Blowing Out Lanterns

New Movies for the Weekend of 2/29/08

Semi-Pro : Starring Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, and Andre Benjamin. Placed in 1976, an ABA basketball team that rivals the NBA is faced with a possible merger Moon (Ferrell) rallies his teammates in an effort to make their far-fetched NBA dreams come true. [Yet, another Will Ferrell movie. Impossible situation in an unrealistic role. I really don't understand this obsession with him. Enough already, we get it, he can be funny...is anyone else getting sick of seeing him in every other movie that sucks...ugh.]

The Other Boleyn Girl : Starring Natalie Portman, Eric Bana, and Scarlett Johansson. Two sisters fight for the attention of King Henry VIII. One sister has genuine feelings for the King while the other is just out to be Queen of England. The Boleyn girls will battle for the love of a King–which could tear England apart. [I am a bit interested in this only because of the era in which the movie takes place. I do like Portman and Johansson. I'm sure the audience will be filled with mostly males with their girls to sneak a peek at the possibility of seeing girl action or a breast!]

Not in All Major Theaters:

Penelope : Starring Christina Ricci, James McAvoy, and Reese Witherspoon. Penelope was born with the curse of a pig’s snout as a nose. The curse can only be broken when she finds true love with a prince. [This sounds like it should be animated. Although, I do like Ricci.]

City of Men : Starring Douglas Silva, Darlan Cunha, and Jonathan Haagensen. A deep-seeded family secret drives best friends apart and into a culture of violence and rival street gangs. [I'm curious if this is going to be just a long episode of "Prison Break".]

Quick Mention: (Limited Viewing) 

Chicago 10

Bonneville

Unforeseen

Beyond Belief

Vivere

Enjoy the weekend!

Tags: Uncategorized by Nekogirl
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Wonderful Neo-surrealist art from George Grie

I’ve always seen the purpose of surrealism as an attempt to unite the disparate elements of the human psyche through a sort of organic juxtaposition of elements, and Grie’s work fits the bill entirely. The demonstration of the commonplace recontextualized into the fantastic and strangely absurd is truly striking. I’m not normally a fan of especially phantasmagorical work, but some of the pieces here really strike a cord with me.

Link

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Pictoriphilia by Etruscan
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!!!!Spoil Alert!!!!

In a critical error by Diebold, the election results have been leaked early. This blunder has added to an already tarnished reputation, whereas various programming errors and security threats have been identified. This unfortunately is their greatest blunder and will forever be known as the company that has spoiled the Greatest Election Race Ever. The next President of the United States will be John McCain. That’s right folks. It doesn’t matter how unified you feel inside to vote for the first black or female president, change is not going to happen.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Via Laughing Squid

Tags: I should probably go to bed, Politics by Gestalt
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Improv Everywhere is a highly organized group of ontological terrorists based out of NYC. They cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places. I have been enjoying their antics for a while now. In their latest attack on social norms they have infiltrated the Starbucks mobile laptop culture by bringing in three undercover covert agents with large old fashion desktop computers and the giant sized monitors. I saw one of them booting up Windows 95. Starbucks has a policy where they encourage people to bring in laptops and hang out so it feels like a regular local coffee shop and not a chain. The policy, in NYC at least, seems to have attracted thousands of desperate writers out to prove that they are actually writers. I guess if you can’t get yourself published at least you can be seen writing. I couldn’t focus in a coffee shop especially a Starbucks in NYC.

Link, via Laughing Squid

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Videophilia by Gestalt
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Messer Chups St. Petersburg’s finest in Russian-Horror-Surf-Psycho-Lounge offers a choose-your-own-adventure of the macabre. Oleg Gitarkin (guitars) & Zombie Girl (bass) offer the finest in retro-camp and they will be appearing in NYC February, 27 2008 at
DROM - 85 Ave. A, at E.6St. NYC, NYC, New York. If you’re in the area this is not to be missed.

They offer more videos on their Youtube page, it’s worth checking out. I had a really hard time deciding which video to feature.

Tags: Audiophilia, Videophilia by Gestalt
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India is, to my knowledge, the first country to ever have an officially recognised “Zombie Party”, the Mritak Sangh. In the State of Uttar Pradesh estimates indicate that over 40,000 people have been declared legally, if inaccurately, deceased. Generally this seems to be an economic ploy so that their relatives can rightfully take possesion of their worldly belongings, but these “living dead” have united in protest of the political system that allows this to occur.

Link to the Bnet article

Tags: Economics, Politics, Zombiphilia by Etruscan
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Wired’s Threat Level blog reports on an interesting data-mining report released by the Director of National Intelligence (now who wouldn’t want that title? Really now…) outlining several surveillance and intelligence gathering initiatives focusing on the online community. Not the least of this is dubbed ‘Reynard’. The stated aim of this project is to

“seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.”

Now, let’s think about this for a moment. “identify the emerging social, behavioral, and cultural norms”. So if I understand this correctly, these guys are meme-hunting in the hopes that that will lead them to identify supposed suspicious behavior. Is it any wonder that I gave up Anthropology? But, of course, they’re doing it covertly but in the public sphere, so that makes it legal. Leaving aside for a moment the absolutely terrifying implications of what ’suspicious behavior’ could be construed as in the context of the web; I must say I love the image of rooms upon rooms of dour-faced men in poorly fitted suits doggedly combing the net for every LOLcat they can find.

What delicious surrealism.

Link to the full report. Via Threat level Via Secrecy News

Tags: Politics, Uncategorized by Etruscan
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CHINA has added ghosts, monsters and other things that go bump in the night to its list of banned video and audio content in an intensified crackdown ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Producers have around three weeks to look through their tapes for “horror” and report it to authorities, the General Administration of Press and Publications said.Offending content included “wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror”, the administration said.The new guidelines aim to “control and cleanse the negative effect these items have on society, and to prevent horror, violent, cruel publications from entering the market through official channels and to protect adolescents’ psychological health”.

The regulations suggest China, where graphic, pirated sex and horror movies are available on most street corners, is keen to step up its control of the cultural arena ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August, which are widely seen as a coming-out party for the rising political and economic power.

This is very sad to me. I can help but think of all the lore, superstitions, and fear that is waiting to come out of that country. Maybe this is why they feel a need to ban potentially subversive material. In the west we have traditionally used horror to mask subversive political content. Horror has always been the ultimate allegory. I’m sure China is doing everything they can to root out any form of creative thinking. Bring on the thought police!!

In response I have one thing to say.

Link. via The Groovy Age of Horror.

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Politics, Zombiphilia by Gestalt
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I totally didn’t post any zombie posts last weekend because I got sucked into a couple of online video games. Kongregate makes some very simple flash games that are easy to play. One very cool game that can provide endless hours of distraction is Endless Zombie Rampage. If fact they have a large assortment of zombie related flash games. You can imagine what I did over vacation. I think I wasted almost a whole week killing stuff. Word of caution!! If you are moderately compulsive you will get sucked in.

This is me getting my ass kicked!!

Tags: I should probably go to bed, Zombiphilia by Gestalt
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This might be an amature claymation film but I felt its raw talent was worthily of passing along. I love the fitful, jerky movements that protest while trying to flow from one scene to the next. Did that clay man just ride a clay toilet like riding a horse? Whoa…

Link

Tags: Videophilia by Nekogirl
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