The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre – these famous monuments draw millions of tourists to Paris every year, to the part of the city that lives above ground. Few tourists get to the other part of the city, the part that lives and breathes beneath the surface. This month, National Geographic has dedicated its feature article and photo gallery to subterranean Paris, taking you into the caves and catacombs that twist and turn beneath the city streets. Produced by NPR and National Geographic, the video above follows “cataphiles” who travel through the dark side of the City of Light.
Star Wars is a Remix
Kirby Ferguson is back. Last September, the writer/director released the first of a four-part film series – Everything is a Remix – that teases apart the long history of artistic “remixing.” This first short film concentrated on the artistic borrowings of musicians and writers, with Led Zeppelin and the Beat writers getting the major focus. Now, with his second film, the attention turns to film, and particularly to the homages and borrowings of George Lucas’ Star Wars. Akira Kurosawa films, Spaghetti westerns and John Wayne westerns, classic wartime movies, Leni Riefenstahl propaganda films, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis – they’re all remixed into the epic space drama. The film wraps up with Ferguson looking at Quentin Tarantino and his own remixing tendencies. And that sets the stage for parts 3 and 4 – a project that you can help finance in your own modest way. I’m sure Kirby will appreciate your generosity…
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
The first Werner Herzog 3D film will hit the cinema screens this spring, and the new trailer paves the way for it. The 89 minute documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, brings Herzog down into the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave discovered in 1994. Located in Southern France, this cave, normally kept off limits to the public, houses the oldest cave paintings ever discovered. We’re talking paintings dating back over 30,000 years and all still preserved in pristine condition. Just as Lascaux left Picasso in awe, the Chauvet cave paintings inspired Herzog to use 3D technology to capture the charcoal figures, the earliest expression of our artistic yearnings.
Don’t miss our earlier post, An Evening with Werner Herzog.
The King’s Speech 1938
You’ve probably seen the film, The King’s Speech, which just landed 12 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. Now it’s time to rewind the videotape and bring you back to 1938, when King George VI, formerly Prince Albert, Duke of York, makes a speech to open an exhibition in Scotland.
Take a quick hop, skip and jump to the British Path site to watch, and you will get a firsthand look at the King speaking in his own words…
Looking for a good read on your ebook reader? Find a classic in our collection of Free eBooks. Books available in multiple formats. Enjoy!
Tarkovsky’s Solaris Revisited
This week, The New York Times film critic A.O. Scott revisits Solaris (watch online here), Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film adaptation of the sci-fi novel written by the Polish author Stanisław Lem (1961). Although Tarkovsky considered the film something of an artistic failure (and Lem turned sour on the project too), Solaris won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. What’s more, Salman Rushdie later called it “a sci-fi masterpiece,” Roger Ebert gave it a big nod too, and Empire magazine ranked it 68th on its list of The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema. Solaris is one among many Tarkovsky films available online (for free) through Google Video and Veoh, or you can always purchase Solaris in high quality format on DVD.
Looking for more movies? Visit our mega list of 340 Free Movies Online.
Fully Flared
Take the intro to Fully Flared, the 2007 skateboarding film directed by Spike Jonze, Ty Evans and Cory Weincheque. And then remaster it in 720p HD and you have quite the sensory experience. Give the clip at least a minute to unfold…
Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paintings & Museums to You
More goodness out of Googleplex. Today, Google is rolling out a new tool called “Art Project,” which gives you access to more than 1,000 works of art appearing in 17 great museums across the world. Using Google’s Street View technology, you can now tour collections at the MoMA and Met in New York City, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery in London – just to name a few museums now virtually open to you. And you can visit countless paintings, some rendered in super high resolution. (We’re talking 7 billion pixels!) Take for example, Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl (see above) or Van Gogh’s The Bedroom. When you view Van Gogh’s painting, make sure you zoom in and look at the brushwork.
Although you won’t have access to the entirety of every museum (actually the selections are rather limited in many cases), Google’s Art Project does put 385 rooms on display. Not a bad start. You can read more about the new initiative on Google’s blog here. H/T to @eugenphoto
Jake Shimabukuro Plays “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the Uke
If you’ve never seen Jake Shimabukuro handle the ukulele before, you’re in for a little treat. Known for his complex fingerwork, the ukulele virtuoso now tours with Jimmy Buffet and has recorded with Yo-Yo Ma. Meanwhile his fab recording of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” has clocked 7,000,000 views on YouTube, all of which sets the stage for this: Shimabukuro bringing his act to the TED 2010 stage. For more ukulele fun, don’t miss The Complete Beatles on Ukulele.
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What’s the Internet? That’s So 1994…
Now making its way around the internets, a little semi-vintage clip of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric, then hosts of The Today Show, trying to sort out the new, new thing called “The Internet.” This bit was recorded on January 24, 1994, just months before Justin Bieber came into the world and Kurt Cobain exited stage left…
What Technology Wants: Kevin Kelly @ Google
Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of Wired magazine and former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog (now free online), published a new book this past October: What Technology Wants. Reviewing his own book on BoingBoing, Kelly summarizes a few key points. “Technology is the most powerful force on the planet.” In fact, humanity is a tool itself, and, like all living things, technology evolves, demonstrating certain unconscious “urges” and “wants” in the process. Technology cannot be held back. But we can try to optimize its benefits for human culture, even while potentially trying to limit the amount of technology in our own lives. It’s a heady book, and, perhaps fittingly, Kevin Kelly pulled through Google in November and distilled his new theory of technology in a 40 minute talk. Watch it above…
Bonus: You might also want to check out this conversation recorded at the New York Public Library. It features Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson (author of Where Good Ideas Come From) in conversation with Robert Krulwich, co-host of Radio Lab.
An Evening with Werner Herzog
François Truffaut once called Werner Herzog the single most important director on the planet, and TIME magazine (with Rogert Ebert writing the related article) ranked Herzog as one of the 100 most influential people alive today. Last April, Herzog, a “romantic visionary” of the New German Cinema movement, visited the UC Santa Barbara campus where he spent roughly two hours in conversation with the author and essayist, Pico Iyer. The video above skips over two introductions, including one by Iyer himself. So if you’re looking for more context, you can always rewind to the very beginning… H/T to @eacion and via Film Studies for Free.
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