Podcasts, etc

Directors Notes
This is an engaging, to-the-point podcast with excellent interviews with independent film directors in every medium from traditional and cg animation to documentary and feature films. The 40-odd episodes, some nearly an hour in length comprise an excellent film school on an i-pod.
(available in flash, mp3 and on iTunes)

LensWork Magazine Podcast

While the magazine is about black and white photography, this is an excellent podcast on art and the creative process that is applicable in any artform. He has discussions on originality, realism, craft, work, art, etc. Again, excellent archive.

Miette's Bedtime Story Podcast
Excellent reading voice, most stories about 45min, check out the hundreds(?) of archived stories for short stories by Dostoevsky, O'Conner, Calvino, Mann, Greene, etc.

School of Visual Arts Lectures
Videos of lectures on graphic design given by famous designers like Milton Glaser, unfortunately they are video only, so they don't work on old mp3 players.

Mars Hill Audio Audition
"...living as disciples of Christ pertains not just to prayer, evangelism, and Bible study, but also our enjoyment of literature and music, our use of tools and machines, our eating and drinking, our views on government and economics, and so on." Mars Hill Audio is a quarterly audio journal, which I've enjoyed for years, this is there new (free) podcast.

Andy Goldsworthy on Nature and Culture

"The older I become, the more connections I can make between times, experiences and places. I have always felt uncomfortable with the easy categorizations that people sometimes apply to my art. I remember overhearing a comment by a member of an audience waiting for me to give a lecture who was saying that I only use natural materials and no tools. My commitment to what are described as 'natural materials' is often misunderstood as a stance against the 'man-made'. I need the nourishment and clarity that working the land with my hands gives me, but at various times I have made us of light and heavy machinery, and I see no contradiction in using the technology of photography. Pretending I could do without such tools when I need them would be a bit like pretending I could swim to America. Likewise, I live in buildings and should, on occasion, work in them."

-Andy Goldsworthy in his book Time

Flannery O'Conner's cinematic prose

Look at this excerpt from Flannery O'Conner's short story The Life You Save May Be Your Own:

Mr. Shiftlet's eye in the darkness was focused on a part of the automobile bumper that glittered in the distance. "Lady," he said, jerking his short arm up as if he could point with it to her house and yard and pump, "there ain't a broken thing on this plantation that I couldn't fix for you, one‑arm jackleg or not. I'm a man," he said with a sullen dignity, "even if I ain't a whole one. I got," he said, tapping his knuckles on the floor to emphasize the immensity of what he was going to say, "a moral intelligence!" and his face pierced out of the darkness into a shaft of doorlight and he stared at her as if he were astonished himself at this impossible truth.

Isn't that very filmic? It may just be by obsession with film, but it seems like that's a heck of a lot of acting, directing and cinematography for a paragraph, not to mention amazing writing.

Perhaps the Brothers Coen could take on one of her stories? Their new film (an adaptation of a novel by another writer of 'southern gothic'), No Country for Old Men, looks amazing.

P.S. I listened to the O'Conner story today on Miette's excellent Bedtime Stories podcast. Kind of strange listening to rednecks read with an English accent, but she's an excellent reader.

"The subject of this anthology is of the greatest importance, not only for the understanding of the art produced in traditional civilizations, but also for understanding of the real nature of human condition and knowledge of what it means to be human. To be truly human is to reflect the Divine Image here on earth. By virtue of being human, man creates and makes, and by remaining faithful to his primordial nature produces traditional art, in the vastest sense of the term. Such an art reflects her on earth the Divine Artist, thus making possible the creation of the forms that lead to the world of the Spirit and the Formless. This understanding of art has been to a large extent forgotten in the modern world as a consequence of modern man's forgetting who he is, why he is here on earth, and where he is going. This anthology is, therefore, not only an exposition of the significance of traditional art, but also the means for rememberence of what it means to be truly human, to be the pontifical man who is the bridge between Heaven and earth and a channel of grace for the world around him."

-Seyyed Hossein Nasr in the Preface to Every Man An Artist: Readings in the Traditional Philosophy of Art

This looks like a goldmine. I'll probably be quoting it here this summer. I like the connection of art to eschatology, which I've talked about in a few posts too.