Augmented-reality contacts make life more fun—and not a little creepy—in this short created by Israeli students Daniel Lazo and Eran May-raz. Issues explored: Augmented reality, online dating, gamification, technology etiquette, online advertising
You'll see pretty browns in beautiful gowns
You'll see tailor-mades and hand-me-downs
You'll meet honest men and pick-pockets skilled
You'll find that business never closes
Till somebody gets killed
If Beale Street could talk, if Beale Street could talk
Married men would have to take their beds and walk
Except one or two, who never drink booze
And the blind man on the corner
Who sings the Beale Street Blues
He said, "I'd rather be here than anyplace I know
Yes, I'd rather be here, than anyplace I know
It's gonna take the Sergeant, for to make me go"
I'm goin' to the river, maybe by and by
Yes, I'm goin' to the river and there's a reason why
Because the river's wet and Beale Street's done gone dry.
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| The Donohoe Mausoleum, one of the oldest remaining mausoleums here |
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| John Overton, one of our mayors and grandson of one of our founders |
Set in a post-apocalyptic world in which water scarcity has extinguished life above ground, the short follows one scientist's quest to investigate the possibility of germinating seeds beyond the confines of her repressive subterranean Nairobi culture.I like the look of this, and I like what the director did with the idea.
... Asha lives and works as a museum curator in one of the indoor communities set up by the Maitu Council. When she receives a box in the mail containing soil, she plants an old seed in it and the seed immediately starts germinating.
Ubik, Philip K. DickOnes I've read are in bold print. I'm so glad I started reading science fiction as early as I did.
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin (I've read the first 2.)
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Gormenghast series, Mervyn Peake
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
Kindred, Octavia Butler
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
The City & The City, China Miéville
The Once and Future King, T.H. White
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Zone One, Colson Whitehead
The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
The Time Quartet, Madeleine L’Engle
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
The Female Man, Joanna Russ
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Dune Chronicles, Frank Herbert
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Neuromancer, William Gibson
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
The Foundation series, Isaac Asimov
Discworld, Terry Pratchett (I haven't read all of them, but I'm working on it.)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Among Others, Jo Walton
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
The Drowned World, J.G. Ballard
Witch World, Andre Norton
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Little, Big, John Crowley
The Dragonriders of Pern series, Anne McCaffrey
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede
The Castle trilogy, Diana Wynne Jones
The Giver, Lois Lowry
In a dirt ring, two giant men perform the age-old ritual, stomping and clapping to alert the gods. Then, in a great burst of energy, they charge forward and grapple each other to determine who will be champion... The Big Book of Sumo is an illustrated guide to Japan's ancient ritual sport that today is winning new fans around the world. Super sumo fan Mina Hall covers all aspects of sumo, including history, traditions, training, stable life, rankings, fighting strategies, and judging. She goes inside the "stables" to show the rigorous, disciplined life of a sumo wrestler. She also gives advice on how you can visit a stable yourself and where to eat and stay near the main sumo arena in Tokyo. Of special interest are a collection of belly-busting "sumo stew" recipes and a revealing look at the Hawaiian power-houses who have helped make sumo a truly international sport. Whimisical line drawings make The Big Book of Sumo the most user friendly sumo guide book available -fun to browse through and filled with amazing facts about the giant wrestlers of Japan.It's a wonderful guide to understanding all aspects of the sport.
Just what is sumo? Is it a sport, a religion, an aesthetic feast, living traditional culture, or a battle of titans? The simple answer is Yes! For the first time ever, David Benjamin's The Joy of Sumo strips away the veneer of culture and looks at Japan's national sport through the eyes of a true aficionado. Learn what makes a sumo exciting. Read what makes individual wrestlers tick. Understand why there are no weight divisions. Find out how to remember names. Memorize tactics. But most of all grasp why such a plethora of descriptions of the sport can all be true. Sumo, like any sport, has its heroes, horrors, and hilarity, and The Joy of Sumo has something for everyone. Guaranteed to provide invaluable information for everyone form the novice fan to the expert, The Joy of Sumo also is the first book to do it with the same humor normally associated more with football, basketball, or baseball. In fact, after he's read this book, the sportslover's world will never be quite the same-just broader and more fun!You have to be willing to actually read this one to get anything out of it, which makes it much less useful to me if -for example- I just want to know what just happened in a bout. It's more filled with anecdotes about past wrestlers and answers fewer Why? and What happened? questions.
The cup from which we drink matters, perhaps not as much as the coffee itself, but it can certainly add significantly to, or detract significantly from, our enjoyment of the coffee.Granted, we shouldn't focus on the superficial aspects of an experience at the expense of the primary experience itself, but I don't see anything wrong in trying to enhance the coffee-drinking experience with a cup that suits you.
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| photo from Sky High Party Rentals |
1. Metropolis (1927)They explain why each is influential and what the political message is. I've seen the ones in bold print. I have a Clockwork Orange DVD on the shelf but haven't gotten to it yet. Alphaville looks like the least well-known of these, at least with people I know. io9 calls it "a pop-art noir masterpiece that still gets listed as one of the all-time great movies".
2) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
3) Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
4) Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)
5) A Clockwork Orange (1971)
6) Robocop (1987)
7) Akira (1988)
8) Demolition Man (1993)
9) The Matrix (1999)
10. Avatar (2009)
11. The Hunger Games (2012)
The war abroad has escaped from the confines of the news and into what could be but likely isn't your backyard (when was the last time the target audience for Harry Brown was anywhere remotely near a project complex?) and nobody can stop it but an old man with a gun and a warped sense of ethics. God help us all.The Guardian gives it 3 out of 5 stars and says it's "a tremendous role for Caine". Roger Ebert praises Caine and says, "We are all so desperately weary of CGI that replaces drama. With movies like this, humans creep back into crime stories." Rotten Tomatoes critics give it 64%.
When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city.The back of the book just quotes from Gore Vidal's article in The New York Review of Books. Here's the Wikipedia description:
The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 cities, apparently narrated by Polo. Short dialogues between the two characters are interspersed every five to ten cities and are used to discuss various ideas presented by the cities on a wide range of topics including linguistics and human nature. The book is structured around an interlocking pattern of numbered sections, while the length of each section's title graphically outlines a continuously oscillating sine wave, or perhaps a city skyline. The interludes between Khan and Polo are no less poetically constructed than the cities, and form a framing device, a story within a story, that plays with the natural complexity of language and stories.The NPR reviewer says, "The question that Calvino seems to be asking is a big one: How should we live?" and, "There is so much there there. It's best, I think, to read Invisible Cities like a traveler — slowly, luxuriously, as if you have all the time in the world." The New York Times calls it an "ineffably lovely book". Kirkus Reviews says, "The assumption of the invisible cities is that we will, no matter what, always have recognitions to share in common and that they may be essential ones." The Guardian says,
Marco Polo and Kublai Khan do not speak the same language. When Polo is explaining the various cities, he uses objects from the city to tell the story. The implication is that that each character understands the other through their own interpretation of what they are saying. They literally are not speaking the same language, which leaves many decisions for the individual reader.
The book, because of its approach to the imaginative potentialities of cities, has been used by architects and artists to visualize how cities can be, their secret folds, where the human imagination is not necessarily limited by the laws of physics or the limitations of modern urban theory. It offers an alternative approach to thinking about cities, how they are formed and how they function.
Invisible Cities is a metafictional guide to Venice, an elegy to a succession of exotic and remote cities that are all versions of Venice, according to the Venetian traveller Marco Polo – who in Calvino's book describes them to the emperor Kublai Khan. He never mentions Venice, instead he describes all the other fantastic places he claims to have visited. But when Khan asks him to speak of Venice he replies: "What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?"
A man known as The Drifter returns home to his cabin in the woods and winds up getting involved with an escaped convict, a gunfighter, lumber company rivals, mysterious family ties and murder.I'm not overly fond of Westerns from the '30s, and there's nothing here to convert me. It was interesting enough, and the acting was fine. If you like this kind of thing or this era of Western, I'm sure you'll like this. What's that saying again? "Them that likes it speaks well of it."
Stuart Cuno has decided to become good. Not believing in God, he invents his own methods, which include celibacy, chastity and the abandonment of a promising academic career. Interfering friends and relations question his sincerity, his sanity and his motives. Stuart’s step-brother Edward Baltram is tormented by guilt because he has, he believes, killed his best friend. He dreams sometimes of redemption, sometimes of suicide. Edward is sent on a "journey to the underworld" to find his natural father, the painter Jesse Baltram, whom he has not seen since childhood. He discovers a father strangely different from his expectations, and succumbs to an enchantment quite unlike the redemptive cure for which he has been seeking; and meets perhaps the one person in the world who has the power to forgive him. Meanwhile Stuart’s moral apprenticeship is causing nothing but trouble. Coming to rescue Edward, Stuart provokes a final catastrophic clash of forces. Funny, compelling and extremely moving, Iris Murdoch's new novel is about obsessive guilt-ridden despair, and the difficult problem of how to try to be good -and the various magical devices which console those who are sensible enough not to try.favorite quotes:
How does one live after total wickedness, total failure, total disgrace?
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow?"
"No."
So little needed to be changed for it all to be different.
I'm not mentally ill I'm spiritually ill. I never knew what that meant before. It's the fact, the fact I have to live with, what happened, what I did. People say, "you have to live with something", but I can't live with this, I can only die with it, except that I don't die.
We practice dying through a continual destruction of our self-images, inspired not by the self-hatred which seems to be within, but by the truth that seems to be without; such suffering is normal, it goes on all the time, it must go on.
Some memories are like lucky charms, talismans, one shouldn't tell about them or they'll lose their power.
One thing I think I've learnt is how to learn.
We all have horrors in our lives that have to be lived with. We must all harden our hearts about the harm we have done to others, forgive ourselves and forget our deeds as the victims of them would do if they were righteous.
I think religion is about good and evil and the distance between them.There's a reference to a painting by Botticelli of angels embracing repentant sinners, but I can't figure out which painting that would be.
no other contemporary British novelist seems to me of her eminence. Her formidable combination of intellectual drive and storytelling exuberance may never fuse into a great novel, but she has earned now the tribute she made to Sartre more than 30 years ago. She too has the style of the age.There is a Center for Iris Murdoch Studies.
The Thief of Bagdad (1924, d. Raoul Walsh)It's intended as a response to the Rotten Tomatoes list, as he says he:
King Kong (1933, d. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958, d. Nathan H. Juran)
The Exterminating Angel (1962, d. Luis Buñuel)
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973, d. Victor Erice)
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987, d. Ching Siu-tung)
Paperhouse (1988, d. Bernard Rose)
Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990, d. Anthony Minghella)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999, d. Michael Hoffman)
Big Fish (2003, d. Tim Burton)
decided to offer my own list of great fantasy movies as a companion piece -- and, in some cases, an antidote to what Rotten Tomatoes cobbled together. I decided against offering my own ten-best, for the simple reason that (a) the truly great selections already have a place on the previous list and (b) are entries you should already be familiar with. (Seriously, haven't you already seen The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series, The Princess Bride, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Princess Mononoke?) My only real criteria, this time, was to select movies that did not appear on Rotten Tomatoes' list. Hopefully you'll find something of interest in these selections.I've seen the ones in bold print and have heard of Exterminating Angel and that version of Midsummer Night's Dream. I haven't heard of the others, but his descriptions motivate me to seek them out. Big Fish is one of my favorite movies.
Good morning judge, what may be my fine?
Good morning judge, what may be my fine?
Fifty dollars, eleven twenty-nine
They 'rest me for murder, I ain't harmed a man
'Rest me for murder, I ain't harmed a man
Women hollerin' murderer, Lord I ain't raised my hand
Piety such as theirs exists no more. Such simple, trusting faith is lost to the world. When you folks here in Abalone worship your god, I understand you do it in a church wired for sound, so that every pleasure automobile, radio-equipped, can, even at sixty miles an hour, hear you at your prayers. But does your god?from the back of the book:
A classic since its first publication in 1935, The Circus of Dr. Lao is irreverent, licentious, insolent and amusing. Here is a circus of legendary creatures -satyrs, werewolves, mermaids, sea serpents- that is scintillating, intriguing, horrifying and delightful. Between the lines of its imaginative orgies is a profound satirical comment on civilization.SF Site concludes, "It's a thought-provoking read and, like Dr. Lao's circus, contains far more depth than its humble surface appears to offer." Strange Horizons closes with this: "The book holds its own today, as it blends in with the exciting changes taking place in imaginative writing. Like Dr. Lao's circus, it is full of magic, and exists outside the boundaries of time." SFF World calls it "Weird, unusual and sadly affecting". Kirkus Reviews says, "just as the absurd circus parade piqued the curiosity of the townsfolk, so page after page, the story piques the curiosity of the reader."
"Just as, in a menagerie, some people will pause to marvel before a cage of an exotic creature from another hemisphere, while others haul their children past, scarecely permitting them a glimpse, so, at the circus, some of us gasp at the trapezists' and the tumblers' feats, and other paying customers move restlessly in their seats and check their fingernails. In a circus we see mostly what we are ready to see. There is no script but chance and hope and sponteneity, and thus it is appropriate that this masterpieve of circus literature describes an imaginary circus, not a real one. No circus ought to be too "real"." -from Edward Hoagland's introduction
"There ain't no man livin' could ever refuse all that money."via youtube:
A very creepy film that more appropriatley resembles a horror film than a Spaghetti Western. It relies heavily on atmosphere and suspense and will no doubt fascinate many viewers. It is one of those movies that every Spaghetti Western fan should see to decide for themselves. It does have faults but has many distinguishing aspects that make this a very interesting and enjoyable Spaghetti Western.The Spinning Image closes by saying,
As an action film, this just about passes muster. It has that familiar mix of grubby sadism, pitch black humour and cynical social commentary ... common to all Django movies, even if they aren’t directly related, and moves briskly through its stalking and shootouts. Sergio Garrone was a solid hand at westerns and war movies...Rotten Tomatoes has no critics' reviews.
The day after a storm floods Vigata, Inspector Montalbano encounters a strange, bedraggled woman who expresses interest in a certain yacht scheduled to dock that afternoon. Not long after she's gone‚ the crew of the yacht reports having found a dinghy in the port, and within it, a disfigured corpse. Also at anchor is an eighty-five-foot luxury boat with a somewhat shady crew. Both boats will have to stay in Vigata until the investigation is over -the unidentified ma was poisoned, it seems. Based on the information -and misinformation- the mysterious woman shared with him‚ Montalbano begins to think the occupants of the yacht just might know a little more about the man’s death than they’re letting on.Euro Crime concludes with this:
Because of its focus on Montalbano's continual agonising between Livia and other women, I would say that it isn't one of the strongest of the series. Nevertheless, there is plenty of Camilleri's trademark humour and charm to please his fans, and of course the able translation of Stephen Sartarelli enhances the whole.Kirkus Reviews closes with this: "delves more deeply into the hero's interior life than usual. A droll delight for series fans, maybe not so much for new readers." Reviewing the Evidence calls it "Entertaining summer fare." The Telegraph says, "As is customary with Camilleri's novels, the delight is not in the crime plot - which is just as well, as most of the exposition comes in a rush at the end - but in the character of Montalbano." Publisher's Weekly says, "The awkward humanity and everyday sadness of Camilleri’s characters make them instantly sympathetic, while wry commentary on language, food, and local customs lend color."
WALL-E4 out of 10. Bummer. I think I have a better track record with "older" movies. Much older movies.
Star Trek
Avatar
Moon
District 9 (I tried to watch it, really I did.)
Inception
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Source Code
Super 8
Looper
1 - The Wizard of Oz37 out of 50, which gives me 2 stars out of 3 in their scoring system. I won't be going back and watching the ones of these I missed except for Orphee and Santa Sangre. I will be looking for those two.
2 - Pinocchio
3 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
4 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II
5 - Fantasia
6 - How To Train Your Dragon
7 - Monty Python and the Holy Grail
8 - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
9 - Beauty and the Beast (1946)
10 - Spirited Away
11 - Kiki's Delivery Service
12 - Pan's Labyrinth
13 - The Witches (1990 film)
14 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
15 - The Princess Bride
16 - Beauty and the Beast
17 - Orphee
18 - Time Bandits
19 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
20 - Enchanted
21 - The Secret World of Arrietty
22 - Jason and the Argonauts
23 - Princess Mononoke
24 - Coraline
25 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
26 - The Secret of NIMH
27 - James and the Giant Peach
28 - ALADDIN
29 - Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)
30 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
31 - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
32 - Shrek 2
33 - Tangled
34 - The Little Mermaid
35 - Shrek
36 - Kung Fu Panda
37 - Black Orpheus
38 - Hellboy II: The Golden Army
39 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
40 - Delicatessen
41 - Howl's Moving Castle
42 - Santa Sangre
43 - The Princess and the Frog
44 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
45 - Bridge to Terabithia
46 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
47 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1
48 - Brave
49 - Kung Fu Panda 2
50 - Hellboy
The resulting experience is unique and thrilling. We are never implicitly told how to feel, when to applaud, or what moments to relish. Consequently, The Fall takes its place among an elite category of cinema: a careful artwork that doesn't advertise its own gravitas. Perhaps that's the definition of a cult classic.Quiet Earth says, "I would recommend The Fall to people who want to be visually blown away and can be a bit forgiving in the storytelling department." Roger Ebert gives it a full 4 stars and says it "is beautiful for its own sake". The Rotten Tomatoes scores: critics score 59%; audience score 83%.
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