Once a year in Japan, a 24-hour televised charity event is held and the funds raised are sent out to various charities. This is one of the shows from the event, its the Senju Kannon, the 1000-hand Goddess of Mercy.

via Neatorama

“Australian-born, London-based Ron Mueck is as enigmatic as his sculptures. From a distended baby, stuck to the wall crucifixion-style and bearing an unnervingly intelligent demeanor far beyond his age, to a smaller-than-life, sick old woman, who curls up in a fetal pose under a blanket, Mueck’s works command an uncanny ability to amaze with obsessive surface detail and intense psychic discharge.” From The Progress Big Man A Conversation with Ron Mueck, Sculpture Magazine, July/August 2003. Check out the whole article and interview with Ron Mueck by Sarah Tanguy here.

More photos follow and a link to a fantastic video follow. (more…)

Here’s a skit by Australian actor, writer, comedian Shaun Micallef from the first season of the Micallef Show on the ABC.

Thanks Ze Frank, via Maniac World

Here, as an addition to this post written several days ago, are some clips posted on YouTube by consumerguide from Les Blank’s classic 1980 short, “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.” The film documents Herzog fulfilling a bet he made with Errol Morris: if Morris would finish his brilliant first feature “Gates of Heaven,” Herzog said he would eat his shoe. He uses this public stunt to say some very serious things about American pop culture, filmmakers becoming “clowns” to promote their work, and the culture of images (or lack thereof).

Werner Herzog’s new film Rescue Dawn is getting interesting reviews.

Ponder Stibbons of The truth that makes me fret is reading Herzog on Herzog (written by Werner Herzog with Editor Paul Cronin) and shares some thoughts on the book:

Notable quotes –

In response to “What are your views on film schools?”:

It has always seemed to me that almost everything you are forced to learn at school you forget in a couple of years. But the things you set out to learn yourself in order to quench a thirst, these are things you never forget. […]

Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school. But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you had travelled alone on foot, let’s say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about 5,000 kilometres. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking than if you were in a classroom… academia is the very death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion.

On the mysterious ’something else’ (that is not happiness) he seems to be after:

One aspect of who I am that might be important is the communication defect I have had since a young child. I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony… Let me explain by telling a story. (more…)
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Michelangelo Antonioni, who was best known for his film Blow-Up, died Monday at his home in Rome. He was 94.

Remembrances
Antonioni, a Filmmaker with an Eye for the Invisible [Listen and/or Watch 'Blow-Up' Clips]
by Neda Ulaby
NPR
July 31, 2007

Michelangelo Antonioni had a long, solemn face and hooded eyes — he looked like Humphrey Bogart. But the work of the Italian filmmaker, who died at home on Monday at the age of 94, couldn’t be further from the traditions of Hollywood.

Antonioni, whose name became synonymous with European art-house cinema in the 1960s, began his career as part of the Italian filmmaking movement known as Neorealism. Their style, says film scholar Peter Brunette, was obsessed with the visual — in the sense of what we can see, the visible surfaces of reality. But Antonioni was different from such gritty Italian Neorealists as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sicca, who focused on postwar problems; Antonioni preferred stark, existential meditations on the things you can’t see and things you can’t say.

“And so you have to read between the lines,” Brunette says. “Everything is powerfully expressive, but you can never exactly pin down what it means.” (more…)

From About.com, July 30, 2007:

Ingmar Bergman, one of the most influential film directors of the 20th century, died Monday at his home on the Swedish island of Faro, his sister Eva reported. He was 89.

Over a career that spanned four decades, Bergman made over fifty films, including perhaps his most famous work The Seventh Seal (1957), in which Max Von Sydow engages Death in a legendary game of chess. Bergman’s top awards include the Golden Palm of Palms at the 50th Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for his body of work. He received a lifetime Oscar in 1970 and another in 1984, for the autobiographical family drama Fanny And Alexander.

From Bergman’s NY Times obit:

Once, when asked by the critic Andrew Sarris why he did what he did, Mr. Bergman told the story of the rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral in the Middle Ages by thousands of anonymous artisans.

“I want to be one of the artists of the cathedral that rises on the plain,” he said. “I want to occupy myself by carving out of stone the head of a dragon, an angel or a demon, or perhaps a saint; it doesn’t matter; I will find the same joy in any case. Whether I am a believer or an unbeliever, Christian or pagan, I work with all the world to build a cathedral because I am artist and artisan, and because I have learned to draw faces, limbs, and bodies out of stone. I will never worry about the judgment of posterity or of my contemporaries; my name is carved nowhere and will disappear with me. But a little part of myself will survive in the anonymous and triumphant totality. A dragon or a demon, or perhaps a saint, it doesn’t matter!”

Mr. Bergman’s celluloid carvings often revealed an obsession with death. But in later life he said that the obsession had abated. “When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying,” he said. “But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It’s like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about.”

Read the entire New York Times Obituary here and here –> (more…)

This film by Joan C. Gratz won an Academy Award for Best Short Film, Animated in 1992. Gratz is known among animators around the world for her unique animation technique, clay-painting. Working with bits of clay as if they were oil paints, she blends colors and etches fine lines to create a seamless flow of images.

via Artdaily.org

A collection of videos from Spiked Humor (best viewed on their site):

Drunk Art: A compilation of passed-out people pictures.

Japanese Master of the Ball: Japanese guy performing tricks with a ball.

Too Many Balloons Prank: Lady acts like she is floating away with the balloons.

Spoon-Altering Psychic Has Copyright Advocates Bent Out of Shape

Uri Geller Runs Afoul of YouTube Users
by Paul Elias
The Associated Press
July 9, 2007

San Francisco - Uri Geller became a 1970s superstar and made millions with an act that included bending spoons, seemingly through the power of his own mind.

Now, the online video generation is so bent out of shape over the self-proclaimed psychic’s behavior that he’s fast reaching the same Internet pariah status as the recording and movie industries.

Geller’s tireless attempts to silence his detractors have extended to the popular video-sharing site YouTube, landing him squarely in the center of a raging digital-age debate over controlling copyrights amid the massive volume of video and music clips flowing freely online. (more…)

Marco Tempest performs iPhone magic:

Last chance to see!

Xtenduum

At The Art Academy Gallery
Exhibition dates 26 June - 5 July

Gallery opening hours Mon - Sat, 10am - 5pm or by appointment
201 Union Street
London SE1 OLN

(Close to Tate Modern)

Liane Lang and Annabelle Moreau are showing new work as part of the exhibition program at 201 Union Street. Extending their studios downstairs into the gallery they present work in film and installation. (more…)

(Or, how not to end up in a tinfoil hat.)
by Mordant Carnival
Key64.net

It’s the aim of this article to look at ways of appraising your magical practice, offering a few approaches and techniques to make sure things are on track as far as effectiveness goes and also to avoid some of the more common pitfalls along the way.

It’s not always possible to apply the scientific method per se to this kind of work but the techniques and approaches associated with scientific investigation are applicable in many cases and can be very useful. This doesn’t mean trying to prove that magic works, putting together a study that could find a home in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society laying out evidence that Wednesday’s sigil working was responsible for your getting laid last night. Since magic is such a nebulous beast, an experiential business with unprovables being kicked around all over the shop and subjectivity agogo, it is frequently a logical impossibility to talk in terms of proof and not necessarily desirable anyway. However, this does not mean that we have to give up all notion of a meaningful assessment of the success or otherwise of a working or a practice, an assessment based on discernment, critical thinking, logic and rationalism. “Proving” that magic works, or that a particular spell worked, is not the point. The point is analysing your results and your overall progress in an intelligent and meaningful way. (more…)

A poetic morphing of Women in Art:

From Eggman913 via Juxtapoz and BoingBoing