Caffeinated Links: Cristin Milioti on HIMYM’s Finale, Guide to Listening to Music at Work, more

film & television March 10, 2014 Leave a comment

409516-how-i-met-your-mother-stars-cristin-milioti-and-josh-radnor

The Onion is often funny but occasionally, release something with such biting on-the-nose satire that you don’t know whether to laugh or nod your head. Man Who Treats Women With Respect Asked What His Secret Is – RT

Cristin Milioti weighed in on How I Met Your Mother rumors about the mother being dead for the entire show’s duration. Her comments significantly downplay that possibility but don’t dismiss it entirely. “And while she calls the Dead Mother idea “insane,” “crazy” and even “so crazy,” it’s worth noting that she never quite refutes/debunks it. In a word, she sums up the March 31 series finale as “beautiful.” RT

Fantastic piece from David Carr at the NYT about the new cultural role of television.  “On the sidelines of the children’s soccer game, or at dinner with friends, you can set your watch on how long it takes before everyone finds a show in common. In the short span of five years, table talk has shifted, at least among the people I socialize with, from books and movies to television. The idiot box gained heft and intellectual credibility to the point where you seem dumb if you are not watching it…

Television’s golden age is also a gilded cage, an always-on ecosystem of immense riches that leaves me feeling less like the master of my own universe, and more as if I am surrounded.” RT

The complete guide to listening to music at work, via Quartz. Fascinatingly, it does count as multi-tasking, and your brain prefers instrumental or classical when you’re working. “It has never been easier to tune in to your own customized soundtrack—or more necessary to tune out your open-office coworkers, cubicle mates, and fellow coffee-shop denizens. But not all music is created equal, especially when there’s work to be done. How should you choose the best office soundtrack for a given task? Which songs will help you get energized, focused, or creative—or even just through a very long day?” RT

The Guardian has had the best online coverage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. “So when flight MH370 disappeared from plane tracking websites, it could mean the signals from the plane’s transponder were stopped deliberately (by pilots or others), or there was a complete electrical failure, or the plane disintegrated” from this article, and see the complete coverage here

 

Keep Your Face Toward the Sunshine

art & illustration March 10, 2014 Leave a comment

facetowardthesunshineRT

Where Love Resides

books poetry lit March 7, 2014 Leave a comment

They fall into exhaustion rather than into gentle sleep,
each limb heavy with the ash of its bonfires burned completely down,
not curled but sprawled, claiming all the space of their bed,

two bodies that attempted fusion, both straining to push into
what is impenetrable in the other, wanting the only way they know
to try, to perhaps break through the inherent loneliness of skin.

Now, very late, leg over leg, arm across chest, they breathe deep as newborns,
as if drawing from the stuffy air replenishment after their struggle.  No dreams
tonight.  Instead, only thick flesh, cooling back into their separate selves.

What will they say when they stir back into the world,
conscious, suddenly, of their edges as morning sun floods their sheets?
What will their first words be upon waking?

They each will arrive in the new day alone, surprised, as they were at their own births,
and at death, and as after each sleep, utterly bound in the locked rooms
of their bodies. Will they recognize their loneliness?  Will they speak of it?

For this is the most fragile moment, with mussed hair and sour breath,
when wild abandon has dispersed and the habitual seeing returns
in the glaring light of every day.  Who can they tell?

If love resides anywhere, it is here: in the waking face, the tender hand that reaches
to touch that face.  It is in the gestures they choose to give, and in their decision,
whether or not they will speak, one to the other, of their true need.

-Joanne Esser, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review

Mstislav Pavlov

art & illustration March 7, 2014 1 Comment

I’ve featured a painting of Russian painter Mstislav Pavlov‘s before, and just have to say I am deeply in love with his work. The bright bursts of color and especially the way he uses form and movement to create a sense of energy, or, in the case of the last painting, a mood – exquisite. And of course I love that he focuses on female figures. He spans a whole range from dreamy and wistful to bold and nearly frenzied in the brushstrokes. Just gorgeous.

aphrodie

Mstislav Pavlov (53)

Mstislav Pavlov (7)

Caffeinated Links: Gwen/Peter Featurette, Wes Anderson, Gillian Anderson on Women in TV

this & that March 6, 2014 Leave a comment

So cute.

The New York Times on inbuilt poverty – “Critics note that if a person manages to get through high school and avoid drugs, crime and parenting outside of marriage, it’s often possible to escape poverty. Fair enough. But if you’re one of the one-fifth of children in West Virginia born with drugs or alcohol in your system, if you ingest lead from peeling paint as a toddler, if your hearing or vision impairments aren’t detected, if you live in a home with no books in a gang-ridden neighborhood with terrible schools — in all these cases, you’re programmed for failure as surely as children of professionals are programmed for success.” RT

William Dafoe via Indiewire on the differences between working with Lars von Trier and Wes Anderson – “There are similarities, but there are probably more differences. You know, their interests, they have a different kind of cinema, but they both have very clear visions, their ways of working are very different. Wes likes to shoot a lot, he’s very obsessive, and he works things out ahead of time. Lars prohibits rehearsal, because he wants the actor off-balance and he wants the actor to be fresh, he doesn’t want them to be able to deliver a performance, he wants the performance to happen. I mean that’s my interpretation of it, but he really doesn’t want them to rehearse. Also, the camera is more fluid, some shots are very designed but they’re huge signs.

In the sequences in Lars’ work where the camera moves, you don’t even know where it is, and he really believes you can cut anything to anything so he doesn’t shoot conventionally. Wes doesn’t shoot conventionally but he does shoot in a very formal way. He really knows the frame, while he may have these wildly athletic camera shots, it’s quite built. He plays very little with chance.” RT

EW has 10 pilot season trends for fall. “IN: Spin-Offs: SO many this year, plus a copycat bonus: Two are set in New Orleans. CBS is yet again expanding its acronym-based cop-show empire with a Big Easy edition of NCIS starring Quantum Leap‘s Scott Bakula plus a Virgina-based CSI set in the FBI Cyber Crimes Division starring ex-Medium Patricia Arquette. Also: The CW’sSupernatural has its spin-off Tribes starring Lucien Laviscount and Nathaniel Buzolic while Arrow has The Flashstarring Grant Gustin. CBS’ How I Met Your Mother spin-off pilot How I Met Your Dad, a female-view twist on the departing hit sitcom starring Greta Gerwig, which is considered a lock for a fall series.” RT

Really, really great interview with Gillian Anderson on choosing a career in the UK, and her work. “Despite her full slate, Anderson keeps busy away from acting. She recently announced “A Vision of Fire,” the first book in a co-authored science fiction series with writer Jeff Rovin, who approached Anderson with the idea, as well as narration for the Emma Thompson–produced film “Sold,” about the child slavery and sex trade industry. “I’ve got so much to say about that,” she says. “Hopefully [the film’s] presence will shine a light on the situation, because the sale of children is becoming the No. 1 industry in the world.” RT

Intern at Fashion/Bridal Website

this & that March 6, 2014 1 Comment

thelane

Rapid-fire opportunity for any Aussie pals: The Lane, a high-end online fashion directory and all-services-provided bridal website, is hiring interns in the following departments, applications due March 10:

-Photography / Graphic Design

– Public Relations / Branding

– Creative Writing / Styling

– Website Management / Creative Content Assistants

Read more and apply

All the Videos You Need Today: Joel McHale, Lea Michele, Annie Trailer, Transformers Age of Extinction Trailer

film & television March 6, 2014 Leave a comment

Joel McHale parodies True Detective on his show The Soup and it’s pure and fantastic (and you don’t have to have seen True Detective to get the parody)

This looks oddly, bizarrely…perfect

Continue reading →

Caffeinated Links: Travoltify Your Name, Debunking Juice Cleanses, Lent

this & that March 4, 2014 Leave a comment

Sam Tsui and Sariah have this bubbly, playful, gorgeously shot-in-a-colorful-arcade cover of Pharell’s “Happy.”

You probably heard how John Travolta called Idina Menzel “Adeel Dezeem” at the Oscars. Now, courtesy of Slate, you can Travoltify your name! RT

The Wall Street Journal debunks the juice cleanse craze – “Consuming more vegetables is great, mainstream doctors and nutritionists agree. But they dismiss the detox claims as a confusing jumble of science, pseudoscience and hype. They argue that humans already have a highly efficient system for filtering out most harmful substances—the liver, kidneys and colon.

“If you’re confused, you understand the issue perfectly,” says Edward Saltzman, an associate professor at Human Nutrition Center on Aging at Tufts University.” RT

Ann Voskamp in a beautiful post on Lent, which starts tomorrow- “He will have to accomplish it all. I am ashes and I am dust and there is no good in me and I am in dire need and lent has given me clear eyes to see my sin and I am the one broken under all this skin.” RT

Beyond Translation

books poetry lit March 3, 2014 Leave a comment
There was no blue in ancient Greece
Homer’s skies were iron and bronze
hung above a wine-dark sea
Likewise, Chloros
seemed to be the word for green
but in literature of the time
honey was chloros
dew was chloros
even tears and blood
Leaving the impression that nothing
was seen in terms of color
that cursory observations were secondary
to intrinsic distinctions that mark
the essence of existence
So the blood’s red hue was less
important than whether it was fresh
as morning dew, moist as honeyed tears
or still as an afternoon
-Shawnte Orion, Sakura Review

Rainie Yang – Xi Guan

this & that March 1, 2014 Leave a comment

I just really like her voice. (Rainie Yang is a very popular Taiwanese pop star and actress).