retcon

Since first discovering the Maximum Fun network of podcasters about a year ago, I’ve been very pleased with all the series and shows that I’ve ended up subscribing to and have found myself especially enchanted with the wit and wisdom and pop-culture reach of one of the newer offerings, Story Break. Three professional Hollywood script writers get to take a break from the usual industry fare of the safe, sellable or filmable and spend an hour brainstorming, developing and finally pitching a movie based on a pastiche of odd premises, like the Kellogg’s Cinematic Universe with breakfast cereal mascots receiving the Marvel superhero treatment.
If you find yourself already exhausted with the existing holiday special line-up and can summon your imagination to limn out the festive scenario the crew is given, you will definitely want to check out their latest pre-production piece, Sleighrunner. The original arc of narrative began with a hegemonial on-line retailor kidnapping Santa Claus, first to take out the last vestige of competition and then to harness Kris Kringle’s unrivalled, perfect logistics and distribution set-up, which the company’s fleet of delivery drones and virtual omnipresence cannot match. Conceding, however, that the corporation already dominates the holiday, the writers take a different angle and have the online retailor not satisfied with capturing the commercial side of the holiday season but also aspiring to make Christmas magic real for all by raising a drone army of Santa’s Helpers capable delivering their presents in person at the appointed hour, arriving in reindeer drawn flying sleighs. A glitch happens however during the first test-flight and the prototype, sentient robot Santa crashes to Earth and no longer can access his original programming not realise that he’s a replicant (tagline: Naughty or Nice – They All Run). Hunted down by a legion of drone Santas and accompanied by a young child who found the castaway robot who believes him to be the real Saint Nicholas, our malfunctioning robot learns about commercialism and the true meaning of Christmas and in some sense does become the real Santa. Or something—nonetheless, it’s a movie I’d watch.

basti fantasti

Whilst arguably at least a nominal improvement over a regime that seeks to denigrate and defund those institutions that promote the arts and humanities, Vienna’s museum board is nonetheless within their rights to protest the misappropriation of the motto of the Secessionist Movement—co-founded by in 1897 by symbolist painter Gustav Klimt—by Austria’s ascendant right-wing government, under the leadership of Sebastian Kurz.
Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit (as seen on the Secession Hall, which houses some of Klimt’s iconic works) means “to every age its art and to each art its freedom” which the cultural wing of the ironically named Freedom Party and ruling coalition (under the People’s Party) has co-opted, which in this other context sounds rather sinister like another pithy German saying that’s not said any longer, Jedem das Seine, to each his own.

operation blue book

Here is a nice ensemble of articles and footage that really captured our sense of dejection when it came to the media’s coverage (or lack thereof) on the revelation that the US Air Force and Pentagon maintained a secretive programme up until five years ago to study (like its antecedents) the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects and assess their potential threats.
Despite a reputable news source and containing some of the more compelling and credible testimony that we’ve encountered in years, the insanity of the news cycle, morbid scepticism and the contagion of time pressure all conspire (we would be flattering the regime if we expected it not to tell) so we are far more willing to believe the command: “Move along. Nothing to see here,” and perhaps we do so of our own accord. Of course there’s a lot of attention-seeking garbage out there not worth the investment of one’s time and attention (and it is encouraged to argue passionately about made-up aliens), but if journalism isn’t allowed to ever stray into the realms of the speculative, indulgent or even the aspirational, it seems to me to collapse into nothing more than one’s daily-digest of propaganda. I want to believe.

6x6

daft the halls: a fun, festive musical compilation in the style of the artists, via The Awesomer

tulip mania: companies unrelated to cryptocurrency craze are garnering attention by adding “blockchain” to their names

not to scale: Tanaka Tatsuya’s creative dioramas comprised of tiny people interacting with everyday objects, via Nag on the Lake

jólnar: the yuletide Icelandic Ogress Grýla seems far more formidable than Krampus (more on her extended family here), via Miss Cellania

bowling for elves: a look back at the viral 1999 computer game that circulated by email and the ensuing scare that made the public more wary about cyber-security

tuin der lusten: an animation studio reinterprets Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych Garden of Earthly Delights (previously) with contemporary vanities