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From an artist / designer perspective: I think the Voynich Manuscript is an early example of a "Lorem ipsum" / "example text"; possibly linked to Venetian scholar and printer Aldus Manutius

2018.06.30 23:55 Obversa From an artist / designer perspective: I think the Voynich Manuscript is an early example of a "Lorem ipsum" / "example text"; possibly linked to Venetian scholar and printer Aldus Manutius

As an edit: Following up on constructive criticism as to the structuring of this post, the following article is me seeking to use authoritative sources and citing sources, as opposed to personal experience alone, as a basis for my opinion and theory.
I'll preface by saying that, after doing self-research on the Voynich manucript, including going through many options presented online...I noted a lot of work by linguists / codebreakers, but a huge lack of input, and opinions, from professional artists and designers.
So, I'm here to give my take, from someone who has consulted directly with, professionals in the field. My mother was previously a commercial graphic designer herself; my paternal grandmother created several children's book drafts by hand; and I met twice with MinaLima (Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima), the design / artist team and company for the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts films.
The MinaLima team has also created graphic props for films such as Sweeney Todd (2007), The Golden Compass (2007) and The Imitation Game (2014) and designed the bestselling books for Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, and Beauty and The Beast.
Why is MinaLima relevant to the Voynich manuscript? Well, for a few reasons:
  • Both designers, and particularly, Miraphora Mina, specialized in hand-crafting, and hand-writing, hundreds upon hundreds of "fake" books and props for the Harry Potter (and other) films, as well as designing books in general. Example: Miraphora Mina painstakingly hand-labelled, designed, and wrote, the hundreds of Hogwarts letters seen in the first film; dozens of labels for Dumbledore's Pensieve memory containers; and Snape's handwriting in the Half-Blood Prince's book. Miraphora Mina's work is the closest I've ever seen, in the modern day, to the level of hand-crafting and artistic process involved on the Voynich manuscript.
  • The design style of modern professional graphic and prop designers (i.e. MinaLima) closely resembles, if not is identical to, the creative process determined to have resulted in the Voynich manuscript (including my own grandmother's "hand-crafting" process for illustrated book drafts). For example, the design begins with the art (i.e. paintings, drawings), usually almost always done, and designed, by hand (and, in the modern era, scanned / copied to the computer for further printing and refining), and text is added later.
  • The Marauder's Map from the Harry Potter films seems to be directly based off of the Voynich manucript, the latetr of which, like the Map, has "fold-out" sections. This means that designer Miraphora Mina, who also created the original Marauder's Map (painstakingly) by hand, including copying the Voynich "circular" and other writing patterns, would've had to extensively study the Voynich manuscript (and its layout) herself.
Concerning the Voynich manuscript itself, and its author(s):
  • The Voynich manuscript itself was quite likely studied, along with countless other texts from the Medieval and Renaissance eras, in the making of props for the Harry Potter films. The official exhibit, and book, on this is "A History of Magic", which also includes a wealth of commentary, items, and research from the same type of historians you might see hypothesizing on the Voynich manuscript itself.
  • The writing on the Voynich manuscript is thought by many researchers and experts to be almost certainly done by an artist's hand, with the art closely mirroring previous Medieval art depicting scenes from Greek mythology, and other popular symbolism of the time (i.e. 13th-century woodcuts and paintings of Tarot cards, nymphs bathing, etc.). Looking closely at the painting done in some areas, it is in my opinion, as an artist, that a "shaky hand" (either from switching back and forth from right-handed to left-handed, and/or due to a mild hand tremor) may have been involved. (Source: Edith Sherwood, PhD) (This could indicate any number of things, but my guess is carpal tunnel.) My grandmother, who is also a professional artist (hand-sewing, quilt sewing and repair, fabric dying, historical fabric restoration, etc...for 50+ years) also experienced this with mild-to-severe carpal tunnel syndrome. Also see, for an in-depth artist's perspective: "When Comics Hurt: Artists on Their Drawing Injuries", Anecdotal testimony
  • According to modern carpal tunnel statistics, if we are to run with that particular train of thought: the Voynich author, going by modern statistics, is more likely to be female than male (60-75% F vs. 40-25% M) (Source); if female, less likely to successfully sell, or be credited for, her work, a possible reason for the book's "forgotten" obscurity over the most of its existence (Source); and likely came from a family of artists, and/or had at least one artist parent (Approximately 50% of the risk for carpal tunnel is determined in the genes; carpal tunnel has a 49% instance rate in females in the trade; and creativity has high heritability); the "shaky hand" and coloring indicates overuse, and work situations requiring rapid finger and wrist motions (i.e. artist's trade, scribe work, and/or writing); and, possibly, a wrist injury; diabetes; hypothyroidism (also high genetic factor); arthritis (worse as age advances, and typically early onset in artist professions); renal disease; or, if the author was female, edema (i.e. fluid retention, inflammation, dehydration) from potential pregnancy, or menopause.
  • Further examination I did, in my opinion, indicates that the handwriting on the Voynich manuscript is much steadier, and possesses a far more seamless fluidity, indicating that the author(s) were more familiar and comfortable, during the manuscript's creation, with writing than drawing. (This is also supported by, and consistent with, several linguists' opinions I looked up online.)
More on the "Lorem Ipsum" Theory
As to why I think the Voynich manuscript is written in a "Lorem ipsum"-type script...after looking at the language patterns, several words are written exactly the same, and often, doubled or tripled up.
This, in modern design, is commonly seen - and known - with the "Lorem ipsum", or "fake text".
In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum is a placeholder text, commonly used to demonstrate the visual form of a document, without relying on meaningful content (also called "greeking" - see below). Replacing the actual content with placeholder text allows designers to design the form of the content before the content itself has been produced.
The "lorem ipsum" text is typically a scrambled section of "De finibus bonorum et malorum", a 1st-century BC Latin text by Cicero, with words altered, added, and removed to make it nonsensical, improper Latin.
A variation of the ordinary "lorem ipsum" text has been used in typesetting since the 1960s or earlier, when it was popularized by advertisements for Letraset transfer sheets. It was introduced to the Information Age in the mid-1980s by Aldus Corporation, which employed it in graphics and word-processing templates for its desktop publishing program PageMaker.
"Greeking" itself is a style of displaying or rendering text or symbols, not always from the Greek alphabet. Greeking obscures portions of a work, for the purpose of either emphasizing form over details, or displaying placeholders for unavailable content.
The name is a reference to the phrase "Greek to me", meaning something that one cannot understand, so that it might as well be in a foreign language.
Greeked text is used in typography to evaluate a certain typeface's appropriateness, overall style, or type color. Because a viewer can be distracted by meaningful content, greeking unimportant text forces the viewer to focus on layout and design.
Greeking is also used when a design is being developed, but the content is unfinished. One example might be the layout of a magazine article which has photographs, but no text; initially, a "lorem ipsum" text is used, and then the nonsense text is replaced with draft versions as they become available.
This allows design and layout to be carried out in parallel with content revisions.
As in typography, greeking involves inserting "nonsense text" or, commonly, Greek or Latin text in prototypes of visual media projects (such as in graphic and web design) to check the layout of the final version before the actual text is available, or to enhance layout assessment by eliminating the distraction of readable text. Text of this sort is known as "greeked text", "dummy text", or "jabberwocky text" [referring to Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll's tendency to make up words for his books, i.e. "jabberwocky"].
"Lorem ipsum" is a commonly used example, though this is derived from Latin, not Greek.
The writing, or "language", used in the Voynich manuscrupt may also be an early form of asemic writing:
Asemic writing is a wordless, open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means "having no specific semantic content," or "without the smallest unit of meaning."
With the non-specificity of asemic writing, there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art. Where asemic writing differs from abstract art is in the asemic author's use of gestural constraint, and the retention of physical characteristics of writing, such as lines and symbols.
Asemic writing is a hybrid art form that fuses text and image into a unity, and then sets it free to arbitrary subjective interpretations. It may be compared to free writing, or writing for its own sake, instead of writing to produce verbal context. The open nature of asemic works allows for meaning to occur across linguistic understanding; an asemic text may be "read" in a similar fashion, regardless of the reader's natural language.
Multiple meanings for the same symbolism are another possibility for an asemic work; that is, asemic writing can be polysemantic, or have zero meaning, infinite meanings, or its meaning can evolve over time.
Asemic works leave for the reader to decide how to translate and explore an asemic text; in this sense, the reader becomes co-creator of the asemic work.
Asemic writing exists in many different forms. It is often created with a pen or brush, but can range from being hand drawn in the sand with a stick, and documented by photography, or to works on canvas, paper, computer images, and animations.
The key to asemic writing is that, even though it is traditionally "unreadable", it still maintains a strong attractive appeal to the reader's eye. Various asemic writing includes pictograms, or ideograms the meanings of which are sometimes suggested by their shapes, though it may also flow as an abstract expressionist scribble which resembles writing, but avoids words.
Asemic writing, at times, exists as a conception or shadow of conventional writing practices. Reflecting writing, but not completely existing as a traditional writing system, asemic writing seeks to make the reader hover in a state between reading and looking. Asemic writing has no verbal sense, though it may have clear textual sense.
Through its formatting and structure, asemic writing may suggest a type of document and, thereby, suggest a meaning. The form of art is still writing, often calligraphic in form, and either depends on a reader's sense and knowledge of writing systems for it to make sense, or can be understood through aesthetic intuition.
True asemic writing occurs when the creator of the asemic piece cannot read their own asemic writing. Relative asemic writing is a natural writing system that can be read by some people, but not by everyone (e.g. ciphers, wildstyle, etc.).
[...] Asemic writing occurs in avant-garde literature and art, with strong roots in the earliest forms of writing.
Asemic writing also includes false writing systems:
False writing systems are artificially constructed alphabets or scripts used (sometimes within the context of a false document) to convey a degree of verisimilitude. Examples of this include alien dialogue in comic strips, animated cartoons, and graphic novels (such as Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the Valérian and Laureline series). The script in Luigi Serafini's 1981 Codex Seraphinianus was confirmed by the author to have no occult meaning.
The Voynich manuscript, a mysterious work on which the Codex Seraphinianus was likely based, uses an undeciphered writing system that some speculated to be false. (Wikipedia)
Particularly, in the case of Luigi Serafini's 1981 Codex Seraphinianus, and the artist's confirmation of the language to have have "no occult meaning", this also concurs with "false texts" created, and designed, by professionals like MinaLima.
When I consulted directly with MinaLima in person, I asked them the following question:
"Do the writings and symbols used on character's wands, and in the newspapers, etc...you create for the franchise have any particular meaning?"
To which Miraphora Mina responded:
"No. The writing is just done for aesthetic design. If you look closely at some of them, like the newspapers, the speech is purposefully generated, or written in gibberish."
From Satu Kaikkonen, a contemporary asemic artist/writer from Finland, had this to say about asemic writing:
"As a creator of asemics, I consider myself an explorer and a global storyteller. Asemic art, after all, represents a kind of language that's universal, and lodged deep within our unconscious minds. Regardless of language identity, each human's initial attempts to create written language look very similar and, often, quite asemic.
In this way, asemic art can serve as a sort of common language—albeit an abstract, post-literate one—that we can use to understand one another regardless of background or nationality. For all its limping-functionality, semantic language all too often divides and asymmetrically empowers while asemic texts can't help but put people of all literacy-levels and identities on equal footing."
Further evidence that the Voynich manuscript may have been written in an early "Lorem ipsum" (i.e. Latin)-style language:
There are only a few words in the manuscript, written in a seemingly Latin script. On the last page, there are four lines of writing written in rather distorted Latin letters, except for two words in the main script. The lettering resembles European alphabets of the late 14th and 15th centuries, but the words do not seem to make sense in any language.
Also, a series of diagrams in the "astronomical" section has the names of ten of the months (from March to December) written in Latin script, with spelling suggestive of the medieval languages of France, northwest Italy or the Iberian Peninsula. However, it is not known whether these bits of Latin script were part of the original text, or were added later.
It is an alphabetic script, but of an alphabet variously reckoned to have from nineteen to twenty-eight letters, none of which bear any relationship to any English or European letter system. The text has no apparent corrections. There is evidence for two different "languages" (investigated by Currier and D'Imperio) and more than one scribe, probably indicating an ambiguous coding scheme. (Source - more information listed here)
The "lorem ipsum"-style script has also been docmented to have been in use since the 1500's, and the Voynich manuscript vellum was supposedly carbon-dated to be from anywhere from 1405-1430's:
"Lorem Ipsum" is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type, and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.
It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing "Lorem Ipsum" passages, and more recently, with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of "Lorem Ipsum".
1914 translation by H. Rackham of the "Lorum Ipsum":
"But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness.
No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.
To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.
These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains." (Source)
On the Possible Link to Aldus Manutius
My personal opinion: it is possible that the Voynich "language", even if a "lorem ipsum"-style script, was compiled by either one person, or a team of artists working together. In the modern day, the MinaLima team also does teamwork with several artists to come up with the designs, and "gibberish", for the props, and "fake books", they create.
Another possibility, I believe, for the Voynich manuscript is for it to be an "example text" (i.e. portfolio piece, made to be a "sample" of art quality style), as commonly seen with artists showing "examples" of their work to market their skills, and win commissions, in the modern day.
I believe this can also be explained by the Voynich manuscript being divided into particular sections, each an "example" showcasing the artist's manuscript layout and artwork:
  • Astronomical + Cosmological (relative to making almanacs, star-charts, horoscopes, naval maps, etc...especially in a time of global trade exploration and expansion)
  • Biological (i.e. showcasing what appear to be body parts + Nymph drawings, as well as architectural drawings)
  • Herbal + Pharmacheutical + Recipes (i.e. showing plant and herb drawings - useful image comparisons for identifying plant species, making medicines, and such - also my opinion this leans towards the "the author was female" view)
Another possibility is a "dummy text", or one used to plan out, and copy, illuminated manuscripts for wealthy patrons...a basic format that could be modified, and edited, upon the commissioner's or publisher's request to be made into different types of texts, on various popular subjects of the time period.
As the vellum of the Voynich manuscript has been dated to the first half of the 1400's, yet another possibility is that it was created as one of the drafts for the early printing press.
Specifically, it may also be related to a man named Aldus Manutius. Manutius hailed from Venice, Italy, which is also in-line with the theory about the Voynich manuscript's Northern Italian origins.
Manutius, too, was a "humanist scholar" of his time, matching the theories of the Voynich manuscript being written by a "humanist hand". The Aldine Virgil, dated to 1501, and Manutius's Aristotle, d. 1495-1498, also somewhat matches the handwriting in the Voynich manuscript (see here), and also includes paintings of mythological scenes, with both (art and font) albeit far more refined than those of the earlier-dated Voynich manuscript.
Also see examples of "handwriting font" from Aldian texts here.
While the Voynich manuscrupt is written in cursive - "everyday handwriting" - Manutius was aiming to design a "cursive typeface" from scratch.
Cursive was the norm for everyday handwriting in Venice, but at the time, published works only contained block lettering. Manutius commissioned typefaces designed to look like the handwriting of humanists, both in Latin and Greek, in order to uphold the manuscript tradition (Fletcher III 1988, pp. 77–82) (Schuessler 2015).
By creating a cursive typeface, Manutius could make the works he published feel more personal. In the New Aldine Studies, Harry George Fletcher III, Pierpont Morgan Library's curator for printed books and bindings, describes his belief for Manutius' typeface, "his principal intent, I am convinced, was to make available in type a face comfortable for its readers (Fletcher III 1988, p. 5)."
Manutius hired the punchcutter Francesco Griffo of Bologna to create the new typeface. The handwriting reproduced for the many Aldine Press typefaces is a topic of conflicting opinions by scholars; the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica suggests Petrarch's handwriting (Symonds 1911, p. 624) while the New Aldine Studies presumes the scribes Pomponio Leto and Bartolomeo Sanvito were the inspiration for the typeface (Fletcher III 1988, p. 77). Other scholars believe the first Greek typeface was derived from the likeness of Immanuel Rhusotas, another scribe during the time of Manutius (Baker 2016, p. 81).
Despite the uncertainty, the Aldine Press commissioned the first Greek script designed "with accents and letters cast separately and combined by the compositor (Baker 2016, p. 81)." The typeface was first used in publishing Erotemata by Constantine Lascaris in 1495. The Roman typeface was finished later the same year, and Pietro Bembo's De Aetna was the first book published in the new roman script (Baker 2016, pp. 81–86). (Wikipedia)
Manutius also preferred larger capital letters, and commissioned them for his printing typeface as a part of his will, matching the larger capital-letter typeface in the Voynich manuscript.
On Manutius, Paul F. Grendler wrote, "Aldus ensured the survival of a large number of ancient texts, and greatly facilitated the diffusion of the values, enthusiasms, and scholarship of Italian Renaissance Humanism to the rest of Europe."
Aldus Pius Manutius (/məˈnjuːʃiəs/; Italian: Aldo Pio Manuzio; 1449/1452 – 6 February 1515) was a Venetian humanist, scholar, and educator. He became a printer and publisher in his forties, when he helped found the Aldine Press in Venice.
Manutius is known for publishing rare manuscripts in their original Greek and Latin form. Before Manutius, publishers rarely printed volumes in Greek. Manutius commissioned type cutters to create fonts in Greek and Latin, resembling humanist handwriting of his time.
Mantius himself grew up in a wealthy family during the Italian Renaissance, and in his youth, was sent to Rome to become a humanist scholar. In Rome, he studied Latin under Gaspare da Verona, and attended lectures by Domizio Calderini in the early 1470s. In 1475 to 1478, Manutius studied Greek in Ferrara from Guarino da Verona (Fletcher III 1988, p. 1).
[...] Giovanni Pico's family supplied Manutius with funds for starting his printing press, and gave him lands in Carpi (Symonds 1911). Manutius determined that Venice was the best location for his work, settling there in 1490 (Symonds 1911).
*Manutius' fonts would be the first known model of italic type. *Manutius also popularized the libelli portatiles, or portable little (specifically) classic books: small-format volumes that could be easily carried and read anywhere.
Aldus Manutius changed the face of publishing as we know it.
Venice, in the 1400s, was a hub of printing revolution. Aldus and his printing press, Aldine Press, were right in the middle of it all. By today’s standards, the amount of monumental change that the printing industry underwent there would rival today’s Silicon Valley. Basically, Aldus Manutius is to modern books as Steve Jobs is to the iPhone.
Aldus’ first achievement involved font choice. He was the first to use an italic font—which mimicked human handwriting—and in doing so, replaced the heavy Gothic print most printers used at the time. He used this italic typeface for the first time to print Virgil in 1501, and countless other books to follow.
It’s estimated that the Manutius family printed over 1,000 editions over the course of 100 years.
In all of these printings, Aldus kept his use of colons and semicolons consistent in each edition, standardizing punctuation for the industry.
Out of all of Aldus’ many accomplishments, however, one has impacted everything, from large trade publishing to your trip to the beach.
Before Aldus, books were luxury items, kept in monasteries or collections. They were large, cumbersome and expensive—not at all accessible to the public.
Aldus used his press to print books small enough to be carried around for study or pleasure, calling them libelli portatiles (Latin for “portable books”). This opened up the literary world to the general public, allowing more to be able to enjoy both classic and modern books. Aldus single-handedly shaped the sharing of ideas and communication as we know it today.
Other Sources:
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2017.02.21 09:52 ben10103 Summer Camp 2011 Set List

Just realized I had the recording but hadn't done a set list for this set thanks to: Infinitesimally_ so figured ide put one together. This set was on fire for being only an hour long. Couple tracks I blanked on, one at 16 min im not sure I know)
EDIT: Added the tracks and samples I had forgotten, thx!
Here's a link to the recording
Pharoah monch - Simon says intro (Vocal sample from heads up, and Teliport massive mashed in)
Bassnectar - Teliport massive (Bassnectar remix) (Beastie boys - Sabotage; accapella mashed in)
D-Queue - Chicken dippaz
Bassnectar - Wildstyle method w/ Bomb the Blocks & Big L – Put It On acapellas
Rollz - Plugged in (Bassnectar remix)
Hawaii 5-0 Theme song
Bassnectar - The 808 Track
DC Breaks - Taken VIP
Bassnectar + Excision + Datsik + Downlink - Going to the beach
Gogol Bordello - Immigraniada (Bassnectar Remix)
Led zeppelin - D'Yer Mak'er (Snoop Dogg – Drop It Like It’s Hot mashed in)
Nirvana - In bloom
Daladubz - Pink Elephants VIP
Malente + Dex - Lions (Bassnectar + Ill gates remix)
The Bloody Beetroots - Warp (Dirtyphonics remix)
House of Pain - Jump Around (Jantsen remix)
Martin solveig - Hello (Enigma dubz remix)
Chris Brown - Look at me now (Dillon Francis remix (Edited and mashed up with other samples incuding Daft Punk - Technologic)
Exponaut - E621
Dev + The Cataracs - Bass Down low (Proper Villains Remix)
Jeuce - Kiss (Zeds Dead Remix)
Swede:art - My home is not here (Kidkanevil remix)
Bassnectar - Timestretch (Mixing in: My home is not here)
Bassnectar - Boomerang
46:25 (30 sec clip of song id?)
Ellie goulding - Lights (Bassnectar remix)
The Upbeats - Mole station 5
Helmet - Unsung
Bassnectar - Bass head (KRS One - Hip Hop vs. Rap, Jay Z – Izzo acapellas)
The Qemists - Stompbox (Spor remix) (Bassnectar edit)
submitted by ben10103 to bassnectar [link] [comments]


2014.07.13 19:03 MartyDonovan IJW: The Lego Movie (2014)

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1490017/
The Lego Movie (2014) Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller; Starring Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks
Rating: 5/5
What we’ve got here is a fantastic film, which could genuinely be enjoyed by anyone. That might be an obvious thing to say, but The Lego Movie might be the closest we’ve come to the elusive story which explores realistic, down to earth problems while being completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots. And there are plenty of robots.
Ironically, for a film based on a lucrative product owned by a giant corporation, The Lego Movie appears to bite the hand that feeds it and actually deconstructs (here come the puns) the corporate world. Who cares if the film will probably make a killing in tie-in Lego sets and video games? At least they decided to tell a compelling and engaging story instead of just palming us off with a heartless cash-in or an overblown explosion-fest.
Similarly, it feels like it’s far too easy these days for film makers to knock out a bunch of cheap CGI movies every year, at the expense of the increasingly neglected but labour intensive art of stop-motion. It’s understandable why this route has been taken, and there are a few gems in the cascade, but outside of Pixar, CGI films are not something I routinely seek out.
Apparently 90% of The Lego Movie was CGI, and a little bit of stop motion, but apart from the facial expressions and fluid movements which would seriously push the limitations of a plastic Lego man, you could easily have convinced me that it was the other way around. Everything looks like it’s made from Lego, even the oceans and the explosions.
It’s both sobering to have reached a point where the two become almost indistinguishable and satisfying to see CGI being used to make a great film which works as both a satire of modern consumerism and an exploration of that age-old Lego dilemma: should one build according to the instructions, or just smash everything into a big pile and build whatever.
Our main man is Emmett (Chris Pratt), your generic Lego man, right down to his classic Lego smiley face. He’s a construction worker living in a huge Lego city, who has very few ideas of his own. He follows his instructions, smiles and waves to everyone he meets, pays through the nose for coffee on the way to work and does whatever the vaguely Orwellian government says is the right thing to do.
In a typical narrative fashion, events kick off after a chance encounter with funky punk girl Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks) who is a member of the resistance. Emmett is dragged along for the ride and passes through the masquerade, leaving the regulated order of the big city and discovering the crazy and colourful potential of Lego in the world of the master builders, exiled lords of creative construction who believe Emmett to be the chosen one to bring balance to the force and end the days of instruction-based oppression. The trouble is he’s never had an original thought in his life.
The film is rounded out with a great cast of characters and some cracking cameos, both showcasing some solid vocal talent. The enemy and instigator of the repressive order is a suitably zany Will Ferrell hamming it up as the Lego universe’s ‘President Business’ who is assisted by the conflicted split-personality of his chief enforcer Good Cop/Bad Cop. voiced by Liam Neeson at his Irish tough guy best.
With a wry nod to his frequent typecasting, Morgan Freeman plays a wise old sage and among the cameos are Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum (from directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s other movie of the moment, 22 Jump Street).
The film really embodies the spirit of Lego, and as such is a huge nostalgia trip for anyone who’s ever encountered the stuff. Once they leave the city, the characters traverse the length and breadth of the Lego-verse, making their way through the many themes Lego has released over the years, providing settings as diverse as western, medieval and pirate.
There are some tender and serious moments, but most of it is a merciless but affectionate parody of whatever transpires, be it city life, epic destiny, overblown villainy or blockbuster action. Everything’s funny and a little wacky, riding easily and successfully on the inherent humour that comes with having everything made out of Lego.
There are even nods to unpopular, ill-conceived, or just plain random Lego themes, and references small and large to various other franchise tie-ins (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Superheroes, etc.) showcasing the kind of mad-cap crossovers you can cook up when you have the licence. By this token, Batman himself (Will Arnett) along with a character from the classic 1980s Space theme (Charlie Day) are major players in the plot.
The ending, which I won’t spoil, does get a little schmaltzy, but it’s forgivable. Otherwise, nothing disappoints, and everything one might want or expect from a Lego movie is delivered in spades. Oh yes, and I managed to get through an entire review of this film without using the word ‘awesome’. Dang. Good soundtrack, though.
If you want to read any of my other reviews, I post them to a blog, http://sunshinebeachcinema.blogspot.com/
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2014.02.22 23:49 Gaarawarr Best Varion World Top 8 Qualifiers!

Hello Everyone!
First off I'd like to thank everyone that participated today. We had some interesting technical issues blindside us, but I'm glad we got them sorted out. We'll have an official tournament feedback thread up on Sunday and we hope you all let us know the good and bad from the tournament.
Now on to the results!
The Top 8 are as follows:
I've posted the full brackets and scoreboard from today on our Best Varion World page. Tomorrow morning I'll be posting the Top 8 brackets there as well so people will know their matchups.
The Top 8 tournament will be streamed on the Waystone Games Twitch channel starting at 3:00 pm EST and all matches will be streamed and cast.
See you there!
~Gaarawarr
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