sundance

“Lovely photograph” wins National Geographic 2010 photo contest

Aaron Lim Boon Teck was the grand prize winner of National Geographic’s 2010 photo contest with this spectacular photo. He explains: “Trekkers [who] were able to make it up to the crater rim on time [were] able to camp overnight to witness the eruption [the] whole night long,” Boon Teck, of Singapore, wrote with his [...]

Martian sunset

The still plugging away Mars Exploration Rover recorded this brilliant footage of a sunset from the viewpoint of a Martian. It seems like the loneliest view in the galaxy. And if you’re wondering why it’s so blue (as opposed to our Earth’s red-orange-ish sunsets) here’s your answer: The red dust in the atmosphere scatters red [...]

BLACK SWAN, intentionally funny

I know, I know. Yes, I have a penchant for posting hilarious YouTube videos on this blog probably far too often. But wait! Seriously, I have discovered a girl who is so freaking funny, I cannot even stand it. Please let me introduce you to Gloria Shuri Nava. With a name like that you better be fierce!

Green tech finds (1/6/11)

The mother of all electronics trades shows — CES — starts today, so lots of new on that front this week… plus another green Groupon, and hornets that harvest solar power.

• CES’ green cred for real?: CES is promoting itself as green this year; Heather Clancy at GreenTech Pastures and Matthew Wheeland at Greenbiz dig into the claims, and the impact, of the monster trade show.
  
  
• Bob Marley comes to CES: The House of Marley, a company founded by the legendary musician’s family, is debuting its eco-friendly lines of earbuds, headphones, and docks at CES.
  
  

A log cabin on wheels

Modular, mobile living was a big theme in design this year, from prefabricated, shippable houses to small temporary rooms that can be set up anywhere you like, in the backyard or the backwoods. The front runner, however, has to be the log cabin designed by Piet Hein Eek.

Why do lesbians earn more than straight women?

Research shows that lesbian women earn more than straight women — even when you control for the facts that lesbian women tend to be better-educated, more likely to be white, live in cities, have fewer children, and more likely to be professionals. So how to explain this wage gap? Economics professor Marina Adshade of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, examines a hypothesis that it has to do with the division of labor in your typical heterosexual union. In short, the theory goes, a straight woman is raised with the assumption that she will most likely marry a man who earns more than she does for the same amount of work, and also that she will be taking on the lion’s share of at-home, unpaid labor. Which means that she is slightly less motivated that her lesbian peers to get ahead at work. Lesbian women — at least, as long as they have been gay — don’t make this assumption.

Pixel street art in Soho

Benjamin Norman snapped these photos of this neat pixilated street installation on Mercer Street in Soho about a month ago.

Before Abbey Road

Kottke posted this neat photo taken before the iconic one was snapped which would later appear on the cover of the Beatles “Abbey Road” album. From Wikipedia: The cover designer was Apple Records creative director Kosh. The cover photograph was taken by photographer Iain Macmillan. Macmillan was given only ten minutes around 11:30 that morning [...]

Small appendages and BLACK SWAN

Ouch. I’ve never spent so much time in a film, focused upon – literally – the leathery skin of cuticles, tough toes, and fleshy ear lobes from which earrings go on and off, on and off. Yep, Darren Aronofsky’s BLACK SWAN is all fingers fingers toes toes, abused in such new and uncomfortable ways that you’ll vow to never use a pair of nail scissors again. EVER. And you thought the movies didn’t have the power to change your life! Once again, and with a different DP (THE WRESTLER = Maryse Alberti and BLACK SWAN = Matthew Libatuque), Aronofsky is (literally) following behind a struggling performer, this one’s insecurities expressed as meek, worried perfectionism as opposed to Micky Rourke’s loud bravado. But unlike THE WRESTLER, BLACK SWAN is a horror film, really, and the most beautiful horror film to emerge in a good long time. True to form, Aronofsky keeps his protagonist’s head squarely in the middle of the frame as he trails behind troubled Nina (Natalie Portman), her bun bobbing along top her emaciated frame.

Sundance environmental films: activism

Enjoy a good David vs. Goliath story? Or perhaps a tale of a passionate person who lets his/her zeal turn from good to ugly? This year’s Sundance Film Festival has you covered. Both of the environmentally-themed films in the US Documentary Competition address activism and activists… warts and all.

Bill Haney’s THE LAST MOUNTAIN delves into an issue that’s become very hot among environmentalists over the past decade: mountaintop removal by coal mining companies. Focused on West Virginia’s Coal River Valley, the film explores the community’s fight against this practice, which damages both the natural environment, and the people living in the vicinity. Check out the trailer above.

Real life happy feet

The Internet’s hearts are warmed during this cold winter (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere) at this video of a penguin acting out its best HAPPY FEET impersonation. That or this penguin’s enjoying a different (illicit) kind of snow.

Sundance Film Festival Follow Up: THE TILLMAN STORY

After football star Pat Tillman was killed while serving in Afghanistan, he was dubbed a national hero was was posthumously bestowed with all the honors befitting that title. His family was informed that he died while charging the enemy in an insurgent attack, effectively saving the lives of the men in his unit. But it [...]

BEING ELMO seeks the man behind the Muppet

With more than 100 films set to screen at the Sundance Film Festival this year, festival-goers and watchers from afar can use all the help they can get in figuring out what’s headed their way. One highly useful tool is the series of interviews the website indieWIRE is rolling out in which directors whose films [...]

Sundance Watch List: Elizabeth Olsen

Interesting celebrity-sibling fact: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s younger sister, Elizabeth Olsen, is starring in not one but two films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this month. In writer/director Sean Durkin’s MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, the 21-year-old actress (a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School in [...]

IDIOT WITH A TRIPOD

NYC auteur Jamie Stuart recorded the recent blizzard that hit our city and transformed it into “IDIOT WITH A TRIPOD,” an artsy gorgeous short film that had critic Roger Ebert proclaiming that it “deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject” for the following reasons: This film deserves to win the Academy [...]

Morgan Spurlock sells out — in a good way?

Those of you who haven’t had a bite of McDonald’s food – a sip of shake, a single fry, a morsel of McRib – since Morgan Spurlock’s SUPER SIZE ME permanently altered your perspective will be interested to learn that the filmmaker/provocateur is returning to the Sundance Film Festival this year with THE GREATEST MOVIE [...]

Memes of 2010 in one minute

Know Your Meme 2010 Year in Review (Minnit To Winnit Acoustic House Remix) from Rocketboom on Vimeo. Rocketboom put together this video acting out all memes and virals of 2010 in one minute. A can of Four Loko on me to anyone who can name them all.

Vimeo of the Week: Undercity

UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo. Andrew Wonder created this half hour film documenting his underground and overground explorations of New York City. He was accompanied by Steve Duncan, a guerrilla historian and urban explorer, as they went underground via subway tunnels and scaled Manhattan bridges. They did this without approval of the city. The [...]

What’s up with all the organic food recalls?

Organic food’s supposed to be safer than produce, meat, and dairy raised by conventional methods… right? Organic growers and ranchers are no doubt dealing with that question regularly over the past couple of weeks: between recalls of salmonella-contaminated sprouts and ground beef possibly laced with E. coli, it’s likely many are questioning the value of organics.

Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Utopia’ for the new year

For the third and final installment of their ‘Utopia’ series, Denmark’s Arken Museum of Modern Art installed Olafur Eliasson’s “Din Blinde Passager (Your Blind Passager),” a 300-foot-long tunnel filled with a fog so thick that visibility is limited to five feet and visitors are forced to rely on senses besides sight to guide them through to the end of the tunnel.

When you first enter the installation you’re bathed in the magical sensation of what feels like a pool of bright light shrouded in mist, but the mist quickly thickens, the light changes colors and the initial feeling of a kind of new birth gives way to disorientation and confusion. So how, exactly, does this fit in with the Arken Museum’s idea of utopia?

Valerie Jarrett on gender parity

Rahim Kanani, a Research Associate for the Justice and Human Rights domain of practice at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, recently conducted an in-depth interview in the West Wing with Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls. They discussed the [...]

Parachute skiing

Superior, Speed Fly from Marshall Miller on Vimeo. This is a rad video of people going parachute skiing (which is exactly like the way it sounds) on Mount Superior in Utah last month. I really want to do this…but first I should learn how to ski first.

PARIAH filmmaker starts donation campaign

Dee Rees, Director or PARIAH You might think a young filmmaker talented enough to have her first feature film selected to make its worldwide debut at the Sundance Film Festival would have it made in the shade. But, for Dee Rees, whose PARIAH, a coming-of-age story about a Brooklyn teenager juggling disparate identities in a [...]

Sundance Film Festival watch: BLACK POWER MIXTAPE

Among the intriguing films in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January is Goran Hugo Olsson’s powerful-looking THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975. The film combines audio interviews with contemporary figures with 16mm archival footage documenting the Black Power movement in America, shot by Swedish journalists between 1967 and 1975 and [...]

Geraldine Doyle, Rosie the Riveter, dies at 86

Geraldine Doyle of Lansing, Michigan passed away on December 26. While her name might not be familiar, her face is famous as she served as the inspiration for the “Rosie the Riveter” recruitment poster (designed by Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller) which later became an iconic symbol of American resilience and can-do spirit during the [...]