Kinetic Typography

I was introduced to this wonderful concept while randomly browsing around YouTube. It is basically taking the dialogue from anything, like a scene from a movie, a song or a trailer, and making a typography video out of it. The words are imposed in a very dynamic way, with the typography used to show the flow of the script.

I really love this new art form. I am a bit of a typography junkie (but a not a worshiper of it, like many professional designers), but the main reason I like these is because they give a new dynamic element to the script of a movie.

Below are some of the best ones that I have found on YouTube. Most of these videos are made in Adobe After Effects.



I love this opening credits sequence from Trainspotting. One of my all time favourite scenes and dialogue from a film. The typography suits it perfectly - it can almost be used as an alternative opening sequnce for the film :)




I love Snatch, and I love how this captures the fast-paced Brit humor.




Very nicely done. Very original, and captures the taut tension from the scene.




One of my all time favourite scenes from a movie.




Very dynamic, and has a nice fast pace - in tune with the original dialogue.




Just like this because it is Requiem for a Dream :)




This has to be my favourite out of all of them. Even though the font is not very readable, I think it goes very well with the theme of the film.




I love this one, because of the clever way the Facebook 'f'' comes up at the end.

Short life

When Stephen Wolfram was my age, he got his PhD in Particle Physics from Caltech.

Puts things in a rather tubular perspective for me.

=______='

Some more music for your delicate ears

Braids - Plath Heart




Muse - New Born (live at Wembley Stadium)




Muse - Knights of Cydonia (live at Wembley Stadium)




Radiohead - Codex




Foals - Spanish Sahara (live on KEXP)




Teen Daze - Let's Fall Asleep Together




Planet Earth - The Journey of the Sun (composer: George Fenton)

Music from the trailer of The Tree of Life

I love the music from this trailer for The Tree of Life. Here are the two musical scores featured in the trailer.


Patrick Cassidy - Funeral March





Bedřich Smetana - Má Vlast Moldau (Vltava)

Links Ahoy! (8)

Here is another Links Ahoy! So soon, but due to my boredom, it was inevitable...

The Burns Archive

In my previous Links Ahoy! post, I linked to the Newsweek selection from the Burns Archive. Dr. Stanley B. Burns was an ophthalmologist who made an incredible collection of photographs during his lifetime. His collection includes pictures of freed slaves, a Nazi fighter pilot, Japanese geisha, and victims of the infamous Tuskegee experiments. Thus, we can see a very rich collection of certain moments in history, perfectly captured in photographic form.

This link is to the entire Burn's collection, containing over 700,000 photographs. Being the macabre-loving bastard child that I am, I am particularly enchanted by the Death & Dying collection. 

[link]

Twaggies

Wonderfully funny illustrations of random tweets from Twitter. Some are just downright surreal - I wonder if I sound that hostile sometimes on my Twitter. 

[link]

Dafont

I don't know if you have come across this site before, but I have found a ton of lovely free fonts here. Especially love my find of the Kremlin font, which I used (with great effect) to creep out my class, by presenting a research poster as a Soviet propaganda poster. 

[link]

Space Invaders

Official website of the famous French graffiti artist Invader (places the 8-bit characters from Space Invaders all around the world [using mosaic tiles] - a wonderful effect, almost like a real invasion).  

[link]



Wilfred Owen poems

I am sure most of you have heard of the great war poet Wilfred Owen. This Project Gutenberg link contains most of his most well-known and revered poems.

[link]



Women in Art: Kathe Kollwitz

I have featured some of her stark artwork in my January 'Air Quotes' series. I am definitely going to an individual blog post about her artwork, because - god - I have never been confronted so directly by art before.

Here is a link to a nice article about her artwork, and some featured work [alas - the pictures are not great quality, but they are the best I can find right now). 

[link]

Epic Rap Battles of History

To finish off on a light note - this YouTube channel features some ridiculously hilarious rap battles between random famous opponents. There is Justin Beiber vs Beethoven, Hitler vs Darth Vader, etc...

But my favourite has to be this one - Einstein vs Stephen Hawking:



[link]

The Romans and their British Accents

I don't get one thing - why, oh why, do all portrayals of Ancient Romans have them talking in British accents? Or more specifically, English accents. And not just Romans, even ancient Greeks are given the stiff upper lip. Whereas, say, ancient Egyptians (at the time of the pharaohs) are portrayed as having an Arab accent (I am broadly generalising what an Arab accent is) - at that time Egypt was not even remotely influenced by the Arabs (the Arab conquests had not taken place yet, obviously).

I really don't understand where this trend came from. You might as well have them talk in German accents for all the authenticity you will achieve. I blame mainly Hollywood for this - somehow 'Europe' equals 'British' for them.

But then again, what else can you expect them to do? It's not like you can have entire television series or movie in old Latin, with subtitles - no one would bother watching it. And even if you do have it in Latin, what would the accent be like? Is there any way to decipher what people sound like by looking at the written language alone? What did an ancient Roman citizen sound like?

I always found this particular thing very funny. I don't understand where this trend came from. If anyone knows, please write in the comments below.

I just noticed what a problem this is when I recently watched Rome (BBC/HBO, 2005-2007). In the show, Latin is equated with English. So if you are a Roman citizen, and you know how to speak the language, you are portrayed as speaking in English, with an English accent. (Conveniently enough, any written portrayals clearly show Latin text, not English).

I don't know much about English accents, but nobility or educated people are shown as having that perfect BBC-accent, whereas common thugs are shown as having that East Enders sort of accent (again, forgive me if I am not using the correct terms, I can only recognise different accents from England, I don't know their names). It is really very strange. I feel like certain biases of writers/directors/producers are leaking into these portrayals of ancient people.

But then a  big problem emerges from this - what if you want to portray a slave or a tribe person from Gaul? They did not know Latin at that time, hence you cannot show them speaking in English on the show, since English = Latin. The show overcame this problem by having these characters not speaking at all! I found that so weird.

And there are some Greek characters on the show, and they are shown as having a distinct accent too, a bit like how a modern Greek person sounds (I have met a few Greek people). So strange - if this was a show only about ancient Greeks, then they too would have an English accent.

Funnily enough, they gave the Egyptians English accents this time too (with a very neurotic Cleopatra); although Nubian tribe members were portrayed as either speaking very little, or speaking in an Arab accent. Does accent equal social hierarchy in these portrayals?

One more interesting thing - Jewish people who have 'assimilated' into Roman society are shown as having English accents, whereas a Jewish person who has just arrived from Jerusalem also talks in a 'Arab accent' (someone please give me a technical term for this).

I know that most actors in this particular production were British, and you could argue that the use of the English accent only follows, but I think this was done precisely because they did not want to waste time trying to teach American actors the English accent.

And it is not just this show - many American movies do this all the time. Pick up any random movie about ancient people, and they will be talking in English accents. Most times (before production begins), American actors will specifically be trained in the English accent.

Honestly, I want to see someone make a movie or television series on ancient Rome, with everyone talking in Norwegian accents. How refreshing. 

Facebook Causes...

...only exist for you to show off. Seriously, they don't raise awareness, they only make you look like a cunt (at least in my mind). When I was a fresh faced fetus on Facebook, I didn't mind such things, but now I notice that people do these things just to wear them as badges, to show off to friends. Ooooh, look, how bloody intellectual I am...

I was recently forced into doing a Facebook campaign (for a class - it was a required assignment (don't ask)), and I feel pretty depressed about it. These things are so shallow...does anyone really care? Click a 'Like' button, only takes a second, and then forget about it. It will be there on your 'Info' page, for prospective stalkers to be fascinated with. And this wasn't even for something serious, it was just an awareness campaign for a fairly trivial thing.

Also, statuses like:

Blah blah blah...if you believe in X, repost this on your wall. 90% of the people who read this will not re-post it, because they are blah blah blah... 

These are fucking stupid. This is a bit like the Facebook equivalent of those forwarded emails with death threats at the end (e.g. the Bloody Mary will stab you in your sleep unless you forward this email to 200 people).

I have seen messages like this on everything from religion to cancer. If you want to post random declarations of your faith on Facebook be my guest, but don't try to shame everyone else into doing it. Religion, especially, is an extremely private thing for me. I don't want to repost your faggy status to declare my love for God on Facebook, so don't tell me to.

Another thing that really pissed me off recently was this post propping up everywhere on my wall:

All of us have a thousand wishes. To be thinner, to be bigger, have more money, have a cool car, a day off, a new phone, to date the person of your dreams. A cancer patient only has one wish, to kick cancer's ass. 

In honor of someone who died, or is fighting cancer, or even had cancer, post this for at least one hour.

I don't get it. I lost a family member to cancer, but I find that posting this on Facebook would be disrespectful to their memory.

Why would I want to 'honor' someone for dying of cancer? There is nothing honorable about someone's death. They didn't die willingly - it's not like they walked into a battle arena. It's a disease and it's horrible, and please stop turning it into a shallow spectacle on Facebook.

Also, my list of a 'thousand wishes' is not as shallow as yours, so fuck off.

Although, unlike the let-me-shame-you-into-reposting-this statuses, I don't object to people posting this on their walls, since it is their personal place, and they are welcome to write whatever they want, as long as they are not implying me to do something. I am simply showing my extreme contempt and disapproval of this, and pointing out how incredibly crass this is.

Perfect bloggers

I wish I could be one of those perfect female bloggers, with a cute layout and fancy photos of cream cakes and blissful weddings.

Instead, I am just a depressed Computer Science student, who only writes about bleeding robots.

[Deal with it.]

Sexual tension [?]

If a man stares at a woman, and the woman likes him, it is considered flirting.

If a man stares at a woman, and the woman does not like him, it is considered leering.


If a woman stares at a man, and the man does like her, it is considered flirting.

If a woman stares at a man, and the man does not like her, it is considered... ?

Links Ahoy! (7)

Some more links here, about magazine covers, photograph archives and such...

But first, PENGUIN CHICKS! (Or more specifically, Emperor Penguin chicks)

Aaaah, so cute. Penguins are so adorable, my favourite little flightless birds. Look at those fat little bastards, I just want to cuddle them :)

Did you know that the Emperor Penguins are not very shy approaching humans. When the first explorers went to the Antarctic, penguins usually approached them with curiosity and did not show any fear of the humans.

They come up to 2 meters close, and then usually stay at that distance. This is because Emperor Penguins do not have any land-based predators, only water-based ones (such as the Leopard Seal), hence they are not used to being wary of any animals on land. Only migratory birds arrive at the Antarctic during summer, and they do not interact much with the penguins. 

Anyways, back to links.

Simplicissimus

Simplicissimus was a satirical German weekly magazine started by Albert Langen in April 1896 and published through 1967, with a hiatus from 1944-1954.

I don't know how to read German, but I love all the artsy covers for each cover. At this link, you can find the entire archive of all Simplicissimus issues. Use Google Translate to translate the page, to make navigation easier (duh).

[link]


Littérature

Littérature was a literary magazine edited by André Breton (godfather of the Surrealist movement), Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon. It ran from 1919 till 1921 and then from 1922 to 1924.

Here you can find all the issues of the magazine in order. Although, it is in French. I know SOME French, but I suck at it so badly that it's not even funny =__='

I am a huge fan of the surrealist movement, and there are some lovely articles in here, as I have read translations of some of them. But I'm linking to this mainly for the lovely main covers (drawn by Breton), found under the "New Series" sections, since the earlier run did not have any covers.

[link]


365 Days of Danboard

I'm sure you have come across Amazon's Danboard cardboard-robot before. Arielle Nadel photographed this little toy for 365 days, and the results are so adorable.

[link]


Rage Comic Builder

You know all those rage comics out there? Well, here is a tool to easily make your own. Although, you can only submit the comic to Memebase, not save it on your own machine.

[link]


The Burns Archive

Exclusively compiled for Newsweek, these are photographs by Dr. Stanley B. Burns, an ophthalmologist, who made an incredible collection of photographs during his lifetime.

His collection includes pictures of freed slaves, a Nazi fighter pilot, Japanese geisha, and victims of the infamous Tuskegee experiments.

[link]

Add a smiley to it.

Have you noticed how you can add a smiley to absolutely ANYTHING and it makes it seem nicer?
I have noticed it a lot on Facebook, where people write random things, sometimes rude things, and add a smiley after it, and somehow it dissipates the rudeness.

Automatically, just like that.

Sometimes I do it myself. I might be writing something in reply to someone, etc, and I would look back my comment for a moment, and feel like it seems rude. So I add a smiley to it, and suddenly it is full of butterflies.

Look, I will even made up some examples for you:

.