Orson Welles Performs a Magic Trick

in Film, Random | May 27th, 2011

We can’t say enough good things about Bib­liok­lept, and not only because they find so many lit­er­a­ture-relat­ed gems. (A few recent exam­ples: Ray­mond Carver’s cor­re­spon­dence with edi­tor Gor­don Lish, Melville’s Pass­port Appli­ca­tion, A Post-Rap­ture Read­ing List). They also find great mate­r­i­al from oth­er art forms — for exam­ple this clip of Orson Welles doing a mag­ic trick, tak­en from the 1995 doc­u­men­tary Orson Welles: The One Man Band.

Watch to the end. As you might expect, the mas­ter upstages his co-star, flap­ping wings and all.

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:

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio

Orson Welles’ The Stranger: The Full Movie

Free­dom Riv­er: A Para­ble Told by Orson Welles

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Sir Anthony Hopkins Reads Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

in Poetry, Video - Arts & Culture | May 27th, 2011

The great actor Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins is well versed in the work of fel­low Welsh­man Dylan Thomas — so much so he even direct­ed the crit­i­cal­ly laud­ed film Dylan Thomas: The Return Jour­ney in 2006. Here, he is read­ing one of Thomas’ best-known poems, “Do not go gen­tle into that good night.” (If any­one knows when this video was made, please drop us a line.)

There is, of course, no read­er of Thomas’ poet­ry equal to Thomas him­self. Just lis­ten to this BBC record­ing from 1951, the year the beloved vil­lanelle was first pub­lished. But if dul­cet tones and min­i­mal­ist record­ings aren’t your thing, then you might want to check out this John Cale ver­sion.

And then, because it’s Fri­day, don’t for­get Rod­ney Dan­ger­field.

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:

Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

 

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Tom Hanks Addresses the Yale Class of 2011

in Life, Yale | May 27th, 2011

For Class Day 2011, Har­vard had come­di­an Amy Poehler, and Yale had Tom Han­ks — two fig­ures who have a whole lot more enter­tain­ment val­ue than the speak­er at my grad­u­a­tion — the Assis­tant Coun­ty Coro­ner. Dead seri­ous! Pun only halfway intend­ed. Any­way, I digress. Today, we’re fea­tur­ing Tom Han­ks, the two-time win­ner of the Acad­e­my Award for Best Actor, who starts fun­ny, but then turns a lit­tle seri­ous, remind­ing grad­u­ates, à la F.D.R., that essen­tial­ly “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Not a bad talk over­all, but we’re still most par­tial to Steve Job’s Stan­ford talk from 2005. Our hands-down favorite…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yale Rolls Out 10 New Cours­es — All Free

Ali G at Har­vard; or How Sacha Baron Cohen Got Blessed by America’s Cul­tur­al Estab­lish­ment

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

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E. chromi: Designer Bacteria

in Biology, Science, Video - Science | May 26th, 2011

E. chro­mi, a short film about a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion between design­ers and biol­o­gists has won the best doc­u­men­tary award at Bio:Fiction, the world’s first syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy film fes­ti­val, held ear­li­er this month in Vien­na.
E. chro­mi tells the sto­ry of a project unit­ing design­ers Alexan­dra Daisy Gins­berg and James King with a team of under­grad­u­ate biol­o­gy stu­dents at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. Using genes from exist­ing organ­isms, the team designed cus­tom DNA sequences, called Bio­Bricks, and insert­ed them into E. coli bacteria.The new E. coli—dubbed “E. chromi”—were pro­grammed to express a rain­bow of col­ors when exposed to var­i­ous chem­i­cals.

Gins­berg and King helped the young biol­o­gists dream up a vari­ety of pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions for the invention.For exam­ple, E. chro­mi could be used to test the safe­ty of drink­ing water–turning red if a tox­in is present, green if it’s okay. Or it might  be used as an ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem for dis­ease: a per­son would ingest some yogurt con­tain­ing E. chro­mi, then watch out for tell-tale col­ors at the oth­er end of the diges­tive process.

The E. chro­mi team was award­ed the grand prize at the 2009 Inter­na­tion­al Genet­i­cal­ly Engi­neered Machine (iGEM) com­pe­ti­tion at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. For more films on syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, see the Bio:Fiction web­site.

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Paulo Coelho on How to Handle the Fear of Failure

in Life | May 26th, 2011

The road to suc­cess runs right through fail­ure. It’s an idea that’s get­ting a lot of atten­tion late­ly. Ear­li­er this month, the Berghs School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in Stock­holm orga­nized an exhi­bi­tion around the whole premise that “suc­cess nev­er hap­pens with­out tak­ing risks. And risks are what you’re capa­ble of tak­ing when you over­come the fear of fail­ing.” But how to do that? How to take that leap? The exhi­bi­tion put that ques­tion to artists and thinkers who know suc­cess in a very inti­mate way. (See full list on Brain­Pick­ings here.) That includes Paulo Coel­ho, the author of The Alchemist, a book that has sold 65 mil­lion copies across 150 coun­tries, and he had this to say:

I’m nev­er par­a­lyzed by my fear of fail­ure… I say “Ok, I’m doing my best… ” And, from the moment that I can say that I’m doing my best … I sit down, I breathe, and I say “I put all of my love into it, I did it with all my heart.” … And whether they like [the book] or not is irrel­e­vant, because I like it. I’m com­mit­ted to the thing that I did. And so far nobody has crit­i­cized or refused it. When you put love and enthu­si­asm into your work, even if peo­ple don’t see it, they know it’s there, that you did this with all of your body and soul, so that is what I encour­age you to do.

It’s a good thought, which gets pur­sued on a par­al­lel track by Tim Har­ford. In 2005, Har­ford wrote the best­selling book, The Under­cov­er Econ­o­mist, and now he returns with Adapt: Why Suc­cess Always Starts with Fail­ure. Speak­ing yes­ter­day on KQED in San Fran­cis­co, the writer, some­times likened to Mal­colm Glad­well, talked about the impor­tance of exper­i­men­ta­tion, tak­ing cal­cu­lat­ed risks, and cre­at­ing room for fail­ure, some­thing that mat­ters as much to indi­vid­u­als as it does to cor­po­ra­tions or nations try­ing to solve dif­fi­cult prob­lems. You can lis­ten to the full inter­view 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!

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Watch Selected Cannes Films for Free (For A Limited Time Only)

in Animation, Film | May 26th, 2011

We’ve already writ­ten about the excel­lent film blog MUBIdai­ly, which is pub­lished by the online screen­ing room Mubi.com. We’ve nev­er real­ly pushed Mubi itself, even though the site fea­tures a wide selec­tion of inde­pen­dent and for­eign films. It’s a sub­scrip­tion site, and we pre­fer to focus on cul­tur­al offer­ings that you can access free of charge.

Still, for the next month, you can watch cer­tain films on Mubi free of charge — specif­i­cal­ly, selec­tions from mul­ti­ple years of Cannes’ La Semaine de la Cri­tique (Crit­ics’ Week), one of the fes­ti­val’s most con­sis­tent­ly inter­est­ing side­bars. Each year a pan­el of inter­na­tion­al crit­ics selects a cur­rent crop of shorts and fea­tures from first and sec­ond time direc­tors, and now MUBI has made a num­ber of past selec­tions freely avail­able online. The selec­tion is a lit­tle uneven, but still often inspir­ing. Of the choic­es offered at Mubi’s mini-ret­ro­spec­tive, we rec­om­mend the Japan­ese film Chick­en Heart, the clever Swedish short Seeds of the Fall, and espe­cial­ly Round Da Way  (Las­cars), a live­ly French ani­mat­ed fea­ture about life in the projects. You can watch Round Da Way above.

The full selec­tion is avail­able for free on Mubi until June 30th, with a caveat or two: Each film is only free for its first 1,000 view­ings, you do need to reg­is­ter to watch, and there may be some geo­re­stric­tion at work (though we can’t say for sure since we’re based in the US).

And final­ly, of course, don’t miss our big curat­ed col­lec­tion of 380 Free Movies, which includes a few major films from Cannes too.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

 

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Endeavour’s Launch Viewed from Booster Cameras

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | May 26th, 2011

Here’s the good stuff that nerdgasms are made of. NASA has released a video that lets you hitch a ride on the May 16th launch of the Space Shut­tle Endeav­our. The video runs 37 min­utes; it’s nar­rat­ed by a NASA offi­cial; and it loops around and lets you see the launch from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent van­tage points.

You start with liftoff, trav­el­ing at 1300 miles per hour. Then, about two min­utes lat­er, the rock­et boost­ers sep­a­rate from the shut­tle, and you then twist with them. The sec­ond loop starts around the 7:20 mark, and don’t miss the splen­did view at 9:40 …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

NASA Zooms into Spi­ral Galaxy

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Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange: Malcolm McDowell Looks Back

in Film | May 25th, 2011

A few days ago, we linked to the recent Col­lid­er inter­view with Mal­colm McDow­ell, the star of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 1971 clas­sic, A Clock­work Orange. One of the high­lights of the piece is a short video clip in which the now 68-year-old actor describes the ori­gins of the film’s icon­ic — and hor­rif­i­cal­ly vio­lent — “Singing in the Rain” scene.

You can catch a much younger McDow­ell dis­cussing that same scene in 1972, start­ing at minute 6:30 of the inter­view below. For kicks, slide back to minute 4:15, and watch the cocky 28-year-old give his inter­locu­tor a sharp dress­ing down for dar­ing to sug­gest that Mr. Kubrick could be “dif­fi­cult” to work with:

via @DangerMindsBlog

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Fil­mog­ra­phy Ani­mat­ed

Killer’s Kiss: Where Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Film­mak­ing Career Real­ly Begins

Kubrick vs. Scors­ese Mon­tage

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Darren’s Big DIY Camera

in Art | May 25th, 2011

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dar­ren Samuel­son spent a good year research­ing his big cam­era. Then it was time to build it. The bel­lows came first, craft­ed over two hard weeks on his liv­ing room floor. Next came the rear por­tion of the cam­era, and even­tu­al­ly the front, the rails, and the rest. All told, sev­en months of lov­ing labor went into mak­ing Dar­ren’s big DIY cam­era, capa­ble of pro­duc­ing 14×36-inch neg­a­tives. (By the way, it also used x‑ray film.) At long last, it was time to give things a try at San Fran­cis­co’s Lands End. The short doc­u­men­tary above shows you the rest. Don’t miss the images at the 2:20 mark…

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Jimmy Fallon Nails the Bob Dylan Impersonation

in Comedy, Music | May 24th, 2011

He looks like Bob Dylan. He sings like our birth­day boy Bob Dylan. And yet he’s cov­er­ing per­haps the cheesi­est 80s sit­com theme song ever made — which makes it all the more hilar­i­ous…

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Pop-Motion Animation: A New Take on the Flip Book

in Animation, Film | May 24th, 2011

When Dul­cidio Caldeira of the agency Para­noid BR was com­mis­sioned recent­ly to cre­ate a one-minute com­mer­cial mark­ing MTV Brazil’s 21st birth­day, he end­ed up re-imag­in­ing one of animation’s old­est forms: the flip book. The result is a work of inspired silli­ness, with char­ac­ters like Gene Sim­mons, Slash, Ozzy Osbourne—even Ozzy’s bat—appearing on a long line of bal­loons being popped at a rate of ten per sec­ond. Caldeira and col­lab­o­ra­tors Andre Faria and Guga Ket­zer used a laser to line up hun­dreds of bal­loons along a 656-foot (200-meter) set of tracks. It took them 24 hours to shoot.

Via: Print Mag­a­zine

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