Arts and Culture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk This video combines three things that make me happy: the voice of Sean Connery ( who passed away today ), the music of Vangelis ( Blade Runner , Chariots of Fire ), and the poetry of C.P. Cavafy . Put them all together and you get a blissful soundscape of rolling synth lines, rolling Scottish R’s, and a succession of Homeric images and anaphoric lines. And the video’s quite nice as well. Cavafy, whose work, I’m told, is really untranslatable from the original Greek, always seems to come out pretty well to me in English. “Ithaca,” one of his most popular poems, expresses what in lesser hands might be a banal sentiment akin to “it’s the journey, not the destination.” But in Cavafy’s poem, the journey is both Odysseus’s and ours; it’s epic where our lives seem small, and it translates our minor wanderings to the realm of mythic history. Anyway, it seems rude to say much more and drown the poem in commentary. So, follow along with Sean ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4F0rT0F6OQ Mark it on your calendars. Alex Winter’s new Zappa documentary will be released on November 23. To whet your appetite, here’s the official trailer for the film: “With unfettered access to the Zappa family trust and all archival footage, ZAPPA explores the private life behind the mammoth musical career that never shied away from the political turbulence of its time. Alex Winter’s assembly features appearances by Frank’s widow Gail Zappa and several of Frank’s musical collaborators including Mike Keneally, Ian Underwood, Steve Vai, Pamela Des Barres, Bunk Gardner, David Harrington, Scott Thunes, Ruth Underwood, Ray White and others.” Would you like to support the mission of Open Culture? Please 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. Also consider following Open Cult...

https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/partiallyexaminedlife/PMP_66_10-18-20.mp3 Why do people enjoy being scared by films? How does what counts as frightening in a film actually connect with what scares us in real life, and how does this in turn relate to childhood fears? What’s the deal with “horror” movies that are good but not scary or that are terrible yet still scary in some way? Your hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Erica Spyres, and Brian Hirt are joined by actor/special effects-guy Nathan Shelton (who runs the Frightmare Theatre Podcast ) for a Halloween conversation where no one gets a rock. We present our picks for what scared us as kids: Trilogy of Terror , Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Dark Night of the Scarecrow , and Copycat , and go on about Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Thing, and Nightmare on Elm Street. We also discussion horror aimed at women, body horror, tropophobia, horror movie music, and Ste...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaKkzNqCPnc We remember the bluesman Robert Johnson as the Jimi Hendrix of the 1930s, a guitarist of staggering skill who died before age thirty. Both found mainstream success, but Johnson’s came posthumously: in fact, his music and Hendrix’s first music hit it big in the same decade, the 1960s. King of the Delta Blues Singers , an album of Johnson’s songs released by Columbia Records in 1961, had a great influence on the likes of Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, and Eric Clapton, who calls Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” How did this poor young Mississippian come by his formidable abilities? Why, he sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads, of course. Or at least that’s what we all seem to have heard. And indeed, doesn’t the legend make the opening line of “Cross Road Blues,” King of the Delta Blues ‘ opening number, that much more evocative? “I went down to the crossroads,” he sings. “Fell down on my k...

Sometimes describing a classic work of literature as “timeless” draws attention, when we revisit it, to how much it is bound up with the conventions of its time.  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  emerged from a very specific time and place, the bank of the Thames in 1862 where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson  first composed the tale for Alice Liddell and her sister . The future Lewis Carroll’s future bestseller became one of the most widely adapted and adopted works of literature in history. It never needs to be revived—Alice is always contemporary. Those who have read the book to children know that Carroll’s nonsense story, though filled with archaic terms and outdated ideas about education, requires little additional explanation: indeed, it cannot be explained except by reference to the strange leaps of logic, rapid changes in scale and direction, and anthropomorphism familiar to everyone who has had a dream. Dodgson was a pretty weird character, and prim Victorian Alice is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hdT8PgT19w Who can resist miniatures? Wee food, painstakingly rendered in felted wool … Matchbook-sized books  you can actually read… Classic record albums shrunk down for mice… The late  Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962) definitely loved miniatures, and excelled at their creation, knitting socks on pins, hand rolling real tobacco into tiny cigarettes, and making sure the victims in her realistic murder scene dioramas exhibited the proper degree of rigor mortis and lividity. Lee began work on her  Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death  at the age of 65, as part of a lifelong interest in homicide investigation. Her preoccupation began with the Sherlock Holmes stories she read as a girl. In the 1930s, the wealthy divorcee used part of a sizable inheritance to endow Harvard University with enough money for the creation of its  Department of Legal Medicine . Its first chairman was her friend, George Burgess Magrath ...