Pickin’ & Trimmin’ in a Down-Home North Carolina Barbershop: Award-Winning Short Film

in Life, Music | December 19th, 2011

Pickin’ & Trim­min’ is a doc­u­men­tary short film from 2008 pro­fil­ing “The Bar­ber­shop” in Drex­el, North Car­oli­na, where Lawrence Antho­ny and David Shirley have bar­bered for decades, and where blue­grass musi­cians have jammed in the back room every week­end. Direct­ed by Matt Mor­ris, the award-win­ning film show­cas­es the peo­ple and atmos­phere of a small com­mu­ni­ty in rur­al Amer­i­ca, per­haps bet­ter than any­thing you’ve seen before. And the music played in the back room is sim­ply won­der­ful.

You can find pho­tos tak­en at The Bar­ber­shop on Flickr here. The film itself has been added to the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion of our Free Movies col­lec­tion.

Update: Lawrence Antho­ny, the head bar­ber por­trayed in this film, passed away in 2009. His son con­tin­ues to run The Bar­ber­shop, but severe water dam­age has left the shop in need of repair. Here is a video show­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Free Audio: Download the Complete Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

in Audio Books, Literature | December 19th, 2011

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. The sev­en vol­umes in the series include:

  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • Prince Caspi­an: The Return to Nar­nia
  • The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er
  • The Sil­ver Chair
  • The Horse and His Boy
  • The Magi­cian’s Nephew
  • The Last Bat­tle

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. Or start lis­ten­ing to the open­ing chap­ters of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe right below.

We have added The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia record­ings to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, where you will find many oth­er great clas­sics. h/t metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load Copy of New Steve Jobs Biog­ra­phy

Free Audio: Down­load George Orwell’s 1984 and Ani­mal Farm for Free

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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Tuileries: A Short, Slightly Twisted Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

in Film | December 16th, 2011

They call Paris the City of Love. It’s also the birth­place of the Mar­quis de Sade. Behind the roman­tic post­card facade, there’s some­thing a bit more com­pli­cat­ed going on. In Tui­leries, a short film by Joel and Ethan Coen from the 2006 anthol­o­gy, Paris Je T’Aime, Steve Busce­mi plays a mild-man­nered tourist caught com­plete­ly out of his ele­ment. What tran­spires is a rather bizarre five-minute cul­tur­al les­son they won’t teach you at Berlitz. It’s now added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Tur­tur­ro Reads Ita­lo Calvino’s Ani­mat­ed Fairy Tale

World Cin­e­ma: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Play­ful Homage to Cin­e­ma His­to­ry

 

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RIP Christopher Hitchens: Stephen Fry Pays Tribute, Hitch Rejects the Deathbed Conversion

in Life, Politics, Religion | December 16th, 2011

18 months after being diag­nosed with oesophageal can­cer, the polem­i­cal writer Christo­pher Hitchens has died at the age of 62. His fans began to fear the worst last month when Hitchens, sud­den­ly hos­pi­tal­ized with pneu­mo­nia, could­n’t attend a wide­ly-pub­li­cized debate in Lon­don. The pro­mot­ers of the event, Intel­li­gence², quick­ly turned the debate into a cel­e­bra­tion of Hitchens’ life. Stephen Fry played host, and Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Buck­ley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Mar­tin Amis, James Fen­ton and Sean Penn all paid trib­ute. Above, we’re high­light­ing the poignant video once again.

Also fit­ting­ly, we’re bring­ing back anoth­er clip that fea­tures Hitchens dis­cussing how his strug­gle with can­cer affect­ed his views on the ques­tion of an after­life. “I would say it frac­tion­al­ly increas­es my con­tempt for the false con­so­la­tion ele­ment of reli­gion and my dis­like for the dic­ta­to­r­i­al and total­i­tar­i­an part of it,” he respond­ed. “It’s con­sid­ered per­fect­ly nor­mal in this soci­ety to approach dying peo­ple who you don’t know but who are unbe­liev­ers and say, ‘Now are you gonna change your mind?’ That is con­sid­ered almost a polite ques­tion.” Dur­ing the event taped last Feb­ru­ary (watch the full pro­gram here), Hitchens made his views pret­ty clear: No deathbed con­ver­sion for me, thanks, but it was good of you to ask.

And final­ly we cap things off with a mon­tage of 22 com­ments from Christo­pher Hitchens. When you add them all up, you get some vin­tage Hitchens — every­thing that made him some­times loved, some­times hat­ed but always respect­ed.

If you have nev­er spent time read­ing Hitch, we’re going to rec­om­mend his last piece for Van­i­ty Fair — his reflec­tion on Niet­zsche’s famous line “What­ev­er doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It was pub­lished last week, and it’s quite the coda.

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Helen Mirren Tells Us Why Wassily Kandinsky Is Her Favorite Artist (And What Acting & Modern Art Have in Common)

in Art | December 16th, 2011

Russ­ian abstract painter and art the­o­rist Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky was born in Moscow on Decem­ber 16, 1866 (Decem­ber 4 on the Julian cal­en­dar), and raised in Odessa, where he took an ear­ly inter­est in music. As a young man he stud­ied eco­nom­ics and law, but in 1895 his life was for­ev­er changed when he attend­ed a Moscow exhi­bi­tion of paint­ings by the French Impres­sion­ists. Kandin­sky was deeply struck by one of Mon­et’s paint­ings from the series Haystacks at Giverny. He lat­er recalled his epiphany:

That it was a haystack the cat­a­logue informed me. I could not rec­og­nize it. This non-recog­ni­tion was painful to me. I con­sid­ered that the painter had no right to paint indis­tinct­ly. I dul­ly felt that the object of the paint­ing was miss­ing. And I noticed with sur­prise and con­fu­sion that the pic­ture not only gripped me, but impressed itself inerad­i­ca­bly on my mem­o­ry. Paint­ing took on a fairy-tale pow­er and splen­dor.

Kandin­sky quit his job as a law pro­fes­sor and ded­i­cat­ed him­self to paint­ing. He emi­grat­ed, first to France and then to Ger­many, where he moved fur­ther and fur­ther away from fig­u­ra­tive paint­ing. He was among the first to cre­ate works that were com­plete­ly abstract, or non-objec­tive. In his 1910 trea­tise, Con­cern­ing the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, Kandin­sky declares that the ele­ments with­in a paint­ing should not cor­re­spond to any out­er object, but only to the artist’s “inner need.”

In obser­vance of the artist’s 145th birth­day, we present two videos with dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on his work. Above, actress Helen Mir­ren talks with the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art about what Kandin­sky, and art, mean to her. Below, a trio of scholars–Beth Har­ris, Juliana Kreinik and Steven Zucker–discuss Kandin­sky’s 1913 mas­ter­piece, “Com­po­si­tion VII,” for the Khan Acad­e­my’s Smarthis­to­ry series. “Com­po­si­tion VII” was paint­ed by Kandin­sky in Munich over a peri­od of four days–but only after he had made more than 30 prepara­to­ry sketch­es, water­col­ors and oil stud­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Jack­son Pol­lock: Lights, Cam­era, Paint! (1951)

John Berger’s Ways of See­ing: The TV Series

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The Godfather Without Brando?: Coppola Explains How It Almost Happened

in Film | December 16th, 2011

It’s hard to imag­ine The God­fa­ther, the icon­ic 1972 film, with­out Mar­lon Bran­do. But that’s almost how it turned out.

Dur­ing cast­ing, Para­mount exec­u­tives orig­i­nal­ly pushed for Lau­rence Olivi­er. But when he could­n’t take the film, and when the direc­tor, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, asked them to con­sid­er Bran­do, they ini­tial­ly respond­ed: “Mar­lon Bran­do will nev­er appear in this motion pic­ture.” Above, Cop­po­la and co-star James Caan explain how the execs were even­tu­al­ly cajoled into chang­ing their minds, and how the clas­sic film fell into place. As you watch this, also keep in mind that Para­mount ini­tial­ly asked two oth­er direc­tors (Ser­gio Leone and then Peter Bog­danovich) to make The God­fa­ther before approach­ing Cop­po­la, plus they lat­er want­ed Robert Red­ford or Ryan O’Neal to play Michael Cor­leone. But Cop­po­la, who threat­ened to quit the pro­duc­tion, got his way and put the rel­a­tive­ly unknown Al Paci­no into the film. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

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M.I.T. Camera Captures Speed of Light: A Trillion-Frames-Per-Second

in MIT, Physics, Technology | December 15th, 2011

Think of it as the ulti­mate slow-motion movie cam­era. Researchers at M.I.T. have devel­oped an imag­ing sys­tem so fast it can trace the motion of puls­es of light as they trav­el through liq­uids and solids. To put it into per­spec­tive, writes John Markoff in The New York Times, “If a bul­let were tracked in the same fash­ion mov­ing through the same flu­id, the result­ing movie would last three years.”

The research was direct­ed by Ramesh Raskar of the Cam­era Cul­ture group at the M.I.T. Media Lab. In an abstract, the research team writes:

We have built an imag­ing solu­tion that allows us to visu­al­ize the prop­a­ga­tion of light. The effec­tive expo­sure time of each frame is two tril­lionths of a sec­ond and the resul­tant visu­al­iza­tion depicts the move­ment of light at rough­ly half a tril­lion frames per sec­ond. Direct record­ing of reflect­ed or scat­tered light at such a frame rate with suf­fi­cient bright­ness is near­ly impos­si­ble. We use an indi­rect ‘stro­bo­scop­ic’ method that records mil­lions of repeat­ed mea­sure­ments by care­ful scan­ning in time and view­points. Then we rearrange the data to cre­ate a ‘movie’ of a nanosec­ond long event.

You can learn more by watch­ing the video above by Melanie Gonick of the M.I.T. News Office, or by vis­it­ing the project web­site.

via Kot­tke

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A Panoramic Virtual Tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

in Art, Museums | December 15th, 2011

These days, you can take a vir­tu­al tour of paint­ings at the MoMA, Met, Uffizi Gallery, Her­mitage, Rijksmu­se­um, and Nation­al Gallery and oth­er major muse­ums, thanks to Google’s Art Project. And don’t for­get the Sis­tine Chapel and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Now let’s add one more to the list — a panoram­ic vir­tu­al tour of the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. You can vis­it the whole muse­um on your own, walk­ing from room to room, check­ing out fos­sils of count­less dinosaurs, spec­i­mens of ear­ly sea life, exhibits on the ice age, and much more. Begin the gen­er­al tour here, or find a more tar­get­ed area of inter­est here.

Note: the tour requires Adobe Flash Play­er, ver­sion 9.0.28 or lat­er.

via metafil­ter

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Remembering George Whitman, Owner of Famed Bookstore, Shakespeare & Company

in Books, Film | December 15th, 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LaM95pBMM&feature=share&list=PL5E409DFE410A41C6

In 2005, the Sun­dance Chan­nel aired Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man, a 52 minute doc­u­men­tary that pays homage to George Whit­man, the Amer­i­can founder of the most famous inde­pen­dent book­store in Paris, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Whit­man died yes­ter­day, at age 98, in his apart­ment above the store.

Sylvia Beach first opened a book­shop named Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny in 1918, and it soon became a home for artists of the “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” (Hem­ing­way, Pound, Fitzger­ald, Stein, etc.). It also famous­ly pub­lished James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. The shop even­tu­al­ly closed dur­ing the Nazi occu­pa­tion of Paris. Yet a good decade lat­er, George Whit­man came along and estab­lished anoth­er Eng­lish-lan­guage book­store on the Left Bank and even­tu­al­ly rechris­tened it Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Whit­man’s shop gave sanc­tu­ary to Beat writ­ers – Allen Gins­berg, William S. Bur­roughs and the rest. And it’s this incar­na­tion of the fabled book­store that the doc­u­men­tary takes as its sub­ject. Give the doc­u­men­tary some time, and be sure to watch the last five min­utes – unless you already know how to cut your hair with fire. It will give you a lit­tle feel for Whit­man and his well-known eccen­tric­i­ties. RIP.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film Set at Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

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Google Presents YouTube for Schools, Makes Video World Safe for Teachers

in Education, Google, K-12, YouTube | December 14th, 2011

On YouTube, the path to edu­ca­tion is as nar­row and as dif­fi­cult to walk as a razor’s edge. Left to their own devices, kids have a ten­den­cy to veer away from the math tuto­ri­als and head straight for the water-ski­ing squir­rels. What’s an edu­ca­tor to do?

Google believes it has the answer with “YouTube for Schools,” a new ser­vice that gives teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors the abil­i­ty to fil­ter out every­thing but their own selec­tions from YouTube EDU, a curat­ed col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos from sources rang­ing from Sesame Street to Har­vard.

“We’ve been hear­ing from teach­ers that they want to use the vast array of edu­ca­tion­al videos on YouTube in their class­room, but are con­cerned that stu­dents will be dis­tract­ed by the lat­est music video or a video of a cute cat, or a video that might not be appro­pri­ate for stu­dents,” writes YouTube Prod­uct Man­ag­er Bri­an Truong. “While schools that com­plete­ly restrict access to YouTube may solve this dis­trac­tion con­cern, they also lim­it access to hun­dreds of thou­sands of edu­ca­tion­al videos on YouTube that can help bring pho­to­syn­the­sis to life, or show what life was like in ancient Greece.”

To help teach­ers find the best mate­r­i­al with ease, YouTube has orga­nized the edu­ca­tion­al videos by sub­ject and grade lev­el, with more than 300 playlists to choose from at youtube.com/teachers. To learn more, or to sign up, go to youtube.com/schools.

Also don’t miss our own curat­ed list of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels, which high­lights the best video col­lec­tions on the Google-owned ser­vice.

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Incredible Mental Math Gymnastics on “Countdown”

in Math, Television | December 14th, 2011

Count­down is a British TV game show revolv­ing around words and num­bers. In the num­bers round, con­tes­tants select six of twen­ty-four shuf­fled tiles with num­bers on them. Next, a com­put­er gen­er­ates a ran­dom three-dig­it tar­get num­ber and the con­tes­tants have thir­ty sec­onds to get as close to that num­ber as pos­si­ble by com­bin­ing the six num­bers through addi­tion, sub­trac­tion, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and divi­sion. This mem­o­rable episode of Count­down aired in March 1997 and starred James Mar­tin and his rather unusu­al way of arriv­ing at the tar­get num­ber of 952.

One YouTube user sug­gest­ed a dif­fer­ent way: 6 x 75 = 450; 450 ÷ 50 = 9; 100 + 3 = 103; 9 x 103 = 927; 927 + 25 = 952

I found yet anoth­er way: 100 + 3 = 103; 103 x 6 = 618; 618 x 75 = 46,350; 46,350 ÷ 50 = 927; 927 + 25 = 952

What about you? Any more sug­ges­tions?

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Math Cours­es

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion: The Vedic Way

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