Looking at oneself is a timeless concept. We are constantly trying to figure out how to represent ourselves in our own brains . . . confusing certainly. In honor of Oxford Dictionaries’s 2013 word of the year — “selfie” — University of Southern California professors pay homage by discussing selfies through the lens of letters, arts, and sciences. They analyse the selfie trend through the perspectives of sociology, gender studies, religion, anthropology, and more. Watch their video below and learn how profound a camera flash and puckered mouth can be.
Click here to view the embedded video.
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Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Alden Ehrenreich
After India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska’s) father dies in a car accident on the day of her 18th birthday, her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), whom she never knew existed, comes to live with her and her mother Evie (Nicole Kidman). While Evie readily welcomes Charlie into their home and her heart, allowing him to fill the void left by her dead husband, India is not so sure of her feelings for this mysterious newcomer. Is he the charming traveller he purports to be or is he hiding something more sinister beneath his handsome exterior?
India Stoker exists in a strange world. Although she lives in the 21st century and attends an ordinary American high school, for India, going home at night is like stepping through a portal into another time. She lives in a big, old gothic mansion that is almost completely devoid of modern technology; dresses in clothes that are decades out of date; and her main interests are playing the piano and hunting game in the fields surrounding her house. Her father was both her only friend and hunting companion, so when he dies, leaving her with her mother who is more of a teenager than India is, India finds she is more or less alone in the world. Enter Uncle Charlie, a kindred soul for India, even if she refuses to admit it.
Writer Wentworth Miller (best known for his acting work in the TV series Prison Break) combines elements of Dracula and Shadow of a Doubt (both clearly referenced in Charlie Stoker’s name) to create a film that is something you would imagine Alfred Hitchcock coming up with if tasked with modernising Dracula and relocating it to the American South. Not that this movie is about vampires. It’s a psychological horror/thriller with a much more human evil at its core. Much of the suspense hangs on the questions of what Charlie’s motives really are and what India will do when she discovers them, and the answers become less and less obvious as the film progresses.
Although, with its teenaged protagonist, Stoker ostensibly fits the teen movie mould, this is no ordinary teen horror flick. It’s a teen movie made for adults. It’s very smart and makes you join the dots yourself rather than spelling everything out for you. There’s bloodshed and a body count, which will keep horror fans happy, but it’s not the over the top gore you’d find in a Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street movie. There are no machete wielding maniacs on the loose. It’s also completely bonkers. The more we learn of the Stoker clan, the more apparent it becomes that none of them are 100% sane, and as you would expect from such a family, their actions are completely unpredictable. This means the film twists and turns in ways you wouldn’t imagine and it is one of the rare films I've seen where I genuinely had no idea of what was coming next.
Stoker is Korean director Park Chan-Wook’s first English language movie. Park manages to extract incredible performances from his three leads, in particular Wasikowska, who proves she now has what it takes to break into more adult roles. He even outdoes Oldboy, the movie which brought him international fame in the first place. The film is beautiful to behold and reminiscent in style of the visually striking work of Italian horror director Dario Argento at the peak of his career (in particular, his masterpiece, Suspiria). I’m not sure what the Academy’s opinion of weird, twisted horror thrillers is, and I’m sure the Academy’s notorious conservatism will work against this film. However, when it comes to award season, it will be a crime if this film does not pick up at least one or two prizes.
Verdict: One of the best films of the year to date, Stoker is unlikely to be everyone’s cup of tea, but is well worth seeing for all fans of high quality psychological horror.
Shortly after arriving on an isolated island for a weekend-long party, a group of ten teenagers start dying one by one. Unable to find anyone else on the island, and with the body count rising, the teens are soon faced with the reality that the deaths are no accident and that one of them may be a murderer.
The book I’ve just described is
Ten by Gretchen McNeil, which is essentially just a teenage update of Agatha Christie’s
And Then There Were None. However, with a few minor word changes, I could just as easily have been describing
Devil (
And Then There Were None in an elevator),
Legion (
And Then There Were None in space),
Harper’s Island (
And Then There Were None on a larger scale, with 29 victims and only 4 survivors) or
Identity (
And Then There Were None with an even bigger twist than Agatha Christie first imagined), to name just a few. Let’s face it, since it was first published in 1939,
And Then There Were None has been adapted/paid tribute to/ripped off a lot of times, but that’s not really surprising since, in spite of its age,
And Then There Were None is still one of the best mysteries stories around.
In writing
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie broke the traditional murder mystery mould and created the set-up that would later be used with much success for a significant proportion of the teenage slasher movies made from the late 1970’s onwards (think
Scream, right down to the ‘you sin, you die’ motive). Instead of a murder being committed and a detective being called in to solve it, there is no clear detective in
And Then There Were None, just a bunch of characters who are all just as likely to be the killer or his next victim, and who are too busy turning on each other and trying to stay alive to do any real investigating. Sound familiar? The constant stream of victims keeps the tension high and the story moving, while the lack of a detective within the novel makes the situation more dangerous. There is no saviour to step in at the last minute, just a bunch of scared characters and a killer. Christie also invented one of the great mystery plot twists with this book (at least, until it got used a hundred times and everyone saw it coming).
Getting back to Gretchen McNeil’s
Ten, although I had no difficulties in finishing the book, and quite enjoyed it (in spite of the fact that the writing’s nothing special and the main character’s best friend, Minnie, was so annoying I kept wishing the killer would choose her next), for those familiar with
And Then There Were None, it offers nothing new. All of the key plot points are identical and if you know the signature plot twist, you can guess the killer’s identity pretty early on. All that is left for the reader to do is to guess the order in which the murders are going to occur.
I don’t have any problems with Gretchen McNeil borrowing her plot from Agatha Christie, but her book would have been a lot better if she had been able to add something of her own to the mix.
Harper’s Island and
Identity both managed to do that (and
Devil to a certain extent, although less so), and in the process, distanced themselves from their source material and became strong stories in their own right. By simply changing the age of the characters, McNeil’s novel is rendered little more than an acceptable homage to a much better classic. Read it by all means, but then read the original.
Verdict: An entertaining read, but if you’ve already read
And Then There Were None, don’t expect anything new.
The challenge word on another illustration blog this week is "homage".
hom·age (ˈä-mij or ˈhä-mij) n. 1. expression of high regard 2. something that shows respect or attests to the worth or influence of another
I thought of several ideas for this topic.
This guy suggested paying homage to
René Magritte. Magritte is his favorite artist. Magritte was also the favorite artist of an illustration teacher I had in art school (many years ago).
Magritte was born in 1898, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, a tailor, and Adeline, a milliner. He began drawing lessons in 1910. In 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water. The image of his mother floating, her dress obscuring her face, may have influenced a 1927-1928 series of paintings of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including
Les Amants. His work frequently displays a juxtaposition of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. The representational use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting,
The Treachery of Images, which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe,
Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe.
My illustration is an homage to Magritte, based on his 1936 painting
La Clairvoyance.
There are many ways to pay homage to a friend 
or even to a queen.
With all due respects to Her Majesty, this is the queen who always carries a couple of sugar cubes in that ever present bag. She also hopes you like the hat!
©Ginger Nielson 2008
Thanks to Brad, her mother's new boyfriend, Gilda is now all set to attend the swanky Our Lady of Sorrows private school. Gilda had wanted to apply on a whim. Now that the pink uniformed experience is right in front of her, she isn't sure she really wants to go!
After a tour of the school, she changes her mind. From creepy Velma Underhill, to the fact that the school looks like an old castle...there are things about this place that give Gilda that hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck feeling that can only mean this is the perfect place for a psychic investigator such as herself.
Turns out, one of the students drowned in the lake on campus 3 years earlier. Gilda knows that she is the one to solve this mystery. But what if there are girls around who do not want the mystery solved? Girls that may have had something to do with poor Delores' demise?
Add to the mystery Gilda's unwanted, school chosen big sister Marcie, her mom's loser boyfriend, and an English teacher with the amusing name of Mr. Pante (pantay....not panty!), and readers are in for another Gilda adventure that is sure to please. There is just something about Gilda that I love. She is her own girl, wonky yet somehow sophisticated.
I am definitely looking forward to more in this series.
Wonderful blog =)
Brilliant!
Fashion Queen for sure! Love the movement!
fabulous....and even Winston (or is that Henry?) is bowing.....and I LOVE the hat !!!
Purple hats and sugar cubes!!!
That my kind of Queen!
Fun! Fun! Fun!
Oh I do love the hat! I do! I love the whole illustration! I am wondering if that is Henry. I have been thinking about Henry a lot lately.
He He He it's too much fun and rich of humor!!!
I love the hat and the shoes ... incredible
Wonderful illustration Ginger! Look at all that action! Thanks for your kind words- John
Adorble, I love the little girl's curtsy, and the fun outfil of the "queen." And who can resist a playful beagle?
Thanks so much for your kind words on my blog. Yep, he meant the world to me (and still does, as he sometimes will show up in my dreams!) :-)
Your characters have beautiful movements Ginger! My compliments to the queen!!!
this is so adorable! love the yellow too, so bright and cheerful!!
a : )
That's a great curtsey! I like the way you've observed the queen's talent for colour co-ordination too! :)
Love the illustration! thanks for stopping by to my FI blog... you might like my other blog is about children illustration 100%, come visit!
www.caracarmina.blogspot.com
is in spanish and english!
Both of these are terrific!
I love you doggie so much, I notice that he have been your main cast recently.
I love your art and the fond and fun messages it sends.