Lest We Forget is a Short Film with a Long Memory

Lest We Forget is a short civil war film directed by Brandon McCormick and produced by Whitestone Motion Pictures.  It’s the kind of short film I don’t see much of anymore.  Very simple and well-produced.  I really like its fearless punch and its call to the audience to not forget.  Because we do forget.  We forget everything.  We want to forget.  In fact, we’ve been seeing a lot of wonderful old-fashioned folk come out of the woodwork around this country to put on a country fair display of their rancid all-American racism.  This film is for that guy at the town hall meeting on health care reform who decided to tear up the poster of Rosa Parks.  Boy did he forget!  That guy should watch this film and think about it a lot.  Then put himself out with the garbage.  Because I really don’t care whether a guy like that remembers or not.  He’s really just a hole in the road that needs to be paved over.

But the one great thing about all this raging racism coming out, much of which is directed at President Obama, is that it does in fact come out.  We see the bigots.  Yes, indeed… we know who you are.

Science Fiction Story Anthology from Starship Sofa

01 Front_Section.inddThe wonderful science fiction podcasting site, Starship Sofa, in celebration of its 100th episode, has published its first collection of stories as a book. Not just an ordinary book. It’s a book filled with fantastic illustrations and gorgeous layout that hearkens back to the pulp publications of the 1930s through 1950s. It even has vintage advertisements!

The best part is that you can either buy the book or read it as a free ebook in an excellent ebook viewer.

Some of the authors featured are Michael Moorcock, Alastair Reynolds, Ken Scholes, Ruth Nestvold, Elizabeth Bear, and more.

UFO Sighting Sci-Fi From India

All UFO sightings and reports of them are works of science fiction and should be judged on their artistic merits. Some are simply genius. The whole Area 51 alien ship landing story in the U.S. is terrific science fiction and fascinates me every time I read about it. This little video from India is extremely good science fiction. It has a cheerfulness sorely lacking in most sci-fi produced in the U.S. Our sci-fi has become big, self-important, thumping, overbearing and deadly dull. This video shows a tiny glimpse of the future of science fiction as I see it. The best science fiction will be made on a cell phone. Trust me, if it’s got Will Smith, it ain’t science fiction.

Via weeimage

Panoramic Image of Milky Way Galaxy

Two French photographers, Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier, spent weeks in the desert highlands of Chile, and a week in the Canary Islands, taking photos of the stars. Using a Nikon D3 digital camera, they took thousands of photos of the night sky and then stitched the photos together to make a panoramic view of the Milky Way Galaxy as seen from Earth. The pictures are extremely high-resolution because the photographers took them from some of the darkest spots on Earth, giving unsurpassed clarity of view.

You can see an excellent interactive zoomable version of the image at photographer Serge Brunier’s web site.

You can also see a zoomable version of the image at Gigagalaxyzoom.

Edgar Allen Poe Digital Collection

PoeRavenThe University of Texas has an excellent program online called The Edgar Allen Poe Digital Collection.  They’ve got digital copies of Poe manuscripts, letters, early editions, books that he owned, newspaper clippings, and photos.  This image shows an edition of collected poems owned by Poe in which can be seen his handwritten notes and corrections for the publisher.  Look at how pissed off he was about the word ‘Raven’ consistently appearing with a lowercase ‘r.’

Halloween is coming.  What better way to prepare than by reading some Poe?

Via Boing Boing

Animation: I Got Opinions

Collaborative animation from Watermark for the Greg Johnson single, ‘I Got Opinions.’ I don’t usually post music videos, but this was just kind of cute. Very colorful and full of imagination. It features the work of eight illustrators.  I like the clever ways it finds to move from one illustration style to another.

I found this at Cartoon Brew.