Vitro NasuIconoclastic Incubator
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Sandhill Crane 
spotted at Kiwanis Park
Happy Birthday <> 
jtwine!
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(jtwine index)
Who else share your birthday….
Kaspar Hauser
Annie Dilllard, Lars Von Trier and Jane Campion.
Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30.
Jack Cardiff 
Still image from “A Matter of Life and Death”, a film directed by Michael Powell.
Each of the Powell films presented their own special challenges. The action of A Matter of Life and Death is divided between Heaven and Earth and required both black and white and colour scenes. Cardiff assumed Heaven would be in colour, but to confound audience assumptions Powell opted for a black and white Heaven and a colour Earth. (Jack Cardiff :Source of Light – Senses of Cinema)
Start with Black Narcissus from 1947, it’s an absolutely gorgeous gem with lighting and color design inspired by Vermeer. (Horsese Think Obit)
Previous post Jack Cardiff: Magic on Screen
Tower 
of Pisa
You can read J. G. Ballad’s last story ‘The Dying Fall” (Guardian)
Three years have passed since the collapse of the Tower of Pisa, but only now can I accept the crucial role that I played in the destruction of this unique landmark. Over twenty tourists died as the thousands of tons of marble lost their grasp on the air and collapsed to the ground. Among them was my wife Elaine, who had climbed to the topmost tier and was looking down at me when the first visible crack appeared in the tower’s base. Never were tragedy and triumph so intimately joined, as if Elaine’s pride in braving the worn and slippery stairs had been punished by the unseen forces that had sustained this unbalanced mass of masonry for so many centuries……
Previous post J.G Ballad here.
Jack Cardiff 
Jack Cardiff, Oscar-winning cinematographer of Black Narcissus, dies aged 94
Persistence of Vision ; Jack Cardiff homepage
In the 1960s Cardiff made a prolonged foray into directing. He favoured fantastic or poetic subject matter, with mixed results. For a long time he treasured hopes of filming James Joyce’s Ulysses, but they were never realized. His other attempt to film internal monologue – Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) – was one of the most unintentionally hilarious films of the decade.
Sons and Lovers directed by Jack Cardiff
Sons and Lovers adapted from DH Lawrence’s autobiographical novel is a beautiful film with great acting. Young Dean Stockwell plays Paul Morel (DH Lawrence) with Wendy Hiller as his mother and Trevor Howard as his coal miner father.
Obit from “Some Came Running”
Obit from IFC and PRtheBeat
Garage sale find I 
Garage sale find II 
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Red chair and old monaural record album (25 cents) are garage sale finds. Opera lover Spike relaxes to “Norma” while coffee brews in background.
Klaus Nomi loved Maria Callas.
(Maria Callas and Pasolini)
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J. G. Ballard
“Slow-motion film of Reagan’s speeches produced a marked erotic effect in an audience of spastic children” (Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan)
Obit from Telegraph (More about how he lived)
J.G. Ballard (November 15, 1930 to April 19, 2009) rewired the brains of generations of readers and writers.Giant of literature passes away
Ballard
I believe in the right to confuse middle England by being autobiographical,
Thus disconcerting Mail readers who might like Empire of the Sun but would take to the streets to prevent Crash being screened in cinemas, even though both films were shot in the wrong places.
I believe in not making my characters merely bourgeois.
I believe in the end of the world
But I also believe in boredom.
I believe in the fictional importance of scientific journals.
I believe in the cultural revolution of the middle classes, even if they’ll never have the guts to blow up the NFT.
I believe in never getting out of the car.
I believe in your obsessions. I believe that the inexistence of the universe means that JG Ballard is not, nor ever will be, dead. (Infinite Thought)
As Martin Amis once said of him: “Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different – a disused – part of the reader’s brain.”
Elegant Variation Obit (Includes a clip of Ballard talking about the making of film “Crash”)
Modern Word on J. G. Ballard
Ballardian has been parked on the sidebar menu.
Sounddex from jtwine 
Jurgen has new sound works – just follow the sound and sight of one screen flickering.
The second image on his post looks like the I Ching, alas one line too many (7 instead of 6) – that is jtwine’s psychic and spiritual line drawing.
I have created bird singing (the real deal) in my garden videos for the silent twitterer whose only sound they make is by their 10 fingers. (Follow Milawaukee, follow Osaka) The twitter sounds authoritarian, a few goes to extreme of refusing to follow. The diamond heist artist follows only 10 institutions.
He twittered,
Sorry my mind has been spinning for a few months and I’m getting butterflies thinking about the auction.
The I Ching 17 is SUI the following.
Sui indicates that you should lead by example rather than just telling everyone what to do.
Get off your office chair and take a deep breath. Follow and listen to Master Birds, turn up the sound.
Masterbird on Octillo
Birds sing for Moon –
Blind following is evil – the independent minded and enlightened people hate following and followers. However, it is good to follow certain instructions – like follow the signs to the bathroom, otherwise you might get arrested for being a pervert.
Drinkers 
Yakitori sign on the noren.
This image seems to be straight out of an Ozu film (see his posters and signs on youtube). Ozu films are more family and tradition than film noir, but Ozu’s sense of isolation and melancholy feelings are there in Hibi’s photographs as well.
Reveling in the Dark (NYtimes slideshow)
For him, the city was bleak, grimy and alienating, the New York of “Taxi Driver” and “Midnight Cowboy,” gritty films he had watched as a teenager in Japan. (NYtimes)
Photographer Yuichi Hibi’s new monograph Neco published by Nazraeli Press, offers a look into the life of cats, exploring the meaning of existence.(via – with 3 Neco photographs)
From Monograph Neco 
Born in Nagoya, Japan in 1964, Yuichi Hibi trained as an actor and filmmaker, achieving success in a broad range of film and theater productions before moving to New York in 1988.(via)
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Yuichi Hibi includes his own calligraphy in his books and photographs.
His name in Japanese on the right and charcters Konseki means traces.
Yuichi Hibi’s exhibiton is at Michael Dawson Gallery till May.
The Death
of James Lee Byars
“What is the Sound of Two Blocks of Ice Melting?”
The Third Mind—American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860 – 1989
by Ellen Pearlman
Guggenheim Museum: January 30 – April 19, 2009
Encompassing two-hundred and fifty works by one-hundred artists and literary figures from James McNeil Whistler to Tehching Hsieh and poets Ezra Pound and Allen Ginsberg, there are special commissions by Ann Hamilton and live performances by Alison Knowles, Gary Snyder, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, and Robert Wilson.
View video about this exhibition here.
More images and review from artfultext blog here.
Hamsun 
Salute to Max von Sydow at Eighty BY PETER COWIE
It’s all too easy to classify Max as a Bergman actor and not much else. But his work for Jan Troell has been enormously fruitful. They have made seven films together, at least three of which are classics—The Emigrants, The New Land, and The Flight of the Eagle—and the latest of which, Hamsun, features a subtle and perceptive portrait of Norway’s most notorious writer.
Forever tarnished by his shocking support of the Nazi occupation during World War II, Norwegian Nobel Laureate Knut Hamsun was once his country’s most illustrious and revered author. Spanning the final 17 years of his life, this searing biopic — featuring a flawlessly nuanced performance by Max von Sydow as Hamsun — recounts the writer’s fall from grace. Ghita Nørby portrays Hamsun’s embittered, manipulative wife. (Netflix)
One film I would recommend is Wim Wenders’ “Until the End of the World,” lambasted by critics at its release in the early 90s, but it’s an epic, beautiful film. Von Sydow’s scenes with the equally fabulous Jeanne Moreau are the highlight of the film. Find the five-hour director’s cut if you can. (Collin Kelly from a comment booth of Criterion article)
Max Von Sydow – photo by Julian Schnabel
Max Von Sydow, his films with Ingmar Bergman and Beyond
(And also Max Von Sydow and Julie Andrews worked together twice, “Hawaii” and “Duet for One”.)
Max Von Sydow – photo by Julian Schnabel (via)
Happy Birthday Max Von Sydow!
Max talks about the film “Diving Bell and Butterfly” here, (tip from here)
Another interview on youtube one, and two – (about working with Ingmar Bergman)
Click to see large 
They made 13 films together.
Max in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf
Max Von Sydow did many theater works with Ingmar Bergman, besides his signature films with Bergman that many of us come to know, the Seventh Seal, The Virgin Spring, Shame, Through the Glass Darkly etc.
He appeared in “Pelle the Conqueror” and “the Best Intentions” by Bille August. Ingmar Bergman scripted ‘The Best Intentions”, based on his parents’ marriage and Max got to play Ingmar’s grandfather character.
Here is Pelle the Conqueror the ending clip on youtube.
is a Japanese composer who has autism. He is the son of Japanese author Kenzaburo Ōe.
It has been said that Ōe was walking with his parents near his house and heard a bird calling. He imitated the call with great precision. His parents were fascinated. They bought him tracks of bird calls, which he learned. This was how they got the idea to recruit a music teacher for Ōe.
(Previous post on Hikari Oe and his father Kenzaburo Oe)
Birdsong2
He doesn’t know the world at all
Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out.
He doesn’t know what birds know best
Nor what I want to sing about,
That the world is full of loveliness.
When dewdrops sparkle in the grass
And earth’s aflood with morning light,
A blackbird sings upon a bush
To greet the dawning after night.
Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to open up your heart
To beauty; go to the woods someday
And weave a wreath of memory there.
Then if tears obscure your way
You’ll know how wonderful it is
To be alive.
Anonymous Child
Written in Terezin Concentration Camp
Getting around links one for identifying bird songs, two for images, three for reading, four for more reading.
Update: A slideshow – A Paradise of Birds in Belize (with great images and sound effect)
Michelle Obama’s whirlwind tour of Prague turned into a love affair with a city and its people. “I’ll be back,” she said.
(via)
The melody of Vltava composed by Smetana followed the Obamas in Prague (Praha).
No speech, no politics, just beautiful city and the music, click below.
Prague: The Moldau (Vltava) and the Charles Bridge
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(Meanwhile see a photo I took of toilet paper from Prague Castle, 1996, when life was more exciting and unpredictable. )
Now I take photographs of Duck with funny hair cut swimming and waddling around the pond.
Warning to bloggers…..this is really scary.
Phoenix Police raid home of blogger whose writing is highly critical of them.
Do not ridicule the policemen in Arizona.
