14.3.13

Good lord I love Polish artists and designers. Here's a big batch of movie posters done back in the time when all they had to go by was a brief synopsis and maybe a photo of the star.

Escape From Alcatraz

Five Easy Pieces

El Dorado

Greystoke

Hair

House on Carroll Street

Help!

In Cold Blood

Jaws
Jaws 2

Star Wars


Sunset Boulevard 

Support Your Local Sheriff 

Weekend at Bernies

Winchester 73
Blade Runner

Bullitt

Broken Arrow

Carnal Knowledge

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 

Chinatown

Casablanca

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels 

Earthquake 1976

Duel

Cat Ballou
12 Angry Men

1941

101 Dalmations

A Shot in the Dark

2001 A Space Odyssey 

A Night to Remember

Adam's Rib

The African Queen

After Hours

Airplane

All That Jazz
Annie Get Your Gun

Alice in Wonderland

Billy Jack

Apocalypse Now

60 happy facts from the happy folks at Ink Tank!


1. A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.

2. If you fake laugh long enough you’ll start to really laugh, really, really hard.

3. The book cover to the prize winning short story collection,Spellbound, was chosen because author, Joel Willans, bought his wife’s engagement ring with poker winnings.

4. The Beatles used the word “love” 613 times throughout their career.

5. The chances of you (as opposed to someone else) being born is about 1 in 40 million.

6. Every year, millions of trees grow thanks to squirrels forgetting where they buried their nuts.

7. On the day of his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. had a pillow-fight in his motel room.

8. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We’re all made of star dust.

9. Cancer death rates are down 20% in past 20 years.

10. The miles travelled by the Apollo 11 crew to the moon were greater than every single exploration mission to the New World combined.

11. Penguins only have one mate their entire life and “propose” by giving their mate a pebble.

12. Cows have best friends.

13. Despite high infant mortality rates and lower life expectancies, not one of your direct ancestors died childless.

14. Cuddling releases Oxytocin which helps speed healing and recovery from physical wounds.

15. Otters hold hands when sleeping so they don’t drift away from each other.

16. Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, wrote his daughter initials there. They’ll last at least 50,000 years.

17. There’s a type of jellyfish that lives forever.

18. Wayne Allwine (the voice of Mickey Mouse) and Russi Taylor (the voice of Minnie Mouse) were married in real life.

19. We now have less crime, a lower death rate and longer life expectancy than at any other time in human history.

20. The clitoris has 8000 nerve fibres, double that of the penis, and is the only organ in the body, which has evolved purely for pleasure.

21. Butterflies can taste with their feet.

22. For someone, somewhere in the world, today is the most amazing day of their life.

23. When you die, your body decomposes, and the atoms that contained “you” are recycled into Earth to be used again.

24. Every year the Netherlands sends 20,000 tulip bulbs to Canada to thank them for their aid in the Second World War.

25. Rats giggle when you tickle them. Their voices are so high-pitched you need special equipment to hear them, but when you do, their laughs are immediately evident.

26. Sea horses mate for life, are completely faithful and travel together by holding on to each others tails.

27. The guy at the end of this video exists.

28. If you say “my cocaine” you sound like Michael Caine saying his own name.

29. Male puppies, when playing with female puppies, will intentionally let the female win.

30. The next Star Wars will not be directed by George Lucas.

31. It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown.

32.The kingdom of Bhutan use ‘gross national happiness’ as a key national indicator.

33. The majority of European children born in 2013 will live to see the year 2100.

34. There’s an animal called a Dik Dik. And it’s the cutest antelope you’ll ever see.

35. Neurologically speaking, seeing somebody else smile actually makes you happier.

36. Every human being spent about half an hour as a single cell.

37. There are people, ombrophiles, who have a passionate love for rain.
38. Once your brain realizes that you’re dying, it releases DMT, one of the most powerful known psychedelics. This dilates your perception of time and allowing you to live inside your own mind for hours or even days.

39. No matter how long you live there will always be an amazing new food for you try.

40. A group of porcupines is called a prickle.

41. Aside from a sample in a lab, Smallpox is completely extinct. No one else will ever die from it again.

42. A pig’s orgasms last thirty minutes.

43. We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.

44. Sloths only leave their tree once a week, to pee and poo.

45. Spinner dolphins sleep in pairs, one with the left hemisphere asleep, the other with the right. They each keep watch with one eye and half a brain. They are known to sleep-mate for life.

46. At the time of your birth, you were, for a few seconds, the youngest person on the planet.

47. Cows produce the most milk when listening to the song Everybody Hurts by REM.

48. Somewhere, someone is losing their virginity right now.

49. If you spell out numbers in order, the first time you get to the letter “a” is at one-thousand.

50. We’ve all been here forever. Every bit of matter we see has been here since the beginning of time and it always will be.

51. A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.

52. Happiness is a skill. You can learn it and it’s not hard.

53. Except when breeding, the Common Swift spend their entire lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in flight. They drink, feed, and often mate and sleep on the wing

54. Baby rabbits are called kittens.

55. Baby puffins are called pufflings.

56. Costa Rica is statistically the happiest nation on Earth.

57. Worms communicate by snuggling.

58. 2013 is the first year since 1987 that consists for four different digits.

59. With our horseless carriages, flying robots, space travel, long-distance communication at the speed of light, cloning, lasers, connection to people all over the world, we are living inthe future people dreamed of.

60. If you blend a sea sponge, it will re-form back into a sea sponge.

12.3.13

Storytelling tips from a talented Pixar storyteller.


These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coates, a Pixar Story Artist. Incredible insight into the inner workings of the story juggernaut that is Pixar:
  1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
  2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
  3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
  4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
  5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
  6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
  7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
  8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
  9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
  10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
  11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
  12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
  13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
  14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
  15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
  16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
  17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
  18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
  19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
  20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
  21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
  22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.