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Black and White again, accepting Jo's challenge... Aiming for a Hitchcockian feel to this, while I still have jowls... Obviously the calorie counting and non-drinking regime will mean this may be my last chance before I metemorphose into a lean mean selfie machine ... Composite of two shots, both lit by iphone...
Another featurette came out today, dealing with Tucci's Mr. Harvey.
I have to admit that I'm speechless at how amazingly visual this film is; Jackson and Lesnie have made another great film. It's seems like there is not one dull shot in this film. Jackson switches up shot types and goes insane with framing. In this featurette there are shots of Tucci at work, sawing things and the camera is floating towards him while tilted; it's friggin astounding. The sequence when Tucci is chasing Lindsey around his house, which you can see somewhat towards the ending of this clip, is reminiscient of something Hitchcockian; that's what many reviewers are saying. Jackson crafted that scene perfectly and I can't wait to see it. The American Society of Cinematographer's magazine is going to come out with an article of this film in its January edition and I'm definitely going to read it; I'll provide a link for those who are interested.
P.S. Like I've said before, Tucci looks amazing in this film---he really did a lot of thinking and planning with this character. And Saoirse Ronan looks fantastic as well.
Here's a link to the new featurette:
www.dreadcentral.com/news/34948/the-lovely-bones-behind-s...
Part of a flock of starlings (and I mean a SMALL part) that flew in this morning, circled around, made a lot of noise, landed for a few minutes, messed the place up, and then took off again. Hmm, just like a pack of management consultants!
The votes are in! Our April selection is...
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
By A. J. Finn
For readers of Gillian Flynn and Tana French comes one of the decade's most anticipated debuts, to be published in thirty-six languages around the world and already in development as a major film from Fox: a twisty, powerful Hitchcockian thriller about an agoraphobic woman who believes she witnessed a crime in a neighboring house.
It isn't paranoia if it's really happening...
Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.
Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare.
What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one — and nothing — is what it seems.
Twisty and powerful, ingenious and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock.
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If interested in joining Common Grounds Book Club, more information on enrollment can be found here.
I especially like this shot. There's something Hitchcockian about it. Almost as if she were in a movie sitting on a train suspecting that she's being followed. A wonderful face and marvelous eyes at any rate.
My Sleep No More protection charm I received from the boy witch. For those of you not aware of Sleep No More, its an awesome production in NYC, loosely based on Macbeth, with a hitchcockian vibe, set in an old 30's style hotel set. Look it up. I'm quite obsessed with it since going in September '11.
A flock of Tree Swallows fills the sky during a Harris Center birding outing to Plum Island (Massachusetts) in August 2017.
photo: Meade Cadot
Hitchcock did it with black birds, now the white birds show how it's done. This was the scene near the start of a strange sequence of event that occurred at my rear balcony last week. Here's the story as I posted to a birdo forum... the message is that Canberra has never been in the normal range of Corellas, but it now seems that they are moving in. Another product of drought and human interference.
A few months after I first started following birds in mid-2006, I 'discovered' Corellas and took some notice of them from then on. Very occasionally here in lower Narrabundah we would observe a flock flying over, perhaps once a month or two on average, which used to please me because they were so uncommon. However in a very short time things have changed, until now, for the last 6 months, Corellas have passed my place every single day, usually many times. They've become common here in only a year.
Separately from this, in the last 6 months I've kind of adopted a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo who took to appearing at my office window and just sitting there watching until I'd go down and put out some seed on the balcony. After a while it started appearing with a friend, so I had two SC Cockatoos that I would feed reasonably regularly. I know... I know, I don't really know why I do it, but ... not rational. Actually my location in a block of units bordering the golf course is a bird desert, or at least a desert for interesting birds. My observations are so incredibly boring that I have to admit I gave up on my garden bird survey. This is one of the reasons I encouraged the SC Cockatoos, they were a little bit different. I fed them regularly despite thinking white cockies must be some of the toughest and most dominating birds around, not exactly in need of our support.
So today I was surprised by the following events...
I came home to find one of "my"cockies busy chewing up the tray that I use as a bird table. So I put some seed out for it, at the same time noticing that it behaved differently from either of my two regulars, so was probably a different bird. A minute or so later I looked out to see that a second had turned up, then three ... I went to the balcony and to my astonishment there was a Hitchcockian array of large white birds all lined up on the fence that separates us from the golf course, more on the sidings between me and both adjacent units and still more above me - on the gutter of the roof above the balcony. What was more surprising was that most of them were Corellas, an absolute first to see them perched anywhere in the vicinity. I've never seen them around here other than than flying overhead. It was unprecedented - there were at least 4 Long-billed Corellas, 9 Little Corellas, 1 half-half Corella and 5 SC Cockatoos, I don't know the actual numbers because the ones on the roof were invisible until I went out on to the balcony, at which time all those close to the balcony would fly off and confuse the issue.
I have never seen more than three cockatoos on the fence before, and never a single corella -- now they were wall to wall. It was far more strange than my little panorama shows, as they were very active, flying from the fence to the roof and back, displacing one another and having goes at each other all the time. But then things got really strange. At first there were the 3 cockies at my bird table, which is only a couple of metres from where I stand at the door. Two flew off when I came out to look, leaving only my original and best-known 'mate'. After 30 seconds or so, the 2 came back ... until ... a single Long-billed Corella (LBC) flew down, two of the cockies flew off immediately and the LBC physically attacked the other one until it left too. At which point a collection of corellas flew to the table and started feeding voraciously. The cockies were completely subjugated and sat on the fence and outer edges watching. There was a lot of activity, fighting and to-ing and fro-ing, with cockies swooping corellas and vice versa, pecking and flying birds attacking perched birds with their feet. But the summary is that the Corellas completely dominated the cockatoos, in particular one Little Corella that eventually would remain at the table even when I was standing close. It would peck and move threateningly every time a cockatoo got close, and looked completely in command.
The business ended strangely as well - a squawk from one bird and the whole lot, all three species, took off at once and disappeared. Not one bird remained.
If my experience is any guide, Canberra is going to have Corellas as much or more than it does Crested Pigeons. If Corellas can dominate Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, is anything likely to stop them?
35/365
Taken, edited and posted from my iPhone this evening. At this time of year the crows congregated in the trees on Oracle campus - it's very Hitchcockian.
Quiscalus mexicanus. Kind of fierce looking, I think. These blackbirds are found in large flocks here. If they ever turn on us, in a Hitchcockian way, we are in trouble.
365 Day 118.
Fortunately my silhouette isn't a large as his.
Strobist Info: 430EX behind me at 1/2 power
This morning hundreds of birds flew through my yard (as they do every year at this time) on their way to someplace warmer. They were unbelievably loud, (and a little too Hitchcockian for me to want to stay outside with them for long).
The remains of the huge cottonwood have a Hitchcockian aura of danger. Several visitors have remarked on this.
IN ANCIANT GREECE, when people set out to interpret the world they lived in, to find instruction, warnings or personal example, they’d look to stories of Zeus and Herra, Jason and the Argonauts, Sophocles and Narcissus. An ancient Greek man’s whole worldview would be likely be colored by the mythology of his times.
In Europe in the middle ages, people facing similar crossroads would seek answers in the lives of saints, finding there instruction and example and ways of understanding the world.
Facing a similar desire to comprehend their world in the early years of the twenty-first century, we turn to our television sets or to the pages of “People” magazine. To the mythology of our age: the culture of celebrity.
Michaelangelo gave us God reaching out to Adam. Warhol gave us Marilyn Monroe blowing kisses at the less.
A charismatic, good-looking young man will remind as onlooker of John F. Kennedy. A suspenseful will strike us as Hitchcockian. A wise old man will illustrate examples of resolve by making reference to Winston Churchill, demonstrate style by pointing to Sinatra. Marilyn Monroe life is constantly related as being symbolic of innocent beauty consumed by a culture of lust, Madonna’s as symbolic of cunning sex appeal triumphing in it.
People may argue about whether it is a good thing or a bad thing (more accurately in most cases, they argue about just how bad a thing it is), but no one would argue that we live in an age obsessed by the famous. A glance through any daily newspaper or supermarket checkout counter will confirm this thesis immediately. And while, in our photographic age, the smile of celebrity more often favors the beautiful than the deformed, it seldom makes value-judgments in addressing the spotlight: Sinner and saint, genius and dunce, lawmaker and criminal –all enjoy an equal opportunity to occupy fame’s warm glow.
It is this amorality which provokes the loudest grumbles about the way we choose our icons: Albert Einstein and O.J. Simpson occupy roughly the same amount of space in the public imagination.
There must be something wrong with such a star system
While high-minded accusers ask how we can celebrate sex and violence and greed to the same or greater degree that we revere insight and valor and benevolence, they fail to see that our system of celebrity is more analogous to ancient mythology than it is to the catalogue of saints.
Our mythology of film stars and politicians and musical celebrities is mush less about reverence than it is about interpretation. And what we’re interpreting is our own lives. If stories of malice and greed seem to outweigh benevolence and intellect in tabloid column inches, it is because we are more lustful and greedy than we are benevolent and intelligent. But of course our fascination with celebrities is even less about that than it is about the story.
People love a good story. They love it even more if they think it is true. The appeal of Entertainment Tonight is similar to in kind if not in scale to the enduring appeal of the bible or of the Ancient Myths—a collection of mostly true stories that provide inspiration and warning, scolding and instruction, comedy and tragedy. Our celebrities shape the way we see the world.
It was with this idea in mind that Victor Pross set out to create this book. Victor Pross’ portraits examine in subjective—sometimes hideous, often hilarious—detail the faces of those who’ve shaped our times. Politicians, rock stars, philosophers, actors, authors—the famous.
In discussing why he chose to work on faces, Victor pointed out a quote from no less a source than Leonardo da Vinci. “Faces display in part the nature of men, their vices and temperaments.” Indeed, in Victor’s portraits I can see the whole stories about the lives of the subjects: Mick Jagger’s dark sex appeal, Ronald Reagan’s cartoon patriotism, Humphrey Bogart’s hard-edged masculinity. His paintings and sketches show us more than familiar faces. They hint at the reason and significance behind them.
The grand idea, in an age in which our celebrities are the story of our times, is that if you paint a portrait of those who’ve shaped our culture, you paint a portrait of the culture itself.
So there you have it: A pictorial history of the Western World in the twentieth century, as told through the eyes and mouths and hairlines of our mythological gods and goddesses. Faces, which display in part the nature of our times, our vices and temperaments.
EDWARD KEENAN.
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