Curious about what happened between the original “Blade Runner” and its sequel?
A 180-degree video display helped fill in the gaps during the Warner Bros. San Diego Comic-Con panel on Saturday. The journey sets up the sequel, set 30 years in the future in a dystopian Los Angeles where the police are trying to find illegal replicants. The whole “Blade Runner 2049” story is laid out on roadto2049.bladerunnermovie.com.
Moderator Chris Hardwick asked the sequel’s director Denis Villeneuve why he took the job. “I didn’t want somebody else to f— it up,” he responded.
Ryan Gosling made minor waves for comparing his experience on the movie to being “on a football team with the Avengers.” Hardwick jumped in to let the audience know that Gosling meant to say “Justice League,” prompting laughs.
The cast was dodgy when it came to plot details. When asked if the sequel will answer fans’ questions about the original, Harrison slyly replied, “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
Later, he teased, “The original film explored the ethics of the creation of replicants and their utility and we further develop those themes in the story … but I’m not going to tell you anything about it.”
But it was an audience question directed at Harrison that got the biggest response when he was asked if his goal is to reboot every major franchise. “You bet your a— it is,” he joked as the audience roared.
The panel also screened a short clip from the movie, in addition to releasing new trailers for “Ready Player One,” “Justice League” and a first look at “Aquaman.”
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The 74th Venice Film Festival runs Aug. 30 to Sept. 9. The Venice Film Festival has announced the full roster of its main competition jury, which will include actress Rebecca Hall, “Baby Driver” director Edgar Wright, and Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi, whose “On Body and Soul” won this year’s Berlin Golden Bear. They will decide the fest’s main prizes alongside French actress Anna Mouglalis, Mexican film director and producer Michel Franco, Australian film critic David Stratton, Italian actress Jasmine Trinca, and Hong Kong-based film director and photographer Yonfan. As previously announced, four-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening will preside over the main jury, the first woman since 2006 to head the panel. The festival also announced Sunday that U.S. director John Landis will head the jury of the new Venice Virtual Reality section, which organizers tout as the first-ever competition for VR works launched by a major film fest. Of the main competition jurors, Franco, whose latest feature as a director is “April’s Daughter,” produced 2015 Venice Golden Lion winner “From Afar” by Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas. British actress Hall most recently starred in Brooklyn-set romantic comedy “Permission,” which bowed positively at Tribeca, while her countryman Wright (pictured) is making a splash in the U.S. with “Baby Driver.” Mouglalis (“Coco Chanel”) plays the lead in upcoming horror thriller “The Most Assassinated Woman in the World.” Stratton is a television personality and former Variety reviewer, and also the subject of the documentary “David Stratton: A Cinematic Life,” which screened recently at Cannes. Trinca scooped this year’s best actress award at Cannes for “Fortunata.” Yonfan has written, directed and produced 13 often sexually daring movies, including melodrama “Prince of Tears,” which competed in Venice in 2009. The festival also announced Sunday the jury members of its Horizons section, which is dedicated to more cutting-edge fare. Italian auteur Gianni Amelio (“The Stolen Children”) will oversee a panel consisting of Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad, whose “Tales” won the 2014 Venice best screenplay prize; U.S. director Ami Canaan Mann, whose “Texas Killing Fields” competed on the Lido in 2011; Irish-Scottish director Mark Cousins, best known for his 15-hour documentary, “The Story of Film: An Odyssey”; Argentine screenwriter Andres Duprat, whose “The Distinguished Citizen” just won multiple nods at the Platino Ibero-American Film Awards; Belgian director Fien Troch, whose “Home” took the 2016 Horizons best director prize; and French writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski, whose “Planetarium,” starring Natalie Portman, screened in Venice last year. French director Benoit Jacquot will head the Lion of the Future jury, which will hand out Venice’s award for best first feature. The other members of the jury are British film lecturer and BFI film programmer Geoff Andrew; veteran Hong Kong-based producer Albert Lee; Italian actress Greta Scarano (“Suburra”); and Greek director Yorgos Zois (“Interruption”). The award recognizes the best debut feature across all competitive sections at the festival and comes with $100,000, to be divided equally between the director and the producer. Landis will be joined on the VR jury by French screenwriter and film director Celine Sciamma, who directed “Tomboy” and penned “My Life as a Zucchini,” and Italian actor and director Ricky Tognazzi (“Ultrà”). Italian director Giuseppe Piccioni (“Not of This World”) will preside over the jury of film students who award the Venezia Classics Awards for best restored classic and best documentary on cinema. The Article is Taken From: Paintings were seized following a tip-off from the Art Loss Register Artwork by Cecil Beaton, Francis Bacon in his studio, 1960, Made of gelatin Spanish police say that they have recouped three works by Francis Bacon that were stolen from a private home in Madrid in June 2015. Five works by the Dublin-conceived craftsman were evacuated amid the assault. As indicated by the BBC, the three unidentified works, which have a place with Bacon's colleague José Capelo, were recouped following a tip-off from the Art Loss Register, the London-based stolen workmanship database. The UK association was reached by a person in Sitges who needed to confirm one of the works. Spanish police did not react to facilitate enquiries. "The return of the pictures is testament to the benefits of international cooperation between the private sector and law enforcement agencies. That these pictures have now been recovered through the skill of the Spanish police, after the Art Loss Register had identified them, and following the circulation of details of the loss via Interpol, is a perfect example of the value of such collaboration," says James Ratcliffe, director of Recoveries & General Counsel at the Art Loss Register. Ten individuals have so far been confined regarding the theft; seven captures were made in Madrid a year ago and three more individuals were captured in January. Bacon’s triptych, Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1963), the first portrait of the artist’s longtime lover, fetched $51.8m at Christie’s New York in May. Editorial Stuff Photo by Alexander Schneider I waver between thinking game-maker and animator David O’Reilly’s masterpiece, Everything, is something more than a video game and not a video game at all. Playing it feels much more like looking at a painting, or perhaps taking a psychedelic meditation retreat. In the game, the player takes turns controlling hundreds of individual objects and entities that are cartoonish abstractions of our own reality, from giraffes to microconidia to continents, clouds and eventually galaxies. Eventually, one is able to create madcap worlds-within-worlds where a murder of crows might dance with submarines beneath the ocean, or a planet-sized record player plunks out strange noises in space. (There are, interestingly, no human beings roaming O’Reilly’s worlds.) Two elements lend this beautiful but absurd experience some real weight. The inclusion of hours of joyful and thought-provoking lectures from the great philosopher Alan Watts, and the expansive score from electronic musician Ben Lukas Boysen and contemporary classical composer/musician Sebastian Plano. Their pieces—anchored by Plano’s emotive cello and expanded by Boysen’s towering, organic ambient structures—are otherworldly and full of wonder. They swell and fade unexpectedly as the player tinkers, and they evoke something more than just beauty. They evoke awe. It is a remarkable experience, and the resulting Everything soundtrack—on the venerable Erased Tapes label—stands on its own as a startling piece of art. We spoke to Boysen and Plano via video chat, as they were drinking beers at Boysen’s home in Berlin. WHAT TO LOOK AT THE MIEFF EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL IN THE ELECTRO-THEATERFrom July 20 to July 23, Moscow's "Electrotheater Stanislavsky" will host the II Moscow International Festival of Experimental Cinema. In addition to the actual film and video art in his program, multimedia events like the performance of Dmitry Volkostrelov or the widget set by the Dutch researcher Esther Ulrus, who is engaged in the reconstruction of fossil film manufacturing and processing technologies (in Stanislavsky she will create a video composition on four 16 mm projectors). In general, the program of the festival is very extensive (there are only four retrospectives here). Vasily Koretsky - about what movie can not be missed on MIEFF under any circumstances. Retrospective of Toshio MatsumotoToshio Matsumoto, one of the important figures of the Japanese "new wave" of the 1960s, is known primarily for his feature film "Funeral procession of roses" - a rather scandalous (at one time) picture describing the world of Tokyo's bohemian and half-light (the main character of the expressive "Procession" is a transvestite prostitute). In addition to the "Procession" in the filmography of Matsumoto - three more full-length paintings; However, the director's experiences in the big cinema had a character, rather sporadic and inconsistent. Exercises in the tight frame of the film format are only weak reflections of Matsumoto's experiments in video art and multimedia theater. His video works, on the contrary, demonstrate the meaningfulness of the method and the integrity of the reception. In the first half of the 1960s he was a documentaryist trying to give the social dock a poetic and not a publicistic form (similar black and white chronicles of the working people Tkachi Nishizdin and Stone's Song, a color film-essay "Mothers" shot on creative business trips In the USA and France). By the end of the decade, Matsumoto switched from poetic realism to pop art, parodying Duchamp and Warhol ("Metastasis") with the help of Scanimate's latest visual synthesizer or by assembling a chronicle of parties in a chaotic semblance of a music video. In 1973, the "Mona Lisa" was brought to Japan from the Louvre, and Matsumoto removed his most probably video work - "Mona Lisa", composed of a series of various reproductions of the portrait, processed by Scanimate. translated from Russian by Dejan Stojkovski The Article is Taken from: Andrés Muschietti's hotly anticipated adaptation of Stephen King's It will open the Fantasy Filmfest in Munich, Germany. The festival runs September 6 - 16. The festival's 2017 lineup already includes a number of eagerly awaited titles, including Paco Plaza's (REC) Veronica, Cannes premiers such as The Villainess and Sicilian Ghost Story, as well as the Japanese box office hit Memoirs of a Murder. Other genre titles include Joe Lynch's Mayhem, Danish vigilante thriller Darkland, shark attack flick 47 Meters Down and many more. Get thee to Germany! The Article is taken from: The whole concept behind 10+ Years Later is to revisit films about which time has potentially changed your opinion. When perusing David Lynch's filmography, I found myself routinely thinking, “Of course Dune is terrible,” and ignoring it to the extent that I could. But really, if one hardly remembers a film at all, and one likes or loves everything else that a filmmaker has done, doesn't one owe said film a second watch? I consider Lynch to be my favorite living artist. I can find value in just about everything he's produced, even when it's a television commercial or a thinly-veiled transcendental meditation manifesto. In college I wrote an (overly long, and surely fawning) essay about his fascination with the duality of blonde girls-next-door and brunette femmes fatale. In preparation for it, I re-watched every movie of his save for The Elephant Man, The Straight Story, and Dune. While I have always liked the first two, I never thought Dune was worth another thought, and Lynch's own admission of failure has tidily validated my avoidance. Now, though, Lynch is enjoying both success and the sweet freedom of total creative control on Twin Peaks: The Return. For the third season's premiere, he basked in a standing ovation at Cannes, the same festival at which his work was booed 25 years ago at the screening of Fire Walk With Me. At 71, he has finally (long overdue) found a medium that suits him, a studio that trusts him, and an audience that will follow him. The sting of Dune's failure has hopefully diminished. So, in the interest of potential revisionism, let's give it one more look. It's somewhat difficult to critique Dune in 2017, when all of its flaws and shortcomings were already laid relentlessly bare by critics upon its release over 30 years ago. And if not difficult per se, the task is surely unnecessary and redundant. Most negative reviews of the era focused on the film's incoherence, its tedious pacing and its general lack of intrigue. For Lynch devotees (especially looking back on the film and trying to reconcile it amongst his oeuvre), the complaints tend to hinge on its directorial anonymity: its seeming lack of Lynchian DNA. For the moment, I will attempt an objective look at Dune as a film -- rather than specifically as a Lynch film. This should not be hard for me to do, because I had always followed Lynch's lead in writing it off as a project he never should have been involved in. This article assumes the reader has seen the movie, and there are spoilers ahead. Royal Albert Hall, London The orchestra’s second Proms appearance this year saw Joshua and Alisa Weilerstein lead a smartly restrained recital of of Pascal Dusapin’s concerto Intensity and introspection … Alisa Weilerstein. Photograph: Chris Christodoulou/BBC Outscape, Pascal Dusapin’s concerto for cello and orchestra, was the novelty in the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s second appearance at this summer’s Proms. The concert was conducted by Joshua Weilerstein, and his elder sister Alisa was the soloist in the piece Dusapin composed for her, which she had premiered in Chicago last year. The title, the composer says, “carries the musical project within itself”, and though the word “outscape”, coined in the 19th century by Gerard Manley Hopkins, seems now to carry multiple meanings, Dusapin construes it in the sense of escaping elsewhere and finding one’s own path. That’s the journey undertaken by the cello in the concerto. There’s no hint of traditional concerto dialectic, no confrontational to and fro between soloist and orchestra, but instead the sense of two independent protagonists who sometimes move towards each other or exchange roles, yet always preserve their distinct identities. The first half of the 27-minute, single-movement work is restrained and introspective, with the ruminating solo cello shadowed first by a bass clarinet and then by a succession of other instruments in the orchestra. The level of activity and the expressive intensity, increase in the second half, though a lot of that busy detail went missing in the Albert Hall; listening later to the BBC’s binaural recording was far more involving. By any standard, it’s a demanding challenge for the soloist, who is allowed very few chances to rest, though the long tendrils of melody that the cello spins do make the most of Alisa Weilerstein’s rich tone, and she projected them intensely. Richard Horne beats up his grandma, takes all her money, calls her a cunt and skips town, but not before killing Miriam, the perky schoolteacher who witnessed him run over that kid a couple of episodes ago. Anyone not believe Richard is the spawn of Evil Cooper, who probably raped Audrey while she was in a coma? Nasty cop Chad intercepts a letter Miriam warns Richard she’s sent to the Sherriff in the event of her meeting with an accident of some kind—I guess making fun of the Log Lady and sneering at Andy and Lucky isn’t all he’s good for. Ben Horne fields an (understandably) hysterical call from Sylvia. Things are as strained as ever. She’s enraged that the main thing he wants to know is whether Johnny was hurt. He’s enraged that she wants more money. Exhausted, Ben asks his married assistant Beverly to dinner. Shelley Johnson’s daughter seems to be reliving her mother’s life with Leo. Harry Dean Stanton sings the cowboy classic “Red River Valley.” Janey-E discovers her husband looks a lot better with no shirt on than he used to. Dougie, um, hits the jackpot in a whole new way (Man, Janey-E is a screamer!) Meanwhile, in Vegas, Lynchian comedy ensues as a casino showgirl attempts to swat a fly, ultimately cracking thug-boss across the cheekbone with the remote. He’s fine. She is a tearful wreck for the rest of the day. The casino thugs discover that the guy who made Ike the Spike finally “step on his own dick” is none other than “Mister Jackpots.” In the casino, Dougie’s crooked co-worker comes to tell the Thuggie Thuggerson that the “enemy” who kiboshed his insurance arson scam was indeed also the nefarious, if seemingly addlepated, Douglas Jones. Sinister clouds gather over Los Vegas. Figuratively. Because Vegas is a desert. Glazunov was renowned for his portraits, illustrations, and religious depictions of Russian history Artist Ilya Glazunov Ilya Glazunov, one of Russia’s most popular and controversial artists, passed away on Sunday at the age of 87. A native of St. Petersburg, he graduated from the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. After winning the Grand Prix of the International Competition of Young Artists in Prague in 1956, he held his first solo exhibition in Moscow. Glazunov was renowned for his portraits of famous personages, both Russian and foreign; illustrations for works of Russian literature; and later in life, religious and nationalistic depictions of Russian history. His enormous canvases are filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of figures depicting the gamut of contemporary and historical figures, from Prince Igor to Monica Lewinsky. In 1976, Glazunov painted one of his first and best known historical works, “The Mystery of the 20th Century.” In it, an atomic bomb explodes over depictions of Nikolai II, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, Vladimir Lenin, Adolph Hitler and Charlie Chaplin, among dozens of other leaders and cultural figures. Hovering above is an image of Christ, and standing in prison clothes is the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. For the ideological crime of depicting Solzhenitsyn, the Central Committee of the Communist Party considered exiling him from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was sent to Siberia to paint portraits of the workers of the Baikal-Amur Railroad. On his return to Moscow, Glazunov continued to paint monumental canvases. By then, society and the political system were falling in sync with his views. In 1986, a large solo exhibition of his works was held at the Manege Exhibition Hall, and in 2004 a museum of his art and his personal collection of icons opened opposite the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Glazunov was the founder and rector of the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, the artistic director in charge of the restoration of the Great Kremlin Palace and a vocal supporter of the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. He was the recipient of many state and foreign awards, including People’s Artist of the USSR, the State Prize of the Russian Federation, and the UNESCO Gold Medal for "outstanding contribution to world culture." Glazunov will be buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery. This article is taken from: Works by Dmitry Plavinsky and Andrei Tarkovsky in a virtual ancient church belfry. AZ Museum Press Service If you are in the city center and need a break from contemporary reality, crawl over the ditches and around the construction barriers and make your way off Pushkin Square to the Theater of Nations’ New Space, a 19th century two-story building that has been artfully reconstructed into exhibition spaces. Until July 20 you can see “Breakthrough to the Past,” an unusual exhibition about two brilliant artists and their work in the 1960s. Organized by the Anatoly Zverev (AZ) Museum and the Dva Andreya Foundation, it presents two artists who worked in different media and never met, but whose work and world views have much in common. The show presents filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and artist Dmitry Plavinsky. More specifically it highlights Tarkovsky’s film "Andrei Rublev" and Dmitry Plavinsky’s etchings and paintings done at the same time and, in some cases, in the same places as Tarkovsky was filming. In the 1960s both artists were drawn to Russia’s ideologically forbidden religious past, to what the curators call the “aesthetics of icons as the manifestation of the Christian world view, as a path for spiritual development and inner freedom.” The idea of the exhibition was suggested by Polina Lobachevskaya, director of the AZ Museum, and first received rather skeptically by her colleagues. Maria Revyakina, director of the Theater of Nations, found the project utterly “unexpected.” Zoya Koshelyova, academic director of the Dva Andreya Foundation dedicated to the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, at first “couldn’t see the two artists together.” But over time, everyone not only came around, but embraced the pairing, which was then produced as a multimedia project by Natalya Opaleva. A new commission by Barbara Kruger for the V-A-C Foundation's Palazzo delle Zattere gallery in Venice (Photo: courtesy of the artist, Sprüth Magers and Mary Boone Gallery) Another influential foreign patron is building an art empire in Venice, joining the ranks of the French luxury goods tycoon François Pinault and the Italian fashion giant Miuccia Prada. The Russian gas billionaire Leonid Mikhelson is launching a gallery in the 19th-century Palazzo delle Zattere with a show of Soviet and contemporary art during the opening week of the Venice Biennale (Space Force Construction, 13 May-25 August). Mikhelson’s Moscow-based V-A-C Foundation will run the new space, which will host two temporary exhibitions a year. The gallery will be free to enter, unlike Pinault’s two Venetian museums, the Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi, and the Prada Foundation space, Ca’ Corner della Regina. “All of our exhibitions and activities at Palazzo delle Zattere will continue to be free of charge and open to everyone,” says Teresa Iarocci Mavica, the V-A-C Foundation’s Italian-born director. The foundation, which Mikhelson established in 2009, has organised annual exhibitions in Venice since 2010. Mavica says that the Palazzo delle Zattere will not house its own collection of international and Russian contemporary art. “It will be a more permanent space for us to be able to continue our work with new generations of artists in Russia and worldwide, offering them an international platform on which to produce and show their work,” she says. A spokeswoman declined to discuss the future programme. Unbelievable movie producer George A. Romero, the father of the cutting edge film zombie and maker of the momentous "Night of the Living Dead" establishment, has kicked the bucket at 77, his family said. Romero passed on Sunday in his rest following a "brief however forceful fight with lung disease," as per an announcement to The Times given by his long-term delivering accomplice, Peter Grunwald. Romero kicked the bucket while tuning in to the score of one his most loved movies, 1952's "The Quiet Man," with his better half, Suzanne Desrocher Romero, and girl, Tina Romero, next to him, the family said. Romero's companions and partners in his Image Ten generation organization pooled their assets to make the film. Impacted by Richard Matheson's novell, I Am Legend, the high contrast film recounts the account of a gathering of individuals caught in a Pennsylvania farmhouse who fall prey to a swarm of the undead. The film was said to be a critique of capitalism amid the counter-culture period of the Sixties. Romero co-composed and coordinated "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968, which went on to become a cult-classic. The film started the zombie film kind and impelled five continuations as a major aspect of Romero's "Dead" film series. Following quite a while of the Living Dead, he coordinated movies including There's Always Vanilla, Season of the Witch, and The Crazies, albeit none had the effect of his initially film. Some of his non-zombie movies of the '70s and '80s increased more consideration in the short-run. These included Knightriders - about jousters who re-authorize competitions on bikes - and the collection Creepshow composed by Stephen King. Among his different movies from the 1990s were Monkey Shines, Edgar Allen Poe adjustment Two Evil Eyes, in a joint effort with Dario Argento, The Dark Half and Bruiser. He official created and refreshed his own particular screenplay for Tom Savini's 1990 revamp of Night of the Living Dead. Also, Romero even showed up in The Silence of the Lambs. He was initially set to coordinate the wide screen port of survival-frightfulness computer game Resident Evil, yet left the venture because of imaginative contrasts. His fourth Dead motion picture Land of the Dead was made in Toronto in 2005, featuring Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento and John Leguizamo. Born in the Bronx, Romero's father was Cuban and his mother Lithuania. He graduated Carnegie He additionally taken a shot at computer games and composed comic books. Mellon University in Pittsburgh, at that point started shooting shorts and commericals including a portion of "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood." He is survived by his wife Suzanne and two children. The family asks for their privacy to be respected at this time. editorial stuff Director Václav Kadrnka, photo credit: Jan Handrejch After fifteen years, the main competition at the Karlovy Vary festival has been won by a domestic entrant. Václav Kadrnka's meditative drama on fatherhood Little Crusader captured the five-member main jury's attention the most and along with the Crystal Globe for best film it also received a financial award of 25 000 dollars. "I'm overjoyed. There was a lot of uncertainty in the film from the beginning; it was a long journey. I'm glad that our film has created emotions," said the moved filmmaker. The special jury prize went to the drama on the trauma of the war in Yugoslavia Men Don't Cry by Bosnian director Alen Drljević. The directing prize was won by Slovak filmmaker Peter Bebjak, who was presenting his film The Line at the festival. The award for best actress went to Jowita Budnik and Eliane Umuhire together for the drama Birds Are Singing in Kigali. Russian actor Alexander Yatsenko was selected as best actor for his role as a doctor in the Russian film Arrythmia. The five-member jury also award two special recognitions – to the American romance Keep The Change for the best debut and to Romanian actress Voica Oltean for best starting actress for the film Breaking News. In the competition East of the West, the imaginative road movie How Viktor "the Garlic" took Alexey "the Stud" to the Nursing Home by Russian director Alexander Hant was successful. A special jury prize was earned by the film Dede, which takes place in Svaneti, a stark mountainous region in northwestern Georgia, directed by Mariam Khatchvani. The award for best feature-length documentary went to the Spanish film Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle. The documentary jury awarded a special prize to the film Atelier de conversation by Austrian director Bernhard Braunstein. The Právo Audience Award was awarded to the American crime drama taking place on a Native American reservation Wind River starring Jeremy Renner in the main role. The movie's protagonist received a Festival President's Award from Jiří Bartoška at the closing ceremony. "I hope this prize doesn't mean that I'm old already?" asked the two-time Oscar nominee. "It's a wonderful honour. Thanks to Mr Babuška, because of whom this festival is alive, and all the staff," added the Avengers star. A KVIFF President's Award was also received by Czech director Václav Vorlíček, who during his thanks recalled the first showing of his comedy The Girl on the Broomstick at Karlovy Vary. The fifty-second Karlovy Vary IFF was attended by 13 734 accredited visitors – of those 11 544 with festival passes, 398 filmmakers, 1165 film professionals and 617 journalists. Over the course of the festival there were 505 film screenings and a total of 140 067 tickets were sold. A total of 207 different films were shown. Next year's 53rd Karlovy Vary IFF will take place from 29 June to 7 July 2018. source: kviff.com by Alissa Simon A deliberately paced tale with a visually mannered style that keeps viewers at arm’s length and distances them from the full impact of the tragic proceedings. Reportedly inspired by Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” the downbeat Azeri drama “Pomegranate Orchard” from Armenian-born director Ilgar Najaf is a deliberately paced tale with a visually mannered style that keeps viewers at arm’s length and distances them from the full impact of the tragic proceedings. Set in rural Azerbaijan, it revolves around the return of a prodigal son with ulterior motives whose reappearance in the bosom of his family after a 12-year absence significantly changes their way of life. Further festival travel is possible, but programmers will likely find it less charming and engaging than Najaf’s previous feature, “Buta” (2012). Aging Shamil (Gurban Ismayilov) is becoming too infirm to maintain the family pomegranate orchard, which has long been his pride and joy and whose saplings are highly valued by other growers. There are many who would like to buy him out, but the old man refuses all offers. Shamil shares his house with his daughter-in-law Sara (Ilahe Hasanova) and visually disabled young grandson Jalal (Hesen Aghayev). His beloved elder son died in a car accident some years previously. Following that tragedy, his black-sheep younger son Gabil (Semimi Farhad), Sara’s husband, left town without a word. We are in civil war. We are in a global war. Support the Black Bloc at G20 in Hamburg! „Its not suicide we are dealing with, but the murder of one part of the species by another part of the same species … the contemporary nomos would be something like the division of the legitimate nation state and the rogue states at the axis of evil (to which we could add the vandals, casseurs, black blocs, zapatistas, the people up in arms).“ Viveiros de Castro. International anti-capitalist demonstration against G20 summit: G20 Welcome to HellThursday, 6 July 2017 4 p.m., St. Pauli Fischmarkt, Hamburg read here more info here video here about G 20 about imperialism today about financial capital about the global proletariat Every three months, the Bandcamp Daily editorial staff combs through the stacks to present our favorite records of the year to date. This edition runs the stylistic spectrum, everything from jazz to pop to gospel to everything in between. And if you want to see our picks for the first three months of 2017, you can check them out here. It’s hard to shake the influence of Kraftwerk on electronic pop music today: the way they merged worlds of human consciousness and mechanical automation on their seminal album The Man-Machine is present in everything from Chicago house to big room EDM. The Detroit-bred techno-pop artist Matthew Dear shares a lot with Kraftwerk stylistically, from his glimmering keys and plastic atmospheres, to his emotive but conversational vocal style. But Dear has never worn Kraftwerk’s influence on his sleeve as clearly as on his new track, “Modafinil Blues.” The springy, filtered chords and the echoing arpeggios instantly recall Kraftwerk’s 1978 classic “Neon Lights.” But instead of the hopeful future imagined on that upbeat song, Dear sounds dejected, searching for a way out as he navigates a drugged-up comedown. He paints himself as a victim of his own self-medication, “hopeless at best,” and “helplessly floating from embers,” and it’s as honest as he’s ever felt on a track. Dear’s wide-open synths and cruising bassline feel airy and warm, but “Modafinil Blues” coasts at an unhurried pace emphasizing his brooding introspection. Pairing gentle production with his dark thoughts, Dear’s “Modafinil Blues” equally fits for an evening joyride or as a soundtrack for a restless insomniac. take from: Listen A track, below: The benefits of taking on new challenges in middle age Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. Photograph: Allstar/Miramax Although his previous attempt at a career break, by becoming an apprentice shoemaker in Florence, didn’t last long, it seems Daniel Day-Lewis is serious about retiring this time. Maybe he’s looking for a new challenge. As we get older, work can feel more routine and easy, which is born out in terms of brain activity. Scans show tasks we are practiced at often use less energy than novel activities – we tend to do them more efficiently, and the mental energy required decreases. We’re all familiar with this as our careers advance. We also get more skilled at spotting our mistakes and rectifying them; as an old hand, you can notice when the edge has gone but you have enough tricks in the bag to make amends. This ‘neuroprotective’ effect may be behind some of the results that show an apparent delay in symptoms of age-related cognitive decline for those more active in middle age. In this light a preemptive move, like Day-Lewis’s, may be more sensible as we become over familiar with what we do. It is perhaps typical of this most uncompromising of actors that he’s quitting while ahead. lthough his previous attempt at a career break, by becoming an apprentice shoemaker in Florence, didn’t last long, it seems Daniel Day-Lewis is serious about retiring this time. Maybe he’s looking for a new challenge. As we get older, work can feel more routine and easy, which is born out in terms of brain activity. Scans show tasks we are practised at often use less energy than novel activities – we tend to do them more efficiently, and the mental energy required decreases. We’re all familiar with this as our careers advance. We also get more skilled at spotting our mistakes and rectifying them; as an old hand, you can notice when the edge has gone but you have enough tricks in the bag to make amends. This ‘neuroprotective’ effect may be behind some of the results that show an apparent delay in symptoms of age-related cognitive decline for those more active in middle age. In this light a preemptive move, like Day-Lewis’s, may be more sensible as we become over familiar with what we do. It is perhaps typical of this most uncompromising of actors that he’s quitting while ahead. Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London taken from: |
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