“This is how Maurice Sendak sometimes sent his letters. Just imagine getting one.” (via Letters Of Note)
![theatlantic:
The Cabin in the Woods Disembowels the Slasher Film
Stop me if you’ve seen this one: A handful of attractive young folks representing immediately recognizable types—the good girl, the sexy girl, the jock, the decent guy, the stoner—plan a weekend of partying at a remote cabin in the woods. When they arrive, though, something timeless and implacable begins stalking and brutally slaughtering them one by one. Liquor-fueled rounds of “truth or dare” and displays of nubile flesh give way to screaming and running and bleeding and dying.
On second thought, don’t stop me. Even if you’ve seen this one—even if you’ve seen it over and over again—you haven’t seen this one, this The Cabin in the Woods. Produced by Joss Whedon, who also co-wrote with director (and longtime Whedonite) Drew Goddard, the movie is a delightful demolition of the horror genre, a tale that subverts not only its own terrors, but those of pretty much every scary movie you’ve ever seen. Why do the protagonists of these films always choose the worst moment and locale to have sex? Why do they split up when it’s evident they should stick together? The Cabin in the Woods at last offers answers.
This is a movie best seen with a minimum of foreknowledge, so I’ll spoil as little as possible. (I’d strongly recommend avoiding the trailer, which reveals a good deal more than I will.) Suffice to say that there are two interwoven narratives taking place at once: the one in the woods with the kids (among them Kristen Connolly and Thor’s Chris Hemsworth); and another, at a secret bunker of the military-industrial complex, where two beleaguered company men (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford), along with a large cadre of technicians, accountants, interns, and various other drones, are hard at work, doing—well, if I told you what they were doing, someone (not me) would presumably have to kill you.
Read more. [Image: Lionsgate]
A message from this Joss Whedon fanboy to Tumblr: The Cabin in the Woods is excellent.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2fpswegQE1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
The Cabin in the Woods Disembowels the Slasher Film
Stop me if you’ve seen this one: A handful of attractive young folks representing immediately recognizable types—the good girl, the sexy girl, the jock, the decent guy, the stoner—plan a weekend of partying at a remote cabin in the woods. When they arrive, though, something timeless and implacable begins stalking and brutally slaughtering them one by one. Liquor-fueled rounds of “truth or dare” and displays of nubile flesh give way to screaming and running and bleeding and dying.
On second thought, don’t stop me. Even if you’ve seen this one—even if you’ve seen it over and over again—you haven’t seen this one, this The Cabin in the Woods. Produced by Joss Whedon, who also co-wrote with director (and longtime Whedonite) Drew Goddard, the movie is a delightful demolition of the horror genre, a tale that subverts not only its own terrors, but those of pretty much every scary movie you’ve ever seen. Why do the protagonists of these films always choose the worst moment and locale to have sex? Why do they split up when it’s evident they should stick together? The Cabin in the Woods at last offers answers.
This is a movie best seen with a minimum of foreknowledge, so I’ll spoil as little as possible. (I’d strongly recommend avoiding the trailer, which reveals a good deal more than I will.) Suffice to say that there are two interwoven narratives taking place at once: the one in the woods with the kids (among them Kristen Connolly and Thor’s Chris Hemsworth); and another, at a secret bunker of the military-industrial complex, where two beleaguered company men (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford), along with a large cadre of technicians, accountants, interns, and various other drones, are hard at work, doing—well, if I told you what they were doing, someone (not me) would presumably have to kill you.
Read more. [Image: Lionsgate]
A message from this Joss Whedon fanboy to Tumblr: The Cabin in the Woods is excellent.
New Van Gogh painting discovered
X-ray technology has revealed that a painting dismissed as the work of an unknown artist is actually by Vincent Van Gogh. “Still Life with Meadow Flowers and Roses,” which hangs in the Kroeller-Mueller Museum in the Netherlands, was examined and an underpainting of two wrestlers was revealed underneath the flowers. This allowed historians to confirm that the painting is by Van Gogh, the AP reports.
The painting was originally thought to be by Van Gogh, but it was dismissed from his catalogue in 2003 after doubts about its origins. It was thought to be too large, with the signature in the wrong corner. The painting was created during a period during which the artist lived with his brother in Paris, beginning in 1886. Letters from Van Gogh to his brother mention the painting of the wrestlers, which helped historians put the clues together.
This discovery follows last week’s revelation that a fresco by Leonardo da Vinci may have been found behind a false wall in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. Researchers have drilled holes in an existing fresco on the false wall, and discovered an air pocket that may lead to da Vinci’s ““The Battle of Anghiari.&
Image Description: Curators prep and test displays from the Art of Video Games exhibit, which opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Friday, March 16. For videos, a list of the featured games, interviews with curators, and a schedule where the show will be travelling in the future, visit the official exhibit site.
Photos from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Take that, Roger Ebert!
“This one above looks to me like a flying cat with wings who’s carrying a whip. So deep.”
(via Tiny Crab Unintentionally Makes Awesome Sand Art (Photos) : TreeHugger)
CRABS made this!! Watch the video to find out how.
Welcome TreeHugger.com to Tumblr! An important follow.
(via genuine chicago hot dog by BettyTurbo on Etsy)
I’m complaining to Mr. Madillac about how we don’t have enough art up on our walls. HUGE fucking apartment, and like 4 pictures up. I HATE that shit. So my Christmas list is basically just art Art ART. I love kitchens that have image of food on the walls, and this is doubly appropriate because it’s regional and 100% true.
Beautiful art and truth.
As a follow-up to this post, I present: Gummi Stonehenge.
The first three are without the flash; the last four are with the flash.
I am currently waiting in 8-bit line to participate in Marina Abramović’s “The Artist Is Present.”
I’m at the end of the line.
Edit: Picture 2 - Check out this guy strolling up like it’s no big deal
Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’
The Independent, from 22 October 1995:
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.” As for the artists themselves, many were ex-communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.
[…]
Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled “Advancing American Art”, with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: “I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash.” The tour had to be cancelled.
The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.
The connection is not quite as odd as it might appear. At this time the new agency, staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover’s FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.
What.
