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How “Starship Troopers” Aligns with Our Moment of American Defeat (single link new yorker) Verhoeven told Empire, in 2014, that he couldn’t finish reading it. With the possible exception of Mary Harron’s “American Psycho,” it’s hard to think of a film adaptation that’s more invested in refuting and satirizing its source. The anti-Fascism of “Starship Troopers” is mordant and merciless, but Verhoeven advances his argument by making its every frame lavishly, overbearingly Fascist. [more inside]
posted by ActingTheGoat at 6:54 PM PST - 159 comments

A short comic about the unusual 2018 art theft involving 'A View of Hampstead Heath' by John Constable - notable because the thieves never even touched the painting (SL Bloomberg).
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:51 PM PST - 17 comments

MiuMiu Guitargirl is a 7 year old in Nanjing. Her parents have been posting her performances to YouTube during the last few months: multi-instrumental covers, song lessons, guitar playing tips and originals. Some of her earliest posts were I Wish You Love, Fly Me to the Moon and Moon River. I looks like musicians around the globe have time on their hands right now and have decided - to - accompany - her - performances.
posted by bonobothegreat at 5:28 PM PST - 10 comments

Spend a pleasant ninety minutes watching beardy, distractible Irish sword-maker Michael Cthulhu build a massive slab of sword called The Wrektangle.
posted by cortex at 3:22 PM PST - 30 comments

Last November, Daniel M. Lavery -- cofounder of the Toast and Metafilter favorite author -- abruptly and publicly broke with his entire family of origin. Lavery's father is the influential evangelical author John Ortberg, pastor at the prominent Menlo Church, and his sister Laura Turner is also a Christian writer. Lavery had written warmly about his family before. What could have happened?

Megachurch pastor John Ortberg kept a family member’s attraction to children secret. Then his son blew the whistle. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 2:55 PM PST - 44 comments

Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. "Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. If we—or our friends or the pundits on CNN—spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views. This, they write, “may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people’s attitudes.” [more inside]
posted by storybored at 1:35 PM PST - 64 comments

A year after creating "arguably the most famous landmark in the Texas panhandle," Cadillac Ranch (Trip Advisor; 1974/1994 short documentary; MoMA; Texas Monthly), Ant Farm (Wikipedia) set up a different sort of temporary event/mixed media piece called Media Burn (original video), whose centerpieces was when a modified Cadillac drove through a burning (smouldering?) wall of televisions (Mltshp; MOMA; MOCAtv short documentary). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:42 AM PST - 5 comments

Childhood friends Kati Horna and Robert Capa became lovers and she went with him to Spain, becoming the woman who captured his Heart.
She documented mostly away from the front lines.
After marrying the Sculptur Jose Horna they fled to Mexico, where she formed a close and lasting friendship with the Surrealists Remedios Varo & Leonora Carrington and her husband Chiqui Weisz (see Mexican Suitcase). As well as photographing Frida Kahlo's studio and Portraits of Leonora Carrington and Varo she played with collage and masks.
A lost archive of her Civil War photos only appeared last year (2019). During her long life she produced a large and varied body of work. See pdf.
posted by adamvasco at 10:09 AM PST - 3 comments

When a decomposing, century-old film becomes a haunting meditation on memory (Aeon): Created using a decomposing 35mm print of the crime drama The Bells (1926), the experimental short Light Is Calling (2004) depicts a dreamy encounter between a soldier and a mysterious woman.
posted by not_the_water at 8:22 AM PST - 7 comments

Ben Wittes and Kate Klonick of LawFare interview Renaissance historian, science fiction writer and anime consultant Ada Palmer on their YouTube channel In Lieu of Fun. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 8:04 AM PST - 5 comments

Vikings Are Gay is a podcast about Norse culture and history from a queer perspective by Old Norse scholar Amy Jeffords Franks. Besides an introductory episode, so far she’s touched on the subjects of bottom shaming and female magic, Odin’s gender, Thor having to act the role of the bride, and an episode in response to Black Lives Matter about the links between Viking studies and white supremacy.
posted by Kattullus at 3:16 AM PST - 20 comments

Italian composer Ennio Morricone, best known for his scores to over 500 films and television programs, has died in Rome at the age of 91. Winner of numerous awards, including two Oscars, six BAFTAS, four Grammys, and three Golden Globes, he gained international recognition in the 1960s for the music he wrote for a series of spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Leone. Over the next five decades Morricone worked with some of the world’s most acclaimed directors and many others who were lesser known. In addition to his film and television work, he also composed music for advertisements, collaborated with singers, and recorded avant-garde improvisational music as a member of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. [more inside]
posted by theory at 2:38 AM PST - 92 comments

In a world where dogs are people too, Huxley feels like he's the chewtoy of the universe. His latest indignity: being unable to afford his mother's funeral. He thinks he's found a way to win without his brother's help in this animated short film, Condolences from the Vulgar Tongue or (Boner).
posted by BiggerJ at 1:16 AM PST - 1 comments