Wizard of oz did u know
At the 2014 Oscars, they celebrated the 75th anniversary of the release of the "Wizard of Oz" by having Pink sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", with highlights from the film in the background. But what
few people realized, while listening to that incredible performer singing that unforgettable song, is that the music is deeply embedded in the Jewish experience.
It is no accident, for example, that the greatest Christmas songs of all time were written by Jews. For example, "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was written by Johnny Marks and "White Christmas" was penned by a Jewish liturgical singer's (cantor) son, Irving Berlin.
But perhaps the most poignant song emerging out of the mass exodus from Europe was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". The lyrics were written by Yip Harburg.He was the youngest of four children born to Russian Jewish immigrants. His real name was Isidore Hochberg and he grew up in a Yiddish speaking, Orthodox Jewish home in New York.
The music was written by Harold Arlen, a cantor's son. His real name was Hyman Arluck and his parents were from Lithuania. Together, Hochberg and Arluck wrote "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", which was voted the 20th century's number one song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
In writing it, the two men reached deep into their immigrant Jewish consciousness - framed by the pogroms of the past and the Holocaust about to happen - and wrote an unforgettable melody set to near prophetic words. Read the lyrics in their Jewish context and suddenly the words are no longer about wizards and Oz, but about Jewish survival:
Somewhere over the rainbow Way up high, There's a land that I heard of Once in a lullaby. Somewhere over the rainbow Skies are blue, And the dreams that you dare to dream Really do come true. Someday I'll wish upon a star And wake up where the clouds are far Behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Somewhere over the rainbow Bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh why can't I? If happy little bluebirds fly Beyond the rainbow Why, oh why can't I?
The Jews of Europe could not fly. They could not escape beyond the rainbow. Harburg was almost prescient when he talked about wanting to fly like a bluebird away from the "chimney tops". In the
post-Auschwitz era, chimney tops have taken on a whole different meaning than the one they had at the beginning of 1939.
Pink's mom is Judith Kugel. She's Jewish of Lithuanian background. As Pink was belting the Harburg/Arlen song from the stage at the Academy Awards, I wasn't thinking about the movie. I was thinking about Europe's lost Jews and the immigrants to America.
I was then struck by the irony that for two thousand years the land that the Jews heard of "once in a lullaby" was not America, but Israel. The remarkable thing would be that less than ten years after "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was first published, the exile was over and the State of Israel was reborn. Perhaps the "dreams that you dare to dream really do come true".
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Movie. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Movie. Tampilkan semua postingan
The Mystery Of Wizard of Oz !!!
Pink Batmobile
Google staff plays April Fool's car prank on co-founder Sergey Brin, turns his Tesla Model S into a pink Batmobile
Google staff surprised company co-founder Sergey Brin on April Fool's by turning his Tesla Model S into a bright pink Batmobile. The pranksters from the Google X project division, currently working on Google Glass, wrapped the car in pink vinyl to make sure the changes weren't permanent.
Holy April Fools, Batman!
Google staff surprised co-founder Sergey Brin by turning his electric Tesla Model S sedan into a bright pink Batmobile as part of a newly revealed April Fool's Day joke.
The staff at Google's 'X' project division, famous within the company for producing its most visionary products and ideas and currently responsible for the Google Glass project, decided to play a joke on their boss, and the company's co-founder Sergey Brin.
However, what made it special is that despite living in a virtual age, where software can be used to alter an image or a misleading story can easily be posted online, the prank, which involved seriously modifying a car, was very much old school and real world.
While Brin's back was turned, his co workers turned his Model S Tesla car into what can only be described as a pink Batmobile, complete with Bat symbol on the hood, massive rims (complete with Google Chrome logos in their centers), protruding rear bat wings and long, luscious eyelashes adorning the car's headlights.
Google X projects member Corey Tabaka posted a photo to his Google+ account not only of the car, but of Brin taking the joke in good humor and actually taking it out for a spin. The reason the pranksters chose the Batman motif is because the X projects department is thought of as the "bat cave," and the jokers were also quick to highlight that they used pink vinyl to wrap the car, so that none of the modifications would be permanent or difficult to reverse.
The Scary Secrets How To See Demons
Strange Sleep Disorder Makes People See 'Demons'
When filmmaker Carla MacKinnon started waking up several times a week unable to move, with the sense that a disturbing presence was in the room with her, she didn't call up her local ghost hunter. She got researching.
Now, that research is becoming a short film and multiplatform art project exploring the strange and spooky phenomenon of sleep paralysis. The film, supported by the Wellcome Trust and set to screen at the Royal College of Arts in London, will debut in May.
Sleep paralysis happens when people become conscious while their muscles remain in the ultra-relaxed state that prevents them from acting out their dreams. The experience can be quite terrifying, with many people hallucinating a malevolent presence nearby, or even an attacker suffocating them. Surveys put the number of sleep paralysis sufferers between about 5 percent and 60 percent of the population.
"I was getting quite a lot of sleep paralysis over the summer, quite frequently, and I became quite interested in what was happening, what medically or scientifically, it was all about," MacKinnon said. [Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders]
Her questions led her to talk with psychologists and scientists, as well as to people who experience the phenomenon. Myths and legends about sleep paralysis persist all over the globe, from the incubus and succubus (male and female demons, respectively) of European tales to a pink dolphin-turned-nighttime seducer in Brazil. Some of the stories MacKinnon uncovered reveal why these myths are so chilling.
Sleep stories
One man told her about his frequent sleep paralysis episodes, during which he'd experience extremely realistic hallucinations of a young child, skipping around the bed and singing nursery rhymes. Sometimes, the child would sit on his pillow and talk to him. One night, the tot asked the man a personal question. When he refused to answer, the child transformed into a "horrendous demon," MacKinnon said.
For another man, who had the sleep disorder narcolepsy (which can make sleep paralysis more common), his dream world clashed with the real world in a horrifying way. His sleep paralysis episodes typically included hallucinations that someone else was in his house or his room — he'd hear voices or banging around. One night, he awoke in a paralyzed state and saw a figure in his room as usual. [See MacKinnon's Artistic Images of Sleep Paralysis]
"He suddenly realizes something is different," MacKinnon said. "He suddenly realizes that he is in sleep paralysis, and his eyes are open, but the person who is in the room is in his room in real life."
The figure was no dream demon, but an actual burglar.
Myths and science of sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis experiences are almost certainly behind the myths of the incubus and succubus, demons thought have sex with unsuspecting humans in their sleep. In many cases, MacKinnon said, the science of sleep paralysis explains these myths. The feeling of suffocating or someone pushing down on the chest that often occurs during sleep paralysis may be a result of the automatic breathing pattern people fall into during sleep. When they become conscious while still in this breathing pattern, people may try to bring their breathing under voluntary control, leading to the feeling of suffocating.
Add to that the hallucinations that seem to seep in from the dream world, and it's no surprise that interpretations lend themselves to demons, ghosts or even alien abduction, MacKinnon said.
What's more, MacKinnon said, sleep paralysis is more likely when your sleep is disrupted in some way — perhaps because you've been traveling, you're too hot or too cold, or you're sleeping in an unfamiliar or spooky place. Those tendencies may make it more likely that a person will experience sleep paralysis when already vulnerable to thoughts of ghosts and ghouls.
"It's interesting seeing how these scientific narratives and the more psychoanalytical or psychological narratives can support each other rather than conflict," MacKinnon said.
Since working on the project, MacKinnon has been able to bring her own sleep paralysis episodes under control — or at least learned to calm herself during them. The trick, she said, is to use episodes like a form of research, by paying attention to details like how her hands feel and what position she's in. This sort of mindfulness tends to make scary hallucinations blink away, she said.
"Rationalizing it is incredibly counterintuitive," she said. "It took me a really long time to stop believing that it was real, because it feels so incredibly real."
Zombie City
Zombie television show turns Georgia town into tourism hub
SENOIA, Georgia (Reuters) - Frank Hollberg III, whose family has sold furniture in Senoia, Georgia since 1894, laughed as he recalled the odd sight of watching a man walk through the idyllic downtown holding a head in his hand.
The head was a prop and the man an actor filming "The Walking Dead," the hit zombie-themed television series that has drawn millions of fans worldwide and helped turn the small town 25 miles south of Atlanta into a thriving tourist attraction.
Senoia, pronounced "Seh-noy" by its 3,300 residents, had seen its fortunes fade after the local cotton and agricultural industries died off. But the town now boasts a retail district that grew from six to 49 businesses in half a dozen years.
Country music singer Zac Brown has opened a restaurant and live music venue on Main Street, and two home showcases by Southern Living magazine's popular "Idea House" program brought about 30,000 visitors to Senoia in 2010 and again in 2012, local officials said.
"It's been a hell of a lot of changes in this town," said Hollberg, 77. "It's a different world."
Hollberg and other locals credit most of the newfound popularity to the success of the weekly AMC cable network series. "The Walking Dead" averages 7 million U.S. viewers ages 18 to 49, making it the top-rated drama for that demographic in cable history, according to AMC.
Fans proved eager to get a behind-the-scenes look at filming in and around Senoia, which for the show's third season was transformed into the fictional town of Woodbury. The season finale airs on Sunday.
They found a town that had stopped cutting the grass and weeding the flower beds to foster an authentic post-apocalyptic setting, said Mayor Robert Belisle. Stores displayed zombie-themed T-shirts next to baby clothes and home decor items.
BUSINESS BOOMING
Some natives grumbled about having to jockey for parking spaces, but many business owners said they were happy to accommodate the show and its fans.
"When your sales are up 40 percent over the same month last year, it must be a good thing," said store owner Jim Preece. "Our Christmas was phenomenal."
The guest book by Preece's register logs signatures of visitors who traveled to Senoia from across the United States, as well as Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.
The tourist traffic continued after the cameras stopped rolling, business owners said, aided by fan websites that direct visitors to specific filming spots for each episode.
Brian Holland, a heating and air service technician who lives in Columbus, Georgia, runs the Walking Dead Locations website as a hobby. He said people email him daily asking for help planning their trips.
"It started out as me running around on Saturdays taking pictures of places we'd seen on the show, to talking to people all over the world," said Holland, 40.
One recent weekday, show fans ranging from teenagers to retirees posed for pictures by the fake Woodbury town hall and bank and bought "Zombie Dark" coffee from the cafe that serves as the Woodbury Coffee House on the show.
"My daughter is going to be extremely jealous," said Ted Molnar, 60, who drove two hours from LaFayette, Georgia, with his wife to check out the show's backdrop. A sticker on their van read, "When the zombies come, I'll be ready."
The series has "forever redefined this town," said Scott Tigchelaar, a developer and president of Raleigh Studios - Atlanta, a film company whose 120-acre property in Senoia serves as home base for the show's production.
"'Walking Dead' to Senoia is like 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' to Savannah," he said, referring to the best-selling 1994 novel set in the picturesque Georgia city and made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Georgia has enticed the film and TV industry to towns across the state with generous tax incentives and dozens of direct flights each day between Atlanta and Los Angeles, he said.
The state hosted 333 films, TV productions and music videos between July 2011 and June 2012, generating nearly $880 million in direct spending by the entertainment industry, according to the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office.
Senoia is not paid for the filming, leaving local leaders to find other ways to capitalize on the spotlight while preserving the town's historic charm.
The downtown development authority installed sidewalk plaques to highlight some of the two dozen movies and TV series that have filmed in Senoia, including "Fried Green Tomatoes", "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Drop Dead Diva".
Tigchelaar, a Canada native whose development company has restored much of the downtown, said he and his brother-in-law bought a trolley to give tours of various film locations starting this spring.
A store with licensed merchandise for "The Walking Dead" is set to open when production resumes in May and, later this year, developers expect to break ground on a boutique hotel.
"Ten years ago to talk about a four-star hotel in Senoia, people probably would have laughed me out of town," Tigchelaar said. "Today, it's feasible."
Dumpster Diver Reality Show
Dumpster Diver TV: Austrians Cook Up Food Waste Reality Show
Sure, we've got "freegans" in the U.S. — people happy not to pay for food when they can just dig it out of trash bins. But even as awareness of food waste grows, these Dumpster divers are parodied on Portlandia and Funny Or Die for putting their palates where their principles are.
But in Austrian media, Dumpster divers aren't being mocked — they're starring in their own reality cooking show, Waste Cooking.
The show is produced by a group of artists/activists. Show director David Gross, who hails from Salzburg, says he did his first dive there in January 2012 and was shocked by the food waste he encountered.
"Although I was prepared for large amounts, the amount of waste left me speechless," he writes in German on the show's website.
Gross felt that more people need to understand what it means that Austria throws out around 105,000 tons of edible food each year. (Austria, mind you, has one of the most sophisticated composting programs in the world.) So, inspired by reality TV shows like Fear Factor, he decided to team up with cooks and fellow divers to demonstrate the delicious possibilities of all the food in the trash.
A typical episode of Waste Cooking begins with a group of divers congregating on their bikes. They then set off into the night, their bike lights flashing, in search of trash cans specifically designated for organic waste — Austria has had an ordinance requiring separate collection of organic waste since 1995.
Invariably, the divers gather an impressive haul of pristine fruits, vegetables, cheese and other foods, packaged or not. Then Vienna food blogger and cooking instructor Tobias Judmaier transforms it into vittles in a kitchen set up on a public pedestrian thoroughfare, where he and others try to lure passersby to taste their fare. Many are titillated by the gambit, but some wrinkle their noses when they learn the provenance of the food.
Episodes of the show — which is a pretty low-budget affair — first went up online last March. The Viennese community TV station Okto began airing it in December. You can find recipes for the dishes they've thrown together on the show's website, and to this food blogger, they don't look half bad — lentil stew and asparagus salad among them.
Last month, the team sent off a short film, called Days in Trash, to an international art exhibition on food at the Museum Ariana in Geneva. (The exhibit lasts through Feb. 24.) You can watch the film here, at left. It has English subtitles and features an earnest song in German about food waste performed by a young woman on a keyboard.
Crystal Liu YiFei Nude in The Assassins
Nudity doesn't bother Liu Yi Fei in The Assassins
CHINA: Chinese actress-singer Liu Yi Fei, also known as Crystal Liu, has stripped off her girl-next-door image - -literally.
Revealing that she isn't conservative, the former 'jade girl' put words into action with a nude scene in "The Assassins", a historical film that focuses on the later years of Han Dynasty warlord Cao Cao.
"I think I'm a strong person. Although there are moments when I am shy, but when I think about it, it's just a phase. I'm actually quite open" said the actress in a recent interview.
"The director was afraid that I couldn't relax… but I myself knew that I won't be influenced by others".
The actress who also co-starred with Jet Li and Jackie Chan in "The Forbidden Kingdom", plays the dual roles of 'Diao Chan' and 'Ling Ju' in the film that opened Thursday.
"I care more about the scenes involving 'Mu Shun' " she said of the film character that she has to relate to in her role as 'Ling Ju', explaining that the pair share a special bond since a tender age.
The first instalment of a planned trilogy, "The Assassins" follows a pair of young lovers Mu Shun (Hiroshi Tamaki) and Ling Ju (Liu) who undergo training in a prisoner-of-war camp to become assassins.
The duo later undertake a secret mission against the Chinese warlord Cao Cao (Chow Yun-Fat) who is rumoured to be planning to overthrow the emperor.
The film's Chinese title, translated as "Bronze Sparrow Platform", is a reference to a terrace of the same name constructed by Cao Cao during the Eastern Han Dynasty after defeating rival warlords to gain supremacy in northern China.
Directed by Chinese director Zhao Lin Shan, the film also stars singer-actor Alec Su and Taiwanese singer-actress Annie Yi.
Wolverine Claws in Saudi Arabia
Batman Is A Gay
A small custom Batman water pistol is not necessarily sexual, but this toy comes out of the Wayne Manor walk-in closet when you begin to use it. Simply remove Batman's butt plug, fill with water, cock, and squeeze the trigger, and shoot your pals with a quick load to the face. Keep it moving, nothing suggestive here!
The Real Batman On Earth
Holy cow! Batman’s a villain
Stan in prison 5 times
Bam, pow, biff, boom! ... Batman Stan Worby took pal Daniel Frayne to nick
BRADFORD Batman Stan Worby is a former villain who has been jailed FIVE times, The Sun can reveal.
Stan, 39 — who handed a fugitive to police while dressed as the caped crusader — once got three years for burglary.
He also served time for stealing cars, driving while banned and driving without insurance.
Stan admitted last night: “I was quite a bad lad.
“I was on the wrong side of the law until I was 24. I just got in with the wrong crowd.
“I’m not proud but I served my time and it’s in the past now.”
The dad of five added: “When I met my wife Mandy, I turned my life round and settled down. I didn’t want to go back inside, I had too much out here to live for.”
Stan, of Wyke, made world news when he escorted wanted pal Daniel Frayne, 27, into a police station last Monday.
The takeaway driver — who had earlier dressed as Batman to watch Bradford City in the Capital One cup final — told cops: “I want a medal for this.”
Officers recognised him in his £24.99 Argos costume and giggled: “Stan, what are you doing?”
Frayne — step-cousin of magician Dynamo — was charged with handling stolen goods, fraud and breaching a court order.
He appears before magistrates tomorrow.
Porn Superhero
Blame Japan’s Perverted Superhero for This Panty Insanity
Hentai Kamen, "the abnormal super hero", is getting his own movie. The flick was teased last fall, and a live-action film called HK is slated for an April release in Japan.
Hentai Kamen is a manga that followed a mankini-wearing hero who got superpowers from wearing panties on his head. And somebody, somewhere thought, hey, why not have schoolgirls wear panties on their heads? I guess!
Earlier today, Akiba Blog, a popular otaku site, uploaded photos of a new photo book called "Kaopan" (かおぱん), or "Panty Face". The book's publisher routinely churns out schoolgirl fetish books, so at first glance, this seemed to be its latest unsettling creation. Though, besides the moral question that arises from fetishizing teens, this book seemed strikingly odd. Panty face? Bwah?
If you think this is odd, well, there are loads of people in Japan that do, too. That's why, in Japan, the reaction on Twitter has largely been bewilderment. Akiba Blog has chronicled some of the responses, which range from "There's a masked panty genre?" and "I thought those where bandages" to "I really worry about this country" and, of course, "The fuck?"
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)
Postingan
