We're all set!

Photo Equipment for World Bodypainting Festiva...Image by intermayer via Flickr
I believe the face lift that I wanted to do for this site is done. And so, I'll be posting some articles once again.

Let me know what would be of interest to you.

Let me hear from you, very, very soon!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Under construction...

Bear [heart] InternetImage by KateMonkey via Flickr
We have moved from our old web address, into here. We are not yet done, so pls bear with us.

Do come back, and feel free to leave your comments and suggestions.

Se you again!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

The unconventionalities of TV Ads

Photo to Christopher Reeve being interviewed a...Image via Wikipedia
Back when Christopher Reeve was alive, and was already wheelchair-bound, there was a commercial that had him walking. Many were angry at that video clip, and many expressed their sentiments to 'Superman', saying that it was actually an exploit of his condition.

He disagreed; he said it was actually a good shot for him, and it gave him hope of someday being able to walk (again).

Not long afterwards, a new TV ads took a different route - using deceased persons. How'd you take it?

For the full story, read the news article below:

----------

Using the deceased in TV ads

Nike has certainly stirred up a lot of controversy with its new ad featuring the voice of Tiger Woods’ late father, Earl Woods, who appears to be talking to his son regarding Tiger’s recent activities – though the voiceover is from a 2004 documentary in which he wasn’t even speaking to his son, but comparing himself to his wife.Upon watching the ad, two questions came to mind – why would anyone have thought this was a good idea and how did Tiger Woods ever agree to this?
The Sentinel Online : Blogs : Now Showing

----------
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

BLACK AND WHITE FILMS

48 Hrs.Image via Wikipedia


---------------------

NEARLY 30 years ago, 48 Hrs. arrived in theatres with a bang. That 1982 movie, in which a gruff white detective partners with a smooth-talking black convict to hunt down a killer, took in US$78 million ($110 million) at the North American box office on a US$13 million budget, transformed a young comedian turned actor named Eddie Murphy into a Hollywood megastar and gave wings to a cinematic tradition as emblematic of the '80s multiplex as John Hughes' teenage dramedies: The interracial buddy-cop movie.

Among the hordes of teenage boys who flocked to 48 Hrs. was the comedian-turned-actor Tracy Morgan.

"I loved it. You've got these two guys alone in this cop car, sharing their lives despite their differences," Morgan, the 30 Rock star and former Saturday Night Live cast member, said this month.

"I grew up watching 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon and all of those movies, and I always wanted to be in one of them."

With his new film, he has gotten his wish. Cop Out, which opens in the United States on Friday, stars Morgan as a Brooklyn detective, with Bruce Willis as his partner. The movie is a throwback to the heyday of Murphy-Nolte, Glover-Gibson and the rainbow coalition of wise-cracking, scum-busting partners that followed close behind, including Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal in Running Scared.

CLEARLY BLACK AND WHITE

The interracial buddy-cop movie (in which, it bears noting, the buddies aren't always police officers per se, but are always crime fighters) was an '80s bumper crop, but it has outlived the decade.

48 Hrs. gave way to a stream of riffs and re-imaginings that included Another 48 Hrs., The Last Boy Scout, Die Hard: With A Vengeance, Men In Black, Rush Hour and Training Day. Cop Out, however, was intended as an homage to the genre as it existed in its classic incarnation.

"I wanted to go for the same vibe Running Scared or Beverly Hills Cop had, where there's a real sense of danger, but you still get to make the funny," said Kevin Smith, the film's director.

"I tell people this movie is like Lethal Weapon, only with 60 per cent less action." To nail the retro ambience Smith hired Harold Faltermeyer, the composer of the Beverly Hills Cop theme song, to write a synthesiser-heavy score.

If the interracial buddy-cop movie has proven itself long lasting, it owes much of this resilience to its relationship to hot-button social concerns. The genre has allowed film-makers to confront race relations but in a rock-'em, sock-'em context: Low on speechifying, high on car chases.

This was true of perhaps the first interracial buddy-cop movie to speak of - Norman Jewison's In The Heat Of The Night. That 1967 murder mystery, which brought together Sidney Poitier as an ace Philadelphia homicide detective and Rod Steiger as a backwoods Mississippi sheriff, is an attack on Southern bigotry and an ode to racial cooperation.

In an interview several years ago Jewison said his hope for the film was that white audiences would experience "the relationship between white and black in the South", stressing that, for this to work, the subject "had to be confronted in a very entertaining and theatrical way".

In The Heat Of The Night is a high-minded sort of thriller, but it shares its basic plotline with many of the flashier action vehicles that succeeded it: After initial hostility, a black man and a white man gradually work past their differences to focus on the greater good. Sometimes the racial tension between them is explicit, as in 48 Hrs., in which Nick Nolte's Jack subjects Murphy's Reggie to a barrage of nasty slurs.

Sometimes that tension is more diffused, or shades into broader anxieties about age or class, as in Lethal Weapon and the Beverly Hills Cop films.

BROMANCE IS COLOUR-BLIND

Racism figures overtly into 1989's Lethal Weapon 2 as an obstacle that unites, rather than divides, Mel Gibson's Riggs and Danny Glover's Murtaugh. The villains in the film are pasty-faced avatars of intolerance: Diplomats from apartheid-era South Africa.

Of course, relations between the police and the black residents were hardly utopian in late-'80s Los Angeles - a city just a few years shy of Rodney King and the 1992 riots.

"The movie's a sort of wish fulfilment," said screenwriter Shane Black, who created the Lethal Weapon franchise and wrote The Last Boy Scout. "In a troubled ethnic climate, a movie where black and white work together with nothing but mutual respect? I think it pointed to a better future." (A fifth Lethal Weapon sequel has been rumoured, but, Black said "with near-complete certainty, it's not happening".)

Melvin Donalson, a professor of film at California State University, Los Angeles, and the author of Masculinity In The Interracial Buddy Film, is more ambivalent about the genre's politics. Interracial buddy-cop movies were a leap forward from earlier black-and-white pairings - Will Rogers and Stepin Fetchit, say, or Jack Benny and Eddie (Rochester) Anderson - in which, Donalson said: "The black character serves mostly to enhance the white one."

But, he added, movies like 48 Hrs. tend to treat racial tension as something that can be simply worked through and gotten over, an interpersonal problem rather than an entrenched institutional one. "As cops, the black and white characters fight for and validate a system that, for all intents and purposes, works."

Donalson also sees the genre as tied to a broader backlash against feminist upheavals of the era: A brawny bloc of movies where men could be men and women hardly figured.

To him, interracial buddy-cop films put a multi-cultural face on traditional notions about gender, "affirming that whether you're a black man, white man, Asian man or Latino man, you're still the person who should be in charge." (The films also represented the rising commercial viability of black actors in the '80s.)

In Cop Out, there is no racial tension between Tracy Morgan's Paul and Bruce Willis' Jimmy.

When the movie begins, they have been partners for nine years, and they behave more like a married couple than wary bedfellows.

"They can't see that one's bald and one's black," said Robb Cullen, who wrote the film with his brother Mark. "We never came at it as, this is a black-and-white movie."

Mark Cullen said Cop Out was the interracial buddy-cop movie given a post-racial makeover - a film in which bromance is colour-blind. "The way we looked at it, we were just writing a romantic comedy for two guys." THE NEW YORK TIMES

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010
----------

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

THE KING OUTSHINES CIRQUE

A photograph promoting the film Jailhouse Rock...Image via Wikipedia


-------------------------

THREE decades after Elvis Presley took his last bow on the Las Vegas Strip, where he once reigned as king, the magicians of Cirque du Soleil have tried to summon back the power of this supreme entertainer in a show titled, Viva Elvis.

They have mixed a dizzying array of dance, acrobatics, live musicians, over-the-top stage sets, and glitzy costumes with gigantic videos of Elvis in his most legendary performances and memorable life events.

In the words of an Elvis song, the result is "Too Much". The 45 candy-coloured, whimsically-designed jumpsuits worn by a dance troupe are fun to watch. And the show has 120 costume changes, including a Follies-like Las Vegas number.

But for all the energy, skill and effort evident on stage, the most riveting segments of Viva Elvis are the videos in which the Presley charisma is as mesmerising as ever. When Elvis is on the huge screen in simple black and white, you can't take your eyes off of him. And the nearby live performers trying gamely to get attention with their colourful dances and acrobatics are seriously upstaged.

Only when Elvis disappears entirely do the acrobats have a chance to shine.

Friday night's premiere before a star-studded audience of 1,800 at the specially-designed Elvis Theatre in the new Aria Hotel got off to a rocky start when, in the middle of the first number, house lights went on, the stage went dark and there was an announcement that an alarm had gone off.

After a five-minute break, the show resumed to sighs of relief. Videos were projected in a gigantic juke box frame as Elvis' voice filled the theatre singing Blue Suede Shoes. Scenes from his concerts, the hysteria of his fans, and his TV appearances set the stage for a retrospective of his life.

Other extravagant numbers included the famous Jailhouse Rock dance - performed on a 40-foot-high cell block by dozens of dancers and acrobats, some dancing upside down.

A segment dealing with Elvis' time in the army featured male dancers in uniform swing-dancing with girls dressed as love letters. Videos of his induction, including a shot of his mother in tears, provided the kind of emotion that makes Elvis' personal story so compelling.

Before the show began, Priscilla Presley, who was an adviser on the production, said in a brief interview she hoped that "this tribute will help to tell a new generation about Elvis. The younger kids will get to know Elvis". AP

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010
----------

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

An Abandoned Tiger?

Tiger WoodsImage via Wikipedia

WIFE GOES SHOPPING AS GOLFER HEADS TO REHAB
-------------------------------------------

NEW YORK - The media scrutiny into Tiger Woods' private life, which the golf superstar lambasted in his public apology on Friday, shows no sign of abating.

As he headed back to treatment for sex addiction the day after, the Daily News in New York reported that his wife Elin was seen shopping with their two-year-old daughter Sam at a Florida shopping mall.

The Swedish ex-model was wearing sunglasses, jeans and boots when she headed to the mall in Windermere, the town where Woods' troubles began last November. She did not speak to reporters.

She later met friends for lunch, according to US gossip site RadarOnline.com, which also reported that the couple played tennis for an hour on Saturday afternoon before they boarded a private plane under heavy security and flew out of Orlando.

It said the developments may indicate a thaw in the couple's relationship. The couple reportedly also met Friday at their home after Woods' televised apology.

British tabloid The Daily Mirror, however, reported that Elin was stunned when the golfer made major last-minute changes to his statement, despite agreeing what he would say.

It said she had been expecting him to announce a return to the golf course within weeks, but after last-minute discussions with his advisers, he instead decided to say he was returning to therapy to seek further help.

She reportedly felt "hurt and manipulated", fearing the U-turn was aimed at placating his sponsors.

In a commentary published in The Observer, the former wife of British golfer Nick Faldo - who was also involved in extramarital affairs - has commiserated with Elin, saying "monogamy and professional golf do not happily co-exist".

Ms Melanie Hickey, who now works as a PR consultant, recalled how she felt "the weight of the corporate machine" bearing down on her as "it moved into the most personal of spaces of (her) life to protect its charge" when her own marriage broke down.

Meanwhile, Woods' long-time caddie Steve Williams said he won't tolerate any heckling from the public galleries when the world number one makes his eventual return to golf.

New Zealander Williams, 46, who has been carrying Woods' golf bag in tournaments since 1999, has a gruff reputation for not tolerating heckling or loutish behaviour in the public galleries when Woods is in action.

"When I go back to work with Tiger Woods, nothing will change," he told The Sun-Herald. "My job is to give him the best information I can and get him around in the fewest possible strokes.

"And as I have always pointed out, it is to try and give him a level playing field. Nothing will change from that aspect. I won't do anything differently."

In his statement on Friday, Woods said he was not sure when he would return to competitive golf.

Former British Open champion Ian Baker-Finch, now a television commentator, said he fears that the player will not play golf again this year.

"I was hoping he'd be back for the Masters, but I read into (his statement) that his comeback's not going to be any time soon," Baker-Finch said.

"My gut feeling is he doesn't come back until he's 100 per cent better, focused on golf and ready to win, and I don't think it will be for the Majors. I can't see any reason to come back (this year) if not for the Majors." Agencies

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010
----------

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

One less troublemaker?

An Ariana Afghan Airlines aircraft flying over...Image via Wikipedia

CANADIAN GETS LIFE FOR TERROR THREATS
-------------------------------------

MONTREAL - A Moroccan man was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison for plotting attacks in Germany and Austria and touting terrorism online from his basement apartment in a Quebec village, said media.

Said Namouh, 37, was convicted in October of four charges under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, including conspiring to detonate a bomb, facilitating terrorism, participating in a terrorist group and extorting a foreign government on its behalf.

Namouh was arrested in September 2007 for engaging in more than 1,000 online conversations and producing videos praising violent attacks on US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as helping distribute ransom demands for kidnappers of a British journalist in Gaza.

In online postings, he also touted his explosives expertise and threatened future attacks in Germany and Austria unless their troops withdrew from Afghanistan.

Namouh, who moved to Canada in 2003, may be eligible for parole after 10 years. Ottawa has said it would seek to deport him after his release from prison. AFP

From TODAY, Friday, 19-Feb-2010

----------

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]