Snagging Free Hitchcock and Fritz Lang Movies Online

in Film | July 14th, 2010

Yes­ter­day, we told you where to find Andrei Tarkovsky’s great films online. Mean­while, over at Brain Pick­ings, we wrote a guest piece high­light­ing where you can watch 15 films (all free, of course) direct­ed by Alfred Hitch­cock and Fritz Lang, two great direc­tors whose careers moved in par­al­lel from the silent era, to sound movies, and from Europe to Hol­ly­wood. Along the way you will encounter some land­mark films – Metrop­o­lis, The 39 Steps, The Lodger, and M, to name a few. These movies (all in the pub­lic domain) and near­ly 200 oth­ers reside in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies.

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The Civil War & Reconstruction: A Free Course from Yale University

in History | July 14th, 2010

The Civ­il War was a water­shed moment in US his­to­ry, and it fig­ures cen­tral­ly in any Amer­i­can his­to­ry cur­ricu­lum. If you missed this course dur­ing high school or col­lege, not to wor­ry. Now, thanks to Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, you can revis­it this his­tor­i­cal moment with Prof. David Blight, one of the nation’s lead­ing Civ­il War schol­ars. The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion “explores the caus­es, course, and con­se­quences of the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, from the 1840s to 1877,” look­ing at how the Unit­ed States was trans­formed on mul­ti­ple lev­els: racial­ly, social­ly, polit­i­cal­ly, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly and moral­ly. You can access the 27 free lec­tures, pre­sent­ed in audio and video, via YouTube, iTunes, and the Yale web site (plus a syl­labus). We also have it on the list of our Free His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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 Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films Free Online: Stalker, The Mirror & Andrei Rublev

in Film, Most Popular | July 13th, 2010

The stench of Vladimir Putin and his inva­sion of Ukraine should­n’t taint every­thing Russ­ian, espe­cial­ly some of its finest cin­e­ma. So we’ll give you this heads up: Mos­film, the largest and old­est film stu­dio in Rus­sia, has post­ed sev­er­al major films by Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986), on its offi­cial YouTube channel. Above, you can watch Stalk­er, which we’ve cov­ered amply here on Open Cul­ture. Below, stream The Mir­ror, Andrei Rublev, and Ivan’s Child­hood.

The Mir­ror

Andrei Rublev

Solaris


Ivan’s Child­hood

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:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

Slavoj Žižek Explains the Artistry of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films: Solaris, Stalk­er & More

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

 

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Roman Polanski on Making Chinatown

in Current Affairs, Film | July 12th, 2010

This morn­ing, the Swiss reject­ed US requests to extra­dite Roman Polanksi. This deci­sion effec­tive­ly brings to a close a rather dark chap­ter in his per­son­al life and lets the con­ver­sa­tion return to his film­mak­ing. Enter our video above, which fea­tures Polan­s­ki talk­ing about the mak­ing of Chi­na­town, his 1974 neo-noir film, star­ring Jack Nichol­son, Faye Dun­away, and John Hus­ton, that land­ed eleven Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions. Thanks Mike for send­ing this our way…

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Three Minute Philosophy — Immanuel Kant

in Comedy, Philosophy | July 12th, 2010

File under com­e­dy. It’s slight­ly cheeky, at times lit­tle crass, but how often do the com­e­dy and phi­los­o­phy worlds col­lide? I mean, real­ly?

S. Peter Davis also has three minute takes on Descartes, Hume, Aris­to­tle, Locke, Galileo, Pythago­ras, and Aquinas.

via Metafil­ter

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A Brief, Artistic Introduction to Nikola Tesla

in History, Science | July 12th, 2010

This week­end marked the 154th birth­day of Niko­la Tes­la, the Serbian/Croatian emi­gre whose work on elec­tro­mag­net­ism and electro­mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing con­tributed to the birth of com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty. Espe­cial­ly dur­ing the past year, his name has regained a fair amount of cur­ren­cy, not least because there’s a very sporty elec­tric road­ster now named after him. In hon­or of his birth­day, the clip above gives a very quick and artis­tic intro­duc­tion to Tes­la’s life and work …

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John Wayne Recites the Pledge of Allegiance

in Random | July 9th, 2010

This week, the US cel­e­brat­ed its inde­pen­dence. And so it’s per­haps fit­ting to head into the week­end with John Wayne, an Amer­i­can icon, recit­ing and inter­pret­ing the Pledge of Alle­giance. Long live the Duke…

Find more vin­tage audio and video in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons.

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New Twain Online

in Literature | July 8th, 2010

Mark Twain died a good cen­tu­ry ago. But new Twain writ­ings keep com­ing out. Lat­er this fall, his auto­bi­og­ra­phy will hit book­stores for the first time. And just this week, PBS pub­lished online a new Twain essay called “Con­cern­ing the Inter­view.” It begins:

No one likes to be inter­viewed, and yet no one likes to say no; for inter­view­ers are cour­te­ous and gen­tle-man­nered, even when they come to destroy.

You can read a high res­o­lu­tion, hand-writ­ten copy of the essay here.

via @alyssa_milano

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The Beginning and Evolution of Life

in Art, Random | July 8th, 2010

It’s an unsci­en­tif­ic point of view by BLU. Thanks @wesalwan for send­ing our way…

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The Stanford Mini Med School: The Complete Collection

in Science, Stanford | July 8th, 2010

Image by King of Hearts, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Through­out the past year, Stanford’s School of Med­i­cine and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job) teamed up to offer The Stan­ford Mini Med School. Fea­tur­ing more than thir­ty dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty, sci­en­tists, and physi­cians, this year­long series of cours­es (three in total) offered stu­dents a dynam­ic intro­duc­tion to the world of human biol­o­gy, health and dis­ease, and the ground­break­ing changes tak­ing place in med­ical research and health care. Now you can watch these lec­tures for free. The fall and win­ter lec­tures (20 lec­tures in total) are com­plete­ly avail­able online. And the spring lec­tures are get­ting rolled out start­ing this week. You can access the full lec­tures series in mul­ti­ple for­mats below:

  • Fall 2009, The Dynam­ics of Human Health — iTunes — YouTube — Web Site
  • Win­ter 2009, Human Health and the Fron­tiers of Sci­ence — iTunes — YouTube — Web Site
  • Spring 2010, Trans­form­ing Our Under­stand­ing of Human Health and Dis­ease — iTunes — Web Site

The entire series also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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Jimmy Page, 13, Plays Guitar on BBC Talent Show (1957)

in Music | July 7th, 2010

Let’s rewind the video tape to 1957. A very young Jim­my Page appears on a BBC chil­dren’s tal­ent show to play some skif­fle. Mix­ing togeth­er strands of Amer­i­can blues, jazz, coun­try and folk music, this style of music became all the rage in the UK dur­ing the 1950s. Lon­nie Done­gan got the craze going. And it was­n’t long before John Lennon formed his own skif­fle band – The Quar­ry Men (pho­to here) … lat­er to become The Bea­t­les. Head­ing into the 60s, a matur­ing Jim­my Page took his music in entire­ly new direc­tions, which brings us to our post last week: The Strange Tale of Dazed and Con­fused.

Video via Laugh­ingSquid

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