Σάββατο 16 Φεβρουαρίου 2013

By LeoDiCaprio Foundation related with Creating A Sustainable Future, Leo joins the Jury of the 'Date with History' Contest!

April 17, 2012 - A diverse group of organizations and individuals have joined forces behind the ‘Date With History’ online youth video speech contest, designed to encourage young people from all walks of life and all over the world speak ‘truth to power’ and inspire urgent action from decision makers and leaders gathering at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil this June.

An open public vote online will determine regional finalists in the speech contest, following which the ultimate winner will be selected by a diverse jury of over 20 individuals. The jury includes more than a dozen respected youth leaders from around the world, Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke, UN Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth, actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio, actor and activist Hayden Panettiere, former Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva, Brazilian actor and activist Sergio Marone and even noted high level names such as Jose Maria Figueres, President of the Carbon War Room, Dr. Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General, UN Industrial Development Organization and Co-Chair Secretary General's High Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All and UNFCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. The jury also notably includes Severn Suzuki, who delivered a moving speech at the 1992 Earth Summit as a 12 year old and is still remembered as ‘the girl who silenced the world.’

More than 120 Heads of state and government will attend the Earth Summit, in the midst of a convergence of crises unlike any seen in our history. Public pressure may well stimulate attendance by key actors, such as President Obama, who are still undecided about attending. The diverse range of organizations involved in the ‘Date With History’ initiative including TckTckTck, Climate Nexus, the UN Foundation, Music for Relief, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Canadian Council of Churches, David Suzuki Foundation and UNESCO Etxea are hopeful that engaging young voices will help to ensure the conference elicits decisive action from governments.
About the Date With History Contest

“Date With History” is organized by the Global Campaign for Climate Action (www.tcktcktck.org), Climate Nexus and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Contest participants aged 13-30 can upload their 2-3 minute speeches at http://datewithhistory.com or via the Mobli™ app http://datewithhistory.com/mobli (using the category @datewithhistory). Once the submission period has closed on 6 May, the most popular speeches from each region, as determined by the number of votes online, will be shortlisted as finalists. A jury made up of prominent individuals from around the world will review the short list and select a winner on May 15. The winner will travel to Rio and deliver his or her vision in person, have the opportunity to witness events on the ground and engage in activities with youth involved in the official process.

For more information on the contest rules and how to enter, or to access the full jury list, please visit http://DateWithHistory.com. The following language versions are available: Spanish at http://CitaconLaHistoria.com; French at http://RencontrezLHistoire.com; Portuguese at http://EncontroComaHistoria.com

Τετάρτη 13 Φεβρουαρίου 2013

By Pen Densham's "Eyeshot" Powerful Network, 7 Basic Plots for Story Utilities Improving Creativity!

THE SEVEN BASIC PLOTS
BY JOHN LEARY
Every story utilizes one of seven basic plots. They are:
1. Man v (Wo)man
This, the most typical story, is about the man who has an argument with his wife one night over whether she will make his lunch for him to take to work the next day. He likes a turkey sandwich and a piece of fruit.  He has a job but she can’t find one, so he thinks she should make his lunch. He doesn’t realize that she can’t find a job because she is a mean sort of person, and not many people like her. Worse, her face is covered in stains and she doesn’t know how to end conversations in the office. He insists that she make his lunch, not realizing that the cramps she feels when reminded of her unemployment are sharpened by his expectations of subservience. They argue, agendas throbbing like a stubbed toe. At last, too embarrassed to resist further, she makes his lunch while he sits at the kitchen table drinking a beer. That night they sleep in separate parts of their bed. In the morning he wakes up and checks his email before getting into the shower, and sees that he has been asked to take a client to lunch that day. He will not need to take his lunch after all. He feels a rush of tender feelings and guilt, and he is able to share a few of these feelings with his wife. They embrace. She promises him that she will keep his lunch in the refrigerator, safely stored, so that he can take it to work the following day. By the time he returns home from work that evening, his wife has not yet decided whether or not to remove the Ipecac-laden pudding that she tucked between his sandwich and apple. Ipecac is a very strong laxative-purgative.
2. Man v Nature
Wash the car and it rains. Go outside without an umbrella and it rains. Try to have a little vegetable garden in that fenced-off part of the backyard, and the plants get attacked by snails and crows, and then it never rains. Pissed off, you open the refrigerator and a Bengal tiger jumps out. You wrestle it to the death and have a beer. A homebrew you made from plants you gathered around the neighborhood.
3. Man v Environment
 A man eats too much fast food and the growth hormones the hamburger-cattle eat cause him to grow enormous breasts. He wants to open a dry cleaning business in his backyard but the neighbors prevent him because he can’t figure out how to dispose of the cleaning chemicals without infecting the ecosystem. He tries to grow a lawn and his neighbors all offer conflicting advice, so he ends up with the only front yard on the street covered in brown stains. He paints the trim on his garage a brick-red color and one of his neighbors comments that the color looks “like a monkey’s ass.”  One of the neighbor’s kids, a five year old boy, stands in his front yard in his underwear holding his ears, jumping up and down and screaming, for several hours a day. No one seems to complain. Zoning laws can be so arbitrary, so fickle. The man applies for a permit to open a muffler repair shop and the permit board turns him down. Some days, he just wants to cry. This story never has a happy ending. Either the man goes mad and hops up and down on his front lawn holding his ears and screaming, or he becomes just like the neighbors. Exactly like them, down to their fatty white teeth.
4. Man v Machine
Same as #1., but this time the wife is a robot.
5. Man v The Supernatural
The Green Ghoul chases the meddling kids down the staircase, heading right for the trap, but then one of the kids falls backwards and to break his fall he hits the switch on the giant fan and by mistake it goes into High Speed Reverse. This is the fan that was supposed to blow the Green Ghoul along a bubble-laden path, straight into the washing machine. Instead, the fan crashes into the ironing board and the kid and his dog are sitting on the ironing board and they fly out one window and then in through another, and they bump into the Green Ghoul, who steps onto a roller skate and slides all the way across the room to where he crashes into a suit of armor. The kids grab the Green Ghoul and unmask him to reveal Mr. Shipley, the owner of the “haunted” amusement park.
6. Man v Self
A man finds that whenever the NASDAQ 100 is going to have a positive day, he wakes in the morning with his left ring finger engorged with blood, so much blood that he can not bend it. The same thing happens whenever the American National Security Advisor appears in a television commercial or video. After much trial and error, he realizes that the only way he can cure this affliction (which, through a complicated series of introspective scenes, is revealed to be a metaphor for “modern life”) is by doing something that is explained in graphic detail with his daughter’s Little Mermaid action figures. Every night under the bedcovers, he plays and sings sea-songs softly. Then one night his wife and daughter surprise him!  It’s an intervention!  He breaks down and sobs, “I can’t help it. I hate myself.”  His wife and daughter want to put him into a treatment center, but the doctors there prod him with felt-tipped needles and stereo wire. Self-loathing and afraid, he flees and becomes notorious; he spends many years on the road having mild adventures. Toward the end of the story, he appears at his daughter’s college graduation. She recognizes him and kicks him in the shins. Stories like this can be exciting, if told well. Toward the end of one of these well-told stories, the man will spend some time alone in the woods or a hotel room “looking deep inside himself.”  If the book is particularly well done, the end of each chapter will feature bullet-pointed “lessons” that can be applied to your everyday life.
7. Man v God
Every day, the man whose wife makes lunch for him also drives him to the train station before taking their two sons to school. Some mornings the boys tell their father the dreams they had the night before. Sometimes the wife joins in. One particular morning, Son #1 says, “Daddy, last night I dreamed that you were being unfair to Biscuit. You said that Biscuit was taking up too much of your time and you hated walking him and feeding him every night. You said he stole the Sports page out of the paper every morning and told you the baseball scores when you took him for a walk. So you sold him to a dog-carnival without telling us.”   The man’s wife shares her dream from the night before: “I was at school taking pictures of the kids and there were some other camera crews there and they had very nice cameras – yes, ours is very nice too; I know you spent seven days of internet research choosing it – but then I lost ours and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I didn’t know how to tell you because I knew you’d be mad so I stayed at school. I stayed there all night.”  Son #2 then says to his father, “In my dream we went out to dinner at Chirpy’s like we did last week and you got really mad at the waiter like you did last week and this time in my dream you beat up the waiter but this time the waiter was Jesus so you beat up Jesus.”  The man gets out of the car at the train station. Listening to the dreams has left him shaken. He can barely climb onto the train when it arrives. His self-image is torn and jagged – he had considered himself a kind, sensitive man, but suddenly wonders if the world perceives him as an ogre. The train passes through a tunnel and he catches his reflection in the window and turns away. His hands are shaking. He is hypoglycemic and he is shaking. He grabs his lunch box, seeking something to calm his stomach, calm his bloodstream. He opens his lunchbox: Pudding!

Δευτέρα 3 Δεκεμβρίου 2012

From The Screenwriter's Newsletter!

“Good screenwriting is about carpentry. It’s a juggling of beginnings, middles and endings so they all inevitably seem to be moving correctly together. Your first draft is dangerously important. Don’t ever kid yourself into thinking, “It’s okay, it’s just the first draft.” Beware of that thought, because it’s ten times more difficult to go in a certain direction once you’ve already gone in another direction.”—Ernest Lehman, screenwriter of Sweet Smell of Success, North by Northwest, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?
“Generally speaking, if you don’t set everything up in the beginning, you’ll pay for it… in the middle or in the end. So I would rather pay for it at the beginning. It’s not television and they’re not going to go off into the icebox, or they’re not going to change channels. An audience in a movie will forgive you for just about anything for the first 10 minutes or so. But really nothing at the end. So it’s the time to prepare… the beginning.” —Robert Towne

Πέμπτη 3 Μαΐου 2012

Thanks to you, Mrs Robinson!



And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)

We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself
Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home

And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)

Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes
It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair
Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids

Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo, woo, woo)
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey) 

Κυριακή 11 Μαρτίου 2012

The Legend Of The Flying Dutchman!


The legend of the Flying Dutchman concerns a ghost ship that can never make port, doomed to sail the oceans forever. It probably originates from 17th-century nautical folklore. The oldest extant version dates to the late 18th century. Sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries reported the ship to be glowing with ghostly light. If hailed by another ship the crew of the Flying Dutchman will try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.
(from Wikipedia)

Σάββατο 10 Δεκεμβρίου 2011

Ένα ποίημα από τον Οδυσσέα Ελύτη

"Το Θαλασσινό Τριφύλλι"

Μια φορά στα χίλια χρόνια
του πελάγου τα τελώνια
Μες στα σκοτεινά τα φύκια
μες στα πράσινα χαλίκια
Το φυτεύουνε και βγαίνει
πριν ο ήλιος ανατείλει
Το μαγεύουνε και βγαίνει
το θαλασσινό τριφύλλι

Κι όποιος το 'βρει δεν πεθαίνει
κι όποιος το 'βρει δεν πεθαίνει

Μια φορά στα χίλια χρόνια
κελαηδούν αλλιώς τ' αηδόνια
Δε γελάνε μήτε κλαίνε
μόνο λένε μόνο λένε:
Μια φορά στα χίλια χρόνια
γίνεται η αγάπη αιώνια
Να 'χεις τύχη να 'χεις τύχη
κι η χρονιά να σου πετύχει

Κι από τ' ουρανού τα μέρη
την αγάπη να σου φέρει

Το θαλασσινό τριφύλλι
ποιος θα βρει να μου το στείλει
Ποιος θα βρει να μου το στείλει
το θαλασσινό τριφύλλι

Οδυσσέας Ελύτης
Τα Ρω του Έρωτα

Τρίτη 6 Δεκεμβρίου 2011

Moneyball!

Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is upset by his team's loss to the New York Yankees in the 2001 postseason. With the impending departure of star players Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Jason Isringhausen to free agency, Beane attempts to devise a strategy for assembling a competitive team for 2002 but struggles to overcome Oakland's limited player payroll. During a visit to the Cleveland Indians, Beane meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young Yale economics graduate with radical ideas about how to assess players' value. Beane tests Brand's theory by asking whether he would have drafted him, Beane having been a Major League player before becoming general manager. Though scouts considered Beane a phenomenal player, his career in the Major Leagues was disappointing. After some prodding, Brand admits that he would not have drafted him until the ninth round and that Beane would probably have gone to college instead. Sensing opportunity, Beane hires Brand as the Athletics' assistant general manager.
The team's scouts are first dismissive of and then hostile towards Brand's non-traditional sabermetric approach to scouting players. Rather than relying on the scouts' experience and intuition, Brand selects players based almost exclusively on their on base percentage (OBP). By finding players with a high OBP but characteristics that lead scouts to dismiss them, Brand assembles a team of undervalued players with far more potential than the A's hamstrung finances would otherwise allow. Despite vehement objections from the scouts, Beane supports Brand's theory and hires the players he selected, such as unorthodox submarine pitcher Chad Bradford (Casey Bond). Following the free agent signings, Beane finds that he also faces opposition from Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the Athletics' manager. With tensions already high between them because of a contract dispute, Howe disregards Beane and Brand's strategy and plays the team in a traditional style despite their unsuitability. Beane is eventually forced to trade away the lone traditional star player (Carlos Pena) to force Howe to use the new recruits.
Early in the season, the Athletics fare poorly, leading critics within and outside the team to dismiss the new method as a dismal failure. Beane convinces the owner to stay the course, and eventually the team's record begins to improve. Ultimately, the Athletics win an unprecedented 20 consecutive games, setting the American League record. Their streak is capped with a victory over the Kansas City Royals. Like many baseball players, Beane is superstitious and avoids attending or sometimes even following games as they are in progress. His family convinces him to go to the A's game against the Royals, as Oakland is already leading 11–0 after the third inning and appears set to continue their winning streak. Beane arrives, only to watch the team go to pieces and allow the Royals to even the score. Finally, the A's do clinch the victory with a walk-off home run by one of Brand's picks, Scott Hatteberg. Despite all their success, the A's lose in the first round of the postseason, this time to the Minnesota Twins. Beane is disappointed, but satisfied at having demonstrated the value of his and Brand's methods.
In closing, the film notes that Beane passed up the opportunity to become the general manager of the Boston Red Sox, despite an offer of $12.5 million a year salary, which would have made him the highest paid GM in baseball history. Also noted is Boston's World Series victory soon after in 2004, based on the theories that Beane pioneered.
(from Wikipedia)

Σάββατο 12 Νοεμβρίου 2011

Μακριά από τη ρυπαρότητα

"Η κόλαση προορίζεται για εκείνους που σε περίοδο ηθικής κρίσης, διατηρούν την ουδετερότητά τους.
(Hell is reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality)"
Martin Luther King

Δευτέρα 12 Απριλίου 2010

Σαίξπηρ

Μωρός που είναι ο άνθρωπος! Άμα η τύχη του αρρωστήσει - απ'τις δικές του καταχρήσεις βέβαια -, κάθε ατυχία τη χρεώνει στον ήλιο, στο φεγγάρι και στ' αστέρια. Σαν να γινόμαστε κακούργοι από ανάγκη, ανόητοι από ουράνια επιταγή, απατεώνες, κλέφτες και προδότες από επίδραση δυνάμεων των άστρων, μέθυσοι, ψεύτες και μοιχοί από επιρροή των πλανητών. Σαν όλα τα ελαττώματά μας να τα επιβάλλει η Θεία Εντολή! Κάθε ακόλαστος φορτώνει τα κτηνώδη ένστικτά του στον ουρανό. Παράδειγμα: ο πατέρας μου ενώθηκε με τη μητέρα μου κάτω από τον αστερισμό του Δράκοντα και η γέννησή μου έγινε κάτω από τη Μεγάλη Άρκτο: γι' αυτό κι εγώ έγινα αγροίκος και φιλήδονος! Α, μπα! Θα ήμουνα ο ίδιος ακόμα και αν το παρθενικότερο αστέρι του στερεώματος λαμπύριζε την ώρα που γινόταν η νοθογονία μου!
Βασιλιάς Ληρ I. 2
Αναφορές στις αρετές, στα ελαττώματα