17 February 2019
Whence Come Angels?
8 February 2019
Children who were Ruined by Fame
That was the story for these child stars whose fame came a bit soon in their life and ultimately lead to their ruin.
Child Stars Ruined By Fame
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay started her career at the tender of 3. During this time, she was a fashion model. After a few years, she rose to the ranks and stared in Disney’s’ film Parent Trap.
It was the point that the dollars started rolling in just like someone who hit a jackpot at sports betting sites, read more at oddshunter.ca. However, a few years after she hand landed her first major acting roles, she was hospitalized for dehydration.
In 2007, she lost two movie contracts and was arrested on a DUI charge. She even tried rehab a couple of times, but all to no avail.
Britney Spears
At sixteen Britney had landed her first record label. With vocals like hers, she quickly managed to rise to the top of the music industry. Her songs were so popular some of them ended up as theme songs to best online casino payouts slots.
However, she soon started to spiral out of control as he was admitted to rehab countless times. During that period she even shaved her head in a desperate plea to get attention.
She did, however, manage to recover in the long run. As we said earlier, her fame came a little bit soon.
Macaulay Culkin
Everyone knew the Home Alone star as he captured the hearts of many fans after the movie was released in 1990.
As a young child, his father managed his fortunes. News broke out that his father mismanaged his funds. This, in turn, led to a nasty court battle. As if this wasn’t enough, at adolescence Macaulay was arrested for being in possession of pot.
The 38-year-old is seen today playing for the band” Pizza Underground”. However, he is a good example of children acquiring fame a bit soon in their lives.
Image Credits
Culkin
Lohan
Spears
■
3 February 2019
Men in Blues – The Blues Brothers meet the Men in Black
Agent J of the MIB is in prison. He swindled Aliens while on the job. Today he is released for a new mission. However, the Aliens are waiting for him!
This is another fantastic mashup from the incredibly talented Fabrice Mathieu. Will Agent J succeed? Well, you will have to watch this remarkable mashup to discover that. Have fun!
■
Canned
If you are a regular reader of Kuriositas then you know that we like two things (among others) – street art and animation. Imagine our delight then when we came across Canned which combines both beautifully. A young artist gets more than he bargained for when he creates his own latterday Venus – as do the police!
Made by students Ivan Joy, Nathaniel Hatton and Tanya Zaman at Ringling College, this is great fun – and has an ending that will make you go “aaah”.
■
Bog Bodies
Bog bodies have been found throughout Europe, the cadavers of people preserved in peat bogs some of which are thousands of years old. Ritual sacrifice has long been suspected as a reason for a number of these deaths and this fantastic animation by Plazma for Mummies Alive (a six part documentary series) imagines the fate of just one bog man. It is chilling but fascinating dramatic reconstruction of how a man may have died many centuries ago.
■
Sunday Short Movie – Ups & Downs
In any relationship between brothers there is, at times, friction. Yet when one feels that he is being neglected while all the attention is lavished on the other, things can sometimes get a little more difficult. Ups & Downs, directed by Stuart Fryer and produced by Charlotte Woodhead, tells the story of Josh (Otto Baxter) and Harry (Bobby Lockwood) and shows that at the end of the day, blood is more often than not thicker than water.
■
The Mortsafe: Or How to Protect Your Loved Ones from the Bodysnatchers
The use of the corpses of the convicted to discover the secrets of human anatomy dates back to the 4th century BC, when Herophilos and Erasistratus of Alexandria were given permission to perform live vivisections. The times, however, had changed and criminals were now only dissected after execution. Yet there was a problem..
More lenient punishment for wrongdoings had meant that only around 50 people a year were now being executed. However, the annual demand for bodies to dissect by the growing medical profession surpassed ten times that number. A thriving and historically infamous bodysnatching trade arose. However, those mourning the loss of a loved one soon developed a weapon against this: the mortsafe.
The first mortsafe was made around 1816. They came in a number of different designs but the one thing that they had in common was their weight, which would make exhumation of the recently deceased impossible.
The mortsafe was ingenious: a complex of iron rods and plates descending in to the ground and rising above it.
Above the ground they were weighted either with stone or iron.
27 January 2019
Juhyo: The Snow Monsters of Japan

There are monsters, high in the Japanese mountains of the country’s northeastern region of Tohoku. A few miles outside of Yamagata city the mountains rise and as the seasons turn and autumn becomes a memory, the monsters appear. Winter isn’t coming here; it’s well and truly arrived.

Their shapes are not uniform. The imagination can truly take flight when considering what might lie beneath the snow. Is that a dragon? Is that a troll? Is that Sulley and Mike from Monsters Inc over there?
26 January 2019
The Dragon’s Skull: The Macabre Appearance of Snapdragon Seed Pods
When laterally squeezed the dragon will open and close it mouth: ask any grandparent whose flowers have been decimated by over keen but clumsy grandchildren. Yet once the flower has died, leaving behind the seed pod, something a little more macabre appears. The dragon – just a visual metaphor after all – appears to have a skull.
20 January 2019
The Mysterious Moeraki Boulders

If you go down to Koekohe beach in New Zealand you can be sure of a big surprise. In front of you, scattered like enormous marbles from some long abandoned game between giants, are hundreds of giant spherical rocks. Or are they the egg shells of sea-born dragons? The Moeraki boulders present us with a mystery – what are they and how on earth did they get here?

Some are isolated but may occur in clusters. That they are here is the result of three things – erosion, concretion and time. First the waves, inexorable and patient, have pounded the local bedrock for countless millennia. The mudstone on the beach – rock which was originally mud and clay – is slowly but surely eroded. Underneath are the boulders that the mudstone – in its original wet form, helped to form. However, the boulders were not there to begin with – that came later.
6 January 2019
The Schmidt Sting Pain Index: How Much Could You Take?
It’s named after a guy who took time out to experience hundreds of stings for himself so he could describe the pain for himself – and for us fingers crossed. So, which insect has the nastiest sting? Go find out for yourself!
■
Silent
Silent is an animated short film created by Academy Award winning Moonbot Studios. It celebrates how storytellers, inventors, and technology work together to create cinema magic.
The story follows two street performers (one of whom seems to be Mr Lessmore! Gasp!) who dream of bringing their "Picture and Sound Show" to life.
■
Cross Stitch Just Got Cool
Ambra is a qualified restorer and has worked in many museums. Yet just as she opened her own restoration lab, the recession hit and the money for renovating old objects ran dry. Not to be deterred, Ambra has turned her attention to two of her other loves, design and embroidery. Marrying her interests in TV, movies and cartoons with her skill as a cross stitch pattern maker, she has created these very very cool designs.
The Long Game
As the world moves faster, so do our expectations. We live in a youth centered society but this video essay in two parts by delve, looks at how, perhaps, things should really be. In order to be a genius, do we need to achieve it while we are still youthful? Taking perhaps the genius of geniuses, Leonardo Da Vinci as an example, this may give any of you reading this who feel it is to late to achieve something more than just a glimmer of hope.
■
The Pyramids of Egypt
A dig outside of Cairo in 1920 and a single archaeologist, whose only company is a somewhat mystified camel, makes the discovery of a lifetime. The secret of the ancients are about to be unlocked…
This very amusing animated short was created by the team of Nicolas Mrikhi, Corentin Charron, Olivier Lafay and Lise Corriol. It was produced as a partnership between their university, Supinfocom Arles and the Museum of Marseille.
■