Yellow Cake: A Modern Parable of Terrorism and Devastating War

Yellow Cake is a short animated film by the award-winning Canadian animator Nick Cross.  Cross explains that he got the idea for the film in 2003, in light of speculation during the Bush administration that Iraq was buying uranium powder called “Yellow Cake.”  Yellow Cake Uranium was one of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that Iraq allegedly possessed.  Cross’s fantastic animated epic becomes a modern parable of terrorism and catastrophic war, a lamentable tragedy featuring geopolitical bullying, social unrest and worker revolt. In the end, as with most revolutions, the revolt is both crushed by foreign intervention and corrupted from the inside until it becomes as evil as the regime the workers had originally fought.

Yellow Cake initially lures the viewer into a tale of pleasant mirth, filled with adorable blue creatures who spend all day baking and then eating their own  exquisitely delicious yellow cakes.  However, by the end of the film the small town of happy little bakers has been driven to terrorism by the greed of their leader and cake-hungry fat cats, resulting in the town’s ultimate catastrophic destruction.  It seems that no matter what they do, the oppressed have no hope left.

Yellow Cake: A Modern Parable of Terrorism and Devastating War

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Sexy Chainsaw Maid Staves Off Bloodthirsty Brain Eating Zombies Attack!

They are coming for your flesh and blood,
The last hope of the family rests on a sexy faithful maid!

Chainsaw Maid is a short animated film by Takena Nagao, an awesomely disgusting claymation blood feast.  The film tells the story of a sexy faithful maid who will go any distance to give satisfaction to her employers.  She certainly won’t be stopped by a bunch of bloodthirsty brain eating zombies.  The brutal clay splatter starts out slow, but it quickly turns into a blood bath as the devoted maid tries to fend off the zombies and takes the last resort of wielding a chainsaw.  Clay never looked so wondrously violent until Chainsaw Maid came along!

Sexy Chainsaw Maid Staves Off Bloodthirsty Brain Eating Zombies Attack!

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The Grey Dress in New York: Private Longings for Love and Desire

The Grey Dress in New York is an intriguing, captivating short experimental art film by Pierre St-Jacques, which has been screened at art and film festivals around the world. The film is loosely based on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel Project for a Revolution in New York.  Robbe-Grillet’s novel (as well as many of his films) exploits pornographic motifs and the imagery of potential sexual violence.  The Grey Dress in New York focuses on short moments of longing for love and and the need to desire.  A woman in her apartment is getting ready to go out, she is ironing her grey dress.  A man comes up the stairs, presumably to meet her, but this is not certain. The style is similar to that in Robbe-Grillet’s book, one of elipses and repeating patterns, and because of those structures we are never quite certain what the intentions of the characters are.

The central theme of The Grey Dress in New York is one of longings for desire.  Desire for the other and also for the self; each character is very self possessed and in many ways very full of flourish. The film is ultimately a test of desire for the viewer, who sees the story evolve and builds certain expectations that are as much a part of the story as is the main narrative thread. The surreal film The Grey Dress in New York is presented below, as well as the trailer for Alain Robbe-Grillet’s darkly dreamlike film, Last Year at Marienbad (1961).

The Grey Dress in New York: Private Longings for Love and Desire

Alain Robbe-Grillet: Last Year at Marienbad (1961) Trailer

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200 One Dollar Bills: Andy Warhol’s Fabulous Joke

Unfortunately, Andy Warhol’s not around to enjoy the fabulous joke of his pictures of money grabbing so much money.  His 1962 silk-screen painting 200 One Dollar Bills sold for $43.8 million at Sotheby’s this week, more than four times its estimated selling price. The seven-and-a-half-foot-wide canvas, one of Warhol’s first silk-screen paintings, looks like just what you’d think: 200 one-dollar bills.  The current record for a Warhol painting is $71.7 million for Green Car Crash, which was sold at Christie’s in 2007.  Yes, if you just take a wide look at today’s contemporary art world, that confection of bucks, puff and street smarts, you realize anew that Andy Warhol was the big daddy of it all.

But is this painting, a solid wall of greenbacks, really beautiful?  Well, in the art world Warhol completely changed our idea of beauty so, yes, it is.  He was also one of the first modern artists to say out loud that money itself is beautiful, is art, which has helped create the reality that, aesthetically speaking, it is as often as not, the price tag, not what it’s attached to, that generates value.  So the new owner of 200 One Dollar Bills got a funny old print on canvas all tarted up with some paint, which he or she succeeded in making super-famous and valuable by paying so much for it.  Wow.  That’s talent.  And as for Warhol, did he already suspect in 1962 that in making his art he would be so good at printing money for many, many years?  He was such a cultural clairvoyant, you just know he knew.

Andy Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills

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The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Ending the Cold War

Snaking along, cutting through fields and streets, the 28-mile-long Berlin Wall stood as a border between East and West Berlin from 1961 to 1989.  On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, a symbol of oppression since it was erected, was opened by East Germany, leading to days of emotional celebrations.  The fall of the Berlin Wall set in motion several important events, including the eventual reunification of the two countries on Oct. 3, 1990; the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe; and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet bloc in December 1991.

Historical Footage: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989

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Grizzly Bear’s Ready, Able: A Haunting Surreal Mix of Sadness and Otherworldly Beauty

Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimst has given birth to another aesthetically appealing video.  Artist Allison Schulnik has created a mesmerizing smeary rainbow-dripped claymation landscape for Ready, Able.  It’s a hauntingly surreal mix of sadness, repulsion and a kind of otherworldly beauty.  Why is that one blob thing melting?  Why are those faces turning inside out?  And why do I get so depressed watching all of it?

Grizzly Bear’s Ready, Able: A Haunting Surreal Mix of Sadness and Otherworldly Beauty

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Susan’s Back! Susan Boyle Sings on Dancing with the Stars

On Tuesday night, Susan Boyle made her American television singing debut in Los Angeles on Dancing with the Stars.  She sang I Dreamed A Dream while Dancing With the Stars professionals Tony Dovolani and Chelsie Hightower danced.

Susan Boyle sings “I Dreamed A Dream” on Dancing with the Stars

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Photos of the Day: Echoes of a Modified Reality

Photography by:  Zefram Cochrane

Echoes is a selection of photographs from an ongoing project created by photographer Zefram Cochrane, which he describes as a visual representation of the song Echoes by Pink Floyd.  He explains that he visualizes the project as an audio-video performance, in which the different moods, tensions, inner visions and hallucinations coming from the music are translated into images synchronized with it.

According to Zefram, “Reality is often limited, trivial and tone-less, far from being able to directly represent what is in a creative mind.  So my major effort is both to modify reality to let the latent image impressed on the film match what it was intended to represent in my mind.  As reality modification is the basic brick of my creative process, my work can maybe viewed as photography of ‘ephemeral sculptures.’  Indeed, I feel that this broad definition could fit.”

Pink Floyd: Echoes/Live at Pompeii-Part I

Slide Show: Echoes of a Modified Reality

(Please Click Image to View Slide Show)

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