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Numa Perrier As The Title Character in My New Film "Octavia: Elegy for a Vampire"

Posted by Dennis Leroy Kangalee on December 4, 2014 at 6:00pm

'Endless Shards of Jazz for a Brutal World'.

That's the sub-title of the movie. In a way, it actually signifies the concept of the film itself: which shall be a collage of scenes and sentiments, feelings and ideas, dramatic poems and songs,  guitars and blood, nooses and belts, sun and moon - all attempting to affix themselves on one large canvas whose sole goal is to express the pain of a life that feels and sees too much.

Punk, Vampires, & Afro-Futurism: Director Dennis Leroy Kangalee & Numa Perrier
Punk, Vampires, & Afro-Futurism: Director Dennis Leroy Kangalee & Numa Perrier

The past 7 months have been rather overwhelming.  Not because of the work load but because of the challenges I had finding the right actress for my upcoming feature film, Octavia: Elegy For A Vampire, a drama about a 150 year old African-American vampire who wants to die due to the world's cruelty, apathy, and seemingly eternal racism.  The film was conceived as a cinematic poem and "theatrical-cubist-drama" that meditates on identity, colonization, and the spiritual battle Black people throughout the diaspora must undergo as we push further in the 21st century - a world that seems, once again, to have lost its "center." It's not that there are no morals.  It's that there is no consciousness.  And man's derangement has corrupted the very blood flowing through his veins.  This alone frightens the vampires in my film.  But it's no so much the blood that the vampires need -- it is a re-affirmation of who they are, a reminder of their identity, a reiteration of truth in the world.  Truth is blood.  Without it, we are nowhere, no one...no thing. 

It was hard getting actresses' to commit to such a low budget, yet artistically luxurious project. The script alone either attracted or confounded actors.  It subverted the "vampire-horror" genre, emphasized the horrors of the real world as opposed to some adolescent fantasy world and it zeroed in on the pain of being alive in a world that you know hates you.  As is the case with my dramatic productions, there would be an emphasis on language, dialogue, and emotional connections between everyday observations, history, and political crisis.  The role of Octavia demanded someone unafraid, intelligent, and open enough in their emotional life to connect and explore themselves and the themes contained in the script.

I am happy to say that NUMA PERRIER, the Los Angeles based actress, producer, and artist has been cast my leading lady and has taken up the challenge gallantly and with a great deal of finesse, passion, and confidence.  Three qualities Octavia herself must possess.

This past weekend we shot the teaser for the film and held a promotional publicity-photo session of the punk band, the Savage Paws, Octavia's rock & roll trio - featured in the film.  Slowly, it all started to come together.  It is taking shape. It has become real.  We got our sonogram. We are closer to realizing our vision and illuminating the script; bringing this incredible story to the screen, and introducing a new character for our times.  We will stop at nothing to express it all.

Principal photography commences late February-early March, 2015.

More updates to follow.  A teaser will be released next week - along with our next crowdfunding campaign.

(c) Photo of Writer/Director Dennis Leroy Kangalee and Numa Perrier as "young" Octavia with her blood-stained Stratocaster guitar with custom finish ("Silverback") by award-winning photographer & cinematographer Erik Swain; wardrobe and styling by Nina Fleck; Rockefeller Center November 23, 2014. 

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Wake Up, Jibo and Pepper...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 4, 2014 at 7:08am
In case you're wondering, Pepper's on the left; Jibo on the right

While we slept, Rosie came into being.

I read the article about JIBO in an issue of Popular Mechanics on the way back to New York from Austin, Texas. An excerpt:

Breazeal stands a few feet from Jibo and says, in a voice only slightly different from the one she uses to talk to humans, "Wake up, Jibo."

Nothing.

Breazeal looks at the man.

"Wait," he says, adjusting, fiddling. "Hold on. Okay. Go ahead."

Again Breazeal looks at her robot and says with purpose and hope, "Wake up, Jibo."

The robot's round head twists on its base, a remarkably human wiggle. A white circle appears on its round screen, like an eye opening. In a voice like an animated movie character—cute, cheerful, but not treacly or grating—Jibo responds, "Hello, Cynthia!"

Pepper is our first C-3PO (fluent in 17 languages); associating JIBO naturally as R2-D2's progenitor. Pepper uniquely will be the first robot that can "read" our emotions and tailor it's conversation to you.

JIBO is apparently not an acronym, and looking up the definition online can vary from the profound to the profane. All of this, JIBO and Pepper will come with a price: that is the price of accepting something "new"; strange, different, without immediately fearing it for the sake of its uniqueness. It is that fear of technology that keeps us backwards, tribal and far behind than we ought to be. These are the things that occur while we sleep.



For a friend who has an acute interest in robotics: Parama Roy. Remember her name.



 Beta Boston:
Robot startup Jibo unveils a multi-purpose 'social-bot' for the home
Scott Kirsner

 IndieGoGo: JIBO, Worlds First Family Robot. 4,800 Pre-Sold!
(and, $2,287,609 raised in a $100,000 initial crowd-funding goal)

 That's Really Possible:
Presenting our first real R2-D2 and C-3PO: JIBO and Pepper!
Glyn Taylor

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Bio Circuits...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 3, 2014 at 7:37am
Illustration: Christine Daniloff/MIT (yeast cell images from National Institutes of Health)

Researchers have made great progress in recent years in the design and creation of biological circuits — systems that, like electronic circuits, can take a number of different inputs and deliver a particular kind of output. But while individual components of such biological circuits can have precise and predictable responses, those outcomes become less predictable as more such elements are combined.

A team of researchers at MIT has now come up with a way of greatly reducing that unpredictability, introducing a device that could ultimately allow such circuits to behave nearly as predictably as their electronic counterparts. The findings are published this week in the journal Nature Biotechnology, in a paper by associate professor of mechanical engineering Domitilla Del Vecchio and professor of biological engineering Ron Weiss.

The lead author of the paper is Deepak Mishra, an MIT graduate student in biological engineering. Other authors include recent master’s students Phillip Rivera in mechanical engineering and Allen Lin in electrical engineering and computer science.

MIT News: New device could make large biological circuits practical,
David L. Chandler

#P4TC: Bio-Computer

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clone, charley no.5

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on November 24, 2014 at 1:50pm

Story seeds, go for it.

Saw uTube vid about viable heart grown from stem cells, a full face transplant. These are what we are allowed to see. Who knows how far we've really come. Implanted organ anti-rejection device, you open a hatch and pop in a small capsule. Organic nanos adjust the body to except new DNA streams. Talk of consciousness transfer and live donors. The medical world has become an industry, a business with a dark underbelly. There is hope for a few and merciless terror for others. Bodies like cars and OEM replacement parts. The critics bash the science by the uncovered mishaps, the egos of ones who can pay to live forever and coined a new word "donor nation".

There was a hospital incident, confusion, intercom voice to evacuate. Guy gets dressed runs out, doesn't know where he's going. Bums on the street direct him to a shelter. No ID, no name, too many questions, sits in lobby watching reruns of Six-million Dollar Man and Robocop. Has flashbacks, flees out the door in anguish screams. No special powers or abilities, an ordinary guy...............

A space ship on a long journey. The suspended animation device has been outfitted with a slew of clone bodies. The idea is to keep someone conscious during the whole trip to run the ship, record and experience. An object strikes the ship, the mind transfer device turns transceiver, picks up an assortment of human souls, all the clones animate. The ship's computer becomes parent, referee, and god..............

Man discovers that photos of people contain a part of the soul. Indians knew this, they warned us. He rigged a way to access the photo soul and record it's experiences. Then he wrote a book about traveling the world in an envelope, the sea in a bottle. He destroyed all data when he recorded a photo soul's experience in a copy machine, a paper shredder and a photographer's studio fire. Today he reads books with no pictures.

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A Democratic Technocracy...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 20, 2014 at 6:30am


Bernal Sphere interior, complete with California-style wine and cheese party, and human powered flight in the lower-gravity area near the axis. Painting by Rick Guidice courtesy of NASA. Source: National Space Society



A Democratic Technocracy I’d define as "a representative democratic republic of elected officials independent of outside financial interests with experience in and/or an appreciation of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to effectively govern a nation and global economy exquisitely dependent on STEM."



More in the embed/link below as well as my observations of the movie "Interstellar."

Snarky Commentary 3 by Reginald L. Goodwin

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Out of the Office...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 23, 2014 at 9:54am


As in past breaks, please enjoy all the previous posts.

Short observation of the announced Executive Action on Immigration Reform: Pass a bill. Yes, at 844 pages, Senate Bill 744 is a hefty thing, but that's why you hire staff to read it and give you the "Cliff Notes" summary. It would also help if the congress worked a sizable amount of a year like every other American. I don't expect the bill's current form to survive a House committee without amendments. Its form will naturally change.


That's politics: the art of compromise that through social media atomizing us into the very factions George Washington warned about in his 1796 Farewell Address has become lost. We've become tribal, "E pluribus unum" a quaint Latin phrase; "United States" oxymoron and national poetry, not reality.

We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means.

Chapter 1, Section 24, in the Princeton University Press translation (1976)

Variant translation: War is merely the continuation of politics by other means. Carl von Clausewitz, "On War," Source: Wikiquote

Horror vacui: "nature abhors a vacuum" and so does politics in this post "Citizens United" and McCutcheon oxymoronic era. We're making fascism inevitable and "rational"; Oligarchy a natural progression from our laziness as an electorate to be informed; to participate and to actually shape the agendas of the "collectivist conspiracy" also known as self-government.


Spending time with friends and family. Blogging will resume 3 December. Peace.
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Spidey and van der Waals...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 22, 2014 at 10:00am
Figure 2 from the paper

Three frames from a video (electronic supplementary material, movie S1) showing a 70 kg climber ascending a 3.7 m vertical glass surface using a synthetic adhesion system with degressive load-sharing and gecko-inspired adhesives. The time between (a) and (c) is about 90 s and includes six steps.



Geckos, when not shilling for insurance companies, are most known for their climbing abilities that let them scale walls effortlessly. Thanks to their biology, geckos have one major advantage over humans who want to move vertically: they are small, and their bodies are light, so their natural adhesive just has to be good, not great. But a team of scientists from Stanford University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have now one-upped the gecko, creating a hand-sized adhesive surface that allows humans to vertically scale glass walls.



I don't plan on rock climbing sheer faces of office buildings any time soon, but the fact they've figured this out (without the proverbial radioactive genetically enhanced spider) is pretty neat!



 Popular Science:
Scale a Glass Wall With Gecko-Inspired Adhesive on Your Hands, Kelsey D. Atherton

 Royal Society Publishing:
Human climbing with efficiently scaled gecko-inspired dry adhesives
Elliot W. Hawkes, Eric V. Eason, David L. Christensen, Mark R. Cutkosky

Wikipedia:
van der Waals Force
van der Waals Equation

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3D Topological Insulator...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 21, 2014 at 11:35am
Purdue University's Yang Xu inspects devices made from topological insulators under a microscope before electrical measurements are made on the samples. (Courtesy: Purdue University/Ting-fung Chung)

Researchers in the US say that they have made the best 3D topological insulator to date. The material is called bismuth antimony tellurium selenide (BiSbTeSe2) and could be of fundamental importance for testing a number of condensed-matter and particle-physics theories. The material could also find use in spintronics devices and be used to build robust topological quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computers.



Topological insulators are materials that are electrical insulators in the bulk but can conduct electricity on their surface via special surface electronic states. "Most topological insulators made to date have not been completely insulating in the bulk, because of impurities (unintentionally introduced during material synthesis or processing) that doped the bulk and made it conducting," explains Yong Chen of Purdue University, who led the research. "Our topological insulator appears not to conduct at all in the bulk but does so only at its surface."



The researchers worked this out by measuring how thin flakes of BiSbTeSe2 of various thicknesses conducted electricity. They found that the conductance of different samples was almost independent of their thicknesses. Such behaviour is completely different to that seen in normal 3D materials, in which conductance is proportional to sample thickness.



 Physics World: New 3D topological insulator is the nearest to perfection yet
#P4TC: Hopping To Open Bandgap

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Marvel's 'Black Panther' Isn't Just Another Black Superhero

Posted by Peter Mute on November 20, 2014 at 3:30am

Source Credit: http://www.npr.org

Article by Charles Pulliam-Moore

Last month Marvel Studios announced the roster for some upcoming features. In addition to Ant-Man and a female-led Captain Marvel film, Marvel's Kevin Feige confirmed that on November 3, 2017, the studio planned to release one of its longest-rumored projects: The Black Panther.

Wesley Snipes portrayed Blade in 1998 and later in the film's two sequels. Halle Berry has reprised her role as Storm in every X-Men film since 2000. Depending on which of the Iron Man films you're watching, either Terrence Howard or Don Cheadle is moonlighting as War Machine. Most recently, Anthony Mackie played sidekick to Captain America as the Falcon.

The thing that makes the Black Panther exciting isn't really his race, it's where he's from – the great nation of Wakanda.

A secretive and isolationist country, Wakanda possesses the world's largest deposit of vibranium, a vibration-absorbing metal that is exceedingly valuable for its technological applications. (It's also the substance that composes Captain America's shield.)

Wary of conflict and foreign exploitation, Wakanda shut out the rest of the world, choosing instead to become a largely self-sustaining society. Through Wakanda, Marvel toyed with and subverted stereotypical depictions of Africa as "wild" or "exotic."

Instead, Wakanda was a futuristic African nation that had never been conquered or touched by colonialism.

--------------

An Interesting read.

Full Article on NPR:  http://n.pr/1tF85oW

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When Your Congressman IS a Rocket Scientist...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 19, 2014 at 7:48am
Source: Link below

Note: Dr. Holt represented New Jersey, but hey: we're close enough! Okay, he was actually a plasma physics person, but you get the drift. Go with the bit...

Rush Holt, a physicist, educator, and eight-term Democratic member of Congress, has been named the new CEO of AAAS (which publishes ScienceInsider). He will succeed Alan Leshner, a neuroscientist who is stepping down this winter after leading AAAS since 2001.


Holt, 66, has represented a New Jersey district since 1999, but in February announced he would not seek another term. Although not known for sponsoring legislation, Holt has earned kudos from both Republican and Democrat colleagues for being an effective, behind-the-scenes advocate for additional funding for research and science education. He was part of an unofficial, bipartisan “physics caucus” in Congress that, at its peak, totaled three members who held physics Ph.D.s.

Holt was a vocal—but often lone—advocate in Congress for reviving the Office of Technology Assessment, a well-regarded in-house think tank for legislators that Congress abolished when Republicans took control in 1995. He admitted that it was an uphill battle, but felt the fight was worth waging. “I would say that most members of Congress value science and respect scientists,” he told ScienceInsider in February. “But I don’t see more scientific thinking evidence-based, critical thinking.”

And now...there are none.

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." Carl Sagan



 Science Mag: Rush Holt, physicist and congressman, to lead AAAS, Jeffrey Mervis

Tomorrow: A Democratic Technocracy

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LakeSim...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 18, 2014 at 7:51am
Source: Last link in third paragraph below

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

A hundred years ago, one out of every five people lived in urban areas. By 2050, that number will balloon to over four out of five.




This rapid urbanization presents significant problems to the world. Even a modest annual population growth of three or five percent can mean thousands of new inhabitants, and each new resident will require energy, transportation, potable water, food and other infrastructure services that strain finite resources.



Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago are developing tools that merge urban design with scientific analysis to improve the decision-making process associated with large-scale urban developments. One such tool, called LakeSim, has been prototyped with an initial focus on consumer-driven energy and transportation demand, through a partnership with the Chicago-based architectural and engineering design firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Clean Energy Trust and developer McCaffery Interests. LakeSim began with the need to answer practical questions about urban design and planning, requiring a better understanding about the long-term impact of design decisions on energy and transportation demand for a 600-acre development project on Chicago’s South Side—the Chicago Lakeside Development project.
Chicago Lakeside : A technology infused community from McCaffery Interests on Vimeo.

More Videos: Chicago Lakeside Development Project
Argonne National Laboratories: Designing Future Cities, Justin H. S. Breaux

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The Shadow Knows...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 16, 2014 at 6:55am
Image Source

The Shadow knows (or, at least "they" do).



"They" know without any critical thinking skills, reason, logic or investigative training. "They" know without any expertise that climate change is a hoax (even write books of pseudoscience on it), get reelected with committee appointments in congress over environmental regulation. Clean air; clean water; survival of the species: no problem! I guess the Department of Defense can scrap that whole pesky, fact-based road map.



The moon landing was faked, "they" say (and a few sadly, trained in STEM). "They" know, despite having never worked at NASA, or in my case at near seven-years-old, having my Saturday morning cartoons interrupted the day before (I quickly got over it). Never mind if it had been, the Russians would have broadcast our shortcomings, gloated at our obtuse obfuscations, then traveled there themselves just to prove the superiority of their system over ours.



Almost immediately after the Sandy Hook Massacre, these speculators spun tales of government "false flag operations"; "the children were actually alive"; "the parents were in on the plot," etc. Boorish, insane and insensitive to the families that everyday: their losses are quite real. The truth is, fear, bamboozle and boondoggle are quite profitable; bankruptcy the only muzzle provocateurs would ever respect.



There were 1,500 inadvertent leaks with the Manhattan Project (you know, the one that built the nuclear bomb), and we're to assume not a peep has come out from a so-called faked Moon Landing?



The Keystone pipeline may actually increase gas prices at the pump by 20 cents per gallon as its done in the Midwest despite the most optimistic propaganda; the purported "thousands of good, blue collar jobs" may only number in the hundreds; instead of making us energy independent, we'll see Canadian shale processed in Texas refineries and put on ships out to the global open market, but no matter. We're being sold a bill of goods by consummate, pathological liars and con artists cum "elected" officials. Instead of reasoned debate, we get: birth certificates...death panels...votes against what was a market-based solution from the Heritage Foundation...UFOs and government cover-ups...Apocalypse...demonic possession requiring telecommuting exorcism (now a state senator despite a colorful military record)...Bigfoot! All fanciful and colorful; worrisome that there is no distinction from reality and fantasies for some citizens determined to propagate them.



When China eventually sets up camp on a new moon base and spin off the world's first trillionaires from the Helium-3 mineral wealth abundant on the lunar surface that will make fossil fuels obsolete (as well as the billionaires profiting from it), I'm sure "they'll" have another explanation: the Chinese (will have) faked it! The profits, political and economic leverage however, will be quite real and felt here as well as globally. Ignorance won't be pleasant.

As humorous as this post attempts to be, my observation is we're addicted to "reality TV"; becoming un-moored from actual reality and facts; prone to the bill of [not] goods snake oil salesmen sell that poses as "information" supporting our worldviews, warped or otherwise to ensure they remain in or gain power.

History bears no evidence adherence to fantasies ever generating, in the long term, national prosperity.



 Skeptic:
Conspiracy Theories: Who, Why and How, Michael Shermer and Pat Linse
Skeptical Science: The History of Climate Change

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Kickstarter for Mulogo and His Quintuple of Trouble

Posted by Martin Reese on November 14, 2014 at 4:00pm

Hi All -

My name is Martin Reese and I have recently re-launched a new and improved Kickstarter for the short live action fantasy film Mulogo and His Quintuple of Trouble. The story deals with a young wizard's apprentice from Kush who unwittingly recites a spell from a forbidden book of magic and conjures up a powerful five-headed dragon. The dragon is more than eager to make him pay for his mistake. Our Kickstarter will run until December 15th.  You can check it out  at this link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1549181393/mulogo-and-his-quintuple-of-trouble-a-magical-shor?ref=category  We humbly ask for your support of this project. If we want more of us featured in positive roles in science fiction and fantasy films then we have to prove that we will support films that feature us in such roles. We have a great creative team and cast in place. All we need is your help. Thank you for any support you are willing to give.

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Spooky Physics and Wormholes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 15, 2014 at 8:02am


Image of a simulated traversable wormhole that connects the square in front of the physical institutes of Tübingen University with the sand dunes near Boulogne sur Mer in the north of France. The image is calculated with 4D raytracing in a Morris–Thorne wormhole metric, but the gravitational effects on the wavelength of light have not been simulated. Wikipedia

Wormholes — shortcuts that in theory can connect distant points in the universe — might be linked with the spooky phenomenon of quantum entanglement, where the behavior of particles can be connected regardless of distance, researchers say.


These findings could help scientists explain the universe from its very smallest to its biggest scales.

Scientists have long sought to develop a theory that can describe how the cosmos works in its entirety. Currently, researchers have two disparate theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, which can respectively mostly explain the universe on its tiniest scales and its largest scales. There are currently several competing theories seeking to reconcile the pair.

One prediction of the theory of general relativity devised by Einstein involves wormholes, formally known as Einstein-Rosen bridges. In principle, these warps in the fabric of space and time can behave like shortcuts connecting any black holes in the universe, making them a common staple of science fiction.

NBC News: Spooky physics phenomenon may link universe's wormholes, Charles Q. Choi

 Tomorrow: The Shadow Knows

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Encore Presentation of 'HOST' online starting @ 8pm Tonight 'Friday the 14th!'

Posted by H. Wolfgang Porter on November 14, 2014 at 6:30pm

Tonight 'Friday the 14th', the only reality-tv show that counts airs again on DEU-TV! Online streaming begins at 8pm CST (US) and will run all night long. So after you catch The Genesis Radio Show with William Hayashi, you'll have another chance to catch the award-winning horror film that shows where reality-tv will ultimately go for ratings!

*Suggested Mature Audiences for L,V and gore.

http://www.dreadedenterprises.com/HOST_home

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also black elves

Posted by Geoff Thorne on November 13, 2014 at 6:30pm

the ladies at Black Nerd Girls put out a call for art featuring black elves. I'm like obsessed with it now.

here are mine. I'm trying to make them look like stills from an animated series.


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