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Showing posts from December, 2009

This is not finished

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It's too late for her wedding. It's too early for her funeral. I don't know what to do. Graphic artist Tanya Marie Williams has some decisions to make. SEE more of her 'Unfinished Ladies' here .

A steelpan cover of Joy Division's 'Transmission'?

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One does appear to exist. Was it a good idea I wonder? FIND out here .

Best wishes

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Arte Postal Pela Paz

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http://artepostalpelapaz.blogspot.com/

Buzoncitos 2010

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Giuliana - Walk Over

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Máscara no antigas

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_guroga (2009) - Venezuela

These films rocked this year

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This was a good year for films, especially if you lived in Trinidad and Tobago where the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (TTFF) really hit new highs, screening strong international films, and good local stuff like: The Solitary Alchemist , Coolie Pink and Green and Bury Your Mother . I've picked my favorite films for the year and judging from how many of you  LOVED James Cameron's Avatar  (which does not make my list I'm quite afraid to say) I figure I'm in for some serious slack for these choices. First of all, how DARE I declare Tomas Alfredson's  Let the Right One In to be the best film of the year, when most people never even heard of it or missed its screening here in Trinidad at studiofilmclub earlier this year? And why is fellow vampire flick  Twilight: New Moon NOT on my list? Didn't I get the memo about the pale and undead being HOT this year? 1. Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) You're getting beaten up in school everyday. It...

this/discourse/has/no/ start(middle)nd

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WHO? I was in primary school at Lower Morvant Government before I realized that other people’s fathers lived with them. It never occurred to me before I saw Michelle Rosales’ father in her front porch, sitting there as though he had every right to do so. “He lives with you? All the time?” I asked her, baffled. “Why?” My own father did not live with us but rather in his wife's apartment. I remember his wife as a stern and distant lady who slept all day, like a bear, only rousing herself to make very sweet Milo and bread and butter sandwiches for my brother and me whenever we were in her apartment. I lived with my mother, sisters and brother in a house Daddy built for my mom a little distance away. But my brother and I were often in dad's home for long stretches. We were, in essence, an extended family. Nobody seemed to find it strange that we were more or less an extension of the household which consisted of: my father Rito Allen, a welder with a successful muffler and water tan...

digital collage 12-20-09

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digital dada

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In December, you get Christmas cards

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While I am of two minds about Christmas , I still find Christmas cards quite charming. But because I have difficulty planning my life three days in advance, I have some difficulty organising tricky things like buying stamps and actually sending them (I'm A-OKAY to receive). Sending cards can be onerous. Either you make them yourself (=time =effort =love =you possibly have nothing else to do) or you buy them. To buy a postcard is one of the worst experiences you'll have in a capitalist society, believe me. Should you get one with a message inside? If yes, you have to READ the message and then decide if it's alright. If you don't get one with a message inside, you can try to THINK of something clever to say. Or just sign and write 'Love' and add lots of  XXXs. People tend to look at cards as a peculiar form of ephemeral art (most cards are thrown away). And some feel cards are little snapshots of your personality, in which case the pressure is on to impress. In...

Goldsmith

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One of the most touching moments in The Solitary Alchemist is its dedication. The film, directed by Mariel Brown, premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in September, mere days after the death of Brown’s father the influential journalist and poet Wayne Brown. A title card at the end of the film reads: “In loving memory of Wayne Brown...” It is a fitting end to a film that is about an artist coming to terms with self-doubt over the trajectory of her career and with her own peculiar emotions...   READ full review of the film at Newsday here .

3 artworks of the project GIULIANA - WALK OVER - Bruno Chiarlone (Curator)

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add and return n. 14 with Ptrzia TICTAC

BLUES S C O R E S

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digital breakdown of the poet

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Tren Poético

ARTE COLLAGE 15

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ARTE COLLAGE 14

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ARTE COLLAGE 13

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The Christmas Tree by Barbara Jenkins

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This year, the end of the noughties, finds me putting up a Christmas tree – first time this millennium. I wanted to get a live tree, in a pot, in soil, so I let my fingers do the driving through TSTT’s new yellow pages and called every plant nursery between Diego Martin and San Fernando and east as far as Arima. No, no, no, no and finally yes, in Mount Hope. Drove there last Saturday morning. What was described on the phone as a Norfolk pine four foot high, barely managed two; quadruped really a limping biped. It would have been taking advantage to string lights and hang ornaments on that baby; it would be just right in 2012, but not for 2009 and at $225, somewhat out of my reach anyway. The San Antonio Nursery in Santa Cruz offered to go into the field and lop off the top of one of the Norfolk pines in their yard. ‘We do this and it sends out several new tops,’ they assured over the phone. I was already burnt by my last encounter but San Antonio – St Anthony to us – is th...

There's a glow-in-the-dark forest in James Cameron's 'Avatar'

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We might as well say it now: the only reason this film got made was probably because of the Hollywood clout of its director James Cameron. As I started to fall asleep next to my sister at the Globe cinema in downtown Port of Spain (not the ideal spot to slumber, many will vouch) I started to think of why anyone would want to make this film, besides for the obvious money-making potential. Avatar follows the coming of age of its protagonist Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington). It's sometime in the future and  Jake's twin brother Tom has just died. Because Jake has the same genome as his dead brother, he can step into Tom's shoes in an ongoing project on a planet called Pandora. Sigh. Apparently, on Pandora, humans are infiltrating an native race called the Na'avi by--get this--plugging themselves (apparently via broadband) into alien-looking flesh suits called avatars. What then follows is one of the most droll science-fiction films of all time, complete with all the ...

digital collage 12-07-09

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