The Undersea World of Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst Created a Fake Documentary About His Fake Venice Show—and Now You Can See It on Netflix

The film, financed by the artist himself, seeks to re-enact the fictional backstory behind the divisive show.

One of Damien Hirst’s “found treasures.” Screenshot via Netflix & Science Ltd. “Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable” (2017).

The exhibition that launched a thousand angry tweets lives on—on Netflix.

Earlier this week, the streaming service released a mockumentary, “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable,” that chronicles the fictional story behind Damien Hirst’s two-venue exhibition in Venice last year.

The slickly produced film—full of sweeping underwater shots and a swelling soundtrack—was financed by the artist himself, a spokesperson from Hirst’s company, Science Ltd, tells artnet News. “The film is something Damien wanted people to be able to come across in years to come, which explores the backstory of the project,” she says.

According to the 90-minute mockumentary, the vast Venice spectacle was not the 52-year-old artist’s highly anticipated comeback exhibition, which took 10 years and cost a reported $65 million to produce.

Instead, the film suggests the show was the debut presentation of long-lost treasure discovered by a team of archaeologists and divers off the coast of east Africa. The trove—so the story goes—had been assembled during the 1st or 2nd centuries by a former slave turned voracious collector, Cif Amotan II (an anagram, it turns out, for “I am fiction”).

The film follows a team of researchers as they identify Amotan’s shipwreck beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. But in order to retrieve the sunken booty, they need a benefactor. Enter: Damien Hirst.

[ click to continue reading at artnet.com ]

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Editor

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Everybody Wants Some!!

from Real Clear Life

Van Halen: Why the Original Line-Up MUST Return to Save Rock ‘n’ Roll

The rainbow belching Yeti requires Michael Anthony on bass.

By Tim Sommer

The year ended with startling news. The kind of news that makes old men remember the elastic arrogance and sunny ignorance of their youth, and old women recall a time when life was so easy and full of charm that they could smoke Merit Lights in the scrubby grass behind the cafeteria, wear culottes, and sigh over the roman curls of Mark Goodman.

Multiple sources state that the original primo line-up of Van Halen — David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, and the amazing Michael Anthony — were gearing up for a reunion tour.

As this information — still unconfirmed, mind you — began to sparkle and ooze over the webbernet, every white American over 45 gasped with excitement, releasing a sound oddly similar to the colossal downward “Thwoooooooo!” bass run in Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street.”

If you believe that rock’n’roll is a rainbow-belching Yeti wearing a puka shell necklace and a completely un-ironic California Jam II concert tee while holding a liter of Mateus Rosé, then you already know why this is such an important event.

When the brick-colored fog clears on the final day, when the mud-orange skies dissolve into a soot that can sustain no echoes of life or joy, when the dust from the earth meets the dust from the sky, when the mountains meet the seas and the life-salt of ocean becomes the lifeless talc of the desert, the creator (or at least the 22 year-old Nephew of The Creator who lives in the Creator’s paneled basement, sleeps on a sofa bed framed by posters of Farrah Fawcett and the “Hang In There!” cat, and when really high can explain, at great length, why you really really need to spend more time listening to Rainbow and UFO) will point its magical, misty finger at Roth-era Van Halen and say, that is rock’n’roll.

[ click to continue reading at RCL ]

Posted on January 4, 2019 by Editor

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Mean Gene Gone

from Fightful

Legendary Interviewer Gene Okerlund Passes Away At The Age Of 76

by JEREMY LAMBERT

Legendary wrestling interviewer Gene Okerlund has passed away at age 76.

Okerlund got his start in AWA before signing with WWE in 1984. He interviewed all of the top stars in the sport including Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Andre The Giant, Ric Flair and more. He also provided commentary and hosted WWE shows All-American Wrestling, Tuesday Night Titans, Wrestling Challenge and Prime Time Wrestling.

Okerlund left WWE in 1993 to join WCW where he continued to add to his interviewing resume, working with the likes of the Four Horsemen, Sting, Goldberg and others. He returned to WWE in 2002 to call the Gimmick Battle Royal alongside Bobby Heenan at WrestleMania 17.

In 2018, Okerlund interviewed AJ Styles as part of Raw 25. The side of the entrance ramp, where the commentary booth currently sits, is referred to as the Okerlund Position in honor of “Mean” Gene as many of his interviews took place in that spot. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006.

[ click to continue reading at Fightful.com ]

Posted on January 3, 2019 by Editor

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Super Dave Gone

from The New York Times

Bob Einstein, 76, a.k.a. Super Dave Osborne and Larry David Pal, Dies

By Richard Sandomir

Bob Einstein, whose career as a comedy writer took a quirky turn into television acting as the hapless daredevil Super Dave Osborne, and later as a friend of Larry David’s on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” died on Wednesday at his home in Indian Wells, Calif. He was 76.

His manager, Lee Kernis, said the cause was cancer.

Mr. Einstein played Marty Funkhouser, Mr. David’s pal and occasional antagonist, on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the long-running fictionalized version of Mr. David’s life on HBO. Mr. Einstein’s health precluded him from working on the series’ 10th season, which is now in production.

“Never have I seen an actor enjoy a role the way Bob did playing Marty Funkhouser on ‘Curb,’ ” Mr. David said in a statement. He added, “There was no one like him, as he told us again and again.”

[ click to continue reading at NYT ]

Posted on January 2, 2019 by Editor

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#HughesToo

from The Daily Mail

Hollywood’s cruellest casting couch predator: Howard Hughes was famed as a reclusive billionaire but a disturbing new book reveals he handpicked scores of young girls as playthings on false promises of fame

Howard Hughes searched for models in magazines and took them to Hollywood
Within weeks, the girls would sign $75-a-week contracts with Hughes company
Every moment of their day was scheduled: dance, voice and acting classes, , always chaperoned, while Hughes took months or years to find a ‘perfect script’
He was hailed by the media as ahero and the most eligible bachelor in the world

By CORINNA HONAN

Fighting back: Feisty Ava Gardner, left, proved a match for control-freak Hughes

The search for fresh ‘talent’ would begin with a stack of newspapers and magazines. As he flicked through the pages, Howard Hughes was searching for only one thing: photographs of nubile young women.

They might be models, beauty queens or teenagers yet to graduate from high school. Once, it was a girl who had won a local fishing contest.

But was she as pretty as she seemed? From experience, Hughes knew better than to trust a grainy photograph — so he despatched aides to track down whichever girl had caught his eye, with orders to get her to pose for a set of new pictures.

He was very specific about the images he wanted. There had to be three of the girl sitting down, another three of her standing up; she also needed to be shot head-on and in profile, and without heavy make-up or fancy hairstyling.

So it was the mothers who were instructed to ensure that their girls always slept in their bras (to prevent droop and were never allowed to turn their heads more than 15 degrees to the left or right (only Hughes knew why).

Meanwhile, the young women were each assigned a furnished flat and an on-call driver — though few ever knew that he doubled as a spy for Hughes. Every moment of their days and nights was scheduled: dance, voice and acting classes, followed by dinner out, usually at Perino’s on Wilshire Boulevard, always chaperoned by the drivers.

[ click to continue reading at The Daily Mail ]

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Editor

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It’s All Fake, Folks

from New York Magazine

How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.

By Max Read

Photo: Artwork by Ayatgali Tuleubek

In late November, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against eight people accused of fleecing advertisers of $36 million in two of the largest digital ad-fraud operations ever uncovered. Digital advertisers tend to want two things: people to look at their ads and “premium” websites — i.e., established and legitimate publications — on which to host them.

The two schemes at issue in the case, dubbed Methbot and 3ve by the security researchers who found them, faked both. Hucksters infected 1.7 million computers with malware that remotely directed traffic to “spoofed” websites — “empty websites designed for bot traffic” that served up a video ad purchased from one of the internet’s vast programmatic ad-exchanges, but that were designed, according to the indictments, “to fool advertisers into thinking that an impression of their ad was served on a premium publisher site,” like that of Vogue or The Economist. Views, meanwhile, were faked by malware-infected computers with marvelously sophisticated techniques to imitate humans: bots “faked clicks, mouse movements, and social network login information to masquerade as engaged human consumers.” Some were sent to browse the internet to gather tracking cookies from other websites, just as a human visitor would have done through regular behavior. Fake people with fake cookies and fake social-media accounts, fake-moving their fake cursors, fake-clicking on fake websites — the fraudsters had essentially created a simulacrum of the internet, where the only real things were the ads.

How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event “the Inversion.”

[ click to continue reading at NYMag ]

Posted on December 26, 2018 by Editor

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QUEEN & SLIM on The Black List

from The Wrap

Black List 2018: Matt Drudge, Kobe Bryant Movies Top List of Best Unproduced Scripts

by Beatrice Verhoeven

The Black List

The Black List 2018 is here — a survey of the best screenplays that have not yet gone into production.

This year, the 73 films included films about Serena and Venus Williams’ hard-driving father (Zach Baylin’s “King Richard”), the sexual assault case against former NBA star Kobe Bryant (Mike Schneider’s “Mamba”) and Cody Brotter’s “Drudge” about The Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge and how he broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The list also includes Emmy winner Lena Waithe’s “Queen & Slim,” a disgruntled Snapchat employee’s account of founder Evan Spiegel (Elissa Karasik’s “Frat Boy Genius”) and Gary Spinelli’s “Rub & Tug” a project that has been in limbo since Scarlett Johansson’s exit from the project because of objections to her playing a trans man.

[ click to continue reading at The Wrap ]

Posted on December 21, 2018 by Editor

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Far Out!

from SPACE

Newfound Object Is the Farthest Solar System Body Ever Spotted

By Sarah Lewin

The location of 2018 VG18 compared to the orbits of other solar system objects. It lives up to its nickname “Farout”! Credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa/Carnegie Institution for Science

A newly discovered object is the most-distant body ever observed in the solar system — and the first object ever found orbiting at more than 100 times the distance from Earth to the sun.The discovery team nicknamed the object “Farout,” and its provisional designation from the International Astronomical Union is 2018 VG18. Preliminary research suggests it’s a round, pinkish dwarf planet. The same team spotted a faraway dwarf planet nicknamed “The Goblin” in October.

“All that we currently know about 2018 VG18 is its extreme distance from the sun, its approximate diameter, and its color,” David Tholen, a researcher at the University of Hawaii and part of the discovery team, said in a statement. “Because 2018 VG18 is so distant, it orbits very slowly, likely taking more than 1,000 years to take one trip around the Sun.” [The Evidence for ‘Planet Nine’ in Our Solar System (Gallery)]

[ click to continue reading at SPACE.com ]

Posted on December 19, 2018 by Editor

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Farming Artists

from The Guardian

Back to the land: are young farmers the new starving artists?

by Lucia Graves

Liz Whitehurst, owner of Owl's Nest Farm outside of Washington DC, in one of her fields. Liz Whitehurst, owner of Owl’s Nest Farm outside of Washington DC, in one of her fields. Photograph: JM Giordano for the Guardian

A small but growing movement of millennials are seeking out a more agrarian life but the reality of life on the land is not always as simple as they hoped

Eight years ago, Liz Whitehurst, then 25, was working in digital communications at a policy organization in Washington DC and dreaming of life outside a cubicle. She started exploring a different kind of existence by volunteering on local farms. When the farmer who provided the locally sourced vegetable box she signed up for invited her to work the fields one day, she was starstruck. “You’re my hero,” she recalls telling the farmer. “I want your life.”

Today, she has it. Whitehurst grows a wide array of produce on Owl’s Nest Farm, set on a few acres in Upper Marlboro, Maryland (she bought it from that same farmer). Whitehurst grows sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash – everything is handpicked. She also provides greens to a local pizza kitchen which was recently named one of the best new restaurants in the country.

She runs the farm with two other millennials: Foster Gettys, 29, who lives on the property with half a dozen chickens as pets, and Sara Policastro, 23, who manages the farm’s small rotation of volunteers.

Whitehurst likes the autonomy. She likes being outside. She likes having visible proof of her efforts at the end of the day. “You can see the thing you accomplished – you weeded the bed,” she says. “And in an office it’s like, ‘Oh I sent all those emails.’”

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

Posted on December 18, 2018 by Editor

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Unlooted Tomb

from The New York Post

Ancient, never-looted tomb discovered in Egypt

By Eileen AJ Connelly

Posted on December 15, 2018 by Editor

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Saving Flannel (Shout-out James McKinnon)

from, The New York Times

The Annals of Flannel

Told that the cozy shirting fabric could no longer be made in America, one man began a yearlong quest.

By Steven Kurutz

Boxes proudly proclaim the product’s origin.CreditAmerican Giant

Three years ago, Bayard Winthrop, the chief executive and founder of the clothing brand American Giant, started thinking about a flannel shirt he wore as a kid in the 1970s. It was blue plaid and bought for him by his grandmother, probably at Caldor, a discount department store popular in the northeast back then. The flannel was one of the first pieces of clothing Mr. Winthrop owned that suggested a personality.

“I thought it looked great,” he said, “and I thought it said something about me. That I was cool and physical and capable and outdoorsy.”

Since 2011 American Giant, or AG, has mass-produced everyday sportswear for men and women, like the Lee jeans or Russell sweatshirts once sold in stores like Caldor — from the ginned cotton to the cutting and sewing — entirely in the U.S. Mr. Winthrop, a former financier who had run a snowshoe firm, made it the company’s mission to, in his words, “bring back ingenuity and optimism to the towns that make things.” He’s been very successful, especially with a full-zip sweatshirt Slate called “the greatest hoodie ever made.” AG has introduced denim, leggings and socks, among other products.

But Mr. Winthrop’s madeleine of a garment proved elusive. “We kept asking around and hearing, ‘Not flannel. You can do all these other things here, maybe. Flannel is gone.’” he said.

Bringing its manufacture back to America, Mr. Winthrop thought, could be deeply symbolic. Both of the capability of U.S. manufacturing and of the need for big fashion brands to invest here again. It was a quixotic artisanal project, perhaps, but one with potentially high business stakes.

Each time AG develops a new product, Mr. Winthrop must patch together its supply chain from what remains. To help him navigate the process, he relies on “old dogs in the industry,” he said, though AG is based in San Francisco and runs like a tech start-up, with sales almost entirely online.

For flannel, he called James McKinnon.

At 50, Mr. McKinnon is not that old (Mr. Winthrop is 49). But he is the third McKinnon to run Cotswold Industries, the textile manufacturer his grandfather started in 1954. Cotswold made the woven fabric for headliners inside Ford cars. Later, the firm manufactured pocket linings for Lee, Wrangler and Levi jeans. Cotswold still handles pocketing business for many U.S. brands, part of a diverse portfolio that includes making fabrics for culinary apparel. The fabrics are woven at its mill in Central, S.C.

Mr. Winthrop called Mr. McKinnon at his office in midtown Manhattan and ran through the list of questions. Why is flannel gone? What would it take to bring it back? How would you do it?

[ click to read full article at NYT ]

Posted on December 13, 2018 by Editor

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XFL Cities

from Fox Business

XFL unveils 8 team cities, stadiums, says games will be cheaper, fast-paced

By Thomas Barrabi

The XFL, a new professional football league backed by WWE CEO Vince McMahon, on Wednesday unveiled the inaugural eight cities and stadiums that will host its teams when play begins in 2020.

XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck said the league will focus on maintaining a fast-paced, safer on-field product with fewer game stoppages and penalties. Ticket prices will be “significantly lower” than other U.S. professional sports leagues, he added. The league will begin play on Feb. 8, 2020, the weekend after that year’s Super Bowl.

The eight XFL teams will be based in New York, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Seattle, Tampa Bay, and Washington, D.C. Games will take place at the following venues: MetLife Stadium in New Jersey; Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas; TDECU Stadium in Houston; StubHub Center in Carson, California; The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis; CenturyLink Field in Seattle; Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay; and Audi Field in Washington.

click to continue reading at Fox Business ]

Posted on December 11, 2018 by Editor

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Alex Morgan Tops Again

from The Boston Globe

Alex Morgan named top women’s soccer player in US

FILE - In this Aug. 31, 2018, file photo, United States' Alex Morgan takes a shot on goal against Chile during the first half of an international friendly soccer match, in Carson, Calif. Morgan, who had 18 goals in 19 games this year to lead the national team, has been named U.S. Soccer’s Player of the Year.(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File) FILE/MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ/AP

Alex Morgan was named US Soccer’s women’s player of the year for a second time after leading the national team with 18 goals in 19 games and helping it earn a spot in the 2019 World Cup in France. Morgan scored seven of her goals during the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament this fall to earn the Golden Boot. Morgan, who was also the top player in 2012, also has three assists and has logged 1,500 minutes this year, most of any player on the team.

[ click to continue reading at The Globe ]

Posted on December 9, 2018 by Editor

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RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown Tournament

from PRNewswire

RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown Tournament Culminates In $150,000 Prize Pool, Finals Hosted By AT&T In Los Angeles

3BLACKDOT, Razer, and AT&T host the top players who will compete on the Razer Phone 2 in final match in Los Angeles alongside guest influencers

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Razer™, the world’s leading lifestyle brand for gamers is collaborating with 3BLACKDOT, the leading Influencer-driven studio, and AT&T to produce the RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown. This two-week event will feature 3BLACKDOT and Section Studios highly rated arena battle mobile game, “RIVAL: CRIMSON X CHAOS.” Participants will have the opportunity to play RIVAL: CRIMSON X CHAOS for a chance to win over $150,000 in total cash, Razer Phone 2, and other prizes.

The RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown will take place from Thursday, December 6th and will conclude with a final event on December 15th at the new AT&T store in Los Angeles, California. From December 6th to December 11th fans looking to compete in this exciting event can download RIVAL: Crimson X Chaos from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store and compete in daily quests and leaderboard challenges for a chance to win daily cash and in-game prizes. The top 24 players will be flown to Los Angeles to compete in the championship event. “Since launching Rival: Crimson x Chaos, fans around the world and our 3BLACKDOT influencers have been playing Rival and absolutely love this game,” says Rahshiene Taha, VP of Marketing at 3BLACKDOT. “The Rival x Razer Holiday Showdown takes it to a new level. There nothing like the energy of a live event that brings fans and our 3BLACKDOT influencers together and we couldn’t be more excited!”

Retailers and carriers around the world are making significant efforts in attracting the fast-growing mobile gaming community to their stores with tournaments, large prize pools, and other forms of entertainment. Michael Breslin, Razer Mobile’s Global Head of Sales & Marketing, said: “Mobile gaming is the fastest growing platform in the space, with mobile gamers logging over 200% more game time than through any other platform,” adding “since Razer Phone 2 was designed specifically with mobile gaming in mind, we wanted to partner with companies whose mission to entertain and engage mobile gamers aligned with ours, and we found that in 3BLACKDOT and AT&T.”

“We’re thrilled to help bring the RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown to gamers, culminating with the championship event at our newest L.A. retail location,” said Shiz Suzuki, assistant vice president of AT&T Sponsorships and Experiential Marketing. “Our commitment to gamers is all about enhancing their experience. We’re excited to see that come to life through this tournament where fans will have the opportunity to win cash and prizes, including the Razer Phone 2 – just like the pros.”

[ click to continue reading at PRNewswire ]

Posted on December 7, 2018 by Editor

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Sushi Grass Explained

from The New York Times

The $0.006 Object in Your Sushi Container Is Doing an Important Job

It separates flavors and comes from a centuries-old Japanese tradition.

By Wendy MacNaughton

[ click to find out at NYT ]

Posted on December 5, 2018 by Editor

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Pilate’s Ring

from The Times of Israel

2,000-year-old ‘Pilate’ ring just might have belonged to notorious Jesus judge

Uncovered 50 years ago at the Herodian palace near Bethlehem, a simple copper-alloy ring is now given a good cleaning — and a second look by skeptical scholars

By AMANDA BORSCHEL-DAN

An intriguing 2,000-year-old copper alloy ring bearing the inscription “of Pilatus” may be only the second artifact testifying to the historicity of the infamous Pontius Pilate. Unearthed 50 years ago, the ring was overlooked until recently, when it got a good scrub, and a second look.

Pilate, a Roman prefect who ruled the Roman province of Judaea from circa 26–36 CE, is mentioned in several accounts in the New Testament, as having ordered the trial and crucifixion of Yeshua, a Second Temple-period radical preacher from the Galilee, more commonly known as Jesus.

The ring was first found among hundreds of other artifacts in 1968–1969 excavations directed by archaeologist Gideon Foerster, at a section of Herod’s burial tomb and palace at Herodium that was used during the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE). Recently, current dig director Roi Porat asked that the engraved copper sealing ring be given a thorough laboratory cleaning and scholarly examination.

[ click to continue reading at The Times of Israel ]

Posted on December 2, 2018 by Editor

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Renoir Vanished

from Bloomberg/Quint

The Renoir Landscape Was Ready for Auction. Then It Was Gone

Boris Groendahl

The Renoir Landscape Was Ready for Auction. Then It Was Gone

(Bloomberg) — A man and two accomplices walked into a Vienna auction house on Monday and hijacked a Renoir landscape before splitting up and slipping from the building into the crowd, police said.

The French impressionist’s coastal landscape “Golfe, Mer, Falaises Vertes”—estimated to be worth between 120,000 euros ($135,000) and 160,000 euros and pictured below after being shared on Twitter—had been on display ahead of an auction planned for Wednesday.

Surveillance video showed a group of three men who went to the second floor of the Dorotheum gallery before pulling the painting from its frame, police said in a statement. Local media had earlier reported a single thief. The “obviously professional” trio dispersed and left through different exits, with two of them carrying shopping bags, pictures from the cameras released by police show.

[ click to continue reading at Bloomberg/Quint ]

Posted on November 30, 2018 by Editor

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Porn For Girls

from The Daily Beast

The Feminist Erotic Film Director Making Porn Hot Again: ‘I Want to Show How Sex Feels’

Indie erotic cinema director Erika Lust owns the site XConfessions, where women submit fantasies and she adapts them into beautiful pornographic films.

by Natalia Winkelman

Courtesy Erica Lust

Erika Lust remembers the exact moment she first saw a porno. She was around 11 or 12, chomping on popcorn at a friend’s sleepover party, when the young host pulled out a VHS she’d swiped from her dad’s private stockpile. Before then, porn was something Lust had only glimpsed in Playboy or simulated with Barbie and Ken. When the sex started, the girls all shuddered. Was porn always this ridiculous, this gross?

It would be years before Lust, now a pioneer in erotic cinema—she writes, directs, and runs her own production company, Erika Lust Films—would view porn under more pleasurable circumstances. Studying political science at Lund University in Sweden, Lust, like many of her female peers, considered herself a liberated young woman, with feminist ideals and an open mind. So when her college boyfriend suggested that they pop in a video to get them in the mood, Lust was eager to give it a try.

She enjoyed what she watching more this time around, but there was something about it that still didn’t sit right. The production design was dreadful, for starters. And where was the feeling, the texture of a real erotic encounter? The sex it depicted was all mechanics, no mood.

“I felt this disconnection between my body and my brain,” Erika recalled, perched in a swanky Manhattan cafe in early November. “My body did get turned on. I felt it in my guts, you know?” She squinted and gripped her abdomen. “But the women that I saw were not my women. I didn’t identify with them. I didn’t feel that that kind of sexual encounter had anything to do with my sex life, and what I expected of sex.”

Born and raised in Sweden, Lust is currently based in Barcelona, where she lives with her husband (who doubles as her business partner) and two teenage daughters. She produces the majority of her work around Europe, where porn—and sex in general—are less of a taboo, and she doesn’t often find herself in America.

[ click to continue reading at TBD ]

Posted on November 28, 2018 by Editor

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Stephen Hillenburg Gone

from DEADLINE

‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ Creator Stephen Hillenburg Dead At 57

by Geoff Boucher and Greg Evans

Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of Nickelodeon’s signature cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants, died on Monday. He was 57.

The animator and former marine biology instructor created a powerhouse property with the quirky SpongeBob SquarePants — the global merchandise sales alone have gone north of $13 billion for a brand that has also yielded two animated feature films — with a third due in 2020 — nine music albums, a video game and a Tony-winning Broadway musical.

Hillenburg revealed in March 2017 that he was battling the neurodegenerative disease ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. His death was announced today in a Nickelodeon statement that framed his singular sensibility, which gave the world a loopy but lovable classic of television animation.

[ click to continue reading at DEADLINE ]

Posted on November 27, 2018 by Editor

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Bertolucci Gone

from The New York Times

Bernardo Bertolucci, Director of ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ Dies at 77

By Dennis Lim

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian filmmaker whose sensual and visually stylistic movies ranged from intense chamber dramas to panoramic historical epics, died on Monday at his home in Rome. He was 77.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Clare Peploe, in a statement that did not specify the cause.

Mr. Bertolucci’s early work reflected the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s and ’70s, in particular the shifting social and sexual mores of the times. While several of his films delved into the traumas of his country’s recent past, he fashioned himself as a global auteur.

Coming of age as the Italian neorealist movement was on the wane, he drew inspiration from the French New Wave and routinely worked across borders and with international casts.

Many of Mr. Bertolucci’s films were warmly embraced by Hollywood. “The Last Emperor” (1987), a lavish biopic of Pu Yi, who became the emperor of China at the age of 3, won all nine Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including best picture and best director.

[ click to continue reading at NYT ]

Posted on November 26, 2018 by Editor

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Nicolas Roeg Gone

from The Ringer

How Nicolas Roeg Broke Movies—and Rebuilt Them in His Own Image

At their best, the director’s masterpieces like ‘Walkabout’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’ added up not to a complete picture but a kind of Rorschach test

By Adam Nayman

Ringer illustration

Nicolas Roeg, who died Friday at the age of 90, didn’t just bend the medium of film to his will. He broke it, splintered it, and sutured it back together. He was a like a surgeon gifted with second sight, and his movies would have probably died on the operating table with anybody else in charge. A former cinematographer who left his mark in several different areas of 1960s cinema—doing unit work for David Lean on Lawrence of Arabia; shooting Fahrenheit 451 for François Truffaut and The Masque of the Red Death for Roger Corman—Roeg had an undeniable eye for color and composition. But it was his attention to editing that made him a legend. His movies were jagged jigsaw puzzles that the viewer had to try to put together in real time; at their best, the pieces added up not to a complete picture but a kind of Rorschach test. “I prefer it,” he said once, “when the familiar is made to feel strange.”

Strange was Roeg’s sweet spot, and his run of five films from 1970 to 1980—Performance, Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Bad Timing—has yet to be equalled in terms of consistently virtuoso weirdness. (The only real contender: Roeg superfan Ben Wheatley, whose Kill List is deeply indebted to Don’t Look Now, and who put an admiring quote from Roeg on the poster for his midnight-mindfuck comedy A Field in England). Because he was initially drawn to genres like gothic horror and sci-fi, Roeg attracted a cult audience, and the way that he used movie stars and rock stars guaranteed studio backing, although more often than not his financiers hated the final product: Even in 1990, when he scored a gig directing an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches for Jim Henson’s production company, he freaked out his collaborators by making Anjelica Huston’s witch queen too flamboyantly sexy for a kids movie—and pissed off Dahl by changing the book’s ending, leading to the author’s attempt to take his name off the movie.

[ click to continue reading at The Ringer ]

Posted on November 25, 2018 by Editor

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Wherefore Art Thou, S. Mundi

from The Times

The fate of Leonardo’s ‘lost’ Salvator Mundi

Salvator Mundi vanished after it was sold last year for $450 million. There are fears for its safety

Salvator Mundi before it was sold at Christie’s in 2017GETTY IMAGES

Wanted: Leonardo da Vinci’s spectacular Salvator Mundi, the long-lost, then found painting of Christ — the “saviour of the world” — holding an orb. His enigmatic expression has led some to consider it the male Mona Lisa. The Renaissance master was thought to have painted fewer than 20 works, including The Last Supper, so when Salvator Mundi was authenticated less than a decade ago, it took on a mystical quality all of its own and, eventually, the heftiest price tag in history.

Yet, despite its enormous art-historical importance, those who care about it the most say they have no idea where the painting is — and they have concerns about how it is being cared for and how that could affect its condition.

[ click to continue reading at The Times ]

Posted on November 23, 2018 by Editor

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Odessa Young Interview

from The Standard

Odessa Young interview: Young women are set up for failure by society

MIRANDA BRYANT

Young and true: Odessa Young says new film Assassination Nation portrays modern teenagers as they really are ( AAP/PA Images )

“In the world we live in now, you can’t win as a young woman,” declares actress Odessa Young. The 20-year-old is explaining why her latest film, Sundance hit Assassination Nation — a sort of woke Mean Girls-cum-horror film-cum-allegory for the social media age — resonates with her and her peers.

Young women have been “set up for failure” by society’s double standards, she says. “The most typical example is the Madonna and the whore complex. Of, ‘Well, if I’m a virgin then I’m a prude, but if I feel myself, I’m badass, then I’m a slut and a whore.’ So that’s the simplest way of explaining it, there’s no way to win.”

From Freud to flat whites, no topic feels too big or too small for the bright and down-to-earth Young. When we meet, on a stormy day in New York at a basement coffee shop near Times Square, her demeanour is so unstarry that I almost miss her casually scrolling her phone at a nearby table.

Such anonymity, however, is unlikely to last long. In addition to Assassination Nation, she has recently made her professional theatre debut off-Broadway (or “Broadway-adjacent”, as she jokingly refers to it) in Days of Rage by Steven Levenson, the Tony Award-winning writer of Dear Evan Hansen. This year she is also in A Million Little Pieces, a film based on James Frey’s controversial book directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Oh, and she’s also just finished filming Shirley, starring Elisabeth Moss as horror writer Shirley Jackson, in Upstate New York.

[ click to continue reading at The Standard ]

Posted on November 20, 2018 by Editor

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Frey on Friedrich Kunath

from BLOUIN ARTINFO

Friedrich Kunath’s “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor” at Blum & Poe, New York

BY BLOUIN ARTINFO

Blum & Poe at New York is presenting “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor,” Friedrich Kunath’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, which is on view through December 22.

This show follows Kunath’s “Frutti di Mare” (2017) —a carpeted, scented, multi-room installation flecked with tie-died tube socks and outfitted with mirrored floors, a mechanical spinning canvas, and a vertical piano.

According to the gallery press note, Kunath carries on his study of a dichotomous human condition—an exploration in happiness and sadness, romanticism, nostalgia, longing, the fetish of authenticity, and the myth of genius. This exhibition negotiates the facets of personal experience registered on a psycho-emotional pendulum that swings between the search for deep existential meaning and purpose, and a frenetic, nonsensical and humorous nihilism.

The gallery reveals that in conjunction with this exhibition, a new major monograph devoted to the last fifteen years of Kunath’s work will be released by Rizzoli Electa. Entitled “I Don’t Worry Anymore,” this book offers new insights into the artist’s work across media, organized conceptually rather than chronologically in eight chapters.

The book features new writing by four contributors—art historian James Elkins takes an historical approach to Kunath’s work, linking him to both recent and older traditions of European painting; Ariana Reines contributes a poem inspired by the artist’s work; James Frey offers a short essay motivated by Kunath’s persona; and the artist and John McEnroe, the famed tennis player, have a spirited conversation about their shared passion for the game of tennis.

[ click to read full article at BLOUIN ARTINFO ]

Posted on November 17, 2018 by Editor

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William Goldman Gone

from BBC

William Goldman, Butch Cassidy screenwriter, dies at 87

William Goldman, screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, has died aged 87.

Goldman, who received Oscars for both of those films, also wrote Marathon Man, Magic and The Princess Bride, which he adapted from his own novels.

His memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade is famous for his memorable declaration that “nobody knows anything” about the movie business.

He was also a noted “script doctor” who worked uncredited on many features.

Born in Highland Park, Illinois in 1931, Goldman started out as a novelist before breaking into movies with 1965 spy caper Masquerade.

He followed that with The Moving Target, also known as Harper, in which Paul Newman played a laconic private eye.

[ click to continue reading at BBC ]

Posted on November 16, 2018 by Editor

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Death By Data

from Prospect

Dark satanic mills 2.0: inside the massive server farms storing your data—and harming the planet

Experts suggest data centres will consume one fifth of the world’s electricity by 2030

by George Grylls

A data storage centre: cooling the centres alone can create a large carbon footprint. Photo: Pixabay

Your family photos are currently in a warehouse on the edge of the M25. Or maybe they are in a warehouse in Swansea. Or maybe, just maybe, they are not in a prosaic suburb, but in a hollowed-out mountain in Norway.

When we think of the “cloud” we are supposed to think of the ether. But data is not immaterial. The route you took to work in your car today, the time at which you logged in to Facebook, the amount of money in your bank account—all this information is physical, perishable, and it is housed in a farm of computers hidden far from your view.

“A lot of people have the perception of the cloud as something out there,” says Tor Kristian Gyland, pushing his hand out into an expanse of thin air. “It doesn’t matter to them if their data is stored in a field in Ireland, or on a hill outside Barcelona or in a mountain in Stavanger.”

Gyland is the affable and surprisingly un-villainous CEO of Green Mountain, a company that transformed an old NATO ammunition store into an underground data centre. “Digitisation has progressed really quickly. Everyone now has an iPhone, an iPad, a Smart TV. But they don’t know where it’s all actually happening.”

When companies store their data (or rather, your data) there are three methods they can use. They can rent “racks” of servers in a form of storage called colocation. Or they can upload the data to the not-so-nebulous cloud, in which case there is no specific server on which the data is stored at any one time, with it instead rebounding from one server to another. Finally, if you are a Facebook or a Google you can just go and build your own data centre.

Whichever way you go, the final product is a warehouse containing thousands of black boxes whirring with billions of calculations. The precious computers are lavished with air conditioning lest they overheat and malfunction. Data centres positively feast on electricity.

“They are growing like mushrooms,” bemoans Dr Anders Andrae, a Swedish academic who studies the ecological impact of technology. “The number of data centres is increasing by 25 per cent every year and this is leading to at least a 10 per cent annual growth in the sector’s energy consumption.”

[ click to continue reading at Prospect ]

Posted on November 13, 2018 by Editor

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Stan Lee Gone

from DEADLINE

Stan Lee Dies: Marvel Comics Icon Was 95

by Geoff Boucher

Stan Lee, the co-creator of Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, is dead. He was 95. Kirk Schenck, the attorney for Stan Lee’s daughter, confirmed to Deadline that the comics culture legend passed away Monday morning after being admitted to Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

As a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, Lee became the most famous comic book creator in the history of the medium — he was the only creator in the field whose fame rivaled that of the characters he created. His career began in 1941 when — at age 17 — he got his first published work, a prose story that appeared in the fifth issue of Captain America Comics. It was the 1960s, however, when Lee minted his reputation and tapped into a vein of pop-culture creativity that made history.

It was Fantastic Four No. 1 in 1961, which teamed Lee with Jack Kirby, and its landmark success changed everything for Lee and for Marvel. It signaled the arrival of a new and dynamic brand of superheroes that were far different than the old-guard heroes of industry leader DC Comics (which published Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern). The Fantastic Four bickered with each other — one looked like a monster and none of them had secret identities. They were at times driven by ego, shame, profit, jealousy or pride. Fans loved it.

[ click to read full obit at DEADLINE ]

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Editor

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HAL 9000 Gone

from NBC News

Douglas Rain, the creepy voice of HAL in ‘2001,’ dies at 90

Rain’s sinuous, detached reading of HAL’s lines made the computer’s murders of four astronauts all the more shocking.

By Alex Johnson

Douglas Rain, the acclaimed Shakespearean actor whose chilling performance as the voice of the homicidal HAL 9000 computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey” rendered the amoral emptiness of outer space in sound, died Sunday at age 90.

The Stratford Festival, the Canadian theater company of which Rain was a founding member in 1953, confirmed his death on Sunday night. A cause of death wasn’t reported.

“Today we lost Douglas Rain, a member of our founding company and a hugely esteemed presence on our stages for 32 seasons,” the company said. “He will be greatly missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”

The HAL 9000 computer was the sentient controller of life support, systems and — although it wasn’t revealed until later in the movie — the very mission of Discovery One, the spacecraft that is sent to Jupiter to investigate a mysterious black obelisk in the landmark 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.

Rain’s sinuous, detached reading of HAL’s lines made the computer’s murders of three astronauts as they slept in suspended animation and its subsequent stranding of astronaut Frank Poole to die in open space all the more shocking.

[ click to read full article at NBC ]

Posted on November 11, 2018 by Editor

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Jodie Turner-Smith To QUEEN AND SLIM

from VIBE

Jodie Turner-Smith To Share The Screen With Daniel Kaluuya In ‘Queen & Slim’

by Khaaliq Crowder

jodie-turner-smith-daniel-Daniel-Kaluuya CREDIT: Getty Images

Lena Waite and Melina Matsoukas have finally found their “Queen.” Actress Jodie Turner-Smith, who audiences may recognize for her recurring role on The Last Ship and Nightflyers, has been chosen to star opposite Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Black Panther) in the Waithe-penned film Queen & Slim.

Reported Thursday (Nov. 8) by Variety, the budding actress confirmed the news on Instagram. The romantic drama has been described as a layered love story. After a first date, the duo is embroiled in a high-stakes case of murder when they kill a police officer in self-defense after a traffic stop. Instead of turning themselves in, they go on the run.

The 2019 slated release will be directed by Matsoukas. This will be her first feature film debut. Currently, Matsoukas is the executive producer of HBO’s runaway hit Insecure. She’s also known for her previous gig as a music video director for the likes of Rihanna, Beyonce, Ciara, and Ne-Yo.

“Words cannot express how excited I am to be starting this journey with you,” Turner-Smith captioned to her Instagram post next to her co-star. “[Waithe and Matsoukas], thank you for choosing me to be your QUEEN.”

[ click to continue reading at VIBE ]

Posted on November 10, 2018 by Editor

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Reznor / Ross Score A MILLION LITTLE PIECES

from Rolling Stone

Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross Scoring Amy Adams’ Woman In the Window’

Thriller set to arrive in 2019

By JON BLISTEIN

David Buchan/Variety/REX/Shutterstock

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are composing the score for Amy Adams’ forthcoming thriller, The Woman in the Window, which is set to arrive in 2019.

The Joe Wright-directed film is based on A.J. Finn’s novel of the same name, which was published in January. The story is centered around a reclusive woman named Anna (Adams) who obsessively spies on her new neighbors until one night she sees something she wasn’t supposed to. The film will also star Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman.

Along with The Woman in the Window, Reznor and Ross are also composing the music for HBO’s forthcoming television adaptation of the famed graphic novel, Watchmen. Though an exact release date has yet to be announced, the show is expected to premiere in 2019.

More recently, Reznor and Ross composed the music for A Million Little Pieces – an adaptation of James Frey’s controversial memoir of the same name – and Jonah Hill’s directorial debut, Mid90s. In June, Nine Inch Nails released their most recent record, Bad Witch.

[ click to continue reading at Rolling Stone ]

Posted on November 7, 2018 by Editor

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The B-52s 1980

Posted on November 6, 2018 by Editor

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See, I told you they used ramps!

from The Guardian

New discovery throws light on mystery of pyramids’ construction

Egyptologists stumble across ramp that helps explain how huge blocks of stones were hauled into place

by Kevin Rawlinson

The mystery of how, exactly, the pyramids were built may have come a step closer to being unravelled after a team of archaeologists made a chance discovery in an ancient Egyptian quarry.

Scientists researching ancient inscriptions happened upon a ramp with stairways and a series of what they believe to be postholes, which suggest that the job of hauling into place the huge blocks of stone used to build the monuments may have been completed more quickly than previously thought.

While the theory that the ancient Egyptians used ramps to move the stones has already been put forward, the structure found by the Anglo-French team, which dated from about the period that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, is significantly steeper than was previously supposed possible.

They believe the inclusion of the steps and the postholes either side of a rampway suggests the builders were able to haul from both directions, rather than simply dragging a block behind them. The team believes those below the block would have used the posts to create a pulley system while those above it pulled simultaneously.

They believe the find to be significant because they say it suggests the work could have been done more quickly, albeit still involving the heavy labour of a large number of people.

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

Posted on November 5, 2018 by Editor

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137

from The Big Think

Why the number 137 is one of the greatest mysteries in physics

Famous physicists like Richard Feynman think 137 holds the answers to the Universe.

by PAUL RATNER

The fine structure constant has mystified scientists since the 1800s.
The number 1/137 might hold the clues to the Grand Unified Theory.
Relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics are unified by the number.

Does the Universe around us have a fundamental structure that can be glimpsed through special numbers?

The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) famously thought so, saying there is a number that all theoretical physicists of worth should “worry about”. He called it “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man”.

That magic number, called the fine structure constant, is a fundamental constant, with a value which nearly equals 1/137. Or 1/137.03599913, to be precise. It is denoted by the Greek letter alpha – α.

What’s special about alpha is that it’s regarded as the best example of a pure number, one that doesn’t need units. It actually combines three of nature’s fundamental constants – the speed of light, the electric charge carried by one electron, and the Planck’s constant, as explains physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies to Cosmos magazine. Appearing at the intersection of such key areas of physics as relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics is what gives 1/137 its allure.

Physicist Laurence Eaves, a professor at the University of Nottingham, thinks the number 137 would be the one you’d signal to the aliens to indicate that we have some measure of mastery over our planet and understand quantum mechanics. The aliens would know the number as well, especially if they developed advanced sciences.

[ click to continue at The Big Think ]

Posted on October 31, 2018 by Editor

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How Nicolas Roeg Broke Movies—and Rebuilt Them in His Own Image

At their best, the director’s masterpieces like ‘Walkabout’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’ added up not to a complete picture but a kind of Rorschach test

The fate of Leonardo’s ‘lost’ Salvator Mundi

Odessa Young interview: Young women are set up for failure by society

Friedrich Kunath’s “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor” at Blum & Poe, New York

William Goldman, Butch Cassidy screenwriter, dies at 87

Dark satanic mills 2.0: inside the massive server farms storing your data—and harming the planet

Experts suggest data centres will consume one fifth of the world’s electricity by 2030

Stan Lee Dies: Marvel Comics Icon Was 95

Douglas Rain, the creepy voice of HAL in ‘2001,’ dies at 90

Jodie Turner-Smith To Share The Screen With Daniel Kaluuya In ‘Queen & Slim’

Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross Scoring Amy Adams’ Woman In the Window’

New discovery throws light on mystery of pyramids’ construction

Why the number 137 is one of the greatest mysteries in physics

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