­ing Dorothy is fre­quent Harold Lloyd co-star, Bebe Daniels. The orig­i­nal piano score is unknown, but like­ly hewed close­ly to Paul Tiet­jens’ music from the play, which is what we hear in the online ver­sion.

Five years lat­er, the movies returned to Oz, with the Baum-pro­duced and ‑script­ed fea­tures, The Patch­work Girl of Oz, His Majesty, the Scare­crow of Oz, and The Mag­ic Cloak of Oz.

The Wiz­ard of Oz (1910) will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

You can also down­load the com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, as free eBooks and free audio books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

A Trip to the Moon (1902): Where Sci Fi Movies Began

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She was shocked to find out how much her child­hood Oz books are worth, but has thus far resist­ed part­ing with them. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

A is for Architecture: 1960 Documentary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Modern Times

in | March 27th, 2016

Made avail­able by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da (NFB), A is for Archi­tec­ture “offers a thor­ough, colour­ful, and charm­ing tour through the grandeur of ancient Greece, the Byzan­tine tra­di­tion through­out Chris­t­ian Europe and Mus­lim Asia, the mid­dle ages with their walled up cas­tles and locked-down cities, the lux­u­ry of Louis XIV’s France, the awe-inspir­ing atmos­phere of goth­ic church­es, the hope, progress, and speed of the ear­ly indus­tri­al mod­ern era, and final­ly the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the urban sky­scrap­ers of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry.” “What do we build?” asks the film. And “how will the sto­ry read when our time has passed?” Direct­ed by Ger­ald Bud­ner and Robert Ver­rall in 1960, the short doc­u­men­tary runs just shy of 30 min­utes.

A is for Archi­tec­ture will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries Online, a sub­set of 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!

Software Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Animation Studio Is Now Officially Ready to Download

in Animation, Software | March 27th, 2016

FYI: Ear­ly last week, Col­in Mar­shall gave you a heads up that Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, the ani­ma­tion stu­dio behind Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neigh­bor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spir­it­ed Away, was prepar­ing to release an open source ver­sion of the ani­ma­tion soft­ware used to cre­ate its films. This week­end, the software–called OpenToonz–officially became avail­able for down­load. And we can now tell you where to find it. Open­Toonz is avail­able on Github, in ver­sions made for both Win­dow and OSX. This link will jump you straight to the down­load area.

If you make any­thing great with it, please share it with us.

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!

Download Beautiful Free Vintage Easter Cards from the New York Public Library

in Art, Design, Letters, Life | March 25th, 2016

‘Tis the sea­son when bun­nies tem­porar­i­ly upend cats as rulers of the Inter­net.

There are scores of vin­tage snap­shots in which inno­cent chil­dren are pas­sive­ly men­aced by hideous, full body bun­ny cos­tumes—hope­ful­ly an inac­cu­rate reflec­tion of the adults encased there­in…

“Medieval rab­bits that hate East­er and want to kill you”…

Some edi­ble DIY fails…

And mer­ci­ful­ly, a bit of sweet nos­tal­gia from the New York Pub­lic Library, who is mak­ing its robust col­lec­tion of East­er greet­ings avail­able for free down­load.

Each card comes with pub­li­ca­tion infor­ma­tion. Images of the flip sides reveal that the sender often con­sid­ered the pub­lish­ers’ preprint­ed sen­ti­ments cor­re­spon­dence enough. (It’s some­thing of a relief to real­ize that social media did not invent this kind of short­hand.)

Bun­nies are not the only fruit here… sea­son­al flo­ra and fau­na abound, in addi­tion to more explic­it­ly reli­gious iconog­ra­phy.

View the entire col­lec­tion here. Down­load as many as you’d like and do with them as you will.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 2,000 Mag­nif­i­cent Turn-of-the-Cen­tu­ry Art Posters, Cour­tesy of the New York Pub­lic Library

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday