Al Jarnow’s Celestial Navigations Merge Art, Science

You’ve probably seen his short films about science and art, which aired on public television in the ’70s and ’80s. You might even have played with his interactive exhibits in museums.

But you probably don’t recognize the name of the multimedia maestro whose avant-garde creations are collected on the new DVD Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow.

Released in February, the long-awaited compilation of Al Jarnow’s works offers a glimpse into what viral videos could achieve if they weren’t populated by crying Britney fans and worse. “Celestial Navigation,” the 1985 short film that gives the DVD collection its title, employs animation, stop-motion and time-lapse photography to chronicle the sun’s seasonal transformation from equinox to equinox.

“It looks at a universe in which we are all moving on a great cosmological wheel, making the most out of the ride and looking for something to break the cycle,” Jarnow told Wired.com in an e-mail interview.

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Secretly Filmed Movie Highlights Tehran’s Gutsy Rock Scene

Long before Iranian civilians tapped Twitter to alert the world about bloodshed on the streets of Tehran, the country’s young music fans routinely subverted the nation’s rigid regime by going online to get transfusions of American rock ‘n’ roll.

The fruits of those furtive sessions can be seen, and heard, in No One Knows About Persian Cats. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at 2009’s Cannes Film Festival, the movie about Tehran’s underground rock scene was filmed secretly, run-and-gun style, in 17 days by director Bahman Ghobad.

The semi-scripted Persian Cats features gutsy musicians, raised on heavy metal and indie rock, who practice on the sly in order to avoid arrest. Apart from the lyrics, most of the songs sound like they could be getting banged out in Any Garage, USA. And yet Iranian bands like Take It, Easy Hospital, Mahdyar Aghajani, Hichkas and The Yellow Dogs face a stiff penalty for rocking without a license: Three months in prison.

Western pop music served as a lifeline to the rest of the world for an entire generation of isolated youth, according to Ghobad.

“After the 1979 revolution, almost all public places were closed down, so you had a lot of these kids who are unemployed, sitting at home, and they start spending all their time on the internet with these very slow connections visiting unfiltered websites,” Ghobad told Wired.com in a phone interview. “In order to not fall behind the rest of the world, they tried to familiarize themselves with the music of the West, and accomplished a lot in this way.”

No One Knows About Persian Cats opens Friday in 10 cities and will expand in May to additional markets.

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Alien Prequel Will Tell Space Jockey’s Story

An Alien prequel that unspools the back story of the mysterious Space Jockey — the giant, fossilized creature with the burst-open chest from the first movie — is definitely going to happen, according to Ridley Scott.

“It’s fundamentally about going out to find out ‘Who the hell was that Space Jockey?’” the director told MTV News. “The guy who was sitting in the chair in the alien vehicle — there was a giant fellow sitting in a seat on what looked to be either a piece of technology or an astronomer’s chair.”

Scott, who’s polishing the script, drops even more details about the Alien prequel, which he calls a done deal in the enlightening interview: The movie will be set in 2085, will delve into the concept of terraforming and might even feature new concept artwork by the amazing H.R. Giger, Scott said.

And why is Scott, who has forsworn making sequels to his films, tackling the Alien prequel? “They’ve squeezed the franchise dry,” he told MTV. “The first one will always be the most frightening, because the beast we put together with Giger and all its parts — the face-hugger, the chest-burster, the egg — they were all totally original, and that’s hard to follow.”

Read the full interview for even more intriguing info on the movie.

“Exclusive: Ridley Scott Reveals Alien Prequel Details” — MTV News

[via io9]

Image from H.R. Giger’s Necronomicon IV. Follow us on Twitter: @lewiswallace and @theunderwire.

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Alt Text: Are Videogames Art? Time Will Tell

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Roger Ebert is at it again, declaring that videogames can’t be art. It’s a bit of an odd choice for a crusade, given that the topic is not up for a vote or anything. There isn’t a Secret Treehouse for Real Artists that Ebert — as the screenwriter of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls — gets to hang out in and Will Wright doesn’t.

Ebert’s central argument seems to be that if it’s interactive, it can’t be art, which is silly because that excludes pop-up books, Choose Your Own Adventure stories and Mister Potato Head, which are clearly the best forms of art.

bug_altextHere’s my point of view: Videogames can be art, but not for the reasons most videogame fans bring up. People inevitably trot out cutscenes as an example of True Videogame Art, which is perplexing.

First off, cutscenes are nearly always the worst part of the game. Secondly, they’re the only part of a videogame that isn’t actually a videogame. Trying to prove a videogame is art by pointing to the cutscenes is like trying to prove a bacon double cheeseburger is delicious by pointing to the lettuce.

You know what’s one of the finest pieces of videogame art of all time? Pac-Man. Aesthetically, it’s a masterpiece of techno-primitive color, sound and interactivity. I’m not just talking from a retro/grognard point of view, though; the same could be said of Katamari Damacy. And Portal isn’t just one of the best videogames of all time — it’s one of the best comedies of all time.

I can’t get behind any theory of videogame art that excludes these games just because they don’t have at least six hours of cutscenes where a guy with pointy hair and a sword the size of a side of beef muses about the nature of being.

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Review: Zoe Saldana Nearly Redeems The Losers

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Zoe Saldana’s got it going on, as anyone who’s seen Star Trek or Avatar can attest. In those movies, she probed outer space aboard the starship Enterprise and saved Pandora from colonization.

In The Losers, opening Friday, Saldana may not rescue an alien world, but she does salvage the movie with her portrayal of Aisha — a tough, sexy mystery warrior who kicks, punches and fires grenade launchers while still managing to shed the occasional tear over an unjust tragedy.

Aisha is not the most original character, but Saldana makes the most of it. In so doing, the lithe, 31-year-old actress nudges an otherwise routine action-adventure beyond “don’t bother” status.

Based on Vertigo’s mid-2000s comic book series by Andy Diggle, The Losers goes heavy on the bang-bang, blow-it-up school of Michael Bay–style pyrotechnics. Rated PG-13, the movie tells the story of rogue CIA operatives who are presumed dead after a mission in a Bolivian jungle blows up in their faces, thanks to a sadistic mastermind named Max who wants to destroy the world.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)

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Playlist: Charlotte Gainsbourg Talks Music, Movies and Her Favorite Tunes

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Charlotte Gainsbourg shares some of her favorite songs in this week's Playlist podcast.

Actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg talked about the music and films that have influenced her when she stopped by the Wired studio recently to guest-DJ the Playlist podcast.

Playlist Podcast: Episode 24

Gainsbourg, who starred in Lars von Triers’ Antichrist last year, played a track from her latest record, IRM, which was co-written and produced by Beck; a tune from Radiohead’s OK Computer; and a song by her father, French musician Serge Gainsbourg; among others.

After complications from a waterskiing accident nearly took her life, Gainsbourg found no shortage of emotion to draw upon when she entered the studio to record IRM. The album’s title is taken from the French abbreviation for magnetic resonance imaging — a process she became familiar with during her long hospital stint.

Who: Charlotte Gainsbourg
Song: “Time of the Assassins”
Album: IRM
Gainsbourg described her song “Time of the Assassins” as having an element of “fantasy” to it. The track’s washed-out reverb chorus and resonant organ chords certainly evoke ethereal sensations.

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Hitler Reacts to Hitler Parodies Being Yanked From YouTube

Who could possibly have seen this coming?

[via Boing Boing]

Follow us on Twitter: @lewiswallace and @theunderwire.

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South Park Airs Censored Episode After Muslim Threat

LOS ANGELES — Satirical animated TV show South Park beeped out the words “Prophet Muhammad” and plastered its Wednesday episode with the word “CENSORED” after being issued a grim warning by a U.S. Muslim group.

The irreverent comedy show on Comedy Central also substituted a controversial image seen last week of the Prophet Muhammad in a bear outfit with one of Santa Claus in the same costume.

It was not immediately clear if the move was a bid to tread carefully following the warning against the South Park creators, or if they were poking fun at the fuss.

The little-known group RevolutionMuslim.com posted a message on its website earlier this week warning creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show.”

The website posted a graphic photo of Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was killed in 2004 by an Islamic militant over a movie he had made that accused Islam of condoning violence against women. It also posted a link to a news article with details of a mansion in Colorado that Parker and Stone apparently own.

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Disney Fetes Earth Day With Wondrous Nature Doc Oceans




Looking for an eye-popping, mind-frying way to celebrate Earth Day? Dive deep into the dream states of Oceans, the new nature documentary that opens Thursday. It promises to be a refreshingly new experience for, well, pretty much everyone.

“Less than 5 percent of the ocean has been seen by human beings,” says oceanographer Sylvia Earle, also known to the National Geographic as “The Sturgeon General,” in the Oceans featurette above. “This is a point in history when we have a chance to look over the shoulder of people equipped with new technologies to be able to explore the ocean as we have never seen it before.”

Narrated by Pierce Brosnan and co-directed by Jacques Perrin (Winged Migration) and Jacques Cluzaud, Oceans premiered last year in France but has finally crossed the pond. It chronicles seven years of painstaking patience documenting teeming life across Earth’s five oceans.

Some clever technological tricks allowed the filmmakers to capture Oceans‘ stunning scenes without too much intrusion into the underwater world.

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The Guild Comic Dives Into Web Series’ Origins Story

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The second issue of Felicia Day’s comic book The Guild digs further into the back story of Cyd Sherman, the intrepid gamer whose misadventures drive Day’s Streamy Award-winning web comedy series.

The middle installment in a three-part prequel, The Guild No. 2 packages its tale behind two variant covers. Kristian Donaldson’s cover design (above left) presents a pulp fiction portrait of Codex, the avatar of main character Cyd (played by Day in the award-winning webisodes). Alternate cover art by Matthew Stawicki (right) features Guild member Vork on the attack.

The comic follows Cyd as she becomes more immersed in the role-playing world. Snubbed by her musician boyfriend, she forms her own group after learning about reputation points and “friending” from pals Clara and Zaboo.

Written by Day with art by Jim Rugg, The Guild (published by Dark Horse Comics) sells for $3.50. The final chapter lands May 26. Meanwhile, The Guild web series is ramping up for a fourth season.

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