When Iranian national Golshifteh Farahani decided to take a stand against Iran's notoriously strict rules for women, she wanted maximun exposure. So what better way for the Paris based actress to show Ahmedinejad the finger than to show a whole lot more than than, by posing naked for a French magazine. Well it certainly got their attention (plus the attention of a many others judging by the huge upsurge in visitors to her Facebook page from her home country), the Iranian government has banned her from ever returning home. According to Ms. Farahani, an official from Iran's Ministry of Culture told her that Iran didn't need any actors or actresses, which was especially ironic since Iran won it's first ever Golden Globe award this year for the film "A Separation" (The Independent).
From the nude to the rude now, as popular British daytime quiz “Countdown” stirred up a bit of controversy this week when a contestant won one round with the word “wanker”. The object of the game is to make the longest possible word from a random selection of vowels and consonants in just 30 seconds, and in this particular round this meant the letters RAEPKWAEN. Mark Murphy’s six letter offering left host Nick Hewer at a loss for words, but was the longest and is in the dictionary, hence took the round after his opponent could do no better than 5. Clearly though “wanker” shouldn’t have netted Mark the points, he could have had “reawaken” for eight (Orange).
A slightly more pleasant shock greeted teacher Parijat Saha from Dinajpur in India when he checked his bank account online one evening. In a classic Monopoly moment, a bank error in his favour gave him a balance of 490 billion rupees (about $9.7 billion). Mr. Saha promptly rang the State Bank of India to report the mistake, joking that the bank appeared to have so much money it was overflowing into his account. A bank spokesman later claimed that the funds were uncleared, and in any case couldn’t have been withdrawn (Digital Spy).
Finally, a three-night astronomy special on British television scored two spectacular successes this week. The BBC show “Stargazing Live”, hosted physicist Brian Cox and comedian Dara O’Briain live from Jodrell Bank, encouraged viewers to get more involved with astronomy, both from their gardens and online, and has led to a 500% surge in telescope sales in the UK in the last few days, but more spectacularly, one viewer may have actually discovered a new exo-planet after visiting a website featured on the show. Chris Holmes was one of sixty thousand people who were inspired to visit planethunter.org after watching the show, and despite having no more than a passing interest before, he identified a possible eclipse of the star SPH10066540 by a Neptune sized object in a 90 day orbit (BBC News).
25 year old Russian contortionist "Zlata" has just released a calendar featuring her in 12 of her most eye- (and spine-) popping poses. From cooking in the kitchen with one leg behind her head, to getting off a bus with, er, one leg behind her head, the spry former-gymnast has tied herself in knots to produce something to please her legions of fans.
More facts about Zlata, with many more examples of her art, can be found here, courtesy of the Daily Mail. (Potentially NSFW.)
Prior to movies, magic lantern slides were omnipresent, cutting-edge entertainment. Consequently, the range of materials they covered--from juvenile to adult--was enormous--and often weird.
S: That was terrible!
W: Horrendous!
S: I'm offended!
W: I'm appalled!
S: So what are we gonna do?
W: What else? E-mail it to everyone we know.
S: Good idea.
If you stay up late all the time, like I do, chances are you've seen some of the infomercials that this video is based upon. I'm willing to bet you feel better about yourself after you've watched this.
Everybody who's anybody knows that one of the best motion pictures of all time is the original Star Wars. So what is the best way to pay tribute to such a cinematic masterpiece? That's right, by breaking the film into 472 fifteen second clips and having fans reenact it. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Star Wars Uncut:
As confusing as it should be to change actors, style, and even plot details four times per minute, somehow this actually works. There are some completed segments and you can see most of the individual clips on their site. I only wish I had found out about this sooner, so I could take part.
This Friday sees the world premier of a new classical composition by popular modern composer Anna Meredith. However this is a score with a difference as Anna, in collaboration with top British beatboxer Schlomo (it's his real name), has incorporated 5 of the performance artists into her latest piece, Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra, playing at London Southbank Centre. The first problem facing the odd-couple duo was how exactly to score a beatbox performance as the vocal styling had grown from its hip-hop roots entirely by 'word of mouth' and has no formal notation. Undeterred Meredith and Schlomo have spent a year constructing their own, which they hope will gain wider adoption when the entire score of the new work is made available online for free following the first performance (FT).
The Southbank Centre has put up a 'teaser trailer' for the new work
And Schlomo's beatbox talents can be checked out courtesy of the BBC's Jules Holland Show.
As very few of you are probably aware, I have been away for a while. Now that I have returned from winter vacation I can start posting again, and I will start with a few weird things I have found around the internet over the past few months.
First, we have an ad that I noticed right here on Weird Universe:
I know Microsoft is evil, but getting their rival to link to their competing service? That's just terrible.
Category: Accidents, Goofs and Screw-ups, Body, Nudism, Education, Entertainment, Actors, Science