Filmmaker Jacob T. Swinney’s First and Final Frames, Part II, above, is a rare sequel that upholds the quality of the original. As he did in its predecessor, Swinney screens the opening and closing shots of dozens of recent and iconic films side by side, providing viewers with a crash course in the editorial eye. What is being communicated when the closing shot replicates—or inverts—the opening shot? Will the opening shot become freighted with portent on a second viewing, after one has seen how the film will end? (Shakespeare would say yes.) Swinney is deeply conversant in the nonverbal language of film, as evidenced by his numerous compilations and video essays for Slate on such topics as the Kubrick Stare and the facial expressions of emotionally revelatory moments. Most of the films he chooses for simultaneous cradle-and-grave-shot replay qualify as art, or serious attempts thereat. You’d never know from the formalism of its opening and closing shots that Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train at the 1:00 mark is a comedy. To be fair, Clint Mansell’s universally applied score could cloak even Animal House in a veil of wistful, cinematic yearning. Given the comic sensibility Swinney’s brought to such supercuts as a Concise Video History of Teens Climbing Through Each Others’ Windows  and a Tiny History of Shrinking Humans in Movies, I’m hoping there will be a third installment wherein he considers the first and final moments of comedies. Any you might recommend for inclusion? (Hold the Pink Flamingos, por favor…) Films featured in First and Final Frames, Part II in order of appearance: Sunshine Snowpiercer Biutiful 21 Grams The Prestige All is Lost Take Shelter The Impossible United 93 Vanilla Sky Ex Machina Inside Llewyn Davis Dead Man Mystery Train Melvin and Howard Fury Full Metal Jacket A Clockwork Orange Eyes Wide Shut Eraserhead The Elephant Man The Fall The Thin Red Line The New World Road to Perdition Snow Falling on Cedars The Bourne Ultimatum The Imitation Game Flight Hard Eight Inherent Vice World War Z Wild The Double The Machinist Born on the Fourth of July Brideshead Revisited Maps to the Stars The Skeleton Twins Mommy A Scanner Darkly 10 Years Milk Lost Highway Boxcar Bertha Badlands Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai Ratcatcher Ida Raise the Red Lantern Gattaca Kundun Bringing Out the Dead A Most Wanted Man The Curious Case of Benjamin Button The Social Network Jack Goes Boating Submarine Half Nelson Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Babel Django Unchained True Grit Vertigo Oldboy Apocalypto Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Gladiator Mad Max: Fury Road World’s Greatest Dad Related Content: A Mesmerizing Supercut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums & More How Akira Kurosawa Used Movement to Tell His Stories: A Video Essay Discover the Life & Work of Stanley Kubrick in a Sweeping Three-Hour Video Essay Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play, Fawnbook, is now playing at The Brick Theater in New York City. Follow her @AyunHalliday A Spellbinding Supercut of the First & Final Frames of 70 Iconic Films, Played Side by Side is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

I have not seen the second two of a promised seven films based on the novels in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series. But I tend to agree with several critics of the first filmed adaptation, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: "The PG-rated movie feels safe and constricted," Peter Travers observed, "in a way the story never does on the page." Although Lewis "did nothing to hide his devout Christianity" in his allegorical Narnia books for young adults, nor in his grown-up sci-fi fantasy series, The Space Trilogy, Lewis on the page comes across as a rigorous writer first and a Christian apologist second. Except, I’d argue, for his work of explicitly populist, and rather facile, apologetics, Mere Christianity (originally a series of radio lectures), his fiction and popular non-fiction alike present readers—whatever their beliefs—with challenging, inventive, witty, and moving ways to think about the human condition. http://audio.ancientfaith.com/grapevine/con001_pc.mp3 Lewis’ immersion in European Medieval and Renaissance literature in his day-job role as an Oxford don—and his ecumenical, almost Jungian, approach to literature generally—gives his fiction a serious archetypal depth that most modern religious novelists lack, making him, along with fellow "Inkling" J.R.R. Tolkien, something of a literary saint in modern Christianity. Though it may offend the orthodox to say so, Lewis’ novels capture a "deep magic" at the heart of all mythological and literary traditions. And they do so in a way that makes exploring heavy, grown-up themes exciting for both children and adults. Though I’ve personally left behind the beliefs that animated my first readings of his books, I can still return to The Chronicles of Narnia and find in them deep magic and mystery. There’s no denying the enormous influence these books have had on children’s fantasy literature, from Harry Potter to Lewis’ atheist antagonist Philip Pullman. I look forward to sharing his books with my daughter, whatever she ends up making of their religiosity. I’ve still got my tattered paperback copies, and I’ll gladly read them to her before she can tackle them herself, but I’m also grateful for the complete audio recordings of The Chronicles of Narnia, available free online and read by English child psychologist and author Chrissi Hart. In installments of two chapters at a time, Hart reads all seven of the Narnia books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle. You can hear the first two chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe above, and stream or download the remaining chapters, and the remaining six books, at Ancientfaith.com. Although Hart and the Ancient Faith site who host her readings clearly approach the novels from an explicitly Orthodox perspective, I don’t think readers need to share their beliefs, or Lewis’, to enjoy and appreciate the storytelling magic of The Chronicles of Narnia. And it should be noted that CS Lewis Pte. Ltd. granted permission to put these recordings online, according to the Ancient Faith web site. The recordings are therefore listed in our collection, 700 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free. Enjoy. Related Content: C.S. Lewis’ Prescient 1937 Review of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It "May Well Prove a Classic" Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis The Only Known Recordings of C.S. Lewis (1944-1948) Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Hear All of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia Novels as Free Audio Books is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The latest installment from The School of Life’s animated video series introduces us to Jean-Paul Sartre‘s concept of bad faith, a concept integral to his philosophy, Existentialism. As Mark Linsenmayer, one of the founders of The Partially Examined Life podcast, explained on our site back in 2011, "bad faith" is a tendency we have to "disassociate ourselves from our actions," or more commonly, to claim we have "more limited choices [in life] than we actually do." He went on to say: Bad faith is possible because of the nature of the self… There is no predetermined ‘human nature’ or ‘true you,’ but instead you are something built over time, by your own freely chosen actions, too often using the roles and characteristics others assign to you. As is their wont, The School of Life takes Sartre’s notion of bad faith and applies it to everyday life, showing how it can help you create the life you want to live-from entering into more satisfying relationships, to getting out of dead-end jobs. For anyone looking to get a fairly accessible introduction to Sartre’s philosophy, you might want to start with his 1946 lecture, Existentialism is a Humanism. And down below, in the Relateds section, we have more helpful introductions to Sartre’s liberating philosophy. Related Content: Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intellectuals Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche: Documentary Presents Three Philosophers in Three Hours Download Walter Kaufmann’s Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Modern Thought (1960) 140+ Free Online Philosophy Courses Simone de Beauvoir Explains "Why I’m a Feminist" in a Rare TV Interview (1975) How Jean-Paul Sartre’s Philosophy Can Empower You to Live the Life You Truly Want is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

In the United States and the UK, we’ve seen the emergence of a multibillion-dollar brain training industry, premised on the idea that you can improve your memory, attention and powers of reasoning through the right mental exercises. You’ve likely seen software companies and web sites that market games designed to increase your cognitive abilities. And if you’re part of an older demographic, worried about your aging brain, you’ve perhaps been inclined to give those brain training programs a try. Whether these programs can deliver on their promises remains an open question-especially seeing that a 2010 scientific study from Cambridge University and the BBC concluded that there’s "no evidence to support the widely held belief that the regular use of computerised brain trainers improves general cognitive functioning in healthy participants…" And yet we shouldn’t lose hope. A number of other scientific studies suggest that physical exercise-as opposed to mental exercise-can meaningfully improve our cognitive abilities, from childhood through old age. One study led by Charles Hillman, a professor of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois, found that children who regularly exercise, writes The New York Times: displayed substantial improvements in … executive function. They were better at "attentional inhibition," which is the ability to block out irrelevant information and concentrate on the task at hand … and had heightened abilities to toggle between cognitive tasks. Tellingly, the children who had attended the most exercise sessions showed the greatest improvements in their cognitive scores. And, hearteningly, exercise seems to confer benefits on adults too. A study focusing on older adults already experiencing a mild degree of cognitive impairment found that resistance and aerobic training improved their spatial memory and verbal memory. Another study found that weight training can decrease brain shrinkage, a process that occurs naturally with age. If you’re looking to get the gist of how exercise promotes brain health, it comes down to this: Exercise triggers the production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which helps support the growth of existing brain cells and the development of new ones. With age, BDNF levels fall; this decline is one reason brain function deteriorates in the elderly. Certain types of exercise, namely aerobic, are thought to counteract these age-related drops in BDNF and can restore young levels of BDNF in the age brain. That’s how The Chicago Tribune summarized the findings of a 1995 study conducted by researchers at the University of California-Irvine. You can get more of the nuts and bolts by reading The Tribune’s recent article, The Best Brain Exercise May be Physical. (Also see Can You Get Smarter?) You’re perhaps left wondering what’s the right dose of exercise for the brain? And guess what, Gretchen Reynolds, the phys ed columnist for The Times’ Well blog, wrote a column on just that this summer. Although the science is still far from conclusive, a new study conducted by The University of Kansas Alzheimer’s Disease Center found that small doses of exercise could lead to cognitive improvements. Writes Reynolds, "the encouraging takeaway from the new study … is that briskly walking for 20 or 25 minutes several times a week — a dose of exercise achievable by almost all of us — may help to keep our brains sharp as the years pass." via New York Times Related Content: This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neuroscience of Reading Great Literature New Research Shows How Music Lessons During Childhood Benefit the Brain for a Lifetime Free Online Psychology & Neuroscience Courses This Is Your Brain on Exercise: Why Physical Exercise (Not Mental Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Ernest Hemingway seemed to feud with most of the prominent male artists of his time, from Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot to F. Scott Fitzgerald. He had a "very strange relationship" with Orson Welles—the two came to blows at least once—and he reportedly slapped Max Eastman in the face with a book. All his bluster and bravado makes his warm friendship with James Joyce seem all the more remarkable. They are a literary odd couple if ever there was one: Joyce the labyrinthine thinker of Byzantine thoughts and creator of symbolic systems so dense they constitute an entire field of study; physically weak and—despite his infamous carnal appetites—intellectually monkish, Joyce exemplifies the artist as a reclusive contemplative. Hemingway, on the other hand, well… we know his reputation. Hemingway’s 1961 obituary in The New York Times characterized Joyce as "a thin, wispy and unmuscled man with defective eyesight" (perhaps the result of a syphilis infection), and also notes that the two writers "did a certain amount of drinking together" in Paris. As the narrator of the rare film clip of Joyce informs us above, the Ulysses author would pick drunken fights, then duck behind his burly friend and say, "Deal with him, Hemingway. Deal with him." (That scene also gets mentioned in The Times obituary.) Hemingway, who convinced himself at one time he had the makings of a real pugilist, was likely happy to oblige. Joyce, writes Hemingway biographer James R. Mellow, "was an admirer of Hemingway’s adventurous lifestyle" and worried aloud that his books were too "suburban" next to those of his friend, of whom he said in a Danish interview, "he’s a good writer, Hemingway. He writes as he is… there is much more behind Hemingway’s form than people know." Joyce, notes Kenneth Schyler Lynn in Hemingway, realized that "neither as a man nor as an artist was [Hemingway] as simple as he seemed," though he also remarked that Hemingway was "a big powerful peasant, as strong as a buffalo. A sportsman. And ready to live the life he writes about. He would never have written it if his body had not allowed him to live it." One detects more than a hint of Hemingway in Joycean characters like Dubliners‘ Ignatious Gallaher or Ulysses’ Hugh "Blazes" Boylan—strong, adventurous types who overawe introverted main characters. That’s not to say that Joyce explicitly drew on Hemingway in constructing his fiction, but that in the boastful, outgoing American, he saw what many of his semi-autobiographical characters did in their more bullish counterparts—a natural foil. Hemingway returned Joyce’s compliments, writing to Sherwood Anderson in 1923, "Joyce has a most god-damn wonderful book" and pronouncing Joyce "the greatest writer in the world." He was "unquestionably… staggered," writes Lynn, "by the multilayered richness" of Ulysses. But its density may have proven too much for him, as "his interest in the story gave out well before he finished it." In Hemingway’s copy of the novel, "only the pages of the first half and of Molly Bloom’s concluding soliloquy are cut." Hemingway tempered his praise with some blunt criticism; unlike Joyce’s praise of his writing, the American did not admire Joyce’s tendency towards autobiography in the character of Stephen Dedalus. "The weakness of Joyce," Hemingway opined, was his inability to understand that "the only writing that was any good was what you made up, what you imagined… Daedalus [sic] in Ulysses was Joyce himself, so he was terrible. Joyce was so damn romantic and intellectual." Of course Stephen Dedalus was Joyce—that much is clear to anyone. How Hemingway, who did his utmost to enact his fictional adventures and fictionalize his real life, could fault Joyce for doing the same is hard to reckon, except perhaps, as Joyce certainly felt, Hemingway led the more adventurous life. Related Content: James Joyce Reads a Passage From Ulysses, 1924 Ernest Hemingway’s Very First Published Stories, Free as an eBook Virginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, "Never Did Any Book So Bore Me," and Quits at Page 200 Ernest Hemingway: T.S. Eliot "Can Kiss My Ass As a Man" Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness James Joyce Picked Drunken Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hemingway; Hemingway Called Joyce "The Greatest Writer in the World" is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Any fan of samurai movies knows the elaborate lengths some productions can go to in order to recreate the look and feel of old Japan, but globetrotting Italian-British photographer Felice Beato (1832 - 1909) actually managed to capture those days on celluloid first-hand. He arrived in Japan in 1863, at the very twilight of the era of the samurai, a time he documented evocatively with a series of hand-colored photographs of subjects like "kimonos, parasols, baby’s toys, basket sellers, courtesans at rest and a samurai gang ready for action," as the Guardian lists them in their gallery of Beato’s Japanese work. "After spending over two hundred years in seclusion, Japan was being forced by the Americans — under a mission led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry — to expand its trade with the west," writes Dangerous Minds’ Paul Gallagher, describing the unprecedented moment of Japanese history in which Beato found himself, one that provided the opportunity to photograph not just the last of the samurais but also the courtesans they loved. But all this had its risks: "Travel was dangerous in Japan," Gallagher adds, "with many of the Shogunate samurai warriors killing westerners," a fate Beato narrowly avoided at least once. Having photographed in Constantinople, India, and China before Japan, Beato moved on after it to other parts of Asia, including Korea and Burma, before returning to his native Italy at the very end of his life. But his pictures of Japan remain among the most striking of his entire career, perhaps because of their artistic use of color, perhaps because of a historical time and place that we think we’ve come to know through so many sword-and-suicide epics. Their characters, from the honor-bound samurai to the sly courtesan to the simple merchant, can seem to us a bit theatrical as a result, but Beato’s photographs remind us that they all began as very real people. Who might they inspire to make a film about their real lives? via The Guardian/Dangerous Minds Related Content: Hand-Colored Photographs of 19th Century Japan Advertisements from Japan’s Golden Age of Art Deco Glorious Early 20th-Century Japanese Ads for Beer, Smokes & Sake (1902-1954) Early Japanese Animations: The Origins of Anime (1917-1931) A Photographic Tour of Haruki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Memory, and Reality Meet Colin Marshall writes elsewhere on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. Hand-Colored 1860s Photographs Reveal the Last Days of Samurai Japan is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Even when one is a longtime, jaded denizen of a major city, celebrity sightings can still induce a thrill. During my tenure in New York City, I ran across my share of famous names, though I’ve never been one to bother a stranger, world famous or no. This almost changed when I ran past Ira Glass one evening and found myself sorely tempted to chat him up. I’m sure he’d be glad I resisted the urge, but having heard his voice on the radio every week for well over a decade… well, I felt like I knew him. Since 1995, Glass has hosted This American Life, perhaps the most popular public radio show ever produced and—before its hugely successful spin-off Serial—the most popular podcast in the U.S. The show is quickly approaching its twenty-year anniversary (its first episode aired November 17th; hear it here), and in honor of that milestone, we revisit another: the show’s 500th episode, which aired in 2013. For that occasion, Buzzfeed visited with Glass for a revealing interview. Though he responded to episode 500 with typical understatement—saying it felt "more like an odometer rolling over than anything else"—many fans of the show, myself included, felt a great deal more enthusiasm, as did Los Angeles’ KPCC, who brings us the list below of Glass’ top ten episodes (including one two-parter). Glass noted that his top picks also happen to be fan favorites as well. You can hear all of his favorites at the links below: Notes on Camp Harper High School One and Two The Giant Pool of Money Somewhere in the Arabian Sea — "I love how funny and human-sized everyone is in this show. It’s a surprisingly funny show about the war on terror," Glass writes. Switched at Birth — Glass: "The structure of this show — where the whole episode you wonder how a mom could know for decades she was raising the wrong baby and finally, she answers it in the end — is perfect." Break-Up — "The standout story is Starlee Kine’s essay on breakup songs, which includes an interview with Phil Collins that’s so menschy and real, it changed how I saw him forever." Babysitting — "Especially the interview with Myron Jones, which is the best interview I’ve ever done, mainly because he had so much grace and humor talking about his past. Any question I could think of, he’d come back with an amazing story, which is rare." My Big Break — "David Segal takes a turn in the middle of this story that’s one of my favorite reveals in any radio story ever." Harold Washington — "How can you go wrong when the central figure in your story is funny and cantankerous and bighearted and idealistic and utterly pragmatic and on top of all that, totally charismatic? If you don’t know who Harold is, be prepared for a treat." Heretics — "Carlton Pearson, like Harold, is someone they should make a movie about, for lots of the same reasons. An idealistic preacher whose idealism costs him pretty much everything: the church he runs, his reputation, his fortune, nearly his family." As a special treat, Glass also shared with Buzzfeed the document at the top of the post, a page of ideas for alternate titles for the show originally called Your Radio Playhouse. Before renaming the show in March of 1996, Glass and his crew considered such titles as the uninspiring "American Whatever," weird "Mouth Noise," and goofy "Ira Glass and his Radio Cowboys." I kind of wish they’d gone with the latter, but it’s hard to imagine the show we know as This American Life could ever have been called anything else. (See it penciled in almost as an afterthought above.) The show’s title perfectly sums up the breadth and scope of a program that tackles everything from the trivial to the highly consequential, often back-to-back in the same themed hour. Though Glass would surely balk at such high praise, I think his show has done more to help Americans know and understand ourselves over the last twenty years than nearly anything else on radio, TV, or the podcasting world. via KPCC Related Content: Ira Glass’ Advice on Achieving Creative Excellence Presented in Two Artful, Typographic Videos Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Stories This American Life Demystifies the American Healthcare System Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Listen to Ira Glass’ 10 Favorite Episodes of This American Life is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Seventeenth-century Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn may have more name recognition than nearly any other European artist, his popularity due in large part to what art historian Alison McQueen identifies in her book of the same name as "the rise of the cult of Rembrandt." Popular Rembrandt veneration brought us in the 20th century such corporate appropriations of the painter’s legacy as Rembrandt toothpaste and money market firm Rembrandt Funds (particularly ironic, "given the notoriety of Rembrandt’s bankruptcy in 1656"). "In contemporary popular culture," writes McQueen, "Rembrandt’s name has such resonance that the headline of an article in the New York Times Magazine in 1995 referred to the trendy barber Franky Avila as ‘the Rembrandt of Barbers.’" By invoking Rembrandt’s name, the author knew his readers would understand that this connection implies that Avila’s skill with a razor equals that of Rembrandt’s with his paintbrush or etching needle… even if a reader has never actually seen any work by Rembrandt. Indeed, though any person on the street will likely know the artist’s name, most would be hard-pressed to name any of his paintings, except perhaps his well-known self-portraits, which have adorned t-shirts, posters, and iPhone cases. I might not have known much more about Rembrandt than those self-portraits either had I not lived in Washington, DC, where I had free access to many of his paintings at the National Gallery of Art.  The Dutch master was astonishingly prolific, painting, drawing, and etching hundreds of portraits of himself and his patrons, as well as hundreds of still lifes, landscapes, scenes from mythology, and many, many Biblical subjects. Nowadays, you can see Rembrandt’s paintings for free online, whether from the National Gallery of Art’s collection, that of the National Gallery in London, or of the Dutch Rijksmuseum. And for another side of his genius, you can now go to the site of New York’s Morgan Library and Museum, who have digitized "almost 500 images from the Morgan’s exceptional collection of Rembrandt etchings," celebrating his "unsurpassed skill and inventiveness as a master storyteller." There are, of course, plenty of self-portraits, like the 1630 "Self Portrait in a Cap, Open-Mouthed" at the top of the post, and there are portraits of others, like that of the artist’s mother, above, from 1633. There are religious scenes like the 1655 "Abraham’s Sacrifice" below, and landscapes like "The Three Trees," further down, from 1643. These are the four main categories that the Morgan uses to organize this impressive collection, but you’ll also find there more humble, domestic subjects, like the 1640 "Sleeping Puppy," below. Writes Hyperallergic, "The Morgan holds in its collection most of the roughly 300 known etchings by Rembrandt, including rare, multiple versions (hence the discrepancy in number of etchings versus number of images.)" Like his highly accomplished paintings, Rembrandt’s etchings "are famous for their dramatic intensity, penetrating psychology, and touching humanity," as well as, of course, for the extraordinary skill with which the artist made these works of art. Thanks to the "cult of Rembrandt," we all know the artist’s name and reputation; now, thanks to digital collections from National Galleries, the Rijksmuseum, and now the Morgan, we can become experts in his work as well. Related Content: Download 35,000 Works of Art from the National Gallery, Including Masterpieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rembrandt & More Late Rembrandts Come to Life: Watch Animations of Paintings Now on Display at the Rijksmuseum A Final Wish: Terminally Ill Patients Visit Rembrandt’s Paintings in the Rijksmuseum One Last Time Rijksmuseum Digitizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Masterpieces Included! Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness 300+ Etchings by Rembrandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Morgan Library & Museum is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Two years ago, we highlighted for you the beginning of a promising project — Julian Peters’ comic book adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s 1910 poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." At the time of our post, Peters had only completed the first nine pages of his adaptation. And, about those first pages, our Josh Jones had this to say: Dante is where "Prufrock" begins, with an epigraph from the Inferno. Peters’ first page illustrates the agonized speaker of Dante’s lines, Guido da Montefeltro, a soul confined to the eighth circle, whom you can see at the top of the title page shown above. Peters’ visual choices place us firmly in the hellish emotional realm of "Prufrock," a seeming catalogue of the mundane that harbors a darker import. Peters gives us no hint of when we might expect new pages, but I for one am eager to see more. Happily for Josh … and the rest of us … we can now find out where Peters took the rest of the project. The adaptation is now complete. 24 pages in total. All now on display on Peters’ website here. If you’re not familiar with "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," I’d strongly encourage you to revisit a post in our archive where you can hear "Prufrock" being read by T.S. Eliot himself and also Sir Anthony Hopkins. There you can learn more about Eliot’s modernist masterpiece. Note: Julian is looking for a publisher to help put his comic book in print. If any publishers want to chat with him, you can find his contact info on his web site. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts definitely appear in your Facebook newsfeed, just follow these simple steps. Related Content: T.S. Eliot’s Radical Poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Read by Anthony Hopkins and Eliot Himself Listen to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Masterpiece, the Four Quartets T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats & Other Classic Poems (75 Minutes, 1955) Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Modernist Poem The Waste Land Read the Entire Comic Book Adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

It’s unfortunate, I think, that legions of Beatles fans turned on Yoko Ono with such ferocious animosity after the breakup of the band. Most fans still absolutely despise Yoko. (See the legion of often crudely misogynist comments under every Youtube video in which she appears.) Sure, her voice and music is certainly not to everyone’s taste, but without her artistic and conceptual influence on John Lennon post-Beatles, it’s unlikely his amazing solo albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) and Imagine (1971) would sound the way they do. Yoko, in fact, more or less gave Lennon the seeds of "Imagine," the song, in her quirky 1964 self-published book, Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings, though she never took the credit for it. Like it or not, if we love solo Lennon, we have no choice but to take the more traditionally great songwriting with the messy, experimental, and sometimes unlistenable. They cannot be completely untangled, to the dismay of a great many people. As Damian Fanelli at Guitar World comments on Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band’s impromptu performance/jam with Eric Clapton in Toronto in 1969, "Yoko screams—very loudly—during the entire otherwise-decent performance." This is not an exaggerated or especially biased characterization. "Someday," Fanelli then goes on, "I’ll vent about how terrible and depressing this is." Fine, but whether we think of her singing as challenging performance art or "depressing" caterwauling, we’re stuck with it. But do the dynamics of John and Yoko onstage change when we add another polarizing weirdo—Frank Zappa—to the mix? See for yourself in the videos here, from an onstage jam session the two did with Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore East in 1971. At the top of the post, Zappa, Lennon, et al. do Walter Ward’s "Well (Baby Please Don’t Go)," which Fanelli declares "the highlight of the jam, for sure." Zappa announces to the band the key and "not standard blues changes," then Lennon introduces the tune as "a song I used to sing while I was in the Cavern in Liverpool. I haven’t done it since." Zappa rips out a fantastic solo at 2:05, and the band—though seemingly in the dark at first—lays down a righteous groove. And Yoko? Well, it’s true, as Fanelli notes, "all she did was scream her head off." In this straight-ahead blues number, I have to say, it’s pretty obnoxious. But her vocal tics play much better in more freeform, oddball, Zappa-lead jams like "Jamrag" and "King Kong," above, and the shouty, repetitive "Scumbag," below, which sounds almost like a Can outtake. Zappa and band, as always, are in top form. Lennon at times looks out of place and uncertain in their improvisatory environment, but he gamely keeps up. Yoko… Yoko does her usual lot of screaming, howling, yodeling, etc. But before you gin up to tear her to pieces in yet another nasty online comment, bear in mind, for what it’s worth, no Yoko, no "Imagine." As Fanelli notes, "the performance was released as part of Lennon and Ono’s poorly received (and not very good at all) 1972 studio/live album, Sometime in New York City." See Allmusic’s review for a much more thorough, fair-minded assessment of that recording, which "found the Lennons in an explicitly political phase." via Guitar World Related Content:   The Night Frank Zappa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Captain Beefheart Too (Belgium, 1969) Download the John Lennon/Yoko Ono "War is Over (If You Want It)" Poster in 100+ Languages Hear John Lennon’s Final Interview, Taped on the Last Day of His Life (December 8, 1980) Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness The Night John Lennon & Yoko Ono Jammed with Frank Zappa at the Fillmore East (1971) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.