How to listen to abel prize lectures of 2007 in iceweasel. lectures are in mp4 format but are not opening even with vlc installed

[Mitchell Laks <mlaks@post.harvard.edu>]

I am trying to listen to some Abel Prize math lectures

the urls are located on these pages

http://www.abelprisen.no/en/multimedia/2004/index.html

I cannot listen to the lectures by atiyah, bismut singer or witten

or


http://www.abelprisen.no/en/multimedia/2007/index.html

or 

http://www.abelprisen.no/en/multimedia/2005/index.html#

on the pages it says

All videos are MPEG4 (mp4) viewable by means of the free QuickTime (v.6.5) application.
Most videos are available in three qualities: double ISDN (112kbs), ADSL1 (384kbs) og ADSL2 (768kbs).

note the more recent lectures such as 2011  are available and fully watchable on the web page.

I have vlc installed but when i click on the lecture i get a black box in the left upper quadrant of the screen and no video.
when i right click and say show controls then it 
shows the controls and says idle
but does not give me a forward button to play it.

thanks

Mitchell Laks