Pin-ups are always pretty and give a much better look to this blog. That's why I needed to post new illustrations of lovely girls. After several posts of George Petty & Alberto Vargas it was time to post about the third best known of the Art Deco era pin-up artists, Enoch Bolles.

Bolles was a versatile illustrator who also worked extensively in the advertising industry, creating hundreds of attractive color illustrations for products ranging from bread to cigarettes. His most widely reproduced advertising illustration is the "Windy Girl" for Zippo lighters.

According to American Art Archives, which has an extensive gallery with images of his works, he worked exclusively as a cover artist, painting oils for Film Fun, Screen Romances, Stolen Sweets, Gay Book, Judge, Titter, Cupid's Capers, Live Stories, Tattle Tales, Gay Parisienne and other magazines.

I wasn't the first to remind about the fantastic work of Bolles this week. IWR posted about him before, pointing to the Flickr set to the Bolles biggest fan. He uploaded thirty nine not so know covers and other illustrations of Bolles with a very good definition. Few more illustrations at this page.

More Art Deco era pin-up artists: Vintage Pin-Up Calendars, George Petty & Alberto Vargas, George Petty's Ridgid Tools Calendars, Erotic Art & Pinup gallery, The Pin-up Page, The Painted Anvil, Italian pin-ups site, Erotic Art and Pin-ups for Christmas.

Posted by Bibi at 03:43 PM in Illustration, Pin-ups, Vintage | Comments (3) ||

Artists can create incredible and very coloured sculptures using pencils, crayons and papers, like Jen Stark does. Working with the colours, shapes and depth, she creates wonderful paper sculptures with beautiful effects. The power of effects of colours is also the base of her drawings, but in the place of paper she uses lines to compose the visual effect. ( via Make)

Posted by Bibi at 02:15 PM in Art, Craft, Sculpture ||

My friend Adriano is an addict. The good part is that he has taken the first step and recognized that he has a problem. He promised he will try to stop making Tilt-shift miniature fakes all the time.And since he has been using this very nice tutorial posted in the group to make Tilt-shift miniatures using GIMP, the second step is to delete it from his computer.

He's not the only one. There are at least 2,589 other people that have that same problem: make Photoshop fakes of 'miniature' scenes as if they were taken with a real tilt-shift lens. Some of those use tutorials like Fake model photography to create those photos using Photoshop.

Adriano wasn't the first case. Кevin was also an addict last year, and was through his Flickr photoset that I discovered this curse. And that's not the end of it, there are more groups at Flickr like this one that is spreading it: Tilt-Shift 1-2 Miniatures and Tilt Shift. Even though I know the danger, I think I will give it a try. People who do this look so cool...

PS.: photos by Martin Hartland and Maciek Szczepaniak.

Posted by Bibi at 12:51 PM in Flickr, Photography, Photography ||

The Foley Gallery shows that there is something even cooler than pulp fiction: the works of the American photographer Thomas Allen. He creates some incredible pulp fiction dioramas. (via Spy's Spice)

Allen gently cuts around the shape of his figures, physically releasing them from their two dimensional surface. They are brought to life from their pages and covers with detailed lighting and a thin focus. Pulled and positioned, their intended drama comes to life. In his newest body of work, Allen explores more detailed narratives involving love triangles and relationships accentuated with moments of voyeurism, homoeroticism, and unrequited love. The book set-ups are more complex and more naughty than previously presented. Multiple books act as separate characters interacting with each other to form relationships and stories about love and lust. In “Wish”, a demure and uncertain teenage girl appears in the foreground, displaying an expression of longing. Behind her, slightly out of focus, is an older couple entangled in a romantic encounter.

Posted by Bibi at 12:18 PM in Art, Photography, Photography, Pulp ||

I don't remember when datajunkie posted for the first time about The Black Cat, but I'm glad that he re-post several covers of this comic book, strips and illustrations of her tricks in The Original Black Cat.

She has a red hair, she's clever and uses a blue costume. What can I say? I loved her style, excluding the boots, of course. The Black Cat was one of the first female characters to wear what amounts to a bathing suit while doing superhero work.She first appeared in August 1941 in Pocket Comics #1 in a story drawn and written by Al Gabriele, published by Harvey Comics.

The Black Cat was Hollywood starlet Linda Turner, whose first adventure began when she suspected her director of being a Nazi spy. Trained as a stunt woman, she was an expert on Judo, motorcycle riding, lariat throwing, and other physical skills costumed crime fighters find handy; and her father, an amateur detective, had taught her the necessary mental skills. Knowing her superstitious quarry had a "thing" about black cats, she used that as a theme for her disguise. After smashing his spy ring, she combatted boredom with her glamorous but empty lifestyle by continuing to fight crime as The Black Cat.

Posted by Bibi at 10:52 AM in Comics ||

Before somebody asks me "Where the heck have you been", let me tell you that I have some good answers. First I will blame carnival and all the laziness and the idea of a short vacation that it gives us. Second, I will blame the hot weather: I can't think in any temperature over 28ºC (82ºF) and in the last few days the hell visited us with 30 and something. Third reason: let me blame a French test that made me study all day on the day before it.

And finally, there is Videos with Bibi. You might guess that blogs don't sprout from nowhere. I had to choose the layout, change templates, test stuff, ask for help, fix some stuff, put other things to work and search for a default entry. Part of the fault for my having created this blog belongs to P-E Fronning. He suggested creating a new blog to show the videos I have been uploading at Google Video since the beginning of last year.

My first reaction was "no, no way". I didn't need more reasons to wast more time on-line. But after reflecting for some days, I finally decided to do it. A lot of people have been posting them, mostly without credit and with no direct links to the videos. And since I was already uploading them, and I have a huge collection on-line, the blog wouldn't be as much work.

I'm not the most normal person I know, and that's why the posts have something more that just the videos embed. Don't expect for reviews, comments or anything like that. I will keep it just like it is now: a summary, the video embed, a link to film at IMDb, to its article at Wikipedia, to where you can buy it and download it (if available), and the names of director, actors and minutes. That's all.

But what is Videos with Bibi? It's a daily blog with videos of films, ephemeral, vintage commercials, animations, cartoons, series and short films public domain, and videos that aren't in public domain, but which can be shared. A second suggestion of P-E Fronning was a long and a short film, and that is more or less how it works. I won't post tons of films, it's just a daily dose of entertainment and I fixed 2 hours as good enough to expend in front of the computer.

You will find a post of 5 or less videos of series or cartoons, a long film and a short film with the subject, or actor or directed by the same person, or some films from the same period, or a film and its trailer. And to try to satisfy everybody almost all the genres (availble) will be posted. Critics, comments and suggestions are welcome. I just have to fix some "obscure" templates, but all the "rest" works.

So, if you are interested in knowing Videos with Bibi, start with the first post: Rashomon (Videos with Bibi). I hope you enjoy and sign the feed

Posted by Bibi at 12:55 AM in About me, Blogs, Cinema, Video ||

A long long time ago, before the existence of the Internet as we know it today, there was the Usenet and living in it was the omniscient Oracle. Unfortunately I couldn't experience of this era of innocence, when everything was fantastic and it was much easier to teach people to be kind with each other on-line. At that time, I had no idea of how computers work.

Many years after all this period of happiness, around 1998, I received the answer to all my questions in an email. This wise message was the translation of probably the most brilliant answer that the Internet Oracle gave to the eternal question of the Buttered cat paradox. It was the translation of a question answered in 1993 for The Usenet Oracle:

Oh omnipotent oracle! If there were a single molecule from a forgotten oraclelean 10,000-year-old fart I would not be worthy to inhale it! Timorously, I ask you:

If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and towering place, it will land on it's feet. But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on it's feet? Or will the butter splat on the ground?

Mike

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash it's furry back If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.

That's right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.

Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several hundred tabbies.

The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of
red-hot starship and pissed off aliens crash on top of them.

You owe the Oracle two slices of toast and a bag of kitty litter.

That was part of the final answer that I receive. The e-mail I received was more complex. It joined the theory above with the attraction of tomato sauce to white shirts and how space ships work. I'm not contesting the wisdom of the Oracle, I wouldn't do that, but this woman did it. Eliane, aka Elly, says in her post that the Oracle answer is nonsese. How? Well, she start her theory this way:

Let us assume a normal Einsteinian universe (although a Euclidean universe would serve our purposes just as well, the Einsteinian is both cheaper and drinks are readily available.)

To test BFAD, one must procure:

Bread
Butter (margarine, for some reason, will not work)
A cat
A strapping device.

Let us assume that all of these are readily available.

Attach the strapping device to the cat.

See?

No cat.

What has happened? We have run up against an a priori universal law. By a priori, we mean that it takes priority over either the Buttered Bread Principle or the Law of Feline Landings.

What happens is that the instant a strapping device and a cat occupy the same four dimensional space, the cat disappears. Now, this can easily be tested, and has been repeatedly. There are two schools of thought about this phenomenon.

The first holds that a cat and a strapping device are constituted out of different fundamental building blocks. According to this theory, a cat is constituted primarily of superquarks, (called meows by current theorists.) These superquarks demonstrate qualities that are both atomic (constituted as they are of groupings of normal quark particles) and feline (because these quarks exhibit characteristic of "charmed" or "lucky" particles.) Again, according to this theory, strapping materials are fashioned out of non-charmed particles. Bringing the two together causes one or the other to cancel out. One aspect of this theory that has not been sufficiently explained to date is the fact that it is always the cat, not the strapping device, that disappears.

And that's just the beginning. There are two other theories that she explains in her post Around 100 and an unusual CAT Theory BFAD. Scholars of this theory also quote the excellent Uncyclopedia article Murphy's law application for antigravitatory cats. As all the great scientific articles, it has equations, the demonstration of forces (as the image above) and visual demonstrations of the results. A precious article.

Based in all those facts, a cinema student called Kimberly Miner made a short animation film to explored the potential implications of the cat and buttered toast idea theory, but she used jelly in the place of butter - don't try this at home! Her film Perpetual Motion won the Student Academy Awards of 2003. This short animation that clearly demonstrates how effective is theory can be watch at YouTube or bellow.

Posted by Bibi at 11:33 PM in Animation, Cats, Fun, Fun, Internet, Memes, Video | Comments (2) ||

As a fan of Edgar Allan Poe's works is my duty follow an on-line comic called The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo. The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo is a series of children's books created and written by Dwight L. MacPherson. The first book: "Edgar Allan Poo and the Great Door to Spindle Towne" is written, edited, and currently being shopped around for a publisher.

I'm had been follow the episodes by the warnings of new updates on my feed reader, a much easier way to remind to check the updates every Saturday. Seven episodes are on-line, but site down and relax: many other episodes will be posted. The comic has a myspace page, and you don't need to be afraid of it, because that one is a nice MySpace page. And if you have any doubts about try to read it or not, here is the series synopsis:

Join the enigmatic Edgar Allan Poo and faithful guide Irving the rat as they battle mythical beasts, ancient gods, magical ravens, sorcerers, the undead, inclement weather and treacherous terrain to escape the land of dreams.

(via The Cartoonist)

More Allan Poe: The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, Fantastic fiction writers, The Raven" illustrations, Read Print - online books and Grandma's Graphics

Posted by Bibi at 10:27 PM in Comics ||

This seems to be pretty good idea: Custom Toy Lab: Custom Designer Vinyl Toys, Paper Toys & Plush Toys.

CustomToyLab.com has been created to support all artists involved in the custom toy scene. The site is created by Tahir and Andy as a way for people to view all the great custom toys in one place. To celebrate the launch we are giving away a custom set of ZLIKS created by Bil BetsOvic. To enter the competition all you need to do is lave a comment on this post.

All artists are invited to get involved and showcase their toy customizing and creating talents. Custom toys can range from custom vinyl toys, hand made plush toys, designer paper toys or any other kind of DIY toy.

The blog is new: it started in February. However, there are tons of cool toys to see. Even if you aren't planning to buy anything now, it's a good place to discover new artists, like Mr Jones from Lunartik that created the lovely little fellow below, and rate the works you enjoyed. Don't miss their Paper Toys category with links to two free models to download.

Posted by Bibi at 09:24 PM in Blogs, Craft, Design, Toys ||

Koji Tomoto, aka Cozy Tomato, is a very talented Japanese artist. He makes beautiful colourful works for books, magazines, editorial, advertising, publishing and he creates characters too. His illustrations are full of cuteness and happiness, it's impossible to resist to them. His portfolio has plenty of works and there are even more at this site ( English translation). (via Children's Illustration)

If you enjoy his retro style, you must check also the works of Toru Fukuda and Lefor Openo.

Posted by Bibi at 08:15 PM in Illustration | Comments (2) ||

P-E Fronning, from Martin Klasch blog, uploaded scanned images of three lovely books at his Flickr set Children's Books. His last addition to the set was Jim, Jock and Jumbo, a children's book published in New York in 1946. The book was illustrated by Swedish artist Einar Norelius. The other two books are: a book about Papier-mâché and Människornas land, a Danish book with illustrations of children and puffins.

After enjoy the cheerful images of those vintage books go to explore the Ephemera and other printed matter, with 75 delightful images also scanned by him. Pretty ads from Swedish, American and German magazines, posters, music sheet covers and prints. According to him, the illustration bellow is a Swedish classic: simple and brilliant. I loved it.

Posted by Bibi at 07:19 PM in Books, Illustration, Vintage ||

The Hammer Collection De Daniel Frenette, aka "La Passion De La Hammer Films", is a homage of Daniel Frenette to the Hammer Film Productions. The site tells the story of the Hammer films and the companies that bet in the horror genre before it, the Universal and the American International Pictures. It also presents short biographies of important actors and directors that worked at Hammer, has information, covers and critics about the DVDs, the filmography, interviews, events and forums. Everything in French.

But don't worry if you French isn't so good to read. You don't need to speak any word in French to explore the Cinema Posters collection. with French and American posters, press-books, vintage ads and lobby cards of The Curse of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and One Million Years B.C. among others. (via IWR)

More Hammer:Australian Hammer Posters

Posted by Bibi at 04:53 PM in Cinema, Posters ||

As I said a while ago, it isn't easy find good sites about vintage Brazilian culture and ephemera. Happily this has been changing in the last years and many sites to preserve this memory appeared. A very good example of this kind of site was Nostalgia do Terror, a dedicated site to preserve the memory of vintage horror Brazilian comics.

Now, my interest is pointed to ephemera: the vintage advertising. The Museu da Propaganda (Museum of Advertising) is a Brazilian site devoted to preserve the memory of the old times of advertising, specially those from the state of Pará, as the Paraenses (= from Pará) page shows.

The site contains around thirty four ads, published between 1915 and the middle of 1960's, and nineteen Jingles in mp3 format. The images aren't big enough for my taste, however the additional information that goes with them makes the site worth it. The Museu da Propaganda is maintained by Arthur Tamer Vasques, and this is the kind of initiative must be stimulated.

The Clube do Carro Antigo de Londrina (Antique Car's Club of Londrina) has a some a lot of information about vintage cars, pictures, prints, and a very nice session with many images of vintage ads. Those ads were originally published in Brazilian magazines in the 1960's and 1970's.

And of course there is a blog devoted to the vintage Brazilian ads: Propagandas Antigas. It has tons of ads published in 1958 at the magazine Seleções do Reader's Digest (Reader's Digest Selections). However, that's not all. Javé - the blogger - created more blogs to host those pretty ephemeral images: propagandas antigas 1, propagandas antigas 2, propagandas antigas 3 and Propagandas antigas - anos 40, with vintage ads published at the Seleções do Reader's Digest in 1942.

After all those blogs I tough that he had stop there, until I finding his Flickr page with more 184 scanned images. And since we are talking about Flickr, I would like to say that I also have some images of vintage ads from 1950's to 1970's in my Vintage Brazilian Ads set. The images were sent by a friend, a while ago, to a mailing list, so I have no idea about the date when they were published.

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Como já disse algum tempo atrás, não é fácil achar bons sites sobre coisas antigas da cultura brasileira em geral e coisas efêmeras. Felizmente isso tem mudado nos últimos anos e vários sites dedicados a preservar essa memória apareceram. Um bom example é o Nostalgia do Terror, um site dedicado à memória de quadrinhos de terror antigos publicados no Brasil.

Agora meu interesse está voltado para coisas efêmeras: anúncios antigos. O Museu da Propaganda é um site brasileiro dedicado a preservar a memória dos velhos tempos da propaganda, especialmente as Paraenses.

Há em torno de trinta e quatro anúncios no site, publicados entre 1915 e o meio dos anos sessenta, e dezenove jingles em formato mp3. As images não são lá grandes o bastante para o meu gosto, mas as informações adicionais que as acompanham fazem o site valer a pena. O Museu da Propaganda é mantido por Arthur Tamer Vasques, e este é o tipo de iniciativa que deve ser estimulada por aqui.

O Clube do Carro Antigo de Londrina tem um bocado de informações interessantes sobre carros antigos, fotos, publicações e uma ótima sessão com diversas images de propagandas antigas. Esse anúncios foram originalmente publicados nas décadas de sessenta e setenta em revistas brasileiras.

E como era de se esperar há também um blog dedicado às propagandas brasileiras antigas: Propagandas Antigas. O site tem dezenas de anúncios publicados nas edições de 1958 da revista Seleções do Reader's Digest. Mas isso não é tudo. Javé, o criador do site, criou outros blogs para hospedar sua coleção de belas imagens efêmeras: propagandas antigas 1, propagandas antigas 2, propagandas antigas 3 e Propagandas antigas - anos 40, que como diz o nome, tem propagandas publicadas nas edições da Seleções do Reader's Digest em 1942.

Após todos esses blogs eu achei que ele tivesse parado por aí, até eu achar a página dele no Flickr com mais 184 imagens digitalizadas. E uma vez que estamos falandos sobre o Flickr, gostaria de dizer que eu também tenho algumas imagens antigas de propagandas dos anos cinqënta até os anos setenta reunidas em um set chamado Vintage Brazilian Ads. As imagens foram enviadas há alguns tempo atrás para uma lista de discussão por um amigo, e por isso eu não faço idéia da data exata de publicação delas.

Posted by Bibi at 04:05 PM in Audio, Culture, Vintage ||

The most noisy epoch of the year is coming: the Carnival. I hate Carnival: all the noisy "music" (sambas enredo), the "propaganda" about it, the people getting drunk as if all the alcoholic drinks were disappear from the world in the next day and driving after, the boring parades and all the money spend in the industry of this carnal party of illusions.

I used to liked it, when I was a kid. And now, thinking a bit more, it wasn't the party that I liked it, or the carnival balls to the children, however, I liked the fancy dresses, the ephemeral idea of happiness, the carnival idea in itself. I liked the magic of turn into other person dressing up, sometimes using a mask and all the marvellous colours.

In some places of Brazil, the carnival still nearest of their origins, if it's possible say this. That's the case of Pernambuco, which celebrates the street carnival with giant puppets and the Frevo, among other regional music and dances. And to celebrate the 100 years of Frevo, and all the happiness, diversity and good humour of carnival at Pernambuco, the Association of Cartoonists of Pernambuco created a nice virtual exhibition: Carnaval 2007 - Frevendo no Traço!. Above and bellow, two of the great works presented on this exhibition, by Acioli and Thiago Lucas. (via Blog dos Quadrinhos)

A época mais barulhenta do ano está chegando: o Carnaval. Eu odeio o carnaval: todas aquelas barulhentas "músicas" de samba enredo, toda a propaganda sobre o carnaval, as pessoas ficando bêbadas como se toda bebida do mundo fosse acabar no dia seguinte e dirigindo depois, os chatíssimos desfiles e todo o dinheiro gasto com essa indústria dessa festa carnal de ilusões.

Eu costumava gostar de carnaval quando pequena. E agora pensando um pouco mais, descobri que não era da festa que eu gostava, ou dos bailinhos para crianças, mas das fantasias, da idéia efêmera de felicidade, da idéia do carnaval em si mesmo. Eu gostava da mágica de torna-se de brincadeira outra pessoa usando uma fantasia, às vezes uma máscara, e gostava também das maravilhosas cores.

Em alguns lugares do Brasil, o carnaval continua um pouco mais próximo de suas origens,s e assim é possível dizer. É o caso de Pernanbuco, que festeja o carnaval de rua com os bonecos gigantes e o Frevo, entre outras músicas e danças regionais. E para celebrar os cem anos do frevo, e toda a "alegria, diversidade e bom humor do carnaval de Pernambuco, a ACAPE (Associação dos Cartunistas de Pernambuco) criou uma bela exposição virtual chamada Carnaval 2007 - Frevendo no Traço!. Acima, dois belos trabalhos apresentados nesta exposição, criados por Acioli e Thiago Lucas.
(via Blog dos Quadrinhos)

Posted by Bibi at 12:19 PM in Culture, Illustration | Comments (4) ||

Minuscule is a wonderful animation series for (not only) children starred by tiny creatures: a group of insects and a snail. Thomas Szabo and Hélène Giraud created those cute 3D creatures and put them into live footage, keeping the cartoon atmosphere, while maintaining the naturalistic flavor characteristic of documentaries.

Minuscule revolves around the day-by-day existence of insects. Although the series calls to mind a wildlife documentary, it's a documentary in which the insects are presented in burlesque situations, with a fair amount of philosophical contemplation thrown in. You might call it a cross between Tex Avery and Microcosmos, or grassroots slapstick. Or a docu-cartoon series.

The site itself of full of cute stuff to explore, however the best part are the funny videos. Nico, from NicoSite, where I discovered "Minuscule", uploaded two of those videos at Dailymotion: Top Départ and Un Radiateur pour deux. At the same site there are also Chenille des viles papillon des champs and La sauterelle. And there is also a playlist with six of those videos.

Posted by Bibi at 10:22 PM in Animation, Video | Comments (2) ||

For all of you that celebrate... a happy Valentine's Day. I won't celebrate, but that isn't an excuse to not blog about it - it never was. And that's why I made a selection of links to all the romantic souls that read this blog, or that are just searching for pretty Valentine's day images.

- A Sampler of things with happy Valentine's day through his posts: Valentines Day Card, More Valentines Wishes, Vintage Valentines and Happy Valentines Day.

- Craftbits have a good list of Valentines Day Crafts: 20 Valentine's cards ideas, crochet hearts, Valentines Day survival kit, jar of hugs & kisses, and much more.

- CRAFT blog has a Valentine's Day Card Contest and Inspirational Links. If you want to join in you've got until this Friday at 5pm PST to get your entries in for the "Recycle Your Heart" CRAFT Valentine's Day Card Contest. Made you craft including some sort of recycled goods in your card, and submit it at The CRAFT Pool.

- Google's Valentine's day logo of this year looks yummy - Official Google Blog explains the logo. Melted chocolate just could be better with ice-cream! Anyway, the previous Valentine's Google logos: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2001 - and a Heart, 2000 - and that Heart.

- Love in the stacks is a nice post of the blog of the Digital Library Services from The University of Iowa Libraries pointing to highlights of their Valentine's day collection.

- Many Faces of Valentine's Day: Love and romance through the ages, presented by the Virtual Museum of Canada. An excellent on-line exhibition with many images of vintage Valentine's cards, images and ephemera.

- Send some love with fd's Flickr Toys, creating a a customized Valentine's day card from you to your contacts. I did one for the last valentine's day.

- The Firefox's maniacs have a very coloured card full of hearts to send from Spread Firefox.

- The Woodland Park Zoo offers four Valentine's Day Greeting E-Card with pretty pictures of animals.

- WikiHow explains How to Make Valentine's Day More Meaningful and How to French Kiss. What? Who needs to learn how to kiss? Eleven-year-old teenagers?

- Will it Blend? shows what you can do with annoying Valentine gift. Actually they said to not try this at home: too bad.

- YouTube also celebrates the Valentine's day with Dump Cupid video cards. Strange stuff.

And to those are so lovely as I am, a nice Wikipedia article about St. Valentine's Day massacre.

More about Valentine's day: Flying Pig, Zombie Valentine, Recipes to Valentines' Day, The Comic Valentine of mid-Victorian England, How-to Fold Paper Roses, A Flowering of Affection, For your Valentines' day, Valentines Book of Styles: a better use for furniture and Valentine's Day.

Posted by Bibi at 05:06 PM in Craft, Culture, Events, History, Video, Vintage | Comments (5) ||

A while ago I discovered that the cute mascot of Mozilla Firefox isn't a fox, but an adorable Red Panda. "The Red Panda, Ailurus fulgens, also known as the Lesser Panda, Bear Cat or Fire Fox, is a mostly herbivorous mammal, slightly larger than a domestic cat (55 cm long)." All this because my boyfriend sent me a link to this gallery with 50 photos of Red Pandas, collected by Skatje.

There are many other pictures of this super cute animal at Flickr. And why not some videos? ARKive has a collection of 17 videos by BBC Natural History Unit and 8 pictures. Animal Fact Sheets, from the Woodland Park Zoo, has a little more information about it and a very short video.

The sad part is the red part is an endangered species. But there are many ways to help to stop this. The Red Panda Project is committed to protecting the red panda and preserving its habitat through the empowerment of local communities by adaptive community-based research, education, and sustainable development. You can be avolunteer, became a member, spread the word or adopt a Red Panda.

Posted by Bibi at 02:51 PM in Animals, Photography, Photography, Video ||

The Russian / soviet cinema made a huge contribution to cinema language with its theories, developed in the 1920's. Universal cinema learned a lot with the edition of the experimental documentary films of Dziga Vertov, specially with The Man with a Movie Camera, with the montage theories of Vsevolod Pudovkin, the Kuleshov Effect created by Lev Kuleshov and with the cinema of Sergei Eisenstein.

Despite the fact that I don't agree with their political position and their speeches, I'd have to say that they were dreamers. They believed in a better world, and that change was necessary to construct this perfect world and the revolution was the way to it. They believed that they could help to turn this into reality using cinema as a tool of teaching, of knowledge. But as Malevich thought, it was necessary create a new art, not the old bourgeois one, and since "there is no revolutionary art without revolutionary form" they searched for a new visual language using the power of the metaphor and analogy in their film montages.

The most important for us today is the Eisenstein's Intellectual montage.

Eisenstein's montage theories are based on the idea that montage originates in the "collision" between different shots in an illustration of the idea of thesis and antithesis. This basis allowed him to argue that montage is inherently dialectical, thus it should be considered a demonstration of Marxism and Hegelian philosophy. His collisions of shots were based on conflicts of scale, volume, rhythm, motion (speed, as well as direction of movement within the frame), as well as more conceptual values such as class.

If someone asked me what is his theory about I would say "it's the junction of classic Hollywood narrative style developed by D. W. Griffith, with his knowledge of logic, his experience with theatre and the pictorial writing of Oriental languages, unleashing conflicts." For him, the principle of edition had to be the contradiction, that is, the shock of opposite plastic values, both among successive planes and inside the shot.

Eisenstein deeply believed in the soviet government and its ideology, but his dream started to crumble a few years after Stalin took power. He tried to escape by creating a mission to spread communist ideas through Europe. He finished his travel in Mexico, getting a little rest, and making the excellent Que Viva Mexico!, but that wouldn't be for long. He had to return to USSR and to a not so happy reality.

His utopic years, the twenties, were very fruitful. He made two visually exuberant masterpieces: The Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927). The greatest propaganda films you are likely to find. October was one of two films commissioned by the Soviet government to honour the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution (the other was Vsevolod Pudovkin's "The End of St. Petersburg"). Potemkin "has been called one of the most influential films of all time", and it definitely is. TThe Odessa Steps sequence has been homage in innumerable films, including the Brian de Palma's The Untouchables. Both silent films had the soundtrack added afterwards, brilliantly composed by Dmitri Shostakovich.

I could suggest some of Einsenstein's books, and I am actually going to suggest two great books: Film Form: Essays in Film Theory and The Film Sense. However, cinema is a visual art: you must watch films to learn about film's language, and to understand the theories. And I'm pointing to links where you can watch his films, and read a little more about them while you don't buy the DVDs. I hope you enjoy.

- Dnevnik Glumova (Glumov's Diary) (1923): video video.

- Stachka (Strike) (1925): article; video

- Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin) (1925): article; video; download

- Oktyabr (Ten Days That Shook the World) (1928): article; video

- Staroye i novoye (Old and New) (The General Line) (1929): video

- Romance sentimentale (Sentimental Romance) (1930): video

- Bezhin lug (Bezhin Meadow) (1937): video

- Aleksandr Nevskiy (Alexander Nevsky) (1938): article; video

- Ivan Groznyy (Ivan the Terrible) Part I (1944) and Part II (1946 / 1958): article; video Part 1 and Part 2

Read also: Rashomon and Fritz Lang's M, more two great films available at Archive.

Obs.: caso alguns dos meus leitores se interesse, há um texto escrito em grupo, na época da faculdade, três ou quatro anos atrás, sobre Eisenstein em PDF: Eisenstein: arte e política.

Posted by Bibi at 11:37 PM in Cinema, Video |