@[email protected] - I felt the same - I couldn't put them down as a kid. It's definitely got some 70s era prejudice in how it was written, and in the strict cultural divisions based on race and religion that it portrays, but I never felt that it was overtly or deliberately racist - rather the author portraying a barbaric world ruled by gods who were very close at hand and fiercely protective of their people. I still get chills remembering the god Mara wailing in the ruins for the slaughtered Maragor.
arotrios
joined 1 year ago
1
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/403415
The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Set in postwar Vienna, the film centres on American Holly Martins (Cotten), who arrives in the city to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime (Welles), only to learn that Lime has died. Viewing his death as suspicious, Martins elects to stay in Vienna and investigate the matter.
The atmospheric use of black-and-white expressionist cinematography by Robert Krasker, with harsh lighting and largely subtle "Dutch angle" camera technique, is a major feature of The Third Man. Combined with the iconic theme music by zither player Anton Karas, seedy locations and acclaimed performances from the cast, the style evokes the atmosphere of an exhausted, cynical post-war Vienna at the start of the Cold War.
Greene wrote the novella of the same name as preparation for the screenplay. Karas's title composition "The Third Man Theme" topped the international music charts in 1950, bringing the previously unknown performer international fame; the theme would also inspire Nino Rota's principal melody in La Dolce Vita (1960).[citation needed] The Third Man is considered one of the greatest films of all time, celebrated for its acting, musical score and atmospheric cinematography.[5]
In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of all time. In 2011, a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out ranked it the second best British film ever.
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/478961
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/429137
Shadow libraries, sometimes called pirate libraries, consist of texts aggregated outside the legal framework of copyright.
Today's pirate libraries have their roots in the work of Russian academics to digitize texts in the 1990s. Scholars in that part of the world had long had a thriving practice of passing literature and scientific information underground, in opposition to government censorship—part of the samizdat culture, in which banned documents were copied and passed hand to hand through illicit channels. Those first digital collections were passed freely around, but when their creators started running into problems with copyright, their collections “retreated from the public view," writes Balázs Bodó, a piracy researcher based at the University of Amsterdam. "The text collections were far too valuable to simply delete," he writes, and instead migrated to "closed, membership-only FTP servers."
More recently, though, those collections have moved online, where they are available to anyone who knows where to look.
The purpose of this site, then, is to have all these libraries at our fingertips when in need of a certain text or book.
As Aaron Swartz put it:
"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves."
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
Read the full text of the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/476755
Don't panic, and bring a towel.
For seasoned galactic travelers, if you're looking for the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which includes:
- Hitchhiker's Guide
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- Life, the Universe, and Everything
- So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
- Young Zaphod Plays It Safe
- Mostly Harmless
... this wormhole should get you there.
Also, upon conferring with both Space and Ice Pirates, I've been persuaded to also provide their contribution here in honor of the late, great Douglas Adams.
Now could you guys please untie my cats and get them off the plank?
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/473436
Long ago, so the Storyteller claimed, the evil God Torak sought dominion and drove men and Gods to war. But Belgarath the Sorcerer led men to reclaim the Orb that protected men of the West. So long as it lay at Riva, the prophecy went, men would be safe...
This series remains some of the best fantasy I've ever read, and it's often very hard to find, as it's been out of print for a while now in most places.
Content Warning: David Eddings has a checkered past regarding the abuse of his adopted son, which he served a year in jail for in 1970. There are likewise dark themes in these novels that some readers may find disturbing. That being said, I believe the work stands on its own as a masterpiece of world-crafting. Please note I present it on those grounds, not as any endorsement of Eddings himself.
194
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/317329
The Blues Brothers is a 1980 American musical comedy film directed by John Landis. It stars John Belushi as "Joliet" Jake Blues and Dan Aykroyd as his brother Elwood, characters developed from the recurring musical sketch "The Blues Brothers" on NBC variety series Saturday Night Live. The script is set in and around Chicago, Illinois, where it was filmed, and the screenplay was written by Aykroyd and Landis. It features musical numbers by rhythm and blues (R&B), soul, and blues singers James Brown, Cab Calloway (in his final feature film role), Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Chaka Khan, and John Lee Hooker. It features non-musical supporting performances by Carrie Fisher, Henry Gibson, Charles Napier, Kathleen Freeman and John Candy.
That's one of the reasons I posted the source material as available (free) downloads as well - Day has come under criticism before by Tolkien scholars. I personally found most of his mistakes and liberties in this work to be minor, but I'm not a Tolkien scholar. Nonetheless, the work has a unique artistic touch that regardless of its accuracy, brings the novels to life in a way that surpasses later catalogues, and it was responsible for getting young readers of my generation interested in reading them.
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Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) - 1959 - starring Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello, directed by Marcel Camus
(lemmy.world)
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/468313
Black Orpheus (Portuguese: Orfeu Negro [ɔɾˈfew ˈneɣɾu]) is a 1959 romantic tragedy film directed by French filmmaker Marcel Camus, and starring Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello. It is based on the play Orfeu da Conceição by Vinicius de Moraes, which set the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice in a contemporary favela in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval. The film was an international co-production among companies in Brazil, France and Italy.
The film is particularly noted for its soundtrack by two Brazilian composers: Antônio Carlos Jobim, whose song "A felicidade" opens the film; and Luiz Bonfá, whose "Manhã de Carnaval" and "Samba de Orfeu" have become classics of bossa nova. The songs performed by Orfeu were dubbed by singer Agostinho dos Santos.[6] Lengthy passages of filming took place in the Morro da Babilônia, a favela in the Leme neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.
Black Orpheus won the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, the 1960 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the 1960 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film and was nominated for the 1961 BAFTA Award for Best Film.
Important to note, there's some controversy over the film in Brazil:
While the 1959 adaptation has been celebrated internationally, it has been criticized by Brazilians and scholars for exoticizing Brazil for an international audience and reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
and...
The Palme d'Or and Oscar-winning film was celebrated internationally and criticized in Brazil; Vinicius de Moraes, author of the play Orfeu da Conceição upon which the film was based, was outraged by the film and left the theater in the middle of the screening. Critics of the adaptation by Marcel Camus argued that it reinforced various stereotypes about Brazilian culture and society and about Afro-Brazilians specifically, portraying the characters as "simple-minded, overtly sexual, and interested only in singing and dancing." Setting out to make itself more "appealing" to foreign audiences, the film resorts to a "cheap and problematic exoticism" of Brazil.
This movie is an explosion of cinematic joy de vivre, unique in the energy it brings to a classic tragedy, and a unique picture of Brazil in the late 50s, I've decided to let the audience decide where their opinions sit in the controversy above.
Captions in English available in settings -> captions on the player for those that don't speak Portuguese.
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/468547
David Day's A TOLKIEN BESTIARY is a scholarly, definitive and enchantingly beautiful explanation of all the imaginary beasts, monsters, races, nations,deities, fauna and flora of J.R.R- Tolkien's fantasy worlds of Middle-earth and the Undying Lands.
David Day has identified, analyzed and described 129 separate races. Each is lucidly explained in terms of its physical appearance, language, behavior and culture. A TOLKIEN BESTIARY does not retell their stories: its purpose is to make Tolkien’s own books more accessible by identifying his living creatures and explaining their roles in his epic world.
While not the most accurate of the Tolkien Bestiaries, this one was the first, and the one with the best artwork.
Downloads for the novels:
I've always dug it because it was one of the first explorations of a successful invasion from another species, and it was an excellent scifi deconstruction of colonialism, one that was groundbreaking for the time it was written (right before WWII).
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/359206
Karel Čapek’s last major novel, War with the Newts, is a satirical dystopian masterpiece, both prescient and timeless, uniquely Czech and yet universal in appeal. Published in 1936, it remains one of the most thought-provoking novels ever written.
The full novel in html, courtesy of Project Gutenberg Australia
If you need it in other formats, this link has a great selection of free alternatives - you can filter by your preferred file format. There's a azw3 version here that should work with Kindle.
Another great one - here's a link to get a free .pdf copy if you're looking to add to your library:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/ae962cb11c50e00ecdc2b50d2d813b54
I agree, Still Life is the stronger novel. I usually choose Cowgirls as the work of his to to introduce new readers to, as it's more accessible and lighthearted, but Still Life is where Robbins really shows his chops.
Here's a link to a free copy (.pdf download) from Anna's if you're looking for one: https://annas-archive.org/md5/85333852ce8e0b37dc4918f59cfb5bb1
I agree. I'm probably gonna post this to the [email protected] with more of a synopsis another night, but here's an early screening for you.
Wut?
The internet archive lit the fire, or whomever posted the video collection did. I just found the smoke, and invited y'all around the campfire. There's no need get snippy, Zorak.
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Sorry - these are all table top games.