Fifteen Karen villagers from the jungles of Burma go up against oil giants UNOCAL and TOTAL in an inspiring David and Goliath story. Directed by Milena Kaneva (http://www.totaldenialfilm.com, http://www.myspace.com/totaldenialfilm)
This documentary is counting down the top 10 deadliest Kung Fu weapons and fighting techniques. The Kung Fu documentary shows uses of famous Chinese weapons, including rare and unconfirmed weapons like the flying guillotine.
In a feature-length special, we scrutinize ancient writings that didn't 'make the cut' in the battle to create a Christian Bible in the new religion's first few centuries. Biblical archaeologists and scholars examine why they were left out and if others might yet be found. Beginning with the little-known Life of Adam and Eve, we also peruse the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch, the Gospel of Thomas, the Protoevangelium of James, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Apocalypse of Peter.
A documentary about Einstein's formula on gravity and the universe. How his 'mistake' to add the Lambda constanse into the formula was not a mistake afterall. Modern physicists today have revived Einsteins 'mistaken' formula and elaborate on it. Basically the hypothesis they are challenging is "what if the amount energy in the universe was not constant to begin with, but was and still is variable?"
Colleagues at C4 have surpassed themselves with The Channel 4 Pig application, a beautifully executed (fnar) flash app helping people in these credit crunch times to exploit all the best and cheapest bits of the beast with some fine recipes from Britain's top chefs. It all supports the forthcoming food season on the Channel and has been managed by my rather wonderfully suitably-named colleague, 4Food Editor, Jane Honey.
When I was at school, learning about food was such an 'un-fun' thing where we produced crap food with crap ingredients cooked crapply. I find this entertaining and, while not designed for schools, there's nothing expensive and lots of deliciousness about making the Ham Hock, Split Pea and Mint Stew. The kids might not want to be stretched with the faggots, though I'm guessing it's the first recipe they'll navigate towards as they work out how to use a pig head constructively and not on the Head Master's desk on the last day of term.
Not so much a wonderful new service that's gone live as a pig that's gone rather dead...
In today's Sunday Herald comes a 'reveal' on my first first major project with 4iP in Scotland, being produced by independent interactive designers ISO. Central Station is a place to share your art and find new talent, be mentored by some of the art world's best names and be entertained by and engaged in the making of a web fiction. The action starts this April.
In August last year I left Learning and Teaching Scotland (still not had my card and chocs :-( and a slew of speaking and consultancy work, to take up some creative and business challenges with Channel 4's new digital online-only non-telly arm, 4iP. It might seem ironic, therefore, that Edd McCracken's piece concentrates mostly on the web fiction element of the arts platform. It is to be filmed in and around Glasgow School of Art, one of many partners in the project (it wasn't, as the caption on the printed piece suggests, chosen by me as a backdrop but was one of many partners already in place thanks to the prep work of ISO and Mr C on the project).
But far from being "telly on the web", something 4iP's not interested in, the web fiction elements will in themselves reflect the art, artists and techniques being talked about by communities of artists aggregated in and around Central Station; as Damien Smith of ISO put it in our planning meeting last November, they will be "of the medium".
Amateur artists aspiring and those already making moves in art schools around the country will also find a place where they can share their artwork, with the chance to win regular prizes that, really, money cannot buy. The final award after nearly a year of frenzied publishing will be a major cash art prize, we think, the world's biggest for social media creativity. As well as finding the next Banksy, the hope is that online creativity among young people, something long romanticised but in reality little realised, is spun into orbit. Watch this space.
Dive in a take a peek at the article, and also at our new featured group this fortnight, covering the company with whom we have the pleasure of developing this artistic beast: ISO.
Cross-posted at 38minutes
This year is Homecoming 09, celebrating 250 years since we started reciting poetry we rarely understand on January 25th, the birthday of our national bard, Robert Burns. It is not, the Government are at pains to tell us, a poorly camouflaged cynical plan to get more tourists to come "back home" to Scotland.
My pal Craig McGill at Dada let me know about a new project that brings together all the letters Burns ever wrote to his many mistresses and followers, published on a blog on the day they were written. It's as simple as they come, but charming and insightful to the bard's many passions.
Robert Burns' Letters, being on a blog and RSS feed, would make the ideal daily posting on a student's personal learning page on a VLE, like Glow. It wouldn't take a designer or enthusiastic teacher more than twenty minutes to put together some nice artwork and the feed, and get some kind-hearted soul who thought it worthwhile to promote it and amplify it through the main LTS site for more to enjoy. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge... we shall see what happens over the next couple of weeks in the run-up to Burns' night festivities. For the rest of us living on the interweb, you can just head over to the site throughout this year.
What would life on earth be like without the moon? Well, chances are, there wouldn't be any life on ... earth without the moon. Life if it had started at all would still be in the earliest stages of evolution.
In 1961, a four-year-old chimpanzee named Ham became the first animal to return from space alive. He proved that humans could survive the extreme conditions of space. This drama, based on NASA's records and archive footage, tells the story of this remarkable chimp and Jeff, the handler who came to love him over two years of training.
Understanding of humans' earliest past often comes from studying fossils. They tell us much of what we know about the people who lived before us. There is one thing fossils cannot tell us; at what point did we stop living day-to-day and start to think symbolically, to represent ideas about our environment and how we could change it? At a dig in South Africa the discovery of a small piece of ochre pigment, 70,000 years old, has raised some very interesting questions.
On July 14, 1789, a mob of angry Parisians stormed the Bastille and seized the King's military stores. A decade of idealism, war, murder, and carnage followed, bringing about the end of feudalism and the rise of equality and a new world order. The French Revolution is a definitive feature-length documentary that encapsulates this heady (and often headless) period in Western civilization. With dramatic reenactments, illustrations, and paintings from the era, plus revealing accounts from journals and expert commentary from historians, The French Revolution vividly unfurls in a maelstrom of violence, discontent, and fundamental change.
The world in 2009 is set to be gloomy be you poor or well-off, a C2 or A1, employed or self-employed. Except if you're a teacher in the stat system or working as a startup in the online creative sector.
The former will see growth as rich kids from the private schools transfer to the comp as mummy and daddy-the-former-investment-banker can't afford to pay the fees any more, the latter enjoying a good part of a £1 billion (or $1b or €1b) innovation fund from the UK Government, and 4iP in Scotland continuing to attract proportionally more investment and potential spend than any other area in the UK.
For the rest of you, many of whose place in a web-driven world will only become more fudged unless significant change occurs soon, the Rev IM Jolly sums it up. Happy New Year indeed.
For the hard of understanding, this is meant to be wry, as in 'Scotch and'.
From Tom, my boss at 4 a couple of months back in preparation for the Scottish Media Literacy Summit I helped organise, this one still sticks with me as a fundamental thing some of those in learning, Government and business could spend a good chunk of 2009 trying to understand better:
Apart from the camisole, Meg's rundown of her nights away from home is incredibly similar - nay, entirely - to all those that I've had this past year in my three-and-a-half times around the world this year. I'm rather glad that I'll be seeing far fewer of those double king beds and impossible wifi instructions in '09.
Documentary explores the continuing appeal of Sherlock Holmes through his various screen incarnations, from early silent films through the classic portrayals by Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing to the BBC's most recent Rupert Everett version. Contributors include Minette Walters, Kim Newman and Edward Hardwicke.