MOVIES IN THEATERS OCTOBER 3, 2008

AN AMERICAN CAROL

Actors/Actresses: Kelsey Grammer, Kevin Farley, Trace Adkins, Jon Voight, Leslie Nielsen, Dennis Hopper

Synopsis: An American Carol is a comedy film for the conservatives that spoofs contemporary culture, particularly Hollywood. The film uses the framework of A Christmas Carol but moves the setting of the story from Christmas to Independence Day.

Left-wing activist and filmmaker Michael Malone (a parody of Michael Moore) is campaigning to end the celebration of the Fourth of July. Malone truculently argues to the American people that America’s past and present are offensive, and therefore should not be celebrated. Malone is then visited by three ghosts, George Washington, George S. Patton, and John F. Kennedy, who try to make him rethink his view of America.

The character Michael Malone is a parody of the American filmmaker, author, and political commentator Michael Moore. On September 5, 2008 Moore was a guest on Larry King Live and was shown a clip from the film where Malone (while lying down on his bed, drinking a Big Gulp and watching archival footage of JFK’s inaugural address) is startled by JFK, who materializes out of Malone’s television screen, and confronts him on his misguided views of American History. Moore said that he was vaguely familiar with the film, and then jokingly said he thought it was Viggo Mortensen that would be portraying him. When King asked him his opinion, Moore shrugged his shoulders and said “I hope it’s funny.”

Movie Website: americancarol.com

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Genre: Comedy

Actors/Actresses: Piper Perabo, Manolo Cardona, Jamie Lee Curtis, Eugenio Derbez, Andy Garcia, Placido Domingo, George Lopez, Edward James Olmos, Paul Rodriguez, Cheech Marin, Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo, Luis Guzman, Drew Barrymore

Synopsis: A pampered Beverly Hills Chihuahua named Chloe finds herself accidentally lost in the mean streets of Mexico without a day spa or Rodeo Drive boutique anywhere in sight. Now alone for the first time in her spoiled life, she must rely on some unexpected new friends — including a street-hardened German Shepherd named Delgado and an amorous pup named Papi — to lend her a paw and help her to find her inner strength on their incredible journey back home.

Movie Website: Disney.com/Chihuahua

Blindness

Genre: Psychological Thriller

MPAA Rating: R

Trailer

Movie Website: Blindness-themovie.com

Actors/Actresses: Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sandra Oh, Danny Glover

Synopsis: When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine. “Blindness,” starring Academy Award®-nominee Julianne Moore, Gael García Bernal, Mark Ruffalo, Sandra Oh and Danny Glover, is a psychological thriller about the fragility of mankind. Adapted from Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s masterwork, the film is directed by Academy Award®-nominee Fernando Meirelles (”City of God”) from a screenplay by Tony Award-winner Don McKellar (”The Drowsy Chaperone”).

The World

Emo history (part 1)

Emotional-punk music's history is highly debatable, both because bands that have been part of the "emo" movement shun the term and try to distance themselves and because there is no clear-cut beginning to or emergence of the movement itself.

Most emo-privy people mark the emergence of the genre as being in 1984, when the band Rites of Spring began playing in Washington, D.C. In a surprising deviation from standard punk music, the RoS lead singer produced heavily emotion-laden lyrics, dangerously exposing himself and his personal feelings in each song. There was no precedent for this sort of direct vulnerability, with the closest comparable exposure being country/western music, in which singers lamented about dying dogs and insufferable in-laws. However, emo made the pain even more personal, as the singers exposed not those around them but themselves through their heart-wrenching tales of woe.

With the incorporation of Rites of Spring into the Washington, D.C. underground scene, emo became acceptable, and copycats followed. The next band to make a substantial impact through emo was Moss Icon, who combined Rites of Spring's lyrical heartbreak with traditional punk's energy, drawing new, excited audiences with its adopted intensity. As the music began to reach more and more people, the movement grew, and emotional-punk music began to spawn its own subculture in the early 1990s.

By the late '90s, the American teen's appetite for hardcore had somewhat subsided, replaced by a craving for semi-commercialized punk pop. The emo movement turned away from its hardcore roots and began to incorporate twinkling guitar or piano riffs, and melodies became more heavily emphasized as the music moved away from its "screamo" past. The music during the 1990s became more mainstream than ever, and by the millenium arguably "emo" bands were garnering regular rotation on MTV and radio stations nationwide.

Since emo emerged from the underground and came into the national spotlight, it has become more and more indistinguishable from its punk-pop counterpart, which is what has become of the original punk movement that spawned the emotional-punk subgenre. Modern pop is currently shying away from the boy bands and dance divas of the late '90s and early millenium, instead steadily moving toward more of a punk sound and overall culture. As these two (sub)genres overlap and reintegrate, a new underground will emerge as "hardcore" followers shun the commercialization of their movement.

iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring03/Seawell/history.htm

World news

4 Dead In S.C. Plane Crash. Former Blink-182 Drummer Travis Barker, DJ AM Both Critically Injured

Hours after performing for thousands of college students, former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and celebrity disc jockey DJ AM were critically injured in a fiery Learjet crash that killed four people, authorities said.

Officials said the plane carrying six people was departing shortly before midnight Friday when air traffic controllers reporting seeing sparks. The plane hurtled off the end of a runway and came to rest a quarter-mile (400 meters) away on an embankment across a five-lane highway, engulfed in flames.

Barker and DJ AM, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, were in critical but stable condition at a burn center in Augusta, Georgia, on Saturday afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Beth Frits said. Augusta is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Columbia.

One witness said he was driving when a fireball streaked across the highway about 600 feet (180 meters) ahead of him. William Owns said he approached to see the two survivors frantically trying to remove their burning clothes.

"I noticed two guys who were on fire and it looked like a dance: They didn't know what to do," said Owens, a 60-year-old delivery van driver.

Goldstein had stripped off his own shirt and was helping Barker strip naked, said Owens, who was able to identify the men Saturday night because of news reports that showed Barker's extensive tattoos.

Owens said Goldstein told him four other people were on board the jet, but the flames were too intense to get close.

"'Oh my God' was all they were saying," Owens said of Barker and Goldstein. "They stood there and it's like - didn't know what to do. None of us did."

Two other passengers - Chris Baker, 29, and Charles Still, 25 - died, as did pilot Sarah Lemmon, 31, and co-pilot James Bland, 52, according to the county coroner. Baker was an assistant to Barker and Still was a security guard for the musician.

The plane was headed for Van Nuys, California. It is owned by Global Exec Aviation, a California-based charter company, and was certified to operate last year, Hersman said. The company expressed its condolences in a statement and said it was working with investigators to determine the cause of the crash.

A longtime friend of the co-pilot said Bland flew anti-smuggling missions 20 years for the U.S. Customs Service and also flew missions for the Santa Ana, California, Police Department and U.S. Border Patrol.

"He was such an experienced pilot, it had to be something beyond their control," said Tim Ferrill, a Huntington Beach, California, pilot. "He was an absolutely meticulous pilot, very thorough and not a risk-taker at all."

At the crash site Saturday, the air was still heavy with the odor of jet fuel. A trail of black soot led off a runway. The nose of the aircraft was gone and the roof was missing from two-thirds of the charred plane.

National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman said officials recovered the cockpit voice recorder but had yet to analyze it or determine whether the recording was in good condition. She said the weather was clear when the plane took off, but said no factors had been ruled out.

"We're working as fast as we can to document all the evidence," Hersman said. "We have not yet found anything but we are looking at everything."

Barker and Goldstein had performed together under the name TRVSDJ-AM at a free concert in Columbia on Friday night. The show, which included performances by former Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell and singer Gavin DeGraw, drew about 10,000 people to a neighborhood near the University of South Carolina.

Jenni Weinman, a publicist for Barker and Goldstein, would not provide any details on their injuries and expressed sympathy for those killed in the crash. She said Baker and Still were very close friends of Barker and Goldstein.

Barker, 32, was one of the more colorful members of the multiplatinum-selling punk rock band Blink-182, whose biggest album was 1999's CD "Enema of the State" and sold more than 5 million copies in the United States alone.

After Blink-182 disbanded in 2005, Barker went on to form the rock band (+44) - pronounced "plus forty-four." He also starred in the MTV reality series "Meet the Barkers" with his then-wife, former Miss USA Shanna Moakler. The show documented the former couple's lavish wedding and home life. Their later split, reconciliation and subsequent breakup made them tabloid favorites.

Goldstein, 35, is a popular DJ for hire who at one time was engaged to Nicole Richie and dated singer/actress Mandy Moore. While he became a gossip favorite for his romances, he draws respect from music aficionados for his DJ skills.

Barker and Goldstein performed as part of the house band at the MTV Video Music Awards earlier this month.

Graphic Design History

The compelling, if somewhat obscure, paintings in the caves of Lascaux around 14,000 BC and the birth of written language in the third or fourth millennium BC, are both significant milestones in the history of graphic design and other fields which hold roots to graphic design.

The Book of Kells is a very beautiful and very early example of graphic design in a form that would be acceptable even today. The Book is a lavishly illustrated hand-written copy of the Christian Bible created by Celtic monks in the ninth century AD.

Johann Gutenberg's introduction of movable type in Europe made books widely available. The earliest books produced by Gutenberg's press and others of the era (the Incunabula). Only through the design of Aldus Manutius did the book begin to have a structure that would became the benchmark by which the design of future books, even as late as the 20th century, would be judged. Graphic design of this era is called either Old Style (especially the typefaces which these early typographers used), or Humanist, after the predominant philosophical school of the time.

Graphic design, after Gutenberg saw a gradual evolution rather than any significant change, in the late 19th century when, especially in the United Kingdom, an effort was made to create a firm division between the fine and the applied arts.

From 1891 to 1896 William Morris' Kelmscott Press published some of the most significant of the graphic design products of the Arts and Crafts movement, and made a very lucrative business of creating books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the wealthy for a premium. Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design and helped pioneer the separation of design from production and from fine art. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterized by its decadence and by its obsession with historical styles. This historicism was, however, historically important as it amounted to the first significant reaction to the stale state of nineteenth-century graphic design. Morris' work, along with the rest of the Private Press movement, directly influenced Art Nouveau and is indirectly responsible for developments in early twentieth century graphic design in general.

Piet Mondrian, born in 1872, is often called the father of graphic design. Although he was a fine artist (not a graphic designer) his use of grids inspired the basic structure of the modern advertising layout known also as the grid system, used commonly today by graphic designers.

The term Graphic Design was first coined by U.S. book designer and type designer William Addison Dwiggins in the early 20th C.

20th century

Famous SS Normandie poster by Adolphe Muron Cassandre.Modern Design of the early 20th century, much like the fine art of the same period, was a reaction against the decadence of typography and design of the late 19th century. The hallmark of early modern typography is the sans-serif typeface. Early Modern (not to be confused with the other modern era of the 18th and 19th centuries) typographers such as Edward Johnston and Eric Gill after him were inspired by vernacular and industrial typography of the latter nineteenth century. The signage in the London Underground is a classic of this era and used a font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916.

Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his 1928 book, New Typography. He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as being fascistic, but it remained very influential. Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky are the fathers of graphic design as we know it today. They pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. Although the computer has altered production forever, the experimental approach to design they pioneered has become more relevant than ever.

The following years saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application. A booming post-World War II American economy established a greater need for graphic design, mainly advertising and packaging. The emigration of the German Bauhaus school of design to Chicago in 1937 brought a "mass-produced" minimalism to America; sparking a wild fire of postmodern architecture and design. Notable names in mid-century modern design include Adrian Frutiger, designer of the typefaces Univers and Frutiger; Paul Rand, who, from the late 1930's until his death in 1996, took the principles of the Bauhaus and applied them to popular advertising and logo design, helping to create a uniquely American approach to European minimalism while becoming one of the principal pioneers of the subset of graphic design known as corporate identity; and Josef Müller-Brockmann, who designed posters in a severe yet accessible manner typical of the 1950s and 1960s.

The reaction to the increasing severity of graphic design was slow but inexorable. The origins of post-modern typography can be traced back as far as the humanist movement of the 1950s. Notable among this group is Hermann Zapf who designed two typefaces that remain ubiquitous Palatino (1948) and Optima (1952). By blurring the line between serif and sans-serif typefaces and re-introducing organic lines into typography these designs did more to ratify modernism than they did to rebel.

An important point was reached in graphic design with the publishing of the First things first 1964 Manifesto which was a call to a more radical form of graphic design and criticized the ideas of value-free design. This was massively influential on a generation of new graphic designers and contributed to the founding of publications such as Emigre magazine.


I Love New York campaign by Milton Glaser.Another notable designer of the latter 20th century is Milton Glaser who designed the unmistakable I Love NY ad campaign (1973), and a famous Bob Dylan poster (1968). Glaser took stylistic hints from popular culture from the 1960s and 70s.

Advances in the early 20th century were largely inspired by technological advances in printing and also in photography. In the last decade of the same century, technology played a similar role, but this time it was the computer, and at first it was largely a step backwards. Zuzana Licko worked very early using computers for layout, in the days when computer memory was measured in kilobytes and typefaces were created using dots rather than lines. Together with her husband Rudy VanderLans they founded the pioneering Emigre magazine and the Emigre type foundry. They played with the extraordinary limitations of computers as something which, in itself, could provide creative freedom. Emigre magazine became the bible for digital design as the technology rapidly advanced to the point where the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.

David Carson is, in a sense, the culmination of the movement against the restrictiveness of modern design—some of his designs for Raygun magazine are intentionally illegible, featuring typography designed to be visual rather than literary experiences.

Soviet Constructivism
Mainly in the 1920's, in Soviet Russia, Soviet Constructivism applied 'intellectual production' in different spheres of production. The movement saw individualistic art as useless in revolutionary Russia and thus moved towards creating objects for utilitary purposes. They designed buildings, theater sets, posters, fabrics, clothing, furniture, logos, menus etc.


www.articlecat.com

MOST TATTOOED PERSON

The ultimate in multi-layered tattooing is represented by the chainsaw juggling, unicycling, sword-swallowing Lucky Diamond Rich (Australia, born New Zealand), who has spent over 1,000 hours having his body modified by hundreds of tattoo artists. He began by having a full collection of colourful designs from around the world tattooed over his entire body. But not content with stopping there, Lucky next opted for a 100% covering of black ink, including eyelids, the delicate skin between the toes, down into the ears, and even his gums. He is now being tattooed with white designs on top of the black, and coloured designs on top of the white

www.guinessworldrecord.com

Fasten month in german..

Of course as usual when we a fasten month, we feel so hungry and thristy. Sometimes I can hold it and sometimes not...hahahahaha.... I have to take a bus when I want to go to mosque and I do it everynight I want to pray taraweh.
Fifteen days fasten my weight dropdown 5kg... could you imagine that????
I eat with everything I have... I don't have much money.
Fortunately there are afew things that still made me happy. I found another Moeslem here.
They come several country such as Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and of course garut, Medan, Semarang.
Bur now I realize waht the meaning of family and Friends, cause here I am alone . I live so far away from my Family and friends.

Info by: Setia Desta from Naumburg, german.