Incredible Puppet Production

The Narrative of Victor Karloch from Kevin McTurk on Vimeo.

Yow! A pretty far cry from Mr Roger's Land Of Make-Believe...


Looks terribly interesting - there's a bit more info about the project HERE.

"Empire Strikes Back" As Silent Film

Here we have a beautiful clip from "The Empire Strikes Back", remixed as a silent film, complete with tinkly piano score, missed frames, and title cards.

It certainly is amazing to see how much the feel of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" comes through in this - his influence is still felt more than eighty years after that masterpiece...

Lordy, what's not to like? I'd love to see the whole original trilogy like this!

Here is "Anachronisme":

Giant Deep-Sea Diver Walks The Streets Of France

Here's a video of a HUGE marionette. It looks like he's about thirty feet tall. He's walking the streets of France, looking for his lost daughter, a twenty-foot tall little girl in a yellow raincoat. He ends up finding her and walking her home.

What's not to like?



I believe this festival happens in Jules Verne's home town, as a tribute to his work.

Big Butter Jesus

During a recent trip near Dayton, Ohio, I took the advice of some strange friends and went to go visit the "Big Butter Jesus" - which is what some heathens call this huge statue of the big J. It's sort of yellowish-gray, and looks as if it might have been carved out of butter. Like for a state fair.

Some motorists get out of their cars and take a picture with three people to the right of the BBJ, making letters with their arms: "Y" (Jesus' letter), "M", "C", and "A". Yup - YMCA!

I just took a stereo photo of the big guy. First, click on the image to make it big, then cross your eyes until you get a third Jesus in the middle...focus, and there he is, in all of his three-dimensional glory!

Oh, and a STRANGE thing: my car's "Check Engine" light had been lit for about ten months - but just as I left the BBJ, the light turned off, and has remained off for several weeks now! NO JOKE. Hmmmm...

Way Groovy Beatles Vid

Here's a vid I only just caught - I guess it's been out for six or eight months, since it's an ad for the Beatles Rock Band. But it's not one of those ugly shots of the game with the wooden moptop cutouts, it's a really SHARP animated "cinematic" version:

Monolith Action Figure

Now you can own your own 2001 / 2010 Monolith:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/monolith-action-figure.shtml?cpg=128H

And with the general collapse of the US Space Program, unless you have fifty million dollars or so to piggyback along with the Ruskies, this is as close to the real thing as you're ever going to get.

*sigh*

Strange And Beautiful

Here's a neat video.

This is a photographic method called "tilt-shift". It is based on the use of certain lenses that have very specific focal lengths, which keep a central area in fine focus, while fuzzing out nearer and farther areas. Which ends up making the entire plateau look like a miniature (as this super-tight focus is often used in photographing tiny objects). This video artist, Keith Loutit, has used this method along with time-lapse, to create a movie that has that "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" stop-motion look to it. In miniature. But it's all REAL. Full-sized people, buildings, ships, mountains, oceans...

I find it all mesmerizing and beautiful.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Here's another:

A Study That Needed To Be Done (?)

Click HERE - read the TRUE MEDICAL STUDY, then whack your forehead with the palm of your hand and say: "No sh*t, Sherlock!"

Maybe next they can study the effects of salt in an open wound...