100 Years in 10 Minutes: A Quick Video History of the Past Century

When you write his­to­ry, you’re always con­front­ed with the ques­tion: what facts and events will make it into your his­tor­i­cal account, and which ones will be left out? When it comes to this viral video pro­duced by Dono­linio Stu­dio, what makes the cut? Europe. Amer­i­ca. Men. And a long list of down­ers: war, depra­va­tion, nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, a‑bombs, social cri­sis, finan­cial cri­sis, geno­cide and assas­si­na­tion, all set to a dra­mat­ic sound­track by Hans Zim­mer. What gets left out? Any­thing that seem­ing­ly makes life worth liv­ing and, with some minor excep­tions, human achieve­ment. And, yes, Africa and Latin Amer­i­ca too — except for the first World Cup tour­na­ment played in Uruguay. (Note: we’re pret­ty sure that Eng­lish isn’t the first lan­guage of the film­mak­ers. Hence the spelling errors in the cap­tions.)

Speak­ing of human achieve­ment and his­tor­i­cal omis­sions, we’d like to pay trib­ute to Mar­tin Luther King Jr. on his birth­day by high­light­ing two of MLK’s mem­o­rable speech­es — his soar­ing “I Have a Dream” speech pre­sent­ed in August 1963, and then fast for­ward to his pre­scient “I’ve Been to the Moun­tain­top” speech, deliv­ered just the day before he was assas­si­nat­ed in April 1968.

To dig deep­er into the past, don’t miss the his­to­ry cours­es (42 in total) in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

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Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson (NSFW)

Back in 1998, Hunter S. Thomp­son’s most famous piece of Gonzo jour­nal­ism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was brought to the sil­ver screen, with John­ny Depp play­ing a lead role. From this point for­ward, Depp and Thomp­son became fast friends. Indeed, Depp would end up pay­ing for Thomp­son’s elab­o­rate funer­al, which involved shoot­ing the writer’s ash­es out of a can­non to the tune of Nor­man Green­baum’s Spir­it in the Sky and Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tam­bourine Man.

Above we fea­ture John­ny read­ing aloud some let­ters he received from Hunter. The let­ters are very Thomp­son-esque, which means, among things, they’re NOT SAFE for work! Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by the Hell’s Angels

John­ny Depp Nar­rates New Kei­th Richards Auto­bi­og­ra­phy (and How to Snag a Free Copy)

Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary: a ‘Warped Casablan­ca’

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The Page Turner: A Fabulous Rube Goldberg Machine for Readers

Last week, The New York Times pro­filed Joseph Her­sch­er, a 26-year-old kinet­ic artist who hails from New Zealand and now devel­ops inten­tion­al­ly “absurd” and “use­less” Rube Gold­berg machines in his Brook­lyn apart­ment. His lat­est con­trap­tion, called “The Page Turn­er,” just gets bet­ter as it rolls along. Per­haps the best part comes towards the end when Her­scher’s pet ham­ster, Chester, makes a cameo appear­ance. Enjoy…

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Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen and Others in the Post 9/11 “New York Miracle” TV Commercials

In the imme­di­ate after­math of the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks, when New York and much of the world were still in a state of shock, a group of top-flight actors, direc­tors and oth­er cre­ative work­ers donat­ed their time and tal­ents for a spe­cial project to lure tourists back to the Big Apple. The “New York Mir­a­cle” ads were unveiled only two months after the tragedy, and fea­tured stars like Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen, Ben Stiller and Bil­ly Crys­tal. The com­mer­cials were as much a boost to the city’s morale as they were an invi­ta­tion to tourists. At the end of each seg­ment, May­or Rudy Giu­liani intones: “The New York Mir­a­cle. Be a part of it.”

The video above offers a look back at all nine ads. They appear in the fol­low­ing order:

  1. “Deli,” star­ring Ben Stiller and Kevin Bacon.
  2. “Turkey,” star­ring Robert DeNiro and Bil­ly Crys­tal; direct­ed by Bar­ry Levin­son.
  3. “The­atre,” star­ring Bar­bara Wal­ters; direct­ed by Bryan Buck­ley.
  4. “Skat­ing,” star­ring Woody Allen; direct­ed by Joe Pyt­ka.
  5. “Yan­kee Sta­di­um,” star­ring Hen­ry Kissinger; direct­ed by Joe Pyt­ka.
  6. “Phil­har­mon­ic,” star­ring Yogi Berra; direct­ed by Joe Pyt­ka.
  7. “New York Giants Kick­er,” star­ring Vanes­sa Williams.
  8. “Marathon,” star­ring Al Roker.
  9. “San­ta,” star­ring Christo­pher Walken.

via @webacion

Countries and Coastlines: A Dramatic View of Earth from Outer Space


We’ve shown you What a Hur­ri­cane Looks Like From Out­er Space and NASA’s 7 Minute Tour of the Earth from Space (in HD). Now comes new high res­o­lu­tion footage from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion that gives you a dra­mat­ic view of coast­lines and coun­tries around the world. Pro­duced by Space Rip, this clip will give you an extra­or­di­nary view of Eng­land, France, Italy, Egypt, Alge­ria, Tunisia, Greece, the island of Crete, Tai­wan, South Korea, Japan, the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argenti­na, and Cuba. Find this video housed in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. If you love space trav­el, astron­o­my, physics, neu­ro­science or tech­nol­o­gy, then you will def­i­nite­ly want to spend time rum­mag­ing through the col­lec­tion.

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Underground Cartoonist R. Crumb Introduces Us to His Rollicking Album Cover Designs

Music and com­ic book art are the two pas­sions of Robert Crumb’s cre­ative life. In this video from W.W. Nor­ton, Crumb talks about his obses­sive inter­est in the old-time blues, folk and coun­try music of the 1920s and 1930s. “I think it’s neu­ro­log­i­cal,” he says. “Some quirky types of ner­vous sys­tems are just attract­ed to that old music.”

As one of the pio­neers of the under­ground comix move­ment in the late 1960s, Crum­b’s work often relat­ed in some way to his love of music. His famous “Keep on Truckin’ ” com­ic of 1968 was inspired by the lyrics of Blind Boy Fuller’s song, “Truckin’ My Blues Away.” That same year Janis Joplin, who was singing with Big Broth­er & the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, asked Crumb to design the cov­er of the band’s album Cheap Thrills.

Since then, Crumb has designed hun­dreds of album cov­ers and music posters. His new book, R. Crumb: The Com­plete Record Cov­er Col­lec­tion, brings togeth­er all the cov­ers and many relat­ed works. The book con­tains por­traits of famous artists like Robert John­son and Woody Guthrie, along with works fea­tur­ing obscure artists with names like “Ukelele Ike” and “Big John Wrencher and his Maxwell Street Blues Boys.” There are also cov­ers and posters made for Crum­b’s own band, the Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders.

Crumb is a ban­jo and man­dolin play­er. One group he has sat in with in recent years is Eden & John’s East Riv­er String Band. This video was direct­ed by the group’s co-leader, John Heneghan, and includes appear­ances by him­self and his part­ner Eden Brow­er. The video fea­tures the fol­low­ing songs:

  1. “Sing Song Girl” by Leroy Sheild (1930)
  2. “Some of these Days” by Cab Cal­loway (1930)
  3. “Lind­berg Hop” by the Mem­phis Jug Band (1928)
  4. “Down On Me” by Eddie Head and His Fam­i­ly (1930)
  5. “Chasin’ Rain­bows” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders (1976)
  6. “Singing in the Bath­tub” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders (1978)
  7. “So Sor­ry Dear” by Eden & John’s East Riv­er String Band, fea­tur­ing R. Crumb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials

Last month we brought you some lit­tle-known soap com­mer­cials by Ing­mar Bergman. Today we present a series of lyri­cal tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments made by the great Ital­ian film­mak­er Fed­eri­co Felli­ni dur­ing the final decade of his life.

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Felli­ni agreed to make a minia­ture film fea­tur­ing Cam­pari, the famous Ital­ian apéri­tif. The result, Oh, che bel pae­sag­gio! (“Oh, what a beau­ti­ful land­scape!”), shown above, fea­tures a man and a woman seat­ed across from one anoth­er on a long-dis­tance train.

The man (played by Vic­tor Polet­ti) smiles, but the woman (Sil­via Dion­i­sio) averts her eyes, star­ing sul­len­ly out the win­dow and pick­ing up a remote con­trol to switch the scenery. She grows increas­ing­ly exas­per­at­ed as a sequence of desert and medieval land­scapes pass by. Still smil­ing, the man takes the remote con­trol, clicks it, and the beau­ti­ful Cam­po di Mira­coli (“Field of Mir­a­cles”) of Pisa appears in the win­dow, embell­ished by a tow­er­ing bot­tle of Cam­pari.

“In just one minute,” writes Tul­lio Kezich in Fed­eri­co Felli­ni: His Life and Work, “Felli­ni gives us a chap­ter of the sto­ry of the bat­tle between men and women, and makes ref­er­ence to the neu­ro­sis of TV, insin­u­ates that we’re dis­parag­ing the mirac­u­lous gifts of nature and his­to­ry, and offers the hope that there might be a screen that will bring the joy back. The lit­tle tale is as quick as a train and has a remark­ably light touch.”

Also in 1984, Felli­ni made a com­mer­cial titled Alta Soci­eta (“High Soci­ety”) for Bar­il­la riga­toni pas­ta (above). As with the Cam­pari com­mer­cial, Felli­ni wrote the script him­self and col­lab­o­rat­ed with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ennio Guarnieri and musi­cal direc­tor Nico­la Pio­vani. The cou­ple in the restau­rant were played by Gre­ta Vaian and Mau­r­izio Mau­ri. The Bar­il­la spot is per­haps the least inspired of Fellini’s com­mer­cials. Bet­ter things were yet to come.

In 1991 Felli­ni made a series of three com­mer­cials for the Bank of Rome called Che Brutte Not­ti or “The Bad Nights.” “These com­mer­cials, aired the fol­low­ing year,” writes Peter Bon­danel­la in The Films of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, “are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, since they find their inspi­ra­tion in var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books dur­ing his career.”

In the episode above, titled “The Pic­nic Lunch Dream,” the clas­sic damsel-in-dis­tress sce­nario is turned upside down when a man (played by Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio) finds him­self trapped on the rail­road tracks with a train bear­ing down on him while the beau­ti­ful woman he was din­ing with (Anna Falchi) climbs out of reach and taunts him. But it’s all a dream, which the man tells to his psy­cho­an­a­lyst (Fer­nan­do Rey). The ana­lyst inter­prets the dream and assures the man that his nights will be rest­ful if he puts his mon­ey in the Ban­co di Roma.

The oth­er com­mer­cials, which are cur­rent­ly not avail­able online, are called “The Tun­nel Dream” and “The Dream of the Lion in the Cel­lar.” (You can watch Rober­to Di Vito’s short, untrans­lat­ed film of Felli­ni and his crew work­ing on the project here.)

The bank com­mer­cials were the last films Felli­ni ever made. He died a year after they aired, at age 73. In Kezich’s view, the deeply per­son­al and imag­i­na­tive ads amount to Fellini’s last tes­ta­ment, a brief but won­drous return to form. “In Fed­eri­co’s life,” he writes, “these three com­mer­cial spots are a kind of Indi­an sum­mer, the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.”

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The Joy of Books

Last year, “crazedad­man” and his wife reor­ga­nized a small book­shelf and record­ed the project in an endear­ing stop motion film. This year, they took things to the next lev­el, spend­ing “sleep­less nights mov­ing, stack­ing, and ani­mat­ing books at Type book­store in Toron­to.”  The rest speaks for itself. Don’t miss oth­er videos for book lovers right below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

A Secret Book­store in New York City

Books Savored in a Lov­ing  Stop Motion Film

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Harvard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Environment Profs

On Decem­ber 8th, six “all-star envi­ron­men­tal pro­fes­sors” came togeth­er at an event called “Har­vard Thinks Green” and pre­sent­ed short, TED-style talks about the envi­ron­ment and strate­gies for revers­ing cli­mate change. The event start­ed with James McCarthy (Pro­fes­sor of Bio­log­i­cal Oceanog­ra­phy) ask­ing the ques­tion (see above), “Is it too late to avoid seri­ous impacts of cli­mate change?” A good ques­tion to ask giv­en that 2010 wit­nessed the biggest annu­al jump in glob­al car­bon emissions—5.9%. This set the stage for Richard Lazarus (Pro­fes­sor of Law) to dis­cuss ways that our polit­i­cal sys­tem could become more respon­sive to the cri­sis. (Did you know that Barack Oba­ma only men­tioned cli­mate change once in pub­lic last year? Just once?) And then Rebec­ca Hen­der­son (Co-Direc­tor of the Busi­ness and Envi­ron­ment Ini­tia­tive) tries to make the dif­fi­cult case that mon­ey-mak­ing and sav­ing the world can go hand-in-hand — that cap­i­tal­ism can become envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able. You can watch the remain­ing talks online here, or on iTunes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Thinks Big 2010

Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard Teach-In Pro­vide Answers

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

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Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series

In his 1997 book of draw­ings and verse, The Melan­choly Death of Oys­ter Boy & Oth­er Sto­ries, Tim Bur­ton imag­ines a bizarre menagerie of mis­fits with names like Tox­ic Boy, Junk Girl, the Pin Cush­ion Queen and the Boy with Nails in his Eyes.

“Inspired by such child­hood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl,” writes James Ryan in the New York Times, “Mr. Bur­ton’s slim vol­ume exquis­ite­ly con­veys the pain of an ado­les­cent out­sider. Like his movies, the work man­ages to be both child­like and sophis­ti­cat­ed, blend­ing the inno­cent with the macabre.”

One of those ado­les­cent out­siders is Stain Boy, a strange kind of super­hero:

He can’t fly around tall build­ings,
or out­run a speed­ing train,
the only tal­ent he seems to have
is to leave a nasty stain.

Some­times I know it both­ers him,
that he can’t run or swim or fly,
and because of this one abil­i­ty,
his dry clean­ing bill is sky-high.

In 2000, Bur­ton extend­ed Stain Boy’s adven­tures (and com­pressed his name into one word) with The World of Stain­boy, a series of short ani­ma­tions com­mis­sioned for the Inter­net by Shockwave.com. “For some sto­ries you have to wait for the right medi­um,” Bur­ton said at the time. “I think (the Inter­net’s) the per­fect forum to tell a sad lit­tle sto­ry like this one. Stain­boy is a char­ac­ter that does­n’t do much. He’s just per­fect for four-minute ani­ma­tions.”

Bur­ton cre­at­ed a series of sketch­es, water­col­ors and pas­tel-accent­ed gray-on-gray wash­es and brought them, along with a script and sto­ry­boards, to Flinch Stu­dio for trans­la­tion into Macro­me­dia Flash ani­ma­tion. Twen­ty-six episodes were planned, but only six were com­plet­ed. “Stain­boy was an exper­i­ment in devel­op­ing rev­enue streams for the Web,” writes Ali­son McMa­han in The Films of Tim Bur­ton: Ani­mat­ing Live Action in Con­tem­po­rary Hol­ly­wood, “but it did not suc­ceed, at least not finan­cial­ly.”

The Stain­boy char­ac­ter was res­ur­rect­ed briefly in late 2010, when Bur­ton invit­ed fans to com­pose a new Stain­boy adven­ture in brief install­ments via Twit­ter. Bur­ton pieced togeth­er a sto­ry using the best tweets. (You can read the final result here.) Mean­while, the orig­i­nal Web ani­ma­tions have con­tin­ued to attract a fol­low­ing. You can watch the com­plete six-part series below in HD. As you will see, some episodes intro­duce new char­ac­ters — Stare Girl, Tox­ic Boy, Bowl­ing Ball Head and the rest:

Episode 1: Stare Girl

Episode 2: Tox­ic Boy

Episode 3: Bowl­ing Ball Head

Episode 4: Robot Boy

Episode 5: Match­stick Girl

Episode 6: The Ori­gin of Stain­boy

You can find the Stain­boy videos on our list of Free Online Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

Harry Houdini’s Great Rope Escape (Circa 1920)

Har­ry Hou­di­ni (né Erik Weisz) emi­grat­ed from Hun­gary to the Unit­ed States as a young­ster, set­tling first in Wis­con­sin, then lat­er in New York City. Cap­ti­vat­ed by mag­ic from an ear­ly age, Hou­di­ni (1874–1926) began per­form­ing small-time mag­ic shows and exper­i­ment­ing with escape acts, even­tu­al­ly hon­ing his abil­i­ty to escape from hand­cuffs. Then he nev­er looked back:

Arriv­ing in a new town, Hou­di­ni would claim the abil­i­ty to escape from any hand­cuffs pro­vid­ed by the local police. His easy escapes pro­vid­ed excel­lent pub­lic­i­ty for his shows. Hou­di­ni offered $100 to any­one who pro­vid­ed hand­cuffs from which he could not escape, but he nev­er had to pay. Through his increas­ing­ly com­plex escapes and his shrewd use of pub­lic­i­ty, Hou­di­ni became a head­lin­er on the vaude­ville cir­cuit, play­ing in cities across the coun­try. Not sat­is­fied with that low lev­el of fame, how­ev­er, Hou­di­ni decid­ed to gam­ble by tak­ing his act to Europe.

When he returned from Europe, Hou­di­ni per­formed increas­ing­ly high-pro­file stunts — e.g., free­ing him­self from chains after jump­ing into Boston’s Charles Riv­er, escap­ing from a strait jack­et while hang­ing upside down in Times Square, break­ing out of a prison cell that held the assas­sin of Pres­i­dent James Garfield. Today, we have Hou­di­ni per­form­ing a more straight­for­ward escape — from a sim­ple chair and rope. Below, in an image appear­ing in Ladies’ Home Jour­nal (1918), Hou­di­ni tells you a lit­tle about how he made his great rope escape. He offers more details here. The video above was shot cir­ca 1920.

houdiniropes2

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Hou­di­ni Escape From a Strait Jack­et, Then See How He Did It (Cir­ca 1917)

Inven­tor of a Wear­able Para­chute Takes a Fly­ing Leap Off of the Eif­fel Tow­er in 1912, and It Doesn’t End Well


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