Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge with a Free iPad App

in History, iPad | May 26th, 2012

When it opened to vehi­cle traf­fic in May, 1937 the Gold­en Gate Bridge was the longest sus­pen­sion bridge in the world. Since then eight bridges have sur­passed it in length, but the icon­ic inter­na­tion­al orange span is still the most pho­tographed bridge in the world. This month marks the Gold­en Gate’s 75th anniver­sary and the Cal­i­for­nia His­tor­i­cal Society’s exhib­it, A Wild Flight of the Imag­i­na­tion, cel­e­brates the event with a look at the bridge’s con­struc­tion. The exhib­it has also been made avail­able as a free eBook for the iPad, which includes his­toric pho­tographs by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange as well as a short film of bridge design­er Joseph Strauss speak­ing to a reporter dur­ing the bridge’s con­struc­tion. At the time, experts said that the Gold­en Gate strait’s fero­cious winds and strong, swirling cur­rents would make con­struc­tion impos­si­ble. But the design intro­duced deflec­tion the­o­ry, which uti­lizes a thin, flex­i­ble road­way and long cables that reduce struc­tur­al stress.

The inter­ac­tive app is accom­pa­nied by a musi­cal score—the open­ing selec­tion from com­pos­er Rob Kapilow’s Chrysopy­lae, Greek for “Gold­en Gate.” Ear­ly users of the eBook report­ed glitch­es with the app’s audio. The cul­prit may have been the side mute switch, which must be flipped off for the audio to work. Also, make sure your iPad’s vol­ume is up. Like the exhib­it in the society’s San Fran­cis­co muse­um, the app includes access to images of some 350 objects and ephemera relat­ed to the span’s con­struc­tion. Almost as nice as a walk across the bridge’s 1.7 miles, and not near­ly as windy.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

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How David Byrne and Brian Eno Make Music Together: A Short Documentary

in Music | May 25th, 2012

On Mon­day, we post­ed the Artist Series, short pro­files of var­i­ous aes­thet­i­cal­ly-ori­ent­ed cre­ators by the late Hill­man Cur­tis. Today, please enjoy what feels like the jew­el in the Artist Series’ crown, despite not offi­cial­ly being part of it: Cur­tis’ pro­mo­tion­al doc­u­men­tary on Bri­an Eno and David Byrne and their col­lab­o­ra­tion on 2008’s Every­thing That Hap­pens Hap­pen Will Hap­pen Today.

Cur­tis inter­views Eno and Byrne in their sep­a­rate work­spaces, cap­tures their con­ver­sa­tions about parts of their songs, and even — pre­sum­ably in keep­ing with the album’s do-it-your­self pro­mo­tion­al spir­it — lets them pho­to­graph one anoth­er. He also shows them doing what they do best when not cre­at­ing: cycling, of course, in Byrne’s case, and look­ing pen­sive­ly through win­dows in Eno’s.

In none of these nine min­utes do Byrne or Eno per­form any­thing. Cur­tis does­n’t need them to; he taps instead into the com­bi­na­tion of artic­u­la­cy, clar­i­ty, and idio­syn­crasy that has earned them near­ly forty years of sta­tus as cere­bral pop­u­lar music icons. Just as the ear­ly eight­ies’ nascent sam­pling tech­nol­o­gy gave Byrne and Eno a new frame­work with which to think about music when they record­ed My Life in the Bush of Ghosts togeth­er, the abil­i­ty to send sounds over the inter­net and exten­sive­ly mod­i­fy absolute­ly any record­ing after the fact shaped the con­struc­tion of Every­thing That Hap­pens Will Hap­pen Today.

The result­ing pro­duc­tion legit­i­mate­ly earns the crit­i­cal­ly abused adjec­tive “dream­like” — have a lis­ten to the track “I Feel My Stuff” above — and the feel of Cur­tis’ video aligns with the feel of the album, using unblink­ing gazes and drift­ing track­ing shots that would­n’t feel out of place in an Apichat­pong Weerasethakul film. If you still want to see these guys actu­al­ly play some­thing, watch Ride, Rise, Roar (trail­er here, clip below), Cur­tis’ con­cert film of the Songs of David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Tour.

Relat­ed con­tent

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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ZeroN: An Amazing, Gravity-Defying New Interactive Technology at M.I.T.

in MIT, Technology | May 25th, 2012

In Stephen Spiel­berg’s film E.T. The Extra-Ter­res­tri­al there is a mem­o­rable scene in which a group of chil­dren ask a strand­ed vis­i­tor from out­er space where he is from, and he tries to com­mu­ni­cate by using an unseen force to lift a group of balls into mid-air and move them around to sim­u­late a solar sys­tem. Now a researcher at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy has tapped into the physics of mag­net­ic lev­i­ta­tion to cre­ate some­thing sim­i­lar: a com­put­er-con­trolled sys­tem that allows users to manip­u­late a met­al sphere float­ing in space.

“I think there is some­thing fun­da­men­tal behind moti­va­tions to lib­er­ate phys­i­cal mat­ter from grav­i­ty and enable con­trol,” writes Jin­ha Lee on his Web site. “The moti­va­tion has exist­ed as a shared dream amongst humans for mil­len­nia. It is an idea found in mytholo­gies, desired by alchemists, and visu­al­ized in Sci­ence Fic­tion movies. I have aspired to cre­ate a space where we can expe­ri­ence a glimpse of this future.”

Lee’s device is part of the M.I.T. Tan­gi­ble Media Group’s larg­er project of giv­ing phys­i­cal form to dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion. The group strives to bring togeth­er the sep­a­rate worlds of bits and atoms in a Tan­gi­ble User Inter­face, or TUI, to allow peo­ple to use their nat­u­ral­ly evolved phys­i­cal dex­ter­i­ty to visu­al­ize and manip­u­late com­pu­ta­tion. To help achieve this, Lee devel­oped a pro­gram­ma­ble inter­face ele­ment he calls “ZeroN.” He describes it in the abstract of a paper pub­lished last Octo­ber with col­lab­o­ra­tors Reh­mi Post and Hiroshi Ishii:

ZeroN serves as a tan­gi­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a 3D coor­di­nate of the vir­tu­al world through which users can see, feel, and con­trol com­pu­ta­tion. To acom­plish this we devel­oped a mag­net­ic con­trol sys­tem that can lev­i­tate and actu­ate a per­ma­nent mag­net in a pre-defined 3D vol­ume. This is com­bined with an opti­cal track­ing and dis­play sys­tem that projects images on the lev­i­tat­ing object. We present appli­ca­tions that explore this new inter­ac­tion modal­i­ty. Users are invit­ed to place or move the ZeroN object just as they can place objects on sur­faces. For exam­ple, users can place the sun above phys­i­cal objects to cast dig­i­tal shad­ows, or place a plan­et that will start revolv­ing based on sim­u­lat­ed phys­i­cal con­di­tions.

You can access the com­plete paper as a PDF. And you can find sim­i­lar videos when you explore our Tech­nol­o­gy sec­tion.

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David Rees and His One-Man Artisanal Pencil Sharpening Service

in Comedy | May 25th, 2012

This is for any­one with a love of old school wood­work­ing — luthiers, ébénistes and the rest. In 2009, the humorist David Rees gave up car­toon­ing and opened up his one-man arti­sanal pen­cil sharp­en­ing ser­vice in Bea­con, New York, an old fac­to­ry town along the Hud­son Riv­er. Just a man, some high qual­i­ty cedar, a knife, and an occa­sion­al pen­cil sharp­er revive a bygone era and a dis­ap­pear­ing instru­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. 400 pen­cils lat­er, at $15 a pop, Rees has some­thing good going. You can learn more about Rees and his crafts­man­ship by read­ing (seri­ous­ly) his new book, How to Sharp­en Pen­cils, with a for­ward by John Hodg­man.

Note: Rees uses some NSFW lan­guage dur­ing the video.

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Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-Winner, Tweets New Story with The New Yorker

in Books, Literature, Twitter | May 25th, 2012

In March, Jen­nifer Egan (A Vis­it From the Goon Squad) paid a vis­it to Google and was asked to sum up her year since win­ning the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. She said: “I am still not used to the idea that I won it. Maybe I will final­ly real­ly grab hold of that idea when some­one else wins it. I will say ‘No, I want it!’ ” Lit­tle did she know that just a few weeks lat­er the Pulitzer Prize judges would decline to name a suc­ces­sor, leav­ing her in men­tal lim­bo for yet anoth­er year. She seems to be han­dling it pret­ty well — well enough to pub­lish a new short sto­ry on The New York­er’s Fic­tion twit­ter stream. Yes, you read that right, its Twit­ter stream.

Start­ing last night, The New York­er began tweet­ing her new sto­ry, “Black Box,” and the sto­ry will con­tin­ue to unfold over nine more night­ly install­ments. It’s a gim­mick, you’re think­ing, right? Well, for Egan, it’s not. She explains on The New York­er web site:

I’d also been won­der­ing about how to write fic­tion whose struc­ture would lend itself to seri­al­iza­tion on Twit­ter. This is not a new idea, of course, but it’s a rich one—because of the inti­ma­cy of reach­ing peo­ple through their phones, and because of the odd poet­ry that can hap­pen in a hun­dred and forty char­ac­ters. I found myself imag­in­ing a series of terse men­tal dis­patch­es from a female spy of the future, work­ing under­cov­er by the Mediter­ranean Sea. I wrote these bul­letins by hand in a Japan­ese note­book that had eight rec­tan­gles on each page. The sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly near­ly twice its present length; it took me a year, on and off, to con­trol and cal­i­brate the mate­r­i­al into what is now “Black Box.”

If you’re a Twit­ter user, you can catch the live stream between 8 and 9 P.M. EDT. (And you can also fol­low our live­ly Twit­ter stream here.) If micro-seri­al­ized fic­tion isn’t your thing, then you can always fol­low the sto­ry on The New York­er’s “Page Turn­er” blog.

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New Great Gatsby, On the Road Adaptations Revive an Old Debate: Can Great Books Make Great Movies?

in Film, Literature | May 24th, 2012

Two of the great­est Amer­i­can nov­els of the 20th century–F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s The Great Gats­by and Jack Ker­ouac’s On the Road–are head­ed for the big screen lat­er this year, and lit­er­ary fans are brac­ing for the worst.

Or at least that’s very much the case with Baz Luhrman­n’s 3‑D ver­sion of The Great Gats­by, star­ring Leonar­do DiCaprio as Jay Gats­by, Carey Mul­li­gan as Daisy Buchanan and Tobey Maguire as nar­ra­tor Nick Car­raway. The trail­er was released ear­li­er this week (see above) and the Inter­net has been buzzing. A head­line writer at the New York Dai­ly News observed that the new adap­ta­tion by the Aus­tralian film­mak­er who brought us Moulin Rouge! “won’t be your high school teacher’s F. Scott Fitzger­ald.” Over at the Wall Street Jour­nal’s “Speakeasy” blog, Lyne­ka Lit­tle described the music in the trail­er (by those Jazz Age lumi­nar­ies Kanye West, Jay‑Z and Jack White) as “awful­ly con­tem­po­rary.” But when it comes to the per­fect choice of words, the prize must go to actor James Urba­ni­ak, who said yes­ter­day on Twit­ter, “The Great Gats­by 3D: Borne back cease­less­ly into your face.”

Lit­er­ary purists are a bit more hope­ful when it comes to the first-ever film of Ker­ouac’s On the Road. In The New York Times yes­ter­day, Steve Chagol­lan described the painstak­ing research con­duct­ed by direc­tor Wal­ter Salles, best known for his 2004 film about Che Gue­vara, The Motor­cy­cle Diaries. The Brazil­ian direc­tor retraced Ker­ouac’s jour­neys across North Amer­i­ca and inter­viewed schol­ars and sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion. “I was well aware that my pas­sion for the book was not suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy launch­ing into an adap­ta­tion straight away,” Salles told the Times. “In fact, mak­ing the fea­ture film ceased to be my main con­cern at the time. Under­stand­ing and get­ting to know these peo­ple bet­ter became my main goal.” Still, as Chagol­lan put it, Beat afi­ciona­dos will be watch­ing the film very close­ly, “cer­tain to cast an unfor­giv­ing eye.”

There’s an old say­ing: Good books make bad movies, and vice ver­sa. But is it true? It’s not dif­fi­cult to come up with the names of a few good books that have been made into mem­o­rable movies. Phillip Noyce’s adap­ta­tion of Gra­ham Greene’s The Qui­et Amer­i­can comes to mind. So does Blake Edward­s’s film of Tru­man Capote’s Break­fast at Tiffany’s and Stan­ley Kubrick­’s film of Antho­ny Burgess’s A Clock­work Orange. It’s even pos­si­ble to think of a great film made from a lit­er­ary mas­ter­piece, as in the case of Kubrick­’s adap­ta­tion of Vladimir Nabokov’s Loli­ta. Kubrick expressed his thoughts on trans­lat­ing books into films in a 1960–1961 essay, “Words and Movies”:

It’s some­times said that a great nov­el makes a less promis­ing basis for a film than a nov­el which is mere­ly good. I don’t think that adapt­ing great nov­els presents any spe­cial prob­lems which are not involved in adapt­ing good nov­els or mediocre nov­els; except that you will be more heav­i­ly crit­i­cised if the film is bad, and you may be even if it’s good. I think almost any nov­el can be suc­cess­ful­ly adapt­ed, pro­vid­ed it is not one whose aes­thet­ic integri­ty is lost along with its length. For exam­ple, the kind of nov­el in which a great deal and vari­ety of action is absolute­ly essen­tial to the sto­ry, so that it los­es much of its point when you sub­tract heav­i­ly from the num­ber of events or their devel­op­ment. Peo­ple have asked me how it is pos­si­ble to make a film out of Loli­ta when so much of the qual­i­ty of the book depends on Nabokov’s prose style. But to take the prose style as any more than just a part of a great book is sim­ply mis­un­der­stand­ing just what a great book is. Of course, the qual­i­ty of the writ­ing is one of the ele­ments that make a nov­el great. But this qual­i­ty is a result of the qual­i­ty of the writer’s obses­sion with his sub­ject, with a theme and a con­cept and a view of life and an under­stand­ing of char­ac­ter. Style is what an artist uses to fas­ci­nate the behold­er in order to con­vey to him his feel­ings and emo­tions and thoughts. These are what have to be drama­tised, not the style. The drama­tis­ing has to find a style of its own, as it will do if it real­ly grasps the con­tent. And in doing this it will bring out anoth­er side of the struc­ture which has gone into the nov­el. It may or may not be as good as the nov­el; some­times it may in cer­tain ways be even bet­ter.

What do you think? Are you look­ing for­ward to see­ing the new Great Gats­by and On the Road films? And can you think of a great book that has been made into an equal­ly great–or even greater–movie?

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Leonard Susskind, Father of String Theory, Warmly Remembers His Friend, Richard Feynman

in Physics, Stanford | May 24th, 2012

Leonard Susskind — he’s the father of String The­o­ry, some­one who won the black hole wars with Stephen Hawk­ing, and a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor who likes to bring physics to the broad­er pub­lic. (Find his 6‑course intro­duc­tion to Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics in the Physics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.) Last year, Susskind head­ed to Cal­Tech to talk about Richard Feyn­man. Of course, he’s the late, great physi­cist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics (find his pub­lic lec­tures on that here). He also shared Susskind’s enthu­si­asm for pop­u­lar­iz­ing sci­ence, cre­at­ing mem­o­rable shows like Fun to Imag­ine, a tele­vi­sion series for the BBC, and The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out. In this warm talk, Susskind remem­bers his men­tor and friend, a com­plex per­son few got to know very well. Feyn­man was many things — a great sci­en­tist, a show­man, a philoso­pher, drum­mer, teacher, a bit of an ego­tist who could co-exist with oth­er big egos, and much more.

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Bill Murray Introduces Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (And Plays FDR In December)

in Film | May 24th, 2012

Excit­ed Wes Ander­son fans: do you need one more watch­able to tide you over before Moon­rise King­dom enters wide release tomor­row? Wes Ander­son-neu­tral film­go­ers: do you need a lit­tle help cut­ting through the fans’ cloud of antic­i­pa­tion so you can make out what Moon­rise King­dom actu­al­ly is? Both groups could ben­e­fit from a tour of the film by comedic super­star and unlike­ly Ander­son reg­u­lar Bill Mur­ray. The film, a sto­ry of two young sweet­hearts on the run in 1965 New Eng­land, fea­tures Mur­ray in the role of the girl’s father. Or, in his own words: “I play a, um… a man in the film.” He goes on to describe the direc­tor (“a nice guy, he’s made some good movies”), his co-stars (“Bruce Willis, play­ing a police­man — type­cast, I guess”), and the pro­duc­tion’s sim­ple accom­mo­da­tions (“we had tents — like, pup tents”). He even cross­es a wall from one set to anoth­er, echo­ing his tour of the Bela­fonte in The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou, three Ander­son movies back. Whether you need the excite­ment inflat­ed or deflat­ed, leave it to Mur­ray, mas­ter of the dead­pan mul­ti­ple mean­ing.

If you fol­low Mur­ray’s craft and the some­times unex­pect­ed chal­lenges to which he applies it, keep your eyes open this awards sea­son for Hyde Park on Hud­son, a dra­ma built around Mur­ray as for­mer Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt. Can’t envi­sion it? Then give the trail­er above a watch. The pic­ture comes from direc­tor Roger Michell, best known in the last decade for Venus, and Not­ting Hill in the decade before that. This new peri­od piece rep­re­sents not a break from his usu­al Eng­lish ter­ri­to­ry and sen­si­bil­i­ty so much as a recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of it: it takes place dur­ing a par­tic­u­lar week­end in 1939, the first time a British monarch made the trip to Amer­i­ca, when Roo­sevelt enter­tained the King and Queen at his upstate New York home. The Wes Ander­son faith­ful will note a reunion of sorts between Mur­ray and Olivia Williams, who near­ly four­teen years ago played Miss Cross in Ander­son­’s Rush­more. Her role in Hyde Park on Hud­son? Eleanor Roo­sevelt.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fact Check­ing Bill Mur­ray: A Short, Com­ic Film from Sun­dance 2008

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Rare Footage: Home Movie of FDR’s 1941 Inau­gu­ra­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch: New Film by Roman Polanski, Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Sir Ben Kingsley & Prada Shoes

in Film | May 24th, 2012

At the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val this week, Roman Polan­s­ki screened a restored ver­sion of his 1979 film, Tess. And then he tan­ta­lized the audi­ence, at least momen­tar­i­ly, when he offered a sneak pre­view of his new film, which turned out to be a cin­e­mat­ic com­mer­cial for Pra­da. A Ther­a­py stars Hele­na Bon­ham Carter and Sir Ben Kings­ley, with Pra­da shoes and coat serv­ing as the props. Or actu­al­ly it’s the oth­er way around.

Film­mak­ers putting their tal­ents in the ser­vice of fash­ion design­ers isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly new. Just two years ago, David Lynch shot his own film, Lady Blue Shang­hai, for Dior. It starred the Oscar-win­ning French actress Mar­i­on Cotil­lard. You can find it online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

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The First Films of Great Directors: Kubrick, Coppola, Scorsese, Tarantino & Truffaut

in Film | May 23rd, 2012

Great direc­tors — unless they’re Orson Welles — rarely start off mak­ing mas­ter­pieces. Their craft evolves, remind­ing us that great film­mak­ing (like every­thing else) takes tal­ent, but also hard work. In case you’re doubt­ful, we’re pre­sent­ing the first films by five icon­ic direc­tors, all fea­tured here before, but nev­er brought togeth­er into one place. Some first films are down­right chop­py; some are work­man­like; some are more refined. But none exact­ly soar to cin­e­mat­ic heights. Above, we start you off with Quentin Taran­ti­no’s 1987 debut film My Best Friend’s Birth­day, a chop­py pro­duc­tion that has some­thing unmis­tak­ably Taran­ti­noesque about it, accord­ing to Col­in Mar­shall.

In some sense, [My Best Friend’s Birth­day] bears an even deep­er imprint of Tarantino’s per­son­al­i­ty than his sub­se­quent films [Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dogs], since he stars in it as well. To behold the ear­ly-twen­tysome­thing Taran­ti­no por­tray­ing the good-heart­ed and aggres­sive­ly enthu­si­as­tic but jit­tery and dis­tractible rock­a­bil­ly DJ Clarence Poole is to behold the Quentin Taran­ti­no pub­lic per­sona in an embry­on­ic form, a dis­tilled form — or both.

Long before Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la shot Apoc­alpyse Now and The God­fa­ther in the 1970s, he made his real direc­to­r­i­al debut with a 75-minute, black-and-white psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror film called Demen­tia 13 (1963). He had made a cou­ple of small-time nudie films before that. But this was his first main­stream, legit effort.

As Col­in, our res­i­dent film crit­ic has not­ed here, “To watch Demen­tia 13 now is to wit­ness Coppola’s con­trol of ten­sion and dark­ness in its embry­on­ic — but still impres­sive — form. Nobody involved in the pro­duc­tion could have delud­ed them­selves about its goal of shoot­ing a few max­i­mal­ly grue­some axe mur­ders as quick­ly and cheap­ly as pos­si­ble, but even such strait­ened cir­cum­stances allow for pock­ets of artistry to bub­ble through.”

When you think Cop­po­la, you think Scors­ese too, anoth­er direc­tor who put his stamp on 1970s and 1980s cin­e­ma with Mean Streets, Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, and Good­fel­las. We recent­ly revis­it­ed Scors­ese’s NYU film school days dur­ing the ear­ly 1960s, when he first cut his teeth as a direc­tor. We showed you sev­er­al of his ear­ly shorts (find them all here), but high­light­ed one of his ear­li­est works, What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This (1963). Scors­ese would lat­er describe the film as “nine min­utes of visu­al non­sense,” while also say­ing “it had no depth at all, but it was a lot of fun. And it won me a schol­ar­ship, so my father was able to use it for the tuition for the next year.”


Where­as Mar­tin Scors­ese went to NYU and leisure­ly stud­ied the his­to­ry and aes­thet­ics of cin­e­ma, Stan­ley Kubrick, a poor stu­dent, skipped col­lege, start­ed work­ing as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for Look mag­a­zine, and even­tu­al­ly began mak­ing movies to eke out a liv­ing. In the ear­ly 1950s, Kubrick start­ed shoot­ing news­reel doc­u­men­taries, hop­ing to turn a tidy prof­it. And here you’ll find his first effort, Day of the Fight, a 1951 noirish doc­u­men­tary on mid­dleweight box­er Wal­ter Carti­er and his match with Bob­by James. It’s a work­man­like film, yes. But not exact­ly an obvi­ous pre­lude to 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clock­work Orange. Mike Springer has more on Kubrick­’s ear­ly doc­u­men­taries here.

The 1957 film, Les Mis­tons (The Brats), was tech­ni­cal­ly François Truf­faut’s sec­ond film but the first that ever sat­is­fied him. Sens­es of Cin­e­ma has else­where called it “the director’s first short film of any real con­se­quence.” Rel­a­tive to the ear­ly efforts of oth­er direc­tors, this short demon­strates a more mature set of film­mak­ing skills, the kind that would be on dis­play two years lat­er when Truf­faut released Les qua­tre cents coups (The 400 Blows), one of the defin­ing films of French New Wave cin­e­ma. Col­in Mar­shall takes a clos­er look at Les Mis­tons right here.

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The Idea TED Didn’t Consider Worth Spreading: The Rich Aren’t Really Job Creators

in Current Affairs, TED Talks | May 23rd, 2012

Late last week, The Nation­al Jour­nal pub­lished a sto­ry called The Inequal­i­ty Speech That TED Won’t Show You, along with a relat­ed sto­ry explain­ing the con­tro­ver­sy, which boils down to this:

TED orga­niz­ers invit­ed a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire Seat­tle ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist named Nick Hanauer – the first non­fam­i­ly investor in Amazon.com – to give a speech on March 1 at their TED Uni­ver­si­ty con­fer­ence. Inequal­i­ty was the top­ic – specif­i­cal­ly, Hanauer’s con­tention that the mid­dle class, and not wealthy inno­va­tors like him­self, are America’s true “job cre­ators.”…

You can’t find that speech online. [Note: it has now been inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished on YouTube.]  TED offi­cials told Hanauer ini­tial­ly they were eager to dis­trib­ute it. “I want to put this talk out into the world!” one of them wrote him in an e‑mail in late April. But ear­ly this month they changed course, telling Hanauer that his remarks were too “polit­i­cal” and too con­tro­ver­sial for post­ing.

The Nation­al Jour­nal and Hanauer present it as a case of cen­sor­ship. But TED’s lead cura­tor Chris Ander­son respond­ed in a blog post, say­ing: “Our pol­i­cy is to post only talks that are tru­ly spe­cial. And we try to steer clear of talks that are bound to descend into the same dis­mal par­ti­san head-butting peo­ple can find every day else­where in the media.” He went on to offer this anal­o­gy: Some­times you send an op-ed to The New York Times and they don’t pub­lish it. Does that mean your ideas are being cen­sored? Or does it maybe mean your ideas aren’t very well put? Or did some­one else do a bet­ter job of fram­ing the argu­ment?

One way or anoth­er, TED did­n’t see Hanauer’s ideas as being “worth spread­ing.” The video now appears on YouTube. You can watch it above and decide what you think: Cen­sor­ship or selec­tiv­i­ty? Or, let me add a third option: a desire to please any­one and every­one at the expense of open­ing deeply-held beliefs and oft-stat­ed mantras to real debate?

via Fora

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