film
grrlscientist | July 10, 2010tags: Validation, humor, funny, social commentary, film, movie, streaming video
This sweet video is actually a short film that has won a lot of awards at film festivals. It's a bit long compared to the usual video embeds I share with you, but I think you'll enjoy this film (I certainly did).
Starring TJ Thyne & Vicki Davis. Writer/Director/Composer - Kurt Kuenne. Winner - Best Narrative Short, Cleveland Int'l Film Festival, Winner - Jury Award, Gen Art Chicago Film Festival, Winner - Audience Award, Hawaii Int'l Film Festival, Winner - Best Short Comedy, Breckenridge Festival of Film,…
grrlscientist | July 5, 2010tags: The Tiger Next Door, documentary, film, ethics, social commentary, exotic pets, wild animals, large cats, Dennis Hill, streaming video
This interesting video is a trailer for a documentary, "The Tiger Next Door," the story of a man named Dennis Hill who has been breeding and selling tigers from his backyard for over 15 years. Hill's dream is to breed a stripeless white tiger -- but at what cost to the animals, and at what risk to the community?
As the film begins, Hill has 24 tigers, 3 bears, 6 leopards and one cougar. But after a surprise government inspection, he loses the license…
grrlscientist | July 3, 2010tags: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, film, movie, trailer, entertainment, streaming video
Those of you who are Harry Potter fans will LOVE this! This is the second trailer from the penultimate installment of the Harry Potter films; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I, which was shown at the MTV movie awards 2010. HP7a will hit theaters on November 19th, 2010 [it's being released in Belgium on 17 November, so guess where I'll go to watch it on opening night?].
grrlscientist | June 28, 2010tags: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, film, movie, trailer, entertainment, streaming video
Those of you who are Harry Potter fans will LOVE this! This is the first trailer from the penultimate installment of the Harry Potter films; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I, which will hit theaters on November 19th, 2010 [it's being released in Belgium on 17 November, so guess where I'll go to watch it on opening night?]. And it looks like the entire film will be offered in IMAX 3D and in 3D, too! Yeow!! I am exciiited and I'll bet you are too! And here's the first trailer,…
grrlscientist | June 19, 2010tags: Foosball Fever, Foosball, table football, Nokia, film, filmmaking, innovation, technology, wow, television, streaming video
This video is amazing! It captures an amazing series of foosball matches, complete with all the wacky new tricks that were done. Plus, after the main video is over, you are presented with a clickable menu of embedded video links you can choose from, like slo-mo captures of how the tricks were done, behind the scenes footage, etc. All in all, this one video is a very cool innovation for foosball fans, video aficionados and technophiles!
grrlscientist | May 24, 2010tags: The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies, feminism, film, movies, entertainment industry, pop culture, cultural observation, Bechdel Test, Allison Bechdel, streaming video
The Bechdel Test is a simple way to gauge the active presence of female characters in Hollywood films and just how well rounded and complete those roles are. It was created by Allison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. It is astonishing the number of popular movies that can't pass this simple test. It demonstrates how little women's complex and interesting lives are underrepresented or non existent…
grrlscientist | May 22, 2010tags: The Chatty Duel, The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Hollywood, film, offbeat, streaming video
For this week's Silly Saturday, I am sharing this video of the fight between the Man in Black (Cary Elwes) and Inigo (Mandy Patinkin) from the Princess Bride. It's actually funny to watch these two chat while sword fighting.
I thought these lines were quite amusing:
"You've done nothing but study swordplay?"
"More pursue than study lately.. you see, I can no' find him. It's been 20 years now, I'm starting to lose confidence. I just work for Vizzini to pay the bills. There's not…
gregladen | May 21, 2010I recently watched this film for the first time since I was a little kid. The plot is much more nuanced than I had realized at the time.
Interesting mixture of science and religion.
cagapakis | May 5, 2010My semester in MIT's course on Documenting Science Through Video and New Media has drawn to a close. I've had a wonderful time and learned a lot about how films and science are constructed by different people in different times for different reasons. Most of all I've learned about how challenging it can be to put together an interesting narrative and present a point of view while at the same time ensuring that the science being explained is honest and clear to everyone. I've recently gotten the chance to watch two great recent science documentaries outside of class, Naturally Obsessed and…
sciencepunk | April 20, 2010Setting nerdy hearts a-flutter across the internet is current rumour that Zooey Deschanel will play Ada Lovelace in an upcoming film about the world's first programmer.
Gizmodo has the scoop:
The casting of Zooey Deschanel isn't completely confirmed, with Production Weekly tweeting she's "in talks to play Ada Lovelace in "Enchantress Of Numbers," Bruce Beresford plans to direct the period drama this fall"
Which is as good an excuse as any to take a few minutes and bask in the sublime wonder of this video:
Hat tip: @carmenego
aardvarchaeology | April 12, 2010One of H.P. Lovecraft's least successful horror stories is "Medusa's Coil", a 1930 collaboration with Zealia Bishop. The story builds to one of the hideous final denouements that Lovecraft liked to end his stories with. Nor was it right that the neighbours should know that other horror which my strange host of the night could not bring himself to tell me--that horror which he must have learned, as I learned it, from details in the lost masterpiece of poor Frank Marsh.
It would be too hideous if they knew that the one-time heiress of Riverside--the accursed gorgon or lamia whose hateful…
grrlscientist | March 25, 2010tags: Resonant Chamber, music, music video, film, animation, technology, computer graphics, Animusic, streaming video
This interesting animation is an argument for how a self-playing harp might work. The one thing that would improve its efficiency is to have a "plucker" that is dedicated to each string (as you see on the bass part of this contraption) rather than have each plucker pick at any or all of the strings. What do you think?
You can learn more at Animusic.
bioephemera | March 19, 2010--A great NYT article on science museums and cabinets of curiosities:
This antic miscellany is dizzying. But there are lineaments of sustained conflict in the apparent chaos. Over the last two generations, the science museum has become a place where politics, history and sociology often crowd out physics and the hard sciences. There are museums that believe their mission is to inspire political action, and others that seek to inspire nascent scientists; there are even fundamental disagreements on how humanity itself is to be regarded. The experimentation may be a sign of the science museum's…
grrlscientist | March 16, 2010tags: Bill and Coo, Tour of Chirpendale, film, movies, silly, funny, humor, fucking hilarious, animal training, birds, parrots, streaming video
I have never seen nor heard of Bill and Coo (1948), but it's a real treat. It features an all-bird cast (trained by George Burton) acting out a story involving Taxi Driver Bill Singer wooing his beloved Coo whilst fighting off a parakeet-devouring crow! This clip features a tour of the town of Chirpendale and its inhabitants. Oddly enough, the film won a special Academy award "In which artistry and patience blended in a novel and entertaining use of…
aardvarchaeology | March 8, 2010
Last week was skiing break for my kids. I couldn't find anywhere good to stay in the mountains, so we didn't go off on holiday. Here's what we did for fun instead.
Dinner at the home of a Chinese friend. It was one of those no hablar parties that spouses in multi-ethnic marriages know all about. The food was great and everybody there except me spoke Mandarin - loudly and incessantly. I've never minded much: this time I had brought a book and there was a computer to play with.
Birthday party at the home of an Iranian friend. He used to be a death-metal kid. Now he's a pro-democracy Persian…
awild | January 27, 2010Mark this on your calendar: February 27 is the 27th annual Insect Fear Film Festival. Hosted by the entomology graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the festival showcases two (usually terrible) arthropod movies. This year's delectable offerings are The Black Scorpion (1957) and Ice Crawlers (2003).
If bad movies aren't your thing, the festival also has an insect art competition, live insect displays, face painting, and other buggy entertainment. As way of a preview, Jo-anne posted her pics of last years event here. I've put the full announcement below:…
aardvarchaeology | January 16, 2010[More blog entries about movies, avatar, tolkien, gaiahypothesis; film, avatar, tolkien, gaiahypotesen.]
Today my mind was blown by James Cameron's sf film Avatar in full-colour 3D. Some spoilers follow.
Tolkien created the ents, the tree-shepherds, out of his sense that trees are so large yet so defenseless against the man -- or the orc -- with an axe and a torch. The moon Pandora, Avatar's world, is Tolkien's ents on a global scale. It's Lovelock's natty old Gaia "hypothesis" turned concrete reality. Lem's world Solaris is covered by a sentient global ocean. Pandora has a sentient global…