The Cowboy and the Frenchman: French Culture Through the American Eyes of David Lynch (1988)

in Film | July 24th, 2012

Some­times, to clear­ly see the cul­ture you come from, you need an out­sider to look at it for you. The French news­pa­per Le Figaro seems to have oper­at­ed on that the­o­ry when, in 1988, they cel­e­brat­ed the tenth anniver­sary of their mag­a­zine sec­tion by com­mis­sion­ing five short films from famous for­eign direc­tors — famous direc­tors for­eign to France, that is. The result­ing series, enti­tled France As Seen By…, com­pris­es Fran­co­cen­tric works by David Lynch, Wern­er Her­zog, Andrzej Wad­j­da, Lui­gi Comenci­ni, and Jean-Luc Godard, who, born in Paris but gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as “Fran­co-Swiss,” pre­sum­ably qual­i­fied as just for­eign enough. You can now watch Lynch’s short, a half-hour bit of inter­na­tion­al slap­stick called The Cow­boy and the French­man, free on Youtube.

Har­ry Dean Stan­ton stars as Slim, a chaps-wear­ing ranch fore­man “almost stone cold deaf on account of two rounds of 30.06 going off a lit­tle too close when he was thir­teen and a half.” Lynch wastes no time putting this old cow­boy of the title into an encounter with the stray French­man of same. When Slim spots him wan­der­ing across the prairie, he sends his crew (which includes Eraser­head star Jack Nance) over to las­so him. From their hap­less cap­tive, dressed in a three-piece suit and a beret, going on in French so sim­ple as not to require trans­la­tion about the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, they seize a bas­ket con­tain­ing not only wine, and not only baguettes, but a mod­el of the Eif­fel Tow­er and an end­less sup­ply of escar­got. Lynch finds a way to merge the world of the dream­ing French­man with that of the anachro­nis­tic cow­boy, bring­ing them togeth­er through sur­re­al musi­cal per­for­mances under the glow­ing­ly opti­mistic yet faint­ly sin­is­ter sheen of mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cana. As is his way.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly David Lynch Short Films

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

David Lynch Debuts Lady Blue Shang­hai

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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NASA’s Van Gogh Sun

in Art, Astronomy, Video - Science | July 24th, 2012

Late last year, NASA released Per­pet­u­al Ocean, a remark­able three minute, Van Gogh-like video show­ing ocean cur­rents swirling around the globe between June 2005 and Decem­ber 2007. Now, the NASA team returns with Van Gogh Sun, a clip demon­strat­ing a new tech­nique cre­at­ed by Nic­holeen Viall, a solar sci­en­tist at the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter, who spe­cial­izes in cre­at­ing images that demys­ti­fy “the mech­a­nisms that dri­ve the tem­per­a­ture and move­ments of the sun’s atmos­phere, or coro­na.” The video above gives you the quick overview; this NASA web page (where you can also down­load the video) takes you deep­er into Vial­l’s world.

If you ask me, Per­pet­u­al Ocean cer­tain­ly calls to mind Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night. When it comes to these coro­na images, it’s Van Gogh’s Sun­flow­ers at close range.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

 

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T.S. Eliot Reads His Modernist Masterpieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

in Audio Books, Literature, Poetry | July 23rd, 2012

Did you know T.S. Eliot’s por­ten­tous and heav­i­ly allu­sive 1922 mas­ter­piece “The Waste Land” was orig­i­nal­ly titled “He Do the Police in Dif­fer­ent Voic­es,” a quote from Charles Dick­ens’ Our Mutu­al Friend? Filled with ref­er­ences to Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness, and James Frazier’s The Gold­en Bough, this most famous of high mod­ernist poems—scourge of mil­lions of col­lege fresh­man each year—was a very dif­fer­ent ani­mal before noto­ri­ous mod­ernist impre­sario Ezra Pound got his hands on it. Pound’s heavy rework­ing is respon­si­ble for the poem you hear above, read by Eliot him­self. The first image in the video shows Pound’s mar­gin­al anno­ta­tions.

In the video above lis­ten to Eliot read his sec­ond-most famous work, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with the text of the poem chore­o­graphed by Wor­dook­ie, an open-source ver­sion of Wor­dle.  “Prufrock,” first pub­lished in 1915, is as dense with lit­er­ary allu­sions as “The Waste Land” (and thus as painful for the aver­age under­grad­u­ate). And if Eliot’s reedy alto doesn’t deliv­er “Prufrock“ ‘s grav­i­tas for you, lis­ten to Antho­ny Hop­kins read it here.

You can find these poems cat­a­logued in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Audio Books and 800 Free eBooks.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

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Total Noob to Learning Online? P2PU’s Peer-to-Peer Courses Hold Your Hand

in Education, Online Courses | July 23rd, 2012

Those of us inter­est­ed in explor­ing the myr­i­ad free cours­es avail­able online will appre­ci­ate the work being done at P2PU. It’s per­haps a fun­ny name when you first say it out loud, but P2PU’s approach and orig­i­nal learn­ing con­tent are for real.

You may have guessed what the name stands for: peer to peer uni­ver­si­ty. P2PU’s mod­el is inno­v­a­tive. Their idea is that tak­ing an online course should be more like learn­ing on the job than tak­ing a tra­di­tion­al class. Their approach encour­ages peo­ple to work togeth­er on projects—whether learn­ing com­put­ing pro­gram­ming or some­thing else—and to assess one another’s work with con­struc­tive feed­back.

Users can design their own cours­es with help from P2PU. Course design is bro­ken down into dis­crete steps and course con­tent is vet­ted by peer users and P2PU staff.

Cours­es are hands-on and super var­ied. One course lets users take a hack at design­ing their own big game—the kind that gets adults out in the streets defend­ing a foun­tain or hid­ing trea­sures under bus stop bench­es. Anoth­er cours­es lays out the steps for mak­ing a music video. Fif­teen oth­er peo­ple are already tak­ing the chal­lenge. Two have com­plet­ed it and four men­tors have offered their help.

One of the most pop­u­lar cours­es is about writ­ing for the web. The com­ments sec­tions for each step are live­ly and filled with links to real blogs. Par­tic­i­pants in this course share their writ­ing and opin­ions about what makes for good web writ­ing.

One of the site’s oth­er well-sub­scribed cours­es teach­es par­tic­i­pants how to pro­gram using the Twit­ter API. P2PU breaks the chal­lenge down into nine steps (the first of which is to intro­duce your­self to oth­ers already tak­ing the course). Par­tic­i­pants pro­ceed at their own pace and can reach out for help to oth­er stu­dents, men­tors and P2PU staff along the way.

Not all of the cours­es focus on new tech­nolo­gies. Always use­ful and nev­er out-of-date, this course is a per­fect fit for num­ber noobs.

You can find a list of P2Pu’s new cours­es here. And while you’ve got your think­ing cap on, don’t for­get our big list of 500 Free Online Cours­es.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

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“The Girl from Ipanema” Turns 50; Hear Its Bossa Nova Sound Covered by Sinatra, Krall, Metheny & Others

in Music | July 23rd, 2012

The first time I heard Stan Getz, Joao Gilber­to, and Astrud Gilber­to per­form “The Girl from Ipane­ma,” I could­n’t believe it was record­ed all the way back in 1963. That sur­prise owes a great deal to the skill of the record­ing engi­neers enlist­ed for that best­selling album, Getz/Gilberto. But it also has just as much to do with the com­po­si­tion cre­at­ed by Anto­nio Car­los Jobim and poet Vini­cius de Moraes, which pulls off the rare trick of imme­di­ate­ly and rich­ly evok­ing the ear­ly six­ties while remain­ing, in all the impor­tant ways, sim­ple and time­less. (It was as true when Gilber­to and Jobim reunit­ed to per­form the song as it was on the record.) They wrote the song fifty years ago next month, a span of time in which it has become the sec­ond-most cov­ered song of all time, right behind the Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day”.

But why do the prover­bial dance about the archi­tec­ture when you can sim­ply lis­ten? “The Girl from Ipane­ma” — sec­ond only, of course, to “Yes­ter­day” — offers you the plea­sure of count­less thou­sands of inter­pre­ta­tions, per­son­al­iza­tions, and reimag­in­ings. Lis­ten to enough ver­sions, and you’ll feel as if you’ve exam­ined the song from every pos­si­ble angle, reveal­ing its vital essence. You can hear it from Frank Sina­tra, Amy Wine­house, Sam­my Davis Jr. Cher, Herb Alpert, Diana Krall, Don­na Sum­mer, and even Mike Tyson.

The song res­onates all over the world, pro­duc­ing cov­ers from Pizzi­ca­to Five in Japan, Odd-Arne Jacob­sen in Nor­way, Acoustic Cafe in Korea, and KOMPRESSOR in Ger­many. And just when you think it’s been played every pos­si­ble way, anoth­er artist, usu­al­ly one with with their own high­ly dis­tinc­tive trade­mark sound, most recent­ly gui­tarist Pat Methe­ny — finds a way to expand the canon:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­day Ther­a­py: Getz and Gilber­to Per­form “The Girl from Ipane­ma”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Rare Film of Sculptor Auguste Rodin Working at His Studio in Paris (1915)

in Art | July 23rd, 2012

In the past few days we’ve fea­tured a series of remark­able lit­tle films of French artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Mon­et and Edgar Degas. Today we wrap things up with just one more: a rare glimpse of the great sculp­tor Auguste Rodin.

The footage was tak­en in 1915, two years before Rod­in’s death. There are sev­er­al sequences. The first shows the artist at the columned entrance to an uniden­ti­fied struc­ture, fol­lowed by a brief shot of him pos­ing in a gar­den some­where. The rest of the film, begin­ning at the 53-sec­ond mark, was clear­ly shot at the pala­tial, but dilap­i­dat­ed, Hôtel Biron, which Rodin was using as a stu­dio and sec­ond home.

The man­sion was built as a pri­vate res­i­dence in the ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry, and served as a Catholic school for girls from 1820 until about 1904, when it became ille­gal for pub­lic mon­ey to be used for reli­gious edu­ca­tion. When the last of the nuns cleared out, the rooms of the Hôtel Biron were rent­ed out to a diverse group of peo­ple that includ­ed some notable artists: Jean Cocteau, Isado­ra Dun­can, Hen­ri Matisse and Rain­er Maria Rilke, who served for a time as Rod­in’s sec­re­tary. It was Rilke’s wife, the sculp­tor Clara West­hoff Rilke, who first told Rodin about the place in 1909.

Rodin first rent­ed four rooms on the main floor, but was alarmed when he learned of plans to sell the prop­er­ty off in pieces to devel­op­ers. So he made a deal with the gov­ern­ment: In exchange for bequeath­ing all his works to the French state, the sculp­tor was allowed to occu­py the man­sion for the rest of his life, and after he died, the estate would become the Musée Rodin.

By the time actor Sacha Gui­t­ry and his cam­era­man arrived to film this scene from Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land,” Rodin was the sole occu­pant of the Hôtel Biron. The film shows the 74-year-old artist walk­ing down the weed-cov­ered steps of the man­sion and work­ing inside, chip­ping away at a mar­ble stat­ue with a ham­mer and chis­el. When Rodin was asked once about how he cre­at­ed his stat­ues, he said, “I choose a block of mar­ble and chop off what­ev­er I don’t need.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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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Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: Jerry Seinfeld’s News Series Debuts on the Web

in Comedy, Television | July 23rd, 2012

You watched all 180 episodes of Sein­feld, not once but six times. You laughed your way through anoth­er 80 episodes of Curb Your Enthu­si­asm. You’re crav­ing more — more Jer­ry, more Lar­ry. You need anoth­er dose of their spe­cial brand of com­e­dy. At last, some relief. Last Fri­day, Jer­ry Sein­feld’s new series, Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee debuted on the web, and it’s entire­ly free — just the way we like it. You don’t have to pay HBO, Com­cast, or Net­flix for a laugh. It’s all gratis, thanks to the show’s spon­sor Crack­le.

You can watch the long pro­mo for the series above, and then dive right into the new­ly-released first episode “Lar­ry Eats a Pan­cake.” It runs 13 min­utes (watch here or below) and com­bines Curb Your Enthu­si­asm’s ciné­ma vérité style with Sein­feld’s fas­ci­na­tion with noth­ing. What more could you want?

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Pavarotti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Other Friends

in Music | July 22nd, 2012

We remem­ber Pavarot­ti (1935–2007) singing with Plá­ci­do Domin­go and José Car­reras. But how about when he sang with U2, Queen (sans Fred­die Mer­cury), the great soul singer Bar­ry White, Sting, and Lou Reed. And then there’s my favorite odd cou­pling — Pavarot­ti singing “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” with the God­fa­ther of Soul, James Brown. The per­for­mances were record­ed at a series of “Pavarot­ti and Friends” con­certs held dur­ing the 1990s. They’re all avail­able on DVD here: The Pavarot­ti & Friends Col­lec­tion: The Com­plete Con­certs, 1992–2000.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best Japan­ese Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup

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