Monthly Archives: April 2010

Feelings are facts.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Mad linkage:

Clive Owen to star in Intruders, the next from 28 Weeks Later‘s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

An interview with Sam Lipsyte.

On translating Don Quixote.

Images are from Olafur Eliasson and Ma Yansong’s “Feelings Are Facts,” an art exhibit currently on display now at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing from now until June, 2010.

I first noticed these striking images via Karina Wolf’s tumblr.

But you can find out more about the incredibly interesting looking art project over at designboom.

Space shuttle performs incredibly back flip.

John Paul Stevens is retiring.

For his next project, Spike Jonze is teaming up with Arcade Fire.

“Fake Hills” by MAD architects.

Passion Pit “The Reeling” (Miike Snow remix).

President Obama goes nuclear over Sarah Palin.

Sleeping insects covered in dew.

The photography of Pierre Wayser.

I can absolutely not get down with this Kiely Williams video/song. Something about date rape just doesn’t have a beat I can dance to, you know?

Sonzai-kan.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Three quotes from “The Man Who Made A Copy Of Himself,” an article about Hiroshi Ishiguro, a Japanese roboticist who’s made a robot double of himself. The article starts like this:

Hiroshi Ishiguro, a roboticist at Osaka University, in Japan, has, as you might expect, built many robots. But his latest aren’t run-of-the-mill automatons. Ishiguro’s recent creations look like normal people. One is an android version of a middle-aged family man—himself.

And then:

By building humanlike robots Ishiguro hopes to decipher what the Japanese call sonzaikan—the feeling of being in the presence of a human being. Where does the sense of humanness come from? And can you convey those qualities with a robot?

from here.

And then:

Hiroshi Ishiguro stomps on the accelerator. The black Mazda RX-8 roars onto the highway, the heavy-metal Scorpions blasting from the speakers. We’re driving to Osaka University’s Toyonaka Campus. Ishiguro is wearing aviator sunglasses, black polyester pants, a black vest on top of a black shirt, along with a black belt, socks, and shoes.

“Give me question,” he says, his eyes fixed on the road.

I ask whether he always dresses in black.

“Why do you change your clothes?” he says. “Do you change your name? So why do you change your clothes? Name is identity. Face is identity. But the majority of your [appearance] comes from your clothes. You should not change your clothes. Do you agree?”

I meekly suggest that all-black attire might get a bit hot in the summer.

“We have air conditioners,” he says. “Next question.”

Photo by Makota Ishida.

Mad linkage:

Who killed more people in the bible, God or Satan?

The 5 creepiest unsolved mysteries that nobody can explain.

Social robots and Mechanical Love.

RIP Malcolm McLaren.

If Peanut links to it, it must be true: Smart women are bigger drinkers.

Conan O’Brien on the internet.

Ray Kurzweil, Caprica, and the upcoming Singularity.

First animals to live without oxygen discovered.

The grand unified theory of artificial intelligence.

Megan Fox protests school budget cuts with comedy.

Among some talk of you and me…

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, to arrive where you are, to get from where you are not…

You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know you must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know, and what you own is what you do not own, and where you are is where you are not.

The words above are from “East Coker” by T. S. Eliot, from Four Quartets. Pictures from here, here, here, and here. And, below, via Alex Fischer.

Desmond of two worlds!

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Or, “See You In Another Life, Brotha!”

Last night Desmond finally properly returned to the world of Lost and I do believe that he not only brought some of his crazy Scottish magic with him, but he also brought the endgame we’ve all been eagerly anticipating/dreading.

And with his return last night, there came not only a new spin on this season’s recurring flash sideways action, but some complicated questions and theories about whether anyone on this show will ever be allowed to live “Happy Ever After.”

Ah, poor Desmond. I’ve said it many a time before, but I truly believe that he lingers somewhere at the living, breathing, constantly raw heart of this show, that he’s immersed in the DNA of Lost like permanent alcohol poisoning. At so many points in his life he’s been not only lost himself, but a constant loser, yet still we love him. He is our sad, wayward Homeric hero and we root for him endlessly, always on the edge of our seat in his continuing quest to return to his Penelope and his Ithaca. And two years ago he found her, only to discover at the end of last season and here in the midpoint of this one that his particular odyssey is not through him.

If this season of Lost, with the continue flash sideways motif going on, has been about, it’s parallels and opposites. Whereas Island Des has always been a coward struggling to find circumstances to make him better, always been a man out of work, a man whose relationships define him more than anything, particularly his love for Penny and the struggle for approval from her father, Charles Widmore. With that family it’s always been a question of worthiness. Widmore never saw Desmond as worthy of his daughter, let alone his fucking Scotch. And though Penny was there, alive and breathing in the flesh in Desmond’s arms so many times, he still went out into the world and struggled to be worthy of her.

Of course there’s parallels to Jack’s love for Kate there. Kate was right there in front of him but Jack was willing to blow up a nuclear bomb to start over again, to be worthy of her (or to get the fuck away from her once and for all). And Desmond wasn’t necessarily as extreme enough as a nuclear weapon, but for him it was about winning a race around the world, besting her father in one of his own challenges. That fails, of course, and somehow Desmond discovers a vastly more important calling in life: Saving the world by pressing a button every 108 minutes for three years.

And then there’s Sideways Desmond! He’s a man defined by his work, both immersed in his materialistic joys and apart from the world that offers them, and he’s beloved by his employer/father figure, Charles Widmore.

You just know that 60 year old MacCutcheon tastes amazing.

And of course Charlie comes into his life again, and he ruins it all again.

from here.

Well, Charlie, and all those crazy electromagnetics.

This is a complicated episode, both in itself and what it means for the future for Lost, and the way it’s evolved from the show’s past and complicated mythology so far. Parallels and opposites: The worst three words that Desmond could ever face in his life, “NOT PENNY’S BOAT,” mean something powerfully different in the Sideways World, a call to something else he should be struggling to find. His odyssey is just beginning and his Penelope is just out there waiting for him. He now needs to seek out what Charlie called, “spectacular, consciousness altering love.”

But then again, Charlie’s a fucking junkie. What the hell does he know?

And so many wonderful returns: Fisher Stevens as George Minkowski, his driver who wants to find him some “companionship,” Jeremy Davies as Daniel Widmore/Faraday, and Finnoula Flanagan as Eloise Widmore/Hawking. Everyone seems to know something more than Desmond, to know that he’s not ready yet for… something, but in some way they’re going to aid him on his quest. Faraday is a musician (one who wants to combine classic music with modern rock) in this Sideways timeline, which was perhaps his heart’s desire even if his dreaming destiny is science, but I loved the philosophical ramblings he shared with Desmond. This is not the world that they were meant to have, he says. Something’s been changed. Like the after of a nuclear weapon going off. Do you want to blow up a nuclear bomb? Desmond asks. I think I already have, Widmore/Faraday replies.

And then Desmond meets the woman of his dreams, the love of his life in another life. Parallels and opposites: This time she’s the one running the tour de stade. She probably has a lot of frustrations to vent (she is, sadly, stuck in Flash Forward at least through this season, after all).

Unrelated, I think this episode highlights a strong difference between Americans and Europeans…

Americans drink and they get drunk. The Eurotrash have really developed and mastered the skill to just keep drinking. Pouring yourself a glass of whiskey is just an extension of your hand, something you just do, like breathing, eating, or genital manipulation. It’s an ability we used to have, but clearly lost. It’s something magical that I think we’ve really lost since the days of the swinging 60s and the era of Mad Men.

It’s nice to have you back, Penny.

Other than that… There’s so much you could say about this episode, about all of it, all over the spectrum. Too much. I typically wouldn’t recommend Jeff Jensen’s Lost ramblings over Entertainment Weekly because they’re usually pretty asinine, but he brings up some good thoughts in his write up about last night’s “Happy Ever After.” Also, I’ll begrudgingly credit him with a good phrasing for the solenoid/toroidal coil chamber room in which Charles Widmore conducts his electromagnetic experiment on Desmond: “Quantum Sweat Lodge.”

from here.

And I tell you, all those years ago, I wish that Hurley hadn’t been reading the Flash/Green Lantern team up comic (the one that teased the audience with the notion of polar bears), but had instead been reading the classic Gardner Fox/Carmine Infantino story, “Flash Of Two Worlds.” It’s the story that pretty much created the DC Comics Multiverse and gave birth to a modern look back at the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics (and has been obsessed over by numerous prominent Scottish comic book writers since). Thought the conversation about the Flash back in “Catch 22″ is a lot funnier to me now. Desmond is a man in two worlds now, he is both Barry Allen and Jay Garrick now. That is, Desmond is the Flash, and things are going to start moving faster now…

…because now the end looms larger still. Things are set in motion, and timetables are being advanced all over the place. Sayid is running around killing people all willy nilly. Desmond’s able to cross his consciousness between two worlds, and seems to have found a mission in both. We’re going somewhere now, but where? Who can say? And who knows in what direction. Up? Down? Forwards or backwards? Or perhaps Sideways.

…In Translation.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Japan unveils humanoid robot that laughs and smiles.

Weekend At Bernies 3!

Holy fucking shit, there’s going to be a 2010 Lollapalooza.

Virtual hugs. Seriously.

Pictures of 16 year old Elian Gonzalez in a military uniform drive the Internet crazy.

Today’s mad linkage comes with a pictorial refresher for last week’s episode of Lost, with pictures courtesy of Videogum, which we discovered via Lola.

Erykah Badu charged with disorderly conduct for naked video.

The parents of bullies.

The right time and place for a conservative victory.

Ryan Gosling gives advice on how to get booty.

George Lucas to  team up with writers from Daily Show and Robot Chicken for a Star Wars sitcom.

Air Force to launch robotic winged space plane.

There are 4 women in orbit right this minute.

Female African-American Robot Designers.

What exactly is a Kraken? And why should he be released?

Hairless “Oriental Yeti” stumps experts.

10 crazy medical inventions that (thankfully) never caught on.

20 strange and mysterious medical syndromes.

“Holy Ghost” relocates his flock to Montana.

A preview for the next episode of Doctor Who, “The Beast Below.”

The Pentagon springs a WikiLeak.

Apparently there’s a certain four-letter word in tonight’s Lost that’s super important.

What happened to the water on Mars?

When the telepaths attack!

Early nearly cut off in machete attack!

Court rules against net neutrality!

Miniature Eiffel Tower attacked!

My body is a cage.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

A video for Arcade Fire’s “My Body Is A Cage” using scenes from Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western Once Upon A Time In The West. Lovely. Via: J. Tyler Helmes.

I really like his videos for Radiohead’s “All I Need” and Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks” as well, which isn’t available online anymore sadly..

Heart in a cage.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

We here at Counterforce have decided – and let’s face it, sometimes we just know better – that your life would be both drastically and dramatically different if today it included quotes from one of America’s most vital thespians and national treasures: Nic Cage.

“Passion is very important to me. If you stop enjoying things, you’ve got to look at it, because it can lead to all kinds of depressing scenarios.”

“There’s a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.”

from here.

“I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion.”

“One of the first signs of being depressed is that you lose interest in things. That`s why I think it is important to stay passionate.”

from Nic Cage As Everyone!

“Hollywood didn’t know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild.”

On how sometimes he goes way over the top and sometimes he holds back:

“Thank you for noticing, because first of all, it’s difficult to talk about the work, right? Because when you talk about the work, it’s kind of stupid because the work speaks for itself. I don’t want to name it, because when you name it, if you name it then it loses its mystery. If I tell you exactly what I was thinking, or what I was up to – and I have been guilty of that – then you lose your secret connection with the work of art. And I digress, but I went on Dick Cavett many years ago and met Miles Davis. And I was talking about things like art synthesis and Picasso and you can do with acting what he did, or with music, and Miles came out and he got it, you know, he was looking at me, he gave me this, like – he nodded and he winked at me. Miles Davis, you know. And we were sharing the trumpet. And ever since then, because he accepted whatever my philosophy was, I believe that I wanted to approach acting as jazz. And so he became like a surrealist father of sorts, along with Walt Disney. And I thought, ‘Okay. Well, this time, I’m going to just let anything come out, whatever it may be.’ Like Bad Lieutenant, you know. But sometimes, it’s really thought out and constructed and carefully thought out, like Adaptation. So I always like to mix it up.”

“As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be more harmonious.”

On his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley:

“I`m sad about this, but we shouldn’t have been married in the first place.”

“I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don`t want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus – a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.”

“Shock is still fun. I won’t ever shut the door on it.”

“[Pablo Picasso] said art is a lie that tells the truth. What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

“They say, ‘Evil prevails when good men fail to act.’ What they ought to say is, ‘Evil prevails.’”

-from one of his most underrated movies, Lord Of War.

“I remember when I met Johnny Depp, he was a guitar player from Florida, and he had no idea he could be an actor. I said, ‘I really think you are an actor, that you have that ability.’ That was just from playing one game of Monopoly with him. I sent him to my agent and he has gone on to carve out a successful career.”

“I think I jump around more when I`m alone.”

Referring to his family:

“It’s a family that’s loaded with grudges and passion. We come from a long line of robbers and highwaymen in Italy, you know. Killers, even.”

from, once again, Nic Cage As Everyone.

“To be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new.”

Easter ha ha.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

from here and Underpants Jail.

from here.

My God, it’s full of stars!

Posted by Maria Diaz & Marco Sparks on

As with far too many of the crazy things that happen at Counterforce, some ideas get started when we sit around and chat. Take last night, for example…

Continue reading →

Like a name in a fairy tale…

Posted by Marco Sparks on

After having waited for what has felt like an eternity, here’s just a few thoughts on tonight’ s episode of Doctor Who, “The Eleventh Hour,” the first new episode of series 5, and the first to properly feature the new Doctor, the new companion, the new TARDIS and new sonic screwdriver and new titles and themes and new everything!

Actually, I don’t want to say a whole lot about this episode. Partly because I’m still in shock from it, of sorts, and part because I want to reserve thoughts for next week’s episode. But what I can tell you about tonight’s episode is that it’s good. Really good. A bit cheesy and silly in places, but also dark and epic in other places.

It literally starts moments after where we last saw the Doctor, having just regenerated from David Tennant/The Tenth Doctor into Matt Smith/The Eleventh Doctor, and now the TARDIS, which is wild and out of control and on fire is spiriting over London at ludicrous speed! And the Doctor is hanging out the side, clinging for dear life!

From there he eventually crashes in the back yard of a little Scottish girl in an English village, Amelia Pond, the girl who has a name like something out of a fairy tale. Boy, does she ever. The fearless little girl helps this strange man sort out his cravings (apples, yogurt, bacon, beans, and toast don’t work, but fish sticks dipped in custard do) and then he helps her investigate the only thing that does scare her: the mysterious ever growing crack in her bedroom’s wall.

From there, the Doctor heads into the TARDIS, needing to fly it five minutes into the future to sort out it’s damaged engines, but doesn’t return til 12 years later. Amy Pond’s all grown up and hot, but has suffered from years from the damage inflicted on her by her “imaginary friend,” the Doctor, and the potential adventures she never got to share with him. Oh, and now Amy’s a kissogram girl, which is both exactly what it sounds like, and also cutesy Brit talk for a stripper.

I’ll stop there, but the story proceeds in classic opening season style for Doctor Who: There’s an alien prisoner on the loose in the house, and a hidden room in Amy’s house. The Doctor’s TARDIS is broken, and soon so is his sonic screwdriver. He’s still going through the pangs of regeneration, still unaware even of what he looks like, and on top of it, he was 20 minutes to save the Earth from being incinerated.

The episode reminded me quite a bit of series 3′s “Smith And Jones” in that the story was good, but not great, but it was a proper romp of an adventure, and the interplay and introductions between the characters were fantastic. Amy goes off for adventures in time and space with the Doctor on the eve of her wedding to her male nurse boyfriend, and you can tell that that’s going to have dark consequences as the season progresses. Nice cameo by Patrick Moore, as well. The “arc words” seeded into this series will seemingly be “Silence will fall” and something called “the Pandorica.” How gloriously sci fi. I like how Moffat is firing on all his own cylinders, but also keeping the things from Russell T. Davies’ tenure that really worked.

…except for the new title/credits sequence. The visuals aren’t terrible, but what they’ve done to the theme song is fucking atrocious. The bombast is gone. The excitement and thrill of that music smashing to life has been replaced with… a casio demo for something not terribly interesting. Glad that they didn’t actually go with the old school giant image of Matt Smith’s head floating there in the vortex.

As for Matt Smith’s Doctor… Not bad, not terrible at all. He’s still growing on me, aided by the fact that I think that Matt Smith genuinely appears to be a weird and awkward person and the writing that supports him is still pretty amazing. The sequence in which we’re reintroduced to the character of the titular Time Lord himself only to have Smith literally burst through and take his place among his predecessors worked as beautifully as it should’ve. I’m sure I’ll have more to say as this series floats on.

from here.

But before I go… My crazy theory about the “new spin” on the Doctor/companion relationship this year: I believe we’re going to see the Doctor, for the first time ever, develop an unrequited crush on Amy Pond. I know I certainly would were I in his suspenders/braces and bow tie.

Next up: The future, the Smilers, and all aboard the Starship UK!