animation, documentary, quotes, Uncategorized

501

Excerpt from Examined Life, 2008. (imdb)Layout 1

Slavoj Zizek investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.

Slavoj Žižek on CBC radio

Political Correctness Is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism

movies

431 – Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

spacetime coordinates:  1873 New Mexico Territory

Cowboys & Aliens is a 2011 American western science fiction film directed by Jon Favreau and starring Daniel CraigHarrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde. The film is based on the 2006 graphic novel of the same name created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. The plot revolves around an amnesiac outlaw (Craig), a wealthy cattleman (Ford), and a mysterious traveler (Wilde) who must ally to save a group of townspeople abducted by aliens.

Favreau chose to film traditionally and in anamorphic format (widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film) to further a “classic movie feel” Measures were taken to maintain a serious Western element despite the film’s “inherently comic” title and premise.

Roger Guyett about the aliens: “They’re frontiersmen in a way: traveling to another place and having to deal with all the adversities of the climate. And in our case, we played up the fact that they weren’t comfortable in our world. There are flies all around them; they don’t like the light; and when they were wounded and exposed, a strange fungus grows around them.”

wiki   imdb

books, documentary, quotes, Uncategorized

348 – Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

“attentiveness alone can rival the most powerful magnifying lens.”

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Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. “Gathering Moss” is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.
In this series of linked personal essays, Robin Kimmerer leads general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings. Kimmerer explains the biology of mosses clearly and artfully, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.

Drawing on her experiences as a scientist, a mother, and a Native American, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/87040.Gathering_Moss

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“the tiny pool of water held in a spoon-shaped leaf is the perfect resting place for a waterbear, as plump and gelatinous as a candy gummy bear. the moisture in a moss mat is as vital to the moss as it is to the waterbear. but, since mosses are non-vascular, their water content fluctuates with the amount of water in the environment. the moss leaves shrivel and contort as water evaporates, leaving them crisp and dry. the waterbears too, simply shrink when desiccated to as little as one-eight of their size forming barrel- shaped miniatures of themselves called tuns. metabolism is reduced to near zero and the tun can survive in this state for years. the tuns blow around in the dry winds like specks of dust, landing on new clumps of moss and dispersing farther than their short waterbear legs could ever carry them.”

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body 

Timeline –  Bog Bodies on youtube

4000 Year Old Cold Case – The Body in the Bog 


Carved idol from the Urals shatters expert views on birth of ritual art – “Only the freak conditions of the peat bog of Yekaterinburg permitted the idol’s survival.” read more

movies

0308 – Slow West (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 1870  Colorado

Slow-West-affiche-neutreSlow West is a 2015 British/New Zealand  western film written and directed by John Maclean in his directorial debut. It stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as a young man searching for his lost love in the American West, accompanied by a bounty hunter played by Michael Fassbender.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3205376/

movies

0300 – Wind River (2017)

Wind-River-film-poster-designed-by-Konrad-CloughWind River is a 2017 American neo-western murder mystery thriller film written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. The film stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tracker and an FBI agent, respectively, who try to solve a murder on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. According to Sheridan, the opening “inspired by true events” card was a reference to the “thousands of actual stories just like it” involving sexual assault of women on reservations, his primary motivation for writing the film.

wind river 2wind-river1wind-river-poster

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5362988/

movies

251 – Apocalypto (2006)

spacetime coordinates:  pre-Columbian Yucatan and Guatemala, 1502

apocalypto_xlg

Apocalypto is a 2006 American epic adventure film directed and produced by Mel Gibson and written by Gibson and Farhad Safinia.  Similar to Gibson’s earlier film The Passion of the Christ, all dialogue is in a modern approximation of the ancient language of the setting. Here, the Yucatec Maya language is used, with English and other language subtitles, which sometimes refer to the language as Mayan.

apocalypto_cover

Themes

Historical Accuracy

imdb

 

movies

152 – The Lost City of Z (2016)

spacetime coordinates: Ireland 1905 > England 1924  //  uncharted eastern Bolivia 1906, uncharted Amazonia 1912, 1925 // Battle of the Somme, France 1916

lost_city_of_z_ver4_xlg

The Lost City of Z is a 2016 American biographical adventure drama film written and directed by James Gray, based on the 2009 book of the same name by David Grann. It describes real events surrounding British explorer Percy Fawcett who was sent to Bolivia and later made several attempts to find an ancient lost city in the Amazon and disappeared in 1925 along with his son on an expedition.

imdb.com     wikipedia

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On 21 March 2004, the British newspaper The Observer reported that television director Misha Williams, who had studied Fawcett’s private papers, believed that Fawcett had not intended to return to Britain but rather meant to found a commune in the jungle based on theosophical principles and the worship of his son Jack.  –  (wikipedia)

James Gray’s tremendous The Lost City Of Z finds meaning in the unknown: “an operatic drama, an adventure saga, an anti-colonialist critique, a veiled artistic self-portrait, and, yes, even a revisionist grail legend. “