Fellini’s Three Bank of Rome Commercials, the Last Thing He Did Behind a Camera (1992)

in Film, Television | August 25th, 2014

It hap­pened before, and it still hap­pens now and again today, but in the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, auteurs real­ly got into mak­ing com­mer­cials: Ing­mar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch. Not, per­haps, the first names in film­mak­ing you’d asso­ciate with com­mer­cial­i­ty, but there we have it. Where, though, to place Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, direc­tor of La Dolce Vita, Satyri­con, and Amar­cord, movies that, while hard­ly assem­bled by the num­bers, could nev­er resist the enter­tain­ing and even plea­sur­able (or the some­how plea­sur­ably dis­plea­sur­able) spec­ta­cle? On one hand, Felli­ni went so far as to cam­paign against com­mer­cials air­ing dur­ing the broad­cast of motion pic­tures; on the oth­er hand, he made a few of the things, and not minor ones, either. In a post here on Fellini’s own com­mer­cials, Mike Springer ref­er­enced a trio shot for the Bank of Rome, quot­ing on the sub­ject Felli­ni biog­ra­ph­er Peter Bon­danel­la, who notes their inspi­ra­tion by “var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books,” and oth­er Felli­ni biog­ra­ph­er Tul­lio Kezich, who describes them as “the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.” Today, we present all three.


“Mon­ey is every­where but so is poet­ry,” Felli­ni him­self once said. “What we lack are the poets.” In these three spots, the cre­ator syn­ony­mous with Ital­ian auteur­hood brings poet­ry and mon­ey togeth­er — even more so than most com­mer­cial-mak­ing “cre­ative” film­mak­ers, giv­en the overt­ly finan­cial nature of the clien­t’s busi­ness. You can read more about the project, “the last thing he did behind a cam­era,” at Sight & Sound: “In 1992, the year before his death, [Felli­ni] realised his best cor­po­rate work. [ … ] Here Felli­ni com­pre­hend­ed, skil­ful­ly con­veyed and exposed the ulti­mate essence of adver­tis­ing: the cre­ation of needs and fears that the giv­en prod­uct will mag­i­cal­ly solve.” The set­up involves Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio as a night­mare-plagued man and Fer­nan­do Rey as his atten­tive­ly lis­ten­ing ana­lyst — and in addi­tion to his pro­fes­sion­al inter­ests, evi­dent­ly quite a Bank of Rome enthu­si­ast. The spot at the top of the post includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, but as with Fellini’s fea­tures, even non-Italo­phones can expect rich, long-form (by com­mer­cial stan­dards) audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ences watch­ing the oth­er two as well (above) — and ones, unlike any expe­ri­ence you’d have actu­al­ly step­ping into a bank, not quite of this real­i­ty. Today, we present all three, the last films Felli­ni ever made.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Flannery O’Connor Explains the Limited Value of MFA Programs: “Competence By Itself Is Deadly”

in Education, Writing | August 25th, 2014

flannery-reading-e1366303327545

Flan­nery O’Connor once wrote, “because fine writ­ing rarely pays, fine writ­ers usu­al­ly end up teach­ing, and the [MFA] degree, how­ev­er worth­less to the spir­it, can be expect­ed to add some­thing to the flesh.” That phrase “worth­less to the spir­it” con­tains a great deal of the neg­a­tive atti­tude O’Connor expressed toward the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of cre­ative writ­ing in MFA pro­grams like the one she helped make famous at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa. The ver­biage comes from an essay she wrote for the alum­ni mag­a­zine of the Geor­gia Col­lege for Women after com­plet­ing her degree in 1947, quot­ed in the Chad Har­bach-edit­ed col­lec­tion of essays MFA vs. NYC. Although fresh from the pro­gram, O’Connor was already on her way to lit­er­ary suc­cess, hav­ing pub­lished her first sto­ry, “The Gera­ni­um,” the year pre­vi­ous and begun work on her first nov­el, Wise Blood. Nev­er­the­less, her insights on the MFA are not par­tic­u­lar­ly san­guine.

On the one hand, she writes with char­ac­ter­is­tic dark humor, writ­ing pro­grams can serve as alter­na­tives to “the poor house and the mad house.” In grad­u­ate school, “the writer is encour­aged or at least tol­er­at­ed in his odd ways.” An MFA pro­gram may offer some small respite from the lone­li­ness and hard­ship of the writ­ing life, and ulti­mate­ly pro­vide a cre­den­tial to be “pro­nounced upon by his future employ­ers should they chance to be of the acad­e­my.” But the time and effort (not to men­tion the expense, unless one is ful­ly fund­ed) may not be worth the cost, O’Connor sug­gests. Her own pro­gram at Iowa was “designed to cov­er the writer’s tech­ni­cal needs […], and to pro­vide him with a lit­er­ary atmos­phere which he would not be able to find else­where. The writer can expect very lit­tle else.”

Lat­er, in her col­lec­tion of essays Mys­tery and Man­ners, O’Connor expressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. Con­clud­ing a lengthy dis­cus­sion on the very lim­it­ed role of the teacher of cre­ative writ­ing, she con­cludes that “the teacher’s work is large­ly neg­a­tive […] a mat­ter of say­ing ‘This doesn’t work because…’ or ‘This does work because….’” Remark­ing on the com­mon obser­va­tion that uni­ver­si­ties sti­fle writ­ers, O’Con­nor writes, “My opin­ion is that they don’t sti­fle enough of them. There’s many a best-sell­er that could have been pre­vent­ed by a good teacher.” Cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers may nod their heads in agree­ment, and shake them in frus­tra­tion. But we should return to that phrase “worth­less to the spir­it,” for while MFA pro­grams may turn out “com­pe­tent” writ­ers of fic­tion, O’Con­nor admits, they can­not pro­duce “fine writ­ing”:

In the last twen­ty years the col­leges have been empha­siz­ing cre­ative writ­ing to such an extent that you almost feel that any idiot with a nick­el’s worth of tal­ent can emerge from a writ­ing class able to write a com­pe­tent sto­ry. In fact, so many peo­ple can now write com­pe­tent sto­ries that the short sto­ry as a medi­um is in dan­ger of dying of com­pe­tence. We want com­pe­tence, but com­pe­tence by itself is dead­ly. What is need­ed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writ­ing class.

O’Connor prob­a­bly over­es­ti­mates the degree to which “any idiot” can learn to write with com­pe­tence, but her point is clear. She wrote these words in the mid-fifties, in an essay titled “The Nature and Aim of Fic­tion.” As Harbach’s new essay col­lec­tion demon­strates, the debate about the val­ue of MFA programs—which have expand­ed expo­nen­tial­ly since O’Connor’s day—has not by any means been set­tled. And while there are cer­tain­ly those writ­ers, she notes wry­ly, who can “learn to write bad­ly enough” and “make a great deal of mon­ey,” the true artist may be in the same posi­tion after the MFA as they were before it, com­pelled to “chop a path in the wilder­ness of his own soul; a dis­heart­en­ing process, life­long and lone­some.”

via Every­thing That Ris­es

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

Toni Mor­ri­son, Nora Ephron, and Dozens More Offer Advice in Free Cre­ative Writ­ing “Mas­ter Class”

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion’ (c. 1960)

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Orson Welles Turns Heart of Darkness Into a Radio Drama, and Almost His First Great Film

in Film | August 25th, 2014

There’s some­thing about cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces that were nev­er made that tan­ta­lize the imag­i­na­tion of film geeks every­where. What would the world look like if Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky actu­al­ly man­aged to make his ver­sion of Dune, com­plete with Pink Floyd score and Moe­bius designed sets? How would have Stan­ley Kubrick’s career evolved if he got Napoleon to the screen? And would a col­lab­o­ra­tion between David Lynch and Den­nis Pot­ter, which almost hap­pened with The White Hotel, be as com­plete­ly amaz­ing as I imag­ine?

Of all these ill-fat­ed projects, the one that per­haps casts the biggest shad­ow over cin­e­ma is Orson Welles’s attempt to adapt Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness. (Find Con­rad’s orig­i­nal text in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.) In 1939, Welles went to Hol­ly­wood, look­ing to con­quer film in the same way that he con­quered radio and the stage. By that time, he was already famous for his trail­blaz­ing Broad­way pro­duc­tion of Julius Cae­sar, his pop­u­lar Mer­cury The­ater radio pro­gram and for scar­ing the liv­ing crap out of the nation with his noto­ri­ous ver­sion of The War of the Worlds. So he pre­sent­ed RKO stu­dio with an auda­cious, grandiose 174-page script for Heart of Dark­ness but, after a cou­ple months of wran­gling, it proved to be just too auda­cious and grandiose for the execs. So then Welles pitched them Cit­i­zen Kane. That’s right, the film that would go down as the great­est film of all time was a plan B.

If you look at Welles’s script for Dark­ness, you can see why Hol­ly­wood might have thought twice about the project. Welles, who at that point hadn’t actu­al­ly made a movie, was propos­ing to rad­i­cal­ly shake up the gram­mar of Hol­ly­wood sto­ry­telling. For instance, the movie was to be shot in the first per­son, where what the book’s protagonist/narrator Mar­low sees is what the audi­ence sees. Robert Mont­gomery tried the same gim­mick a few years lat­er in the adap­ta­tion of Ray­mond Chandler’s Lady in the Lake with mixed results.

Hol­ly­wood’s peren­ni­al ner­vous­ness about movies with overt polit­i­cal over­tones is anoth­er rea­son why the movie got scotched. As with his mod­ern rework­ing of Julius Cae­sar (find it here), Welles took a strong stance against the rise of fas­cism in Europe. “You feel that if this film had been made, Hol­ly­wood might have been a dif­fer­ent place,” said artist Fiona Ban­ner in an inter­view with The Dai­ly Tele­graph. In 2012, she staged the first ever pub­lic read­ing of the script star­ring actor Bri­an Cox. “When [Welles] start­ed writ­ing it, fas­cism wasn’t such a big sto­ry in Hol­ly­wood, but by the time he fin­ished it, in 1939, it must have been some­thing of a hot pota­to. That was prob­a­bly the main rea­son it didn’t get made. The more I’ve looked into it, the more I’ve realised how close he is to the stuff in Europe, and not just in the obvi­ous ways of giv­ing all these com­pa­ny men that Mar­low meets Ger­man names. It’s cen­tral to the tale.”

Conrad’s sto­ry clear­ly fas­ci­nat­ed Welles. As you can see above, he adapt­ed the novel­la for his radio show in 1938. His pro­duc­ing part­ner, and leg­endary actor in his own right, John House­man spec­u­lat­ed why the direc­tor was so tak­en with Dark­ness.

We had done this Con­rad sto­ry with only mod­er­ate suc­cess on the Mer­cury The­atre of the Air, and while it was a won­der­ful title, I nev­er quite under­stood why Orson had cho­sen such a dif­fuse and dif­fi­cult sub­ject for his first film. I think, in part, he was attract­ed by the sense of cor­rod­ing evil, the slow, per­va­sive dete­ri­o­ra­tion through which the dark con­ti­nent destroys its con­queror and exploiter—Western Man in the per­son of Kurtz. But, main­ly, as we dis­cussed it, I found that he was excit­ed by the device—not an entire­ly orig­i­nal one—of the Cam­era Eye. Like many of Orson­’s cre­ative notions, it revolved around him­self in the dou­ble role of direc­tor and actor. As Mar­low, Con­rad’s nar­ra­tor and moral rep­re­sen­ta­tive, invis­i­ble but ever-present, Orson would have a chance to con­vey the mys­te­ri­ous cur­rents that run under the sur­face of the nar­ra­tive; as Kurtz, he would be play­ing the char­ac­ter about whom, as nar­ra­tor, he was weav­ing this web of con­jec­ture and mys­tery.

Years lat­er, Welles summed up why Heart of Dark­ness nev­er got made in an inter­view with Bar­bara Leam­ing. “I want­ed my kind of con­trol. They did­n’t under­stand that. There was no quar­relling. It was just two dif­fer­ent points of view, absolute­ly oppo­site each oth­er. Mine was tak­en to be igno­rance, and I read their posi­tion as estab­lished dumb­head­ed­ness.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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Jorge Luis Borges Poses with Bread Basket on His Head During a Light Moment

in Literature, Random | August 24th, 2014

borges breadbasket

Let’s give three cheers and quick­ly cel­e­brate the birth­day of the Argen­tine writer Jorge Luis Borges, born on this day in 1899. Above, we have a pho­to of Borges tak­en dur­ing a seem­ing­ly fes­tive moment. Accord­ing to the blog Me and My Big Mouth, the pho­to comes from the col­lec­tion of Nor­man Thomas di Gio­van­ni, whose biog­ra­phy Georgie and Elsa — Jorge Luis Borges and His Wife: The Untold Sto­ry will hit book­stores on Sep­tem­ber 2 (though it can be pre-ordered now). Paul Ther­oux calls the bio “a long, sat­is­fy­ing and pen­e­trat­ing gaze into the pri­vate life of an acknowl­edged genius, his work, his eva­sions, and his pecu­liar heartaches.”

If you care to turn this cel­e­bra­tion into a full-day affair, we’d rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures on Poet­ry, record­ed at Har­vard. The 9 lec­tures pro­vide hours of intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion. Or watch the free doc­u­men­tary, Jorge Luis Borges: The Mir­ror Man, which one review­er called  a “bit of every­thing – part biog­ra­phy, part lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, part hero-wor­ship, part book read­ing, and part psy­chol­o­gy.” 

 You can find a few more Borges favorites from our archive right below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Borges Explains The Task of Art

Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions

Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Por­trait

Jorge Luis Borges, Film Crit­ic, Reviews Cit­i­zen Kane — and Gets a Response from Orson Welles

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Miles Davis’ Chili Recipe Revealed

in Food & Drink, Music | August 23rd, 2014

Image by Tom Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

No one cooked on the trum­pet like Miles Davis. And, as it turns out, he was also quite good in the kitchen (see? I spared you a pun). Tired of going out to restau­rants, the food­ie Davis decid­ed to learn to make his favorite dish­es. “I taught myself how to cook by read­ing books and prac­tic­ing, just like you do on an instru­ment,” he wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “I could cook most of the French dishes—because I real­ly liked French cooking—and all the black Amer­i­can dish­es.”

Davis, writes the Chica­go Sun-Times, “knew how to sim­mer with soul […] He made chili, Ital­ian veal chops and he fried fish in a secret bat­ter.” Davis’ cook­book has dis­ap­peared, and he’s appar­ent­ly tak­en his recipe secrets to the grave with him. All but one—his favorite, “a chili dish,” he writes, “I called Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack. I served it with spaghet­ti, grat­ed cheese, and oys­ter crack­ers.”

While Davis didn’t exact­ly spell out the ingre­di­ents or instruc­tions for his beloved chili in his mem­oir, his first wife Frances, whom Davis trust­ed implic­it­ly with the chili mak­ing, sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing to Best Life mag­a­zine in 2007. While you’re prep­ping, I rec­om­mend you put on 1956’s Cookin’ With the Miles Davis Quin­tet.

Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack (Serves 6)

1/4 lb. suet (beef fat)
1 large onion
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground veal
1/2 lb. ground pork
salt and pep­per
2 tsp. gar­lic pow­der
1 tsp. chili pow­der
1 tsp. cumin seed
2 cans kid­ney beans, drained
1 can beef con­som­mé
1 drop red wine vine­gar
3 lb. spaghet­ti
parme­san cheese
oys­ter crack­ers
Heineken beer

1. Melt suet in large heavy pot until liq­uid fat is about an inch high. Remove sol­id pieces of suet from pot and dis­card.
2. In same pot, sauté onion.
3. Com­bine meats in bowl; sea­son with salt, pep­per, gar­lic pow­der, chili pow­der, and cumin.
4. In anoth­er bowl, sea­son kid­ney beans with salt and pep­per.
5. Add meat to onions; sauté until brown.
6. Add kid­ney beans, con­som­mé, and vine­gar; sim­mer for about an hour, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly.
7. Add more sea­son­ings to taste, if desired.
8. Cook spaghet­ti accord­ing to pack­age direc­tions, and then divide among six plates.
9. Spoon meat mix­ture over each plate of spaghet­ti.
10. Top with Parme­san and serve oys­ter crack­ers on the side.
11. Open a Heineken.

Men­tal Floss, who bring us the above, also cites anoth­er recipe Davis learned from his father, quot­ed by John Szwed in So What: The Life of Miles Davis. This one comes with no instruc­tions, so “like a jazz musi­cian, you’ll have impro­vise.”

bacon grease
3 large cloves of gar­lic
1 green, 1 red pep­per
2 pounds ground lean chuck
2 tea­spoons cumin
1/2 jar of mus­tard
1/2 shot glass of vine­gar
2 tea­spoons of chili pow­der
dash­es of salt and pep­per
pin­to or kid­ney beans
1 can of toma­toes
1 can of beef broth

serve over lin­guine

Dig it, man.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

1967 Cook­book Fea­tures Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Gar­funkel, Bar­bra Streisand & More

Ernest Hemingway’s Sum­mer Camp­ing Recipes

Alice B. Tok­las Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch a Hand-Painted Animation of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”

in Animation, Literature | August 22nd, 2014

Pub­lished in 1864, Fyo­dor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Under­ground has a rep­u­ta­tion as the first exis­ten­tial­ist nov­el. It estab­lished a tem­plate for the genre with a por­trait of an iso­lat­ed man con­temp­tu­ous of the sor­did soci­ety around him, par­a­lyzed by doubt, and obsessed with the pain and absur­di­ty of his own exis­tence. Also true to form, the nar­ra­tive, though it has a plot of sorts, does not redeem its hero in any sense or offer any res­o­lu­tion to his gnaw­ing inner con­flict, con­clud­ing, lit­er­al­ly, as an unfin­ished text. Thir­teen years lat­er, the great Russ­ian writer, his health in decline but his lit­er­ary rep­u­ta­tion and finan­cial prospects much improved, wrote a sim­i­lar sto­ry, “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man.”

In this tale, an unnamed nar­ra­tor also med­i­tates on his absurd state, to the point of sui­cide. But he observes this spir­i­tu­al malaise at a dis­tance, recall­ing the sto­ry as an old­er man from a van­tage point of wis­dom: “I am a ridicu­lous per­son,” the sto­ry begins, “Now they call me a mad­man. That would be a pro­mo­tion if it were not that I remain as ridicu­lous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now.” This char­ac­ter, unlike Dostoevsky’s bit­ter under­ground man, has had a trans­for­ma­tive experience—a dream in which he expe­ri­ences the full moral weight of his choic­es on a grand scale. In a moment of instant enlight­en­ment, our pro­tag­o­nist becomes a kinder, more humane per­son con­cerned with the wel­fare of oth­ers.

It is the dif­fer­ence between these two tales which makes the sta­t­ic, inter­nal Under­ground a very dif­fi­cult sto­ry to adapt to the screen—as far as I know it hasn’t been done—and “Ridicu­lous Man,” with its vivid dream imagery and dynam­ic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, almost ide­al. The 1992 ani­ma­tion (in two parts above) uses painstak­ing­ly hand-paint­ed cells to bring to life the alter­nate world the nar­ra­tor finds him­self nav­i­gat­ing in his dream. From the flick­er­ing lamps against the drea­ry, dark­ened cityscape of the ridicu­lous man’s wak­ing life to the shift­ing, sun­lit sands of the dream­world, each detail of the sto­ry is fine­ly ren­dered with metic­u­lous care. Drawn and direct­ed by Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Alexan­der Petrov—who won an Acad­e­my Award for his 1999 adap­ta­tion of Hem­ing­way’s The Old Man and the Sea—this is clear­ly a labor of love, and of tremen­dous skill and patience.

The tech­nique Petrov uses, writes Gali­na Saubano­va, is one of“Finger Paint­ing”: “Forc­ing the paint on the glass, the artist draws with his fin­gers, using brush­es only in excep­tion­al cas­es. One fig­ure is one film frame, which flash­es with­in 1/24 of a sec­ond while watch­ing. Petrov draws more than a thou­sand paint­ings for one minute of his film.” In Russ­ian with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles tak­en from Con­stance Garnett’s trans­la­tion, the twen­ty-minute “ani­mat­ed paint­ing” sub­lime­ly real­izes Dostoevsky’s tale of per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion with a light­ness and lyri­cism that a live-action film can­not dupli­cate, although a 1990 BBC pro­duc­tion called “The Dream” cer­tain­ly has much to rec­om­mend it. If you like Petrov’s work, be sure to watch his Old Man and the Sea here. Also online are his short films “The Mer­maid” (1997) and “My Love” (2006).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See a Beau­ti­ful­ly Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1999)

Watch Piotr Dumala’s Won­der­ful Ani­ma­tions of Lit­er­ary Works by Kaf­ka and Dos­to­evsky

Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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Everyday Economics: A New Course by Marginal Revolution University Where Students Create the Syllabus

in Economics, Online Courses | August 22nd, 2014

In 2012, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, launched Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty (oth­er­wise known as MRUni­ver­si­ty) which deliv­ers free, inter­ac­tive cours­es in the eco­nom­ics space. Dur­ing its ear­ly days, MRUni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed cours­es on The Great Econ­o­mists, Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics, Inter­na­tion­al Trade, and The Eco­nom­ic His­to­ry of the Sovi­et Union. And now it’s cre­at­ing a some­what uncon­ven­tion­al new course called Every­day Eco­nom­ics. The course tries to show how eco­nom­ics impacts peo­ple’s day-to-day lives. And, rather suit­ably, MRUni­ver­si­ty is invit­ing its stu­dents — every­day peo­ple around the globe — to vote for top­ics the course should cov­er. It’s what’s called a “stu­dent-dri­ven” course.

The course is being built in stages, and you can already watch lec­tures (above) from the first sec­tion, taught by Don Boudreaux. It cov­ers Trade and Pros­per­i­ty broad­ly speak­ing, and gets into top­ics like The Hock­ey Stick of Human Pros­per­i­ty and How the Divi­sion of Knowl­edge Saved My Son’s Life.

The next sec­tion, to be taught by Tyler Cowen, will focus on Food. And right now MRUni­ver­si­ty wants your input on the top­ics this sec­tion might focus on. For exam­ple, you might rec­om­mend that they explain “Why is tip­ping so preva­lent in restau­rants but not in oth­er parts of the econ­o­my?” You can make your sug­ges­tions here.

everyday economics

What oth­er top­ics will the course cov­er as it unfolds? It’s all still TBD. But, again, you’re invit­ed to help shape the syl­labus. Big­ger pic­ture sug­ges­tions are being sought here.

For more cours­es on the Dis­mal Sci­ence, don’t for­get to peruse our list of Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es. It part of our meta col­lec­tion called, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es, Bring­ing Free Cours­es in Eco­nom­ics to the Web

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in New MOOC

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

Take a Free Course on the Finan­cial Mar­kets with Robert Shiller, Win­ner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

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Shakespeare’s Restless World: A Portrait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Podcasts

in History, Literature, Theatre | August 22nd, 2014

bardtimes_2192865b

The BBC’s acclaimed pod­cast A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects brought us just that: the sto­ry of human civ­i­liza­tion as told through arti­facts from the Egypt­ian Mum­my of Horned­jitef to a Cre­tan stat­ue of a Minoan Bull-leaper to a Kore­an roof tile to a Chi­nese solar-pow­ered lamp. All those 100 items came from the for­mi­da­ble col­lec­tion held by the British Muse­um, and any ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er to that pod­cast will know the name of Neil Mac­Gre­gor, the insti­tu­tion’s direc­tor. Now, Mac­Gre­gor has returned with anoth­er series of his­tor­i­cal audio explo­rations, one much more focused both tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly but no less deep than its pre­de­ces­sor. The ten-part Shake­speare’s Rest­less World “looks at the world through the eyes of Shake­speare’s audi­ence by explor­ing objects from that tur­bu­lent peri­od” — i.e., William Shake­speare’s life, which spanned the 1560s to the 1610s: a time of Venet­ian glass gob­lets, African sunken gold, chim­ing clocks, and hor­rif­ic relics of exe­cu­tion.

These trea­sures illu­mi­nate not only the Eng­lish but the glob­al affairs of Shake­speare’s day. The Bard lived dur­ing a time when mur­der­ers plot­ted against Eliz­a­beth I and James I, Eng­land expelled its Moors, Great Britain strug­gled to unite itself, human­i­ty gained an ever more pre­cise grasp on the keep­ing of time, and even “civ­i­lized” nations got spooked and slaugh­tered their own. Just as the study of Shake­speare’s plays reveals a world bal­anced on the tip­ping point between the mod­ern con­scious­ness and the long, slow awak­en­ing that came before, the study of Shake­speare’s time reveals a world that both retains sur­pris­ing­ly vivid ele­ments of its bru­tal past and has already begun incor­po­rat­ing sur­pris­ing­ly advanced ele­ments of the future to come. Even if you don’t give a hoot about the lit­er­ary mer­its of Richard III, Titus Andron­i­cus, or The Mer­chant of Venice, these real-life sto­ries of polit­i­cal intrigue, grue­some blood­shed, and, er, Venice will cer­tain­ly hold your atten­tion. You can start with the “tabloid his­to­ry of Shake­speare’s Eng­land” in the first episode of Shake­speare’s Rest­less World above, then con­tin­ue on either at the series’ site or on iTunes. And if you find your­self get­ting into the series, you can get Mac­Gre­gor’s com­pan­ion book, Shake­speare’s Rest­less World: Por­trait of an Era.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

Fol­ger Shake­speare Library Puts 80,000 Images of Lit­er­ary Art Online, and They’re All Free to Use

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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