“Designed by Thomas Leeser, the swollen baby-blue form, which has been grafted onto the back of a 1920s building, effectively blurs the boundaries among architecture, film and viewer. In doing so it immerses you in the kind of fantasy world you usually get only when the lights are turned off.”
Tag: 01.15.11
Documentaries – The New Propaganda
“Propaganda is not what it used to be. As it enters its third round of bringing nonfiction American films to underserved foreign audiences, the American Documentary Showcase, a project of the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, has been full of surprises — some for the audiences, some for the filmmakers.”
Rebel Against The Cultural Elite? Oh Really…
“There is very little in cultural life that is easier than ignoring what critics have to say, and for more than 200 years normal Americans have been doing just that. And critics, for the most part, have accepted that, since virtually none of us is actually motivated by the urge to tell other people what to do.”
Fabricating the Bloody Flesh for a Pulp Movie
“On a winter afternoon Robert Hall, owner of the special-effects makeup house Almost Human, is supervising the fabrication of a neck wound for a scene in a new project. While one of his cohorts squeezes a meaty piece of silicone between his fingers, another slathers it in a viscous red liquid poured from a Karo Syrup bottle. Earlier in the day [They] had perforated the silicone by rubbing it over hard Styrofoam pellets harvested from a gutted beanbag chair.”
What Angry Birds Tells Us About Human Evolution
“To play Angry Birds, you must use a catapult to lob little birds at structures in the hope of knocking them down on pigs. … Predicting parabolas is something humans just seem to find intriguing. How else do you explain golf?” Yet, with one piscine exception, “no other animal uses parabolic trajectories.”
Qug’yuq: Swan Lake, Inuit-Style
Alaska Dance Theatre’s Qug’yuq (the Yup’ik word for swan) retells the story [of the classic ballet] … This time, however, the swan and her swain come from a Yup’ik village. Their nemesis, intent on keeping the girl for himself, is no one less than the powerful trickster, Raven. The usual balletic pirouettes and plies are augmented by Yup’ik Eskimo drumming and dance.”
Stieg Larsson’s Partner Wants to Finish His Fourth Girl Who Book
“Eva Gabrielsson has been locked in an ongoing battle with the family of Stieg Larsson, who died in November 2004 from a heart attack.” She says that Larsson “had just finished 200 pages in the [Millennium] series’ fourth installment before dying” and that she could complete the book if Larsson’s estate would grant her the rights.