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HEATHERS

from The New Yorker

“Heathers” Blew Up the High-School Comedy

The 1989 cult classic ushered in a darker, weirder, more experimental era for teen movies.

Text by Naomi Fry

“Touchstones” is an ongoing interactive series in which New Yorker writers guide us through the works that shaped them as critics and as people.

In the course of the eighties, nothing formed my understanding of what it meant to be a teen-ager, and particularly an American teen-ager, more than the movies of John Hughes. I was an Israeli kid who occasionally, thanks to my dad’s job, spent time in the United States, and Hughes’s œuvre—especially “The Breakfast Club,” “Pretty in Pink,” and “Sixteen Candles”—served, for me, as both an anthropological document and a how-to guide. For American teen-agers, I learned, daily life was a battleground: their parents pushed them around or ignored them; their teachers were bored and boring; they were confused about sex, and even more so about love; race was rarely a problem (the American teen-ager was almost always white), but class, and especially money, was; and class and money translated into the chief issue seemingly dogging every American teen-ager’s life—high-school cliques, and one’s ability to break free of their constraints in order to discover who one really was.

No matter how difficult these issues were to deal with, however, teens were able to overcome them by the end of Hughes’s movies. No problem was unmanageable, no adversity insurmountable. The movies’ redemptive arc guaranteed that the burnout and the prom queen could set their conflicts aside—as could the rich guy and the poor girl, and the jock and the weirdo—and the result was a new, more perfect union, which was more often than not sealed with a kiss.

The Hughesian Ending

“Make a wish,” Jake tells Samantha in the last scene of “Sixteen Candles.” “It already came true,” she replies.

The constancy of this teen-movie template was likely why “Heathers”—directed by Michael Lehmann, written by Daniel Waters, and the feature-film début for both—came as such a shock. Though the movie was released in the States in 1989—where it was, for the most part, a critical hit, though a box-office flop—it had not come out in Israel, and I saw it only in 1990, which I spent in Seattle. That year, I had fashioned myself as a sophisticated outsider, and had begun going to see movies alone, as sophisticated outsiders tend to do. (Making friends was a little bit of a struggle.) And so I settled down alone in a cinematheque-style theatre to watch what I believed would be another Hughes-style comedy. “Heathers,” I imagined, would focus on two attractive young people, played by Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, who would, against the odds, fall in love, come to resist the cliquishness of their school—embodied by a trio of popular mean girls, all named Heather—and bring on an improved, quasi-utopian social order.

But about twenty-five minutes into the movie I experienced a strong cognitive dissonance: I watched as J.D. (Slater) and Veronica (Ryder) gave Heather Chandler, the cruellest, most powerful member of the Heathers, a poisonous concoction. Had they just killed her? A teen movie couldn’t include murders, could it?

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker ]

Posted on April 1, 2019 by Editor

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55,000 Hours Of Boxing Archives

from The New York Times

For Sale: This Massive, Obsessive and (Probably) Obsolete VHS Boxing Archive

Forty years of boxing matches — as many as 55,000 individual fights — have been painstakingly preserved in a video archive. In the age of YouTube and cloud storage, is it worth anything?

By Alex Vadukul

Rock’ Em Sock’ Em Robots.CreditVincent Tullo for The New York Times

There’s a small apartment on 137th Street in Hamilton Heights that contains one of the most peculiar videotape collections in New York. The dusty VHS archive fills a vast library that contains the analog history of a sport: 8,000 cassettes with recordings of over 55,000 boxing matches that span 40 years.

It was the life’s work of Bela Szilagyi, a classical pianist and passionate fight enthusiast, who started the collection in 1979 when he taped a featherweight title match on a Quasar videocassette recorder. Mr. Szilagyi died in 2012 at 78 years old and his wife, a soft-spoken piano teacher, became the collection’s archivist.

On a recent Sunday night, Elizabeth Szilagyi, 76, commenced her ritual in the living room. She poured herself a glass of red wine, put on her reading glasses, and sat in front of her TV with a notepad in hand to record a welterweight fight at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. She ate a salad while taking notes about the match for the information card that gets filed in the archive. The bell rang and the boxers marched toward each other.

[ click to continue reading at NYT ]

Posted on March 23, 2019 by Editor

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Eternal Sunshine at 15

from Vanity Fair

Mind Games and Broken Hearts: Jim Carrey and Michel Gondry on Making Eternal Sunshine

Fifteen years later, the star and director get candid about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s grueling production, why they almost got into a fistfight on set, and the Tracy Morgan-starring scenes that didn’t make the final cut.

by YOHANA DESTA

Winslet and Carrey in *Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.*From Snap Stills/REX/Shutterstock.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—Michel Gondry’s instant classic of a sci-fi romance, written by Charlie Kaufman, which debuted 15 years ago—originally had a much darker ending. The Oscar-winning film follows ex-couple Joel and Clementine (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) as they undergo procedures to erase one another from their respective memories, with much of the story taking place in Joel’s subconscious. By the end of the film, they’re drawn together again anyway, willfully ignoring the fact that their relationship may very well crash and burn once more.

That’s not how Kaufman wrote it, though. “We don’t end up together in Charlie’s version. I walk away,” Carrey said in a recent phone interview. Gondry—who was sitting next to Carrey—added that the screenwriter also considered flipping the narrative, revealing at the end that the story has been taking place in Clementine’s head the whole time. But both ideas were ultimately scrapped—and Gondry’s relatively happy ending won out instead. (Kaufman’s rep didn’t respond when we asked to comment on this story.)

With its homespun sci-fi aesthetic, aided by Gondry’s nifty, lo-fi special effects and lived-in romanticism, Eternal Sunshine was a quietly mind-blowing film, the kind that spawned plenty of thin imitators. But it took a lot of tweaking for the film to arrive where it did—which also meant that several scenes featuring notable bit players were left on the cutting-room floor. A post-S.N.L., pre-30 Rock Tracy Morgan, for example, played Joel’s neighbor in a few flashbacks that did not make the finished film. “He’s a comedic genius,” said Gondry—“Genius!” Carrey emphasized. But “the reality is he was Tracy Morgan”—which made his presence a bit of a distraction. (Morgan’s rep says the comedian doesn’t remember if he acted in the film.)

[ click to continue reading at VF ]

Posted on March 19, 2019 by Editor

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Yoga With Hunnam and Hurst

from Pop Culture

‘Sons of Anarchy’ Co-Stars Charlie Hunnam and Ryan Hurst to Lead Yoga Class

By DANIEL S. LEVINE

Sons of Anarchy co-stars Charlie Hunnam and Ryan Hurst agreed to host a yoga class for fans, but only for one day this May.

The event, appropriately titled “Yogis of Anarchy,” will be part of Motor City Comic Con at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan. The convention runs from May 17-19, with the yoga class held on the final day from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. It is only open to convention attendees and only limited spaces are available.

Hunnam and Hurst built an off-screen bond while they worked together on FX’s Sons of Anarchy from 2008 to 2012. They reunited on Sam Taylor-Johnson’s A Million Little Pieces, which was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

In a new Hollywood Reporter interview, Hunnam said they frequently practice yoga together and are still close friends.

[ click to continue reading at Pop Culture ]

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Editor

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Old Order New Monday

Posted on March 15, 2019 by Editor

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2020 Best Picture Oscar Prediction – James Frey & Lena Waithe’s QUEEN AND SLIM

from Gold Derby

2020 Oscar Predictions: Best Picture

by Paul Sheehan

Oscars-new-logo-and-statue

Predicting the winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture is never easy. We were sure the top prize at the 2019 Oscars would go to “Roma” but it was “Green Book” that won. In coming up with our 2020 Oscar predictions, we considered a slew of factors, starting with the preferential ballot used to determine the winner. Add in the pedigree of the filmmakers, the critical reception to the films, the box office tally and the track record of the studios. We take all of these into consideration again as we look ahead to the 2020 Academy Awards. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2020 Oscars predictions for Best Picture.)

Contenders began to emerge at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Others will be seen for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival in May. However, most of the top tier of Best Picture hopefuls won’t screen until September at four film festivals: Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York. And a few will be held back till the last weeks of eligibility, getting limited releases in December.

Please note: Only those films with confirmed release dates are listed below. Check back often as new contenders are scheduled while other are dropped due to delays or critical reaction.

“Knives Out” (Lionsgate – November 27)
Writer/Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Lakeith Stanfield, Michael Shannon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Christopher Plummer.
Plot: A modern murder mystery in a classic whodunit style.

“Queen & Slim” (Universal – November 27)
Director: Melina Matsoukas
Writers:  James Frey, Lena Waithe
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Bokeem Woodbine, Jodie Turner-Smith
Plot: A couple’s first date takes an unexpected turn when a police officer pulls them over.

“The Souvenir” (A24 – May 17)
Writer/Director: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Honor Swinton-Byrne, Tom Burke, Richard Ayoade
Plot: A film student in the early 1980s becomes romantically involved with a complicated and untrustworthy man.

[ click to read complete list of contenders at Gold Derby ]

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Editor

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King Kong Bundy Gone

from Fox News

WWE legend King Kong Bundy dies at 61

By Ryan Gaydos

Former WWE legend King Kong Bundy has died, the wrestling company announced Tuesday. He was 61.

The New Jersey native, whose real name is Christopher Pallies, was known for his enormous stature inside the ring. He was 6-foot-4 and weighed 458 pounds. People called him the “walking condominium.”

One of his biggest moments in WWE was wrestling Hulk Hogan for the title at Wrestlemania 2. He would leave WWE in the 1980s only to return once more as part of The Million Dollar Corporation faction in 1994 before he left the company a year later.

[ click to continue reading at Fox News ]

Posted on March 7, 2019 by Editor

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Keith Flint Gone

from The Sun

Keith Flint ‘suicide’ – The Prodigy legend famed for Firestarter and wild haircut dead after ‘taking his own life’ aged 49

The iconic singer, from Essex, was found dead at his home after police and paramedics were called at around 8am this morning

By Richard Wheatstone

THE Prodigy’s Keith Flint has been found dead in a suspected suicide at his home, aged 49.

The iconic Essex singer was discovered at around 8am this morning after police and paramedics were called to the property.

Officers remain outside the £1.5m rural home this afternoon but his death is not being treated as suspicious.

The Prodigy’s co-founder Liam Howlett said Keith Flint had ‘taken his own life’.

Famed for his devil-horns haircut and intense stage performances – the iconic 90s musician was performing just last month in New Zealand on a world tour set to run until May.

The Essex boy, who once dated Gail Porter, was the face of the rave band and took centre stage on their best-known hit Firestarter, the single which launched him as an icon.

[ click to continue reading at The Sun ]

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Editor

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Lena Waithe and The New Black Renaissance

from TIME Magazine

Hollywood’s New Black Renaissance Is Thriving. But the Industry Still Has Work to Do

By LENA WAITHE

Lena WaithePHOTO: ROGER ERICKSON / Courtesy of Chicago Magazine

What makes me optimistic today are the people trying to rip up what it means to be black and successful in Hollywood and rebuild it afresh. People like Terence Nance, the writer and director behind HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. People like Dime Davis, who is directing four episodes of BET’s Boomerang, the TV version of a beloved movie that I’m producing. And people like Drew Michael, the stand-up comedian whose recent HBO special was almost like a therapy session; there was no audience hiding Drew and he was so vulnerable. That’s what art should be: aware of where the lines are, but coloring outside them.

Audiences are loving this new renaissance. They’re entertained, but they’re also educated. But my hope is that it no longer needs to be a renaissance, a moment or a movement. I want it to be the norm. It sometimes seems like people believe: “They have Black Panther, so they’re cool. Moonlight won best picture, so they’re good. They’ve got shows like Atlanta and Insecure, so they’re done.” But that’s not enough. White folks have everything, and we still have a lot of catching up to do. It’s too soon to be patting ourselves on the back like the problem is solved.

After all, the decision makers still don’t look like us. We’ve had a black person run the country, but never a big movie studio. Even though I’m making cool work, I still have to ask white people, “Is it OK? Do you like this enough? Do you understand this?” Until the big studio execs look like the rest of the world, that’s not going to change.

That said, people of color are a commodity right now. Every senior white executive is like: “Where’s my black TV show?” “Where’s my black Blockbuster?” And that’s awesome. But what we need is someone to be looking at it with a certain kind of intention. Don’t say, “Where’s my Insecure?” Ask, “Who’s the next Issa Rae?” Don’t say, “Where’s my Black Panther?” Ask, “Who’s the next Ryan Coogler?”

We need to find artists who are rebels—and usually the artists who are rebels aren’t the kind to raise their hands or promote themselves. We can’t count on the industry to find them. There are very few execs out there looking for the next stars and doing the roll-up-your-sleeves work of reading a bunch of scripts and talking to a lot of people to find who’s next. Until you’re hot, no one is seeking you out.

[ click to continue reading at TIME ]

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Editor

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Frieze LA Destroyed

from The Art Newspaper

Frieze LA diary: Leibovitz’s photo finish, Destroyer smashes it and a mushroom-powered rocket (doesn’t) take off

Plus, Suzanne Jackson’s modest gallery revival

MAXWELL WILLIAMS

Destroyer playing at the opening for Friedrich Kunath’s monograph, Sincerely Yours at Blum & Poe Photo: Max Williams

Destroyer smashes it at Blum & Poe

There’s a certain candor in Friedrich Kunath’s paintings, which often have text crossing lush, romantic landscapes like an aerial banner with no airplane, that pairs well with music. For the launch of his monograph, I Don’t Worry Anymore, which includes contributions from a substantial cast of characters—the poet Ariana Reines, the novelist James Frey, and the former tennis player-turned-art collector John McEnroe—Kunath invited the Canadian troubadour Daniel Bejar, aka Destroyer, to perform in front of one of those dreamy landscapes. The upstairs gallery at Blum & Poe was packed (whether there were more people there to support Kunath or to see Destroyer, we may never know) and Destroyer’s songs felt exactly right: romantic without being mawkish, funny without being inane. The musician and the painter were a pairing no DJ could have mixed better. “This is big for me,” said Kunath, who was a huge fan of the musician. Bejar played a mix of old and new songs while propped on a stool on top of a bear rug with a camel sculpture in front of him. “I want to thank Friedrich for letting me out tonight,” he joked. “It’s nice to get out of Canada once in a while.”

[ click to continue reading at The Art Newspaper ]

Posted on March 2, 2019 by Editor

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No Pads

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Editor

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America Afraid Of Penises

from Vice

French Director Gaspar Noé on America’s Fear of the Penis

“The fear of the penis in the United States still shocks me,” he said. “In many ways, the Western world is turning Victorian.”

By Noel Ransome

Near the end of my chat with Gaspar Noé, I ask him why he’s so comfortable with pushing narrative boundaries in film. He replied he doesn’t believe he’s pushing anything compared to what came before. So I remind him of cinema’s growing sensitivity to controversial representations of sexuality in 2019. The French director—whose latest film Climax (which is co-produced by VICE Studios), is a journey with a dance troupe lured into hallucinogenic states to the point of injury and death—decides to answer in the most Noé way possible.

“The fear of the penis in the United States still shocks me,” he lets out during a phone exchange. “In many ways, the Western world is turning Victorian.”

If you’ve ever seen a film by Gaspar Noé, it would be downright disappointing not to hear the word “penis” leave his mouth. The director is famed with his ability to unsettle viewers with equal parts beauty, sexuality and terror. You’ll see it in works such as Irreversible , Love, Enter the Void, and now in Climax set for a March 1 limited release—zero penises guaranteed.

It takes a special kind of mind to come up with films that explore the dark depths of the human psyche. And thankfully, I got a chance to listen to the ideas that a mind like that will throw at you when questioned. Whether it was drugs, directing or “the penis,” Noé was a man comfortable speaking about it all.

[ click to continue reading at Vice ]

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Editor

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Bring Back The Shit Stick!

from National Post

U.S. plush toilet paper use wiping out Canada’s forests, flushing away the future: report

The report gave failing grades to the leading toilet paper, tissue and paper towel brands for using only virgin fibre pulp, mostly from Canada’s old boreal forests

by Adrian Humphreys

The voracious use of toilet paper in the United States — with the average American using almost three rolls each week and major manufacturers spurning alternative fibres — is destroying Canada’s forests and causing widespread environmental damage, two international environmental groups say.

A report on tissue paper use gave failing grades to the leading toilet paper, tissue and paper towel brands for using only virgin fibre pulp, mostly from Canada’s old boreal forests.

“Forests are too vital to flush away,” says the report, called The Issue With Tissue, released Wednesday by Natural Resources Defense Council and Stand.earth, international nonprofit environmental organizations that cooperated on the study.

[ click to continue reading at National Post ]

Posted on February 26, 2019 by Editor

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Warhol Still More Famous Than Brady

Posted on February 24, 2019 by Editor

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Cassettes Still Rock (and hiss)

from The Guardian

It’s cool to spool again as the cassette returns on a wave of nostalgia

Sales are soaring and current stars are releasing tracks on the format… but is anyone actually listening to them?

by Nosheen Iqbal

Pause. Stop. Rewind! The cassette, long consigned to the bargain bin of musical history, is staging a humble comeback. Sales have soared in the last year – up 125% in 2018 on the year before – amounting to more than 50,000 cassette albums bought in the UK, the highest volume in 15 years.

It’s quite a fall from the format’s peak in 1989 when 83 million cassettes were bought by British music fans, but when everyone from pop superstar Ariana Grande to punk duo Sleaford Mods are taking to tape, a mini revival seems afoot. But why?

“It’s the tangibility of having this collectible format and a way to play music that isn’t just a stream or download,” says techno DJ Phin, who has just released her first EP on cassette as label boss of Theory of Yesterday.

“I find them much more attractive than CDs. Tapes have a lifespan, and unlike digital music, there is decay and death. It’s like a living thing and that appeals to me.” Phin left the bulk of her own 100-strong cassette collection in Turkey, carefully stored at her parents’ home, but bought “20 or 25 really special ones” when she moved to London. “I’m from that generation,” she says. “It’s a nostalgia thing – I like the hiss.”

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

Posted on February 23, 2019 by Editor

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Social Media Boys

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Editor

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Dragon Aurora

from The Metro

Nasa releases picture of mysterious ‘dragon’ aurora rearing its head in the sky

by Jasper Hamill

A view0 of the mysterious dragon aurora snapped in Iceland on February 18 (Photo: Jingyi Zhang & Wang Zheng)

NASA has released incredible pictures of an unusual ‘dragon’ aurora roaring silently in the sky over Iceland.

The stunning natural wonder was caused by particles emited from the sun which smash into the atmosphere to cause a dramatic light display.

Nasa wrote: ‘Have you ever seen a dragon in the sky? Although real flying dragons don’t exist, a huge dragon-shaped aurora developed in the sky over Iceland earlier this month.

‘The aurora was caused by a hole in the Sun’s corona that expelled charged particles into a solar wind that followed a changing interplanetary magnetic field to Earth’s magnetosphere.

‘As some of those particles then struck Earth’s atmosphere, they excited atoms which subsequently emitted light: aurora.

‘This iconic display was so enthralling that the photographer’s mother ran out to see it and was captured in the foreground.

[ click to continue reading at Metro ]

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Editor

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Wi-Fi For The Brain

from Science Alert

Neuroscientists Say They’ve Found an Entirely New Form of Neural Communication

by PETER DOCKRILL

Scientists think they’ve identified a previously unknown form of neural communication that self-propagates across brain tissue, and can leap wirelessly from neurons in one section of brain tissue to another – even if they’ve been surgically severed.

The discovery offers some radical new insights about the way neurons might be talking to one another, via a mysterious process unrelated to conventionally understood mechanisms, such as synaptic transmission, axonal transport, and gap junction connections.

“We don’t know yet the ‘So what?’ part of this discovery entirely,” says neural and biomedical engineer Dominique Durand from Case Western Reserve University.

“But we do know that this seems to be an entirely new form of communication in the brain, so we are very excited about this.”

[ click to continue reading at Science Alert ]

Posted on February 20, 2019 by Editor

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Lagerfeld Gone

from Vogue

Legendary Designer Karl Lagerfeld Has Died

NICOLE PHELPS

Karl Lagerfeld.Karl Lagerfeld / Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, September 2018

Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most prolific and widely popular designers of the 20th and 21st centuries, has died in Paris. He was 85.

Lagerfeld was creative director of Chanel, the French house founded by Gabrielle Chanel, for an era-defining, age-defying 36 years. Upon assuming the reins in 1983, Lagerfeld swiftly revived Chanel, reinterpreting the house founder’s iconic tweed skirtsuits, little black dresses, and quilted handbags. He did it via the lens of hip-hop one season and California surfer chicks the next—he was a pop culture savant—without ever forgetting what the revolutionary Coco stood for: independence, freedom, and modernity.

In more recent years, as the company’s fortunes grew and grew, Lagerfeld became known for the lavish Grand Palais sets he conceived for the six Chanel collections he designed a year. There was a rocket ship, a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower, and a supermarché stocked strictly with Chanel-brand products. Florence Welch sang on the half-shell at the Spring 2012 show. Most memorable of all was the improbable giant iceberg from Scandinavia that Chanel shipped across the continent for the Fall 2010 show. Lagerfeld also pioneered the concept of the traveling pre-season show. The Karl caravan has landed variously in Versailles; West Lothian, Scotland; Dallas; Seoul; and, spectacularly, Havana, Cuba.

[ click to continue reading at Vogue ]

Posted on February 19, 2019 by Editor

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LORDS OF CHAOS, Mayhem Dissed

from The Telegraph

Call for Lords of Chaos film about suicide and satanism to be banned

by  Charles Hymas

One of the most controversial films ever made has been approved for release in the UK despite featuring self-harm, suicide and burning of churches by members of a satanic black metal band.

Official film classifiers in the UK and US are understood to have been so concerned about the release of Lords of Chaos that it was reviewed at the highest levels.

Church groups have, however, called for it to be banned following controversy over the role of online self-harm images in the death of Molly Russell, 14, who took her own life after viewing such images on Instagram.

The film, based on the real-life Norwegian black metal band Mayhem,contains explicit violence, including two murders and the burning…

[ click to continue reading at The Telegraph ]

Posted on February 18, 2019 by Editor

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Motility Re-dated

from Phys.org

Discovery of the oldest evidence of motility on Earth

 

Discovery of the oldest evidence of mobility on EarthPreviously, the oldest traces of this kind found dated to approximately 600 million years ago: the Ediacaran period, also characterized by a peak in dioxygen and a proliferation in biodiversity. Scale bar: 1 cm. Credit: A. El Albani / IC2MP / CNRS – Université de Poitiers

An international multi-disciplinary team coordinated by Abderrazak El Albani at the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux de Poitiers (CNRS/Université de Poitiers) has uncovered the oldest fossilised traces of motility. Whereas previous remnants were dated to 570 million years ago, this new evidence is 2.1 billion years old. The fossils were discovered in a deposit in Gabon, where the oldest multicellular organisms were found. The results appear in the 11 February 2019 edition of PNAS.

A few years ago, geologist Abderrazak El Albani and his team at the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux de Poitiers (CNRS/Université de Poitiers) discovered the oldest existing fossils of multicellular organisms in a deposit in Gabon. Located in the Franceville Basin, the deposit allowed scientists to re-date the appearance of multicellular life on Earth to 2.1 billion years—approximately 1.5 billion years earlier than previously thought (600 million). At the time, the researchers showed that this rich biodiversity co-occurred with a peak in dioxygenation of the atmosphere, and developed in a calm and shallow marine environment.

In this same geological deposit, the team has now uncovered the existence of fossilised traces of motility. This shows that certain multicellular organisms in this primitive marine ecosystem were sophisticated enough to move through its mud, rich in organic matter.

[ click to continue reading at physical.org ]

Posted on February 17, 2019 by Editor

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Nippy Hot Rod Tractors

from Somerset Live

Police impound tractor after it was reported for drag racing motorbikes

‘Pretty nippy’ tractor weighs around 5.5 tonnes and has up to 175hp

By Thomas Cock

Police in Wiltshire seized a five-tonne tractor after being told it was racing against motorbikes.

By their own admission, police in Amesbury said pulling over a tractor for allegedly racing was an “unusual” operation.

The farm vehicle was impounded after it was found to be using red diesel – duty free fuel only to be used for agricultural purposes.

Police also said the driver could not produce valid insurance at the time.

They tweeted a picture showing a New Holland T6 175 tractor.

This model is listed online as having up to 175hp and weighing around 5.5.tonnes.

One twitter used described it as “pretty nippy.”

The tractor had a large sticker on it saying “seized by police – no insurance”.

[ click to continue reading at Somerset Live ]

Posted on February 16, 2019 by Editor

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Fifth Estate Fashion

from AP

Extra! Jeremy Scott makes news (literally) on the runway

By JOCELYN NOVECK

NEW YORK (AP) — CHAOS! HORROR! PANIC! BABY, IT’S HOT! Designer Jeremy Scott has always liked to make news, but with his latest collection he did it literally, drawing design inspiration from New York’s tabloid headlines.

Chromatically speaking, Scott’s runway show Friday evening at New York Fashion Week was a very disciplined collection in all black and white; Scott usually uses a riot of bright colors and large cartoon graphics in his clothes.

Here, garments were emblazoned with an artist’s versions of the New York Post and the Daily News — on dresses, trousers, jackets, jumpsuits and much more. Some of the most striking items: dainty, elegant chiffon party dresses printed with tabloid headlines.

[ click to continue reading at AP ]

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Editor

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“A MILLION LITTLE PIECES” Backstage

from Backstage

Why There’s Magic to ‘Proper Indie Filmmaking’

BY ASHLEY LEE

Photo Source: Courtesy Tiff

On the first day of production for “A Million Little Pieces,” Aaron Taylor-Johnson was completely naked. Per the instruction of Sam Taylor-Johnson (his director, screenwriting partner, and wife), the actor began dancing for the camera, spinning wildly with vacant eyes before falling out a window.

“I wanted the audience to know, very quickly, exactly who he was, without repeating imagery we’ve seen before,” explains Sam Taylor-Johnson of introducing the film’s drug-addicted character. “I said, ‘You’re a broken human being, and your behavior has to be so raw and without any boundaries or sense of self. So, your nakedness, you have no sense of it being right or wrong. You have no shame. You have no anything, really.’ Of course, when we shot it, it’s like, ‘Oh, god.’ ”

[ click to continue reading at Backstage ]

Posted on February 10, 2019 by Editor

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Les secrets du Chateau

from Vanity Fair

Secrets of the Chateau Marmont

As the ultimate movie-colony clubhouse turns 90, Mark Rozzo prowls among the bungalows and crannies off Sunset Boulevard where mega-stars and ne’er-do-wells, from Garbo and Harlow to Lindsay and Britney, have whiled away nearly a century of enchanted evenings.

by MARK ROZZO

A photo of The Chateau Marmont.Photograph by Nikolas Koenig/OTTO.

In the late 1920s, as Hollywood was booming and Beverly Hills was sprouting a bumper crop of movie-colony mansions, the stretch between them was little more than sagebrush and scrub. It was known as No-Man’s Land. Winding through it was a forlorn trail with a presumptuous name: Sunset Boulevard. Where this unpaved road met Marmont Lane, catty-corner to an oasis-like complex of villas in mid-construction called the Garden of Allah, the attorney and developer Fred Horowitz became mesmerized by a barren hillside. One day in November of 1926, the story goes, he rolled up to the unpromising site in a town car, pulled out a snapshot he’d taken in the Loire Valley of the Château d’Amboise (where Catherine de Medici and Henry II of France shacked up in the 16th century), and, in a title-card moment from a silent movie, shouted: “YES.”

Horowitz had found his spot. Here, on the north side of Sunset, he would build a brawny, earthquake-proof, seven-story, Manhattan-worthy apartment house in a fairy-tale French Gothic style: thick, buff-colored walls, spiky turrets, steep roofs, arched windows, raftered ceilings, and a vaulted colonnade, with the two flanks of the building folding in upon a grassy courtyard, all adding up to a veritable fortress of luxury, taste, and fantasy. His California castle—“distinctively furnished and decorated,” as the early ad copy put it—would have state-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms. Promising Park Avenue-style discretion and privacy, it would be a sanctuary for New Yorkers moving West and for movie machersdesiring East Coast polish. Horowitz toyed with names: Chateau Sunset? Chateau Hollywood? He went with Chateau Marmont. It sounded French. Along with the Garden of Allah, the Chateau Marmont turned that faceless frontier into what would become the Sunset Strip.

[ click to continue reading at VF ]

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Editor

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Taco Art @ SXSW

from artnet

Holy Guacamole! A Group of ‘Taco-Loving Creatives’ Is Building a Pop-Up Museum Devoted to the Mexican Snack at SXSW

The pop-up promises to “deliver true Instagrammable goals.”

Sarah Cascone

Avocados. Courtesy of Tacotopia.Avocados. Courtesy of Tacotopia.

The pop-up museum trend shows no sign of dying out as the latest Instagram trap is set to touch down in Austin, Texas, just in time for the SXSW film, music, and media festival, which runs from March 8 to 16. It’s called Tacotopia, and it’s already threatening to go on a six-city tour to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

“The exhibit is part of a larger movement encompassing interactive and experiential art,” the press release helpfully points out for anyone who’s been hiding under a rock since Refinery29’s 29 Rooms and the Museum of Ice Cream ushered in this strange new age of ball pits and thematic odes to avocados, dreams, feminism, pizza, and rosé.

But this particular iteration doesn’t even pretend it’s there for anything more than to “deliver true Instagrammable goals” via larger-than-life immersive installations, according to its website. It will include such attractions as a foam pico de gallo ball pit, a “Señorita Needs a Margarita” lime swing, and a staircase leading to “Churro Heaven.”

It all feels vaguely sacrilegious: the jumping off point for the whole affair is a character dubbed the Goddess of Tacos, a cross between the Zapotec Goddess of Life and Ushnishavijaya, the Buddha Goddess of a Long Life. Tacotopia plans to work with local artists in all six cities to create unique installations for each stop on the tour.

[ click to continue reading at artnet ]

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Editor

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Sullivan on Sex

from New York Magazine

The Nature of Sex

By Andrew Sullivan

Photo: Yukipon

It might be a sign of the end-times, or simply a function of our currently scrambled politics, but earlier this week, four feminist activists — three from a self-described radical feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front — appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation. Together they argued that sex was fundamentally biological, and not socially constructed, and that there is a difference between women and trans women that needs to be respected. For this, they were given a rousing round of applause by the Trump supporters, religious-right members, natural law theorists, and conservative intellectuals who comprised much of the crowd. If you think I’ve just discovered an extremely potent strain of weed and am hallucinating, check out the video of the event.

I’ve no doubt that many will see these women as anti-trans bigots, or appeasers of homophobes and transphobes, or simply deranged publicity seekers. (The moderator, Ryan Anderson, said they were speaking at Heritage because no similar liberal or leftist institution would give them space or time to make their case.) And it’s true that trans-exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs, as they are known, are one minority that is actively not tolerated by the LGBTQ establishment, and often demonized by the gay community. It’s also true that they can be inflammatory, offensive, and liobsessive. But what interests me is their underlying argument, which deserves to be thought through, regardless of our political allegiances, sexual identities, or tribal attachments. Because it’s an argument that seems to me to contain a seed of truth. Hence, I suspect, the intensity of the urge to suppress it.

[ click to continue reading at New York ]

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Editor

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Conquering The Ardblair Stones

Posted on February 5, 2019 by Editor

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QUEEN AND SLIM – Cold in Cleveland

from The Plain Dealer

Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith continue movie making on chilly Cleveland set of “Queen and Slim”

By James Ewinger, The Plain Dealer

(AP Photo/Joel Ryan)

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Stars and film crew continue to mine movie gold on St. Clair Avenue, despite bitter cold.

The movie being made here now is called “Queen and Slim,” staring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith. Filming, much of it at night, began this week and is expected to wrap here Friday.

After filming early Wednesday morning, Turner-Smith said in a Tweet it was “slightly chilly” in Cleveland with a screen shot of her weather app displaying a reading of minus-17 degrees, which likely was the wind-chill. Temperatures at that time were around zero.

By midday Wednesday, there was no evidence of a film on St. Clair Avenue, except for a lone City of Cleveland van. Filming was to resume at 5 p.m. as temperatures dipped below minus-5 with a wind chill in the minus-30s. St. Claire from East 61st to East 71st was to be closed for the second straight night.

Melina Matsoukas is directing the movie, with a script by Lena Waithe and author James Frey. The Hollywood Reporter and other film-focused outlets have called in a “Bonnie and Clyde” story.

“To me, this is protest art,” Waithe told Variety in July. “It’s about being black and trying to fall in love in a world that’s burning down around you.”

Variety called that “Queen & Slim” an “exploration of America’s social and political climate through the lens of a genre-defying love story. The film centers on a black man and black woman who go on a first date that goes awry after the two are pulled over by a police officer at a traffic stop. They kill the police officer in self-defense and rather than turn themselves in, they go on the run.”

[ click to read full article at Cleveland.com ]

Posted on February 4, 2019 by Editor

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Withnail & I

from Vanity Fair

The Cult of Richard E. Grant’s Withnail and I Is Finally Having Its Moment

After decades of obsessively quoting Bruce Robinson’s 1987 comedy, Gen Xers are using Grant’s Oscar nomination as an excuse to teach a new generation to demand the finest wines available to humanity.

by DUFF MCDONALD

Bruce Robinson’s script for his 1987 cult classic, Withnail and I,wanders effortlessly between the high (a Hamlet soliloquy) and the low (“You can stuff it up your arse for nothing and fuck off while you’re doing it!”). But it’s the incandescent performance of Richard E. Grantthat sends the dark British comedy—about a couple of out-of-work actors—into the stratosphere of greatness.

So it’s less weird than it might at first seem that the movie which screened at New York’s Film Forum on Thursday night wasn’t the one that has earned Grant a best-supporting-actor Oscar nomination—Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, starring Melissa McCarthy—but the one that forged his legend more than three decades ago.

Over coffee in Brooklyn, I asked Grant if he could tell when he read the script for Withnail and I that it was a role for the ages? “I knew it bone-deep,” he said. “It made me laugh out loud, it was so brilliantly written. Even the stage directions were hilarious. I had also been unemployed for nine months, too, so it was the best preparation I could have had for playing an embittered unemployed actor.”

[ click to continue reading at VF ]

Posted on February 2, 2019 by Editor

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Alternative Milk

from The Guardian

White gold: the unstoppable rise of alternative milks

How wellness upstarts spoiled milk’s healthy reputation – and built a billion-dollar industry from juicing oats and nuts.

By Oliver Franklin-Wallis

Cows being machine-milked in France in 2017.Cows being machine-milked in France in 2017. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

In the spring of 2018, New York was gripped by a sudden, very particular and, for some, calamitous food shortage. Gaps appeared on grocery shelves. Coffee shops put out signs, turning customers away. Twitter and Instagram brimmed with outrage. The truly desperate searched from Williamsburg to Harlem, but it seemed undeniable: New York was out of oat milk.

It wasn’t just New York, in fact. The entire US was suffering from a shortage of Oatly, a Swedish plant milk whose rapid rise from obscure digestive health brand to the dairy alternative of choice had caught even Oatly by surprise. Since its US launch in 2016, Oatly had gone from supplying a handful of upscale New York coffee shops to more than 3,000 cafes and grocery stores nationwide. The company had ramped up production by 1,250%, but when I spoke to CEO Toni Petersson in late summer, they were still struggling to meet demand. “How do we supply when the growth is this crazy?” Petersson said.

Fortunately, when it comes to milk, in 2019 there is no shortage of alternative alternatives. Visit your local supermarket and you will find a refrigerated aisle overflowing with choice: almond milk, hazelnut milk, peanut, tiger nut, walnut, cashew – and that’s just the nuts. Coconut, hemp, spelt, quinoa, pea – you name it, somewhere a health-food startup is milking it. London tube stations are filled with ads for new plant milks – or rather, “mylks” (EU law prevents dairy alternatives from using the word milk if it isn’t produced by a lactating mammal). Cookbooks dedicate entire chapters to blending and straining your own. Sainsbury’s now stocks around 70 different options. There are the wellness punks (Rebel Kitchen, Rude Health), the dairy puns (Malk, Milkadamia, Mooala) and the nourishers (LoveRaw, Good Karma, Plenish). “People are just looking at every nut that exists and seeing if they can squash it into a milk,” said Glynis Murray, one of the owners of Good, which squashes hemp seeds into oil and milk.

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

Posted on January 29, 2019 by Editor

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The Notable QUEEN & SLIM

from Dark Horizons

The Notable Films Of 2019: O-S

By Garth Franklin

image

“Queen & Slim”

Following his superb turns in “Get Out,” “Black Panther” and “Widows,” Daniel Kaluuya is set to lead this Lena Waithe-penned indie romance drama which sees “Insecure” and “Master of None” director Melina Matsoukas make her feature debut. Famed author James Frey came up with the initial idea for the project about a black man (Kaluuya) and a black woman (Jodie Turner-Smith) who go on a first date that goes awry after the two are pulled over by a cop. They kill the police officer in self-defense and rather than turn themselves in, they go on the run in a film that aims to “define black love as a revolutionary act.”

[ click to see full list of Notables at Dark Horizons ]

Posted on January 22, 2019 by Editor

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Rembrandt’s Secret Sauce

from artnet

Scientists Have Found the Rare Secret Ingredient Rembrandt Used to Make His Paintings So Vibrant

The discovery could be critical in helping to preserve the Dutch artist’s masterful paintings for future generations.

by Henri Neuendorf

Dutch and French scientists and have discovered the secret behind Rembrandt’s brilliant and life-life impasto technique.

Citing a research paper published in the scientific journal AngewandteChemie, the Daily Mail reports that the team has identified a substance called plumbonacrite, a rare compound thus far only identified in works of art from the 20th century and in one painting by Vincent van Gogh. The information is vital for understanding Rembrandt’s work—and could be crucial for conserving and restoring his masterpieces for future generations to enjoy.

“We didn’t expect to find this phase at all, as it is so unusual in Old Masters’ paintings,” the paper’s chief author, Victor Gonzalez of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Delft University of Technology, told the Daily Mail. “What’s more, our research shows its presence is not accidental or due to contamination, but the result of an intended synthesis.”

[ click to continue reading at artnet ]

Posted on January 19, 2019 by Editor

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