Richard Dawkins Rallies for Reason in Washington DC

in Current Affairs, Religion, Science | March 27th, 2012

This week­end, an esti­mat­ed 20,000 agnos­tics, athe­ists and ardent sec­u­lar­ists gath­ered on the Nation­al Mall in rainy Wash­ing­ton DC. They were attend­ing the first Rea­son Ral­ly, an event intend­ed to “uni­fy, ener­gize, and embold­en sec­u­lar peo­ple nation­wide, while dis­pelling the neg­a­tive opin­ions held by so much of Amer­i­can soci­ety… and hav­ing a damn good time doing it!” Lawrence Krauss, Michael Sher­mer, Eddie Izzard — they all spoke to the crowd. And then came Richard Dawkins, the high priest of rea­son, the author of The Self­ish Gene, who spent decades teach­ing evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy at Oxford. In the mid­dle of his 16 minute talk, he tells the audi­ence, “We’re here to stand up for rea­son, to stand up for sci­ence, to stand up for log­ic, to stand up for the beau­ty of real­i­ty, and the beau­ty of the fact that we can under­stand real­i­ty.” I’m with you Richard on that. But then comes the scorn we’re now so accus­tomed to (“I don’t despise reli­gious peo­ple; I despise what they stand for.”), and my guess is that chang­ing per­cep­tions of agnos­tics, athe­ists and sec­u­lar­ists will need to wait for anoth­er day.

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Newly Discovered Piece by Mozart Performed on His Own Fortepiano

in History, Music | March 27th, 2012

A music schol­ar made an astound­ing dis­cov­ery recent­ly while going through the per­son­al belong­ings from the attic of a recent­ly deceased church musi­cian and band leader in the Lech Val­ley of the Aus­tri­an Tyrol.

Comb­ing through the dead man’s col­lec­tion of old music man­u­scripts, Hilde­gard Her­rmann-Schnei­der of the Insti­tute for Tyrolean Music Research noticed a hand-writ­ten book with the date “1780” on the cov­er. On pages 12 to 14 she found an uniden­ti­fied sonata move­ment with the tem­po mark “alle­gro molto,” Ital­ian for “very quick­ly.” On the upper right-hand side of page 12 was writ­ten “Del Sig­nore Gio­vane Wolf­gan­go Mozart,” or “The young Wolf­gan­go Mozart.”

“Wolf­gan­go” was a name Mozart’s father, Leopold, called him when he was a boy. Look­ing fur­ther into the man­u­script, Her­rmann-Schnei­der found sev­er­al pieces that were already known to have been writ­ten by Leopold Mozart. Those com­po­si­tions were respect­ful­ly marked “Sig­nore Mozart,” or “Lord Mozart.”

Although the writ­ing was clear­ly not in the hand of either the elder or the younger Mozart, the metic­u­lous­ness of the tran­scrip­tions, along with the accu­ra­cy of every ver­i­fi­able detail through­out the 160-page book, led Her­rmann-Schnei­der to sus­pect that the com­po­si­tion by “The Young Wolf­gan­go Mozart” was an authen­tic, pre­vi­ous­ly unknown piece.

On the back of the man­u­script was the copy­ist’s name: Johannes Reis­er­er. After an exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion, Her­rmann-Schnei­der was able to learn that Reis­er­er was born in 1765 and had gone to gym­na­si­um, or high school, in Salzburg, where he was a mem­ber of the cathe­dral choir from 1778 to 1780. That would have placed him in close prox­im­i­ty to Leopold Mozart. “Researchers have thus con­clud­ed,” writes The His­to­ry Blog, “that Johannes Reis­er­er used the note­book to copy com­po­si­tions as part of a rig­or­ous pro­gram of music instruc­tion by Kapell­haus music mas­ters, per­haps Leopold him­self.”

Based on the style and the lev­el of accom­plish­ment in the piece, now known as the “Alle­gro Molto in C Major,” researchers place the date of com­po­si­tion at around 1767, when Mozart was 11 years old. A press release from the Insti­tute for Tyrolean Music Research describes the piece:

Mozart fre­quent­ly select­ed a C‑major key, and the Alle­gro molto has a sonata form with a length of 84 mea­sures. Its ambi­tus is tai­lored to the clavi­chord. The Alle­gro molto could be a first major attempt by Wolf­gang Amadé to assert him­self in the area of the sonata form. This is sug­gest­ed by the rel­a­tive­ly high lev­el of com­po­si­tion­al technique.…Throughout the Alle­gro molto, the­mat­ic for­ma­tion, com­po­si­tion­al set­ting and har­mo­ny have a num­ber of com­po­nents that are found repeat­ed in oth­er Mozart piano works. Hard­ly a com­po­si­tion­al detail points to a con­tra­dic­tion with the gen­er­al char­ac­ter­is­tics of Mozart’s com­sum­mate musi­cal com­po­si­tion. Accord­ing to cur­rent schol­ar­ly knowl­edge, it must there­fore be regard­ed as an authen­tic sonata move­ment by Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart.

Aus­tri­an musi­cian Flo­ri­an Bir­sak, who spe­cial­izes in play­ing ear­ly key­board instru­ments, gave the pre­mier per­for­mance of the piece on Mozart’s own fortepi­ano last Fri­day at the Mozart fam­i­ly home in Salzburg, which is now a muse­um of the Salzburg Mozar­teum Foun­da­tion. You can watch a video, above, which was record­ed some­time ear­li­er in the same place and on the same instru­ment. You can also read a PDF of the score, and down­load Bir­sak’s record­ing at iTunes.

The first page of Mozart’s Alle­gro Molto in C Major (above) from the 1780 note­book. Cred­it: Salzburg Mozar­teum Foun­da­tion.

via @MatthiasRascher

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Star Gazing from the International Space Station (and Free Astronomy Courses Online)

in Astronomy, Video - Science | March 26th, 2012

Don Pet­tit joined NASA in 1996 and has since logged more than 176 days in space, liv­ing abord the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS) mul­ti­ple times, and always tak­ing his cam­era with him. In the past, he has shown us What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth, Views of the Auro­ra Bore­alis Seen from Space, and How to Drink Cof­fee at Zero Grav­i­ty. Now we get an edit­ed ver­sion of what it looks like to star gaze from low orbit. Whether you look up or down, you can’t lose.

Look­ing to dig a lit­tle deep­er into what’s hap­pen­ing out there in the cos­mos? Then you might want to spend some time with the cours­es list­ed in the Astron­o­my sec­tion of our Free Cours­es col­lec­tion.

  • Astro­bi­ol­o­gy and Space Explo­ration – iTunes – YouTube – Lynn Rotschild, Stan­ford
  • Astron­o­my 101 – iTunes – Web Site – Scott Miller, Mer­cedes Richards & Stephen Red­man, Penn State
  • Explor­ing Black Holes: Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty & Astro­physics –YouTube – iTunes Video — Web Site – Edmund Bertschinger, MIT
  • Fron­tiers and Con­tro­ver­sies in Astro­physics - YouTube — iTunes Audio – iTunes Video – Down­load Course – Charles Bai­lyn, Yale
  • Intro­duc­tion to Astro­physics — iTunes — Joshua Bloom, UC Berke­ley

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

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Robert Frost Recites ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’

in Literature, Poetry | March 26th, 2012

Today is the birth­day of Robert Frost, who once said that a poem can­not be wor­ried into being, but rather, “Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melt­ing.” Those words are from Frost’s 1939 essay, “The Fig­ure a Poem Makes,” which includes the famous pas­sage:

The fig­ure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wis­dom. The fig­ure is the same as for love. No one can real­ly hold that the ecsta­sy should be sta­t­ic and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direc­tion with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of life–not nec­es­sar­i­ly a great clar­i­fi­ca­tion, such as sects and cults are found­ed on, but in a momen­tary stay against con­fu­sion.

To cel­e­brate the 138th anniver­sary of the poet­’s birth, we bring you rare footage of Frost recit­ing his clas­sic poem, “Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” You can also lis­ten to a four-part record­ing (below) of Frost read­ing a selec­tion of his poems in 1956, cour­tesy of Harp­er Audio.

  • Robert Frost Read­ing, Part One: “The Road Not Tak­en,” “The Pas­ture,” “Mow­ing,” “Birch­es,” “After Apple-Pick­ing,” and “The Tuft of Flow­ers.”
  • Robert Frost Read­ing, Part Two: “West-Run­ning Brook” and “The Death of the Hired Man.”
  • Robert Frost Read­ing, Part Three: “Mend­ing Wall,” “One More Brevi­ty,” “Depart­men­tal,” “A Con­sid­er­able Speck,” and “Why Wait for Sci­ence.”
  • Robert Frost Read­ing, Part Four: “Ethe­re­al­iz­ing,” “Pro­vide, Pro­vide,” “One Step Back­ward Tak­en,” “Choose Some­thing Like a Star,” “Hap­pi­ness Makes Up in Height,” and “Reluc­tance.”

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The Animation of Billy Collins’ Poetry: Everyday Moments in Motion

in Animation, Poetry, TED Talks | March 26th, 2012

The first time I saw Bil­ly Collins speak, he appeared at my col­lege con­vo­ca­tion, toward the end of his years as Unit­ed States Poet Lau­re­ate. Now, the sec­ond time I’ve seen Bil­ly Collins speak, he appears giv­ing this TEDTalk, “Every­day Moments, Caught in Time,” in which he makes fun of his own ten­den­cy to men­tion his years as Unit­ed States Poet Lau­re­ate. But he most­ly uses his fif­teen min­utes onstage in Long Beach in front of TED’s swoop­ing cam­eras to talk about how the Sun­dance Chan­nel ani­mat­ed five of his poems. A boost­er of poet­ry “off the shelf” and into pub­lic places — sub­ways, bill­boards, cere­al box­es — he fig­ured that even such an “unnat­ur­al and unnec­es­sary” merg­er could fur­ther the cause of elud­ing humanity’s “anti-poet­ry deflec­tor shields that were installed in high school.”

Collins also notes that the idea for the project stirred the embers of his “car­toon junkie” child­hood, when Bugs Bun­ny was his muse. Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, how­ev­er, the pro­duc­ers at the Sun­dance Chan­nel kept quite far indeed from the Mer­rie Melodies. These ani­mat­ed poems opt instead for an aes­thet­ic that takes pieces of visu­al real­i­ty and repur­pos­es them in ways we don’t expect: look at the real arm slith­er­ing across the pages in the first poem, the tan­gi­ble-look­ing dolls and doll envi­ron­ments of the sec­ond poem, or the drift­ing pho­to­graph­ic cutouts of the third. Not to get too grand about it, but isn’t this what poet­ry itself is sup­posed to do? Don’t the words them­selves also cut out frag­ments of actu­al exis­tence and posi­tion them, recon­tex­tu­al­ize them, and move them around in ways that sur­prise us? The sub­stance of these shorts — foun­tain pens, fig­urines, car keys, paper boats, match­sticks, mice — may seem like the last word in mun­dan­i­ty, but per­ceived through the dif­fer­ent­ly “real” lens­es of Collins’ poet­ry and this unusu­al ani­ma­tion, they inspire curios­i­ty again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3 Year Old Recites Poem, “Litany” By Bil­ly Collins

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry At Con­struc­tion Site

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

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Free Science Fiction Classics on the Web: Huxley, Orwell, Asimov, Gaiman & Beyond

in Audio Books, Books, Sci Fi | March 26th, 2012

Today we’re bring­ing you a roundup of some of the great Sci­ence Fic­tion, Fan­ta­sy and Dystopi­an clas­sics avail­able on the web. And what bet­ter way to get start­ed than with Aldous Hux­ley read­ing a dra­ma­tized record­ing of his 1932 nov­el, Brave New World. The read­ing aired on the CBS Radio Work­shop in 1956. You can lis­ten to Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

(FYI: You can down­load Hux­ley’s orig­i­nal work — as opposed to the dra­ma­tized ver­sion — in audio by sign­ing up for a Free Tri­al with Audible.com, and that applies to oth­er books men­tioned here as well.)


Lit­tle known fact. Aldous Hux­ley once gave George Orwell French lessons at Eton. And, 17 years after the release of Brave New World, Hux­ley’s pupil pub­lished 1984. The sem­i­nal dystopi­an work may be one of the most influ­en­tial nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry, and it’s almost cer­tain­ly the most impor­tant polit­i­cal nov­el from that peri­od. You can find it avail­able on the web in three for­mats: Free eText — Free Audio Book – Free Movie.

In 1910, J. Sear­le Daw­ley wrote and direct­ed Franken­stein. It took him three days to shoot the 12-minute film (when most films were actu­al­ly shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shelley’s clas­sic mon­ster tale (text — audio) was ever adapt­ed to film. And, some­what notably, Thomas Edi­son had a hand (albeit it an indi­rect one) in mak­ing the film. The first Franken­stein film was shot at Edi­son Stu­dios, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny owned by the famous inven­tor.

lovecraft hp

Stephen King and Joyce Car­ol Oates — they both pay homage to H.P. Love­craft and his great tales. And you can too by spend­ing time with his col­lect­ed works, avail­able in etext for­mats here and audio for­mats here (Free Mp3 Zip File – Free Stream).

Philip K. Dick pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 sto­ries dur­ing his short life­time, solid­i­fy­ing his posi­tion as one of Amer­i­ca’s top sci-fi writ­ers. If you’re not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his nov­els, then you almost cer­tain­ly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Run­ner, Total Recall, A Scan­ner Dark­ly and  Minor­i­ty Report. To get you acquaint­ed with PKD’s writ­ing, we have culled togeth­er 14 short sto­ries for your enjoy­ment.

eTexts (find down­load instruc­tions here)

Audio

Back in the late 1930s, Orson Welles launched The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air, a radio pro­gram ded­i­cat­ed to bring­ing dra­mat­ic, the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions to the Amer­i­can air­waves. The show had a fair­ly short run, last­ing from 1938 to 1941. But it made its mark. Dur­ing these few years, The Mer­cury The­atre aired The War of the Worlds, an episode nar­rat­ed by Welles that led many Amer­i­cans to believe their coun­try was under Mar­t­ian attack. The leg­endary pro­duc­tion, per­haps the most famous ever aired on Amer­i­can radio, was based on H.G. Wells’ ear­ly sci-fi nov­el, and you can lis­ten to the broad­cast right here.

Between 1951 and 1953, Isaac Asi­mov pub­lished three books that formed the now famous Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy. Many con­sid­ered it a mas­ter­work in sci­ence fic­tion, and that view became offi­cial doc­trine in 1966 when the tril­o­gy received a spe­cial Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series, notably beat­ing out Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Even­tu­al­ly, the BBC decid­ed to adapt Asimov’s tril­o­gy to the radio, dra­ma­tiz­ing the series in eight one-hour episodes that aired between May and June 1973. Thanks to The Inter­net Archive you can down­load the full pro­gram as a zip file, or stream it online:

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3| Part 7 |MP3| Part 8 |MP3|

Before the days of Har­ry Pot­ter, gen­er­a­tions of young read­ers let their imag­i­na­tions take flight with The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, a series of sev­en fan­ta­sy nov­els writ­ten by C. S. Lewis. Like his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis served on the Eng­lish fac­ul­ty at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and took part in the Inklings, an Oxford lit­er­ary group ded­i­cat­ed to fic­tion and fan­ta­sy. Pub­lished between 1950 and 1956, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia has sold over 100 mil­lion copies in 47 lan­guages, delight­ing younger and old­er read­ers world­wide.

Now, with the appar­ent bless­ing of the C.S. Lewis estate, the sev­en vol­ume series is avail­able in a free audio for­mat. There are 101 audio record­ings in total, each aver­ag­ing 30 min­utes and read by Chris­si Hart. Down­load the com­plete audio via the web or RSS Feed.

Neil Gaiman has emerged as one of today’s best fan­ta­sy writ­ers. He has made comics respectable and pub­lished nov­els, includ­ing one that will be adapt­ed by HBO. A great deal of his out­put, though, has been in the form of short sto­ries, some avail­able on the web in text for­mat, oth­ers in audio.

Audio & Video

  • “Har­le­quin Valen­tine” – Free Audio at Last.FM
  • “How to Talk to Girls at Par­ties” – Free MP3
  • “Orange” (read live) – Free Video
  • “Oth­er Peo­ple” (read live) – Free Video
  • The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Moun­tains – Free Audio
  • The Grave­yard Book (a nov­el read live with illus­tra­tions) – Free Video
  • “Troll Bridge” (read live, starts at 4:00 mark) – Free iTunes
  • “A Study in Emer­ald” – Free iTunes

Oth­er Gaiman works can be down­load via Audible.com’s spe­cial Free Tri­al. More details here.

Text

Between 1982 and 2000, Rudy Ruck­er wrote a series of four sci-fi nov­els that formed The Ware Tetral­o­gy. The first two books in the series – Soft­ware and Wet­ware – won the Philip K. Dick Award for best nov­el. And William Gib­son has called Ruck­er “a nat­ur­al-born Amer­i­can street sur­re­al­ist” or, more sim­ply, one sui gener­is dude. And now the even bet­ter part: Ruck­er (who hap­pens to be the great-great-great-grand­son of Hegel) has released The Ware Tetral­o­gy under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, and you can down­load the full text for free in PDF and RTF for­mats. In total, the col­lec­tion runs 800+ pages.

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The Art and Science of Violin Making

in Music, Technology | March 23rd, 2012

Sam Zyg­muntow­icz is a world-renowned luthi­er, or mak­er of stringed instru­ments. Joshua Bell and Yo-Yo Ma play his instru­ments. In 2003, a vio­lin he made for Isaac Stern sold at auc­tion for $130,000–the high­est price ever for an instru­ment by a liv­ing luthi­er. To sum up Zyg­muntow­icz’s stature as a builder of fine instru­ments, Tim J. Ingles, direc­tor of musi­cal instru­ments for Sothe­by’s, told Forbes mag­a­zine: “There are no more than six peo­ple who are at his lev­el.”

Zyg­muntow­icz is the sub­ject of a 2007 book by John March­ese called The Vio­lin Mak­er: Find­ing a Cen­turies-Old Tra­di­tion in a Brook­lyn Work­shop. In one pas­sage, March­ese writes about the mys­te­ri­ous acousti­cal qual­i­ties of the vio­lin, which he likens to a mag­ic box:

The laws that gov­ern the build­ing of this box were decid­ed upon a short time before the laws of grav­i­ty were dis­cov­ered, and they have remained remark­ably unchanged since then. It is com­mon­ly thought that the vio­lin is the most per­fect acousti­cal­ly of all musi­cal instru­ments. It is quite uncom­mon to find some­one who can explain exact­ly why. One physi­cist who spent decades try­ing to under­stand why the vio­lin works so well said that it was the world’s most ana­lyzed musi­cal instrument–and the least under­stood.

The most famous, and fabled, stringed instru­ments are those that were made in Cre­mona, Italy, in the late 17th and ear­ly 18th cen­turies by Anto­nio Stradi­vari and a hand­ful of oth­er mas­ters. In Zyg­muntow­icz’s work­shop in the Park Slope neigh­bor­hood of Brook­lyn, New York, there is a bumper stick­er that says, “My oth­er fid­dle is a Strad.” Behind the joke lies a seri­ous point. Zyg­muntow­icz wants great musi­cians to use his instruments–not because they are cheap­er than a Stradi­var­ius, but because they are bet­ter. He’s try­ing to break a bar­ri­er that has been firm­ly in place for cen­turies. “I call it the ‘Strad Ceil­ing,’ ” he told NPR in 2008. “You know, if some­one has a Strad in their case, will they play your fid­dle?”

Although Joshua Bell owns a Zyg­muntow­icz, he most­ly calls on the luthi­er to make fine adjust­ments to his Stradi­var­ius. But Eugene Druck­er of the Emer­son String Quar­tet told Forbes that he actu­al­ly prefers his Zyg­muntow­icz to his 1686 Stradi­var­ius in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. “In a large space like Carnegie Hall,” he said, “the Zyg­muntow­icz is supe­ri­or to my Strad. It has more pow­er and punch.” In spite of the mys­tique that sur­rounds Stradi­vari and the oth­er Cre­mona mas­ters, Zyg­muntow­icz sees no rea­son why a mod­ern luthi­er could­n’t make a bet­ter instru­ment. “There isn’t any inef­fa­ble essence,” he told the The New York Times ear­li­er this year, “only a phys­i­cal object that works bet­ter or worse in a vari­ety of cir­cum­stances.”

For a quick intro­duc­tion to Zyg­muntow­icz’s work, watch a new video, above, by pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Dustin Cohen, and an ear­li­er piece by Jon Groat of Newsweek, below. And to dive deep­er into the sci­ence of the vio­lin, be sure to vis­it the “Strad3D” Web site, which fea­tures fas­ci­nat­ing excerpts from Eugene Schenkman’s film about Zyg­muntow­icz’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with physi­cist George Bissinger on a project using 3D laser scans, CT scans and oth­er tech­nolo­gies to ana­lyze the acousti­cal prop­er­ties of vio­lins by Stradi­vari and Giuseppe Guarneri. As Zyg­muntow­icz told Strings mag­a­zine in 2006, “What makes those vio­lins work is more know­able now than it ever was.” H/T Kot­tke

Note: if you have any prob­lems watch­ing the video below, you can watch an alter­nate ver­sion here.

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Tom Schiller’s 1975 Journey Through Henry Miller’s Bathroom (NSFW)

in Books, Film, Literature | March 23rd, 2012

No sur­prise, you might think, that a doc­u­men­tary about the man who wrote Trop­ic of Can­cer would mer­it an NSFW label. But what if I were to tell you that this par­tic­u­lar doc­u­men­tary spends almost every one of its 35 min­utes in Hen­ry Miller’s bath­room? Yet the writer has imbued this bath­room with a great deal of noto­ri­ety, at least in his cir­cles, thanks to how care­ful­ly he adorned its walls with visu­al curiosi­ties. Fol­low­ing its sub­ject as he grunts him­self awake, puts on a robe, and tells the sto­ries behind what­ev­er the cam­era sees, Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake uses these bath­room walls as a gate­way into his mind. We see repro­duc­tions of paint­ings by Hierony­mus Bosch and Paul Gau­guin. We see por­traits of Miller’s per­son­al­ly inspir­ing lumi­nar­ies, like Her­mann Hesse and the less­er-known Swiss mod­ernist nov­el­ist Blaise Cen­drars. And of course, we see a still from the Trop­ic of Can­cer movie and the expect­ed amount of nude pin-ups. “I put these here express­ly for the peo­ple who want to be shocked,” Miller explains.

Tom Schiller, the doc­u­men­tary’s direc­tor, made his name cre­at­ing short films for Sat­ur­day Night Live. Obscu­ri­ty-ori­ent­ed cinephiles may know him best as the direc­tor of Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er, a 1984 com­e­dy fea­tur­ing Bill Mur­ray and Dan Aykroyd that, to this day, lan­guish­es some­where in Warn­er Broth­ers’ legal depart­ment. Schiller received this guid­ed tour of Miller’s bath­room — and, by exten­sion, his mem­o­ry — in 1975, when the author had reached his 82nd year and fifth mar­riage; his wife, Hiroko “Hoki” Toku­da, appears in one of the wal­l’s pho­tographs. He also points out a blown-up cov­er of a favorite Junichi­ro Taniza­ki nov­el, a scrap of Chi­nese text for which every Chi­nese vis­i­tor has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent trans­la­tion, an image of a leg­en­dar­i­ly randy Bud­dhist monk, dra­mat­ic por­traits of Chi­nese actress­es and Japan­ese bar girls, and — in the absence of reli­gious iconog­ra­phy of any oth­er kind — count­less rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Bud­dha. And if you’d like to see some­thing else from Asia pre­sent­ed in an espe­cial­ly Milleresque spir­it, don’t miss when Schiller’s cam­era turns toward the show­er. Just make sure you’re not watch­ing at work. Seri­ous­ly.

The films has been added to our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. Look under Doc­u­men­tary.

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

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Filmmaker James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

in Film, Science | March 23rd, 2012

This week, film­mak­er James Cameron (Titan­ic, Avatar, The Abyss) hopes to go where only two men have gone before, div­ing 36,000 feet beneath the sea, to the Mar­i­ana Trench, the deep­est known place on Earth. It’s basi­cal­ly Mount Ever­est in the inverse. Cameron plans to make the his­toric solo jour­ney in The Deepsea Chal­lenger, a 24-foot-long ver­ti­cal tor­pe­do, built secret­ly in Aus­tralia over the last year eight years. (More on that here.) And when he reach­es his des­ti­na­tion, he’ll spend six hours shoot­ing 3‑D video of the trench and col­lect­ing rocks and rare sea crea­tures with a robot­ic arm. Or so that’s the plan.

Above, James Cameron describes his mis­sion in a Nation­al Geo­graph­ic video. Below, you’ll find an ani­ma­tion of the Mar­i­ana Trench dive cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA). You can track Cameron’s voy­age on the Nat­Geo web­site and find a detailed descrip­tion of the actu­al dive right here.

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Terry Gilliam’s Debut Animated Film, Storytime

in Animation, Comedy, Film | March 22nd, 2012

Ter­ry Gilliam’s fun­ny debut film, Sto­ry­time, fea­tures three ear­ly exam­ples of the Mon­ty Python ani­ma­tor’s twist­ed take on life. The film is usu­al­ly dat­ed 1968, but accord­ing to some sources it was actu­al­ly put togeth­er sev­er­al years lat­er. The clos­ing seg­ment, “A Christ­mas Card,” was cre­at­ed in late 1968 for a spe­cial Christ­mas-day broad­cast of the chil­dren’s pro­gram Do Not Adjust Your Set, but the oth­er two seg­ments– “Don the Cock­roach” and “The Albert Ein­stein Story”–were broad­cast on the 1971–1972 British and Amer­i­can pro­gram The Mar­ty Feld­man Com­e­dy Machine, which fea­tured Gilliam’s Pythonesque ani­ma­tion sequences at the begin­ning and end of each show. What­ev­er the date of pro­duc­tion, Sto­ry­time (now added to our col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online in the Ani­ma­tion Sec­tion) is an engag­ing stream-of-con­scious­ness jour­ney through Gilliam’s delight­ful­ly absurd imag­i­na­tion. If you’re a Ter­ry Gilliam fan, don’t miss these oth­er relat­ed items:

Ter­ry Gilliam Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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Cinema History by Titles & Numbers

in Animation, Art, Film | March 22nd, 2012

Between the sim­ple card open­ing D.W. Grif­fith’s 1916 Intol­er­ance to the vibrat­ing neon first onslaught of Gas­par Noé’s 2009 Enter the Void, Ian Albinson’s A Brief His­to­ry of Title Design packs in count­less icon­ic, rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and oth­er­wise fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ples of words that pre­cede movies. As Edi­tor-in-Chief of the blog Art of the Title, Albinson dis­tin­guish­es him­self as just the per­son you’d want to cut togeth­er a video like this. His selec­tions move through the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry from The Phan­tom of the Opera, King Kong, and Cit­i­zen Kane, whose stark state­li­ness now brings to mind the very archi­tec­ture of the old movie palaces where they debuted, to the delib­er­ate, tex­tur­al phys­i­cal­i­ty of The Trea­sure of Sier­ra Madre and Lady in the Lake. Then comes the late-fifties/ear­ly-six­ties mod­ernist cool of The Man With the Gold­en Arm and Dr. No, fol­lowed by Dr. Strangelove and Bul­litt, both of which show­case the work of Pablo Fer­ro — a liv­ing chap­ter of title design his­to­ry in his own right. After the bold intro­duc­tions to the block­busters of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies — Star Wars, Sat­ur­day Night Fever, Alien, The Ter­mi­na­tor — but before the fresh­ly extrav­a­gant design work of the cur­rent cen­tu­ry, we find a few intrigu­ing­ly mar­gin­al films of the nineties. How many reg­u­lar cinephiles retain fond mem­o­ries of Freaked, Mim­ic, and The Island of Dr. More­au I don’t know, but clear­ly those pic­tures sit near and dear to the hearts of title enthu­si­asts.

An elab­o­rate work of motion graph­ics in its own right, Evan Seitz’s 123Films takes the titles of four­teen films — not their title sequences, but their actu­al titles — and ani­mates them in numer­i­cal order. If that does­n’t make sense, spend thir­ty sec­onds watch­ing it, and make sure you’re lis­ten­ing. Does­n’t that calm­ly malev­o­lent com­put­er voice sound famil­iar? Does the col­or scheme of that “4” look famil­iar, espe­cial­ly if you read a lot of com­ic books as a kid? And cer­tain­ly you’ll remem­ber which of the sens­es it takes to see dead peo­ple. This video comes as the fol­low-up to Seitz’s ABCin­e­ma, a sim­i­lar movie guess­ing game pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture. Where that one got you think­ing about film alpha­bet­i­cal­ly, this one will get you think­ing about it numer­i­cal­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

450 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

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

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