we say "shapah!"

Stop-motion never gets boring, especially since people keep finding new ways to make it even more compelling.

Take, for example, a short I found today on Laughing Squid made by Tomas Mankovsky that was shot from above using a still camera on the ceiling:

click here to see how it was made.

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A pal and I watched the game from Brit’s Pub in downtown MPLS yesterday where the ratio was easily 3:1 United to Barca fans.

The first few minutes of the game were controlled by United and thus their fans looked on us with dominance. We thought, “Oh, no”.

But then, Barca suddenly and collectively began to play like gods and never let up, relentless during the 80-odd minutes that remained.

The United fans around us fell into a deep and dark depression as we wooted, yelped and hollered Barca to their championship.

Here are the two goals of the game, both by Barca, in two minutes or less:

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QUESTION: Why is there buttock stabbing in Rome?

Manchester United fans are in Rome for the Champions League final. When English teams have visited the Italian capital in recent years there have been a string of fans stabbed in the buttocks by hooligans. But why do they target the backside? Other than the fact that United plays dirty so why shouldn’t their fans?

It’s called the Eternal City by many, but Rome also has the sobriquet “Stab City” among football fans because of the level of knife attacks in the Italian capital.

There are fears tonight’s Champions League final, being held in the city’s Olympic Stadium, will be marred by such violence after several knife-related attacks on supporters from a number of English clubs over the last decade.

What is marked about the attacks is that victims are often stabbed in the buttocks. The practice even has its own slang name in the local Roman dialect – “puncicate”. But why is the backside targeted?

ANSWER: It is a painful, humiliating injury but not likely to be life threatening.
In medieval duels stabbing someone in the buttocks was considered the most skillful move
According to those who have researched the subject, a stab wound in the buttocks may be chosen as it is seen as not likely to be life-threatening, but is humiliating and painful for the victim.

Experts believe the cultural tradition may even be linked to medieval duelling where slashing an opponent’s buttocks was supposedly considered very skillful.

“Puncicate” is mainly about hurting rival fans but not killing them, says John Foot, a professor of modern Italian history at University College London and an author on Italian football.

Update: I’m happy to report there were no buttock-stabbings at Brits Pub while I was there watching the game.

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Today is the day, meeting a pal downtown to watch – GO BARCA!!!

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I make films under the moniker of thinfilms. My films are mostly fiction, but recently I completed a documentary about the game of tag, titled appropriately “Tag”. It was a long process as I did most of the work myself and kept the budget under $5000.

From thinfilms.net:

For three years I collected candid interviews with people from all over the world regarding the way they grew up playing “Tag”, the names they had for it and their stories surrounding this game that touches everything we do: identity, justice, success, relationships – everything.

Out of that experience, I have created this odyssey capturing the essence of a complex, yet simple and overlooked, part of who we are and how we come to be who we are.

Spend a few moments with experts from the Jane Goodall Institute, the Anthropology Department at the University of Minnesota and the International Play Association, who discuss the essential role play has in our development as a culture and as individuals, while “Tag” reconnects us with our capacity for play – the catalyst that leads to creation, discovery and innovation.

I couldn’t have accomplished this without the generous support of the kind faculty and students at the Anthropology Department of the University of Minnesota, Dr. Michael Wilson at the Jane Goodall Institute for Primate Studies, Dr. Joanna Seymore of the International Play Association and a small army of pals who opened doors for me left and right during the film’s production.

I just received news that the film is set to broadcast during the second week of June on 360 North, a new station broadcast via PBS in Alaska.

The screening times are:
June 10 – 9:00 pm, repeats in overnight schedule
June 11 – 11:00 am, 5:00 pm
June 14 – 10:00 am, 9:30 pm

360 North can be streamed via this link.

Cheers.

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James Burke has the storytelling powers of the immortal. Here we can listen and see him discuss the thinking behind his work. Groovy, indeed.

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Some friends and I debated over whether this is real or photoshopped. The consensus is that if this was photoshopped, then that would be even more of a feat.

The whimsical nature of this is great – even if it took the fella a few tries to nail it.
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