Saturday, July 11, 2009

"The Stoning of Soraya"

The director of the movie, Cyrus Nowrashteh talks to Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd on PJTV.

Topics of discussion are the origin and background of the film,  the making of, the attitude of Hollywood, feminists and the Left in the face of the savagery of Sharia law towards women.

Starring James Caviezel, Mozhan Marnò and Shohreh Aghdashloo.

The Official site.

Watch the slideshow on IMDb.

Page on IMDb.

Update:

Below is the director sitting down with Natalie Foster:


Friday, July 10, 2009

Your Choice: Liberty or Tyranny



You're watching an interview with Mark Levin, author of “Liberty & Tyranny” which debuted as No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list and has retained that position for five straight weeks.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Art Without Objective Value

The process in which our world is being deconstructed is the following. It is best made visible in art and culture, but through its anti philosophy it slowly permeates every walk of life, until one day we find ourselves plunged into the black hole of nihilism.

Narrative: "Morality is relative and depends on your point of view; the same is true of beauty and any other value; our values are middle class; values are evil, Western constructs; objective art (science, music (tones), drama, literature (language, letters) ballet (movement), culture, education, gender, family, religion, etc.) must be liberated from the constraints put upon it by evil, Western, objectivists; old culture must be attacked and destroyed."

This process of the hatred of the good for being good cannot go on forever without consequences.

City Journal: "Beauty and Desecration - We must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness", by Roger Scruton

At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. And if you had asked what the point of that was, you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important in its way as truth and goodness, and indeed hardly distinguishable from them. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form. And no Romantic painter, musician, or writer would have denied that beauty was the final purpose of his art.

At some time during the aftermath of modernism, beauty ceased to receive those tributes. Art increasingly aimed to disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties, and it was not beauty but originality—however achieved and at whatever moral cost—that won the prizes. Indeed, there arose a widespread suspicion of beauty as next in line to kitsch—something too sweet and inoffensive for the serious modern artist to pursue. In a seminal essay—“Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” published in Partisan Review in 1939—critic Clement Greenberg starkly contrasted the avant-garde of his day with the figurative painting that competed with it, dismissing the latter (not just Norman Rockwell, but greats like Edward Hopper) as derivative and without lasting significance. The avant-garde, for Greenberg, promoted the disturbing and the provocative over the soothing and the decorative, and that was why we should admire it. (...) >>>

Related:

- Stephen Hicks: "Why Art Became Ugly"

Monday, June 29, 2009

You Just Hate to Break It to Them ...

... wouldn't know how ...






The Obama Prints

Friday, June 26, 2009

Huge, Stinking, Shapeless Phallus About to Climax

Voila, the apotheosis of the Amorphophallus Titanum!

Apparently the tension at Leiden's Hortus Botanicus is getting unbearable.


On the run for 24/7 wall-to-wall coverage of the untimely demise of the king of pop? ...

... disillusioned with the Left for leaving the people of Iran at the mercy of evil old men and the bloodthirsty dungeon inmates they unleashed on to the city of Tehran (the so-called 'under-the-bus' effect)? ...

... then perhaps you can find some solace watching this rare horticultural sprout come to a short, but dramatic bloom.

Here's a link to the Hortus' webcam.

Bring your own coffee and sandwiches (but for heaven's sake, don't hold your breath!).


Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Twitter Revolution














© Copyright John Cole

Friday, June 19, 2009

Amorphophallus titanum! Que?

... the huge, (stinking) shapeless phallus ...

Dutch News: "Titum arum set to bloom in Leiden"

One of the world's strangest plants, the giant titan arum (amorphophallus titanum), is expected to bloom at Leiden's botanical gardens on Sunday night. The botanical gardens are open on Sunday evening as part of midsummer celebrations. The titan arum produces the world's biggest flowers after eight to 15 year's of growth. The flowers, which have a terrible stench like rotting meat, last just two nights. A second plant is set to flower in about three weeks time (...) >>>

High resolution photos

This Hortus Botanicus page contains a link to the webcam. Perhaps nice to watch towards opening time.

Watch one on an earlier occasion at the Brooklyn Botanic.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Subtlety and Class: The "European Jazz Trio"



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More on "The making of..."  - from the European Jazz Trio DVD "Afternoon in Amsterdam", produced by Hiro Yamashita (M and I) and John Twigt.

European Jazz Trio is:

- Marc van Roon - piano
- Frans van der Hoeven - bass
- Roy Dackus - drums

Some Suggestions to your Calender This Year ...

Monday, June 08, 2009

More of This ... Much, much More!

With the habitual flaws, idiosyncracies, and fallacies running riot on the Left, one would have thought there's material to last a lifetime. We want more satire. Don't be shy: if it was them they'd go over dead bodies (remember BDS?) ...




Hat Tip: "The Reference Frame"

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Historical Movie Theater: D-Day Newsreels

Tonight's historical movie comes with great gratitude from Tim Gray Media:



The Tim Gray Media site is a treasure trove of D-Day material and expert information. On the WWII tab we learn that ...  

"(...) the “D” does not stand for “Deliverance”, “Doom”, “Debarkation” or similar words. In fact, it does not stand for anything. The “D” is derived from the word “Day”. “D-Day” means the day on which a military operation begins. The term “D-Day” has been used for many different operations, but it is now generally only used to refer to the Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944.

Why was the expression “D-Day” used?
When a military operation is being planned, its actual date and time is not always known exactly. The term “D-Day” was therefore used to mean the date on which operations would begin, whenever that was to be. The day before D-Day was known as “D-1″, while the day after D-Day was “D+1″, and so on. This meant that if the projected date of an operation changed, all the dates in the plan did not also need to be changed. This actually happened in the case of the Normandy Landings. D-Day in Normandy was originally intended to be on 5 June 1944, but at the last minute bad weather delayed it until the following day. The armed forces also used the expression “H-Hour” for the time during the day at which operations were to begin. (...) >>>

Also, check out the blog for more wonderful stories.

Particularly noteworthy is the footage of annual visits to the Normandy coast with veterans (a number on the YouTube Channel) - in fact Tim Gray has been tweeting live all day from the commemoration site in France.

Also drawing your attention to a beautifully produced and very touching full one hour documentary exclusively available on the official Tim Gray site, entitled "D-Day, the Price of Freedom" (trailer). Note the difference in tone compared to the newsreels of the time, in which optimism and boosting morale was of a higher order than the grim reality.

Related: 

- The National World War II Museum (U.S.)
- D-Day Museum and Overlord Embroidery (U.K.)

- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled" - 

Monday, June 01, 2009

How Nanotechnology Works



"How Nanotechnology Works", posted with vodpod
Much, much more on the blog of American Freedomist Central.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Historical Movie Theater: A Short History of Bad Ideas

Tonight in Politeia's historical movie theater a video version of a British Independent Television News documentary, compiled by the renowned suspense film director, Alfred Hitchcock.

The work was withheld by the post war government because it was deemed to gruesome to be shown. The footage was shot by Allied military on entering the Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II.

The movie illustrates the first in a series of posts on Politeia, "A Short History of Bad Ideas", aiming to chart the lofty ideas underpinning collectivist ideals and the resulting dystopias. The first instalment is entitled, "The Victims".

Watch "The Holocaust", compiled by Alfred Hitchcock.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

French Fanfare

WSJ: "Hats Off to Monsieur Hulot", by RICHARD B. WOODWARD

The films of Jacques Tati don't square with many other cultural products of postwar France. Released between 1947 and 1974 but unmarked by existential despair or other trends of Parisian intellectual life, his experiments in slapstick and whimsy had more in common with the skits of Red Skelton than the agit-prop pastiches of Jean-Luc Godard.

In retrospect, his work may be seen as an attempt to recover for a humiliated nation the innocence of vaudeville (originally a French word) that older audiences had found in the British music hall and in American silent comedies. Monsieur Hulot, the character he created for five of his best-known films, is one of the screen's endearing oddballs.  (...) >>>

Read more on the current tribute to M. Hulot and its creator at the Cinemathèque Française in Paris, in the WSJ article.

Here's a trailer related to a recent Tati "jour de fête" at Scénovision in Sainte-Sévère sur Indre:





Saturday, May 16, 2009

Friday, May 08, 2009

Sitting Down With a Star Trek Author

Seattle Times: "A Q&A with "Star Trek" co-writer Roberto Orci", by Jeff Shannon

Roberto Orci approached the writing of "Star Trek," a new movie that opened here last night, as a devoted fan. His screenwriting partner, Alex Kurtzman, was also familiar with the original "Star Trek" TV series, and their mutual enthusiasm — along with credits including blockbuster hits like "Transformers," "Mission: Impossible III" and the upcoming "Transformers" sequel — made them strong candidates for reinventing "Star Trek" as a big-screen adventure for the original, much-younger crew of the starship Enterprise.

- Caption: Star Trek actors, then and now -

Friends and collaborators for 17 years, Kurtzman and Orci (who's now 35) met in high school and later wrote numerous TV scripts before working on "Alias" with creator/producer J.J. Abrams ("Lost"). In addition to writing "M:I III" and "Star Trek" (both directed by Abrams), Kurtzman and Orci are co-creators of "Fringe," the Abrams-produced Fox TV series that's presently awaiting a second-season commitment. (...) >>>

Read a review of the new Trekker blockbuster in the US:

CNN: "Review: 'Star Trek' is exhilarating"

Friday, May 01, 2009

"Cry Me A River"

The latest great effort of LadyNea:



She ought to go pro. Brava!