Phobos GRUNT is due to fall out of Earth Orbit this weekend
Detail from P-G's official poster with Phobos over the Grand Canyon of Mars
The Russian rockets carrying the space-lab, with many international experiments on board, failed after the first step towards landing on one of the tiny moons of Mars. Speaking of the Red Planet:
Grizzled warrior Taylor Kitch seems to be suitably smitten by beautiful princess Lynn Collins in this digitized mashup of images from the upcoming "John Carter" move.
I’ll take any chance to have fun with Old-Time Mars — the mythic Wild West of Science Fiction from days before War of the Worlds and onward. (See below for more Barsoomian lore.)
“SCIENCE !”
Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2011; A partial list — World’s lowest density material — less than one milligram per cubic centimeter; A brain-machine interface that’s bi-directional where you can actually feel the computer-generated world around you; NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered the orbit of Vesta — the second largest body in the main asteroid belt; NASA’s Kepler Mission announced the discovery of the first planet with two suns, just like Tatooine), the first two known Earth-sized exoplanets, and quadrupled the number of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system; Heartbeat-powered nanogenerators could soon replace batteries — you may never have to recharge your phone again; UC Berkeley neuroscientists demonstrated using advanced brain-imaging techniques to turn activity in the visual cortex of the human brain into digital images; 100,000-year-old art kit found in South Africa; Online gamers solved the spatial challenge of determining three-dimensional structures of proteins in three weeks; The hunt for the Higgs boson neared its conclusion, and NUMBER ONE has to be faster than light neutrinos — which would be one of the biggest scientific paradigm shifts in history.
Out of the operatic past
The Metropolitan Opera broadcast was another excellent archival performance — Bellini’s Norma (1832) from April 4, 1970 featuring Richard Bonynge, Marilyn Horne, and the late, great Joan Sutherland in her debut at The Met. This thing was a Bel Canto extravaganza with absolutely gorgeous singing, but it had one of the stupidest excuses for a plot I’ve ever encountered. Maybe it was supposed to be an Anti-Medea, but that’s the only detail I can bear to reveal.
More Sublime
This is what I heard before the opera — Read the whole NPR article HERE
Digitized Damiano Bigi and Clementine Deluy perform Pina Bausch's choreography.
The film Pina is Germany’s official entry at the 84th Academy Awards — and a collaboration between two famous Germans of the postwar generation. The filmmaker Wim Wenders captures the groundbreaking modern-dance choreography of the late Pina Bausch, in what many critics are calling a groundbreaking use of 3-D film …
… “Dance — include me out. It was not for me,” Wenders says. “And the first time I ever saw the Pina Bausch company perform, my girlfriend really, literally dragged me.” Wenders came prepared for tedium.
“And then I found myself on the edge of my seat, crying like a baby after five minutes, and crying through the entire thing,” he recalls, amazement still in his voice after 27 years. “I was hopelessly, helplessly crying, and didn’t know what was happening. It was like lightning struck me.”
… “Pina Bausch showed me in 40 minutes more about men and women than the entire history of cinema.”
… He worked with 3-D experts for more than a year, and by June 2009 he was ready to shoot rehearsals and show Bausch the results … And then, just a few days before the cameras were to roll, the choreographer died. It was a horrible surprise to nearly everyone; she had been diagnosed with lung cancer less than a week earlier and had, with her usual reticence, kept it to herself.
“I immediately canceled the film, because we had wanted to make this together for 20 years,” says Wenders. “And the fact there is a film after all, I strictly owe to the dancers.”
Full Disclosure: My friend Katie Duck was a long-time associate and friend of Pina Bausch.
THIS was pretty darn good too !
Lee, Neil, Kelly, and "Charlie Bird" at Crush Wine Bar 01-12-2012
The roads were kind of clear, so I took a drive to Whitefish to hear Kelly West and her excellent band worrying those ol’ blue notes in new colors.
Ultra-LOW Culture
Thanks to Internet Magic, I have been able to see some odd entertainment that hasn’t been available since the early days of television. I only knew about Captain Video second-hand, from MAD Magazine‘s satire Captain TVideo (which applied to many other cheap, inept Space Operas) and scattered written descriptions — which told of missed cues, shoddy sets, and segments of old Western movies tossed in as “Captain Video’s Secret Agents.” Well, they were neither lying nor exaggerating !
(L to R) The Dumont Network presented Jackie Gleason as well as Captain Video (Dumont manufactured TV sets); Hitch-hiking St. Pete in Ub Iwerks' "Air Race"
Cartoons too old and moldy for theaters flooded pre-school TV for almost a generation — run and re-run without regard for racism or vulgarity. The example above is a quote from Willie Whopper’s Air Race (circa 1933) by talented animator Ub Iwerks, who tried in vain to make a career outside the black hole of Walt Disney Studios. That IS the angelic St. Peter thumbing a ride in the clouds during said race and giving the bad guy THE BIRD after a rude rejection. The last time I saw this cartoon was 1965 ! (Later in his career, Ub Iwerks was involved with the robotic spectacles Abe Lincoln and Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland.)
"Buck Rogers" was the first syndicated Space Opera -- I followed Murphy Anderson's version in the newspaper during 1957-58, and enjoyed his work on "Adam Strange" in DC Comics through the early 1960's.
Although there were several Space Operas in circulation during the 50′s, my earliest recollections were Space Patrol and Flash Gordon — both Buster Crabbe’s Universal movie serials and the ill-conceived TV series starring Steve Holland. If Tom Corbett — Space Cadet, Rocky Jones, or Captain Video were ever shown in my home town, I was too little to remember seeing them.
After the 1950′s
More conceptions of Warlord John Carter and Princess Dejah Thoris -- ERB's pulp yarns, newly-published in paperback form, were big hits during the 1960's and 1970's.
Online Versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom Novels:
A Princess of Mars ; The Gods of Mars ; Warlord of Mars ;
(John Carter’s initial blood-soaked trilogy);
Thuvia, Maid of Mars ; The Chessmen of Mars
(Adventures of Dejah & John’s offspring);
Mastermind of Mars
(An totally-unrelated WWI officer wakes up on Barsoom);
A Fighting Man of Mars
(An intrepid private soldier from Carter’s armed forces);
Swords of Mars
(ONE MORE TIME! John Carter, Dejah Thoris, plus an inhabited Martian Moon);
Synthetic Men of Mars
(Sequel to Mastermind);
Llana of Gathol
(Interlocking short stories featuring Carter and his granddaughter);
… and a half-baked posthumous collection called John Carter of Mars:
Skeleton Men of Jupiter — a magazine story by the old man himself;
Giant of Mars — ghost-written by John Coleman Burroughs for a Whitman Better Little Book, originally entitled John Carter of Mars — the title of Jack’s syndicated Comic Strip.
If you think it is high time, and that THAT is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out … (You’re quoting Shakespeare)
Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!
Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!
Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!
Check Out the Dance Histories Section !
