I put this up to remind me to think about the insightful title of this painting, “The Betrayal of Image” – it’s the most famous painting from Magritte. I’m pondering how bring about such a concept into another medium.
Campagnolo
Beauty, elegance, refinement, precision – Campagnolo industrial design is outstanding.
Christopher Nolan
Doodlebug, one of his early short films:
Google finds you
Google results are your new resume whether you’re going on a date, getting a job, or representing your company. Reputation management is the new personal branding. Here’s some tips on emancipating your reputation. It’s not EASY – but it’s better than having a video of someone singing bad karaoke ranking for your name.
Some know issues about putting your ideas/thinking online: People trust other people’s opinions more than your own. Often, other people’s websites can have more link authority than your own websites. With those two guiding propositions you should be able to muster enough link traffic to rescue your Google listing. Don’t fret, follow these 10 steps and think carefully about the importance of building the right sort of credible name for yourself online. Terrible search results are allotted like bad karaoke, but they can be avoided.
Old Man of Coniston
The blind climber story quickly gained status amongst the locals. It’s a story that could of easily become folklore, a old man loses his sight and against all odds, starts climbing the local mountain in aid of charity. I stumbled across this documentary by pure chance. What happened was a blind climber story had quickly gained cult status amongst the local’s mountain community in Cumbria (North of England).
Arriving in the village of Coniston, I wandered into the local post office and asked for directions. Sure enough, they knew a blind climber who’s actually better known as Charles Turnbull, 86, a retired police inspector with a passion for remembering names, place and people. “It’s comes from 40 years on the job” he explains over tea, clearly at ease with sharing his story with the inclusion of charm and good humour. This was an extraordinary tale of adventure and courage.
Director/Cameraman Dan Sellars
Sound and Vision Jez Curnow
Format: U-matic High Band – 10 minutes
I architect
Seth Godin’s says, Is architect a verb?
“I confess. I like using it that way. I think architecting something is different from designing it. I hope you can forgive me but I think it’s a more precise way to express this idea. Design carries a lot of baggage related to aesthetics. We say something is well-designed if it looks good. There are great designs that don’t look good, certainly, but it’s really easy to get caught up in a bauhaus, white space, font-driven, IDEO-envy way of thinking about design.
So I reserve “architect” to describe the intentional arrangement of design elements to get a certain result. You can architect a computer server set up to make it more efficient. You can architect a train station to get more people per minute through the turnstiles.
More interesting, you can architect a business model or a pricing structure to make it far more effective at generating the behavior you’re looking for. Most broken websites aren’t broken because they violate common laws of good design. They’re broken because their architecture is all wrong. There’s no strategy in place.”
Image: Henri Cartier Bresson
Ernst Haas—Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Roof gardens in NYC
Rooftop beauties from Manhattan, including Mariah’s penthouse.
Amazing private roof decks, speechless! This one BELOW includes Mariah’s penthouse. I can say with 90% certainty that it is indeed Mariah’s rooftop. The curve of the window matches what we saw in MTV cribs, and she always mentions a hot tub on the roof: is that dark red patch near the front corner of the roof a hot tub cover? And the brickwork looks to match.
All credit to jwilly for photographing a brilliant set of ostentatious roof gardens in New York City.
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Colonel Blimp
Colonel Blimp is a music video production company, it was named in homage to the 1944 film “The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp” directed by Powell and Pressburger. In that film Roger Livesey plays a man who fights a duel and cuts his top lip so badly that he is forced to grow a large and unusual handlebar moustache which he keeps for the rest of his life.
Creating a memorable music video is much like growing an unusual moustache. It takes patience and nerve. During the early planning stages it may be difficult to perceive exactly what the finished ‘tache’ will look like. The growing period may be arduous, drawn out. The moustache’s grower perhaps tempted by the easy clichés of fashion to compromise their original design.
James Marsh, Man on Wire
Don’t wobble when you reach the top. This new doc might well strike a chord for the audience, especially those desperately eager to establish ‘why’ and ‘how’ do you go about walking the wire across the 1970’s construction site of the Twin Towers. This was one of the most defining stunts every accomplished by a French climber.
Synopsis: August 7, 1974. A young French man named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire suspended between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He danced on this wire for an hour with no safety net before he was arrested for what has become to be known as the “artistic crime of the century”.
“Man on Wire” is the perfect example of matching doc director to doc subject. French tightrope walker and juggler Philippe Petit became world-famous when he walked between the two World Trade Center towers, then under construction, on August 7, 1974 — a completely illegal if fantastic act that involved complex preparation and shook up New York City’s police department. (He had to cross back and forth several times to avoid the cops.) Petit had already achieved artistic notoriety for his feats at famous sites like Notre Dame in Paris, but to traverse the air space between what were then the world’s two tallest buildings? It’s not only his unbeatable skill, though, that makes Petit an ideal subject for a doc: He is a ball of fire, a fascinating egomaniac who engages you completely with his energy and confidence. Petit has written several books, including To Reach the Clouds, which recounts the feat in downtown Manhattan.
The full interview with British director James Marsh.
Christopher Nolan
Like many future filmmakers, British-born Christopher Nolan began making amateur movies at an early age, playing around with a Super 8mm camera that belonged to his father. When his family relocated to Chicago for three years during his formative years, this child of a British father and American mother traded tips on movie making with pals Roko and Adrian Belic (who in 1998 premiered their documentary “Genghis Blues”). While an undergraduate at University College in London, Nolan saw his short “Tarantella” air in the USA on PBS in 1989. By the mid-90s, he had hooked up with Jeremy Theobold who appeared in the shorts “Larceny” and “Doodlebug”. Theobold would go on to produce and star in Nolan’s feature directorial debut, “Following” (1998). Serving as director, co-producer, co-editor and cinematographer, he inverted some of the conventions of the film noir to recount the tale of a blocked writer (Theobold) who spends his days stalking strangers in the hopes of jump-starting his imagination. Then, one of his “victims” turns the tables and invites the scribe to join in a series of petty thefts. Juggling time via flashbacks and flash forwards, Nolan established a key signature of his work in which chronology takes a back seat to character. Critics found much that was admirable in Nolan’s first feature, although most felt it was a marginal achievement, at best.
Nolan took a giant leap forward with his second film, “Memento” (2000), working from an unpublished short story by his brother Jonathan. An intriguing skewering of the conventions of film noir, “Memento” centers on a man with “anterograde amnesia”, a condition that does not allow him to form new memories, who is seeking the man who raped and murdered his wife. While the heart of the piece was a conventional revenge drama, the story unfolded in an intriguing manner — backwards, with bits of additional information added each time. Fascinating and complex, “Memento” earned great acclaim when it opened in Europe in fall 2000 and at its US premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival where Nolan picked up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. The film also earned him numerous citations from critics’ groups. Despite the fact that the idea for the story originated with his brother’s fiction, Nolan’s screenplay was deemed an original for the purposes of Academy Award consideration, in part because the film had premiered in both Great Britain and the USA before the short story was published in the March 2001 issue of Esquire. Capitalizing on his success, Nolan directed the English-language remake of the 1997 Norwegian crime thriller “Insomnia” (2002), starring three previous Academy Award winners, Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank . The critical response to the film was mixed: while some labeled the thriller as an early Oscar contender and heaped praise on Williams’ smart, controlled performance, others found the film a lackluster sophomore follow-up to the bravura efforts of “Memento.”
Nevertheless, Warner Brothers, which produced “Insomnia,” was still confident enough in Nolan’s talents to tap him to direct its long-aborning effort to revive the all-but-defunt “Batman” franchise after various other incarnations failed to make it into production. Teaming with screenwriter and comic book author David S. Goyer, who’d previously translated the “Blade” character from comics to film, Nolan took the film series 180 degrees from its increasingly gaudy and campy direction, envisioning “Batman Begins” (2005) as a pitch-black, deadly serious psychological exploration of the origins of the legendary comic book superhero. Taking direct inspiration from many sequences from the post-“Dark Knight Returns” era of the comics, Nolan’s film traced Bruce Wayne’s journey from orphaned millionaire to intensely skilled crimefighter, taking pains to craft both a Gotham City and an outer world that was as realistic as its pulpy source material would allow and eschewing over-the-top theatrics and computer-generated special effects in favor of nuanced acting and old-fashioned stunt work. Nolan and Goyer’s take attracted an all-star cast, including Michael Caine as Wayne’s faithful aide Alfred; Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, Gotham’s sole uncorrupt cop; Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, the provider of Batman’s technology; and Liam Neeson as the mysterious, machiavellian Henri Ducard; but the true discovery of the film was Christian Bale in a star-making turn as the titular superhero. Though the film lacked some of the darkly manic pop inspiration that characterized the Tim Burton films, “Batman Begins'” soberer take was a breath of fresh air for loyal fans of the comic books and moviegoers turned off by Joel Schumacher’s more recent camp efforts, and the film proved to be both a critical and commercial success. Nolan was set to return to the franchise for “The Dark Knight” (scheduled for release in 2008) reteaming with Goyer on story chores (with a script by Nolan’s brother Jonathan) and helming again, this time with Heath Ledger in the role of the iconic villain The Joker.
* Born:
July 30, 1971 in England
* Job Titles:
Director, Screenwriter, Director of photography, Producer, Editor
Family
* Brother: Jonathan Nolan. wrote short story upon which “Memento” (2000) was based
Education
* University College, London, England, English
Milestones
* 1989 Made short “Tarantella” which received airing on PBS in USA
* 1996 Short film “Larceny” screened at the Cambridge Film Festival; Jeremy Theobald made acting debut
* 1998 Feature directorial debut, “Following”; Theobald starred and served as one of the producers
* 2000 Helmed second feature, the acclaimed thriller “Memento”, adapted from a story by his brother
* 2002 Directed the English-language remake of “Insomnia”
* 2005 Directed and co-wrote the fifth Caped Crusader installment “Batman Begins” which starred Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman
* 2006 Directed Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in “The Prestige,” about rival magicians working in early-20th-century London
* Began making short films at age seven
* Collaborated with Theobald on the short “Doodlebug”
* Spent three years of his youth living in Chicago; made early films with Roko and Adrian Belic (the future Oscar nominees for the documentary “Genghis Blues”)
Maggie Chung
New York Times review for In the Mood for Love:
“But I was so much older then, I’m much younger than that now..!”
Maggie’s acted in 75 films, but she says she only likes 10 of them and is only proud of 3: “Comrades – Almost a Love Story“, “Clean” and “In the Mood for Love“. In the sorta-sequel to the latter, “2046”, she was supposed to play an important part but wound up only appearing on screen for a few minutes.
How to watch Maggie Chung:
Netflix In the Mood for Love (subscription required)
Hulu The Heroic Trio (free with commercials/ads)
In The Mood For Love – he whispers his secrets into the hole, and then covers it with mud. it’s supposed to be a method to keep secrets as he once said to his friend during dinner in singapore.
Cool Hand Luke
Luke: I can eat fifty eggs.
Dragline: Nobody can eat fifty eggs.
Society Red: You just said he could eat anything.
Dragline: Did you ever eat fifty eggs?
Luke: Nobody ever eat fifty eggs.
Prisoner: Hey, Babalugats. We got a bet here.
Dragline: My boy says he can eat fifty eggs, he can eat fifty eggs.
Loudmouth Steve: Yeah, but in how long?
Luke: A hour.
Society Red: Well, I believe I’ll take part of that wager
Good looking prefab
The on-going debate about what to do with _our_ NY roof space took an interesting turn today after a conversation with a Vancouver based architect. This one was designed by Ray Kappe for LivingHomes
Why are you still shooting film
1. The ultimate in image sharpness (100+ million pixels)
2. A specific look
3. Widest tonal range
4. Budget, digital can be very expensive to do it right
5. Widest range of lenses, especially wide angle
6. The magic of developing it
C.S. Lewis
“The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are”
Initially when Lewis turned to writing children’s books, his publisher and some of his friends tried to dissuade him; they thought it would hurt his reputation as writer of serious works. J.R.R. Tolkien in particular criticized Lewis’s first Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He thought that there were too many elements that clashed—a Father Christmas and an evil witch, talking animals and children. Thankfully, Lewis didn’t listen to any of them. DARE says, be bold.
Bravura
1 : a musical passage requiring exceptional agility and technical skill in execution 2 : a florid brilliant style 3 : a show of daring or brilliance
In classical music, a bravura is a virtuosic passage intended to show off the skill of a performer, generally as a solo, and often in a cadenza. It can also be used as an adjective (“a bravura passage”), or refer to a performance of extraordinary virtuosity. The term comes from the Italian for great skill.
Pronunciation: \brə-ˈvyu̇r-ə, brä-, -ˈvu̇r-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian, literally, bravery, from bravare to show off — more at bravado
Mechanical Turk
In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, was seated on a wooden cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet’s doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the mechanical Turk: a chess master cleverly concealed inside.
Value and scarcity thoughts
1. The connection between value and scarcity is something we all know. Gold is precious because there is not much of it to go around, not because you can use it to build skyscrapers. The psychologists reasoned that this link has become deep-wired into our neurons, so that we unconsciously call on it—and its inverse—for life decisions.
2. Is it human tendency to make negative conclusions solely because we are unable to fulfill our desires? Maybe we should try to a little harder as it is never too late. In the case of a friend, the belief that good men are vanishing has resulted in refusal to see any other guy who is actually standing right next to her. More often than not, the solutions to our problems are so obvious that we overlook them.
3. Most people think of prejudice as simple animosity. But psychologists are coming to see this common human trait as far more complex than that. Indeed, it appears from a growing body of research that our emotional reactions to “others” are quite nuanced. We may pity people who are powerless but benign—the elderly, for example—yet we don’t despise them. And we may respect but dislike people who are powerful but not particularly warm–the very rich, for instance. It appears that we save our most extreme emotional assessment—pure contempt—for the doubly cursed: those who we perceive as not only cold but incompetent. At the extreme, we view these extreme rejects—addicts, bums, modern-day lepers—as barely human.
4. I think most folks don’t quite get that courtship/mating problems are actually marketing problems. If you look at marketing you will see that ‘cold mailing’ results in about a 0.5%-1% return while a warm campaign can give more like 2%. A person selling themselves to others is not at all different. What she doesn’t understand is that she may have to converse with 100 guys before she hits a real prospect. Perhaps her problem is the same as most start-up business owners who think that 10% of folks who see their product will buy it! You have to figure out your target. You have to look in the right places to increase your chances and then accept that it’s going to take longer than you think, maybe 10x longer. Accept that.
Cloud Cuckoo
“Cloud Cuckoo”. It’s now registered on IMDB. The film celebrates daring acts of childhood imagination. This 12-minute short tells a tall story about a young boy’s adventure to an imaginary cloud factory. An award winning production in partnership with an aspiring young Scottish producer Lachlan MacKinnan. Our fantasy script secured the renowned acting talents of the late Doctor Who supremo Jon Pertwee.
Sci-Fi Hong Kong
Captured on the street of Hong Kong/Shanghai in 2006. Colin Mutchler over at ActiveFreeMedia providing the soulful acoustic tunes, courtesy of the YouTube audio swap function.
