Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Musically Delicious

Song From My Heart: original music designed, performed and recorded by the amazing Kate D. Godfrey, as a theme song for my sci-fi short story anthology Long Story Short. Which also serves as the general theme song for my Arcanum series of stories.


At my request, the incredible Vika Yermolyeva composed and recorded two instrumental versions of that song on piano:
cover 1

cover 2

Then, for fun, I manipulated both incarnations to create several new songs out of them:

Godfrey alternate 1
Godfrey alternate 2
Godfrey alternate 3
Godfrey alternate 4
Godfrey alternate 5

Vika alternate 1
Vika alternate 2
Vika alternate 3

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Artemis Eternal gives you wings, man

ARTEMIS ETERNAL LIMITED EDITION T-SHIRTS!
A brilliant way to display Wingman pride, with your love of cinema/ contempt for LOLlywood.
Designed in partnership of AAE creator Jessica Mae Stover and fantastic resident AAE artist Greg Martin, these beautifully rendered shirts are available only until January 7.
Profit from the shirt sales goes to ARTEMIS ETERNAL developments.
If I were to get another tattoo, this:
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*bonus desktop wallpaper download of magnifiecent variant image also provided on other side of link above.
Also, learn more about the outstanding ARTEMIS ETERNAL film project/movement

This Innocence Is Brilly-ent: Limerence

As an inferential storyteller myself, I love the enigmatically inferential style of IDAK Production LIMERENCE, an esoteric (and silent) short film created by Isak Gundrosen & Ida Skjefstad.
A woman with nothing to wear is given a reverencial gift by an adoring stranger.
Subtle and sublime, a poetically mysterious theme and juxtaposition of clothed and unclothed runs throughout this fairy tale-ish story.

>also can be seen here: http://vimeo.com/groups/1615/videos/17272651

Which Reaches From The Deepest Inner Mind

Written/Produced by Hunter Woo and Directed by Seaton Lin, the introspective short film Civilian brilliantly plays like a scene from one of the best Outer Limits episodes. I'd like to see the rest of that episode.
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Through hypnosis, a woman recalls an eerie visitor who showed her a landscape of stars.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Sci-Fi Spectacle of Modern Times

Allegedly with no budget and much free time and skill, some guys named Ben Craig, Simon Mountney, Tom Mountney and Robin Mair have deftly rendered a spectacular sci-fi short film of stunning visuals, called Modern Times.
With a concept simultaneously complex and simple, Modern Times is beautifully sketched in intricately casual world building detail.
On the surface, the obvious and most impressive aspect of the film is the gorgeous CGI visuals.
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But looking deeper and further into the text, the story itself is equally impressive, implying-- and from which can be inferred-- a particular future reality that may be appreciated by Artemis Eternal Wingmen.
Not only is cinema clearly celebrated—- and on a grand technological and aesthetic scale, but people apparently still read paper printed books.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Intriguing Propositions: Jorge Luis Borges

As an independent art philanthropist and enthusiast, I’ve made it my mission to seek out exceptional unknown or lesser known fiction writers, and add their stories to my library.
Authors like Jeffery Harrell, Lee Thomas and me. Perhaps one of the most famous of such authors is the relatively unknown Jorge Luis Borges.
The profound, surrealist short stories of Borges are not to be read, so much as intuited & interpolated… deconstructed, decoded and deciphered. His fiction tends to be laced with fantastical themes of dreams, labyrinths, libraries, fictional writers, mythology and religion.
PhotobucketInnovatively metaphysical and metaphorical, many of his stories are meta-- a kind of labyrinth or puzzle box, infused with the arcane mystery and exploration inherent in each. Insinuated with uncanny subtext, Borges stories are frequently about more than the surface story itself, composed with multiple layers of interpretation and inference.
The exquisite and intricate poetry through which Jorge Luis Borges manifests his enigmatic tales is astounding and rare. His exotic literary style could be roughly described as a combination of Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle... and me.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Candy Shop & Good Pretender @ Doorpost

Brandon McCormick of Whitestone Motion Pictures , in conjunction with the Doorpost Film Project, has produced a fantastic fairy tale of a short film entitled The Candy Shop ... a poignant parable about the child sex trafficking epidemic that has plagued the city of Atlanta. But it also serves as a mission statement for an activist movement against child prostitution: The Candy Shop
The owner of the titular candy shop in this exceptional story is a delightfully creepy mix of Willy Wonka and Michael Jackson (which is not an endictment of MJ as an alleged pedophile. Nor Willy Wonka.).

Also on the other side of the link is another film worth watching, made by Maziar Lahooti, called Good Pretender . A terrificly imaginitive story examines the complicated issue of the father/daughter relationship (when the father is single), as an ambivalent girl copes with the loss of her mother by blending her disapointing reality with the more satisfying fiction of her favorite movie: Terminator 2.
But she isn't the only one pretending.

A sampling of remarkable Mikko Löppönen films

Featuring a wonderful actress with great screen presence named Jessica Brandt, HMC Indie's Apocalypse short film evokes a palpable sense of nostalgic melancholy in an apocalyptic scenario on the cusp of becoming Post.

Somewhere in the distant future. A world under attack. A lone woman gazes into the abyss...
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The whole film consists of a single scene, but I love how efficiently that mere scene implies more going on in the world around them-- both off camera as well as before and after; plus it defies the "defenseless, lone woman in distress" trope in Buffy The Vampire Slayer fashion.
So does this other film by HMC Indie Productions, also starring Jessica Brandt (who appears in several movies produced by Mikko Löppönen with HMC):
Towards the Exit

Both films also exemplify the possible effectiveness and grace of deliberately slow pacing-- a point often lost in this age obsessed with amped up action sequences and rushed plotting.

Lord of the Forests is another fine film from HMC, but this time without Brandt.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Joker vs Superman

Chris Notarile and Kim Santiago with Blinky Productions-- renown for their inventive DC comics fan films— have conceived a wonderfully original Superman story, featuring Notarile in his outstanding portrayal of Heath Ledger’s Joker, in Die Laughing . He is so good as this character that he would be an excellent understudy for Ledger. Besides Notarile’s fantastic recreation of the Joker from Nolan’s Batman films, particularly remarkable is the intriguing premise commenting on a fundamental aspect of Superman.
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