Yosemite National Park in All of Its Time-Lapse Splendor

in Video - Arts & Culture | January 23rd, 2012

This video shows Yosemite Nation­al Park in all of its glo­ry. Watch as dark­ness descends over Half Dome after a gor­geous sun­set. Then, look­ing to the heav­ens, we observe the bril­liant sky and the mil­lions of stars vis­i­ble. It’s Yosemite like you’ve nev­er seen it before.

The video was cre­at­ed by Shel­don Neill and Col­in Dele­han­ty, who share an inter­est in time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy and found each oth­er via Vimeo. The result, after numer­ous vis­its to Yosemite, was this com­plet­ed project. All time-laps­es were shot on the Canon 5D Mark II with a vari­ety of Canon L and Zeiss CP.2 lens­es. The music accom­pa­ny­ing the video is “Out­ro” from the new album Hur­ry Up, We’re Dream­ing by elec­tron­ic band M83.

One of the scenes from this video is of El Cap­i­tan, a ver­ti­cal rock for­ma­tion that’s twice the height of the Empire State Build­ing. Wall: The Jour­ney Up tells the hero­ic sto­ry of Steve Wampler’s quest to become the first per­son with Cere­bral Pal­sy to climb El Cap­i­tan. The inspir­ing video/film trail­er is worth watch­ing.

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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An Animated Tour of Fallingwater, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Creations

in Animation, Architecture | January 21st, 2012

Falling­wa­ter was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935. Con­struc­tion began a year lat­er and was even­tu­al­ly com­plet­ed in 1939. Many con­sid­er Falling­wa­ter one of Wright’s finest cre­ations. Hence why Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine count­ed it as one of the 28 Places to See Before You Die. Now, thanks to the mini movie above, you can watch the build­ing of Falling­wa­ter take place right before your eyes, and then take a tour of the house. It’s all done in com­put­er graph­ics and runs 4+ min­utes. And, as one read­er tells us, the “video is as real as it gets.” You can learn more about the film and the house at this web site.

For more Frank Lloyd Wright, you’ll also want to vis­it the R.W. Lind­holm Ser­vice Sta­tion, a gas sta­tion designed by the famous archi­tect in the 1930s. We’ll take you on a vir­tu­al tour right here.

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A Robot That Flies with the Grace of a Bird: A Great TED Flight

in Science | January 20th, 2012

The dream of flight fired the imag­i­na­tion of Leonard da Vin­ci in the ear­ly six­teenth cen­tu­ry. In design­ing his famous fly­ing machines, the painter, sculp­tor, archi­tect, math­e­mati­cian, engi­neer, inven­tor, anatomist  — ah heck, let’s just call him a Renais­sance man — close­ly stud­ied the mechan­ics of birds in flight, not­ing the ele­gant ways in which they turn and glide. Cen­turies lat­er the Wright Broth­ers got us off the ground, but nev­er with equal grace. It has tak­en a long time, but final­ly engi­neers at the Ger­man com­pa­ny, Fes­to, have found a way to mechan­i­cal­ly repro­duce the beau­ty of birds in flight. They call their robot the Smart­Bird, and they showed it off last year at TED.

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Remembering the Soulful Etta James

in Music | January 20th, 2012

“When I’m singing blues,” Etta James once said, “I’m singing life.”

Hers was a dif­fi­cult life. The leg­endary singer, who died this morn­ing at the age of 73 after a long strug­gle with leukemia, was born Jame­set­ta Hawkins on Jan­u­ary 25, 1938, to an unwed 14-year-old girl, and her life was marked by drug addic­tion and emo­tion­al volatil­i­ty. Through it all, James rose to become one of the most influ­en­tial and admired singers of the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

“There’s a lot going on in Etta James’ voice,” Bon­nie Raitt told Rolling Stone in 2008. “A lot of pain, a lot of life but, most of all, a lot of strength. She can be so rau­cous and down one song, and then break your heart with her sub­tle­ty and finesse the next.”

Her great­est hit came in 1961, with the soul­ful bal­lad “At Last.” For anoth­er side of James’s ver­sa­tile style, lis­ten and watch above, as she per­forms the gospel-influ­enced “Some­thing’s Got a Hold on Me” in 1962. To learn more about James, and to watch video high­lights from her career, see today’s arti­cle by Ben Green­man on The New York­er’s “Cul­ture Desk” blog. And over at the Guardian, see Richard Williams selec­tion of 10 Clas­sic Etta James Per­for­mances.

In 1997, James summed things up in an inter­view with Rolling Stone: “Life’s been rough,” she said, “but life’s been good. If I had to go back and do it all over again, I would live it the exact same way.”

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Willie and the Hand Jive, by the Late Great Johnny Otis

in Music | January 20th, 2012

One of the catchi­est grooves from the rhythm and blues of the late 1950s is “Willie and the Hand Jive,” by John­ny Otis. In this live­ly scene from his ear­ly TV show, Otis per­forms the song as Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy demon­strate the hand jive. Lionel Hamp­ton joins in on the vibra­phone.

Otis, known as “the god­fa­ther of rhythm and blues,” died Tues­day at the age of 90. The son of Greek immi­grants, he grew up in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black neigh­bor­hood of Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, and devel­oped an ear­ly affin­i­ty for African Amer­i­can cul­ture. “Genet­i­cal­ly, I’m pure Greek,” Otis said in 1994. “Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, envi­ron­men­tal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, by choice, I’m a mem­ber of the black com­mu­ni­ty.”

As a band­leader in the 1950s, Otis helped bring rhythm and blues to a main­stream audi­ence. He dis­cov­ered a num­ber of impor­tant artists, includ­ing Big Mama Thorn­ton (Otis pro­duced her orig­i­nal 1952 record­ing of “Hound Dog”) and the great Etta James, who died this morn­ing.

“Willie and the Hand Jive,” with its infec­tious Bo Did­dley beat, was a top 10 pop hit for Otis in 1958, and was cov­ered by a vari­ety of well-known artists, includ­ing Eric Clap­ton. Otis con­tin­ued to per­form into his 80s, and worked at var­i­ous times as a disc jock­ey, an ordained min­is­ter and an organ­ic farmer. You can read more about his remark­able life in the New York Times obit­u­ary.

You can also watch the com­plete half-hour episode of The John­ny Otis Show (below) from which the clip above was tak­en. The John­ny Otis Show was broad­cast on KTLA in Los Ange­les from 1954 to 1961. This episode fea­tures great per­for­mances by Lionel Hamp­ton (with the mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Otis join­ing in on drums) and oth­er artists, includ­ing more from Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy.

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Christopher Walken Reads The Three Little Pigs, The Raven, and a Little Lady Gaga

in Books, Comedy, Film | January 20th, 2012

Here we go again. We’re get­ting meta with read­ings by the great Christo­pher Walken. It all starts with the actor appear­ing on a 1993 broad­cast of the British TV series “Sat­ur­day Zoo” host­ed by Jonathan Ross, and he’s read­ing and riff­ing on the beloved fairy tale, The Sto­ry of the Three Lit­tle Pigs. The poten­tial­ly ter­ri­fy­ing sto­ry is unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly jol­ly. Walken goes for laughs, not chills. The same can’t be said for the next tale.

We’re not clear on the back­sto­ry of this read­ing. But we do know Walken is read­ing Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven, and stays true to the orig­i­nal text pub­lished in 1845. The Raven made Poe famous then, and it remains influ­en­tial today — so much so they named a foot­ball team after the poem. How many oth­er sports teams can make such a claim?

And then we come full cir­cle again. Almost 16 years after Walken’s read­ing of The Three Lit­tle Pigs, the star returned to anoth­er show host­ed by Jonathan Ross (BBC’s Fri­day Night) and served up a sec­ond com­ic read­ing. This time it’s “Pok­er Face” by the inescapable Lady Gaga.

Walken read­ing Where the Wild Things Are by Mau­rice Sendak? If only, if only .….

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Everything You Wanted to Know About Coffee in Three Minutes

in Random | January 19th, 2012

Cof­fee — it’s the fuel of the mod­ern world and cer­tain­ly this site. And, if you believe this video (appar­ent­ly not made by Star­bucks or the Amer­i­can cof­fee lob­by), it’s the great­est, safest addic­tion around. Take it all with a grain of salt … while you drink your morn­ing (or after­noon) cup of joe.

More Relat­ed Cof­fee Items:

How to Drink Cof­fee at Zero Grav­i­ty

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

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A Rare Interview with Fritz Lang and His 1931 Masterpiece of Suspense, M

in Film | January 19th, 2012

“I made my films with a kind of sleep­walk­ing secu­ri­ty,” says Fritz Lang. “I did things which I thought were right. Peri­od.” Thus begins this fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with the great Aus­tri­an-born direc­tor.

The inter­view was con­duct­ed by William Fried­kin, direc­tor of The French Con­nec­tion and The Exor­cist, in Feb­ru­ary of 1975, a lit­tle more than a year before Lang’s death. Lang talks about his ear­ly life as a run­away. (“Any decent human being should run away from home.”), his entry into the­atre and film as a young man, his Ger­man mas­ter­pieces Metrop­o­lis and M, and a chill­ing encounter in 1933 with the Nazi Min­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da Joseph Goebbels that pro­voked him to flee Ger­many the same day.

The sto­ry of Lang’s escape has all the ele­ments of a cin­e­mat­ic thriller, but biog­ra­phers have cast doubt on its verac­i­ty, cit­ing pass­port records which indi­cate that Lang left Ger­many some time after the meet­ing with Goebbels, and that he returned on brief trips sev­er­al times that year. But the anec­dote, along with Lang’s reflec­tions on his life and on the nature of fate, pro­vide a fas­ci­nat­ing look into the great film­mak­er’s char­ac­ter.

The con­ver­sa­tion above, which runs 50 min­utes, was edit­ed down from a much longer set of inter­views. Accord­ing to the Tori­no Film Fes­ti­val web­site, Fried­kin orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to use the Lang mate­r­i­al for a doc­u­men­tary on hor­ror cin­e­ma, to be called A Safe Dark­ness, but there is no dis­cus­sion of the hor­ror genre in this ver­sion.

As an extra bonus from our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, we present the film Lang most want­ed to be remem­bered for, M. (See below.) The film was made in 1931, and was the first by Lang to incor­po­rate sound. Peter Lorre makes his screen debut as a man guilty of unspeak­able crimes. In its intro­duc­tion to the film, the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion writes: “In his har­row­ing mas­ter­work M, Fritz Lang merges tren­chant social com­men­tary with chill­ing sus­pense, cre­at­ing a panora­ma of pri­vate mad­ness and pub­lic hys­te­ria that to this day remains the blue­print for the psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller.”

M, by Fritz Lang:

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