Laurence Olivier has been resurrected for a film role. A new movie – Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – uses old footage of Olivier, with dubbed voice, as the villainous leader of killer robots threatening civilization. The style, judging from the trailer, is wonderfully retro and noir – looks very reminiscent of Fritz…
ruins and remains
media archaeology – hearing the past again
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Getting back into the groove News of some more fascinating media archaeology in Berkeley – recovering sound from wax cylinders too delicate to touch. Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale and other characters from history may soon be able to speak again, as scientists perfect techniques to recover…
the look of the past
A moving event this afternoon. A celebration of the life of a family friend, Barbara Levin, who died last week. It was at her home in Portola Valley, where her son Dan Levin, Naomi Andrews and their daughter Maya now live. She loved food, travel, living life to the full. What has stuck with me…
Julian Thomas and the dangers of scholasticism
Julian Thomas (Manchester University) and Mike Pearson (Wales, Aberystwyth) were the opponents in the defence of Jonna (Ulin) and Fiona’s (Campbell) dissertation in Gothenburg (see my blog entry for June 11). Something has been bugging me since then about Julian’s criticisms of their work. Jonna and Fiona make a basic proposition that archaeology is performance….
the individual in prehistory
Could Stonehenge Skeletons Be Its Bronze Age Builders? – 24 Hour Museum This is the second (or third) recent attempt to connect individual burials with the making of Stonehenge (see my comments on ). They come from Wessex Archaeology. OK – so let’s accept that people built Stonehenge, not spacemen or giants or wizards. These…
the conservation of transience
Fascinating piece of restoration highlighted by Architecture Week 2004 | June 18 – June 27 Organised and Managed by Arts Council England Long before upstart trader Nick Leeson put the boot into Barings Bank by secretly running up more than $1bn of liabilities, financial difficulties had scuttled one of the key assets of the bank’s…