The 10 Must-See Sundance Films For Art Lovers

January 13, 2015, 7:21 am

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Beginning January 22, Park City, Utah will play home to a cinephile's favorite time of year, the Sundance Film Festival. While the whole shebang makes us drool with envy over those who've snagged tickets, we've got our eyes firmly fastened on the New Frontier portion of the festivities.

Focusing on the intersection of film, technology and -- of course -- art, the New Frontier champions experimental forms of storytelling that aren't your average indie film fare. From a series of 61 one-minute mini-films to a virtual reality experience meant to simulate that of a bird, the New Frontier films are changing the future language of cinema.



"The primary thing I look for when considering works, both for the New Frontier films section, and the [coinciding] exhibition, is how an artistic or scientific practice innovates or expands the art and craft of cinematic storytelling. Innovation often happens when intelligence, passion, and drive meet limited resources. It also happens when diverse forms of creative expression entangle and hybridize," Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer and curator of the New Frontier exhibition, wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. "New Frontier is filled with filmmakers and content creators who were unsatisfied with conventional modes of expression, and consequently pushed beyond traditional paths of practice to reach for something new and undiscovered."

"I’m interested in films, art works, media experiments that speak powerfully to the art and craft of storytelling," she added, and "to imagining the future of what telling cinematic stories can be."

This year's pickings with gather together everyone from music video director Chris Milk to fine artist Doug Aitken to virtual reality visionaries Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël. "The film lineup completely eschews any notion of theme, style or category, unless the category is incredible diversity," said Frilot. "The sheer geographic diversity, and the diversity of the filmmakers themselves, is matched only by the diverse and eclectic visions of their films in the line up."

"A theme that might unify the work in this year’s edition of the New Frontier exhibition is that they bring the viewer to occupy full immersion inside the storyworld. The works by this year’s New Frontier creators allow the viewer to inhabit a consciousness inside the moving image itself, and enter a state of becoming. They compel a penetration of our own bodily presence into the digital tableau. As we make choices in the heat of the moment and wander through virtual storyworlds, our state of being evolves and we become something both additional, and parallel, to ourselves."

Behold, the 10 must-see films at Sundance's New Frontier. If you're lucky enough to attend this year's fair, don't let these go unseen.

1. The Forbidden Room Directors: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Screenwriters: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Robert Kotyk



"A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wind their way toward progressive ideas on life and love."

2. Station to Station Director: Doug Aitken



"'Station to Station' is composed of 61 individual one-minute films featuring different artists, musicians, places, and perspectives. This revolutionary feature-length film reveals a larger narrative about modern creativity."

3. Birdly Artist: Max Rheiner



"Flying is one of the oldest dreams of humankind. 'Birdly' is an experiment to capture this dream, to simulate the experience of being a bird from a first-person perspective. This embodiment is conducted through a full-body virtual reality setup."

4. Dérive Artist: François Quévillon



"This interactive installation uses the audience’s body motions and positions to explore 3D reconstructions of urban and natural spaces that are transformed according to live environmental data, including meteorological and astronomical phenomena."

5. Evolution of Verse Artist: Chris Milk



"Chris Milk, working with visual effects powerhouse Digital Domain and virtual reality production company VRSE.works, has created this photo-realistic CGI-rendered 3D virtual reality film that takes the viewer on a journey from beginning to new beginning."

6. Paradise Artist: Pleix



"Paradise is certainly not paradisiacal if you look at it through our eyes. But neither is it totally devoid of humor, melancholy and absurdity. Perhaps it is first and foremost life as it is, and then a touch exaggerated in the digital overdrive."

7. Way to Go Artist: Vincent Morisset



"It is a walk in the woods. It is an astonishing interactive experience, a restless panorama, a mixture of hand-made animation, 360-degree video capture, music, dreaming, and code; but mostly it is a walk in the woods."

8. WILD –- The Experience Artists: Félix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphaël



"Fox Searchlight and the Fox Innovation Lab present this virtual reality experience drawing from the film 'Wild.' Viewers enter a fully immersive media environment to join an intimate moment on the Pacific Crest Trail between a woman, Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon), and her mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern), a vision from the afterlife."

9. Herders Artists: Félix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphaël



"Mongolian pastoral herders are one of the world's last remaining nomadic cultures. For millennia they have lived on the steppes, grazing their livestock on the grasslands. Through a series of virtual reality experiences, the viewer is invited into the reality of a nomadic family of yak herders."

10. Strangers with Patrick Watson Artists: Félix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphaël, Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski



"'Strangers with Patrick Watson' invites the viewer to spend an intimate moment with celebrated Montreal musician Patrick Watson at work in his studio loft on a winter’s day."

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Why One Photographer Is Devoted To Capturing America's Disappearing Rivers

January 13, 2015, 7:25 am

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"We stand at a precipice in the history of water," photographer Ansley West Rivers writes in her artist statement. "How we approach the health and use of our rivers now will determine the lifespan of fresh water."

Rivers -- whose rather perfect name is not lost on anyone -- has devoted her recent life to capturing photographs of America's disappearing bodies of fresh water. She's an ardent advocate for watersheds as maps, visual pinpoints that tell a story of our civilization's past and present relationship to waterways in the United States. Her photos are not intended to be documentation, but rather, constructed portraits that pull together images of climate change, over-farming, industrial development and the general public's constant need for fresh water.


According to the EPA, there are 2,110 watersheds in the continental U.S.

Her series, "Seven Rivers," began in 2011. After spending 25 days floating on the Colorado River, passing the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, nestled between Glen Canyon Dam and the great Hoover Dam, she began to take notice of watermarks. "The Canyon is a National Park giving the impression of untouched wilderness," she explained to HuffPost. "But the rapids, though wild with whitewater, are all government controlled. While floating downstream, I would gaze up the canyon walls to see the historical watermarks stretching above. The marks are evidence of the river before the dams."

They stand as evidence of the people that once populated the banks of the rivers too. "The death of a civilization is also evident throughout the canyon," Rivers added. "The people who lived along the riverbanks now only exist as ghosts and ruins dotting the canyon. Their loss is felt through the spirituality that exudes from the canyon walls but their life is no longer."

After her Colorado River trip, the artist began investigating the changes in other rivers -- from water levels to temperature, wildlife to saltwater intrusion. The seeds for "Seven Rivers" were sewn, taking the form of a photography project meant to capture portraits of seven of America's fresh water bodies: the Colorado, Missouri/Mississippi, Columbia, Rio Grande, Tuolumne, Altamaha and Hudson.

Like photographic collages, Rivers' works toy with negatives, splicing together remnants of water's present, with fragments of a future filled with looming smokestacks and receding shorelines. Horizons bend into silhouettes, while the waves of one river disappear into the rush of another. They are not realistic depictions of the state of fresh water, but Rivers' abstract renderings draw the viewer into a realm of conservation otherwise overlooked.

Rivers concludes: "The debate over water can only truly begin if we can connect ourselves to the rivers that sustain us."

Why I Believe New York's Art Scene Is Doomed

January 13, 2015, 7:26 am

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This article originally appeared on artnet News.
By Ben Davis


High-wire act: Suspended Cirque performance at Galapagos Art Space
Image: Courtesy Galapagos Art Space

This is an article about art and gentrification, the inescapable topic. I have something new to add—that I think we may be coming to the end of a period where being an artist was synonymous with being urban, unless we are willing to fight for it—but before I start it, let me say that I have mixed feelings about my own conclusions.

On the one hand, I like New York, and I think that artists should fight for their place in it. I believe that this would take some serious coalition building and some effort to break out of the shoe-gazing, white-guilt bottleneck where the conversation always gets stuck.

It would not be impossible to do so. If you read Rosalyn Deutsche and Cara Gendel Ryan's “The Fine Art of Gentrification" essay from 1987 about struggles in the East Village, you can see that there was a time when political consciousness was acute enough within the arts community in New York that taking a stand against “artists housing" was actually the commonsense radical thing to do. Artists clearly saw that they were being used by real estate interests to drive out poor communities and communities of color, and put their future with a larger struggle to change urban priorities.

Of course, those struggles failed to stop the gentrification of the East Village, so the contemporary version would actually have to be more sustained, more far-reaching. It could happen, and it's what I'd like to see happen. On the other hand, I think it's important to be honest about the hour, and the hour is late.

“The white-hot real estate market burning through affordable cultural habitat is no longer a crisis, it's a conclusion," Robert Elmes, the director of Galapagos Art Space announced this past year, saying that his organization was decamping to Detroit (see High Rents Drive Brooklyn's Galapagos Art Space to the Motor City). Shortly thereafter, the New York Times returned fire with an article stating that reports of New York's death as a creative capital are highly overstated. I actually appreciate wanting to do justice to the weird things still going on, even if I don't find the examples adduced—a rage for pop-up parties—that convincing. As long as there are interesting people, there will be interesting parties. But we are talking about a process that is still unfolding, and right now that process only goes one way.



The Night Heron, a pop-up speakeasy in a New York watertower
Photo: Courtesy The Night Heron

It is worth laying aside our NY-centricness for a second to note that this is part of a much, much bigger trend. This year you had Jen Graves's “How Artists Can Fight Back Against Cities That Are Taking Advantage of Them," from Seattle, and Christian L. Frock's “Priced Out" series from San Francisco, both examples of art scenes being smothered. There was even, at year's end, an article on how Asheville lost its cool. That's Asheville, North Carolina.

When it comes to my own city of residence, the best article I read last year was from the website Brokelyn. “There is nothing hip and cool happening in Brooklyn," community organizer Imani Henry told author Camille Lawhead. “It's a war."

He then begins to answer the question that gets lost because most gentrification stories are told from the point of view of the guilty consciences of first-wave gentrifiers: “If people can really think about it, there are people moving to the Poconos and Ithaca in their 70s. People with mental health conditions who have no place to go or live. Families are being pushed out of their apartments. There's nothing sexy, hot, or cute about it."

It's easy to think of this as just a process that will go on, the same as it ever was. But in the larger scheme of things, we are approaching or have passed a key inflection point, one that already has a branded name: “The Great Inversion," from Alan Ehrenhalt's imperfect but interesting book of the same name. In essence, the traditional relationship between suburb and city in American life is reversing. For a long period, the affluent used to move to the suburbs; over time, white flight emptied out inner cities of resources. But lately, the wealthy have been returning to the cities—gobbling them up, in fact. Some of those new apartment towers in Manhattan—such as the vast 432 Park, the tallest the city has ever seen, set to cast a shadow on Central Park—will not have much more than 100 units. That's the urban geography of inequality for you.


Artist rendering of 432 Park, which will be New York's tallest residential building and have only 104 units


Meanwhile, everyone else is being pushed out by the same process, while new immigrant groups are tending to settle in the suburbs as well. This trend has already passed an important threshold: in raw numbers, more poor people live in the suburbs now than in cities.

The “urban Renaissance" we are living through is a terrific example of solving a problem by not solving it, or rather, by turning it inside-out. We've imported suburbia to the city, recreating its bucolic aura via bike lanes and urban gardening, and its gated community vibe via “broken windows" policing. Soon it will have all those stereotypical negative characteristics of suburbia too: lack of human diversity, and commercial life crushed under chain stores (in his book, Ehrenhalt is strangely enthusiastic about Starbucks as a sign of the rebirth of city life). Meanwhile, we are exporting poverty to places where you need a car to survive.


Dumb Starbucks, a stunt parodying the omnipresent coffee chain (from the Comedy Central Show Nathan For You)

It is very possible that Detroit will become a new artists capital—Elmes says it is accumulating artists at "an astonishing rate"—but my guess is that all the same problems will follow artists there unless the political problems are solved (Galapagos is quite explicitly gambling on its ability to raise real estate values: "the arts are already in the real estate business—they just aren't being rewarded for it"). The pattern of hyping new funky hotspots is one real estate speculators have down cold, and have perfected in such a way that it has accelerated. (This is an international process: See the New Republic's piece on Berlin, "The Life and Death of a 'Cool' City".)

A little more than a decade ago, pundit Richard Florida put this all into a form ripe for marketers everywhere with his The Rise of the Creative Class, which told cities to court creatives as part of a development strategy, putting artists, whose incomes are very variable, into a confusing bloc with I-bankers and tech professionals. Now he admits that “creative class"-led development is not beneficial for all, because most people can't keep up with rising rents. Well, guess what else? His new thing is “Suburban Renewal," so get ready for the "creative suburb" to be a thing. “Maybe one day creative types will look down their noses from trendily sketchy suburban enclaves at those lame bourgeoisie in the cities," one author prognosticates.

Maybe that doesn't sound probable. But then 50 years ago when artists started moving into the blighted, abandoned industrial spaces in SoHo, no one would have thought that “loft living" would define the aesthetics of a new urban lifestyle. Well, the current conjunction looks to me like that particular cycle has matured, and a new one is set to begin. Somewhere, some new set of artists is inventing a new, very different way of being that will also look to have been inevitable in 50 years. In a very speculative way, I would say that Carlo McCormick's ArtNews article last year on the rise of the “hickster"—about artists leaving the city altogether—is a better hint of the future in a generation or so than Galapagos's move to Detroit, which seems just a stop on the way.

Neither is my favored option. My preferred option is a fight for the city. You've got to be clear on what that fight would take, though: It involves challenging a trend that we have already let go very, very far. Otherwise, gas up the car, because we are heading to the burbs.

Follow @benadavis on Twitter.


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Fat Femme Artist Picks Apart Your Preconceived Notions Of Beauty, One Photo At A Time

January 13, 2015, 7:35 am

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Day after day we're fed image after image of a certain body aesthetic: tanned, toned, waxed, oiled and perhaps a little digitally retouched. Today let's do things a little bit differently.

We want to honor beautiful bodies that break the conventions we encounter in magazines, on television, on billboards and just about everywhere else. The radical and magnificent photographs of artist and activist Kelli Jean Drinkwater deconstruct the oppressive body ideals that govern so many of our desires, cherishing the impact of real, human forms.

"As an artist and a woman of size my creative practice and my body politics are inseparable," Drinkwater explained in an email to The Huffington Post. "Exploring ways to reclaim spaces and platforms that are often prohibitive to 'othered' bodies is a huge inspiration. I also enjoy the aesthetic potential of taking up space."



For years Drinkwater has used art and performance to communicate her experience in a fat body, using humor and strength to challenge limited representations of bigger bodies and embolden fat positive visibility. (She also founded a fat femme synchronized swimming team called Aquaporko! which makes our hearts soar more than we can adequately express.)

"I was looking to make a movement piece using big bodied performers when [contemporary dance choreographer] Kate Champion approached me to collaborate with her on 'Nothing to Lose.' I loved that we were both conceptually in sync but coming from completely different perspectives. It was a very timely meeting."



Champion's company Force Majeure issued an Australia-wide call out for people that self-identified as fat, larger, or bigger bodied, distributing the message to body acceptance communities and creative and queer networks. The response was overwhelming, which, to Drinkwater and Champion, only reaffirmed the importance of the project.

"Kate's interest in the choreographic potential of fat bodies as well as her intuitive approach to bringing out performers' inerrant movement is, I believe, the only way a work on this subject could be achieved with authenticity and respect.
Both Kate and I are fascinated by the societal obsession with fatness and the way that impacts the movement potential and potency of having an entire cast of undeniably large bodies on stage."



The resulting photographs, frozen moments of real bodies in motion, express courage, grace and fire, turning the human body into a vehicle for change, a mode of resistance. The subjects, donning bathing suits and lingerie, revel in the many peculiarities of flesh on the go; every wrinkle, dimple and fold speaking to the beautiful imperfections of all human beings.

"As a creative team we have approached this subject with authenticity to guide the material in 'Nothing to Lose' to go beyond the usual dialogue and approach when talking about fat. This approach is grounded in the lived experience of the cast and one that has a definite focus on movement vocabulary. We aim to provide a space where audiences are able to investigate the complexity of these performers' lives and the relationships to their bodies, which in turn may inform the audience's ideas around body size and challenge any preconceptions they may have."

Charlie Hebdo Staff Is Fully Behind New Muhammad Cover

January 13, 2015, 10:53 am

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While journalists and news outlets worldwide continue to struggle with the decision to print Charlie Hebdo's latest depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, one thing is for sure. Charlie Hebdo is not worried, and the satirical newspaper's resolve to continue moving forward is strong.

On Monday, Charlie Hebdo revealed its newest cover, the first since gunmen launched an attack on the paper's Paris office, killing 12 people. During a press conference Tuesday, editor-in-chief Gerard Briard provided the media with more information on the upcoming edition of the paper .

"We are happy to have done it," Briard said, later adding that, when the editors first saw the new cartoon, they "burst out laughing" and "jumped up with joy."

The paper will print 3 million copies of the new edition, said Briard, with the help of Libération and other organizations that had guaranteed staffers and resources. He added that the issue will be translated into multiple languages, including English, Italian, Spanish and Arabic.

As the newspaper continues to work through one of the worst attacks on media in history, Briard reaffirmed that the terrorists have not won.

“There is a future, but we don't know yet what it will resemble," Briard said Tuesday. "There will be a newspaper. There will be no interruption."

Renald Luzier, the cartoonist who drew the new cover, told the press conference audience that, despite many concerns from news outlets over whether or not to reprint the images, the staff of Charlie Hebdo stands behind the cover.

"I am not worried about the cover because people are intelligent," Luzier said. "If this did anything, it made people take to the streets. It has been a while since people took to the streets in Paris. I want the spirit of Charlie to prevail not just in Charlie, but everywhere. If we can make ideas live, we can win."

Tituss Burgess Will Play The Witch In 'Into The Woods' Production In Miami

January 13, 2015, 11:12 am

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Composer Stephen Sondheim has reportedly given his blessing to actor Tituss Burgess, who will tackle the coveted role of the Witch, which is normally played by a woman, in a new production of "Into The Woods."

Burgess, whose Broadway credits include "The Little Mermaid" and "Guys and Dolls," will play the part in the Carnival Studio Theater production of "Woods," which opens Jan. 22 and runs through Feb. 15, in Miami. He'll star opposite .J. Caruncho and Arielle Jacobs as the Baker and the Baker's Wife, respectively, and Annemarie Rosano as Cinderella, Playbill first reported. Justin Fortunato will direct.

Of the non-traditional casting choice, Natalie Caruncho of the Carnival Studio Theater told Playbill, "We wrote a letter, through MTI, addressed to Mr. Sondheim and Mr. Lapine regarding Tituss playing the Witch and we were approved!"

She added, "It was a special moment for us."

The Witch was originally played on Broadway by Bernadette Peters, who nabbed a Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance. Meryl Streep's performance as the character in the 2014 film version of "Into The Woods" is considered one of the movie's highlights.

Burgess, who stole scenes from Alec Baldwin and fellow guest star Sherri Shepherd on "30 Rock" as the hairdresser D'Fwan, told The Huffington Post in 2012 that it was important for his work to be representative of his life as an openly gay performer.

"I try to write in a perspective that's both a representation of [myself] but also doesn't alienate those from any other walks of life," Burgess said at the time. Still, he added, "My young sisters and brothers in the LGBT community…they need assistance."

Modern Puppetry Takes Center Stage At International Festival In Chicago

January 14, 2015, 5:00 am

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By Mark Guarino
CHICAGO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Puppets aren't just about Muppets, kids and circuses.
Indeed, an international puppetry festival in Chicago aims to redefine the art form and promises theatergoers an experience that, unlike so many in our digital age, can't be swiped, streamed, downloaded, or tweeted.
The first annual Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, which opens on Wednesday and runs through Jan. 25, is about the many forms of contemporary puppetry - from marionettes, masking and shadow puppets to tabletop puppets and larger-than-life installation characters that tell stories that are both epic and innately intimate.
Puppet theater is thought to have been around in some form for more than 3,000 years, with recent award-winning stage shows like "War Horse" and "The Lion King" taking the art to new, emotional levels and huge global audiences.
Festival founder Blair Thomas says the low-tech nature of puppetry is what makes it so enduring, especially when people are now inundated with technology in their daily lives.
"Live puppet theater is really just this sculptured object being performed in front of you by someone who has ability to endow it with life," Thomas said.
"That's in such sharp contrast to our media culture where we are inundated with how fast things are edited in film. Our cinematic eye is very sophisticated but also oversaturated. So there's something very real about being in the presence of an animated puppet that is a breath of fresh air," he said.
The 12-day festival takes place throughout Chicago, from storefront theaters to the Museum of Contemporary Art and Field Museum. It will feature about 50 puppeteers from around the world including New York, London, Montreal, the Netherlands, and France.
Chicago is represented by companies like five-year-old Manual Cinema that incorporates multimedia, soundscapes, and storytelling focusing on abstract expressionism.
Puppetry has deep roots in Chicago with the term "puppeteer" credited by etymologists as originating there in 1912 with Ellen Van Volkenburg, a co-founder of the Chicago Little Theater that put on marionette shows on Michigan Avenue.
Van Volkenburg was later profiled in a 1920 New York Times article which first used the term "puppeteering" in print.
Thomas says more theater artists are incorporating puppetry today because they have come to appreciate how it expands their storytelling potential.
The simplicity of the art form, it seems, taps into something inherently primitive that cannot be replicated by human actors reading from conventional scripts.
"Puppet theater is intimately connected to the irrational," he said.
"After several centuries of empirical thinking as the primary way of looking at the world, there's no way for irrational thought to go. So watching a puppet that is animated well can tap into that reptilian brand, which makes it a very powerful experience."
The performances in Chicago (chicagopuppetfest.org) will vary from traditional shadow puppetry by New York's Chinese Theater Works, to the animated drawings of Canadian Daniel Barrow, and what is described as "a live-action three-dimensional cartoon" performed by 15 puppeteers of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater of Minneapolis.
Thomas hopes the festival will become a biannual event.
"One of our goals is to redefine what puppetry is in people's minds," he says. "It crosses a lot of boundaries and borders and cultures and languages that otherwise separate us." (Reporting by Mark Guarino, editing by Jill Serjeant and Gunna Dickson)

New Map Of Galaxy's 'Mysterious Molecules' May Help Solve Old Cosmic Puzzle

January 14, 2015, 6:10 am

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Scientists may be one step closer to solving a cosmic puzzle that's had astronomers scratching their heads for nearly a century.

It all started in 1922, when American astronomer Mary Lea Heger noticed that certain wavelengths were consistently absent in the light emitted by binary star systems in the constellations Orion and Scorpius. Since then, other scientists have identified many more of these "diffuse interstellar bands."

Subsequent research showed that something in interstellar space was absorbing the missing wavelengths before they reached Earth. Evidence pointed to various complex molecules scattered across the Milky Way, though astronomers have been unable to determine exactly what they are.

Now, two teams of scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have created a map that shows where in our galaxy the mysterious molecules are located.

The researchers hope this map--created with the help of new data-processing techniques--will finally make it possible to analyze the composition and properties of the molecules.

(Story continues below image).


"For the first time, we can see how these mysterious molecules are moving around the galaxy," Dr. Gail Zasowski, a post-doctoral researcher at the university and one of the astronomers behind the new research, said in a written statement. "This is extremely useful and brings in new connections between these molecules and the dynamics of the Milky Way."

For the research, a team led by Zasowki analyzed infrared data from more than 60,000 stars in the densest parts of our galaxy. Another team, led by graduate student Ting-Wen Lan, looked at visible light from more than half a million stars, galaxies, and quasars.

If that sounds like a lot of data to pore over, it is.

“The era of Big Data in astronomy allows us to look at the universe in new ways," Dr. Brice Ménard, a professor of physics and astronomy at the university and a member of both teams, said in the statement. "There is so much to explore with these large datasets. This is just the beginning.”

The map was unveiled in Seattle last week at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

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Infographic Explores The Careers Of The World's Most Successful Authors

January 14, 2015, 6:15 am

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Although he published his first book at 27, it wasn't until two decades later, after the release of A Prayer for Owen Meany, that John Irving garnered acclaim for his writing. Such an arduous path isn't uncommon in the world of literature -- while the task of penning a novel is typically rewarding intrinsically, there's no guarantee of eventual success, and you can almost certainly not bank on immediate rewards (unless you're Douglas Adams, whose Hitchhiker's Guide was written when he was only 28).

According to the below infographic created by blinkbox, it's typical for an author's breakout book to be written mid-career. This goes not only for classic writers like Tolstoy and C.S. Lewis, but also contemporary writers like Danielle Steel who focus on mass-market titles. Check it out below to see who was the most and least prolific, who made it big at a young age, and whose popularity took decades to bubble up.

[via Blinkbox Books]

7 Oscar Nominations That Need To Happen On Thursday

January 14, 2015, 6:24 am

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Michael Keaton, Julianne Moore, Richard Linklater, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, J.K. Simmons, Emmanuel Lubezki, Patricia Arquette and Eddie Redmayne are among the many people who should expect to hear their names called when nominations for the 87th annual Academy Awards are announced on Thursday. But there are still a surfeit of contenders on the bubble at the moment. Here are seven who should be anything but underdogs -- aka if the Oscars don't nominate this group, something went terribly wrong.

Ava DuVernay, Best Director for "Selma"



To consider Ava DuVernay a fringe candidate in this category is an outrage, but after the brouhaha over the historical precision of "Selma" and several snubs from prominent guild groups, that's what this Oscar race has become. When the movie screened for press around Thanksgiving, the critical conclave sent up white smoke that pointed to "Selma" having locked up one of the haziest Best Picture races in recent memory. I still think it'll make that shortlist, but it seems like Ava DuVernay, who would become the first black woman nominated for Best Director, will not. To encapsulate the contemporary cultural milieu and make the year's most expertly crafted film, yet still walk away empty-handed, is the year's biggest awards transgression. -- Matthew Jacobs

Damien Chazelle, Best Director for "Whiplash"



For months, a great many awards pundits have put Damien Chazelle inside the box Benh Zeitlin created two years ago. It's a pretty enticing narrative: Both men are young, white and debuted what would become a major awards contender at the Sundance Film Festival (Chazelle with "Whiplash," Zeitlin with "Beasts of the Southern Wild"). Zeitlin ended his magic run with a Best Director nomination; Chazelle should follow suit, but only if he can nudge out someone like Clint Eastwood or Morten Tyldum (both of whom appeared on the Directors Guild shortlist this week). On merit, he should: we'll be talking about "Whiplash" long after the really good "The Imitation Game" and the pretty bad "American Sniper" fade from memory. -- Christopher Rosen

Laura Dern, Best Supporting Actress for "Wild"



Patricia Arquette has been such a shoo-in for "Boyhood" that it seems like we stopped weighing the other four Best Supporting Actress slots long ago. That comes at the expense of Tilda Swinton, Carrie Coon, Melissa McCarthy, Rene Russo and Laura Dern, who, with "Wild," gave one of the year's most accomplished performances. Her screen time is relatively brief, but she has the lofty task of capturing years of backstory using only flashback scenes. She's radiant. If nothing else, the Academy owes Dern a "Wild" nomination to atone for no awards groups paying any attention to her equally moving part in "The Fault in Our Stars." -- MJ

Bradford Young, Best Cinematography for "Selma"



Much like how a nomination for Ava DuVernay should absolutely be a thing that happens on Thursday, so too should some serious recognition for Bradford Young. The year's most discussed cinematographer worked on both "A Most Violent Year" and "Selma," but it's the latter film that should land Young among the five Best Cinematography nominees on Thursday. As with DuVernay, Young was ignored by his relevant guild -- the American Society of Cinematographers -- but it would be an egregious mistake for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to follow suit. Young's work on "Selma" is wildly original and gorgeous without being showy. He stood out as the year's best image maker, and should be rewarded as such. -- CR

Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, Best Original Screenplay for "Love is Strange"



"Love Is Strange" should have factored into the entire race, but it looks like the Independent Spirit Awards may be the only prize to pile on the praise this movie deserves. Its screenplay is probably the sole opportunity for any Oscar attention, and even that seems like a long shot. Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias managed to write a movie that's at once heartwarming and heartbreaking, simple and relentlessly layered. Those same adjectives might apply to, say, "Interstellar," yet look how bloated Jonathan and Christopher Nolan's script was. Sachs and Zacharias wrote a sweet, no-frills movie about growing old, living in New York, being gay, navigating family dynamics, maintaining romance and finding comfort. "Love is Strange" proves it doesn't even take 100 minutes to make the year's most thoughtful movie (see also: "Nightcrawler"). -- MJ

Alexandre Desplat, Best Original Score for "The Grand Budapest Hotel"



Alexandre Desplat produced five scores this year, including one for "The Imitation Game" that might land him a seventh Oscar nomination. It would be well deserved -- his score for Morten Tyldum's movie is quite good! -- but nothing on Desplat's 2014 CV compares to "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Desplat's latest collaboration with Wes Anderson, following "Moonrise Kingdom," is a throwback of Eastern European influences that fits the waltz-loving composer like the glove of a dowager. It's an oxymoron of delicate bombast that provides Anderson's most emotional movie to date with a lot of its emotion. For the love of antique tuba parts, please don't leave this one off the nominees list. -- CR

"Selma" for Best Picture



Critics don't matter when it comes to Oscars, but "Selma" has a better Metacritic rating than "Birdman," "The Grand Budapest Hotel," "The Imitation Game," "The Theory of Everything," "Whiplash" and "American Sniper." (Of the major Best Picture contenders, only "Boyhood" rates higher.) At Oscar prognostication site Gold Derby, all 27 experts have "Selma" listed among their Best Picture predictions. Yet after being blanked by the major guilds -- Producers, Screen Actors, Directors -- "Selma" has the look and feel of an outsider. A long shot. A snub. That would be an unforgivable mistake. -- CR

Razzie Nominations Include 'Transformers: Age Of Extinction,' 'Blended' And 'Annie'

January 14, 2015, 6:31 am

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Ah, it's time for the Razzie nominations, which salute the worst movies and performances of the year. This year, "Transformers: Age of Extinction" leads the pack with with seven nominations, including worst picture and screenplay. "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas" and "The Legend of Hercules" each earned six nods, and stars like Nicolas Cage, Seth MacFarlane, Cameron Diaz and Adam Sandler had their performances called out.

A new category, the Redeemer Award, also honors past Razzie regulars on their recent work. (Example: Ben Affleck, who went from "Gigli" to "Argo and "Gone Girl.") Here's the full list of Razzie nominees:

WORST PICTURE
"Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"
"Left Behind"
"The Legend of Hercules"
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
"Transformers: Age of Extinction"

WORST ACTOR
Kirk Cameron, "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"
Nicholas Cage, "Left Behind"
Kellan Lutz, "The Legend of Hercules"
Seth MacFarlane, "A Million Ways to Die in the West"
Adam Sandler, "Blended"

WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Mel Gibson, "Expendables 3"
Kelsey Grammer, "Expendables 3," "Legends of Oz," "Think Like a Man Too," "Transformers: Age of Extinction"
Shaquille O'Neal, "Blended"
Arnold Schwarzenegger, "Expendables 3"
Kiefer Sutherland, "Pompeii"

WORST ACTRESS
Drew Barrymore, "Blended
Cameron Diaz, "The Other Woman" and "Sex Tape"
Melissa McCarthy, "Tammy"
Charlize Theron, "A Million Ways to Die in the West"
Gaia Weiss, "The Legend of Hercules"

WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cameron Diaz, "Annie"
Megan Fox, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
Nicola Peltz, "Transformers: Age of Extinction"
Susan Sarandon, "Tammy"
Brigitte Ridenour (née Cameron), "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"

WORST DIRECTOR
Michael Bay, "Transformers: Age of Extinction"
Darren Doane, "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"
Renny Harlin, "The Legend of Hercules"
Jonathan Liebesman, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
Seth MacFarlane, "A Million Ways to Die in the West"

WORST REMAKE, RIP-OFF OR SEQUEL
"Annie"
"Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt?"
"The Legend of Hercules"
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
"Transformers: Age of Extinction"

WORST SCREEN COMBO
Any Two Robots, Actors (Robotic Actors), "Transformers: Age of Extinction"
Kirk Cameron & His Ego, "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"
Cameron Diaz & Jason Segel, "Sex Tape"
Kellan Lutz & Either His Abs, His Pecs or His Glutes, "The Legend of Hercules"
Seth MacFarlane & Charlize Theron, "A Million Ways to Die in the West"

WORST SCREENPLAY
"Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"
"Left Behind"
"Sex Tape"
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
"Transformers: Age of Extinction"

REDEEMER AWARD
Ben Affleck, from "Gigli" to "Argo" and "Gone Girl"
Jennifer Aniston, from four-time Razzie nominee to "Cake"
Mike Myers, from "The Love Guru" to directing "Supermensch"
Keanu Reeves, from six-time Razzie nominee to "John Wick"
Kristen Stewart, from six-time Razzie winner for "Twilight" to "Camp X-Ray"

'American Soldier' Photos Expose The Many Faces Of Modern War

January 14, 2015, 6:50 am

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What does a soldier look like? Once you reduce the term to a specific type of serviceman or woman -- taking into account the era, the country, the war, the branch of the military, the rank -- can you settle on a particular image of a soldier? Is she, or more likely he, wearing fatigues or full regalia? Is she being honored or is he in the midst of fighting? Is she stationed in your city or is he currently living in barracks across the globe?

Of course, the actual faces of a sharp shooter in Gettysburg, a Marine Captain in South Korea, and a Private First Class in the Gulf are wildly different. Their daily lives are distinct, their psychological experiences are personal, and as a result, the ways we think about and remember these individuals varies too. But the term "soldier" holds some universal meaning, conjuring scenes of both honor and embattlement, hierarchy and chaos, pride and regret. The many ways we perceive and interpret the concept of "soldier," in all its complexities, adds up to our collective understanding of conflict around the world.



"American Soldier," an upcoming exhibition at Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, explores this collective understanding. Through 50 portraits of American servicemen and women, from the Civil War to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the show presents a range of emotionally charged images of all contexts.

Photojournalists and documentarians, artists and loved ones captured these images, focusing on the faces of soldiers as they stand to attention, sleep amidst equipment or beg for medical assistance. From the grim to the glorious, many of these images have or will become part of the visual history of war in the modern age. Just as the photos echo civilians' varied glimpses into the military machine, they reflect the ways in which photographers frame conflict from all sides. W. Eugene Smith focuses on the beads of sweat dripping from a helmet, Joe Rosenthal sees the raising of a very famous flag, Larry Burrows snaps a fleeting grimace and the late Tim Hetherington captures the shadows of a dorm in Afghanistan.

You can see a full preview of the Nelson-Atkins show, which will be on view from January 23 to June 21, 2015, below. The museum is also soliciting images of your own (or your loved ones') military experience. Share your photos on social media and use the hashtag #AmericanSoldierKC to share with the museum.

Meet Millo, The Street Artist Who Paints Massive Monochromatic Murals Around Italy

January 14, 2015, 6:52 am

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Meet Millo. The Italian street artist, also known as Francesco Camillo Giorgino, is well known in cities like Florence and Rome. Last year, he painted 13 massive murals in the town of Turin alone, as part of the B.Art competition in 2014. His work can also be seen in Paris and London, Luxemburg and Rio de Janeiro, revealing a consistently simple, monochromatic style matched with bits of color and whimsical characterizations.


Cristina Bigliatti

Born in 1979, Millo began his artistic career as a student of architecture, which might account for his keen sense of space, and his ability to fill an exterior facade with such perfectly shaped designs. “I started just doing stuff for myself, I didn’t have it in my mind that I’d be doing it as a job, I just painted because I liked to paint," Millo said of his early days painting, in an interview with the UK-based blog Inspiring City. In lieu of more conventional job opportunities, he made art his profession, participating in exhibitions and mural festivals to make a name for himself.

Now, he squeezes epic landscapes onto the sides of residential and commercial sites, populating his creative worlds with gigantic, child-like figures who play with makeshift telephones and building blocks and paper cranes and trains. Sometimes coyly surreal, other times borderline terrifying, his designs appear like Brazilian brothers Os Gemeos' street art mixed with the black-and-white world of graphic novelist Yumi Sakugawa. Needless to say, we like it.

We reached out to Millo for a selection of his works over the past few years. Below is glimpse into the Italian artist's oeuvre, and a video of the master at work. Enjoy.

Nicole Kidman's A Viral Sensation Now, And She's Pretty Happy With That

January 14, 2015, 7:15 am

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Nicole Kidman's IMDb page lists six movies on the horizon for 2015, but when HuffPost Entertainment talked to her last week, she was just concerned about making it to "Conan" on time. Bob Weinstein, who produced "Cold Mountain" and co-owns The Weinstein Company, had dropped by the "Paddington" press day and sucked up Kidman's attention. That was just a couple of days after Kidman sucked up the Internet's attention with her widely circulated appearance on "The Tonight Show," during which she informed Jimmy Fallon that she had attempted to woo him a decade earlier. Kidman was just as surprised as the rest of us to see the moment take on a second life online the next day.

Naturally, when HuffPost Entertainment hopped on the phone with Kidman after Weinstein left, we had to ask about the buzzy interview clip before moving on to the first feature-film adaptation of "Paddington," Michael Bond's popular children's book series about the marmalade-loving bear from Peru. Kidman plays Millicent Clyde, a vicious taxidermist on the hunt for Paddington. There's been a lot of that eponymous bear in her house as of late. We talked to the Oscar winner about exposing her own children to the books, acting with an invisible bear and whether we'll see the troubled "Grace of Monaco" on the big screen anytime soon.

Did you expect to wake up last Wednesday and learn that you were a viral sensation?
No, I’m shocked. I’ve never been a viral sensation in my life. There’s always a first, right?

Viral moments in late-night TV usually stem from celebrities playing games or acting in sketches nowadays. But you won everyone's attention with your actual interview. Have you noticed that shift in late-night over the years you've been on the circuit?
I hadn’t actually thought of that. I know they did the pre-interview and I didn’t mention anything I was going to say.

So Jimmy genuinely had no idea?
He was genuinely shocked. It’s crazy. We just had a different view on what that night was. But he’s so good at just going with it, though. I’m glad that it was funny at least. It could have really gone pear-shaped.


Nicole Kidman appears on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" on Jan. 6.

What made you decide to tell the story?
I was sitting at home a couple of months ago watching and I went, "Oh my God, if I ever go on the show I’ve got to talk to him about that because I haven’t seen him since." So that was the first time I’ve seen him in like 10 years. Crazy. I just thought it would be two minutes and we would move on to Paddington Bear, and we didn’t.

"Let’s talk about 'Paddington'" is now the best interview segue.
Nobody wants to talk about "Paddington"!

Is there anybody else that you’ve tried to date that we don’t know about?
Oh, stop! No! And I’m going to keep my -- no, no, no, I’m done. [laughs]

So let’s talk about "Paddington."
Yes, I tried to date Paddington. "Paddington" is fun. It’s so nice to be able to promote a movie where you go, "Oh my gosh, this is funny." And it’s adorable. I just hope that it translates to America.

Did have a relationship with the "Paddington" books growing up?
My relationship was that I was raised with them. There were lots of other books that I was raised with, too, but Paddington was very much a part of our growing up. I just remember as a kid wanting my own Paddington Bear that was alive and walking and talking and eating marmalade sandwiches. I think that, probably, is the desire of a child to have something smaller that you can take care of that talks and is like a little person, but isn’t your little brother and sister.

Have you read "Paddington" to your own children?
Yeah, oh yeah. And even before I accepted to do the movie, we’d read it a few times. But once I was doing the movie, it was like, okay, now we’re really going to embrace the bear.

So there's been a lot of "Paddington" in the Urban-Kidman household lately?
There has. And strangely, for it to have taken off the way it did in the U.K. and in Europe and Australia and stuff, I think the great thing is I’ve seen the movie now play with my own kids and then with my mother, who’s 74, and it plays to a huge array of people and ages. That’s what I didn’t expect.


Paddington, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban walk the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of "Paddington" on Jan. 10.

It's nice that you get the fun part in a fun movie by getting to play the campy villain.
Yeah, I always seem to get cast as the campy villain. Which is fine by me.

Right, yet I feel like we haven’t seen you do a campy villain since “The Golden Compass.”
Yeah, and the great thing is this was funny. “Golden Compass” wasn’t funny. [Paul King, the director] was so nice because he said he wrote the part for me, but then when I showed up he had a whole vision for it. He said, "I really want this to be funny. I don’t want this to be serious. I want it to have a joyful, tongue-in-cheek quality to it." He made the set really fun. This is the first of many films that are going to be huge successes that he does. He’s really clever.

I know you had to be convinced to take the "Golden Compass" role because of the campy-villain thing.
Yeah.

Did you feel that at all here, too?
No, I was like, "I'm in." And Paul showed me the bear. He said, "Look, this is what the bear is going to look like," because obviously the bear is the movie. I just saw two minutes of bear footage that they’d put together before the film when they were working on it to see if it could work, and he was adorable. That’s when I went, "Oh, this thing is going to so work." But actually the film is better than the script even. It’s a very strange mix of things. It’s kind of hard to explain why it works because it’s really charming, but it’s kind of naughty at times, but it just walks this incredible fine line of humor and then empathy. It’s an amazing mix of stuff.

You're acting opposite a CGI bear. Is it hard to map that out so you know what your actions should be?
Usually there’s nothing there, but then we did have Lauren -- she was 3-feet-6 and she would sometimes step in and do some of the walking so that you would have somewhere to look, and then we had another actor who would sometimes do the voice, and then we had a physical-comedy clown called Javier and he did a lot of the physical comedy that the bear does. So there were many different ways they made it work, but a lot of times it was just a stick with a hat on it. And I say this because Sally Hawkins and I were being asked a question of "How do you act opposite nothing?" -- and so many times as an actor we have to make believe. That’s what we do. Sometimes you get to exist in a bubble with another actor, but most of the time we’re having to pretend the cameras aren’t there and the people aren’t there. There’s stuff that we think is real and it’s not. I did a movie, "Dogville," where there’s nothing. I mean nothing. And we had to pretend.

Do you know when we might finally see "Grace of Monaco" on U.S. screens?
I don’t. That’s a Harvey Weinstein question, but I’ve got a film coming out at Sundance, so I’m going off to Sundance, and that’s a low-budget Australian film that I did. And then I’m actually going to film a movie in L.A. for a couple of weeks, so that will be kind of nice because I live in Nashville.

Good! I hope we'll get to see "Grace" soon, though.
Oh my gosh, yep. Well, I don’t know. It’s had a very rocky road, so we’ll see.

This interview has been edited and condensed. "Paddington" opens Jan. 16.

Bedridden Artist Explores Sexual Identity Through Warped Religious Idols (NSFW)

January 14, 2015, 7:20 am

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Note: The following images may not be suitable for work environments. Be warned, things get beautifully weird.

Brooklyn-based artist Don Pablo Pedro began creating his work while bedridden, recovering from his inguinal orchiectomy -- i.e., the removal of his left testicle. We're guessing the experience informed his output in some (not so subtle) ways, the mix of physical transformation, sexuality, alchemy, pain and identity all playing into his singular style.


“Foot In Mouth” 2014 Ink and Textile Pigment on Linen 9 x 9 in

Pedro originally used his hospital bedsheets as canvases, adorning them with watercolor and acrylics. After his hospital stay was completed, he turned to muslin, a cloth most commonly used for clothing mockups, with a similar texture to sheets. These days, Pedro is experimenting with linen as the base for his thangka-style works, like Buddhist scenes on (a rather surreal) spring break.

His colorful artworks depict both masculine and feminine figures -- many of which highly resemble the artist himself -- caught in an endless string of monstrous, orgiastic positions. Feet spring from eye sockets and burst into mouths, a penis burrows out of a forehead and a woman's face emerges shyly from a hefty beard. The characters take part in a chaotic spree, positioned inside a nightmarish allegorical painting depicting more of a love decagon than a love triangle.


“Head Hurts” 2014 Ink and Textile Pigment on Linen 48 x 36 in

Pedro weaves relationship narratives into his artworks, addressing both particular successes and failures and the wider theatrics involved in dating. Through his contorted cast of people, Pedro visualizes the contrast between our ugly inner self-loathing and the sunny personas we project at all costs. The images pin one's exterior masquerade against the demons lurking within, staging an individual battle that's at once horrifying, titillating and altogether impossible to look away from.

See the obscene smorgasbord in full below and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

---

Entertainment Weekly's 'Boyhood' Cover Just Blew Our Minds

January 14, 2015, 7:37 am

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Thanks to the magic of photo editing, Entertainment Weekly has placed three versions of "Boyhood" star Ellar Coltrane on its cover this week. There's Ellar at 11, Ellar at 12 and -- smiling with his arms around both -- Ellar at 20. "Boyhood" is the expected front-runner for Best Picture at the Oscars; this cover is front-runner for the freakiest thing we've seen all week.

We have the story behind #Boyhood's 12-year climb to Oscar frontrunner. Head to EW.com now for a sneak peek at this week's cover story. Photo credit: Richard Phibbs for EW.

Una foto publicada por Entertainment Weekly (@entertainmentweekly) el Ene 14, 2015 at 7:01 PST

Finally, The Truth About Disney's 'Hidden Sexual Messages' Revealed

January 14, 2015, 7:51 am

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The wonderful world of Disney has long been suspected of hiding subliminal sexual messages in its animated films. From inappropriate words hidden in the sky in "The Lion King" to suggestive language in "Aladdin," the evidence against the Mouse seems to mount up fast ... or does it?

In the age of the Internet, it's hard to tell what's real any more. For instance, an image of a purported sex scene in "Toy Story 3" went viral after the movie's release, but that just turned out to be a well-executed hoax.

To learn the truth behind the supposed sexual images in Disney films, HuffPost Entertainment spoke with former Disney animator Tom Sito. Even though you didn't know it, Sito was a big part of your childhood. His credits include "The Lion King," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" and more. Now teaching animation at USC, Sito took some time to school us on what's real and what's misinformation when it comes to those scandalous Disney scenes.

Without further ado, here's the truth behind some of Disney's most controversial moments:





1. Does the bishop get aroused in "The Little Mermaid"?




What appears to happen:

The bishop seems like he enjoys weddings a little too much. A close look at the man during the marriage scene in "Little Mermaid" appears to show him getting an erection.

The explanation:


It turns out that Sito was the actual artist who created the bishop character and drew the scene. "It's his knees," he said about the infamous moment. "The joke was he’s a little man standing on a box and his robes, his big bishop robes, are draped over everything so they’re covering his whole body. And people are just seeing what they want to see."


2. Does Aladdin tell teens to get naked?




What appears to happen:

While having some trouble with Rajah, Aladdin seems to say, "Good teenagers take off your clothes." You can hear it as Jasmine opens the curtains. It's at that moment that your pre-teen self would giggle and hit the rewind button over and over.


Image: Giphy

The explanation:


According to the "Aladdin" director's commentary, the line is actually an ad-lib to extend the scene. It's supposed to say something like, "Good tiger. Take off. Scat. Go!"

Adding to the evidence that the controversial line is just misheard, Sito told us, "The two animators who were doing that sequence are both, like, very religious guys ... that’s not their sense of humor."


3. Is there really a naked woman in "The Rescuers"?




What appears to happen:

An image of a naked woman appears in the background as Bianca and Bernard speed by, resulting in your mom never allowing you to watch the movie again.

The explanation:

"[In] the first 'Rescuers' there was the nudey picture," says Sito. The animator went on to explain that when there was a reedition of the movie, a lot of the original executives who produced the video tape were gone. Not knowing about the naked image, the new executives used the original negative from 1977 in the reedition. This reportedly led to a major recall.

"If somebody had asked an artist, he would say, 'Oh yeah, there’s a naked picture in there. I mean, the Playboy centerfold. Everybody knows that.' Everybody who was in animation knew about the centerfold. But nobody asked us," added Sito.


4. Does the word "Sex" appear in "The Lion King"?




What appears to happen:


After Simba kicks up some dust, the word "sex" appears in the sky and your childhood is ruined.

The explanation:


According to Sito, the word isn't a subliminal sexual message. It's just a shout out to the special effects department. The animator says, "It doesn’t say 'sex.' It says special effects. It’s SFX."

Whether it's Sid's suspected appearance in "Toy Story 3" or Rapunzel showing up in "Frozen," Disney films are full of easter eggs. And it appears this is one of them as well.


Image: Giphy


5. Does Jessica Rabbit have a wardrobe malfunction?




What appears to happen:

After a cartoon car crash in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," Jessica Rabbit is thrown from the vehicle and it appears that her "nether regions" are exposed. Or wait ... does it? That was kind of fast.

The explanation:

Appearances can be deceiving, but reportedly not in this case. According to Variety, there was a run on copies of the movie after the word got out that animators had Jessica Rabbit appear without underwear in a few frames. Later editions of "Roger Rabbit" were reportedly digitally altered to give Mrs. Rabbit appropriate coverage.

Though Sito didn't confirm the scandalous scene, he explained that adding inside jokes into older films wasn't considered a big deal. "You know in pre-video and pre-VHS and VCR and stuff, people used to put little inside jokes in films because things were running at 1/24 of a second," said Sito. "So you say, 'Well, nobody’s seeing anything.’ ... And then so [cartoonists] will do that as a joke. But really since the modern age of playing back stuff and everything, they look at everything now, even the old films. They’ll go frame by frame, and they’ll pull those questionable things out all the time."

When asked if he'd share any other inside jokes or hidden sexual humor, Sito laughed. "Well, if there was, I’m not telling," he said. "It gives people something to do on a rainy day."

Now that's what we call a Happy Ending.


Image: Giphy

Katy Perry Has Found Some Odd Inspiration For Her Super Bowl Halftime Show

January 14, 2015, 8:02 am

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Wondering what Katy Perry has up her sleeve for the Super Bowl halftime show? Here's your first hint, and let us warn you: It's pretty bizarre.

Perry tweeted a link to a YouTube video of a performance from Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. Nude dancers on stilts, a squeaky skateboard and bondage gear dart around to kinetic tribal music. If anything, it seems like a good fit for "Dark Horse" or "E.T." choreography. How exactly Perry is finding inspiration from the clip is a mystery that will be solved in a few short weeks. The Super Bowl takes place Feb. 1.

Deep in SB rehearsals: http://t.co/2hXe5DzqeT

— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) January 14, 2015

Lena Dunham Was Mistaken For Liza Minnelli At The Golden Globes

January 14, 2015, 8:17 am

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It's not uncommon for fans to mistake one celebrity for another. It's less common for E! News to mistake one celebrity for another 40-years older than they actually are.

But that's what happened on the red carpet at the 72nd annual Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night. E! News mistook "Girls" star Lena Dunham, 28, for Liza Minnelli, 68, and they didn't even know who Andrew Rannells was, identifying the "Girls" actor only as "Guest" in the chyron.

This is really special. I assume I am "guest" but... you never know. @lenadunham pic.twitter.com/m1UEMBYWeg

— Andrew Rannells (@AndrewRannells) January 13, 2015

Rannells clearly was a good sport about the mix up judging by the tweet, as was Minelli, who also posted about it on her Facebook page:

"I was in rehearsal for my new show this past Sunday so I couldn't go to the Golden Globes but no matter ... apparently the wonderfully talented Lena Dunham and Andrew Rannells of 'Girls' went for me. Next year maybe we'll all go together and really confuse E! News. Much love to both of them."

Finally, You Can 'Knit Your Own Kama Sutra' (NSFW YARN SEX)

January 14, 2015, 12:11 pm

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You've heard of pearl necklaces, but wait until you see the purl necklace!

It's called "Knit Your Own Kama Sutra," and features twelve sex positions straight from the ancient erotic handbook depicted in the form of knitting.

For instance, the chapter for a position called the "Erotic V" shows a knit man and woman having sex on top of a knit copier -- and they've got great yarn sex hair as an added bonus.

SEE THE PHOTOS BELOW

The naughty knitting sex guide is the kinky creation of Trixie von Purl, the pen name of British-based knitting expert Geraldine Warner, who has written less explicit manuals under her real name.

Warner admits that research was a blast.

"I had lots of fun looking through any Kama Sutra books I could get my hands on (including a bizarre one with a joyless, terrifying looking gentleman strenuously holding each stance) to come up with the right positions," she told HuffPost by email. "I brainstormed the funniest situations I could think of, then retreated to my knitting boudoir for 5 months to make it all happen."

Warner says she tried to push herself in both sex and sewing to get the project to completion.

"As far as the knitting is concerned, I always like to challenge myself in terms of techniques and I think that comes through in the patterns," she said. "I’d probably say I adopt a similar approach to my love life. Ahem."

Surprisingly, sewing the characters in the act of sowing their oats was easier than some of the inanimate objects in the sets -- to a point.

"The knitted pieces are actually pretty straightforward, although the telephone (conveniently off the hook in the accompanying image) is a bit fiddly," she said. "The hardest part was getting the dolls into position and keeping them there, although it’s amazing what you can do with some pipe cleaners, wooden tooth picks and dowel rods. I mean, generally in life too."





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