Sir David Attenborough is England’s finest natural history filmmaker, best known for his Life collection, a series of nine nature documentaries aired on the BBC between 1979 and 2008. It’s widely considered the standard by which all other wildlife programs are measured.
In recent weeks, British and American audiences have been treated to Attenborough’s latest production, Frozen Planet (see trailer below). It’s thought to be his last major program with the BBC, and to commemorate this milestone, the ad agency RKCR/Y&R has produced a moving video that features Attenborough reading lines from “What a Wonderful World” — you know, the Louis Armstrong classic — as scenes from Attenborough’s documentaries fill the screen.
The ad agency introduced the video last week with a little blog post, which concluded by saying: “If you’ve had a shitty journey into work today, I promise, this will put your smile back in place.” We could haven’t have said it any worse or better.
Spike Jonze has made a name for himself as a wildly inventive director of music videos and feature films, like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. He has also created some of the most distinctive television commercials of the past decade. Today we bring you a few of his greatest hits.
In late 2002 Jonze created a stir with his IKEA commercial, “Lamp” (above). The 60-second spot went on to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Boards magazine listed “Lamp” as one of the top 10 commercials of the decade, writing:
Spike Jonze’s incredibly human directing touch created a believable tenderness between a woman and her new Ikea lighting, eliciting pure empathy for a lonely, discarded object, left to suffer curbside in the rain, and then shattered it all with one brilliant stroke of casting that abruptly and brusquely brought us all back to reality.
Jonze’s startling Gap commercial, “Dust,” (above) became a YouTube sensation immediately following its release in 2005, but the company pulled the 90-second ad after testing it in only a few cities. Perhaps the spectacle of a corporate brand exuberantly doing violence to its image was a bit too much for the boys in the boardroom. The decision to shelve the ad made the company look even less hip than before. As Seth Stevenson wrote in Slate, “I just can’t understand spending all that money on a big-name director, and a big-budget shoot, and then frittering the results away on such a limited purpose. Did Gap not see the possibilities? Were they too scared to go for broke?”
Another ground-breaking Jonze commercial from 2005, “Hello Tomorrow,” (above) was made to introduce a self-adjusting, “intelligent” sneaker from Adidas. The spot uses special effects to create the impression of a lucid dream. The music was created by Jonze’s brother, Sam “Squeak E. Clean” Spiegel (Jonze’s birth name is Adam Spiegel) and sung by his girlfriend at the time, Karen O of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The ad received many awards, including two Gold Lions at Cannes. The sneaker was dropped by Adidas in 2006, but the commercial lives on.
Here’s a little known fact about the rapper and actor Ice Cube. During his younger days, before he became a star, Mr. Cube studied architectural drafting at the Phoenix Institute of Technology in Arizona, where he gained an appreciation for the way architects, like rappers, can take existing materials and work them into entirely new creations. Yes, architects can do mashups, too. And perhaps no one did them better than the husband-and-wife design duo, Charles and Ray Eames, who built the Eames House, a landmark of modern architecture, in 1949.
In a video promoting a collaborative exhibit, “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980,” Ice Cube drives the streets of L.A. and explains his admiration for the Eames House and other Los Angeles landmarks. Meanwhile below, you’ll find some vintage footage that captures Charles Eames (1907–1978), driving around the city, giving his own analysis of the hodge-podge architectural styles that define Los Angeles.
Cambridge University has had many famous graduates, but perhaps none is more famous than Isaac Newton (class of 1665). This week, Cambridge continues to honor Newton by opening a digital archive of Newton’s personal papers, which includes an annotated copy of the Principia, the landmark work where the physicist developed his laws of motion and gravity. The initial archive features 4,000 pages of scanned materials (roughly 20% of the complete Newton archive), and eventually Cambridge will add material from Charles Darwin, another famous alum, and other scientific figures.
Bonus: If you’re looking to bone up on Physics, you can find many free physics courses in our big collection of Free Online Courses. Leonard Susskind’s class on Classical Mechanics may be of particular interest here.
A year ago, Apple began selling The Beatles’ catalogue of music on iTunes. Now, twelve months and many millions of downloads later, Apple is giving away The Beatle’s Yellow Submarine as a free ebook.
It’s not just any ebook. Based on the 1968 film, this ebook features animated illustrations, 14 video clips from the original film, audio functionality that magically turns the book into an audio book, and various interactive elements. You can “read” the book (download it here) on any iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Our apologies in advance if you use other devices.
The Yellow Submarine will be added to our collection of Free eBooks, which features 250 classics, including texts by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Joyce, Nabokov, Austen, Nietzsche and others. Also don’t miss our equally large collection of Free Audio Books.
Last Wednesday, the Occupy movement gained a little more intellectual momentum when eight faculty members from Harvard, Boston College, and N.Y.U. gathered in Cambridge to present a daylong Teach-In. In one talk, Archon Fung (Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship and Co-Director of Transparency Policy Project at Harvard) took a vague thesis of the Occupy movement — “Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit” — and gave it some academic depth in a data-filled talk called “Why Has Inequality Grown in America? And What Should We Do About It?” The other talks are available on YouTube (see links below) or via audio stream:
Fear and Power — Brad Epps, Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures and Department Chair for Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
How many of the great philosophers have you actually heard speak? This clip comes from the 1976 documentary Sartre by Himself, which features discussions with Jean-Paul Sartre and his near-equally famous partner Simone de Beauvoir, among others. The film was released with English subtitles in 1979, a year before Sartre died.
In this clip, Sartre criticizes modern intellectuals as “specialist workers in practical knowledge,” who apply “universal notions and practices” to particular purposes determined by a political establishment. This can cause a conflict of conscience: Sartre gives the example of scientists working on the atomic bomb, but also professors whose efforts solely benefit a small group of prosperous students. Sartre thinks intellectuals use this kind of conflict to feel better about themselves–they may sign petitions, side with the working class, etc.–while still not seriously questioning themselves. Intellectuals rage against the machine but are still playing their assigned role in it. “[They are] very pleased to have an unhappy conscience, because that is what allows [them] to denounce.”
This is an example of his famous notion of “bad faith,” where we disassociate ourselves from our actions, or more commonly where we claim to have more limited choices than we actually do. Bad faith is possible because of the nature of the self, according to Sartre: there is no predetermined “human nature” or “true you,” but instead you are something built over time, by your own freely chosen actions, too often using the roles and characteristics others assign to you.
Early in his career, he constructed a theory of consciousness and the self that makes this plausible. The work in which he did this, “The Transcendence of the Ego,” is the subject of the most recent episode of The Partially Examined Life philosophy podcast, profiled in this earlier Open Culture post. The podcast has since taken off: it’s currently featured on the main podcast page in the iTunes store and has broken the top 40 in “top audio podcasts,” reaching #1 in the philosophy category.
What is nano? And how will nanoscience (the study of phenomena and manipulation of materials at the nanoscale) shape our future, from the way we build houses to how we cure diseases? It’s all explained in a snappy 17 minute video narrated by Stephen Fry (British writer, actor and director). Produced in partnership with Cambridge University, NANO YOU was named the best short film at the Scinema Science Film Festival in 2010.
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French photographer Tanguy Louvigny created this time-lapse film of bucolic Normandy and Brittany using High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging techniques.
From forest floor to setting sun, Louvigny’s shots render fine detail across an extremely wide range of luminosity. To achieve this he used the auto-bracketing feature of his Canon EOS 400D and 60D cameras to create three different exposures for each frame in the film. (At 30 frames per second, that’s 90 exposures for each second of screen time.) Louvigny then merged each set of three exposures into one image using Photomatrix Pro 4.0 software, selectively tone mapping each sequence to hold detail in some areas while allowing others to go dark.
To create the moving-camera effects, Louvigny designed and built his own robotic three-axis motion system using Tetrix motors and a LEGO Mindstorms control system, which he programmed in ROBOTC language. This allowed him to automate the tortoise-like dolly, pan and tilt movements. Louvigny edited the digital film in Adobe Premiere and After Effects software. To top it off he composed his own music on a Roland MC-808 groovebox. For more information, go to the photographer’s website and Vimeo page.
The French love their jazz. The people love it. Their cows love it no less.
Here we have The New Hot 5, a New Orleans-style band, bringing their act to the pastures of Autrans, France, and treating the audience to an American classic, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” You can learn more about The New Hot 5 at jazzforcows.com.
Speaking of France, we have added French lessons by Carnegie Mellon and the BBC added to our collection of Free Language Lessons.
Last week, composer Philip Glass and rock legend Lou Reed embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement. Initial video & audio clips capturing their appearances were shoddy at best. Now Jean Thevenin (who joined the protest at Lincoln Center Plaza) has given us a better view, producing a short, elegant film simply called Visible Shape. The accompanying music is “Protest” from Satyagraha, written by Philip Glass and performed by New York City Opera Orchestra.
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