Belated - Five Things on Thursday #3

Better late than never? Here are my top links from last week, from the wide world of the internets:


1. Love and other Adorable Things

Photographer and 'artist', Amanda Jane Jones's blog 'My Better Half' is the photographic equivalent of a chocolate raspberry terrine, i.e. sweet yet quirky. Her photos of creative couples (filmmakers, writers, painters, poets, graphic designers) indulges the free-spirited festival-goer inside me, and her latest shots in Denmark ruffle the feathers of my beaded headband. Speaking of which, check out 'Laura' from the new Bat for Lashes album, 'The Haunted Man' due out this October. Totally NSFW album cover, but oh so sexy.


2. Gulfies and Cupcakes

So begins that time of year when the inevitable emergency room, gluttony-induced iftar patients hit the HMC emergency rooms. Meanwhile, seriously, what the frak is up with Gulfies and their obsession with cupcakes? Another Americana garnish to further dilute a struggling culture? Or simply, "The perfect food for our post-industrial, indie vibe Great Recession." So many jokes, kids.


3. Show Me the Money!

From the barren landscapes of Jordan's Karak, to owner of the Jordan Chalk Factory and thirty percent of the global chalk market share, meet the inspirational Salah Oqbi (hopscotch anyone?). As anyone who reads this blog or follows me on Twitter will know, I'm an advocate for digitizing information. As a PhD student, the lack of digitized info on the Gulf and Levant is beyond fucking frustration. So I'm all for this project on archiving Gulf history; and in true Arab/Gulfie style, we're paying someone else to do it for us. Ace.


4. WARNING: Taboo Material

Rape, sexual orientation, women's rights and the Arab world. I am eternally saddened (and also, pissed the fuck off) at the consistent denial of the region (and the world, a la name and shame rapists in the US) re these issues. Underage marriage, unconsented sex and homophobia, are never, ever okay.


5. Did I mention, Guillermo del Toro?

I wish I'd been at Comic-con; it's articles like this that make my obsessive (and slightly unhealthy) love for del Toro flourish even further. What I would give to visit the set of 'Pacific Rim' - if he promises us the "biggest fucking monsters ever," after watching the making of 'Hellboy II' I can only fucking imagine. Oh yeah.
p.s. feed your Guillermo-esque imagination with 'Maccabre & the Beautifully Grotesque' on Facebook (photo credit).  

Five Things on Thursday #2

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It's Thursday again! And because I, a) love the sound of my own voice (like the look of my own words?) and, b) will most definitely go crazy if I don't keep writing, here's my second go at this weekly round-up malarky.
This week was brought to you by the letter 'M' (for monsters), awesome graphic novels and body growths with adult/baby mutations inside them. Of course.


1. It's all about the money:

It feels like only yesterday that people were doubting crowdfunding and the general public's willingness to help bring others' projects to life. Now, everyone's bloody doing it! This week, I came across a total, thieving nutter who claims the sun (yes, that yellow fire ball in the sky - sorry England) has forbidden her from using donations to complete the intended project - the perfect example of dirty specimens that could become the slow-gnawing downfall of crowdfunding. On a lighter note, I came across the delightfully curious James Curcio and his upcoming campaign for a potentially incredible transmedia experience. Also, my naughty friends over at Daddy Cross hit their blasphemy-endorsing target (and then some), which makes me happy. However, with two days still to go, you can still help these dudes make these shorts even more... exploit-y?

2. Things that go bump in the night:

This week, I fed my obsession with monsters. Monsters are awesome. The furry ones, the creepy ones, the Lovecraftian ones, monsters with one eye, monsters with tentacled faces and heads shaped like churches (seriously - also Pale Man's cousin is pretty slick too).

3. Good words:

I found new words to fall in love with, including Sophie Chamas's brilliantly written account of life in the Gulf over on The State. There was also this incredibly poignant review of Ales Kot's graphic novel, 'Wild Children' via Adam Rothstein - an excerpt, "Suddenly, I was not reading a comic book anymore- I was silently gliding down a VALIS beam, shot from a drone, illuminating a target I had not noticed before, despite the hours I spent pouring over satellite imagery of our contemporary cultural terrain." Woah. Read it all, here. Akram Foad Khater spoke to Jadaliyya about his new (and much needed) book about Christians in the Middle East and I was introduced to the gorgeously stacked archives of Coilhouse Magazine + Blog - check out this insane piece on REAL Ukrainian interrogation photographs.

4. I believe:

Not in the stupid ass 'Requiem for a Dream' montage, but that they will come:

5. Random:

Yes, more random than everything else on this list. First, this creepy (and fairly disgusting) clip from bizarre Japanese scifi/comedy, 'Funky Forest: The First Contact.' Equally as strange, here is a slideshow of David Bowie doing normal things. Highly disconcerting. 



Into the Wild

Buy the Molokhiya Monster tee from Jo-bedu.com

"What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams." Werner Herzog

I've been watching the making of Hellboy and a lot of interviews - mostly with Guillermo del Toro -about monster design, development and concept art. It's a world I find both fascinating and incredibly enticing, the birth of creatures so creepy, yet familiar and beautiful, at the same time. Carl Jung once said, “I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be resolved into algebraic equations.”

Here is my attempt at capturing a tiny part of that experience; my monster/mythology wish list:

1.       Emborgification – to emborgify. The act of transforming a being of (essentially) flesh and blood into a partly mechanical/robotic entity, resulting in a technologically enhanced creation, i.e. a wizborg. Take Gandalf the Grey, with a hardy spirit of fire, but – to some capacity – a mortal’s body, emborgification into a ‘wizborg’ enhances Mithrandir’s powers whilst compensating for his weakened anatomy with a combination of synthetic and organic materials. The result is neither Gandalf the Grey, nor the White, rather Gandalf of Steel, a magician of the elements.  

2.       Nanobic Ziggurat – the plague-like morphology of funghi and the mystique of Martian meteorites are combined in these miniscule, nerve centers of power. At just 20 nanometers in diameter, the Nanobic Ziggurats would be the smallest organisms known to humanity, allowing communication with the Gods of the cosmic mountain, sans desert trekking. Their rarity would ignite battles between good and evil to determine either their extinction, marking the end of mankind, or the rise of a higher authority, multiplying their numbers in search of a foretold nirvana.

3.       Odyssire – pronounced: oh-dee-sire. Humanity’s historical, Biblical recklessness with the concept of an eternal, saving love is tested via these winged creatures of the night. Used by murderous, militant dictators in the inevitable War of the Worlds to weaken the leaders of the auratic New Age Resistance (NAR), the Odyssire’s inject a potent elixir into the pericardium using crystallized fangs, some reaching a length of 4 inches. Latching onto the victim’s chest, the Odyssire’s poison surrounds and overtakes the regular functions of the human heart, instilling feelings of loss and despair leading into an endless journey of loveless suffering and, eventually, death.  

4.       Molokhiaite – pronounced: moh-loh-khee-ayt. Barren, desert landscapes are this predator’s salvation as the shrub-like organisms grow under the protection of the shadowed Jordan Rift Valley. The only known living entity within a 650 mile radius of the Dead Sea (also known as the sea of  death), the Molokhiaite feeds off the extreme salinity of the earth around the lifeless body of water, readying itself for attack. When provoked, the Molokhiaite launches itself into any crack or crevice in the human body, seeping into the blood stream and procreating by the second, fuelled by the chemical reactions of high sodium levels and oxygen. The final stages of a human life post Molokhiaite invasion is that of internal herbal solidification, and death, combatted only by the golden droplets harvested by the Dew Collectors of Levantinople, from the leaves of the Black Iris of the Jordan River.

5.       Dune Guard – from the blazing pits of the Saudi Arabian desert, a creature from the long-forgotten ancient texts of the Middle Eastern mythology awakens. A mass of neither gas, solid nor liquid, but all three combined, the Dune Guard serves as the feared protector of the banished peoples of desolate lands. The Guard’s body is constituted of millions of vibrating granules of sand and star dust, growing in size – and hence, power – with every meteoric deluge that paints the barren landscapes. A thermogenic phlebotomizer at its core, the shimmering, immortal being mutates into bio-domes of resistance against the forces of nature and human foes alike, shielding its subjects with a vibrating wall of unbearable, searing heat and cosmic confetti.


Note: Find a different edit of this article on the Doha Film Institute website, here.

Five Things on Thursday

My awesome friend, Tarek Es-bear, has adopted and adapted a new trend from the ever evolving digital hipster scene in the UK and introduced us to 'Five Things on Thursday.' Not unlike the roundups I've done in the past (like here, here and here), five things is meant to highlight the best of the best of your internet week.

So, I'm jumping on the numerical bandwagon (for this week at least) and recounting the top five videos/articles/one man Lord of the Rings shows, for your viewing pleasure:

 

1. Although I saw this a couple of weeks ago, and it is fairly old in internet terms, this short is pretty much one of the coolest, gutsiest and best made films I have seen thus far in 2012. Treading ever so lightly on a semi-apocalytpic, drug-induced mutation of a public announcement, check out 'The Gate' (dir. Matt Westrup).

2. You know those women, who are all (apparantly) about feminism, and girl power, not having kids and 'sticking it to the man'? Listen, I'm a Jordanian woman - if there ever was someone who was pro feminism, it would be me. But all this "marriage is crap" bullshit is ridiculous. Love is good, and personally, I'm a sucker for a good love story. Enter Jess & Russ and the latest example in this new, revamped online wedding invitation craze. It is LOVELY.

3. Film is what you make of it. Personal interpretation and value-systems dictate the success of a feature - alongside production prowess, budgets and execution, of course. In the past year, I've been exposed to some B-movies I would have never touched had I not made the friends I have. Although many of these are (putting it lightly) not my cup of tea (enter 'Green Slime'),  I have always respected the love some have for the genre. Although I could easily label some as sweaty jockstraps of an excuse for film, I don't, because a) that's mean, and b) I'm on this new zen diet where I try not to get worked up. Long story short, I know not everyone loved 'The Avengers', but I did and it is a wonderful two hours of escapism, alongside everything else (almost) that Marvel Comics have ever done. So here are a bunch of awesome geeks (including me - plug *cough* plug) talking about their favourite Marvel characters, embarassing photos included.

4. I love Guillermo del Toro. SO MUCH. So this week, I found i) a faun... having lunch... and, ii) Hellboy looking sad. Also, although James Cameron is meant to be producing, it appears 'At the Mountains of Madness' has been put on hold (thanks 'Prometheus'). Save it by joining the petition, here.
Note: Cameron lost one of the 'Pan's Labyrinth' notebooks that del Toro gifted him. Nice going, Jimmy.

Lunching faun

 

Image courtesy of Pacman on DeviantArt

5. The final link for this, my inaugural 'Five Things on Thursday' post, is courtesy of my 'Daddy Cross' friends who show us how NOT to do a crowdfunding video call-out. And Evrim Ersoy should reconsider a career in comedy.

Fantastical Film Art

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination. - Carl Jung

Incredible Lord of the Rings, Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth concept art from the unbelievably talented Christopher Ulrich and John Howe.