We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot

in Life, Science | June 23rd, 2010


Let Carl Sagan put every­thing – and I mean every­thing – in per­spec­tive for you …

(And see his relat­ed book, The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)

Thanks Zoran for send­ing!!

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Bruce Lee Auditions for The Green Hornet (1964)

in Television | June 22nd, 2010

Here’s where the leg­end of Bruce Lee all began (at least for Amer­i­can audi­ences). Back in 1964, Lee, only 24 years old, was invit­ed to audi­tion for The Green Hor­net. And he nailed it, land­ing a star­ring role on the short-lived ABC tele­vi­sion series. Dur­ing these eight vin­tage min­utes, Lee gives you, the view­er, the the­o­ry and prac­tice of kung fu. It’s all rather enjoy­able to watch, unless you’re the slow-reflexed man shar­ing the stage with him. The real action begins at the 4:05 minute mark.

Thanks to Maria Popo­va, aka @BrainPicker, for giv­ing us a heads up on this…

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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The Meta Summer Reading List

in Books | June 22nd, 2010

Now time for some beach wor­thy books… Fla­vor­wire has pulled togeth­er a meta col­lec­tion of sum­mer read­ing lists, aggre­gat­ing books rec­om­mend­ed by The New York Times, NPR, UC Berke­ley, Details, Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library and sev­en oth­er sources. Some­where in this mix you’ll find that per­fect read.

Try Audi­ble Now and Get A FREE Audio­book! Details here.

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Kubrick vs. Scorsese Montage

in Film | June 21st, 2010

Ear­li­er this year, Lean­dro Cop­per­field spent days re-watch­ing the films of Quentin Taran­ti­no and the Coen broth­ers. Then, using 500+ scenes from 17 movies, he devel­oped a mon­tage trib­ute sim­ply called Taran­ti­no vs Coen Broth­ers. This pair­ing makes a cer­tain amount of sense. Both have a won­der­ful knack for aes­theti­ciz­ing vio­lence. But what’s the thread that runs through Cop­per­field­’s lat­est short trib­ute, Kubrick vs Scors­ese? Per­haps it’s quite sim­ply the grandeur of their film­mak­ing. About Kubrick­’s artistry Scors­ese said, “Watch­ing a Kubrick film is like gaz­ing up at a moun­tain­top. You look up and won­der, how could any­one have climbed that high? There are emo­tion­al pas­sages and images and spaces in his films that have an inex­plic­a­ble pow­er…” And, you can’t help but think that Kubrick looked at Scors­ese’s work with a sim­i­lar sense of awe.

Scors­ese offers more thoughts on Kubrick in this 2001 episode of Char­lie Rose. It’s worth a watch. For more great films, please see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via @BrainPicker and Kot­tke

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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Meryl Streep Gives Graduation Speech at Barnard

in Life | June 21st, 2010

Meryl Streep has been nom­i­nat­ed for 16 Acad­e­my Awards, and won two, over her bril­liant act­ing career. She’s one of Amer­i­ca’s greats. But it has­n’t gone to her head. Above, we have Streep giv­ing the grad­u­a­tion speech last month at Barnard (the wom­en’s lib­er­al arts col­lege affil­i­at­ed with Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty). And what comes across is some­one who does­n’t take her­self or act­ing too seri­ous­ly. Some­one who still gets a lit­tle charm­ing­ly ner­vous speak­ing in front of crowds. And some­one who rec­og­nizes that we glob­al­ly – and women par­tic­u­lar­ly – have major chal­lenges to con­tend with. It’s worth a watch, along with one of my favorite com­mence­ment speech­es: Steve Jobs at Stan­ford, 2005.

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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Chaos & Creation at Abbey Road: Paul McCartney Revisits The Beatles’ Fabled Recording Studio

in Music | June 20th, 2010

In 2005, Paul McCart­ney returned to Stu­dio 2 at Abbey Road, the famous (and recent­ly endan­gered) site where the The Bea­t­les record­ed their won­drous albums. (Watch some orig­i­nal footage here.) As part of the BBC pro­duc­tion, Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road, McCart­ney intro­duces view­ers to vin­tage instru­ments used by the band and an assort­ment of record­ing tech­niques. And, above, we have Sir Paul recount­ing the very first moments when he and John Lennon met, then break­ing into a ver­sion of “Twen­ty Flight Rock,” the Eddie Cochran song he played to audi­tion for The Quar­ry Men (lat­er to become The Bea­t­les). You can watch the full pro­gram above.

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Soccer’s Lost Boys

in Current Affairs | June 18th, 2010


As the World Cup kicked off this week in South Africa, Cur­rent TV aired the lat­est episode of Van­guard called “Soccer’s Lost Boys.” It’s a sober­ing piece of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism that digs into the dark side of the world’s most pop­u­lar game. Mov­ing from Ghana to Moroc­co to even­tu­al­ly Paris, Van­guard cor­re­spon­dent Mar­i­ana van Zeller details how preda­to­ry agents sell African teenagers on the hope of land­ing big con­tracts with elite Euro­pean teams. The next thing they know, the young play­ers find them­selves des­ti­tute and strand­ed in an unfa­mil­iar coun­try, some­times home­less and forced into pros­ti­tu­tion, and mean­while their fam­i­lies get fleeced of their life sav­ings. It’s a grim real­i­ty tak­ing place in the shad­ow of the sport’s show­case event. Run­time is 45 min­utes.

Thanks to Rob for send­ing this along. We have added Cur­rent to our list of Intel­li­gent Video Sites.

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Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man

in Film, Literature | June 17th, 2010

In 1900, L. Frank Baum wrote The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz, which went on to become one of the most beloved chil­dren’s books of all time, reprint­ed and rein­vent­ed in a myr­i­ad stage plays, films, TV series, musi­cals and oth­er adap­ta­tions. But Baum’s orig­i­nal tale fea­tured a lit­tle-known back­sto­ry about the Tin Woods­man – a moral­i­ty tale about a man who gets so caught up in his work that he los­es sight of what real­ly mat­ters in life.

Direc­tor Bri­an McCormick decid­ed to cap­ture this poet­ic tale and the hid­den love sto­ry about a sim­ple woods­man and a beau­ti­ful maid­en in Heart­less: The Sto­ry of the Tin Man — an art­ful­ly shot short film, view­able for free online.

Addi­tion­al behind-the-scenes footage reveals the pro­duc­tion process and metic­u­lous crafts­man­ship of the film’s art direc­tion, sound design and cin­e­matog­ra­phy.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends too much time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

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Johnny Cash Remembered with 1,000+ Drawings

in Art, Music | June 17th, 2010

Give cred­it to The John­ny Cash Project. They took took hun­dreds of draw­ings, each done by a dif­fer­ent per­son, then stitched them togeth­er to pro­duce a video (above) that accom­pa­nies the title track of John­ny Cash’s last album, Ain’t No Grave. H/T to men­talfloss

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Crime and Punishment: Free AudioBook and eBook

in Audio Books, Literature | June 17th, 2010

In 1865, Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky found him­self in a deep hole. He had gam­bled away his last sav­ings and wracked up big debts. He also had to sup­port the fam­i­ly of his recent­ly deceased broth­er. Look­ing to make some quick mon­ey, Dos­to­evsky asked Mikhail Katkov, pub­lish­er of The Russ­ian Mes­sen­ger, for an advance. Then he began writ­ing in earnest a novel­la that soon sprawled into a grand nov­el. The first part of Crime and Pun­ish­ment would appear in The Russ­ian Mes­sen­ger in Jan­u­ary 1866; the sec­ond part in Decem­ber of that same year. Like The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov (Dos­to­evsky’s oth­er major work), Crime and Pun­ish­ment probes the dark side of human psy­chol­o­gy and asks some hard exis­ten­tial ques­tions. Niet­zsche would lat­er call Dos­to­evsky “the only psy­chol­o­gist from whom I have some­thing to learn: he belongs to the hap­pi­est wind­falls of my life, hap­pi­er even than the dis­cov­ery of Stend­hal.” One of the mas­ter­pieces of the Russ­ian lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, Crime and Pun­ish­ment is now avail­able as a free audio book thanks to Lit2Go. You can down­load the nov­el in full via iTunes, or as mp3s via the Lit2Go web site. Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for a free etext ver­sion of the nov­el, you can find it in the fol­low­ing for­mats: Google Mobile – Kin­dle – Feed­books — ePub.

Note: Crime and Pun­ish­ment appears in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

Learn how you can get a Free Audio Book (no strings attached) from Audible.com here.

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Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

in Comedy, Literature | June 16th, 2010

On the lighter side…

On a more seri­ous note, if you want some free audio books by the Bron­të’s (includ­ing Wuther­ing Heights and Jane Eyre), sim­ply find them in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Thanks to @wesalwan for send­ing our way.

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