War on Terror

This is humorous, but it has a point. How many of us really understand the War on Terror?

 

List of 80th Annual Oscar Nominees

The nominees are out for the 80th Oscar awards.

Best Picture

• Atonement
• Juno
• Michael Clayton
• No Country for Old Men
• There Will Be Blood

Best Actor

• George Clooney, Michael Clayton
• Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
• Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
• Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Actress

• Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
• Julie Christie, Away From Her
• Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
• Laura Linney, The Savages
• Ellen Page, Juno

Supporting Actor

• Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James
• Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
• Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
• Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
• Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

Supporting Actress

• Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
• Ruby Dee, American Gangster
• Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
• Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
• Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Director

• Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• Jason Reitman, Juno
• Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
• Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
• Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

Foreign Film

• Beaufort, Israel
• The Counterfeiters, Austria
• Katyn, Poland
• Mongol, Kazakhstan
• 12, Russia

Adapted Screenplay

• Christopher Hampton, Atonement
• Sarah Polley, Away from Her
• Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
• Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

Original Screenplay

• Diablo Cody, Juno
• Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl
• Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
• Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, Ratatouille
• Tamara Jenkins, The Savages

Animated Feature Film

• Persepolis
• Ratatouille
• Surf's Up

Art Direction

• American Gangster
• Atonement
• The Golden Compass
• Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• There Will Be Blood

Cinematography

• The Assassination of Jesse James
• Atonement
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• No Country for Old Men
• There Will Be Blood

Sound Mixing

• The Bourne Ultimatum
• No Country for Old Men
• Ratatouille
• 3:10 to Yuma
• Transformers

Sound Editing

• The Bourne Ultimatum
• No Country for Old Men
• Ratatouille
• There Will Be Blood
• Transformers

Original Score

• Atonement, Dario Marianelli
• The Kite Runner, Alberto Iglesias
• Michael Clayton, James Newton Howard
• Ratatouille, Michael Giacchino
• 3:10 to Yuma, Marco Beltrami

Original Song

• Falling Slowly from Once, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
• Happy Working Song from Enchanted, Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
• Raise It Up from August Rush, Nominees to be determined
• So Close from Enchanted, Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
• That's How You Know from Enchanted, Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz.

Costume

• Across the Universe
• Atonement
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age
• La Vie en Rose
• Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Documentary Feature

• No End in Sight
• Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
• Sicko
• Taxi to the Dark Side
• War/Dance."

Documentary (short subject)

• Freeheld
• La Corona (The Crown)
• Salim Baba
• Sari's Mother

Film Editing

• The Bourne Ultimatum
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• Into the Wild
• No Country for Old Men
• There Will Be Blood

Makeup

• La Vie en Rose
• Norbit
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Animated Short Film

• I Met the Walrus
• Madame Tutli-Putli
• Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
• My Love (Moya Lyubov)
• Peter & the Wolf

Live Action Short Film

• At Night
• Il Supplente (The Substitute)
• Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)
• Tanghi Argentini
• The Tonto Woman

Visual Effects

• The Golden Compass
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Transformers

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In This America...

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has asked that a man awaiting trial for cannibalism be forced to become a vegetarian. 

Christopher McCuin was arrested and charged earlier this month with killing, cooking, and partially eating his girlfriend. In a letter from PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich (pictured on right) to prison officials, Bruce asks that Christopher be put on a strict vegan diet to prevent him from contributing to any more suffering and death.

The request will not be honored, prison officials said. McCuin will be fed like any other prisoner.

 

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TGIF Tropical

Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA

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Lucky Number Slevin

Lucky Number Slevin - 2006

For the first - oh - three quarters of this movie you are baffled with multiple story flashbacks, convergent plot lines and oddball characters galore. In an effort to be an American version of Lock, Stock, and two Smoking Barrels, Lucky Number Slevin succeeds on the merits of its all-star cast. Director Paul McGuigan uses a slick and style to deliver a film that is part gangster flick, part mystery and part suspense.

Slevin Kelivra (Josh Hartnett) has got to be the unluckiest guy in New York. In town to visit a friend after losing his apartment and girlfriend, he gets mugged and is relieved of his wallet. His fiend is nowhere to be found at the apartment and soon Slevin is pulled into the battle between two rival underworld chiefs. With wacky neighbor Lindsey (Lucy Liu), they set out to solve the mystery of the missing friend, get Slevin out of trouble, and stay one step ahead of the cops.

Lucky Number Slevin has some witty fun dialog in the tone of a Tarantino film (pre Kill Bill). And it is delivered by some of the best deliverers in the business, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley, Stanley Tucci, Danny Aiello. If these names don't get you in the door, then how about this: this movie looks awesome. Production design is by François Séguin, recently from The Greatest Game Ever Played and Shattered Glass. Check out the wallpaper throughout the movie (yea, I know, wallpaper). The movie oozes with style and visual appeal.

There is a hilarious scene where two tuffs from the Morgan Freeman gang come to collect Slevin for the boss. The two heavys (Sloe & Elvis) share this dialog with Slevin:

Elvis: [Grabs Slevin by the throat and moves him into the living room] The Boss wants to see you.
Slevin: Who?
Sloe: The Boss.
Slevin: Who's the Boss?
Sloe: The guy we work for. Sit
Slevin: [He attempts getting up but is kept down by Sloe] Look. I'm not the guy you're looking for. I don't live here.
Sloe: Yeah well you look like the guy who lives here.
Slevin: Man, you don't know what the guy who lives here looks like.
Elvis: What he means to say is that you look like you live here.
Sloe: Yeah, that's what I mean to say.

Many critics have given this movie a low rating because they knew they were being taken for a ride and didn't like it (here, here and here). I knew I was being taken for a ride, and I liked the ride.

 

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Tom Firing His Shotgun Under the Stars

Check out this fascinating picture from Kathleen Connally's Photoblog. The capture is timed perfectly.

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In This America...

An inmate that injured himself breaking out of a Colorado jail is suing on grounds that the facility didn't do enough to prevent him from trying to escape.

Scott Gomez Jr. claims that he was badly injured when he fell 40 feet while attempting to scale down the outside wall of the Pueblo County jail.

"Prison authorities did next to nothing to ensure that the jail was secure and that he would not escape." said Gomez' lawyer.

TGIF Blue Fantasy

Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA

 

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Oliver 40274 Products

This interesting widget from mpire allows a blog to show different products in a rotating display. As you mouse over a product, the display jumps to that item to show details. It provides a way to show products without ads (that suck)

Here is an example using televisions.

Let me know what you think. Is it a positive way to monitize a site?

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Fellini, Artist at Work

Continuing our series on the Italian director Federico Fellini and his movies, this installment is on the director himself. In this post will discuss early influences and achievements. Future posts will investigate his career as filmmaker and artist.

While this exploration is important for film buffs, it is for anyone who has been moved by a Fellini film and would like to know more about this dynamic director.

 

Fellini - The Early Years

Fellini's early ambition and career choice was that of newspaper reporter. During the 1930's, while working in the Italian capitol of Rome, he remarked that he was inspired by American films of glamorous newspapermen of the period. He reported police news for the popular paper Il popolo di Roma, cartoons and short stories in Marc' Aurelio (a weekly satirical magazine). From there he moved to radio - and the next progression was to film.

In 1943 he met Giulietta Masina, who had a profound influence on his life and work. After getting to know each other from initial work on a radio serial, they were married in 1943. Giulietta went on to star in six of Fellini's films (Variety Lights, The White Sheik, La Strada, Il Bidone, Nights of Cabiria, Juliet of the Spirits).

 

Fellini - The Work

"Cinema is basically a pictorial medium, therefore a  director must be curious about the multiple aspects of reality."

Fellini originally loved the black and white film medium. He thought that it allowed the viewer to engage more imaginately with the characters and objects in the film. The viewer would project the colors onto the film. In his first color project, Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini became a convert, playing with color and content like an artist on a canvas. Color became an integral feature of the film. When asked about his use of color, Fellini described cinema as movement and color as immobility. Trying to blend the two was the supreme ambition.

To compose a film, Fellini needed to know intimately everything in every shot - every shirt, every tie, every moustache. Understanding that art and life are not equivalent, he choose to create worlds that existed only on the screen. Enter a Fellini world and be prepared to witness another world where fantasy and reality twist and intertwine.

I hope this short essay leads you to explore Fellini's films and work. Stop back and leave us a note as you explore..

Fellini Research & Links...

IMDB

Wikipedia

Senses of Cinema

 

Related Posts...

Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits

Fellini's 8 1/2

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Great Mysteries

This from the folks at RedPlanetCartoons, some great mysteries in life...

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TGIF Mystery

Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA.

Any guesses what this object is?