Jim Henson Pilots The Muppet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Violence” (1975)

in Comedy, Television | February 24th, 2012

In the ear­ly 1970s, Jim Hen­son was wor­ried that the Mup­pets were becom­ing type­cast as chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment. So in Decem­ber of 1974 he pro­duced a pilot episode for The Mup­pet Show and gave it a name that was about as far away from Sesame Street as you could get: “Sex and Vio­lence.”

The half-hour pilot was first broad­cast on ABC in March of 1975. It’s a fast-mov­ing series of vignettes, fea­tur­ing a mot­ley cast of characters–many of whom would become famil­iar in lat­er years–appearing and reap­pear­ing through­out. Sam the Eagle, Sgt. Floyd Pep­per, The Swedish Chef, Statler and Wal­dorf, and a wrestler named The San Fran­cis­co Earth­quake all make an appear­ance. At one point, Ker­mit the Frog propo­si­tions a female with the line, “I might be able to get you a job on an edu­ca­tion­al show for kids.” The sto­ry, to the extent there is one, cen­ters around prepa­ra­tions for a “Sev­en Dead­ly Sins Pageant.” Alas, the pageant nev­er quite gets off the ground. As Sam the Eagle sage­ly asks: “Do we real­ly want to get into a ‘dead­ly sins’ sit­u­a­tion?”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Primer

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

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Inspirations: A Short Film Celebrating the Mathematical Art of M.C. Escher

in Art, Film, Math | February 24th, 2012

Almost two years ago, Span­ish film­mak­er Cristóbal Vila shot an exquis­ite lit­tle film, Nature by Num­bers, which cap­tured the ways in which math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts (Fibonac­ci Sequence, Gold­en Num­ber, etc.) reveal them­selves in nature. And the short then clocked a good 2.1 mil­lion views on YouTube alone.

This week, Vila returns with a new film called Inspi­ra­tions. In this case, the inspi­ra­tion is M.C. Esch­er (1898–1972), the Dutch artist who explored a wide range of math­e­mat­i­cal ideas with his wood­cuts, lith­o­graphs, and mez­zot­ints. Although Esch­er had no for­mal train­ing in math­e­mat­ics beyond sec­ondary school, many math­e­mati­cians count­ed them­selves as admir­ers of his work. (Vis­it this online gallery to get bet­ter acquaint­ed with Escher’s art, and be sure to click on the thumb­nails to enlarge the images). As Vila explains, Inspi­ra­tions tries to imag­ine Escher’s work­place, “what things would sur­round an artist like him, so deeply inter­est­ed in sci­ence in gen­er­al and math­e­mat­ics in par­tic­u­lar.” It’s a three min­utes of unbri­dled imag­i­na­tion.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 Periodic Table Table” — All The Elements in Hand-Carved Wood

in Science | February 24th, 2012

In 2011, Theo Gray (co-founder of Wol­fram Research, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence colum­nist, and ele­ment col­lec­tor) won the ACS Grady Stack Award for Inter­pret­ing Chem­istry for the Pub­lic. And here you can see why. In this clip, Gray intro­duces you to his DIY mas­ter­piece — the world’s first “peri­od­ic table table.” Yes, we’re talk­ing about a hand-carved wood­en table that brings to life the Peri­od­ic Table, and lets you play with the ele­ments. The project began back in 2002, and now, a decade lat­er, Gray puts it on dis­play in a video pro­duced by the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chem­istry on YouTube: “Peri­od­ic Table of Videos” Wins SPORE Prize

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Jefferson Airplane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Captures It (1968)

in Film, Music | February 24th, 2012

Just when you think you’ve seen every­thing Jean-Luc Godard has ever shot, some­thing like this sur­faces. If you’re only now con­sid­er­ing tuck­ing into the feast that is Godard­’s fil­mog­ra­phy, don’t let his abun­dance of uncol­lect­ed odds, ends, clips, and shorts intim­i­date you. Not only do they promise a lit­tle thrill down the road when you’ve already digest­ed his major works, but they offer quick bursts at any time of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary cin­e­mat­ic zest with which the film­mak­er took on the world. With the man alive and work­ing, I should per­haps say “the rev­o­lu­tion­ary cin­e­mat­ic zest with which the film­mak­er takes on the world,” but that gets into one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tions that swirls around him: has Godard still got it?

Some say yes, that his lat­est pic­ture Film Social­isme presents the log­i­cal con­tin­u­a­tion of all Godard has ever rep­re­sent­ed; some say no, that the Godard to watch remains the scrap­py star of the 1960s’ French New Wave. In his study Every­thing is Cin­e­ma: The Work­ing Life of Jean-Luc Godard, New York­er film blog­ger Richard Brody some­how makes both claims.

In the chap­ter “Rev­o­lu­tion (1968–1972)” he describes Godard­’s impro­vised method of shoot­ing a 1968 Jef­fer­son Air­plane con­cert:

He took over from the spe­cial­ists and oper­at­ed the cam­era from the win­dow of Lea­cock-Pen­nebak­er’s office on West Forty-fifth street, shoot­ing the band on the roof of the Schuyler Hotel across the street. (Pen­nebak­er recalled him to be an ama­teur­ish cam­era­man who could not avoid the begin­ner’s pit­fall of fre­quent zoom­ing in and out.) The per­for­mance took place with­out a per­mit, at stan­dard rock vol­ume: as singer Grace Slick lat­er wrote, “We did it, decid­ing that the cost of get­ting out of jail would be less than hir­ing a pub­li­cist…”

Ama­teur­ish or not, a piece of the footage has sur­faced on YouTube. Lis­ten to the Air­plane per­form “The House at Pooneil Cor­ners,” watch Godard­’s dra­mat­ic swings of focus and zoom as he attempts to con­vey the spec­ta­cle of the band and the spec­ta­cle of count­less sur­prised Man­hat­tan­ites at once, and think for your­self about this pecu­liar inter­sec­tion of two bold lines in the era’s alter­na­tive zeit­geist. As Jef­fer­son Air­plane co-founder Paul Kant­ner said in a 1986 inter­view, “Just for a while there, maybe for about 25 min­utes in 1967, every­thing was per­fect.” But these sev­en min­utes in Novem­ber 1968, from open­ing shouts to inevitable arrest, don’t seem so dull them­selves.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 BestAmer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

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

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Harvard Thinks Big 2012: 8 All-Star Professors. 8 Big Ideas.

in Harvard, TED Talks | February 23rd, 2012

Ear­li­er this month, Har­vard stu­dents made their way to the Sanders The­atre for the 2012 edi­tion of Har­vard Thinks Big. It’s a TED-style event which gets pitched like this: “8 all-star pro­fes­sors. 8 big ideas. All ten min­utes each.” You get the gist.

This year’s ver­sion had as much sub­stance, though per­haps not quite the same siz­zle, as the 2011 ver­sion, which fea­tured talks by Steven Pinker, Lawrence Lessig, Daniel Gilbert and Elaine Scar­ry. Above, we have one talk from the lat­est Har­vard Thinks Big. It fea­tures Daniel Lieber­man, the renowned biol­o­gist (per­haps you know his work on bare­foot run­ning?) talk­ing about how evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy explains why obe­si­ty is on the rise in the Unit­ed States.

Oth­er speak­ers at the event includ­ed Doug Melton, Eleanor Duck­worth, Nicholas Chris­takis, Kaia Stern, Don­hee Ham, Stephen Green­blatt, and Jill Lep­ore. The lec­tures can be watched via YouTube (fol­low the pre­vi­ous links) or via iTunes. Regret­tably the talks by Green­blatt, Ham and Lep­ore haven’t made it to the web, at least not yet. When they do, we’ll men­tion it on our Twit­ter stream, where we post lots of oth­er cul­tur­al good­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

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

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

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The Birth of the Moon: How Did It Get There in the First Place?

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 23rd, 2012

The Moon is a mys­tery. For all its familiarity–the reg­u­lar­i­ty of its phas­es, the fact that every­where on Earth it looks the same–the Moon has always been an enig­ma, a lumi­nous ques­tion mark rolling across the night sky.

In this new video from Cos­mic Jour­neys, we learn about some of the lat­est sci­en­tif­ic research into the struc­ture and his­to­ry of the Moon. In par­tic­u­lar, we learn the lat­est ideas on what is per­haps the great­est of lunar mys­ter­ies: the ques­tion of how the Moon got there in the first place.

The lead­ing can­di­date for an answer is the Giant Impact Hypoth­e­sis, which posits that some­time in the ear­ly stage of the Solar System–about four and a half bil­lion years ago–a large pro­to-Earth col­lid­ed with a Mars-sized body named “Theia,” caus­ing a huge cloud of mate­r­i­al from both bod­ies to fly out into space. Some of the mate­r­i­al remained in the Earth­’s orbit and coa­lesced into the Moon. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing hypoth­e­sis. To see more videos from the same series, vis­it the Cos­mic Jour­neys chan­nel on YouTube, or the Spac­eRip blog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moon Up Close, in HD

A Year of the Moon in 2.5 Min­utes

The Far Side of Moon: A Rare Glimpse from NASA

125 Great Sci­ence Videos

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Watch Battleship Potemkin and Other Free Sergei Eisenstein Films

in Film | February 23rd, 2012

As a car­less cinephile, I’ve spent hours upon hours lis­ten­ing to film pod­casts while rid­ing my bike or the train. Bat­tle­ship Pre­ten­sion, host­ed by knowl­edge­able but still knowl­edge-hun­gry young crit­ics Tyler Smith and David Bax, has long held top pri­or­i­ty on these rides — and even if the title’s ref­er­ent doesn’t flood your mind with mem­o­ries of artis­tic awe, you prob­a­bly get the pun. But if you want to go deep­er and talk about how film edit­ing went from grunt work to art form, you have lit­tle choice but to talk about Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (1925) and its direc­tor, Sergei Eisen­stein. A Russ­ian dou­ble-threat of film­mak­er and film the­o­rist in the 1920s through the late 1940s, Eisen­stein pio­neered many now-essen­tial edit­ing tech­niques, fig­ur­ing out how images could be arranged to serve not just a film’s sto­ry but its rhythm, its tone, and even its themes.

Like cin­e­ma itself, Eisen­stein came from the the­ater. Unlike most of his con­tem­po­raries, he made great strides in drag­ging cin­e­ma out of the the­ater behind him, cast­ing off staid sto­ry­telling habits in favor of the vast pos­si­bil­i­ties of the then-new medi­um, most of which remain unchart­ed even today. Tasked by his gov­ern­ment with pro­duc­ing what came down to rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­pa­gan­da, Eisen­stein couldn’t push the the­mat­ic enve­lope very far. Even so, today’s film­mak­ers look­ing for ways to advance their form, or today’s film­go­ers eager to learn more about how movies work, would do well to look at what Eisen­stein man­aged to do 85 years ago, and how aes­thet­i­cal­ly exhil­a­rat­ing it all remains.

This you can do from the com­fort of your com­put­er by brows­ing Open Culture’s col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, where you’ll find links to Eisen­stein pic­tures view­able at the click of the mouse, includ­ing the sweep­ing Alexan­der Nevsky, the doomed ¡Que viva Méx­i­co!, and of course, the icon­ic Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (above). Watch a few, and you’ll see why Bat­tle­ship Pre­ten­sion’s lis­ten­ers vot­ed Eisen­stein into the top hun­dred direc­tors of all time. Smith and Bax called on yours tru­ly to write his blurb on the list, but don’t take my word for the filmmaker’s impor­tance; his movies, whether you catch them in a grand revival screen­ing or on your web brows­er right now, show you every­thing you need to know.

Com­plete list of free Eisen­stein films: Alexan­der Nevsky, Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, Octo­ber: Ten Days that Shook the World, Old and New, ¡Que viva Méx­i­co!, Romance Sen­ti­men­tale, andStrike.

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

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Princeton v. Yale, 1903: The Oldest College Football Game on Film

in Film, History | February 23rd, 2012

You can thank Thomas Edi­son and his motion pic­ture cam­era for many things: Bike Tricks Caught on Film in 1899; Footage of Mark Twain from 1909; The World’s First (and Slight­ly Scan­dalous) Hand-Tint­ed Motion Pic­ture (1895); The First Kiss in Cin­e­ma, 1896; and now this — footage of the 1903 Prince­ton v. Yale foot­ball game. The two teams were unde­feat­ed, and 50,000 spec­ta­tors were on hand. The video starts with the play­ers tak­ing the field (Prince­ton first, Yale sec­ond) and some panoram­ic views of Yale’s sta­di­um. Then (around the 2:00 mark) we get to the high­lights of the game.

The clip above is appar­ent­ly the old­est col­le­giate foot­ball footage sur­viv­ing today. And, in case you’re keep­ing score, Prince­ton won the game 11–6.

But if you’re count­ing the num­ber of Free Cours­es pro­vid­ed by the two uni­ver­si­ties, we have the score at 38–1, with Yale com­ing out way on top.

via Retro­naut and the Reel Mudd

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Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Classic Jazz 625 Show

in Music, Television | February 22nd, 2012

In April of 1964, the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion launched BBC Two as a high­brow alter­na­tive to its main­stream TV chan­nel. One of the new chan­nel’s first pro­grams was Jazz 625, which spot­light­ed many of the great­est Jazz musi­cians of the day. Dizzy Gille­spie, Thelo­nious Monk, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans and oth­ers per­formed on the show, which fea­tured straight-for­ward cam­era work and a min­i­mal­ist set. The focus was on the music.

The title of the show referred to the chan­nel’s 625-line UHF band­width, which offered high­er res­o­lu­tion than the 405-line VHF trans­mis­sion on BBC One. Among the sur­viv­ing episodes is Thelo­nious Monk’s March 14, 1965 per­for­mance at the Mar­quee Club in Lon­don. You can watch a 35-minute excerpt above. The quar­tet fea­tures Monk on piano, Char­lie Rouse on tenor sax­o­phone, Lar­ry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums. They per­form four num­bers:

  1. Straight No Chas­er
  2. Hack­en­sack
  3. Rhythm-A-Ning
  4. Epistro­phy

You can learn the sto­ry behind Jazz 625 by read­ing an arti­cle by Louis Barfe at Trans­d­if­fu­sion. And to see more from the shows, scroll down.

The Oscar Peter­son Trio:

Above is a 25-minute excerpt from the Oscar Peter­son Tri­o’s Octo­ber 1, 1964 per­for­mance. The orig­i­nal show, like oth­er episodes of Jazz 625, was over an hour long. The trio fea­tures Peter­son on piano, Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thig­pen on drums.

The Bill Evans Trio:

Above are two 35-minute episodes, shown back-to-back, fea­tur­ing the Bill Evans Trio. The two sets were record­ed on March 19, 1965 and fea­ture Evans on piano, Chuck Israels on bass and Lar­ry Bunker on drums.

The Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet:

The Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet per­formed for Jazz 625 on April 28, 1964. Above is a 27-minute except, fea­tur­ing the Quar­tet’s musi­cal direc­tor John Lewis on piano, Milt Jack­son on vibra­phone, Per­cy Heath on bass and Con­nie Kay on drums. Brazil­ian gui­tarist Lau­rindo Almei­da makes a spe­cial appear­ance.

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30 Free Essays & Stories by David Foster Wallace on the Web

in e-books, Literature | February 22nd, 2012

Image by Steve Rhodes, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We start­ed the week expect­ing to pub­lish one David Fos­ter Wal­lace post. Then, because of the 50th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, it turned into two. And now three. We spent some time track­ing down free DFW sto­ries and essays avail­able on the web, and they’re all now list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. But we did­n’t want them to escape your atten­tion. So here they are — 23 pieces pub­lished by David Fos­ter Wal­lace between 1989 and 2011, most­ly in major U.S. pub­li­ca­tions like The New York­er, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Enjoy, and don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tions of free writ­ings by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Read 17 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

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How Woody Allen Discovered Ingmar Bergman, and How You Can Too

in Film | February 22nd, 2012

An Ing­mar Bergman ret­ro­spec­tive begins next month here in Los Ange­les, and as I mark my cal­en­dar, I reflect on what turned me on to his films in the first place. Who can approach Bergman now with­out first run­ning a cul­tur­al gaunt­let of know­ing ref­er­ences, gush­ing appre­ci­a­tions, and con­trar­i­an broad­sides? What young cinephile could resist the temp­ta­tion to inflate an opin­ion about The Sev­enth Seal, or Wild Straw­ber­ries, or Per­sona after see­ing them for the first time — or indeed, before? We could all ben­e­fit from some­one to show us the way into the “Swedish mas­ter’s” loaded, time-con­sum­ing fil­mog­ra­phy, and as this BBC inter­view by film crit­ic Mark Ker­mode reveals (watch Part 1 above, and Part 2 here), Woody Allen could well be it.

Allen holds a sur­pris­ing­ly plau­si­ble claim to the title of Bergman’s num­ber-one fan, or at least his most promi­nent one. How to square his ded­i­ca­tion to these solemn Swedish med­i­ta­tions on mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al iso­la­tion, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of faith with his cre­ation of beloved light come­dies like Bananas, Sleep­er, and Annie Hall? But watch Allen’s fil­mog­ra­phy in full, espe­cial­ly pic­tures like Love and Death, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Shad­ows and Fog, and the answer comes into view. Mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al iso­la­tion, the impos­si­bil­i­ty of faith — Bergman’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions are Allen’s, but Allen grap­ples with the unan­swer­able ques­tions by mak­ing jokes about them. What Allen describes as a “the­mat­ic con­nec­tion” to Bergman ulti­mate­ly becomes a much more com­pli­cat­ed entan­gle­ment: his hir­ing of Bergman’s cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Sven Nykvist to shoot Anoth­er Woman, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Celebri­ty, for instance, sug­gests some­thing beyond sim­ple influ­ence.

In con­ver­sa­tion with Ker­mode, Allen remem­bers join­ing the van­guard of New York Bergman enthu­si­asm after see­ing Sum­mer with Moni­ka and The Naked Night, films that, to his mind, dis­played an obvi­ous­ly high­er lev­el of craft than any­thing else play­ing in town. The days when dis­cov­er­ing Bergman real­ly meant dis­cov­er­ing Bergman have long passed, but it will nev­er be too late to feel the same excite­ment Allen did about Bergman’s abil­i­ty to express inter­nal con­flicts — “inner states of anx­i­ety,” Allen calls them — so rich­ly and dra­mat­i­cal­ly on film. The Woody Allen-approved points of entry for the Bergman novice: The Sev­enth Seal, Wild Straw­ber­ries, and Cries and Whis­pers “for sure.” And maybe The Magi­cian. H/T @opedr

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

Also don’t miss Hubert Drey­fus’ course on Exis­ten­tial­ism & Film (iTunes) in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

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

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