Showing all posts tagged: legacy
Polly Pollet, Brussels based ballpoint pen artist and drawer
26 June 2017
If it’s artworks with attitude that you’re seeking, then look no further than the work of Polly Pollet, AKA the ballpoint ninja, a Brussels, Belgium, based ballpoint pen artist and drawer. More work can be seen on her Behance page.
Originally published Monday 26 June 2017.
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Deirdre Sullivan Beeman, surrealist figurative artist
30 March 2017
Deirdre Sullivan-Beeman is a surrealist figurative artist, based in Los Angeles. This work is titled Orphic Egg Girl, a wood panel painted with oil and egg tempera.
Tempera is a painting medium, often consisting of, yes, egg yoke. As a painting medium, egg tempera is long lasting, very long lasting. Artworks painted with egg tempera in the first century survive to this day. You learn something new every day. And who knows, people may still looking upon Orphic Egg Girl two thousand years from now.
Originally published Thursday 30 March 2017.
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art, Deirdre Sullivan Beeman, legacy
Lena Macka Lyon France based illustrator and tattoo designer
21 March 2017
Lena Macka is an illustrator and designer of minimal tattoos, who is based in the French city of Lyon. She seems to work mainly in black and white, and shades of grey, but look through her illustrations, and you will see some colour works.
Originally published Tuesday 21 March 2017.
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Thilo Vogel, engineer, digital nomad, and portrait photographer
1 February 2017
Thilo Vogel describes himself as a photographer, engineer, digital nomad, and rooftop tent camper. That’s quite the mix. But check out his portrait photography. He certainly has a way of bringing out his subject’s — in this case Fabian Freigeist — individuality. Am I right, or am I right?
Originally published Wednesday 1 February 2017.
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Queen of the Desert, by Werner Herzog, with Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson
31 May 2016
Still from Queen of the Desert , a film by Werner Herzog.
Born in England in 1868, Gertrude Bell spent the early decades of the twentieth century travelling across the Middle East, in what is now Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Iran, and Jordan. She was a writer, archaeologist, and explorer, and was much respected by both the British, and the peoples of the region. She also played a part in establishing latter day Iraq and Jordan.
In Queen of the Desert, trailer, the Werner Herzog (Invincible, Cave of Forgotten Dreams) made depiction of her life, she is portrayed by Nicole Kidman. Bell is desperate to flee the clutches of her stifled upper class life, and leaps at the opportunity to leave, when her father (David Calder) offers to send her to stay in Tehran with her uncle, the British ambassador.
Upon arriving, Bell is soon enamoured by the free-spirited way of life in the Middle East, and sets her sights on seeing as much of the area as possible, plus meeting the local inhabitants, and their tribal leaders. She also catches the eye of several British military and diplomatic personnel, including Henry Cadogan (James Franco), and T.E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia (Robert Pattinson).
Nicole Kidman meets Lawrence of Arabia? Who wouldn’t want to see a film where that happens? Maybe quite a few people, and it almost seems the producers were hoping this drawcard meeting would carry the story. Instead, Queen of the Desert presents as little more than a perfunctory re-counting of Bell’s exploits in the Middle East. The performances by the leads are competent, but I think audiences may be left feeling unsure what sort of film Herzog was trying to make.
Originally published Tuesday 31 May 2016. Updated Sunday 21 April 2024.
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film, James Franco, legacy, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, Werner Herzog
Planet Nine, a captured exoplanet? How B-grade sci-fi is that idea?
6 May 2016
There has been chatter in recent months about Planet Nine, a would-be planetary body lurking on the extreme far reaches of the solar system.
The hypothetical planet is so far away, its orbital period around the Sun is estimated at ten thousand years. By comparison, Pluto, the solar system’s best known dwarf, and outermost planet, completes a lap around the Sun in about two-hundred-and-forty-eight years.
But back to Planet Nine. Before even confirming the body even exists, astronomers are trying to figure out its origins. Wouldn’t that be easier once the planet is found? Whatever, some scientists believe it formed relatively close to the Sun, before being dispatched to the solar system’s outer reaches after a run-in with Jupiter.
Others, however, think Planet Nine is an exoplanet, a once rogue exoplanet possibly, that was captured by the Sun, after straying a little too closely to our solar system.
The final scenario sounds like a plot line from a B-grade sci-fi movie, and it seems to be comparably unlikely. Planet Nine could be an extraterrestrial invader. “Planet 9 may be an exoplanet in our own solar system,” said Gongjie Li, another astronomer at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics whose recent modelling paper explores this very possibility, among others.
I’m not sure though I like the notion of Planet Nine being described as “a plot line from a B-grade sci-fi movie”, since it’s an idea I’ve been kicking around, as if it were a cosmic soccer ball, so to speak, in one of my sci-fi writing projects.
Originally published Friday 6 May 2016. Updated Friday 24 May 2024.
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Wuher: A Star Wars Story, and other films you may not live to see
18 November 2015
If a single movie, Rogue One, a Star Wars “spin off” story, slated for release in late 2016, can be spawned by way of a few words taken from the opening crawl of A New Hope, then imagine what else seen in the six films released to date, has the potential to inspire? A point that’s not lost on current series producers, the Walt Disney Company:
And if the people at the Walt Disney Company, which bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, have anything to say about it, the past four decades of Star Wars were merely prologue. They are making more. A lot more. The company intends to put out a new Star Wars movie every year for as long as people will buy tickets. Let me put it another way: If everything works out for Disney, and if you are (like me) old enough to have been conscious for the first Star Wars film, you will probably not live to see the last one. It’s the forever franchise.
I think Wuher, the gruff bartender in the canteen at Mos Eisley, is worthy of a film. In fact, I’m of the opinion that the significance of his role in the saga has been greatly understated so far. Read his profile. I think you’ll agree there’s far more to him than meets the eye.
Originally published Wednesday 18 November 2015.
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film, legacy, science fiction, Star Wars
Only the Dead, a documentary by Michael Ware, Bill Guttentag
16 October 2015
“Only the dead have seen the end of war” is a phrase Greek philosopher Plato is said to have uttered the better part of two and a half thousand years ago. They are words bluntly contending, that for some, combat is an experience they will always live with, no matter how much time, or distance, they place between themselves and the battlefield.
War does not only scar the belligerents, and the hapless civilians caught up in the middle of it, but also those whose part is considered ancillary, including medics and journalists. Only the Dead tells one such story, of Australian reporter Michael Ware, and is based on video footage he recorded while working for Time Magazine in Iraq, between 2003 and 2007.
Although American lead coalition forces quickly took control of Iraq, and ousted long-time leader Saddam Hussein, when they invaded in 2003, the real struggle commenced afterwards. Groups of insurgents, some backed by al Qaeda, began engaging in guerrilla warfare, using terrifying tactics that included suicide bombings, kidnappings, and beheadings, against the occupying army.
Gradually Ware was able to make contact with members of some insurgent groups. This eventually resulted in Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was considered one of al Qaeda’s most vicious leaders, handing him video footage of their attacks against the occupying forces. It soon became apparent to Ware that the insurgents were far more organised than was first realised.
Co-directed by American documentary maker Bill Guttentag (Death on the Job, Nanking), Only the Dead is a harrowing, first-hand, account of the war in Iraq. It is also very much a personal story, and audiences are not only witness to some of the conflict’s most disturbing, horrific moments, but also Ware’s own dark, inner, turmoil.
Originally published Friday 16 October 2015.
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Bill Guttentag, documentary, film, legacy, Michael Ware
Pluto, the solar system’s other red… planet?
14 July 2015
NASA’s New Horizons space probe will probably be skimming, mere thousands of kilometres, passed Pluto around about now. That means the photos it sends in the next few days will doubtless be far sharper than the above image of Pluto and Charon, taken from a distance of approximately twenty million kilometres.
While it’s been known for sometime Pluto is reddish-brown in colour, I didn’t realise it was referred to as the solar system’s “other red planet”, with Mars being, I guess, the red planet. While both have reddish hues, their colouring comes about in quite different ways:
What color is Pluto? The answer, revealed in the first maps made from New Horizons data, turns out to be shades of reddish brown. Although this is reminiscent of Mars, the cause is almost certainly very different. On Mars the coloring agent is iron oxide, commonly known as rust. On the dwarf planet Pluto, the reddish color is likely caused by hydrocarbon molecules that are formed when cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet light interact with methane in Pluto’s atmosphere and on its surface.
Also, isn’t referring to Pluto as “other red planet”, with the operative word being planet, likely to start all sorts of arguments?
Originally published Tuesday 14 July 2015.
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All you need to know about finding dropped coins in the street
23 April 2015
New York City resident Roger Pasquier has been keeping a record of the money he picks up along the footpaths he wanders each day, and for almost two decades collected about fifty-eight dollars a year. His… earnings however jumped to about ninety-five dollars annually from 2007 though.
This has been attributed to the arrival of the first of the smartphones. People are now so busy gazing at a screen, they miss any money that may have been dropped on the ground.
From 1987, when he began recording his findings, through 2014, he retrieved a thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars and eighty-seven cents. From 1987 to 2006, he averaged about fifty-eight dollars a year. Then Apple introduced the iPhone, and millions of potential competitors started to stare at their screens rather than at the sidewalks. Since 2007, Pasquier has averaged just over ninety-five dollars a year.
I tend to find coins on, or near footpaths, from time to time (hey, I’m a writer, I need all the help I can get). This usually over the summer months, and more often than not, two-dollar coins, rather than anything of lesser value.
I put this down to Australian two-dollar coins being, for whatever reason, the smallest coin, aside from the five-cent piece of course, and people thus not noticing when they fall from their pockets or wallet. Other coins are big enough to probably make some reasonable clink when they hit the ground, but not the two-dollar coin.
Pasquier meantime has all sorts of advice for those hoping to collect a dollar or two as they go about their affairs, worth a read really:
Good spirits, he said, are a liability. When you’re happy, you tend to look up, not down. “It takes a lot of will power to focus when you’re in a cheerful mood,” he said.
Originally published Thursday 23 April 2015.
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