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Steve Jobs may have been a technological revolutionary, but his legacy will not be remembered in a Paris street name.

Could a sexualised hot dog bun or a crude and libidinous packet of cornflakes shock and corrupt teenagers? US cartoon "Sausage Party" led weighty French lawyers to consider this question Tuesday.

Artists: Ed Ruscha, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jānis Avotiņš, Jorge Macchi, Paul Thek, Robert Gober, Rosemarie Trockel

Venue: Ibid Los Angeles

Exhibition Title: Sleep

Curated by: Paolo Colombo

Date: September 25 – December 17, 2016

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Ibid Los Angeles

Press Release:

Ibid Gallery’s presents Sleep, curated by Paolo Colombo from September 25 – December 17, 2016 in the largest of the three galleries in its newly opened location in Downtown Los Angeles.

The title of this show touches on a mood, rather than on an abstract concept of sleep: the presentation includes a number of works that illustrate the dimension of dreaming, of surrender, and of submission to states of trance and slumber.

In Greek mythology Hypnos (Sleep) is the brother of Thanatos (Death) and the son of Nyx (the Night) and Erebus (Darkness). He lives by the river Lethe, source of forgetfulness. His children include Morpheus (Shape: the Inducer of Dreams in human form) Phobetor (Fear: the Inducer of Dreams in animal form) and Phantasos (Imagination: Inducer of Prophetic Dreams)—all begotten with Pasithea, goddess of relaxation and hallucinations.

As Hypnos inhabits half of our lives, it seems appropriate that an exhibition be dedicated to its influence, addressing our necessary abandonment to night, fatigue and oblivion. The works on show
will allude to an extended family of Hypnos, from the inducer of letting-go to the memory of languor: from the darkness of night to the oblivion of death.

This exhibition includes a tapestry by Ed Ruscha, Industrial Strength Sleep, produced in 2006 with The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia; works on paper by Jānis Avoti7!, Robert Gober, Jorge Macchi, Paul Thek, Rosemarie Trockel, and a paper stack work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

A special section of the show is dedicated to manuscripts by three American poets: Andrea Applebee; Mc Arthur Fellow A.E. Stallings; and G.F. Zaimis. This section is a homage to the personification of sleep in the classical world through three poets that have established Greece as their residence.

Sleep, curated by Paolo Colombo, is the first of a series of exhibitions hosted by guest curators that Ibid Gallery will present in its space.

Link: “Sleep” at Ibid Los Angeles

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

To celebrate boisterously.

Dream lucidity is awareness that you are dreaming. This awareness can range from a faint recognition of the fact to a momentous broadening of perspective. Lucid dreams usually occur while a person is in the middle of a normal dream and suddenly realizes that they are dreaming. This is called a dream-initiated lucid dream. A wake-initiated lucid dream occurs when you go from a normal waking state directly into a dream state, with no apparent lapse in consciousness. In either case, the dreams tend to be more bizarre and emotional than regular dreams. Most importantly, you will have at least some ability to control your "dream self" and the surrounding dream .

EditSteps

EditUsing Dream Awareness Techniques

1. Keep a dream journal. Keep it close by your bed at night, and write down your dream immediately after waking, or the emotions and sensations you experience right when you wake up. This will train you to remember more of your dreams, which is important for lucid dreaming.^[1] Plus, there's not much point in controlling your dreams if you forget the experience before the morning.
   
   • Alternatively, keep a recording device by your bed.
   • You might remember more of your dream if you stay still for a few minutes concentrating on the memory, before you start writing.^[2]
2. Use reality checks frequently. Every few hours during the day, ask yourself "Am I dreaming?" and perform one of the following reality checks. With enough practice, you'll start following the habit in your dreams as well, cluing you in to the fact that you're dreaming.
   
   • Read a page of text or the time on a clock, look away, then look back again. In dreams, the text or time will be blurry or nonsensical, or will be different each time you look.^[3]
   • Pinch your nose, close your mouth, and test whether you can still breathe.
   • Simply look at your hands and feet. These are often distorted in dreams when you inspect them closely.
3. Repeat "I will be aware that I'm dreaming" each time you fall asleep. Each night as you fall asleep, repeat to yourself "I will know I'm dreaming" or a similar phrase until you drift out of consciousness. This technique is known as Mnemonic Induction to Lucid Dreaming, or MILD.^[4] Mnemonic induction just means "using memory aids," or in this case using a rote phrase to turn the awareness of your dreaming into an automatic habit.
   
   • Some people like to combine this step with a reality check by staring at their hands for a few minutes before they go to sleep.
4. Learn to recognize your personal dream signs. Read through your journal regularly and look for recurring "dream signs." These are recurring situations or events that you may notice in your dreams. Become familiar with these, and you may recognize them while you dream, and therefore notice that you're dreaming.
   
   • You probably know some of these already. Common dream events include losing your teeth, being chased by something large, or going into public without clothes on.
5. Drift back to sleep when awakened from a dream. When you wake up and remember your dream, write it down in your dream journal, then close your eyes and focus on the dream. Imagine that you were in the dream, noticed a dream sign or reality check, and realized it was a dream. Hold on to this thought as you drift back to sleep, and you may enter a lucid dream.^[5]
   
   • Note that most lucid dreams occur while the person is fully asleep, usually because he notices a bizarre event and realizes he's in a dream. This is just an alternate trigger that starts off about 25% of lucid dreams.^[6]
6. Consider purchasing a light alarm. Go online and purchase a light-based, instead of a sound-based alarm, or even a specialized "DreamLight" designed to induce lucid dreaming. Set it for 4.5, 6, or 7 hours after you fall asleep, or set it to go off every hour if possible. While sound, touch, or other stimuli during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep can also make a dreamer aware of the fact he's dreaming, one study shows that light cues are most effective.^[7]
   
   • You don't want to actually wake yourself up (unless you try the Wake Back to Bed method below). Keep the light alarm more than arm's reach away from your bed, and/or cover it with a sheet to dim the light.

EditUsing the Wake Back to Bed Method

1. Know when lucid dreams most commonly occur. Lucid dreams, and vivid dreams in general, almost always occur during REM sleep, the deep sleep phase characterized by Rapid Eye Movement. The first REM phase typically occurs ninety minutes after you first fall asleep, with additional phases roughly every ninety minutes afterward. The goal of this method is to wake up during a REM phase, then fall back asleep and continue the dream aware that you are dreaming.
   
   • You won't be able to time your phases exactly unless you visit a sleep lab or have a very dedicated night owl watching your eyelids all night. More realistically, just keep repeating the method below until you catch yourself in REM phase.
2. Encourage your body to get more REM sleep. There are many ways to increase the amount of REM sleep you get, as described in the linked article. One of the most effective, and the one that causes REM sleep to appear at regular times, is to stick to a daily sleep schedule, and to sleep long enough that you wake up well-rested.
   
   • This can be difficult to balance with the step below, which interrupts your sleep in the middle of the night. If you have trouble falling back asleep, try a different method instead, or limit your attempts to once or twice a week.
3. Wake up in the middle of the night. Set one alarm to go off either 4.5, 6, or 7 hours after the time you fall asleep.^[8] You're more likely to be in REM sleep during these times, although it's difficult to predict in advance. The six or seven hour times are the most likely to work, because later REM phases last longer, and are more likely to contain vivid or lucid dreams.^[9][10]
   
4. Stay awake for a while. Write down your dream if you were having one, make yourself a snack, or just get up and walk around for a while. Your goal is to get your conscious mind active and alert, while your body is still full of sleep hormones.
   
   • One study shows that staying awake for somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes gives the highest chance of a lucid dream.^[11]
5. Concentrate on the dream and fall asleep again. Close your eyes and fall asleep again. If you remember the dream you were having, recall it and fall back asleep, imagining yourself continuing the dream. Even if this takes quite a while to happen, you've got a decent chance at a lucid dream. 
   
6. Try other concentration techniques. If your mind wanders while trying to "catch" the dream, or if you don't remember the dream at all, instead try focusing on the movement of your fingers. Use a pattern of small movements, such as "index finger up, middle finger down, middle finger up, index finger down." Repeat this rhythmic movement until you fall asleep.
   

EditUsing Additional Techniques

1. Meditate. Before going to sleep, meditate in a quiet, dark room. Taking a meditation training course may give better results, but to start out, just pay attention to your breathing, or imagine ascending or descending stairs. The goal is to stop thinking and enter a quiet, comfortable state, and from there slip into a lucid dream.
   
   • Keep in mind that "Wake Induced" lucid dreams are rarer and more difficult than dreams that become lucid after you're already asleep.
   • There are many meditation guide videos online specifically designed to help you lucid dream.
2. Prolong a lucid dream as it starts to fade. One common experience among first-time lucid dreamers is waking up due to the excitement of having a lucid dream! Usually, you'll get some warning before hand as the dream feels "unstable" or you begin to notice sensations from the real world. These techniques can help you keep the lucid dream going:^[12]
   
   • Spin your dream body around or fall backwards. Some people report that this helps, although the reason is unknown.
   • In the dream, rub your hands together. This can distract you from the sensations of your actual body.
   • Continue doing whatever you were doing before the dream became unstable, asserting that you are still in the dream. This is much less effective than the techniques above.
3. Listen to binaural beats. If you send a different sound frequency to each ear, your brain will interpret the two sound waves' overlapping pattern as an audio beat even though no beat is included in the sound. This definitely changes the brain's electrical activity, but so far scientists are unsure whether this can actually stimulate lucid dreaming.^[13] There are many websites out there with collections of binaural beats, so it's easy to try it out if you can sleep with ear buds in. Most would-be lucid dreamers use beats that mimic Theta brain waves, which occur in REM sleep, but some swear by Gamma or Alpha beats instead, or a progression through several types.
   
   • Binaural beats can come with soothing background music, or just the beat itself.
4. Play video games. Gamers report a much higher rate of lucid dreaming than the general population.^[14] While more studies need to be done, it's possible even a couple hours a week could increase your chances of a lucid dream. The type of game played does not appear to make a difference.^[15]
   
5. Consider taking galantamine. Galantamine, a drug synthesized from the snowdrop plant, may be the most effective drug for inducing lucid dreaming. Take 4 to 8 mg in the middle of the night for best results; taking it before bed can worsen sleep quality and cause unpleasant dreams.^[16] Due to this possibility and the unpleasant side effects listed below, galantamine is only recommended as an occasional supplement.
   
   • Talk to a doctor first if you have any medical issues. Galantamine can worsen existing conditions such as asthma or heart problems.
   • This drug also increases the chance of sleep paralysis, a harmless but often terrifying experience of being awake for several minutes without being able to move your muscles.
6. Consider the occasional vitamin B supplement. Vitamin B5 or Vitamin B6 supplements can increase dream vividness, weirdness, and emotional intensity, which can lead to lucid dreaming.^[17] However, you may need to take a dose of 100 mg for this effect to be noticeable. This dose is much higher than recommended for daily intake, and if you take it regularly over a long period of time, it can lead to unwanted side effects.^[18] Use this only for a special lucid dreaming occasion, and at your own risk.
   
   • Check with your doctor first if you are taking any medications, or if you have a disorder involving bleeding, the stomach, the intestines, or the heart.
   • This drug sometimes causes people to wake up in the night, so it may be counterproductive if you're a light sleeper.

EditTips

• Lucid dreaming is a skill that must be learned, but even people who lucid dream regularly may only do so once or twice a month. Be patient and continue using these techniques, and the chance and frequency of lucid dreaming will gradually increase.
• If you sometimes get "false awakenings" while dreaming, get in the habit of performing a reality check (such as trying to read a book) as soon as you wake up. Otherwise, a false awakening can turn a lucid dream into an ordinary one.
• When you do lucid dream, consider waking up intentionally after a few minutes. This increases your chance of remembering the dream.
• Do not drink any fluids for one hour prior to sleeping. The last thing you want is to wake up from successfully lucid dreaming just because you had to use the bathroom.
• If you find the dream is not going how you want it to, "close your eyes" for a bit in the dream, then open them forcefully. Repeat until you wake up.
• If you think you are losing control, shout out what you want to happen next very loudly until you regain control or it happens.
• Another way to do reality checks while your in the dream is to look at a clock, look away, and then look back. If the hands are extremely different, than you know you are dreaming.
• When you've decided to sleep, start a story in your head. Eventually, this would drift off into a dream and you can take it from there. However, this method usually works with people who play games.
• Another way to really check is to pinch yourself. Even though it's stereotypical, pinching yourself while asking yourself "Am I in a dream?" can help you to gain Lucidity.

EditWarnings

• If you get very excited during your lucid dream, you might wake up suddenly. To attempt to return, shut your eyes and focus on your dream. If you are caught partway through waking up, but still "in" your dream self, spin around or rub your hands, which enables you to regain the dream.
• Lucid dreaming can cause sleep paralysis, in which you remain conscious and aware of your surroundings during the transition from sleep to wakefulness, but are not able to move your muscles. This is harmless, but often terrifying, especially as it can be accompanied by hallucinations of a strange presence in the room. Some muscles are often less affected than others, so concentrate on wiggling your toes or swallowing and stay calm until the hallucinations stop.

EditRelated wikiHows

• Remember Dreams
• Interpret Your Dreams
• Adopt a Polyphasic Sleep Schedule
• Cope with Sleep Paralysis
• Sleep Better
• Make a Dream Board
• Fly in Your Dreams
• Get People to Dream About You
• Start a Dream Diary
• Sleep in Zen Relaxation
• Use Super Powers in a Lucid Dream
• Get the 'Feel' of Dreams

EditSources and Citations

• Robert Waggoner, Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, (Needham, MA: Moment Point Press) pp. 269-270

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Cancer: 'Jet lag' increases mouse cancer risk

Nature 540, 7631 (2016). doi:10.1038/540010c

Mice with simulated jet lag have an increased risk of developing liver cancer.Sleeping out of step with the day–night cycle has been linked to various health disorders in humans. David Moore, Loning Fu and their colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas,

These hazards will make you think twice about relocating to Mars

peashooter85:

“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

-Nikola Tesla, 1926

There is already a great documentary about the working practices of Austin’s favourite son, Richard Linklater. It’s called Double Play: Richard Linklater and James Benning, and it was made by Gabe Klinger in 2013. Instead of traipsing on a biographical tour through the director’s life and work with added commentary and clips, Klinger filters the material through an artistic friendship, and taking great pains to use the films as a way to draw stylistic and ideological parallels between the two artists.

Karen Bernstein and Louis Black’s Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny, by contrast, is a scrappy compendium of filched odds and sods with the feel of an electronic press kit. It comes across like an unofficial biography replete with a couple of solid testimonials from famous collaborators, a few choice snippets of archive material and lots of excerpts from DVD extras. Linklater lends his easygoing presence to the film, allowing the filmmakers into his utopian ranch where he does all of his creatin’.

Otherwise, this is a procession of people finding different ways to explain why “Rick” is such an awesome dude, a genius filmmaker and an irrepressible maverick whose career defies industry logic. The films themselves aren’t explored in any critical detail, in most cases with Bernstein and Black accepting the Rotten Tomatoes-enshrined legend. Everything from 2005’s Bad News Bears to 2011’s Bernie is hastily dismissed as second tier Linklater in a race to roll the conversation towards his award season titan, Boyhood.

Fans of the director will already be keyed in to most of this. It passes the time for sure, but this is the exactly the type of lazy, generic docu-dirge that Linklater himself would never touch with a 10-foot, wonkily animated barge pole.

The post Richard Linklater: Dream is Destiny appeared first on Little White Lies.

1. Remaining with the parents for a long time after birth. 2. Living in the home of another species.

This delightful short film takes some of our favourite characters from the world of Studio Ghibli and superimposes them onto everyday backgrounds in Japan. From narrow backstreets to vast open plains, snapshots from classic films like Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind and Princess Mononoke are brought into real life.

Little Ponyo runs across the water in Hiroshima bay where the iconic Itsukushima Shrine stands. We see Howl’s moving castle flying through the clouds and Totoro with Satsuki and Mei doing yoga next to Turnip-head in the park. The maker of the film, Kojer, has even given the backgrounds an added sheen of pink lighting or windy sound effects to encapsulate the often nostalgic atmosphere these films. And to top it off, the video is set to ‘One Summer’sDay’, the beautiful theme song to Spirited Away.

By taking these anime characters out of their original settings and reimagining them in real-world ones, it’s almost as if they’ve been brought home. We certainly wouldn’t mind running into Chihiro and No-face on the morning commute!

Also, check out the below making-of video which shows the amazing craftsmanship that went into creating the film.

The post This beautiful video imagines Studio Ghibli characters IRL appeared first on Little White Lies.

Even in a rainstorm, Paris lives up to its nickname of the City of Light, as sun streaks through storm clouds over the city in this image by Your Shot photographer Raffaele Tuzio.

This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now >>

Bigly jenga. (at Target Tribeca)

unpicasso: aries: “i’m an aries” taurus: super jealous and territorial but goes after everyones...

–

How does the geography of your upbringing determine the texture of your nightmares? To find out, we’re embarking on a blood-curdling, globe-trotting journey through horror cinema to better understand what keeps us all up at night. Thirty one films from 31 different countries, each with their own distinct styles, themes and sociopolitical subtexts.

1. Argentina – The Nazarene and the Wolf (1975)

Inspired by the classical myth of the Luison, a South American wolf creature, The Nazarene and the Wolf is an unconventional werewolf tale about the cursed son of a farmer’s family. When he is nearly 18 years old, Nazareno falls deeply in love with the beautiful Griselda but he also learns that the village legends are true and as the seventh-born son he is fated to become a werewolf. Meeting with a devil surrogate called Mandiga, he is presented with a choice: give up love with Griselda and be cured, or be doomed to be a monster. One of the most successful Argentinian films of all time, The Nazarene and the Wolf has established itself as one of the more important films in the country’s history. Presented as a dream injected with South American mythology and Catholic imagery, the film draws on the lurid sensuality of the Argentinian landscape to flesh out what might otherwise be a familiar story of doomed love.

2. Australia – The Babadook (2014)

Wake in Fright may be the quintessential Australian film and some may argue that it is, in its own way, a horror film. The Babadook however, shifts perceptions and let us in on a version of the country rarely screened. Far away from the central continent, The Babadook presents a more feminine and suburban version of Australia as the narrative pins itself on an isolated single mother dealing with her difficult child alone. Battling the expectations to fill the roles of mother and provider, the widowed Amelia has not had time to grieve the death of her husband, as her mental state unravels. As she begins to fear that the monster from a mysterious book has been stalking her home, reality and nightmare begin to blend into one. A psychological mind bender that tackles the horrors of motherhood in the face of isolation and gendered expectations, The Babadook stands out as one of the best horror films of the past decade.

3. Belgium – Daughters of Darkness (1971)

No vampire has ever been quite as elegant as Delphine Seyrig in Daughters of Darkness. A smiling bottle blonde baroness with eyes on a young couple at a vacation resort, Daughters of Darkness represents a sleek euro horror that blends French sensibilities with a Belgian flair. While drawing on international stylings from both American and French cinema, the film’s unique surrealism sets it apart from most European lesbian vampire films of the era. Shot in two of Belgium’s greatest hotels, dating back to ruthless King Leopold II, which echoes throughout the film’s centuries-long legacy of violence the film is stamped with Belgium’s colonial history of violence. And channeling a comic tone through surrealism, the film evokes one of Belgium’s greatest artists, the surreal master Rene Magritte who threatened the comfort of the mundane by questioning the surface value of objects. Seyrig’s impossibly beautiful vampire hiding below her smiling surface is humanity’s potential towards self-motivated violence and oppression.

4. Brazil – The Seven Vampires (1986)

The lesser known master of Brazilian genre cinema, Ivan Cardoso, infuses the music of the Brazilian language into the rhythm of his films. After the death of her husband by a murderous plant, a dance teacher retreats from the world to a small cabin. Drawn out by some friends in order to help stage a ballet called ‘The Seven Vampires’ at a nightclub, the performance she helps orchestrate goes wrong when a very real murder takes place on stage. The bourgeois crowd, however, believes the incident to be all a part of the act and clap along as a dancer is literally eaten alive on stage. Playing with misdirection and irony, Cardoso treats sex and violence with the irreverent pleasure of a trickster demon. Playing with voyeurism and genre tropes, Cardoso uses editing and music to defy audience expectations and surprise them through twists the blend horror and comedy.

5. Canada – Ginger Snaps (2000)

As a horror film set in suburbia, Ginger Snaps takes advantage of the shifting seasons to present Canada as politely uneventful. A werewolf narrative that serves as a metaphor for menstruation, two goth sisters are late bloomers until Ginger, the older sister, is attacked by a lycanthrope. Suddenly, her body starts to change she navigates the puberty minefield of new hair, new desires, and a new body. Canada’s literary history based on themes of survival is satirised through the all-too-comfortable life of these girls and their wickedly macabre imagination. Capturing so deftly the mundane ordinariness of Ontario suburbia, the theme of survival is reimagined as an internal rather than an external conflict. Feminized horror at its best, Ginger Snaps blends continues in Canada’s legacy of body horror established by master David Cronenberg with a new twist.

6. Costa Rica – El Sanatorio (2010)

Documentary filmmakers are looking to investigate ghost sightings in an abandoned sanatorium in this found footage horror comedy from Costa Rica. The filmmakers here are arrogant, while they search for proof of ghosts with little faith in the people they speak with. Using their documentary project as an excuse to get attention from girls, they are soon faced with the possibility that there may very well be lurking in the vandalised hallways of the old hospital. With the increase in paranormal tourism, the film offers a compelling insight into a landscape that ignites the horror imagination. Similarly portraying the ulterior motives of bro-filmmakers works remarkably well as a means of working around the budgetary limits the film has been constrained by. Supporting characters, such as a psychic, similarly shed some insight into the legends and beliefs of some of more superstitious elements of Costa Rican folklore.

7. Czech Republic – Lunacy (2005)

“What you are about to see is a horror film,” Jan Švankmajer says in his introduction to Lunacy. Combining live action and his stop motion, Lunacy is a tribute to the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. With hints of both in the film’s sensual and irreverent narrative, the film takes place at an asylum where the line between keepers and inmates has long been blurred. Subversive surrealism bleeds into the film as time and space are redefined along non-linear trajectories. Horse-drawn carriages pass over highways and hint at the looming future that intermittently bleed into the film’s subconscious mind space. Frightening more for it’s treatment of rampant power abuses and the fragility of the human mind than grotesquery, Lunacy portrays a microcosm of a society in which the most debased criminals and moral offenders are deemed the caretakers of the rest of us.

8. Egypt – The Cursed House (1987)

This Egyptian ghost film with a giallo flavour jumps right into the action. In a high-end modernist home, a housewife settles in for the night until a strange incident lead her to run away in fear. Part Poltergeist and part The Entity, the film makes it ambiguous as to whether or not a supernatural presence is lurking in the home or if a duplicitous husband is trying to make it seem that way. So much of the film’s impact lines on the shoulders of actress Mariem Fakhr El Dine who channels skepticism that devolves into a slow building madness. In one scene, she is awoken in the middle of the night by a noise downstairs only to stumble upon her phantom doppelgänger bleeding at the neck and struggling to hold onto “life”. Is this all a dream or an elaborate fantasy? Rather than be a gothic horror, the film seems to be about more contemporary fears and makes an allusion to classic horror films like Psycho to create a post-modern atmosphere.

9. Finland – The White Reindeer (1952)

The stark black and white cinematography of The White Reindeer is only amplified by the incredibly white snow that dominates much of the film. Blinding and oppressive, the snow conceals a difficult life where life follows the herds of reindeer that provide the snow dwellers with what they need to survive. Amid this difficult landscape, a beautiful woman falls in love and gets married, only to be separated from her husband for long periods of time as he goes off to work with the reindeer. Frustrated and lonely, she visits a shaman who offers her a love potion that goes horribly wrong. Inspired by Finnish folklore, the film gradually devolves into a phantasmagorical experience where the natural world is as deceptive as the human spirit. Driven by animalistic passions that override survivalist impulses, the recurring apparition of a legendary white reindeer drives a dividing line between the real and the dream world.

10. France – Martyrs (2008)

In a horror narrative that could almost only be born from the tensions between religion and class burrowed in France’s cultural identity, Martyrs challenges the limits of the human body and spirit. Not for the faint of heart, it represents a more mainstream side of the French extremist horror movement of the 2000s, which focuses on transgressive motifs. Martyrs opens up with the escape of a young girl from an out of use slaughterhouse where she has been tortured and pushed to her physical limits for an extended period of time. Years later, with the help of a friend, she seeks revenge by the people who imprisoned her as a child only to be recaptured. Focused on class and gender abuses, the film roots the torture of its subject in a quest for evidence of life after death. Old school Catholic morality dictate the film’s trajectory and inspire the callous cruelty of its upper crust villains.

11. Germany – Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

Rather than be a remake, Werner Herzog intended Nosferatu the Vampyre to be in dialogue with FW Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece. Connecting the height of the German cinema to the New Wave of German cinema, he reinterpreted the classical vampire narrative for a new age. While bearing many similarities to its silent counterpart, Herzog’s film is rooted more deeply in both empathy and reality. Emphasising vampirism as disease, along with Nosferatu arrives millions of rats which descend upon the German countryside and bring the plague along with them. Rather than be a scourge, Klaus Kinski’s interpretation of the pallid vampire has been imbued with deep sensitivity and longing. Herzog, who has long been fascinated with the sublime in nature, here maps it onto a supernatural being who represents the contradictions of humanity’s fragility and durability in the face of our own mortality.

12. Greece – Singapore Sling (1990)

Perverted and macabre, Singapore Sling blends elements of horror and film noir. Shot in black and white with evocations of Otto Preminger and Josef von Sternberg, the film is about an unhinged and incestuous mother and a daughter team who take in a bleeding and subdued detective who arrives at their doorstep. What ensues are a series of grotesque and hilarious power games involving BDSM, sex, and violence. Rather than build up suspense through increments, the film embraces maximalism and excess. Each shot takes full advantage of the foreground and background, while the performances are delirious physical. Not for the faint of heart or the prudish, Singapore Sling portrays two beautiful and liberated women bending morality to such extremes that they barely even seem human anymore. Blending elements from Greek tragedy and comedy, director Nikos Nikolaidis disturbs the perception of the ancients as the pinnacle of high art by drawing out from them their most absurdist and horrific motifs.

13. Hong Kong – Dumplings (2004)

Brightly saturated colour dominates Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, about the miracle cure that keeps women looking and feeling young. Dizzying and darkly funny, Dumplings presents a distinctly feminine take on horror focused on the tribulations of ageing and the perception of women as caregivers. Set along the border of Hong Kong and China, the film follows an actress who wants to look young again in order to recapture the attention of her wealthy husband. She visits Aunt Mei, who prepares her special dumplings filled with aborted human fetuses. Among the film’s locations is Lai Tak Tsuen, a public housing development that’s presence bookends the film’s central action. Serving as a representation of class divisions, it’s unusual bicylindrical design serves not only as vaginal imagery but emphasises the film’s atmosphere of oppression.

14. Iceland – Draugasaga (1985)

As much a comedy as it is a slasher film, Draugasaga is set at a television studio haunted by a red-headed American women. With many stylistic flourishes that seem inspired by B-movie horror films from the 1970s, the film overcomes budgetary limitations with comedy and idiosyncratic directorial flourishes. A young man is employed at a tv studio as a night watchmen and spend his nights playing with a female coworker but soon the line between reality and fantasy begin to blur. Set in the reality of a television studio lends some practical advantages, but similarly, helps emphasise the dangers of losing yourself to cinematic fantasies. While most of the film takes places indoors, a beautiful scene in a warm cafe by the harbour only helps to further serve the film’s insular environment where imagination can thrive.

15. India – The Mansion (1949)

The wind blows through the titular mansion as a narrator explains the ill-fated affair of two lovers without names. Their mysterious fate captures the attention of the mansion’s new owner, who finds himself enthralled by a spirit whom he believes is the beautiful lover who once lived in the house. With one mystery falling over the other, The Mansion intertwines fate and coincidence, as piece by piece the story of the two lovers comes together. With strong doses of gothic romance, the almost cavernous mansion is beautifully adorned and labyrinthian. The question of the beautiful woman who, like a spectre, appears around the house blurs the line between good and evil intentions. With evocation of previous lives, she suggests that this is not the first time they’ve met and they are the ill-fated lovers of legend. The only thing keeping them apart now is his life, that she urges him to abandon so they can once again be together.

16. Iran – Girl’s Dormitory (2004)

In this Iranian horror film, two young women go to a university near Tehran but their creepy accommodations leave much to the imagination. With their dormitory located in a dark and mountainous region, legends of elves and fairies living in an abandoned building inspire late night explorations through its haunted halls. Blending comedy and horror, the film uses misdirection such as unveiling the inexplicable cry of a baby piercing through the cobwebbed ruins as a cheeky ringtone rather than evidence of supernatural forces. A film about concealed temptation, the fairies are able to transform their appearance and lure young women towards corruption through trickery. Supernatural and real world evils blend into each other, as one of the girls encounters repeatedly a phantom man with brown teeth who may be a spirit or a vagrant. He begins to haunt her and even far from University it seems she cannot escape his influence.

17. Israel – Rabies (2010)

Mass hysteria has long been a favourite theme of horror filmmakers but placed onto the first Israeli slasher it feels particularly subversive. When a group of friends run into disgruntled police officers in the woods, the abuse of power spread like a disease. Set mostly in a primal forest haunted not by supernatural creatures but by bear traps and mines, society imbued with rage and hatred does the rest of the work as the tropes of the slasher genre are twisted for a darkly comic effect. Unsatisfied with the politeness that only leads to more trouble for our protagonists, Rabies turns the subtext of power abuses into the text itself as the behaviours of a rogue police officer only leads to more anger and violence. As power itself lies between good and evil, it makes the perfect villain in this tight, backwoods Israeli horror.

18. Italy – A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin synthesised beautifully the virtues of the hyper-stylised giallo movement. Blending the genres crime elements with the more poetic influences of nightmares, a beautiful woman, Carol, dreams that her neighbour had been brutally murdered only to find that police are investigating that very crime. Scared and confused, she becomes the prime suspect in a murder she only remembers from a nightmare. With a twisting narrative interrupted by hazy dreams, Carol loses more of herself as she suspects things aren’t quite as they seem. Focused on finding answers, Carol starts rebuilding and searching for characters, places and things from her nightmares in order to piece together exactly what happened that night. The film seems dipped in saturated colours and cobbled together from fashion spreads brimming with stunning women and over the top locales, a feast for the spirit and the eyes.

19. Japan – Audition (1999)

Takashi Miike has invariably come to define Japan’s genre cinema in the contemporary age. Often making three or four films a year, Miike is ruthlessly prolific but still maintains a higher than average hit ratio. Back in 1999, he released one of the films that introduced him to an international audience: Audition. About a widower who struggles to meet women and decides to host auditions to find a girlfriend, the tables turn on him when the woman of his dreams, Asami, turns out to be a creature of nightmares. What begins as a slow burn drama about deception quickly turns to all-out horror, as perceptions are not what they seem as surface manners conceal ulterior motives. Toying with the image of the ideal Japanese woman, the film subverts expectations and tackles the objectification of women through a dark plot of violence and revenge.

20. Mexico – Alucarda (1977)

Obsessive female friendship is pathologised in Alucarda, a reinvention of the Marquis de Sade’s sister novels Justine and Juliette, set within a Mexican convent. The innocent Justine encounters the troubled Alucarda (Dracula spelled backward) and the pair becomes very close. Wandering the countryside, Justine and Alucarda accidentally unleash a demonic force into the convent, what follows is a horrific interpretation of the meeting of superstition and religion. Some of the most unsettling images in all of horror emerge from Alucarda, not the least, the bizarre rituals of this specific religious order where under their habits the sisters wear yellowed and bloodied rags. In the film’s final chapter, these nuns act as mummy like spectres who wander through the literal cave-like halls of their convent as fire rages around them. Larger than life in many ways, Alucarda showcases the kind of female relationships that make people uncomfortable and the environments that breed obsessive and insular friendships.

21. Netherlands – Spoorloos aka The Vanishing (1988)

Far from a traditional horror film, the villainous killer of Spoorloos has games on his mind as he sets his mark on a young woman. While most of the film follows the young woman’s boyfriend as he tries to find the truth behind her disappearance, Spoorloos never conceals the identity of the offender. This film is not a slasher or even a mystery, but rather a philosophical undertaking of the mind of a kidnapper. The Vanishing unveils nearly everything to the audience, except the exact nature of the titular vanishing. Building suspense in a non-traditional way, the audience is handed all the evidence at face value and is challenged to interpret it while following along with the narrative. Cerebral rather than visceral, the film creeps under your skin and offers a unique and as of yet, unreplicated, cinematic experience in dread.

22. Philippines – The Echo (2004)

Filipino horror The Echo is cast in petulant shades of green and yellow. Marvin has just moved into his new apartment and quickly notices that his neighbour, a police officer, repeatedly abuses his wife and child. Afraid of authority and torn as to what to do, he volunteers to help the poor young mother by sheltering her daughter from her father’s violent outbursts. With horror drawn from the internal conflict of wanting to do what’s right and fearing the consequences of an unchecked violent authority, The Echo explores personal responsibility and consequences of standing up to the police and how violence has a way of echoing through time and space. Within the concrete and mostly windowless apartment complex, pain stemming from one particularly brutal act of violence spreads like a phantom through the film’s environment, eventually bleeding out into the greater world.

23. Poland – Mother Joan of the Angels (1961)

Inspired by the true events of a convent in Lourdes, France, Mother Joan of the Angels is one of the greatest Polish films. The film depicts life in a convent where the nuns, under the guidance of Mother Joan, have all gone mad. Sent to investigate the incident of mass hysteria, the Father Józef Suryn witnesses the perversions of religious worship and rituals within the convent walls. Far from a traditional horror film, Mother Joan of the Angels builds an atmosphere of oppression with stark contrasting blacks and whites and rigorous formal compositions that emphasises the twisted bodies and malformed expressions of the apparently possessed nuns in contrast with the stiff convent walls. Rather than depict demonic possession with the dramatics of say, the subtlety of Mother Joan’s villainy blurs the line between conscious rebellion and the suggested evil that has apparently crept into her soul and spread to her flock.

24. Romania – Domnisoara Christina (1992)

A gothic horror that does little to dispel associations with Dracula, this film is inspired by a 1936 novella about a legendary undead woman and the relationship she forges with a young man, Egor, visiting the house she haunts. Relegated mostly to the sumptuous mansion, the film takes place deep within Egor’s mind. He controls the action as the film maintains his point of view, and his voice over draws us into his thoughts and fears. With a dreamy atmosphere, the film blurs the line between the conscious and subconscious mind as Egor gets pulled deeper into a romance with the undead. As the film goes on he becomes more disconnected with the world of the living, losing himself to the past. Short on jump scares, the film tackles the fragility of our own reality especially in the face of tremendous loneliness.

25. Russia – Viy (1967)

Inspired by a classic Russian folktale, Viy was given liberties in its religious depictions by the otherwise strict USSR. With a hazy blue colour and visual effects reminiscent of the silent works of FW Murnau, Viy evokes a frightening fairy tale intended for older children. Set in the Russian countryside, beautiful Orthodox churches and centuries-old towns set the scene for a beautiful challenge of faith as a priest presides over the three-night wake of a beautiful young woman. Every night, however, she rises from her deathly slumber to challenge him, while he battles the forces of evil with just some salt, his bible and his belief in God. Evoking a perverted pastoral poetry, the film’s natural environments are cast in a hazy blue light and evoke otherworldliness that contributes to the film’s fairy tale quality. The film’s final act unexpectedly showcases an extravagant horror set piece with otherworldly demons descending upon the small farm house.

26. South Korea – Thirst (2009)

Shockingly sensual and with a vampiric twist, Park Chan-wook’s Thirst is inspired by Emile Zola’s novel of forbidden love, Therese Raquin. As much a horror film as it is the story of an illicit sexual affair, the film presents vampirism as a medical experiment gone wrong rather than some ancient evil. This shifts the moral question away from temptation and updates it for a contemporary age as it challenges humanity to stand up for their own actions rather than shift the blame on some outside force. Deeply entrenched in irony, Park Chan-wook challenges preconceptions about the genre and portrays a thoroughly modern vampire story. Among other things, Thirst explores the human cost of living forever and the self-destructive capacity for obsessive carnal attraction. Park Chan-wook has long become the rare filmmaker to appeal to both gorehounds and Cannes and Thirst may very well be his masterpiece.

27. Spain – [Rec] (2007)

One of the shining lights of the found footage film, [Rec] abandons many of the genre’s conceits by angling the presence of a camera through a television crew working on a feel-good segment about firefighters at work. As they arrive on the scene of emergency in an apartment complex, without much notice they are all put under quarantine lockdown as a strange illness has spread through the residents. Blending first-person scares with the obsessive fears of Catholic guilt, the film showcases the birth of an epidemic in real time, working towards a rapturously horrific set piece built around the meeting of religion and science in the form of an emaciated victim of demonic possession.

28. Sweden – Let the Right One In (2008)

The sound of snow falling, like creeping insects, sets the tone for Sweden’s Let the Right One In. As a bullied boy befriends a young girl who hangs around the playground at night, he finds in this aloof playmate his first and only friend. She lives with a father figure who acts more like a spurned lover than a guardian and strange happenings start appearing about town. Longing and loneliness meet as the pair become closer and their bond over their shared ostracisation and capturing deftly the alienation that comes with long winter nights, director Tomas Alfredson twists the perceived safety of a Swedish suburb for horrific effect. The promise of comfort offered by these neighbourhoods only provides the illusion of a perfect suburban life, which only targets it’s more weakened elements. A disturbing take on the cycle of violence which presents no alternative and no real end to it, creates a creeping sense of dread that follows you well after the credits roll.

29. Thailand – Shutter (2004)

A dark secret looms over Shutter, a Thai horror about a photographer who starts to see bizarre and nightmarish apparitions in his photos. Playing on technophobic fears of the dangers of technology as connected with older superstitions about sudden or unresolved death, Shutter carries over old fears into a new age. Central to the film’s haunting is the echoes of a suicide and secrecy as the failure to address the past and trauma of those around you has a way of weighing you down (often quite literally). Cast in cool tones, the film has the atmosphere of a morgue except the red glow of the darkroom which punctuates some of the film’s most important revelations and is the source of so much dread. Strangely prescient in regard to the pervasiveness of technology in our lives, Shutter angles to put a supernatural edge on mechanical advancements.

30. United Kingdom – The Wicker Man (1973)

Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man, may very well be a sole figure in the pagan-musical horror genre. Wrapped up in the mystery of a missing girl, Sergeant Howie arrives on the remote Summerisle where the residents have abandoned Christianity in favour of Celtic paganism. Rapturously sensual, the uptight Howie struggles spiritually as his hardline Christianity comes up against the seemingly liberated sexuality of the island. A spiritual mystery as much about religious oppression as it is about a missing girl, the film explores the nature of religious belief from the outside while revealing Howie’s own hypocrisy in his own belief systems. With a kind of rhythmic energy, the film has a unique and disjointed cadence that inspires a troubling unease, especially as matched with the overcast but nonetheless visually sunny environments. Facing forgotten Celtic rituals revived during the hippie movement with the uptight Protestantism that came to dominate the UK over the centuries, the film marries two disparate ideologies that threaten reason and justice within contemporary society.

31. United States of America – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

A re-imagining of horror itself, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre draws on the hopelessness of an impoverished countryside as slaughterhouses and drought exemplify the scorched Texas landscape as imagined by Tobe Hooper. Reflecting in the senseless of the growing dread of a seemingly endless war and the death of 1960s idealism, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ushered in a new age of American fears where heroes are neither brave or particularly clever, only lucky. The American cinema is one of intense contradictions, represented too often by the machine of Hollywood, the films emerging from the dream factory have never been able to reflect the totality of the American experience – least of all, within the horror genre. Low budgeted and dirty, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre represents at once the stretching infinity of the land and the stunning resourcefulness of its greatest artists.

The post A Horror Travelogue: 31 horror movies from 31 different countries appeared first on Little White Lies.

The polling crisis: How to tell what people really think

Nature 538, 7625 (2016). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/538304a

Author: Ramin Skibba

This year’s US presidential election is the toughest test yet for political polls as experts struggle to keep up with changing demographics and technology.

1. Something showy but worthless. 2. Nonsense or rubbish. 3. Deceit; fraud; trickery.

tru:

 Ren Hang

Tian Xiaolei

1. Venus
   
2. Merge
   

Carving a great pumpkin for Halloween takes a lot of time and effort. Many people get frustrated when their work of art starts to mold right after All Hallow's Eve comes to a close. There are several ways to keep your pumpkins smirking and mold-free far past Halloween. Read on for more information on some of those ways

EditSteps

EditSilica

1. Find some silica gel packets. Silica is used as a desiccant, meaning that it wicks away excess moisture. What causes your pumpkin to start rotting and molding? Excess moisture. The two are a devilishly simple but effective combination.
   
   • Check your closet or dresser drawers, as you may have left some lying around from recent purchases. If you can't find any, packets of silica are available in bulk for very economical prices online. Silica packets are largely available with the following items:
     • Beef jerky
     • Shoes and shoe boxes
     • Cat litter
2. Remove silica beads from their packets. Don't leave any lying around for your pets because, while silica gel itself is nontoxic, sometimes manufacturers add other toxic chemicals (for example, cobalt chloride) to the product.
   
3. Embed the silica into the pumpkin. Remove the top of the pumpkin. Take a silica bead and embed it into the interior of the pumpkin. Don't stick the bead in so far that it changes the appearance of the pumpkin's exterior.
   
   • When applying the beads, use 3/4 grams of silica for every 100 cubic inches of pumpkin.

EditBleach

1. Mix 1 teaspoon bleach per gallon of water to create enough water to dunk the pumpkin into. You'll need a vat and a good amount of bleach/water, depending on the size of the pumpkin.
   
   • The idea is that bleach is an antimicrobial, and that water will hydrate the skin of the pumpkin like a moisturizer would on human skin.
2. Dunk the pumpkin into the bleach solution, covering completely. Soak the pumpkin in the bleach solution for approximately 8 hours.
   
3. Remove the pumpkin from the bleach solution and pat dry with paper towels or sponges.
   
4. Every day, moisturize the pumpkin with the bleach solution. Spray the outside and inside with the bleach solution used to treat the pumpkin initially. Soak up any excess moisture after spraying. Moisture is the ally of mold.
   

EditPumpkin Preservative

1. Purchase a pumpkin preservative. Pumpkin preservative, like Pumpkin Fresh, are available online and at Halloween specialty stores. Pumpkin preservatives may contain water, sodium tetraborate decahydrate (borax), and/or sodium benzoate (a preservative and fungicide). They act as fungicides.
   
2. Spray the pumpkin with the preservative or dunk the pumpkin into the preservative. Spraying is more convenient, but dunking may be more long-lasting.
   
   • If choosing to dunk, be sure to pat the pumpkin dry. Remember that mold hits where moisture fits.
3. Continue to spray the pumpkin with preservative every day. Spray the outside and inside with the preservative and watch as it fights off mold and decay. Pumpkin preservatives help the pumpkin last relatively mold-free for up to 14 days.
   

EditMethods That Do Not Work

1. Do not use white glue to preserve a pumpkin. The idea is that white glue is supposed to create a seal around the inside of the pumpkin, preventing moisture from developing into mold. Sadly, white glue just hastens the demise of the pumpkin.
   
2. Do not use petroleum jelly to preserve a pumpkin. The idea here is that the petroleum jelly is supposed to keep the pumpkin from dehydrating, thereby staving off decay. Unfortunately, this method also hastens the production of mold.
   
3. Do not use acrylic spray to preserve a pumpkin. Again, this method is supposed to seal a pumpkin's inner flesh, creating a barrier that keeps out mold. The idea is better than its execution: pumpkins sprayed with acrylic do not outlast pumpkins that aren't treated at all.
   

EditTips

• You can also consider sticking a packet into the interior. This can help combat any moisture resting on the floor of the pumpkin.
• If you need to dig little niches in the pumpkin to keep the beads from crushing while embedding them, that's fine.

EditWarnings

• Silica has been linked to Scleroderma, so be extremely careful when handling the beads out of their packets.

EditRelated wikiHows

• Carve a Pumpkin
• Preserve Leaves With Silica

EditSources and Citations

• http://www.myscienceproject.org/pumpkin.html
• http://www.extremepumpkins.com/pumpkin-preservation-methods.html

Study of various animal species sheds light on purpose of yawning

New York team used new in vitro fertilization method in Mexico to create baby, avoiding U.S. restrictions on experimental procedure

Deep learning method reduces translation errors up to 87%

It’s been a while since Mike Mills was last on the scene, doing his moviemaking thing. Beginners, his film about an introverted creative (Ewan McGregor) learning of his father’s (Christopher Plumber) latent homosexuality, felt like a lifetime ago, aka 2010. Now he’s back with the highly intriguing 20th Century Women, which arrives with an absolutely storming cast list: top billed are Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig and Annette Bening.

The film is a drama in which three women come to the aid of a sexually frustrated teenage boy, each bringing the slightly differing attitudes, approaches and politics of their era. Mills is maybe still best known as an ace music promo director, working primarily with the French band Air and NY alt-rockers Blonde Redhead, but on the evidence of this first trailer, feature filmmaking may just be his strongest creative suit. We’ve got big hopes for this one, and it’s set to premiere at the New York Film Festival before reaching UK cinemas in 2017. Watch the first trailer above and share your thoughts with us @LWLies

The post Watch the first gorgeous trailer for 20th Century Women appeared first on Little White Lies.

A man who seeks out the company of upper-status women, especially for advancing himself.