Free Interactive Comic Book: Poe’s “Pit and the Pendulum”

in Art, Literature | February 22nd, 2011

First came the stop motion film. Now comes the inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal com­ic book that gives you a mod­ern take on Edgar Allan Poe’s clas­sic hor­ror sto­ry, “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum.” (Find Poe’s orig­i­nal text here or lis­ten in audio here.) The dig­i­tal Pit and the Pen­du­lum com­ic book is the brain­child of Marc Lougee and Susan Ma, who have lay­ered infor­ma­tive links, QR codes and social media into their visu­al design, adding a new mea­sure of inter­ac­tiv­i­ty to the tra­di­tion­al com­ic book expe­ri­ence. To get the most out of the expe­ri­ence, you will need to down­load a good PDF read­er and QR code read­er. Find those resources here. And, on a relat­ed note, don’t for­get to watch anoth­er favorite of ours: the 1953 ani­mat­ed film ver­sion of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by James Mason. A clas­sic!

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Tim O’Brien & Tobias Wolff Talk “Writing and War”

in Books, Literature, Writing | February 21st, 2011

Last month, two award-win­ning writ­ers and Viet­nam vet­er­ans – Tim O’Brien and Tobias Wolff – met at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty to talk about war and lit­er­a­ture, a tra­di­tion that has giv­en us Tol­stoy’s War and Peace, Remar­que’s All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, Hem­ing­way’s A Farewell to Arms, and Mail­er’s The Naked and the Dead. O’Brien has con­front­ed war in two pre­vi­ous works, If I Die in a Com­bat Zone and Going After Cac­cia­to. But he’s best known for The Things They Car­ried, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that gives lit­er­ary expres­sion to the Viet­nam expe­ri­ence, and that’s now a sta­ple of high school and col­lege lit­er­a­ture cours­es. As for Tobias Wolff, his mem­oir recount­ing his dis­il­lu­sion­ing expe­ri­ence as a sol­dier in Viet­nam – In Pharao­h’s Army – was a Nation­al Book Award final­ist, rank­ing up there with This Boy’s Life and Old School. Their wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion runs 80 min­utes…

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Sub Zero: Winter Time-Lapse in South Dakota

in Art, Life | February 21st, 2011

Ear­li­er this month, Randy Halver­son braved the cold South Dako­ta nights (where tem­per­a­tures often drop to ‑25 below wind chill), to cre­ate this night­time time-lapse film. Using a Canon 60D and T2i, Halver­son gave each shot a 20 sec­ond expo­sure, with a one sec­ond inter­val placed between shots. The result is pret­ty jaw-drop­ping. H/T @matthiasrascher.

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The Great Train Robbery: Where Westerns Began

in Film | February 21st, 2011

A great film tra­di­tion – the West­ern – start­ed with The Great Train Rob­bery in 1903. Edwin S. Porter’s 10 minute film com­bined west­ern themes with inno­v­a­tive cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques (nar­ra­tive sto­ry­telling, par­al­lel edit­ing, minor cam­era move­ment, loca­tion shoot­ing, etc.). And the film took its inspi­ra­tion from an event that became the stuff of leg­end: Butch Cas­sidy’s 1900 train heist, which end­ed with Cas­sidy blow­ing open a safe and escap­ing with $5,000 in cash.

Porter’s land­mark film helped spark Amer­i­ca’s love affair with West­ern films. Thou­sands of West­erns flood­ed cin­e­mas through­out the silent era — films like Bron­cho Bil­ly and The Greas­er (1914), Sky High (1922), and West of Hot Dog (1924). And though the West­ern fad­ed briefly with the advent of sound film (cir­ca 1927), the genre staged a major come­back with the release of Stage­coach (1939), a John Ford film that turned John Wayne into one of Hol­ly­wood’s endur­ing stars. And yes, we have cat­a­logued 25 free John Wayne Films right here. To find oth­er free West­erns, vis­it this YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Trip to the Moon: Where Sci Fi Movies Began

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: Animation Concepts

in Art, Books, Film, Literature | February 18th, 2011

Michael Chabon pub­lished The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay in 2000, and the next year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion. The film ver­sion of the nov­el has been locked in “devel­op­ment hell” for a good decade now. (The pro­duc­er Scott Rudin has a rep­u­ta­tion for option­ing high-pro­file nov­els and sit­ting on them for a long time; he also holds the film rights to Jonathan Franzen’s The Cor­rec­tions.) Any­way, some­where in the devel­op­ment process, the direc­tor Jamie Caliri was asked to explore ani­ma­tion con­cepts, and here’s what he came up with: a fun inter­twin­ing of live action and ani­ma­tion.

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 Ice Book, a Beautiful Pop-Up Book

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | February 17th, 2011

The Ice Book, seen above, is a paper the­atre brought to life with light. Watch as sheets of paper are illu­mi­nat­ed in a daz­zling ani­ma­tion dis­play. Accord­ing to the artists, Davy and Kristin McGuire, The Ice Book tells the sto­ry of a mys­te­ri­ous princess who lures a boy into her mag­i­cal world to warm her heart of ice. It was shot with the Canon 5D Mark II, with the actors super­im­posed onto the mon­tages using a makeshift green screen, and pro­jec­tions cre­at­ed in Adobe After Effects. A sim­ple yet remark­able achieve­ment. You can learn more about the project here. Don’t miss the page describ­ing the behind the scenes work, or this oth­er pri­mo video that savors books in stop motion film.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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“From Dictatorship to Democracy.” Open Text Changes Face of Egypt.

in Current Affairs, Politics | February 17th, 2011

There’s some­thing won­der­ful about this .… unless you’re a dic­ta­tor. Today, The New York Times shines a good light on Gene Sharp, a shy Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al who has spent decades writ­ing on the art of non-vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion. Back in 2002, Sharp pub­lished “From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy: A Con­cep­tu­al Frame­work for Lib­er­a­tion,” a 93-page guide to upend­ing auto­crats. Then, he had the text trans­lat­ed into 24 lan­guages and made freely avail­able online, with all copy­right restric­tions removed.  The man­u­al has since inspired dis­si­dents in Bur­ma, Bosnia and Esto­nia, while giv­ing strate­gic direc­tion to the protests in Egypt and Tunisia. Ideas have pow­er. But good ideas have more pow­er when they’re open. You can down­load Sharp’s man­u­al here (PDF), and learn more about his mis­sion through his non­prof­it, The Albert Ein­stein Insti­tu­tion.

Speak­ing of good ideas that are open, feel free to down­load 35o free online cours­es and teach your­self any­thing and every­thing.

via @philosophybites

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NASA Zooms into Spiral Galaxy

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

Cour­tesy of NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, we’re zoom­ing into a “majes­tic disk of stars and dust lanes” and get­ting a stun­ning view of the spi­ral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 mil­lion light-years away in the con­stel­la­tion of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). But wait, it gets even bet­ter. This high res­o­lu­tion still pho­to shows the spi­ral galaxy in all its beau­ty and splen­dor…

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Christopher Hitchens Answers Reddit User Questions

in Current Affairs | February 17th, 2011

A lit­tle ways back, Christo­pher Hitchens field­ed ques­tions for 30 min­utes from Reddit.com users, answer­ing any and every ques­tion they threw his way. What his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, events or books have been under­em­pha­sized in Amer­i­can pub­lic edu­ca­tion? Has the Iraq War (some­thing Hitchens sup­port­ed) had a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive impact on Islam­ic extrem­ism? What do social­ism and lib­er­tar­i­an­ism have in com­mon intel­lec­tu­al­ly, if any­thing? Oth­er fig­ures inter­viewed by Red­dit users include Richard Dawkins, Noam Chom­sky, and Ron Paul.

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Evolution Made Us All

in Music, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

File under Every­thing is a Remix. Ben Hill­man offers a cre­ative lit­tle riff on “All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful” (lis­ten here), an Angli­can hymn inspired by William Paley’s 1802 trea­tise, Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, which posi­tions God as the design­er of the nat­ur­al world … in an Enlight­en­ment kind of way. You can catch more Hill­man videos on Vimeo here.

via RichardDawkins.net

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A Rare Look Inside Pixar Studios

in Art, Film | February 16th, 2011

Since 1995, Pixar has released a steady stream of award-win­ning ani­mat­ed films. First came Toy Sto­ry, then Find­ing Nemo, Mon­sters, Inc., The Incred­i­bles, and most recent­ly Toy Sto­ry 3. (You can revis­it Pixar’s clas­sics in this won­der­ful lit­tle trib­ute video.) Get­ting inside Pixar Stu­dios has nev­er been easy. But last week The New York Times pulled it off, pro­duc­ing a six minute video that takes you through the stu­dios designed by Steve Jobs him­self, and inside Pixar’s patent­ed ani­ma­tion process – a process that com­bines more tra­di­tion­al and cut­ting-edge ele­ments.

Note: This video tour also appears on Vimeo and YouTube.

H/T @matthiasrascher

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