Validation -the grandest short on smiling

The Kind-hearted man who tries to make the world a better place, one encouraging comment at a time.

I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating [& sharing their experience]. I don't care if it's a book, a film, a painting, a dance, a piece of theater, a piece of music… I think this world would be unlivable without art. ~ S. Soderbergh

A fable about a parking attendant who gives his customers REAL validation -- dispensing both free parking and free compliments.

From the Film TEAM:

If you are one of those people (like me - because of being a teacher and all) who believe very strongly that making others feel good about themselves is not just social glue but a major factor in spreading positivity and boosting achievement in the world, this is a film for you. I love it.

http://theindependentcritic.com/validation 

I've seldom, if ever agreed with Heartland Grand Prize winners, but when "Validation" captured the Best Short Grand Prize at the 2007 Heartland Film Festival this paraplegic nearly stood and applauded. As written and directed by award-winning filmmaker and composer Kurt Kuenne, "Validation" is a delightful, funny, sweet and inspiring film that will make you laugh and cry in the film's short span of 16 minutes.

The action centers on Hugh Newman (T.J. Thyne), a parking lot attendant who hands out real-life validation along with free parking. "Validation" has the sort of storyline that has you tapping your forehead thinking "Why couldn't I think of that?" It's amazingly simple, yet original, fresh and and entertaining.

The award-winning film is perfectly cast, most notably the awesome performance of T.J. Thyne as Hugh Newman. Vicki Davis also shines as a frowning DMV photographer who captures Hugh's attention.

The B&W short is beautifully photographed and Kuenne's score is a perfect complement to the film's gently off-kilter proceedings.
Easily one of 2007's most delightful shorts, all I can say to Kurt Kuenne is 

"You are great. No, really. You are so talented and your camera work is beautiful. Your words inspired me and made me laugh. Your music is delightful. You're awesome."

For a class activity: great ideas from Kieran Donaghy
at http://film-english.com/2013/01/03/validation/




KampaiTube's Review

Amazing isin't it? You just feel like smiling right now, yup that's how impressive and powerful this video was! Never thought that complimenting someone else can feel this great :) The video and audio was good!

Bold and daring, this is the first thing we thought when we first watched it. This was suppose to be a heartwarming, smiling video but why is everything black and white? Usually those are the elements of gloomy and darkness, but this video challenged it and took it from its own perspective. The idea of this film was delivered well but maybe some might find it a little hard to catch up like the part when a girl shouted ' Next' at 4:02 after the group danced, it got us confused for awhile too.They even include humor as well when Hugh met Bush and even Saddam to make them smile :P but this also got us thinking, being unappreciated can be this draining and down. Nope, i'm not talking about the people Hugh complimented but rather Hugh himself! Look at what he said at the last part of the last dialogue of the show ''No one has ever said that about me before''. Why? because people usually take, but never give, so have you been giving? ;) 



Bald guy : I'm here to get validated
Hugh : You..You are awesome
Bald guy : Excuse me?
Hugh : You have an amazing face, you've got powerful features man anyone ever tell you that?
Bald guy : No, No
Hugh : Then listen, you look a little down and it may seem like sometimes people don't understand you, but some day man, SOME day people are going to see you for what you really are
Bald guy : You..you really think so?
Hugh : Absolutely, You are great

Lady with sunglasses : Need a validation please
Hugh : You, You are great maam, you have amazing cheekbones
Lady with sunglasses : really?

Police 1 : Sir!
Police 2 : Yes?
Police 1 : We have a situation
Police 2 : Where?

Hugh : you have so much life experience that other dont appreciate that you know
Old lady : Bless you dear

Police 1 : They're not patronizing the shop, they're just coming here to see him!

Hugh : Sir you're in a great shape! You work out?

Police Chief : Not for long
Police Chief : Young man, we are running a business here not a social club
Hugh : That is a fantastic suit, it really flatters you
Police Chief : You..think so?

Hugh : You guys worked so hard, you are the backbone that keeps this place running!
Police 2 : I always felt like no one really appreciated us
Police Chief : Yeah i mean our jobs are so stressful it seems like, most of the times people don't see it
Hugh : NO, what you do is so important
Police CHief : You know i bet the boss would love to meet you

Hugh : You are great, you provide hundred of jobs, sustaining hundred of families, that's huge!
Boss : That's so good to hear, most of the time i feel people don't recognize that, i'm just a big bad man in hell
Hugh : Not at all, you give
Boss : You know some people would probably like to meet you

Hugh : Mr. president, no matter what people say about you, you still got a great golf swing
Bush : God bless you
Hugh : You do!

Hugh : You have a fantastic moustache, i bet look at you and get envious, I'm not kidding!
Osama : Thank you
Hugh : You're welcome!

News report : Hugh Newman a man who is changing the world with free parking and free compliments

Police : Your license is expired sir
Hugh : That is great at what you do, you are so thorough
police : Really? you think so?

News reporter : Hugh, what is your secret?
Hugh : I just love to see people smile!
News reporter : It seems like there is no one Hugh Newman cannot make smile

Victoria : Next!
Victoria : No one smiles in their driving license photo sir, its not allowed
Victoria : Next!
Victoria : Next!
Hugh : You are amazing, you are so efficient
Victoria : Next!
Hugh : Victoria..aw that's a beautiful name
victoria : Next!
Hugh : You take such good care of your equipment, anyone is lucky to have you
Victoria : We're closed sir
Hugh : Victoria, I just..want to see you smile
Victoria : Good night sir
Hugh : Where do i go for
Victoria : We don't validate sir

Victoria: Next!
Hugh : They match your eyes, sorta, Oh you have the most beautiful eyes i've ever seen
Victoria : Next..
Hugh : You eat healthy too, see you take good care of yourself, that's awesome
Hugh : See? You're even a great pet owner, you give her full hours of walk, most people wont take the time, but you care! oh you care
Hugh : Have you ever smiled?
Victoria : Yes
Hugh : When?
Victoria : When i was a little girl
Hugh : Aww, i bet you have a beautiful smile, what happened to it?
Victoria : Next!

Hugh : Look like anyone you know?
Victoria : Next!
Hugh : There's color and black and white
Victoria : Next!
Victoria : Next!
Hugh : I just wanted to see you smile
Victoria : I'm sorry
Victoria : Next!

Bald guy : I'm here to get validated please!
Hugh : You're..okay i guess
Bald guy : Okay? Did you say okay?
Hugh : Yeah you're fine..
Bald guy : Don't you have anything else to say?
Hugh : What's the point..

Guy : Hey! excuse me! excuse me! Could you take our picture?
Guy : Thanks, really appreciated it
Girl : It's our first time here
Hugh : Smile
Hugh : That's not a real smile
Hugh : You guys love each other?
Hugh : You're on vacation travelling the world?
Hugh : God that's great, Wish i can travel the world with the one i love, wish i can have someone take our picture and really smile
Hugh : You guys have every reason to smile!
Hugh : You're gorgeous!
Hugh : You are prime of your lives! and you guys..are great!
Hugh : Hold it right there, Now That! its a smile..
Hugh : One more one more right there
Hugh : Aw that's it! one more one more
Hugh : Beautiful Beautiful! Look at each other
Hugh : Aw fantastic couple

Hugh : What do you love most about your wife?
Husband : Erm, she accepts me, despite knowing

Hugh : Where did you meet?
Girl : Laundry duty
Hugh : Aw , serve your country at the love of your lives, you guys are awesome
Hugh : Beautiful beautiful
Girl : THank you so much
Hugh : Okay bye
Guy : Excuse me, you get the most sincere smile out of people i've ever seen, you wanna make some extra money? Shooting stuff like this?

Hugh : Friendly folks, sorry to interrupt, you're a beautiful couple
Hugh : You're models?
Guy 1 : No
Hugh : Would you like to be?

Hugh : You have two the most beautiful eyes i've ever seen
Lady on wheelchair : Excuse me?
Hugh : Your eyes, their gorgeous! And your dress matches your eyes, its perfect! May I?
Lady on wheelchair : Okay
Hugh : What do you love most on the world?
Lady on wheelchair : My daughter, she has the most wonderful smile

Hugh : Hello, I'm here to attend some cleaning, Hugh Newman?
Receptionist : Hello Hugh, can you just keep the driver's license over there?
Hugh : Sure
Receptionist : Thank you

Hugh : Hey
Guy 2 : hey
Hugh : How did you..You're..Smiling! But..she..did you

Shabbly guy : NEXT!
Hugh : Excuse me sir, er where's Victoria?
Shabbly guy : She don't work here, she's fired!
Shabbly guy : NEXT!
Hugh : Fired? Why?!
Shabbly guy : She was smiling, look at this, she DID this, look at that girl smiling, look a that! those pictures SUCK! they're not suppose to smile!
Hugh : Where is she?

Victoria : You are awesome, you're gona have so much fun on this trip, the stories you're gona tell people when you get back will be amazing
Lady : I can't wait, I've always wanted to see Paris
Hugh : I don't understand, I tried everything, what happened?
Victoria : When i was a little girl, my mother got very sick and she stayed that way
Victoria : And over the years she got so sad that she forgot how to smile
Victoria : And seeing her like that I couldn't smile either, and i didn't ..for years
Victoria : But then one day , a young man came up to her and told her how beautiful she was, so beautiful that you wanted to take her picture
Victoria : He made her smile and suddenly after all those years she got better
Victoria : I knew it was you , I looked everywhere for you, but i couldn't find you anywhere
Victoria : I went to every garage in town , I paid every ticket they had but i couldn't find you
Hugh : You paid for parking for me?
Victoria : Yes, because you..are great
Victoria : You.. are amazing
Hugh : No one has ever said that about me before

Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice | Video on TED.com

Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice | Video on TED.com


ted talks: RORY SOUTHERLAND. Life lessons from an ad man



Video: (Buzzer) Man: Shreddies is supposed to be square.

Woman: Have any of these diamond shapes gone out?

Voiceover: New Diamond Shreddies cereal. Same 100 percent whole-grain wheat in a delicious diamond shape.
HHH

Man: So, Shreddies is actually producing a new product, which is something very exciting for them. So they are introducing new Diamond Shreddies. (Laughter) So I just want to get your first impressions when you see that, when you see the Diamond Shreddies box there.

Woman: Weren't they square?

Woman #2: I'm a little bit confused. Woman #3: They look like the squares to me.

Man: They -- Yeah, it's all in the appearance. But it's kind of like flipping a six or a nine like a six. If you flip it over it looks like a nine. But a six is very different from a nine.

Woman # 3: Or an "M" and a "W". Man: An "M" and a "W", exactly.

Man #2: [unclear] You just looked like you turned it on its end. But when you see it like that it's more interesting looking.

Man: Just try both of them. Take a square one there, first. (Laughter) Man: Which one did you prefer? Man #2: The first one.

Man: The first one?



produce placebo education. The point is that education doesn't actually work by teaching you things. It actually works by giving you the impression that you've had a very good education, which gives you an insane sense of unwarranted self confidence, which then makes you very, very successful in later life. So, welcome to Oxford, ladies and gentlemen. (Laughter)
from Rory Southerland


and Joseph PINE.

goods have become commoditized. Commoditized: where they're treated like a commodity, where people don't care who makes them. They just care about three things and three things only: price, price and price.



That's why you have companies like Starbucks, right, that doesn't advertise at all. They said, you want to know who we are, you have to come experience us. And think about the economic value they have provided by that experience. Right? Coffee, at its core, is what? Right? It's beans; right? It's coffee beans. You know how much coffee is worth, when treated as a commodity as a bean? Two or three cents per cup -- that's what coffee is worth. But grind it, roast it, package it, put it on a grocery store shelf, and now it'll cost five, 10, 15 cents, when you treat it as a good. Take that same good, and perform the service of actually brewing it for a customer, in a corner diner, in a bodega, a kiosk somewhere, you get 50 cents, maybe a buck per cup of coffee. But surround the brewing of that coffee with the ambiance of a Starbucks, with the authentic cedar that goes inside of there, and now, because of that authentic experience, you can charge two, three, four, five dollars for a cup of coffee. So, authenticity is becoming the new consumer sensibility.

is he better than Oliver Atom?

In stands Iniesta,  if not, judge from yourself??
The player  "touched with a magic wand" as he hs been described.

This summer, a photograph did the rounds: Iniesta surrounded by seven Italian defenders. He describes it as a coincidence but it was appropriate somehow: he's the man they fear the most and the man who draws the most pressure on himself. Why? Because he trusts his ability to overcome it. 

Always in control, he is the creative fulcrum of the Spain team.

There is something different about him. The touch is so smooth, so soft, almost imperceptible at times, that he can do things that other players simply cannot, from incredible dribbles to jaw-dropping assists.

Always in control, he is the creative fulcrum of the Spain team.

In a game where control has become the obsession, defences have become more populous and space harder to find, Iniesta offers that most important of qualities: inspiration.

lived, loved, laughed and left....Paris 1945: an unfair affair

Mismatched lovers will always have Paris

seducing ingrid bergman

June, 1945

In newly liberated Paris, battle-ravaged photographer Robert Capa is drowning his sorrows. After ten years of recording horror and violence, he longs for a diversion.

Ingrid Bergman has been sent to entertain the troops and when she walks into the Ritz Hotel Capa is enchanted. From the moment he slips a mischievous invitation to dinner under her door, the two find themselves helplessly attracted. Ingrid, tired of her passionless marriage, and her controlling film studio, is desperate for freedom and excitement.

And Capa is willing to oblige. Dinners in cafes he can’t afford. Night walks along the Seine. Dancing barefoot in nightclubs. Trysts in hotel rooms. He brings her back to life and she fills the hole inside him.

But with everything at stake, both Capa and Ingrid are presented with terrible choices.

Full of the romantic glamour of 40s Paris and Hollywood, Seducing Ingrid Bergman tells the heart-wrenching story of the secret affair between the iconic Casablanca star and the famous photographer.

http://ingridbergmanfilms.blogspot.com.es/

To read about Bergman's loves, (icí - French)

for a new text: 

http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2012/07/paris-ritz-history-france 

Ingrid Bergman recalled that she felt happy and excited coming back to the Ritz at the end of World War II, after having been away for eight years, and finding it bustling with American journalists and war correspondents. When she went up to her room, she found this message under the door


The famous note can be found in Capa's Biography - R Whelan -page 239

Subject:    Dinner. 6.6.45. Paris. France.
To:           Miss Ingrid Bergman

 Part 1.     This is a community effort. The community consists of Bob    Capa and Irwin Shaw.

2.      We were planning on sending you flowers with this note inviting you to dinner this    evening - but after consultation we discovered it was possible to pay for the flowers or the dinner, or the dinner or the flowers, not both. We took a vote and dinner won by a close margin.

3.      It was suggested that if you did not care for dinner, flowers might be sent. No decision has been reached on this so far.
4.      Besides flowers we have lots of doubtful qualities.
5.      If we write much more we will have no conversation left, as our supply of charm is limited.
6.      We will call you at 6.15.
7.      We do not sleep.

                Signed: Worried.

===============  ===============  ===============  ================

Date

January 6, 2013

Thornton McCamish

A novelisation of the affair between Ingrid Bergman and legendary war photographer Robert Capa.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/mismatched-lovers-will-always-have-paris-20130105-2c9ke.html#ixzz2IB6gd4TH

Spellbound ... Robert Capa, above, had an affair with Ingrid Bergman. Photo: Getty Images

Chris Greenhalgh is a British poet and screenwriter whose first novel, Coco and Igor (2002), was made into a movie. His second, like the first, is a lush romantic fiction spun from a historical footnote, and it, too, feels destined for the big screen, if only because it's halfway there already.

This novelisation of the affair between Bergman and legendary war photographer Robert Capa is ripe with the atmospherics, arch dialogue and tremulous melodrama of an old silver-screen weepie.

This improbable true story begins in 1945, when the star of Casablanca visits Europe to entertain US troops. In Paris she meets Capa, a man with nothing but his combat helmet, cameras and a boyish charm.

Seducing Ingrid Bergman by Chris Greenhalgh. Penguin, $19.99.

They begin their reckless fling (Bergman is grimly married) and, for a while, it's hard to resist the nostalgic glamour of it all: giddy summer evenings in liberated Paris, a screen goddess falling all too humanly for a battle-weary chancer who's ''not used to having anything so luminous in the viewfinder'' - or in his bed.

In Capa's improvised darkroom, among ''long thin strips of film like flypaper'', there she is, ''her image haunting several of the negatives, transparent, vivid in her lipstick, sticky''.

If Capa is beguiled by Bergman's beauty (''it simply glows from her, blinding us, an inner incandescence spilled''), Greenhalgh is besotted. His perfervid prose moons over Bergman from the get-go.

Sadly, though, neither celebrity ever feels fully real, even when we're inside their heads.

Greenhalgh wants to convey the intensity of their passion - and the reader wants to feel it - but his showy style keeps getting in the way.

Metaphors meant to evoke a visceral depth of feeling, for instance, sound distractingly like thoracic surgery. At one point, Capa feels love ''take a deep scoop out of my chest''; when Bergman thinks of Capa, ''it's as if a rib of hers cries out''; and then poor Capa's ''heart cracks open with the pressure''.

Greenhalgh's use of similes is so incontinent, you start to scan nervously ahead for ''like'' and ''as if''. ''Silence,'' one reads with puzzlement, ''spreads like a carpet between them.''

Some images even turn up twice: wine's perfume is ''a delicate ribbon of scent''; later, Bergman's perfume also trails ''like a ribbon''.

Still, there are some witty and vivid hits among the misses. When he follows Bergman to Hollywood (she's filming Hitchcock's Notorious), Capa attends a party and spies on a sofa ''a trio of expensively dressed young women, their legs crossed the same way as if someone has been practising knots''.

Capa is a nobody in LA, though. While this places him below the suspicious notice of Bergman's cuckolded hubby, it means he relies on her to pull strings to find him work. He retreats ''into numbness'', gambling lucklessly, cadging loans, boozing, brooding on nightmarish memories, and channelling Notorious-style dialogue. ''I'd drink before breakfast if I could get up early enough,'' he tells Bergman.

He knows the affair could destroy her career, but Bergman spells it out for him anyway: ''The studios sell dreams,'' she says, ''they don't deal in damaged goods.''

There's pathos here because, as history records, Bergman does eventually risk scandal and leave her husband - but for Roberto Rossellini, not Capa. So this affair was always doomed, but the stakes are never high enough to make us mind much.

In the final pages, Greenhalgh imagines Capa's death in a Vietnamese paddy field with feeling and restraint, but it's too late. Bergman's long gone by then, and so, I fear, will be plenty of readers who have decided to wait for the DVD.

==

For an analysis on Capa's photo's read here:

http://www.adammarelliphoto.com/2011/06/robert-capa/

The world of con art

A con, or confidence game, is a swindle — when you take advantage of someone's trust. 

Video: Focus
Steve Martin was reportedly among the Beltracchis' most prominent victims. The actor and art collector spent €700,000 on Campendonk's "Landscape With Horses" at Paris gallery Cazeau-Béraudière in 2004, then resold it through Christie's in 2006, where a Swiss businesswoman bought the work for €500,000. German industrialist Reinhold Würth and Hannover’sSprengel Museum were also duped. French collector Daniel Filipacchi may have held the most expensive forgery, Ernst's "La Forêt 2," bought for some €4.9 million in 2006 after being shown at the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl and the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris. 

FORGERY: the act of reproducing something for a deceitful or fraudulent purpose

bluff, cheat, crime, deception, double-cross,dupe, fraud, 

gold brick, graft, mockery, swindle,take in

 1- art forgery scandals sentenced for:   counterfeiting paintings that sold for more than $22 m    tricking prominent museums2- the rampant fraud of masterly forgeries3- Master swindlers forged 47 works by world-class artists4- gullible expert was duped into confirming forged paintings

Helene Beltracchi, posing as her grandmother, in a pseudo-antique photo staged to lend credibility to the fictional provenances of  Beltracchi's forgeries. Hanging on the wall at left is a fake Fernand Léger; at far right is a phony Max Ernst

The Century Fraudster - Der Spiegel

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/   Thursday Oct 27, 2011

High life ends for couple who conned art world

Deutsche Welle  Thursday Oct 27, 2011

The Great Bluff Making Money with Art

 ARTINFO.com   Fri Oct 28, 2011

Masterminds of Massive Forgery Ring That Snookered top-notch collectors Receive Light Sentences After Charming Court and Public

  March 6, 2012, 
Convicted Art Forger Says More of His Works Are Out There  

GLOBALPOST.com   Fri March 7, 2012

Beltracchi, convicted art forger, claims he faked more paintings

Vanity Fair Oct 12, 2012

The Greatest Fake-Art Scam in History?

The future:

http://www.beltracchi-project.de/

my tech images mirror

TEST 1:

TEST 2. WRITING INTERFERENCE....Which are the ones you never used?

TEST 3: choose the one you heard twice:

TEST 4. When in love with your computer... which one is your position:

TEST 5. Which OS HAVE YOU TRIED? 

 TEST 6. The road to Linux is ahead us:

TEST 7. Which stage are you in?  The paradox of diversity in modern life:

EPILOGUE. The future is not what it used to be....