Posts that focus on and link to the doings of others.
297 PostsSt Wilfrid's Catholic School in Crawley have produced an end-of-year video featuring their headmaster — a faithful shot-by-shot remake of Spike Jonze's video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice.
I was most impressed by the side-by-side comparison with the orginal:
As someone said on MeFi, such wholesome fun!
Impressive Kashaka playing by Yowie.
More on their YouTube channel and instruction available on Yowie's Patreon.
Wikipedia has info on this West african percussion instrument.
I'm not sure if Bastien Dausse considers himself a dancer or an acrobat, or both, but he's also an inventor and... sculptor, maybe?
Check out this video, which features Dausse and another performer working with two of his sculptures. Fantastic stuff.
And then there's this bit of business:
Which, of course, reminded me of this dance scene from Hal Hartley's Surviving Desire:
Dausse's site is here: Barks Copagnie.
If you dug these pieces, you'll also appreciate my post on Unorthodox Choreography.
Terrific short film to promote the new Tutu Academy on the anniversary of the Hong Kong Ballet's 45th Anniversary.
You can watch the 3-minute film here:
You ever have a line of dialogue in your head and you can't remember what film it's from?
Enter PlayPhrase, a search engine for dialogue. It managed to properly source every phrase I threw at it:
"It's no longer your film," from Mulholland Drive.
"For me, the action is the juice," from Heat.
"Poured out like water on the ground," from The Thin Red Line.
"I'm quietly judging you," from Magnolia.
"Because you only have two forms of expression: silence and rage," from Midnight Run.
Pretty impressive. Not sure what it says about me that those are the phrases that came to mind, though.
"Curbside Classic is a general interest automotive and transportation site with a special emphasis on history and documenting the older cars still on our streets."
Worth a visit for the pictures of cool vehicles — but there's also some great in-depth info on the cars, including some with old sales brochures and ads. Neat!
For instance, here's the entry on the 50s Mercedes Benz Coach pictured above.
And the Morris Minor below:
I tell you about this stite today because I've added a new Curbside Classics section to A Tiny Bell: favorite cars I've seen on my travels.
These lovely illustrations shared by Present & Correct were the inspiration for me sharing my own scans of a Carl Hansen & Son catalog.
The above are all from Present & Correct's first post on it. They've now made a second post.
Gorgeous stuff.
Winners of the 2024 Big Picture Nature Photography Contest have been chosen.
My favorite is one of the runners-up, but I'm biased as I recognize the heron, Glinlid, whom I met in the Dominican in 2019:
Check out all the 2024 winners on the Big Picture site.
Winners from years going back to 2014 are also viewable.
Landays (pronounced land-eyes) are 22 syllable, two-line poems composed primarily by Pashtun women who live on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are passed on orally and are anonymous, as these women are usually illiterate and poetry for women — not to mention education — is forbidden by the Taliban. The Harvard Review says, "The landay is a vibrant, clandestine, and ancient tradition."
Eliza Griswold, a Pulitzer-winning journalist, has translated many landays and collected them in a book published by FSG: I Am the Beggar of the World.
Here are a few landays from the book:
May God make you into a riverbank flower
so I may smell you when I gather water.
You sold me to an old man, father.
May God destroy your home, I was your daughter.
Leave your sword and fetch your gun.
Away to the mountains, the Americans have come.
Your eyes aren’t eyes. They’re bees.
I can find no cure for their sting.
When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.
When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.
Two years ago the Talibs favored boys and left the girls alone.
A woman then was worth her weight in stone.
You can read more on landays on the Poetry Foundation's page on the form, which was written by Griswold and is excellent.
Griswold also wrote this piece for the BBC: The 22 Syllables That Can Get You Killed, and spoke with PBS NewsHour about the artform (6m30):
