An Animated Christmas Fable by Maurice Sendak (1977)

in Animation | December 25th, 2012

Today we say mer­ry Christ­mas the Open Cul­ture way, by bring­ing in a piece of work from the late Mau­rice Sendak, the chil­dren’s author and illus­tra­tor who with every­thing he wrote and drew evad­ed the lim­i­ta­tions of that label. Though most of us remem­ber his books Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen from child­hood, when­ev­er our child­hoods hap­pened to be, few­er of us have seen his ani­mat­ed work. Above you’ll find a bit of it rel­e­vant to this time of year: Sendak’s open­ing sequence for Sim­ple Gifts. In it we wit­ness a shoe­less waif’s meta­mor­pho­sis into a Christ­mas tree which attracts and com­forts a pair of sim­i­lar­ly dis­pos­sessed tots. The 1977 anthol­o­gy film col­lect­ed six short films, all on the theme of Christ­mas. But only this first minute and a half comes from the inim­itable mind belong­ing to the man Time called “the Picas­so of chil­dren’s books.” The video then fea­tures Sim­ple Gifts’ open­ing remarks from Colleen Dewhurst, who reflects on and draws a les­son from this brief ani­mat­ed tale: “A per­son gives noth­ing who does not give of him­self.”

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Ani­ma­tion of Mau­rice Sendak’s Sur­re­al and Con­tro­ver­sial Sto­ry, In the Night Kitchen

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

David Bowie and Bing Crosby Sing “The Little Drummer Boy”: A Chestnut From 1977

in Music | December 24th, 2012

In 1977, just a short month before Bing Cros­by died, the 40s croon­er host­ed David Bowie, the glam rock­er, on his Christ­mas show. The awk­ward­ness of the meet­ing is pal­pa­ble. An old­er, crusty Cros­by had no real famil­iar­i­ty with the younger, androg­y­nous Bowie, and Bowie was­n’t crazy about singing The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. So, short­ly before the show’s tap­ing, a team of writ­ers had to fran­ti­cal­ly retool the song, blend­ing the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas song with a new­ly-writ­ten tune called Peace on Earth. After one hour of rehearsal, the two singers record­ed The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth and made an instant lit­tle chest­nut. The Wash­ing­ton Post has the back­sto­ry on the strange Bing-Bowie meet­ing. We hope you enjoy revis­it­ing this clas­sic clip with us. Hap­py hol­i­days to you all.

Two Prison Concerts That Defined an Outlaw Singer: Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Folsom (1968–69)

in Music | December 24th, 2012

As a life­long John­ny Cash fan, raised on coun­try, gospel, blues and folk and all their out­law cousins, I spent my ado­les­cence lis­ten­ing to 1969’s Live from San Quentin and imag­in­ing the scene: Cash, who nev­er served hard time, singing about prison life to hard­ened men who greet­ed him as kin­dred. Lit­tle did I know, won­ders of the Inter­net to behold, that there is actu­al footage of the con­cert online. And so there it is above, and it’s great. John­ny mocks the guards, gets the­atri­cal­ly bel­liger­ent, and rocks out out­law coun­try style with “San Quentin,” voic­ing every prisoner’s griev­ances with his grav­el­ly deliv­ery. His glare is hyp­not­ic, and the song plays over footage of armed guards on the fences and inmates marched in herds.

Of course, there’s no San Quentin with­out Cash’s first prison con­cert, 1968’s At Fol­som Prison. The doc­u­men­tary below (with Swedish sub­ti­tles) opens with inter­views from coun­try stal­warts Mar­ty Stu­art and Cash’s daugh­ter Roseanne; it’s an hour-long explo­ration of the Fol­som prison con­cert and its import.

Cash loved giv­ing these con­certs, and he loved the men inside, not because he was one of them but because he knew he could have been if music hadn’t saved him. He gave anoth­er con­cert in 1977 at the Ten­nessee State Prison, but this record­ing nev­er had the impact that those first two did. Cash’s appear­ances at Fol­som and San Quentin in some ways defined his career as a writer and singer of out­law songs who cared about the men who paid the price for law and order.

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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!

Michael Pollan Presents an Edible Education, A Free Online Course From UC Berkeley

in Life, UC Berkeley | December 24th, 2012

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When seized with the desire to learn where their food comes from, many of today’s read­ers turn to Michael Pol­lan, author of books like The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma, In Defense of Food, and Food Rules. Per­haps you know him as the guy who pop­u­lar­ized the guid­ing words, “Eat food. Not too much. Most­ly plants.” If you’ve stud­ied at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, you might also know him as a pro­fes­sor at their Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism. Pos­sessed of both a jour­nal­ist’s curios­i­ty about sources and process­es and a pro­fes­sor’s abil­i­ty to explain — not to men­tion based in the same con­scious­ly hedo­nis­tic city that gave rise to Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse — Pol­lan has posi­tioned him­self well to remain Amer­i­ca’s fore­most pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al of the edi­ble. Who else would UC Berke­ley want to lead their Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion cours­es?

Above you’ll find Pol­lan’s open­ing ses­sion for the lat­est Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion lec­ture series, “Telling Sto­ries About Food and Agri­cul­ture.” Open to mem­bers of the pub­lic as well as Berke­ley stu­dents, the course exam­ines the real and poten­tial effects of the way we eat food and how that food gets to us in the first place. Oth­er lec­tur­ers include the­atre direc­tor Peter Sel­l­ars, radio pro­duc­ers the Kitchen Sis­ters, and “rock star of social jus­tice writ­ing” Raj Patel. Hav­ing “passed” the class, look into our archives and you’ll find the ide­al fol­low-up for next semes­ter: Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Sci­ence and Cook­ing: From Haute Cui­sine to the Sci­ence of Soft Mat­ter, also free online. Nev­er before has a prac­ti­cal edu­ca­tion on our every­day food been so eas­i­ly acces­si­ble — or as live­ly.

Both cours­es men­tioned above appear in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Michael Pollan’s Book, Food Rules, Brought to Life with Ani­ma­tion

Michael Pol­lan on Sus­tain­able Food

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch The Snowman, the Classic Animated Children’s Tale Introduced by David Bowie

in Animation, Film, Television | December 23rd, 2012

Thir­ty years ago the British tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Chan­nel Four pre­miered this enchant­i­ng, lyri­cal film based on the award-win­ning Ray­mond Brig­gs chil­dren’s book, The Snow­man.

The tale bears some resem­blance to the ear­li­er Amer­i­can sto­ry, “Frosty the Snow­man,” but probes deep­er into the psy­chol­o­gy of chil­dren, con­vey­ing the fear and won­der they feel in a mys­te­ri­ous world, and their long­ing for friend­ship and mag­ic. It’s more ele­gant­ly told, too, using only pic­tures and music to con­vey the sto­ry. And just as Mau­rice Sendak said “I refuse to lie to chil­dren,” Brig­gs refus­es to pro­vide a Hol­ly­wood end­ing.

The orig­i­nal ver­sion of The Snow­man includes an intro­duc­tion by Brig­gs. A lat­er ver­sion (see above) has a sim­i­lar intro­duc­tion by David Bowie, who plays the grownup boy from the sto­ry. As the intro­duc­tion ends, Bowie opens a draw­er and pulls out a scarf that was giv­en to him dur­ing his adven­ture with the snow­man, prov­ing that it was not just a dream.

In 1983, The Snow­man was nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award. It ranks 71st on the British Film Insti­tute’s list of the 100 great­est British tele­vi­sion pro­grams and was vot­ed num­ber four in UKTV Gold’s “Great­est TV Christ­mas Moments.” Watch­ing The Snow­man has become a hol­i­day tra­di­tion in the UK in much the same way that watch­ing A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas has in Amer­i­ca. Tonight in Britain, Chan­nel 4 will pre­miere the long-await­ed sequel, The Snow­man and the Snow­dog, set 30 years lat­er at the same house but with a dif­fer­ent boy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie and Bing Cros­by Sing ‘The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy’ in 1977

Richard Burton Reads Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1965)

in | December 23rd, 2012

Richard Bur­ton reads “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge, with Robert Hardy and John Neville.

You can find an alter­nate ver­sion read by Orson Welles here.

Both can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

A Selfie That is Out of This World

in Astronomy | December 22nd, 2012

Tak­en at the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion by astro­naut Aki Hoshide (Japan), this awe-inspir­ing self por­trait brings into one frame “the Sun, the Earth, two por­tions of a robot­ic arm, an astro­naut’s space­suit, the deep dark­ness of space, and the unusu­al cam­era tak­ing the pic­ture.” You’ll want to click the image above (or this link) to view the pic­ture dubbed “Orbit­ing Astro­naut Self-Por­trait” in a wor­thy larg­er for­mat.

Find oth­er self-por­traits tak­en in space here and here. And vis­it NASA’s Astron­o­my Pic­ture of the Day for more strik­ing images each and every day.

via @coudal

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Watch Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Films Woody Allen in 1986 Short Film

in Film | December 22nd, 2012

It seems that a lim­it­ed num­ber of per­son­al­i­ty types best suit the job of cin­e­mat­ic auteur. A few exam­ples: there’s the reclu­sive per­fec­tion­ist (Kubrick, Mal­ick), the mys­tic poet (Bres­son, Tarkovsky, also Mal­ick), the quirky man­child (Wes Ander­son, Michel Gondry), the brat­ty stu­dent of hip (Godard, Tar­enti­no), the hyper-lit­er­ate, neu­rot­ic Man­hat­tan­ite, jazz-play­ing Jew­ish come­di­an…. Okay, fine, it’s an imper­fect sys­tem. Only one direc­tor fits that last one, but he deserves his own cat­e­go­ry. And when Jean-Luc Godard decid­ed to make a film about an inter­view with Woody Allen in 1986, he seemed to agree. But in real­i­ty, the short piece above is a hybrid; the film begins with Godard’s poet­ic, rumi­na­tive voice-over in French, and as a view of Cen­tral Park comes into focus (from a win­dow in the Plaza, it appears), Gershwin’s “Rhap­sody in Blue” begins to play. The title– Meetin’ WA—is a Godard­ism, appro­pri­at­ing corny Amer­i­can speech pat­terns with its faux-folksy dropped “g.”

But there are plen­ty of Allenisms as well, like the jazz inter­ludes and silent-film title cards announc­ing each top­ic. Ulti­mate­ly, Godard swipes these tropes as fod­der for his own styl­is­tic eccen­tric­i­ties (jar­ring, off­beat cuts, self-ref­er­en­tial­i­ty) as the two dis­cuss styl­is­tic dis­tinc­tions, even as their styles meet, awk­ward­ly, on the screen. For exam­ple, Allen says of the title cards that Godard uses them as a cin­e­mat­ic device, while he thinks of them as lit­er­ary devices. This seems to mark a very impor­tant dif­fer­ence between the two direc­tors: Godard is a rapa­cious read­er and rede­ploy­er of the lan­guage of film, while Allen’s films are more nov­el­is­tic, pri­or­i­tiz­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism and ver­bal humor over manip­u­la­tion of the image.

The inter­view is pri­mar­i­ly in Eng­lish, save cer­tain moments when Godard needs to revert to French to get a point across (he has a trans­la­tor). For lovers of these two direc­tors, or of film in gen­er­al, their con­ver­sa­tion will fas­ci­nate. But it seems fair to say that with­out Godard’s edi­to­r­i­al inter­ven­tions (or inter­rup­tions, as the case may be), it wouldn’t look like much. Allen most­ly sits slumped on a drab hotel couch while the cam­era trains on him from behind Godard’s shoul­der, so that the lat­ter isn’t vis­i­ble at all. Then about halfway through, we cut away: while their con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues, we watch a scene of Godard sit­ting on the floor of a bright blue room, sift­ing through a box of VHS tapes and slam­ming them on a table in seem­ing dis­gust. This scene marks a cen­tral point of their discussion—what to make of the loss of cin­e­ma qua cin­e­ma as TV and video took over.

Now, as screens get even small­er, bud­gets big­ger, and atten­tion spans con­sid­er­ably more reduced, the movies must work hard­er to retain a view­ing audi­ence, and the sit­u­a­tion for artists like these two is even more pre­car­i­ous. In a sweep­ing dra­mat­ic ges­ture, Godard has recent­ly pro­claimed “the death of cin­e­ma”—a very Euro­pean thing to do, it seems, like Barthes’ death of the author or Orte­ga y Gasset’s death of the nov­el. Allen sol­diers on, recent­ly mak­ing what many have called his best film in decades, which may also be his most self-con­scious­ly literary—a film that warns against the dan­gers of nos­tal­gia even as it looks back obses­sive­ly to Allen’s beloved jazz age. Maybe this meet­ing of Godard and Allen rep­re­sents a time-cap­sule curio we look back on, from the oth­er side, after the death of the auteur.

You will find Meetin’ WA list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick (1971)

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

 Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

Michael Sandel’s Famous Harvard Course on Justice Now Available as a MOOC: Register Today

in MOOCs, Online Courses, Philosophy | December 21st, 2012

Back in 2009, Har­vard polit­i­cal philoso­pher Michael Sandel made his course, Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, avail­able on the web for free (YouTube — iTunes — Web). Sud­den­ly life­long learn­ers around the world had access to a pop­u­lar course enjoyed by more than 14,000 Har­vard stu­dents over 30 years. Start­ing on March 12, 2013, Sandel plans to offer Jus­tice as a free course through edX, the provider of MOOCs (or Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) cre­at­ed by Har­vard and MIT. And here’s one thing you can guar­an­tee: In a sin­gle offer­ing, Sandel will bring his course to more stu­dents world­wide than he did through his decades teach­ing at Har­vard.

FYI: edX announced oth­er new spring cours­es. All will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es & MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. They include:

• The Chal­lenges of Glob­al Pover­ty — liv­ing on under $1 a day, exam­in­ing and over­com­ing pover­ty traps.
• Jus­tice — a glob­al dia­logue about the big moral and civic ques­tions of our time.
• The Ancient Greek Hero — amaz­ing sto­ries, poet­ry and songs from more than two mil­len­nia ago (intro lev­el).
• Copy­right — who “owns” ideas in the US and beyond – you’ll find out in this pilot course (lim­it­ed to 500 stu­dents).
• Human Health and Glob­al Envi­ron­men­tal Change — cli­mate change, bio­di­ver­si­ty loss and their effect on bil­lions of peo­ple.
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics — an amaz­ing, intro­duc­to­ry course on the fun­da­men­tals and the sci­ence of draw­ing con­clu­sions from data.
• Quan­tum Mechan­ics and Quan­tum Com­pu­ta­tion — a remark­able intro course for stu­dents of all types.

Peter Gabriel Plays Full Concert in Modena, Italy (1994)

in Music | December 21st, 2012

“It’s a rare moment when an artist takes his estab­lished, even icon­ic work and makes it still stronger,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Susan Richard­son in 1994, “but Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live is just such a moment. Record­ed in Mod­e­na, Italy, dur­ing a Jan­u­ary 1994 per­for­mance on his Secret World tour, the album and the con­cur­rent video release bring songs thread­ed togeth­er by the images of earth and water into a cycle that explores rela­tion­ships between men and women. The result is tan­ta­mount to a reli­gious rite, merg­ing grandeur with the inti­ma­cy of feel­ing, the pub­lic with the secret.” Bold words, but then music crit­ics have always enjoyed using them, and Gabriel him­self has spent a career grow­ing known for using bold sounds. If you rec­og­nize him only as the man who sung the song waft­ing from John Cusack­’s held-aloft boom box, watch his entire Secret World Live Mod­e­na con­cert and get a sense of his true cre­ative range.

A hybrid of pop star and musi­cal mag­pie, Gabriel has gone from Gen­e­sis front­man to eight­ies hit­mak­er to world music impre­sario. Today he brings all the influ­ences col­lect­ed along the way to a peri­od of aggres­sive­ly enthu­si­as­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion with a host of play­ers from the leg­endary to the obscure. This 1994 per­for­mance finds him in mid-career, or at least what now looks like the mid­dle-ish por­tion of a very long and very pro­duc­tive run indeed. The set, as Richard­son went on to assess it, “main­tains a pow­er­ful con­ti­nu­ity that los­es nei­ther pace nor momen­tum; more than the stu­dio orig­i­nals, these ver­sions elab­o­rate on the dra­mat­ic poten­tial inher­ent in them — the heat and mag­ni­tude of rhythm, the human/animal ambi­gu­i­ty of an oth­er­world­ly cry. Secret World enters an inner realm that is know­able only through the range of emo­tion it gives rise to, join­ing ecsta­sy and agony into music that avoids being larg­er than life and instead is as large as life itself.” Does the show still mer­it that lofty descrip­tion today? Watch and per­form some music crit­i­cism of your own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.