Category Archives: Immortality

The Old Guard is packed with action and a thrilling story ripped straight from the comics, but what did the film change from the source material?

Marvel and DC have always had a joint monopoly on live-action superhero productions, but once in a while, good movies and TV shows that aren't associated with the two brands come out. Netflix hit movie The Old Guard,whichis based on a comic series of the same namebelongs to that category.

RELATED:The Old Guard: 5 Ways It's Charlize Theron's Best Action Movie (& 5 Better Alternatives)

Despite the fact that comic creatorGreg Rucka wrote the movie's screenplay, there are a couple of differences between the story on paper and the story on screen. Not surprising given that the screenplay is said to have been rewritten three times.Here's what's the same, and what's different between source material and film

In both the film and the comics,former CIA operative Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) pretends to be a friend to Andy and her team at first but it is laterrevealed that he isworking for the villain Merrick. Soon, he realizes the error of his ways and decides to betray Merrick.

The immortals spare him in both the comics and the film. His reason for cutting ties with Merrick are similar too, He isn't cut out for the blatant greed and cruelty that Merrick embodies. Though the film adds a smaller detail by making Copley choose tohonor his wife's memory by doing more good than bad.

In the movie,Quynhgets placed in what appears to be an Iron Maiden device and tossed to the bottom of the sea. She remains trapped there for about 500 years. At the end of the film, she is seen again, suggesting that she has resurrected.

In the comics, her death is caused by a storm. She isn't deliberately drowned. According to screenwriterGreg Rucka, the change was made to save money. Apparently, the storm scene from the comics would have cost too much.

In the movie,U.S. Marine Nile Freeman gets targeted by an enemy soldier in Afghanistan who slits her throat. As expected, she recovers seconds later. When she wakes up, she has a strange dream that makes the other immortals aware she exists.

RELATED:The 10 Best Movies Based On Comics That Aren't Marvel Or DC (According To IMDb)

Andy then tracks her down to grab her justbefore the military can take her to Germanyto perform tests on her. This is exactly the same way that the immortals find out about Nile in the comics too. She has a dream, forcing Andy to swoop in and take her just in time.

Despite Andy being immortal at the beginning of the film, she lost her immortality somewhere between, leading to an intense third act where she had to fight hard to keep herself alive. At some point during a gun battle, theother immortals had to use their bodies to prevent Andy from getting hit as they also fired at the enemy.

The vulnerability helped Andy understand humanity better.This could be best seen when a stranger helped her patch up a stab wound. However, in all the installments of the comics, there wasn't a single time when Andy lost her immortality.

They obviously appear better on screen thanks to the choreography but most of the fight scenes happen exactly as they do in the comics. This includes the memorable one between Andy and Nile in the plane. Apparently, 3000 takes were needed for that specific scene.

The same baddies that get killed in battle in the comics are the same ones that get killed in the movie. The comics actually allocate plenty of illustrations to the action scenes, making them look as realistic as possible.

The film's best relationship is that of the LGBTQ couple, Joe and Nicky. When Joe gets taunted and asked whether Nicky truly is his boyfriend, Joe gives a classic response by saying that "boyfriend" is not a good enough way to describe Nicky. As beautiful as the moment is, it is even better in the comics.

RELATED:10 Questions We Have After Watching The Old Guard

In the comics, Joe describes Nicky in a poetic manner, saying things like"his very thoughts make music of the mundane." If viewers want to relish the experience of that scene a bit more, they should probably check out the comics.

InThe Old Guard's third act, it is revealed through Copley's discovery, thatwhenever the group uses their powers to do good, there is a larger ripple effect in the rest of the world. For example, there's a new major medical discovery or the disappearance of a natural disaster that had been predicted to occur.

This revelation happens in the comics too, only that it's in the second volume, not the first volume that the film is based on. Given that there were a number of rewrites to the screenplay, the decision to bring the revelation forward was probably made in the last stages.

Veronica Ngo's character Quynh was a memorable but she isn't exactly as she was in the comics. First, her nationality was changed from Japanese to Vietnamese. Second, her name in the comics was actually Noriko (a Japanese name).

The changes were actually requested by Ngo, Since she is Vietnamese, she asked Rucka if the character's name and nationality could be switched to suit her Vietnamese heritage. Rucka wasn't sure about that, so he asked the director. Luckily, she agreed to the switch because it wouldn't affect the plot in any major way.

When Booker and Andy meet Copley in the later stages of the move, Booker betrays her and wounds her. He later regrets it because he thought she would heal quickly but she just so happens to have lost her immortality.

RELATED:The 10 Best Comic Book Sequels To Famous Movies

Booker is punished for his betrayal by being banished from the group for 100 years. Thegroup then meets Copley who informs them of the ripple effect. This plays out similarly in the comics though it also happens a bit later.

Steve Merrick was more of a corporate villain in the movie. He's a pharma billionaire who is keen on capturing Andy and her team so that he can conduct experiments on their bodies. He just so happens to have an army of goons to which he relies on to defend him,

In the comics, Merrick is a proper good too. He is buff and tattooed up. He is a skilled fighter who constantly intimidates his henchmen by doing push-ups during meetings. And when he first meets Joe and Nicky, he even stabs them for fun just to see if they'll die.

NEXT:10 Movies To Watch If You Liked Netflix's The Old Guard

Next Harry Potter: 10 "What If" Theories That Will Make You Pensive

Philip Etemesi is an author, journalist, screenwriter and film critic based in Nairobi. Kenya. As a child, he preferred watching movies like The Goodfellas instead of Home Alone. His girlfriend constantly has to pull him from the front of the TV but he just keeps returning. Stubborn dude! An animal lover, Philip also has a pet giraffe called Refu.

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The Old Guard: 5 Things It Kept From The Comics (& 5 Things It Changed) - Screen Rant

When the New York Times and CNN recently referred to the staged town hall spectacles of Biden and Trump as dueling events, they inadvertently revealed the truth that U.S. presidential elections are Americas favorite movie and that the corporate media is in the entertainment business.

While it is ludicrous to imagine these tottering actors crossing swords in tights, their skirmishes in suits and ties are good for a few laughs, if you have the stomach to watch them. Only people who still believe in professional wrestling would think these clowns dont work for the same bosses the Umbrella People, aka the power elites, the national security state, etc., who own the country and choose their stooges to represent their interests in the White House.

I much prefer Mel Brooks, a genuinely funny guy.

The columnist Russell Baker once said the purpose of such political entertainment is to provide a manageably small cast for a national sitcom, or soap opera, or docudrama, making it easy for media people to persuade themselves they are covering the news while mostly just entertaining us.

As for debates and town hall farces in television prime time, the witty Baker said that the charm of television entertainment is its ability to bridge the chasm between dinner and bedtime without mental distraction.

Now lets proceed to the dark side, where the sardonic screams of laughter dissolve into tears.

For such entertainment serves a devious distracting purpose: to conceal the nature of social evil and the driving forces behind American politics today. It is not particularly complicated unless the syllogism All cats die/Socrates is dead/ therefore Socrates is a cat rings true.

Then its an impossible conundrum.

We are not cats or Socrates, as far as I know. But like them, we will also die. Everyone knows this, but the thought of death is not particularly have-a-nice-dayish, so people deny it as much as possible in a host of ways. Most people prefer life over death, and when death does approach and can no longer be denied, most hope for immortality in some way, shape, or form.

Yes, there are those who assert this isnt true for them, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity. There are philosophical arguments to support their position, such as that of the Roman poet Lucretius in his famous poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). But I would maintain with the great psychoanalyst Rollo May that all such naturalistic efforts, including Lucretiuss, to explain away human anxiety rooted in death, founder on the human emotions of pity, grief, love, and loneliness. Rational explanations take us only so far. In their efforts to deny the human condition and dismiss the spiritual dimension, the irrational, and the daimonic, they open the door to madness, as is happening today with the push by the worlds economic elite to convince people that they are machines and that their machine dreams will conquer death.

For those who love life, it seems axiomatic to me that some form of perpetuation and redemption of an individuals life in the face and fear of death is widely desired. This can take many forms: a literal afterlife, fame, heirs, monuments, money, children, etc. History is quite clear that people have always sought some way of transcending their physical fates.

This was aptly noted by Graham Greene, the English novelist, when, as an old man approaching death, he was asked if he was disappointed at not receiving the Nobel Prize, and he said no, since he was hoping for a greater prize.

In his important book, The Denial of Death (Pulitzer Prize 1974 for general non-fiction), the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, puts it succinctly:

Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.

Faced with such an impossible situation, then, overwhelmed from childhood with a sense of ones own ultimate physical powerlessness but being symbolic creatures as well as physical ones, the normal person learns to repress the terror of death by building various defenses that allow one to believe that he ultimately controls his death. Ones natural impotence is then hidden within the vital lie of character; one lives within the manageable social world that helps one blot out existential awareness by offering various social games and cultural symbols, agreed forms of madness that narcotize the fear. One learns to adjust. The aim is to cut life down to manageable proportions, domesticate terror, and trust in the cultural and social authorities for protection and reassurance. Obedience is key.

Listen to Big Daddy and he will rescue you , especially when he first tells you that Mr. Pumpkin Head is coming to get you unless you run into his protective embrace.

These days, its Halloween all year round in the land of the free and the home of the brave where the fear of death is handed out like poisoned candy and Big Daddy waits at the door disguised as everyones benevolent grandfather. To be treated, you must be masked. That is his trick. Stay well, he mutters, after he drops a dollop of sweet fear into your bag and cackles behind his face.

Everywhere you look these days, people are doubly masked. The paper kind and by definition, since the the word person, being derived from the Latin, persona, means mask, while there is another Latin word, larva, that also means mask or ghost or evil spirit. Clearly there is a dance contest underway, a danse macabre. And who will win nobody knows.

Every conflict over truth, wrote the psychoanalyst Otto Rank, is in the last analysis just the same old struggle over immortality.

This is exactly what is going on now with the fierce disagreements over Covid-19.

Like the attacks of September 11, 2001, the anthrax attacks, the ginning up of terrorism fear with Homeland Securitys color-coded warning system, the lies about weapons of mass-destruction, and the coronavirus early warning systems, people have adopted positions upon which they stake their psychological lives. To admit you were snookered is a little death that is hard to swallow.

We are being subjected to mind-control on a vast scale, the continual pumping up of the fear of death to control the population. Americans have been living in an atmosphere of dread for almost twenty years. Its so old and so obvious but cuts so deep it works like a charm. You dont want to die, do you, so come here into Big Daddys arms.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell writes that The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. It is a famous quote that is not true when taken out of context. The Umbrella People and their lackeys dont seek power entirely for its own sake. They have a larger agenda: immortality.

If one reads Orwell carefully, one comes upon a key passage that clarifies the previous quote. The evil OBrien, the torturer and member of the Inner Party who poses as a member of the resistance to Big Brother (sound familiar?), asks his victim Winston Smith to reverse the slogan from Freedom is Slavery to Slavery is Freedom:

Alone free the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is destined to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he will be all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter external reality as you would call it is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute.

All power is fundamentally power to deny mortality. This is true whether it is the power of the state or church. And it is always sacred power.

Many often ask why do the super-rich and powerful always want more. Its simple. They wish to transcend their pre-existing human mortality and become gods immortals. They stupidly believe that if they can lord it over others, kill, dominate, achieve status, become billionaires, presidents, magnates, celebrities, etc., they will somehow live in some weird forever.

In a process that has spanned at least a hundred and fifty years or so, our traditional cultural/religious symbol systems have been radically undermined, most momentously by the Faustian creation of Lord Nuke. All forms of symbolic immortality (theological, biological, creative, natural, and experiential) that formerly provided a sense of continuity have been severely threatened. This is the haunting specter lurking in the background of life today.

What is death? How to defeat or transcend it? How to affirm life in the face of death?

One paradoxical way that political leaders do this is by killing. Followers who accede to such killing join their leaders, not simply to see others dead, but to acquire power over death itself to kill their own deaths. It is perverse, of course, and is summed up in the saying to love the bomb joyously, to experience the nightmare of oblivion as ecstasy. Isnt this what the philosophy of voting for the lesser of two evil is about? At least he will be our killer. Our evil killer, but not as bad as yours. You lose.

I have read that there is a painting still visible at the entrance to a house in ruined Pompeii that tells us much about power and wealth. It perfectly symbolizes the meaning of the economic gap between the super-rich e.g. those behind the World Economic Forum, the CIA, the presidential candidates, the corporate media and the rest of us. It pictures a man weighing his penis on a scale of gold coins. Gold, God, wealth, and power. Its an old story.

Today, however, there is a difference, for the spirit of nihilism has grown as belief in the spiritual dimension and God has diminished dramatically. Money or gold, wealth in all its forms, is todays foremost immortality symbol, a sign that one is powerful and can conquer death. What else are Trumps gold-emblazoned Tower and hair, and Bidens boastfully admitted threat to withhold one billion dollars from Ukraine unless they fire the prosecutor investigating his son, Hunter. The greasing of palms, bribery, tax theft, etc. par for the course in a corrupt society run by thieves and criminals.

Becker says of this wealth obsession:

The only hint we get of the cultural repression seeping through is that even dedicated financiers wash their hands after handling money. The victory over death is a fantasy that cannot be fully believed in; money doesnt entirely banish feces [decay and death that is of course defeated with toilet paper as Covid-19 has proven], and so the threat of germs and vulnerability in the very process of securing immortality.

Pseudo immortality.

Enter Covid-19. Like the attacks of September 11, 2001, it is death writ large. An insidious terrorist threat. Invisible, sneaky, ready to pounce. Fear and trembling. So-called surprise attacks that were preceded by simulations and live drills. Numerous parallels, too many to mention. Lets not. Have a nice day! Stay safe!

So what do the super-rich controllers want now? What are the World Economic Forums Claus Schwab, Google and the Defense Departments Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates, Ray Kurzweil of Google and The Singularity, et al. pushing now that Covid-19 has so many cowering in fear?

These people have realized that the thing that their money and power must do is to create a world where trans-humanism must triumph and people of flesh and blood must be induced and forced to become the machines they have been told they are. If you doubt this is underway, research the World Economic Forums agenda, see what the Great Reset is about, the Build Back Better slogans, the massive push to create on-line existence for everyone, etc. As a recent ad I saw says: The world is going digital.

The goal of these mad technocratic elites is to create a fabricated reality where the visible world becomes nearly meaningless once the screen world becomes peoples window on the world. An electronic nothingness to replace reality as people in the industrialized countries gleefully embrace digital wraparound apparitions and the poor and vulnerable of this world suffer and die out of sight and out of mind. It is the fundamental seismic shift of our era and perhaps the greatest propaganda operation ever undertaken. A sort of end-times desperate gambit.

And it just so happens to revolve around the use of death fear to accomplish its goals.

But for the elites, there will be no death. For having realized that their stolen wealth and power can only take them so far, and they too will become food for worms, they have commandeered science and medicine to undertake their immortality projects. If medicine fails to find for them the secret of immortality, then computer science and Artificial Intelligence will, and they will be uploaded into computers and live forever in their beloved cyberspace. Digital immortality is not a joke for these people see Kurzweils (the director of engineering at Google) The Singularity, etc. for they are actually insane but hold key positions throughout the computer and biotechnology industries. Check where the super rich invest their money to confirm this. None of it is secret.

Having heeded Russell Bakers words about television offering no mental distraction between dinner and bedtime, I took to my crib early, knowing Tweedledee and Tweedledum would be dueling again, this time in what they humorously called a debate. I was surrounded by my stuffed animals that protected me and I slept safe and sound.

Upon awakening, I read that the gladiators had exchanged blows but that both were left standing for the big showdown on November 3. I also noticed that each had used the words dark winter in reference to Covid-19. Biden said one was coming and Trump said he didnt know.

Neither, of course, spoke of the Dark Winter Exercise, a senior level war game conducted on June 22-23, 2001, about a biological attack, a smallpox outbreak, the public health response, the lack of vaccines, the need for quarantine and isolation, the restriction of civil liberties, and the role of the Defense Department and the military in the response. Nor did they speak of anthrax attacks, but the Canadian researcher, Graeme MacQueen, will here fill you in on both, in case you dont know. Maybe the boys just forgot.

I am sure they didnt talk about the elements of Trumps Operation Warp Speed, but if you wish to understand how we are being gamed, Whitney Webb will tell you here.

Was there any mention of the Russians? I havent heard. They are always a kind of a solution. As my friend Joe Green has said:

All dissenting opinions are Russian. I think Socrates said that. Im paraphrasing.

Maybe many are still Waiting for the Barbarians.

This article was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2020 at 10:20am and is filed under General, Opinion.

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Death, Money, and the Dueling Frauds: Trump and Biden - Dissident Voice

Spider-Man has the unenviable choice of whether or not to kill his zombified partner, Mary Jane in the latest issue of Marvel Zombies Resurrection.

This article contains spoilers forMarvel Zombies: Resurrection #3

Peter Parker and Mary Jane go together like zombies and decapitation. Or maybe its like peanut butter and jelly, except Spider-Mans peanut butter is an ax and Mary Janes jelly is her head, because Spider-Man may have to kill his zombified life partner.

Spider-Man has been aiding Reed and Sue Richards children in their quest to find a cure to the infection that has turned all superheroes - and the remaining human population that hasnt already become food - into zombies. Thezombie disease came from Galactus corpse, which crash landed on earth and its revealed in Marvel Zombies: Resurrection #3 that the infected can travel the multiverse via portals into Limbo thanks to a zombified Magik. As Spider-Mans crew of zombie killers/would-be infection healers arrive at the hives central location in the underwater city of Atlantis, they are surrounded by a legion of zombie superheroes and none other than the love of Peter Parkers life.

Related: Marvel's Deadliest Version of Punisher Joins The Zombie Apocalypse

Now undead, Mary Jane offers immortality to Spider-Man via infection. Creative team Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Leonard Kirk offer up an unenvious choice to Peter Parker: kill M.J. or turn into a zombie. The everlasting life of a zombie could seem a romantic notion to Peter, who could spend eternity with his partner. An immortality marred by the grim prospect of killing to eat and watching his girl devour everyone in sight, but immortality nonetheless.

Peter has spent every issue of this seriesrevisiting his past mistakes through horrid nightmares that play out at the beginning of each comic. In his flashbacks, Spider-Man relives the early days of the infection. Most heroes fell quickly and Spider-Man was stuck caring for Valeria and Franklin Richards after their parents turned. He couldnt kill Reed and Sue then but he certainly wasnt going to let the kids join the family business of brain eating. But now faced with the option to finally stop running and living in constant fear, does Spider-man have what it takes to kill?

Spider-Man is one of the more altruistic heroes and has often sacrificed himself for the greater good. But there is no greater good option here; its just kill or turn. Spider-Man and Mary Jane are meant for each other, but does that love extend into the afterlife? Will Spider-Man be able to stomach the remains of dead flesh as well as the regretful choice of turning zombie to be with his love? It seems unlikely that Spider-Man would give up his mortal life to be with M.J. when he still has the Richards kids to keep care of. Though it surely has to be tempting.

The alternatives to becoming a zombie are not ideal. Spider-Man and his cohorts are surrounded by super-powered undead and are trapped in the sunken city of Atlantis. Its down to fight, flight or become a feast for the undead fiends. The limited series is set to wrap up with the next issue, so Spider-Mans impossible choice will probably lead up to the conclusion of the story. And in a series rife with bleak choices it only makes sense that Spider-Man is faced with the ultimate one.

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Does Spider-Man Have What It Takes To Kill Zombie Mary Jane? - Screen Rant

The sheer number of pots, dark and brown pottery of all sizes, was staggering. Early explorers say more than 1,400 pots were found just laying in plain sight in the flowstone pools, visible to the naked eye with no need for excavation. Thousands more are likely buried under layers of calcite, each one begging Chac for rain, rain, please bring the rain.

We all slinked along the ridges of the pool, inches away from artifacts that had survived for centuries in the dark.

Look down, said Ian.

It took me a second to realize I was staring down at a skull, its yellowed jaw missing its two front teeth like some cheerful toddler. Several years before, a photographers long lens knocked the teeth out as he bent over too far for that perfect picture.

Above and past the ladder of doom, another skull laid face down. A large hole in the back of the skull made me think this soul was bludgeoned, but I was wrong.

A man, holding his own and his wifes digital camera, had struggled for a couple of shots, and he accidentally dropped his wifes camera, which burst through the cranium.

For the powers that be in Belize, that was nearly the last straw. Terrified of the continued damage to the relics and remains, the government planned to close the cave, but the official guides begged and pleaded, and a compromise was made.

No photos. No cameras. No gear. So far, that rule has worked, and no other major incidents of damage have occurred since, Ian said.

This is our livelihood, he said. We fought to keep the cave open for tours. We go through a long training to become guides. Its an honor.

Staring at my crystallized boy, it was an honor for me to be in the dark with him, to remember him in some small way for what he gave up to try to save his people.

His death wasnt enough for Chac. The rains didnt come. Massive cities were left abandoned for the jungle to reclaim, and his people scattered defeated and lost across Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

But still, The Crystal Maiden remains silent and still and glowing under the eyes of tourists curious for a glimpse of immortality. For me, the dangers of the underworld were worth the chance to slip back into history and honor the dead.

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Confronting The Dead In The Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave In Belize - TravelAwaits

The conscious does not believe that anything digital will last very long.

Cartoon artist and illustrator Ville Tietvinen turns 50, but his thoughts revolve on three time levels within a radius of 5,000 years, from the Bronze Age to the present.

Iiro Kttnerin scripted cartoon work Spacing is nearing completion.

Its based on the earliest found Aramaic scroll that tells a version of a 5,000-year-old flood story, Tietvinen says.

An archaeological detective story in modern times explores what really happened in the days of Noah and how history was rewritten in 450 BC when book scrolls were burned in the Jerusalem temple.

Spacing will be released next fall. Knowledgeable and known as a screenwriter, Kttner has used the University of Helsinkis Old Testament Exegesis Lecturer as an expert. Kirsi Valkamaatawho, according to Tietvinen, knows the Bronze Age very well.

The Dead Sea the scrolls have made the Knowledgeable think modern digital. There are still mostly parts of them, but something has survived.

SpacingWhen making the book, the belief in anything permanent has faltered. But if anything about us survives, then books. I dont think anything digital will last very long. I cling to analog and as old ways as possible to tell new stories.

Culture and art have traditionally been seen to represent the mortal mans desire for immortality, a means to leave a mark on the world of itself.

Immortality was also discussed by the photographer Maija Tammen made with Immortal (2020), a combination of art and non-fiction. It tells of a Hydra polyp that does not age and could live forever unless external factors kill it.

Known with Kttner has done the same Tree stories trilogy, picture books for adults. Thinning was supposed to be the next part of the series, but the Knowledgeable liked the idea by asking Kttner to expand the comic script from it.

About thinning becomes more than 140 pages long, the most extensive work of the conscious then Invisible hands comic book work (2011).

The book about a paperless Moroccan immigrant received tremendous publicity, was taken in four editions, and translated into German, French, Swedish, and Arabic.

Invisible hands i did five years, drawing took three years. Thinning Ive done a couple of years. A cartoon is a cumbersome way of telling stories, so its not worth using for day flies. But I miss that dialogue of image and word.

Knowledgeable especially to draw his comics in a laborious, almost as laborious style as his illustrations. Many cartoonists use lighter techniques.

Invisible hands after the conscious artistic burden has been lightened by collaborators, Kttner and Tammi, but also Aino Tietvinen, his own daughter, with whom Tietvinen made a book mixing comics and picture books Just a bad dream (2013) Ainos dreams.

I thought I was a perfectionist, but Maija was interested in all the steps of making a book. It is enjoyable to work with Iiro because he knows everything about the structures of the stories and is therefore able to break them.

But Aino has definitely been the most demanding partner. Nothing suited him without negotiation. But I had to illustrate his imagination.

At the time of writing, Aino Tietvinen was 67 years old.

Ville Tietvinen became interested in making comics only as an adult, while studying. He studied architecture. First-born Smiling moon (1995) was born then Harri Hannulan with.

We started making the best cartoon in the world. Now I hope the publisher has rejected it. I graduated as an architect, but I havent done those jobs in a single day. I am not formally valid for anything I do.

In addition to his own books, Tietvinen has made layouts, stamps, posters and more for other books. After comics, he is best known for magazine illustrations. He has done journalistic illustration Ville Hnninen with book Narrative image (2018).

Even in illustrating magazines, the Knowledgeable is more fascinated by paper than the web, even though he uses digital aids in drawing. He says the golden age of newspaper illustration is ten years behind. Before, more than half of Knights work was in it, now about a quarter.

Illustration can deepen the news in a different way than photography, but the savings have struck and it is being used less all the time. Images increase but content does not. It is claimed that we live in visual time, but this does not always seem to be the case.

Who?

Born in Helsinki in 1970.

Graduated as an architect from the Helsinki University of Technology in 2000.

Illustrations from the 1990s to Helsingin Sanomat, Yliopisto magazine and Suomen Kuvalehti, among others.

Comic books: Smiling Moon (1995), Birds and Seas (2003), Invisible Hands (2011), Only Bad Dream (2013).

Storybook series Trees of Trees (20142015) with Iiro Kttner.

Picture book Invisible (2016) with Elina Hirvonen.

Narrative image non-fiction book (2018) on journalistic illustration with Ville Hnninen.

Art book Immortal Lost Memoirs of Cornelia Dulac Concerning the Freshwater Polyp Hydra (2020) with Maija Tammi.

Awards include: Finnish Critics Associations Criticism Incentives for Birds and the Sea 2004, Finnish Cultural Foundations Invisible Hands Award 2011.

Turns 50 on Tuesday 20.10.

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50 years old | Ainos daughter has been the most demanding coworker of illustrator Ville Tietvinen Nothing suited her without negotiation - Pledge...

The 2000 film Requiem for a Dream celebrates its 20th anniversary this fall, and in that time there's at least one part of its legacy that's never faded: the music. The movie's haunted original score spawned a kind of breakout hit that would ripple through media for years to come, while also kickstarting a new career for its British-born composer, Clint Mansell.

Mansell churned out a whole batch of disparate musical ideas after reading the script for the film, which director Darren Aronofsky co-adapted with Hubert Selby Jr. from the 1978 novel of the same name, about four characters succumbing to addiction. The sketch that became the score's central theme, Mansell remembers, was track 17 out of 20 on a demo CD he'd made, and sounded like kind of a hip-hop slow jam: "It even had sort of an 808 beat under it," he says. It didn't yet have the stabbing melody line that would become its hallmark; for now it was just three sad, descending chords.

Aronofsky had originally asked Mansell to write a hip-hop score for the story, since that was the music of the Brooklyn director's youth, but Mansell kept getting stuck. He was on the verge of quitting when Aronofsky flew to New Orleans where Mansell was living in an apartment owned by and adjacent to Trent Reznor for a desperate session of just throwing ideas from the CD against scenes in the film. They randomly tried the theme track under a scene where the character Marion (Jennifer Connelly), who has just slept with her therapist for drug money, stumbles out into a violent thunderstorm and vomits. "And it was just like, oh my God, what's this?" Mansell says. "It was one of those magical moments where image plus music creates this third element."

He developed that seedling into a piece called "Lux Aeterna," and it became the core idea of the score, an addictive uroboros of despair that was further elevated by the artistry of Kronos Quartet, who performed it for the recording. "It's not just the chords, it's not just the melody," Mansell says of the track's essential power, "it's the life that [Kronos] breathed into it." The theme plays in slightly different variations throughout the film during the speed-fueled montage of Sara (Ellen Burstyn) cleaning her apartment, or when Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) flees a drug dealer's limo after a violent shootout and it crescendos in the finale as the four main characters each curl up into a fetal position. "Darren had said, 'It's like a horror movie, really. Every time that the addiction wins, that's a win for the monster,' " Mansell recalls. " 'Lux Aeterna' is basically a monster theme."

Requiem was only the composer's second film score, and he says he felt way out of his depth. A self-taught guitar player from the industrial town of Stourbridge, 100 miles north of London, Mansell formed the band Pop Will Eat Itself when he was 19. The group's sample-heavy style a mashup of post-punk, rock and hip-hop was dubbed "grebo." They didn't garner any big hits, but "like the best music of that time, you felt like you were in a club," Reznor says. "If you saw other people at that rack in the record store, or wearing a t-shirt, you shared some common insight and secret society vibe. [The band] felt like a refreshing breath of truth. It wasn't concerned about political correctness or anything else. It just felt like an interesting collage of music and presentation. It just felt alive."

Reznor liked PWEI so much that he signed the band to his label, Nothing Records. He says that in his New Orleans base of operations at the time, "We had a big studio with a lot of rooms for people to hang out, and it also had two separate apartments attached to the building. At some point, after we had toured together and Clint and I had become friends and drinking buddies and kind of comrades, I vaguely remember he was in some form of crisis in his life, and was living in New York and needed to get away. And I said, 'Well, there's an apartment here. Anytime, you know indefinitely if you want to stay there, there's nobody living there.' "

Mansell was transitioning out of PWEI, and had just written an electronic score for Aronofsky's first feature, Pi. He moved into one of the apartments, and Reznor bought him his first Apple computer and Pro Tools setup. "I remember him working super hard, and my recollection is it taking quite a bit of time, and just hearing peripherally about the frustrations and the learning curve but a real excitement," he says. "And to my amazement, this incredible film pops out, with this incredible soundtrack. I was really happy for him. And suddenly he's a big film composer."

Though Reznor says Mansell didn't directly inspire his own evolution into a film composer 10 years later with The Social Network, he adds: "Clint would have given me the confidence to feel like it could be done. You know, it's not an impossible thing. He's proven you can do that, without 20 years of university studies and degrees."

Requiem for a Dream premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2000, and was released in theaters that December. Burstyn received an Oscar nomination for her performance as an aging woman in unglamorous descent, but the film a relentlessly bleak, hallucinogenic trip that crescendos into a symphony of debasement wasn't exactly a smash. Aronofsky chose to release it unrated to avoid an NC-17 rating, which all but relegated it to art houses.

Likewise, the "monster theme" for this controversial, indie downer should have faded into obscurity. Instead, it quietly became a monster hit not on the radio, but relentlessly licensed in other media. Most of that can be traced to its usage in the theatrical trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in 2002, where it was given an "epic" remix, goosed with a warlike choir and full orchestra, which was created specially for the trailer by Simone Benyacar, Daniel Nielsen and Veigar Margeirsson.

After that, the "Requiem for a Tower" remix kept getting used in movie trailers including for The Da Vinci Code, I Am Legend and Sunshine as well as for video games (Assassin's Creed), advertising campaigns (Canon cameras, Molson Canadiaan beer) and on TV shows (The Late Show with David Letterman, So You Think You Can Dance). Mansell wasn't paid much up front for the score, but he held onto the writing and publishing rights. Each licensing fee would have brought in somewhere between $35,000 and $100,000. "If I could do that every day, you know, fantastic," he says, laughing.

Mansell's film scoring career ignited after Requiem. He scored four more films for Aronofsky, including Noah, the Grammy-nominated Black Swan -- where he applied a remix approach to the music of Tchaikovsky and The Fountain, about a man whose wife is dying of cancer and his desperate quest for immortality. It had been discovering David Bowie that turned a young Mansell onto music in the 1970s; in 2009, Bowie's son Duncan Jones found himself using the scores from Requiem and The Fountain as reference tracks for his sci-fi thinker, Moon so he asked Mansell to score it.

Moon and Requiem became favorites of another director, Ben Wheatley, leading him and Mansell to collaborate on 2015's High-Rise and, most recently, a new adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier classic Rebecca for Netflix. "The thing that I love about his music in general," Wheatley says, "is the sorrow, the sadness of things. As light and as romantic as it can sound, there is always that underscore, undertow, of sadness. And I definitely feel that is totally appropriate for [Rebecca,], because the story is sad about things."

In 2014, sorrow paid a personal visit to Mansell: His girlfriend, actress Heather Mottola, died of complications from pneumonia at just 29. The last thing they'd seen in a theater together was a concert film of Lou Reed performing his polarizing album Berlin.

"Obviously I was grieving, and in a lot of shock," Mansell says. "It was traumatic. I did therapy and grief counseling, and they all kind of pointed at the idea that, 'You should express yourself through music, and do something musical for her.' " He ultimately decided to make a track-for-track cover album of Berlin, which he released this summer.

Even though Reed's subject matter is grim drugs, murder, doomed romance Mansell and his collaborator, Clint Walsh, decided to make it in the glam punk style that Mottola loved. "The reinterpretation of the music actually became about us doing it, not what it represented," he says. "We had fun making that record. The original record is very downbeat, and it's bleak. I think we found some hope in our version."

Mansell's collaborators tend to say he's a pretty cheery and funny guy, who happens to be drawn to stories in the realm of requiems. "But I think it's more than that," Mansell says for his own part. "I think it's to do with the authenticity of those things, you know, and the stakes of them. They're just the ones that feel real to me, that musically bring something out of me. I want to spend the time with them you know? It feels important to me."

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Requiem For A Theme: Film Composer Clint Mansell On The Sound Of Sadness - Delaware First Media