I'm not a gamer, nor much of a DC Universe guy (Marvel was mostly my comic of choice back in the day) but I have to say that this looks cool. I'd pay $12 to see this movie (live action or CGI), well if it were a movie instead of a game. Glad Green Lantern's coming but where's the Wonder-Woman movie? Or how about a Deathstroke movie? From this game clip, I'd say bring it on! Well I hope DC gets their act together someday for a Justice League movie at least, Marvel can't have all of the fun with the Avengers...DC, I'd even pay $20 for the 3D version...

On a Marvel note, heard the first looks at Comic-Con of the upcoming Captain America and Thor movies, were positive. I hope so...Avengers Assemble! (thanks Shadow and Act for the tip on the video) 

Exclusive Who Do You Trust Trailer HD

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 1:12 PM 

Below check out the crowd dancing behind Honey Blo, which reminded me of a white version of the classic 70s Parliment/Funkadelic 'stage of thousands'! Be sure to check out the little intro with Ratso, which actually comes near the end of the video (thanks to O Hell Nawl for the lead). After seeing that, here's some more fun: 'jazz' bagpipes ("Amazing Grace" starts about a minute in). Is it me or does the bagpipes sound like an soprano saxophone with an especially bad tone?

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:37 PM 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2010

"But I have written to you that I am engaged on a great work. Don't you see how that claims one completely, and how one is often so engrossed in it that one is virtually dead to anything else? Now think of a very great work in which the whole world is reflected--oneself is, so to speak, merely an instrument on which the universe plays...At such moments I do not belong to myself...There are terrible birth pangs the creator of such a work has to suffer, before it all arranges itself and constructs itself and flares up in his head, there has to be a good deal of absent-mindedness and self-absorption and deadness to the outside world...My symphony will be something such as the world has never heard! The whole of Nature finds a voice in it, and tells of such secret things as one may perhaps divine in a dream. I tell you, I myself get an uncanny sensation at certain points, I feel as though I hadn't written this myself."
-Gustav Mahler discussing his Third Symphony to Anna von Mildenburg (from "Mahler" by Kurt Blaukopf translated by Inge Goodwin, Praeger Books, 1973)
 "And so we come to the final incredible page [of the Ninth Symphony]. And this page, I think, is the closest we have ever come, in any work of art, to experiencing the very act of dying, of giving it all up. The slowness of this page is terrifying...It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering between hope and submission.And one by one, these spidery strands connecting us to life melt away, vanish from our fingers even as we hold them. We cling to them as they dematerialize; we are holding two--then one. One, and suddenly none. For a petrifying moment there is only silence. Then again, a strand, a broken strand, two strands, one...none. We are half in love with easeful death...now more than ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain...And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything."
 -Leonard Bernstein, from his The Twentieth Century Crisis, the 5th part of "The Unanswered Question", the Harvard University Norton Lecture Series (1973)
"I have been going through so many experiences (for the past year and a half) that I can hardly discuss them. How should I attempt to describe such colossal crisis? I see everything in such a new light and I am in such continuous fluctuation...I am thirster than ever for life, and I find the 'habit of living' sweeter than ever..."
-Gustav Mahler in a letter to Bruno Walter, 1909 (from"Mahler-The Man and his Music" by Egon Gartenberg, Schirmer Books, 1978)
Happy 150th Birthday, Herr Mahler!

(Text in the below video is from the last part of the 5th lecture, The Twentieth Century Crisis, of the riveting 6-part The Unanswered Question, Leonard Bernstein's Harvard Norton Lectures talks from the 1970s; )

(photo credit: Mahler on his way to conduct the Court Opera in 1904 from Kurt Blaukopf's Mahler)

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 10:55 PM 

I don't remember this kind of dancing the last time I was at the New York City Ballet! Twirl was created for the NYCB's Dance with Dancers 2010 event and is a good and interesting way to promote the ballet for  potential younger consumers. Of course you wouldn't want to always have something like this techno-rap, but if they could more often make the actual ballet  experience as fun as this video, maybe it would really attract a...ah, more diverse, younger audience (Nutcracker excepted...).

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:54 AM 

On this date April 24th, 1990 the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. After the initial trepidation over the misshapen mirror and the subsequent repair, the images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been inspiring wonder and amazement in me and millions of other fans and viewers for much of those 20 years (the above Deep Field image from Hubble is one of my favorites and I can continually gaze at in astonishment and reverie).

So Happy Birthday Hubble! My hope is that when the 'eyes of our Pale Blue Dot' is retired and replace with the James Webb Space Telescope, set for launch in 2014, that we will, for many more years to come, continue to see the universe in all its beauty, mystery, and glory.

Hubble Images
Hubble Deep Field slideshow

And while the Hubble Telescope did not take the famous 'Pale Blue Dot' photo (which also was taken over a series of months, 20 years ago), Carl Sagan's famous essay that describes his feelings upon seeing the image of Earth, as taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it was leaving the solar system, could easily reflect the perspective and humility granted by Hubble.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 7:00 AM 

I just came across this brief interview of one of my favorite composers Arvo Pärt, conducted by one of my favorite musicians, Björk. Hearing Pärt, with his halting English, give a tiny insight into his thoughts on music was serenely fascinating. But one lingering question: is it just me or at times does it sound like Björk could have come from Glasgow? Seriously, nonetheless worth checking it out for the Pärt fan. BTW, the title refers to a question of Björk's around 3:30 in the video. Pärt's answer is both kind, serious, and illuminating).

Choice Pärt quotes from the video:
"You can kill people with sound...and if you can kill, maybe there is the sound that is the opposite of killing."

"In art, everything is possible, but everything [what is made] is not necessary."

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 5:53 PM