Masterpiece

Werner Herzog’s enduringly gripping and influential movie is rereleased for its 50th anniversary; it is Herzog’s early masterpiece, a bold and brilliant retelling of a strange true story from German history, plainly and candidly staged, full of poignancy, and pathos as well as mystery, but which is also revealed here to be about the arbitrary nature of survival and death. The original German title is Jeder für Sich und Gott Gegen Alle, whch translates as Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which Herzog used as the…

One year after The Empire Strikes Back premiered with Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, the actor co-starred in a film with Sylvester Stallone, who had already portrayed Rocky Balboa in two films. No, they didn’t reprise their noted iconic roles, but they became a part of an outstanding film that some will still say is overlooked today. Of course, I’m talking about the 1981 film Nighthawks. The movie has since become noteworthy for Rutger Hauer’s performance, the script, and the shot-on-location spots around New…

In the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw, violinist Joshua Bell and conductor Dalia Stasevska are on an intensely focused mission to get the opening bars of a concerto just right. The work begins with a series of exposed chords from the woodwind, from which rises a declamatory flourish on the violin that fades into a lyrical phrase so intimate and hushed that it steals the breath. The musicians are recording the piece, so the passage is repeated over and over, then critiqued, with the finest of adjustments made.You…

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be trained to see details in images that escape the human eye. Now an AI neural network has identified something unusual about a face in a Raphael painting: it wasn't actually painted by Raphael.The face in question belongs to St Joseph, seen in the top left of the painting known as the Madonna della Rosa (or Madonna of the Rose).Scholars have in fact long debated whether or not the painting is a Raphael original. While it requires diverse evidence to conclude an artwork's provenance, a…

The Running Chicken Nebula comprises several clouds, all of which we can see in this vast image from the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), hosted at ESO’s Paranal site. This 1.5-billion-pixel image spans an area in the sky of about 25 full Moons. The clouds shown in wispy pink plumes are full of gas and dust, illuminated by the young and hot stars within them. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgment: CASUThe ESO unveils a detailed image of the Running Chicken Nebula, located 6500 light-years away in the Centaurus constellation.…

The end of the year finds awards-hungry film studios wrapping up and stuffing into theaters some some of their best goodies for audiences to unwrap over the holiday break. For the most part, you’ll be thrilled with what you’ll be given, particularly “The Iron Claw,” “American Fiction,” “The Color Purple” and “All of Us Strangers.” Here’s our roundup. “The Iron Claw”: Four brothers (Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson and Stanley Simons) deep in the heart of Texas sacrifice their dreams, careers and even their…

Although their advantages over conventional bicycles are debatable, hubless-wheel ebikes certainly look futuristic. Penny farthings, on the other hand, definitely do not. It only makes sense, then, that YouTuber Christopher Terpstra would combine the two in his one-off penn-E-farthing.Terpstra lives just outside Chicago, and has a degree in Industrial Design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He worked as a retail fixture design engineer for 15 years, and first came to our attention back in 2015 when he…

Holocaust movies are now a genre. It makes one more than a little queasy to acknowledge this. We’re talking about art that seeks to recreate an atrocity of such devastating scale and magnitude; to imagine the unimaginable. You can say the phrase “Holocaust movie” and a number of images and scenarios, conventions and clichés immediately spring to mind. Some of these feature films have been extraordinary. Several have been borderline exploitative. A few have been outright offensive. German philosopher Theodor Adorno is…

When Hayao Miyazaki, the world’s greatest living animator, approached his longtime producer Toshio Suzuki in July 2016 and told him that he wanted to make another film, Suzuki was not enthusiastic. “I said: ‘Absolutely not. This is a bad idea,’” Suzuki recalls. He had his reasons. “I’ve seen many, many great directors, who feel that they can make one more great film and most of the time they fail. I didn’t want to see him go down that road.”Besides, Miyazaki had supposedly already made his final film. Three years…

Research on human foot evolution highlights the importance of the medial longitudinal arch and explores the variability in foot morphology, influenced by factors like lifestyle, footwear, and genetic traits. Credit: SciTechDaily.com A comprehensive study reveals new insights into the evolution and complexity of the human foot, focusing on the medial longitudinal arch and its significance in differentiating Homo sapiens from primates. “The human foot is one of the most complex masterpieces of evolution, a work of art in…