Saturday, September 27, 2008

I picture my epitaph: 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.'


For his strong support of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 (and effective use of television commercials in California), Newman was 19th on Richard Nixon's enemies list. Something he commented "Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?"




Paul Newman, screen legend, superstar, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, was born in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a successful sporting goods store owner. He acted in grade school and high school plays and after being disharged from the navy in 1946 enrolled at Kenyon College. After graduation he spent a year at the Yale Drama School and then headed to New York, where he attended the famed New York Actors Studio. Classically handsome and with a super abundance of sex appeal, television parts came easily and, after his first Broadway appearance in "Picnic" (1953), he was offered a movie contract by Warner Brothers. His first film, The Silver Chalice (1954) was nearly his last. He considered his performance in this costume epic to be so bad that he took out a full-page ad in a trade paper apologizing for it to anyone who might have seen it. He fared much better in his next effort, Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), in which he portrayed boxer Rocky Graziano and drew raves from the critics for his briliant performance. He went on to become one of the top box office draws of the 1960s, starring in such superior films as The Hustler (1961), The Prize (1963), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). He also produced and directed many quality films, including Rachel, Rachel (1968) in which he directed wife Joanne Woodward and which received an Oscar nomination for best picture. Nominated nine times for a best actor Oscar, he finally took one home for his performance as an aging pool shark in The Color of Money (1986). Though well into his 70s as the century drew to a close, Newman still commanded lead roles in films such as Message in a Bottle (1999). He lives with his wife in Westport, Connecticut. A caring and supremely generous man, he is the founder of "Newman's Own" a successful line of food products that has earned in excess of $100 million, every penny of which the philanthropic movie icon has donated to charity. Renowned for his sense of humor, in 1998 he quipped that he was a little embarrassed to see his salad dressing grossing more than his movies.
On September 26th, 2008, Newman died at his long-time home in Westport, Connecticut succumbing to complications arising from lung cancer.


Mini Bio By: Tom McDonough



Monday, September 15, 2008

ABSENT MINDS / POISSAOLEVA MIELI

by Renja Leino



Fascination and frustration are some words to describe my feelings as a starting point to this new series of photographs. For quite a long time I have been looking at people working by their computers, watching TV, playing PlayStation games. It is almost the same, a strange expression on their face when they are inside a world of their own; faces in foreign landscape. They are often serious; sometimes some familiar feelings can be visible on their faces. People are for sure physically present, but somehow their mind is absent. The source, the box with electricity, pixels, magical light, some kind of Camera Obscura or Lucida, is catching their full concentration.



The phenomenon is global. No national borders exist when surfing abroad and around. Imaginary landscapes are visited, even real human contacts are made through the earth. All this happens within seconds.

My new work is an attempt to study this phenomenon of our time. For me it is not clear at all where all these electronic signals and impulses of light are leading us. Digital media is filling our rooms and our minds: The question is, with what.

Method: I use a mobile phone. People who I want to photograph can just relax because of this simple camera. Usually they even forget my presence because of the strange power of these machines they are working or playing with.



Pigment Ink Jet prints. Height 140 x180 cm, glossy lamination.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

MC TXT

Interactive Freestyle Rap



This is the latest project by TXTual healing, the ongoing work of Paul Notzold. Text message enabled freestyle rap. The live release was at BLVD in Manhattan. An audience text messages in the content that they want the MC’s to freestyle from. The messages are fed to the MC’s via a monitor on the stage, the audience sees the messages go up on a large display so they can follow along. The MC’s have no idea what’s coming next.

The Next performance is Thursday Sept 11th. 10 pm at Galapagos in Williamsburg.



If you missed the previous performance at BLVD, after the jump is a taste of what went down...









more

Monday, September 08, 2008

God Bless Romain Bernardie James

Me As seen by M.G



tribute
yes you know who you are



Mickey Mouse and me
Picture of me by Maroussia with Andre’s artwork at Grand Palais


Maroussia reloaded


God Bless Romain B James is the photoblog of Romain Bernardie James and Marion Paris, an ongoing collection of charming, whimsical and wonderful pics.




Subjective Camera part. 3




Maria



Wassup Guy?
OK i just bought the last Guy Bourdin’s book and i like it.



Worse



Bruce Nauman 1974



Philosophy


Bird


STOLEN IV



STOLEN



Rachel



all pics © Romain Bernardie James and Marion Paris

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

This Post Not Made In Chrome

Google's EULA Sucks

David Loschiavo points to the fact that Google's Chrome Terms of Service take out a royalty-free license for Google of any content submitted by users over the internet.

snippet:
If you're like every other geek, you were one of the many people who downloaded Google Chrome within minutes of it's 3:00PM EST release today. There's no doubt about it -- Chrome is ridiculously faster than Firefox and IE. But you, like virtually every computer user out there, probably didn't even bother to gloss over the Chrome Terms of Service.

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.


In other words, by posting anything (via Chrome) to your blog(s), any forum, video site, myspace, itunes, or any other site that might happen to be supporting you, Google can use your work without paying you a dime. They can go and edit it all they want. Even further, you're claiming that you have the power to grant these rights. So no one who works for Conde Nast (Wired, Arstechnica), TechCrunch, Gawker, any of the other big web publishers, or a university where the employee is performing research can agree to the Chrome ToS because they most likely don't have the right to give a license to the intellectual property (IP) they produce....

For those of you who are thinking this applies only to Google sites like blogger and gmail, read section 1.1
Your use of Google's products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the "Services" in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Google....

And for the record, Microsoft tried this years ago with MSN messenger, where MS got an irrevocable perpetual license to all IP that passed through MSN messenger, and the net basically revolted.

With more and more apps being shifted into web browsers, this is almost like MS claiming that it gets a license to any document in MS Word, Powerpoint, or Excel.

full article here