Andy Samberg Announces Death of Liberal Arts, Coolness of Science Majors at Harvard Class Day

Every time Har­vard Class Day rolls around, you can expect a few good laughs from a come­di­an. In years past, Sacha Baron Cohen (a Cam­bridge grad), appear­ing as Ali G, offered some words of non­sen­si­cal wis­dom to Har­vard grads. Amy Poehler and Will Fer­rell have done the same. This year brings Andy Sam­berg, a Sat­ur­day Night Live cast mem­ber and co-star in var­i­ous com­ic films. The high­lights?

  • 4:29 mark: Announces that His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, any­thing relat­ed to Art, and any­thing that ends with “Stud­ies,” are offi­cial­ly use­less.
  • 5:12 mark: Declares that Math and Sci­ence majors are cool .… final­ly.
  • 9:13 mark: Reads poem by WB Yeats in his own, nov­el way.
  • 10:20 mark: Impres­sions begin.
  • 14:07: Awk­ward­ly comes on to all the moth­ers in the crowd.
  • 15:04: Awk­ward­ly comes on to all the fathers in the crowd.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

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David Rees and His One-Man Artisanal Pencil Sharpening Service

This is for any­one with a love of old school wood­work­ing — luthiers, ébénistes and the rest. In 2009, the humorist David Rees gave up car­toon­ing and opened up his one-man arti­sanal pen­cil sharp­en­ing ser­vice in Bea­con, New York, an old fac­to­ry town along the Hud­son Riv­er. Just a man, some high qual­i­ty cedar, a knife, and an occa­sion­al pen­cil sharp­er revive a bygone era and a dis­ap­pear­ing instru­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. 400 pen­cils lat­er, at $15 a pop, Rees has some­thing good going. You can learn more about Rees and his crafts­man­ship by read­ing (seri­ous­ly) his new book, How to Sharp­en Pen­cils, with a for­ward by John Hodg­man.

Note: Rees uses some NSFW lan­guage dur­ing the video.

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A Most Unfortunate Commencement Typo at UT Austin

We’ll let you spot the typo to end all typos. Need­less to say, the school has issued its mea cul­pa on Twit­ter and start­ed print­ing new com­mence­ment brochures. Now they’ll wait with bat­ed breath to see if their goof becomes fod­der for The Dai­ly Show. We all make mis­takes and then we move on. via Jim Romanesko

Give us a fol­low on Face­book and Twit­ter, and you can share intel­li­gent media (and the occa­sion­al joke) with fam­i­ly and friends.

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The Miracle of Flight, the Classic Early Animation by Terry Gilliam

As Michael Palin once put it, “there’s no get­ting away from the wit, won­der and wiz­ardry of the man Cahiers du Ciné­ma once described as Ter­ry Gilliam.”

Those qual­i­ties are clear­ly vis­i­ble in this very fun­ny ear­ly film by Gilliam called The Mir­a­cle of Flight. The film was made in 1971 for the Amer­i­can-British TV show The Mar­ty Feld­man Com­e­dy Machine. Mon­ty Python was on hia­tus that year, so Gilliam went to work for the short-lived Com­e­dy Machine, cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­it sequence and var­i­ous ani­mat­ed fea­tures using his trade­mark air­brush and paper cutout tech­niques. (Watch his primer on doing your own cutout ani­ma­tion here.) The mate­r­i­al for The Mir­a­cle of Flight was appar­ent­ly pack­aged as a stand-alone film in 1974, right after Gilliam’s first film, Sto­ry­time.  It was lat­er used as a bonus fea­ture before the­atri­cal screen­ings of Gilliam movies, and dur­ing live Python per­for­mances. The film ver­sion is slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the one aired on the Com­e­dy Machine. Accord­ing to Smarter Than The Aver­age, “for the the­atri­cal ver­sion it lost a griz­zly punch­line where a man who had failed at his attempt to fly by emu­lat­ing the ergonom­ics of a bird takes his revenge by rip­ping the bird to pieces.” The writer then goes on to describe details only a Python fanat­ic could notice:

The Mir­a­cle of Flight in par­tic­u­lar is a cor­nu­copia of odd­i­ties for the Python con­nois­seur, con­tain­ing as it does one line record­ed by Ter­ry Jones, the tarred-and-feath­ered char­ac­ter who appears in Ani­ma­tions of Mor­tal­i­ty, the moun­tain in the finale of the Mean­ing of Life com­put­er game and the ani­mat­ed woman from Python who says “Turn that tele­vi­sion off–you know it’s bad for your eyes”. Most baf­fling of all is the muzak in the air­port ter­mi­nal, which is the same as used in the Den­tal sequence of the Mean­ing of Life CD-Rom near­ly thir­ty years lat­er. For sheer num­bers of Python iconog­ra­phy appear­ing in a non-Python pro­duc­tion, The Mir­a­cle of Flight’s only rival is Eric Idle’s music video for George Har­rison’s Cracker­box Palace. But I digress.

Indeed. But we enjoyed it. And you’ll enjoy The Mir­a­cle of Flight, which might more accu­rate­ly be called The Tri­umph of Grav­i­ty.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

John Cleese Plays the Devil, Makes a Special Appeal for Hell, 1966

Hell. We tend to take it for grant­ed. Have you ever stopped to think about the heat­ing bills, or the stu­pen­dous over­head?

John Cleese plays a cash-strapped Prince of Dark­ness in this clas­sic sketch from The Frost Report, the show that launched Cleese as a tele­vi­sion star in Britain. He was 26 years old at the time. The pro­gram was host­ed by David Frost, who is per­haps best known for his 1977 inter­views of Richard Nixon. There were four oth­er future Mon­ty Python come­di­ans on the writ­ing staff of The Frost Report–Gra­ham Chap­man, Ter­ry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle–but only Cleese was a cast mem­ber. The show was broad­cast in 1966 and 1967, with each week­ly episode cen­tered around a par­tic­u­lar theme, like love, leisure, class and author­i­ty. The “Souls in Tor­ment Appeal” is from a March 24, 1966 pro­gram about sin. It’s a fun­ny sketch.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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: 

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

What Happens When a Terry Gross/Fresh Air Interview Ends: A Comic Look

If you’re a reg­u­lar read­er of Open Cul­ture, and if you live in the Unit­ed States, then chances are you lis­ten to Ter­ry Gross’ Fresh Air inter­views on NPR, at least occa­sion­al­ly. There’s also a good chance that you’ve won­dered, at some point dur­ing the past 30 years, what the host looks like and what goes on behind the scenes. Now you can find out … sort of.

Above, we’re fea­tur­ing a new video by come­di­an Mike Bir­biglia, which gives you a fun­ny and entire­ly fic­tion­al look at what hap­pens when a Fresh Air inter­view draws to a close. The video was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced for the “This Amer­i­can Life” live show, which was broad­cast to 500 movie the­aters on Thurs­day night. If you’re a casu­al or ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er to Fresh Air, it’s good for a laugh. And if you’ve nev­er lis­tened to the show before, you can get acquaint­ed by lis­ten­ing to Ter­ry’s actu­al inter­view of Bir­biglia in Octo­ber 2010. Catch it right here, or lis­ten below.

via AllTh­ingsD

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

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Jacques Tati Film Festival: Four Rare Films, 1935–1967

Jacques Tati was the gen­tle poet of French cin­e­ma. His come­dies, includ­ing the clas­sics Mon Oncle and Mr. Hulot’s Hol­i­day, are less about hilar­i­ty than what Roger Ebert calls “an amused affec­tion for human nature.”

Tati’s six fea­ture films coin­cide with the peri­od of French his­to­ry known as the trente glo­rieuses, the thir­ty “glo­ri­ous” years of rapid­ly ris­ing pros­per­i­ty after World War II. As mod­ern France grows up all around, Tati’s pro­tag­o­nists bum­ble along at an agrar­i­an pace. Tati’s “out-of-synch­ness” is evi­dent not only in the con­tent, but in the form of his films. They are essen­tial­ly silent films in an age of talk­ing pic­tures. Sound and dia­logue are sec­ondary. Tati’s pro­tag­o­nists tend to mum­ble while com­mu­ni­cat­ing through mime.

Today we offer four rarely seen short films fea­tur­ing Tati as a per­former. Gai Dimanche (“Live­ly Sun­day”), above, is the sec­ond of Tati’s sur­viv­ing film per­for­mances. Direct­ed by Jacques Berr in 1935, it fea­tures Tati and his friend Enri­co Spro­cani, a cir­cus clown who went by the name of “Rhum,” as a pair of city tramps who hatch a scheme to spend an all-expens­es-paid day in the coun­try. The sto­ry was writ­ten by Tati and Spro­cani, and was inspired by their own straight­ened eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances. It’s a rough film, with just a hint of what was to come. “Gai Dimanche,” writes David Bel­los in Jacques Tati: His Life and Art, “seems to have less to do with Tati’s méti­er as a mime, and more to do with the ear­ly devel­op­ment of the themes that he would lat­er elab­o­rate into films of real imag­i­na­tive qual­i­ty.”

Soigne ton Gauche (“Watch Your Left”), 1936:

Direct­ed by René Clé­ment, Soigne ton Gauche is a more pol­ished film than Gai Dimanche. Draw­ing on Tati’s ear­ly music-hall work as a “sport­ing impres­sion­ist,” it tells the sto­ry of a dull-wit­ted dream­er thrust into the role of a box­ing cham­pi­on’s spar­ring part­ner. “Though the mimed box­ing match is the cen­tre­piece of the movie’s plot,” writes Bel­los, “all the inter­est of the work is in what is added to the com­ic fight–the pic­to­r­i­al and nar­ra­tive sur­round, its fic­tion­al­ized con­text, and espe­cial­ly the make-believe of the chil­dren and of the char­ac­ter of the unin­ten­tion­al spar­ring part­ner.”

L’É­cole des Fac­teurs (“School for Post­men”), 1947:

Tati’s first film after World War II, L’É­cole des Fac­teurs is also his first as direc­tor. Although the film is often dat­ed 1947, the exact year of pro­duc­tion is uncer­tain. Accord­ing to Bel­los, film­ing may have begun as ear­ly as 1945. Filmed near the south­ern vil­lage of Aix-en-Provence, L’É­cole des Fac­teurs is in many ways a tri­al run for Tati’s first full-length fea­ture, Jour de Fête (“Fes­ti­val Day”). It tells the sto­ry of a rur­al post­man’s clum­sy efforts to join into the mod­ern spir­it of ever-increas­ing effi­cien­cy. “The vision we share through L’É­cole des Fac­teurs is a satir­i­cal one,” writes Bel­los: “through exag­ger­a­tion and ridicule, it prompts a neg­a­tive view of those things that Tati disliked–work, effi­cien­cy, hur­ry, organisation–and no less sure­ly sug­gests that men in peaked caps are arrant fools.” The film is Tati’s first mature work. As Bel­los writes:

There is not a visu­al­ly dull moment in L’É­cole des Fac­teurs, and its qual­i­ty derives in large part from its extreme econ­o­my of means. But with­out the pecu­liar effect of Tati’s size, of his anti­quat­ed half-mil­i­tary uni­form, and of his com­ic clum­sinss so well-honed that it acquires a kind of grace, the film would not be any­thing very much. It was intend­ed as a launch-vehi­cle for Tati as a new com­ic cin­e­ma per­son­al­i­ty. It is not a mas­ter­piece; but it is a very promis­ing start, far ahead of any­thing Tati had done before the war.

Cours du Soir (“Evening Class­es”), 1967:

Where the oth­er three short films we’ve pre­sent­ed make up a kind of pre­lude to Tati’s career, Cours du Soir seems more like a coda. The film was shot in 1966 by one of Tati’s assis­tants, Nico­las Ribows­ki, at “Tativille” the sprawl­ing set of Play­time. Although Bel­los calls it one of Tati’s “least excit­ing per­for­mances ever,” the film offers a rare glimpse of the mas­ter explain­ing the art of mime to a group of stu­dents. As always, Tati appears as a man out of step with his time.

The films men­tioned above will be added to our meta col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

 

David Byrne Plays Seven Characters & Interviews Himself in Funny Promo for Stop Making Sense

We’ve shown you the heady David Byrne lec­tur­ing some­times on how archi­tec­ture helped music evolve, and some­times on the con­nec­tions between music and cog­ni­tion. We’ve also giv­en you the breezi­er David Byrne extolling the virtues of urban bicy­cling. Now comes the light­heart­ed David Byrne inter­view­ing him­self in a pro­mo­tion­al video for the Talk­ing Heads 1984 con­cert movie, Stop Mak­ing Sense. (Watch a clas­sic clip below.) In a mat­ter of min­utes, Byrne, play­ing the role of inter­view­er and inter­vie­wee, changes char­ac­ter, mov­ing from white woman to African Amer­i­can male, from used car sales­man to old geyser, all while explain­ing the gen­e­sis and phi­los­o­phy of the film. And some­how it all makes sense.…


If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

 

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