Theo Jansen is a modern day Leonardo Da Vinci. Calling himself a Kinetic Sculptor, the dutch engineer turned artist has been creating these fantastic wind-powered creatures for the past 15 years. His Strandbeests are mechanical skeletons built entirely from lightweight plastic tubes, which allows them to be powered from the smallest breeze.
Go here for more info and more videos.
I accidentally informed my dutch teacher (in dutch) by email that I would rather take a lethal injection than come to her class. Fortunately she realised that it was just a blunder and I didn’t mean any such sentiments.
It’s a highly entertaining and well rounded Western directed by Howard Hawks. Starring John Wayne, Ricky Nelson and Dean Martin – Recommended!
In other news, the enlargements of my photographs that I ordered came out great – mostly. Now the only challenge I foresee is choosing the ones I like most, and choosing which ones not to put forth for the exhibition – I will have limited wall space!
I’m sure everyone’s had this sort of exhaustingly relentless throat infection, whereby you’re forced to drink water like a fish to remain hydrated, whilst you blow your nose until it’s red raw, and piss like a firehose every five minutes. You become lethargic, your head gets floaty, and your ears will not “pop”.
I think these pictures I took with my Camera Phone today on the train illustrate the kind of mood i’m in! Emo alert:
At the moment i’m trying the “scold it to death” trick of gulping down paintfully hot tea. It’s probably doing more harm than good, but I can imagine those germs being burnt to fuck, like the bastards they are.
Bitter? A little.
I’m having some of my digital photography printed larger (than I have done before) so that I can exhibit it at the Photography Society’s exhibition at Filmbase on December 5th.
And on an unrelated note, here is a photo I took in Belgium on my camera phone!
It’s the only camera phone picture i’ve taken that I quite like!
Things we’ve established about the IFI (part one, part two) at this stage:
The cake is great. The bookstore is great. The building is great. The location is great.
Latest developments:
The restaurant food is great. The films are great. The cinemas are great.
Pretty great on the whole.
The Page Turner (“La Tourneuse de Pages”)
I saw this film there. I highly recommend it.
Great psychological thriller.. If i were to say anything about the plot it would probably either give the story away, or make it sound boring (even though it is intense and well directed and acted).
Music is used really well by the director throughout the film. Innovatively and effectively – which is crucial for a thriller. Particularly a thriller set in the world of music, as this one is. I think I read that the director has a background as a composer or conductor… A musician certainly.
I will say that if you have ever learned a musical instrument (piano in particular), you will relate to the film on a deeper level. But it’s definitely worth watching even if you haven’t.
The ending is really great!
By the way, that’s page turner, as in “the person who turns pages for a musician”, not as in “a good book”.
It’s usually very difficult to get an interesting or original shot of city architecture. Everything is rigid and unchanging. One has to somehow find a new perspective in order to make such a scene his own. Photographer Alisdair MacDonald got this great shot by taking advantage of the changing environment, with multiple exposures:
t could almost be a stairway to heaven. This remarkable picture of the full moon was taken by photographer Alisdair Macdonald from the South Bank this week after 20 years of trying. It is not a montage but one picture exposed 10 times.
Mr Macdonald shot it with traditional film and said: “I had to sweat overnight until I could take it to be developed.
“When I saw it I just said ‘Yes!’ It’s a lovely feeling when you know you have got it. I’ve tried many times to get the shot but I always messed it up or a cloud would come along.
“This time there was not a cloud in the sky. Tourists stopped to see what I was photographing. Then they all tried with their little cameras. I was thinking ‘Good luck!’”
Mr Macdonald used an 80mm lens on his Nikon mounted on a tripod. The nine hundredth-ofasecond exposures are all four minutes apart. For the final shot he captured the buildings with a two-second exposure.
The clock on St Paul’s Cathedral captures the time of the final exposure: 5.45pm.
From the daily mail’s website.
Today I got two great books at the IFI (Irish Film Institute, mentioned in a recent post).
One is a book of comics by the director Alan Parker (called Will Write And Direct For Food) which makes fun of (to put it lightly) the film industry. It’s a really sharp and funny book – loads of great observations and perspectives.
The other one is a book called The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. It’s a massive tome exploring the theory that all stories comply to one or more of seven basic plot outlines, and also man’s obsession or need for stories and storytelling throughout history. I haven’t read much of it yet, but it seems pretty good so far. Obviously the premise of the book is very interesting to me – but it was really the astoundingly relentless praise on the back cover which convinced me to buy it in the first place.
Learning about the customs of other countries is sometimes amusing or shocking, but always fascinating! Here’s a great page on wikipedia about the various Faux Pas one might encounter around the world.
In particular, I thought the Nicaraguan ones were great:
# Knocking softly on someone’s front door. One should knock loudly on the door so that one can easily be heard.
# Referring to the United States as ‘America’. To Nicaraguans, they too are ‘Americans’. The USA should be referred to as ‘Los Estados Unidos’, and in adjective form as ‘estadounidense’.
# Not heeding the advice of Nicaraguans urging you not to shower when you are hot, or agitado would be considered poor form.
# Not heeding the advice for women not to sit on rocks… it’s said to reduce their ability to procreate (the rocks are hot).
# Calling someone a “cochón”(homosexual), when you really want to buy a “colchón” (mattress)
Reminds me of a Faux Pas I learned of in Belgium (from another dutch-language Student) over the summer (which isn’t featured on this list). In Indonesia, it is extremely impolite to say “no” to any question. They have many (twelve or more) ways of saying no which literally mean “yes”.
Hey. See that black speck in the leftmost third of the picture?
The massive golden sphere in the background is the sun!
This marvelous photo is by astronomer Phil Jones.
The composited image was taken through a telescope equiped with an H-alpha filter that narrowly transmits only the red light from hydrogen atoms. Such images emphasize the solar chromosphere, the region of the Sun’s atmosphere immediately above its photosphere or normally visible surface.
Ogi Ogas gives a fascinating first-hand account of how he deployed tricks and ideas from his education and research in neuroscience to tackle the gameshow Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
The first technique I drew upon was priming. The priming of a memory occurs because of the peculiar “connectionist” neural dynamics of our cortex, where memories are distributed across many regions and neurons. If we can recall any fragment of a pattern, our brains tend to automatically fill in the rest. For example, hearing an old Madonna song may launch a cascade of linked memories: your high school prom where it was the theme song, your poorly tailored prom outfit, your forgotten prom date, the stinging embarrassment when you threw up in the limo.
And him describing how he felt when the host revealed that he had won 500,000 dollars (after playing a nasty bluff for a moment):
My neurohormones whipped from black misery to shining ebullience, saturating my brain in a boiling cauldron of epinephrine and endorphins. I gaped at the azure screen in front of me as the ultimate question coalesced in hot white font.
I love this guy!
Read the entire Article !
Photos courtesy of pierofix on flickr.
It also sells cake and coffee.
I’m doomed.
There’s also a place right beside the IFI called Filmbase, where they offer classes in things like Film Appreciation, Filmmaking, Acting, Editing (with final cut pro), etc. They also hire out and sell filmmaking equipment, like cameras, booms, etc. You can rent a super 8 camera for €10 a day – awesome!
Well, most of the time. But I like weird and innovative cars like this, the Nissan Pivo:
Pivo features an innovative cabin that revolves 360 degrees, eliminating the need to reverse. Thanks to its compact body, the car is also exceptionally easy to maneuver.
More concept cars here.
I thought that I would be in good company, signing up for a course about Film. Don’t get me wrong, the course is fantastic. I’m enjoying it very much indeed.
However, the majority of the other students on the course seem to be there because they think they like films. Because they think it is an easy course. I don’t know. They don’t take it as seriously as I had hoped they would. I guess the people who really care about film are taking it as their major (the course I didn’t get in to).
Whatever the case, I’m witnessing this upsetting behaviour every time we watch a film on this course. The behaviour i’m referring to is, more specifically, when people laugh obnoxiously during a film even when the film is not a comedy, or when it is not intended to be funny. Furthermore, they laugh at the parts which are intended to be moving or shocking.
They laugh at the naivety of the old films. There is no understanding or respect.
What kind of ignorant, plank-headed moron does it take to guffaw uncontrollably every time some cheap special effect is deployed, or whenever someone mentions something which has since changed or become outdated? To have to giggle loudly and incredulously to the person beside you, whenever someone makes an unusually theatrical expression on screen?
It’s childish and it’s really off-putting. It ruins the atmosphere that has been carefully built up by the film.
I don’t know which is more offensive or upsetting: the ignorance of the people, or the fact that they are so open and unashamed of their ignorance. The sad fact is that I am in the minority who see this as a problem.
They are brilliant films, and no one is giving them the respect they deserve. It makes me question the emotional intelligence of people. How can they not be following the expressions of the characters and hanging on their every word? Sure, they are acting differently to people nowadays, but that’s to be expected, and it’s easily adjusted to.
Here are some great concept paintings of potential space colonies, created in the seventies.
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A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made. These have been converted to jpegs and are available as thumbnails, quarter page, full screen and publication quality images.
Here is the link to the site. With lots more pictures, and much bigger versions of the pictures.
