"Reel To Real compares a scene from "W.", the new Oliver Stone film that follows the career of President George W. Bush, to footage of an actual presidential address that took place April 13, 2004."

• This was actually my favorite W. moment!

Uruknet.info - information from occupied Iraq: "Pakistan Daily published a list of Iraqi academics assassinated in Iraq during the US-led occupation

This is a particularly meaningful aspect of the Iraq genocide, the extermination of its intellectual classes. It wasn't enough to invade and occupy what was once the most advanced country in the Middle East and destroy its economy. Iraq had to be obliterated, its history re-written and its future denied.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative Roger Wright said in the October 2004 report: "Iraq used to have one of the finest school systems in the Middle East." Who remembers now that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) prize for eradicating illiteracy in 1982!"

Heute den ganzen Abend in der ARD. Hat vorher reichlich Lorbeeren kassiert. Wollen mal sehen.

It took me forever to check out what the hype was all about and I was pretty disappointed. Dr. Horrible is a villain, his nemesis is Captain Hammer and he is in love with a girl. Dr. Horrible has a blog and there were a bunch of free "webisodes" a while ago. By now there is nothing but merchandising and you gotta buy the dvd to watch this. It's something that marketing people would come up with to push some brand. Considering that Joss Whedon has done a thing or two to make entertainment more intelligent and written a few superhero comics himself, this is pretty weak. I understand that Whedon would rather like to be a musician. He's actually a good songwriter and the musical side sort of works, but it's still too nice, too Disney, too mainstream and simply not funny at all.

A smile here and there is all you get from me, Mister! This is a "please become a viral marketing success story" that could have been much better. You can't sell this shit to any TV station, but you can put it on the internet and give the fanboys something to talk about.

Spiegel TV sucht das Gespräch mit minderjährigem Pöbel.

Times Online has a great 007 Special this weekend. Check out the special features for the current exhibition: For Your Eyes Only: interactive preview "Times Online has teamed up with Imperial War Museum London to offer readers an interactive preview of its brand new exhibition. For Your Eyes Only runs until March 1, 2009."

Episode 1 - The Ring Masters Gladio - Episode 2 - The Puppeteers Gladio - Episode 3 - The Foot Soldiers

INFO: Gladio by Allan Francovich - BBC Timewatch (1992) "BBC series about a far-right secret army, operated by the CIA and MI6 through NATO, which killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades and other left wing groups. Known as 'stay-behinds' these armies were given access to military equipment which was supposed to be used for sabotage after a Soviet invasion. Instead it was used for massacres across mainland Europe as part of a CIA Strategy of Tension. Gladio killing sprees in Belgium and Italy were carried out for the purpose of frightening the national political classes into adopting U.S. policies."Director Allan Francovich Series Editor - Roy Davies

MORE INFO: en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org www.archive.org GLADIO, PARLANO GLI INGLESI Repubblica — 11 giugno 1992 pagina 43 sezione: TELEVISIONE ricerca.repubblica.it...

www.bilderberg.org

Glückwünsche per Rauchsignal nach nebenan!

Very interesting article at cjr.org: Overload! - Journalism’s battle for relevance in an ?age of too much information: "News is part of the atmosphere now, as pervasive—and in some ways as invasive—as advertising. It finds us in airport lounges and taxicabs, on our smart phones and PDAs, through e-mail providers and Internet search engines. Much of the time, it arrives unpackaged: headlines, updates, and articles are snatched from their original sources—often as soon as they’re published—and excerpted or aggregated on blogs, portals, social-networking sites, rss readers, and customizable homepages like My MSN, My Yahoo, myAOL, and iGoogle. These days, news comes at us in a flood of unrelated snippets. As Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, explains, “The economic logic of the age is unbundling.” But information without context is meaningless. It is incapable of informing and can make consumers feel lost. As the AP noted in its research report, “The irony in news fatigue is that these consumers felt helpless to change their news consumption at a time when they have more control and choice than ever before. When the news wore them down, participants in the study showed a tendency to passively receive versus actively seek news.”

An sich interessiert es kaum, was da in den Indien in jüngster Zeit passiert ist und der Ausbruch von Gewalt in dieser Woche interessiert nur, wenn es zumindest ein Opfer aus Deutschland gibt. So stottert sich die "Bild" halt was zusammen und die anderen machen auch irgendwie mit. Man selbst schaltete nach Feierabend die Glotze ein und es lief die schmierige Bambi-Preisverleihung oder alternativ ein unwichtiges Fußballspiel und dazu auf ntv der Börsenreport. Nur auf Phoenix gab es um 19 Uhr 30 eine halbe Stunde Berichterstattung, die halbwegs Sinn machte und ansonsten durfte man sich bei der BBC informieren oder auf CNN darauf warten, dass es endlich noch mehr Blut zu sehen gibt. Kamera drauf, wir brauchen Bilder für die Spätnachrichten. Katastrophenporno oder "Disaster Porn", wie die Kollegin Milly Getachew im New Statesman schreibt. Dabei kennen die Medien inzwischen keine Skrupel mehr. Unter dem Deckmantel des Mitgefühls werden die Bilder, die man haben will, schon irgendwie aus der Situtation rausgepresst. Beispielsweise in Somalia: "Somali doctors and nurses have expressed shock at the conduct of film crews in hospitals," report Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal of African Rights. "They rush through crowded corridors, leaping over stretchers, dashing to film the agony before it passes. They hold bedside vigils to record the moment of death."

PEBKAC is an acronym which stands for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair". The phrase is used by computer experts as a humorous way to describe user errors.

It involves posing nude with strategically placed games, consoles, controllers, etc.

Ha, ha, this is funny!

I just love Rocketboom's Know Your Meme !

Found by Dr. Watson.

Wikipedia: "The Yellow Book, published in London from 1894 to 1897 by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, later by John Lane alone, and edited by the American Henry Harland, was a quarterly literary periodical (priced at 5s.) that lent its name to the "Yellow" 1890s.

It was a leading journal of the British 1890s; to some degree associated with Aestheticism and Decadence, the magazine contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres, poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and reproductions of paintings. Aubrey Beardsley was its first art editor, and he has been credited with the idea of the yellow cover, with its association with French fiction of the period. He obtained works by such artists as Charles Conder, William Rothenstein, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert, and Philip Wilson Steer. "

All 13 volumes are available to download from www.archive.org in either djvu or pdf formats. Wikipedia has direct links.

Also on archive.org: The later work of Aubrey Beardsley

Birmingham Mail: "Castle Fine Art in the ICC, together with Castle Galleries in the Mailbox, Mill Lane in Solihull and Poplar Arcade, Touchwood, will be exhibiting the limited edition collection taken by photographer Philip Townsend.

The previously unseen collection includes a black and white shot of the band taken at ATV Studios in Birmingham in 1963.

Philip said: “This shot was taken at ATV Studios just before they appeared on Thank Your Lucky Stars, which was the first time they had appeared on television.

“They were plugging their first single Come On and it was the second and last time they were wearing these checked jackets, as their manager Loog Oldham stated: ‘they are not the image I want’.”

Can't wait to see this! Comedy Central Insider - A Colbert Xmas to Feature Elvis Costello, Feist, Toby Keith, John Legend, Willie Nelson and Jon Stewart!

The Colbertnation has some videos.

Where? Here! Read this: "You can choose from three basic lessons that start with a certain number of keys on the keyboard, and then, as you progress through the lessons, more keys are added to the mix to make things a little tougher. As a nice touch, it keeps live track of all your mistakes and your words-per-minute (wpm), and even creates graphs of your performance."

MTV: The internet damn-near gave the actor a standing ovation when news broke last month about Downey not only signing on for “Iron Man 2,” but also officially joining the cast of the absurdly-anticipated “Avengers” movie. “If we don’t get it right it’s really, really going to suck,” said Downey. “It has to be the crowning blow of Marvel’s best and brightest because it’s the hardest thing to get right. It’s tough to spin all the plates for one of these characters.”

"I'm not going back to America!" (Jack Bauer)

Wie, was, der knochenharte Geheimagent wird im nicht so richtig dolle angekündigten TV Movie plötzlich zum Obama im Felde?

Kurz vor der 7. Staffel ein Ausflug zu den Kindersoldaten in Afrika und da nützt dann auch das Handy nichts.

Erfrischende Renovierung und natürlich "testing ground" gen Kinoversion!

TRAILER AB!

Thanks, Flo! The Trailer is online!

I worked as a consultant/editor on this for a year! Cheers to Rirkrit!

Official synopsis by Raimar Stange: "Just say it – in his feature film "CHEW THE FAT“, 2008, Rirkrit Tiravanija meets up with twelve international artists of his own generation. He takes a stroll in the Californian desert with Andrea Zittel; in Berlin he visits Angela Bulloch, as well as the recently arrived Douglas Gordon. He relaxes with Elizabeth Peyton on her porch on Long Island, NY, before hooking up with Jorge Pardo in his spacious Los Angeles studio. Upping the pace of what begins like a roadmovie, he checks e-mails in New York with Liam Gillick, receives a visit in Thailand from Pierre Huyghe, and inspects Carsten Höller's birdcage in Stockholm. Then he enjoys a glass of wine in Paris with Philippe Parreno, and saunters along the Seine with Dominique Gonzales-Förster. Finally, with Tobias Rehberger, he rides a train across Germany. The only absence is Maurizio Cattalan, who is nonetheless present in everyone else's memories.

If this sounds varied and entertaining, that is exactly what it is. But the relaxed mood of these meetings in locations chosen by the artists themselves also makes for pleasantly focused yet far-reaching conversations. Tiravanija begins each talk by asking the artist to tell him about his or her motivation and art education. What happens next is left to chance: the topics covered in "Chew the fat“ range from the Football World Championships to current art projects; from street cleaning in Paris to structural changes in artists' working conditions since the 1990s. High and low, life and art are intentionally yet casually intermingled; participants discuss the value of art as a commodity and as entertainment; again and again the materialness of art objects is eclipsed by discussions of key temporal and spatial relations. While each one of the twelve conversations is unique, they share one aspect: playfully yet searchingly they adress reflections and ideas that have made art so fascinating since the 1990s.

Rirkrit Tiravanija made "Chew the fat“ in the context of twelve individual artist portraits created over the past several years. A must-see!

© Translation from German, Oct. 2008: Margret Powell-Joss"

ART FORUM REVIEW

Wow, that's what I call a slow news-day!

Wie allein die KünstlerInnen samt Kunst nur in die Kristallkugel reinpassen sollen... Vernissage und The Ball am Sa. 29. November um 20 Uhr Finissage und The Ball Ball am 31. Dezember 2008 ab 22 Uhr innerhalb der Ausstellungszeit gibt es jeden Freitag ab 20 Uhr den Salon Arbiträr mit DJ Catastrophe und wechsenden künstlerischen Aktionen Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, wir möchten Sie herzlich zur Vernissage der Ausstellung The Crystal Ball Ball, am Sa. den 29. November, in die Galerie Crystal Ball, Schönleinstrasse 7, in 10967 Berlin / Kreuzberg, einladen. Über Ihren Besuch freuen wir uns sehr. Mehr im Crystall Ball Blog

Die dritte Gruppenausstellung der Galerie Crystal Ball vereint Künstler des Programmes mit befreundeten Künstlern und Mitstreitern zu einer großen vielseitigen Präsentation künstlerischer Arbeiten. Die Ausstellung soll die zukünftige Galeriearbeit sichern helfen. Gleichzeitig dazu wird der Freundeskreis Kristallkugel unter der Schirmherrschaft von Svea Lena Kutschke aus der Taufe gehoben. Ich danke besonders allen Künstlern, die für diese Präsentation der Galerie Arbeiten gespendet haben und den ersten Mitgliedern des Freundeskreises Kristallkugel!

The third group exhibition of Crystal Ball associate artists of the program with good friends and companions of the gallery for a big versatile presentation of art works. The exhibition should help to secure the gallery work in the future. Parallel to this the Circle of Friends Kristallkugel is launched under the auspices of Svea Lena Kutschke. I want to thank the artist who participate or donate their works for this presentation and all of the debut members of the Circle of friends Kristallkugel!

Teilnehmende Künstler sind: Julia Baier, Norbert Bauer, Thomas Behling, Matthias Bösche, Marion Bösen, Francoise Cactus, Alexander Callsen, Stefan Demming, Marcia Farquhar, Anja Fußbach, Elke Graalfs, Marco Goldenstein, Christian Haake, Mareike Hube, Juwelia, Aylin Kayser, Andreas Kotulla, Ins A Kromminga, Max Müller, Wolfgang Müller, Astrid Küver, Jonathan Kroll, Monika Müller Kroll, Henrik Jacob, Michael Jungblut, Lydia Karstadt, Martin Löhr, Stu Mead, Kay Michalak, J. Maizlish Mole, Sugár Meliton, Flowrian Pauly, Christian Metzner, Hannes Niepold, Veronika Schumacher, Inhalt und Sinn, Alexander Steffens, Annette Stemmann, Zoe Thorne, Silke Thoss, Bob Tooke, Heike Walter, Ole Wulfers, Barbara Wagner, Daniela Weber, Sabine Wewer, Ming Wong und weitere

Galerie Crystal Ball Manfred Kirschner Schönleinstrasse 7 10967 Berlin / Kreuzberg www.galeriecrystalball.de

U Bahn Linie 8, Station Schönleinstrasse Di, So: 15- 20 Uhr Fr: 15- 24 Uhr und nach Vereinbarung

Internet, Du bist zu langsam!

Found over here: This Modern Life

ART: "Zehn Vorurteile über Kunst und Islam und was davon zu halten ist. "

Via rebelart

James Bond war immer eine einfache Formel: die besten Stunts, die wahnsinnigsten Sets, coole Schurken, schöne Frauen und Technik-Gadgets. Okay, das alles ging für "Casino Royale" über Bord, M war schon vorher eine Frau und John Cleese hat als "comic relief" auch nicht so richtig gezündet, aber muss man die Marke James Bond deswegen so verwässern, dass davon nichts mehr übrig bleibt? Sie haben auch Superman einen Technodress verpasst und am Ende bekam der Mann nach einem Jahr den alten Anzug zurück. Never change a winning team.

Mag "Quantum of Solace" auch noch so erfolgreich sein, ich habe mich nur mäßig amüsiert und dachte, hey, warum spielt nicht stattdessen Axl Rose den Superschurken aus Amerika, "Chinese Democracy" wäre als Soundtrack durchgewunken worden (ey, "live and let die"...) , man hätte sich über die 80er amüsiert, etwas "tongue in cheek", wäre gegangen...

Stattdessen eine ironiefreie Endlosverfolgungsjagd mit hölzernen Gesichtern, pseudokritische Amerika-Kritik und CGI-Anleihen. Wenn wir Bond wollen, wollen wir die verdammt besten Stunts und die verflucht besten Kameraleute aller Zeiten und nicht irgend so ein Computergezuckel. Es sollte "echt" wirken oder es ist nicht James Bond.

Und der neue "James Bond" ist soviel James Bond wie Batman noch Batman war als er zwischendurch "Azrael" hieß und eine Technorüstung trug. Tarzan im Jeansanzug funktioniert nicht (just don't change the original design, ok?)

Und für "Chinese Democracy" gehören einige Hosenboden versohlt. Sowas macht man heutzutage nicht mehr und vor allem gibt man für solch pubertären Unsinn nicht mehr soviel Geld aus.

Tatsächlich ganz lustig! Gibt ja sonst keine Satire in Deutschland... Die aktuelle Folge (Youtube) ist nicht so richtig stark, aber die Typen sind auf dem richtigen Weg. Eigentlich ganz okay....