Joshua Bell Plays Multimillion Dollar Fiddle in D.C. Metro

in Video - Arts & Culture | April 17th, 2007

Recent­ly a Wash­ing­ton Post staff writer, Gene Wein­garten, decid­ed to con­duct an usu­al exper­i­ment about high cul­ture. He talked one of the world’s finest vio­lin­ists, Joshua Bell, into tak­ing his mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar fid­dle to the Wash­ing­ton D.C. metro and play­ing incog­ni­to for com­muters dur­ing the morn­ing rush hour. The result? Hard­ly any­one slowed down, let alone stopped to lis­ten. Wein­garten’s arti­cle explores what hap­pened in fas­ci­nat­ing detail and rais­es trou­bling ques­tions about how we expe­ri­ence free cul­ture. Does art only mat­ter when we enjoy it in the right con­text? After a few min­utes in the sub­way, Bell said his own expec­ta­tions were rad­i­cal­ly low­ered, to the point that he was sick­en­ing­ly grate­ful when some­one dropped a dol­lar instead of a quar­ter into his (mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar) vio­lin case. Check out his amaz­ing per­for­mance (appar­ent­ly the acoustics were pret­ty good in the metro sta­tion):

You can lis­ten to the full ver­sion of Bel­l’s impromp­tu con­cert on the Wash­ing­ton Post web­site here. Inci­den­tal­ly, he went on to win the pres­ti­gious Avery Fish­er Prize this week. Mean­while Garten, the Wash­ing­ton Post writer who mas­ter­mind­ed the stunt, dis­cussed the expe­ri­ence on On the Media last Fri­day (iTunes — Feed — Site).

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Kurt Vonnegut in Second Life

in Video - Arts & Culture | April 12th, 2007


We’re not exact­ly break­ing news here today in men­tion­ing that author Kurt Von­negut has passed away. (Get the NY Times obit here.) In mem­o­ry of the writer, we thought that we’d present a fit­ting­ly uncon­ven­tion­al inter­view that was con­duct­ed last year in Sec­ond Life. (And, by the way, the irony of talk­ing today about a Von­negut inter­view in some­thing called Sec­ond Life is not exact­ly lost on us. Let’s hope that he’ll indeed have one.)

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Sopranos — All 6 Seasons Recapped in a 7 Minute Video

in Video - Arts & Culture | April 9th, 2007


The first episode of the sev­enth and final sea­son of the Sopra­nos aired last night. If you can’t quite remem­ber all the plot­lines that brought us from Sea­son 1 to this point, then give this snap­py lit­tle video a quick look. It boils down six sea­sons in sev­en min­utes. Don’t blink. You might miss some­thing. (Note: Like The Sopra­nos, this sum­ma­ry has strong/adult con­tent. If this is not your thing, then skip it.)

P.S. 60 min­utes just aired a seg­ment on the Sopra­nos. You may want to check it out.

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Oodles of Google Video Documentaries

in Google, Video - Arts & Culture | March 23rd, 2007

Last week, we talked about how it can be logis­ti­cal­ly dif­fi­cult to find smart videos on Google Video and YouTube. Then, this week, we stum­ble upon this: a no-frills web site called Best Online Doc­u­men­taries that aggre­gates, yes, you guessed it, high-qual­i­ty online doc­u­men­taries, almost all from Google Video. The video seg­ments are divid­ed into broad cat­e­gories (Biogra­phies, His­to­ry, Reli­gion, Sci­ence, etc), and, with­in them, you’ll find some items that deserve your time — includ­ing a his­to­ry of Byzan­tium, a biog­ra­phy of Mal­colm X, a look at Alfred Hitch­cock and his films, a pro­gram called The God Delu­sion fea­tur­ing the Oxford sci­en­tist Richard Dawkins, and, at the oth­er end of the spec­trum, a coun­ter­point British pro­gram, The Trou­ble with Athe­ism. If these pro­grams are up your alley, you can start perus­ing the larg­er col­lec­tion here.

Oth­er doc­u­men­taries and films can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies.

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University Video Collections

in Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | February 23rd, 2007

 

Note: Please don’t for­get to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es, which includes many cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties in video.

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Jazz Great Sonny Rollins on iTunes and Youtube

in Video - Arts & Culture | February 15th, 2007


Sonnyrollins2Son­ny Rollins, who made his name with the acclaimed album Sax­o­phone Colos­sus, has defied the
fate

of oth­er jazz greats. He’s long out­lived his impor­tant con­tem­po­raries – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelo­nious Monk – and, at 76 years old, he’s still out there issu­ing new albums (the lat­est being Son­ny, Please), and even new web videos.

Jazz fans will want to explore the new 12-part web video series that’s just being rolled out. Sched­uled to be released in month­ly install­ments (a new one on the 23rd of each month), the video series will “intro­duce Rollins, the man and his music, to new lis­ten­ers,” using “musi­cal per­for­mances, both cur­rent and clas­sic, inter­views and exclu­sive behind-the-scenes videos.” (See the full project descrip­tion here.) Enti­tled “The Son­ny Rollins Pod­cast,” the col­lec­tion can be accessed on iTunes in video. But you can also find the videos on Youtube/Google Video if you don’t have (or know how to use) a video-enabled iPod. That may be the eas­i­est way to go.

The first episode, “On The Road with Son­ny,” just came out in the past few weeks, and it fea­tures “behind the scenes rehearsal footage from two late 2006 Ari­zona con­certs.” You can watch it below. If you want to con­tin­ue fol­low­ing the series, then just vis­it sonnyrollins.com toward the end of each month, and they’ll post each new install­ment.

See Open Cul­ture’s Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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Norman Mailer’s Fuhrer in MultiMedia

in Books, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | January 30th, 2007


Mailer
Nor­man Mail­er, now 84 years old, has just pub­lished his first nov­el in a decade. And what becomes imme­di­ate­ly clear is that age has done lit­tle to stop Mail­er from tak­ing his trade­mark lit­er­ary risks. Just as he felt free to inhab­it the mind of Jesus in The Gospel Accord­ing to the Son (1997), he has now dared to get deep inside anoth­er world-his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, the anti-Christ fig­ure of the last cen­tu­ry, Adolph Hitler. Nar­rat­ed by a min­ion of Satan, who oth­er­wise masqua­rades as a for­mer SS offi­cer named Dieter, The Cas­tle in the For­est takes a Freudi­an look at Hitler’s youth and his tan­gled famil­ial rela­tion­ships. But how well Mail­er pulls it off is open to debate. Up front, it’s worth men­tion­ing that you can freely access the first chap­ter of the new book and start judg­ing for your­self. And, for that mat­ter, you can also get Mail­er’s own take on the book in this NPR inter­view. How­ev­er, if you want some guid­ance before decid­ing whether to plunge into this lengthy book (450+ pages), you can check out the reviews that have start­ed rolling out. So far, assess­ments are mixed: The audio pod­cast issued by The New York Times Book Review (which is itself based on a thought­ful review appear­ing in print) con­sid­ers Mail­er’s lat­est to be among his best. But it’s an opin­ion that stands some­what alone, at least so far. The reviews in The Wash­ing­ton Post and the Eng­lish ver­sion of Ger­many’s Spiegel Online take less glow­ing posi­tions, and, as you’d expect, the crit­i­cism is more stri­dent and polit­i­cal­ly-charged over in Europe, Ger­many in par­tic­u­lar.

Final­ly, we leave you with this — Mail­er read­ing from his new work, describ­ing the con­cep­tion of Hitler, as told from the dev­il’s per­spec­tive, in some­what racy terms. (NOTE: the video qual­i­ty is very Youtube-esque, but it gets the job done):
 

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Ali G at Harvard; or How Sacha Baron Cohen Got Blessed by America’s Cultural Establishment

in Comedy, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | January 17th, 2007

Oodles of print have been writ­ten about Sacha Baron Cohen’s film, “Borat: Cul­tur­al Learn­ings of Amer­i­ca for Make Ben­e­fit Glo­ri­ous Nation of Kaza­khstan.” And there’s per­haps not a great deal more to say about it, oth­er than it’s remark­able how well the film has been received by Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al estab­lish­ment. Edgy, shock com­e­dy that uses racial and gen­der stereo­types to sub­vert racial and gen­der stereo­types usu­al­ly does­n’t go down so well with high­brow crit­ics. But, in this case it did. The Wash­ing­ton Post called the film “a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of slap­stick and satire, a Pla­ton­ic ide­al of high- and low­brow that man­ages to appeal to our basest com­mon denom­i­na­tors while bril­liant­ly skew­er­ing racism, anti-Semi­tism, … [and] sex­ism.” (Pla­ton­ic ide­al? Borat?) Of the film, The New York Times said “The bril­liance of ‘Borat’ is that its com­e­dy is as piti­less as its social satire, and as brainy.” Then, we heard Ter­ry Gross, of NPR’s Fresh Air, gush over the com­ic in her amus­ing inter­view with Baron Cohen. And last­ly, the British com­ic has been nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar by Hol­ly­wood’s film elite.

If any fur­ther proof was need­ed that Baron Cohen has been embraced by the cul­tur­al van­guard, then let this video serve as final wit­ness. In 2004, Har­vard invit­ed Baron Cohen to speak at “Class Day,” the big tra­di­tion­al event that takes place the day before com­mence­ment. And here you get him speak­ing to stu­dents and par­ents not as Baron Cohen, but as Ali G., all in a light-heart­ed way. (For more on this vis­it, see the arti­cle in the Har­vard Gazette.)

 

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.