Elephants Dream is another great short from the Blender Foundation (the guys behind Big Buck Bunny) about two strange characters exploring a capricious and seemingly infinite machine. The elder, Proog, acts as a tour-guide and protector, happily showing off the sights and dangers of the machine to his initially curious but increasingly skeptical protégé Emo. As their journey unfolds we discover signs that the machine is not all Proog thinks it is, and his guiding takes on a more desperate aspect”.
Elephants Dream is a story about communication and fiction, made purposefully open-ended as the world’s first 3D “Open movie”. The film itself is released under the Creative Commons license, along with the entirety of the production files used to make it (roughly 7 Gigabytes of data). The software used to make the movie is the free/open source animation suite blender along with other open source software, thus allowing the movie to be remade, remixed and re-purposed with only a computer and the data on the DVD or download.
Denis Darzacq’s photography is fantastic (and almost unbelievable) when you consider the fact that “there is nothing false in these scenes. These moments really occurred. There is no fiction, no retouching or special effects”.
Instead, he uses athletic and gymnastic young folks as well as good timing to make it look like his subjects are about to smack the ground face first.
In Denis’ own words, “at the moment of the leap, chance and gravity also intervened”.
Chuck Palahniuk is definitely my favorite author, so when I read the summary of his upcoming book, Snuff, I immediately hit the pre-order button:
Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. SNUFF unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?
Having read and loved the nationally bestselling book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser, I can’t wait to see the film adaptation that hits theaters on November 17th. The book takes a hard-hitting look at the fast food industry and the control it wields over the American public. It chronicles the history and growth of one of America’s greatest institutions, including some pretty revealing biographies of the “founding fathers” of fast food, Carl Karcher and Ray Kroc. What really sets this book apart from the average political satire is the fact that Schlosser is not just propagandizing his views. He relates the growth of the fast food industry to the growth of our country, and shows that in a sense, the industry is just the ultimate result of America’s obsession with capitalism: owners growing profits at all costs. Fast Food Nation is also about the trickle down effects of the growth of fast food, including the poor conditions of the meat packing industry, the underpaid burger flipping staff, the marketing of fast food to children, and the general effect of fast food dollars on our fast food country. Though fictional, the movie takes heavy inspiration from the book, following the path of the burger, from the meatpacking plant to the underpaid food clerk to the corporate big wig to your mouth. It promises to be a revealing look at an often-overlooked aspect of our daily lives, and one that is sure to leave a lasting impression on the hearts and minds of fast food lovers everywhere. Do you want McLies with that?
Chuck Palahniuk is definitely my favorite author, so when I read the summary of his upcoming book, Snuff, I immediately hit the pre-order button:
