Mortal Kombat | timotheories

Nuit Blanche Takes A Break (Petite Nuit)

Posted on September 22, 2016 by Tim Kuefler

Write a post about a festival you’ve never been to they said, it’ll be fun they said. I’d rather be sleeping right now.

Let’s get down to business, dear readers. I was tasked with the opportunity to write about Nuit Blanche, which lots of my friends have attended in 2015, but which I have absolutely no experience with.

If you haven’t heard of it before, you shouldn’t be too surprised, as it’s fairly new to Edmonton and area. Though the festival has been active since 2002. Formed in the city of Paris, France under the direction of Jean Blaise, founder of the Centre de recherche pour le developpement culturel (Research Center for Cultural Development), Nuit Blanche is an annual all-night AKA “night-time” artists festival that begins in the evening and carries through to the following morning.

The goal of the festival is to attract people to the streets and buildings of a concentrated area, allowing local businesses to participate in and support the display of all kinds of art works. Since the first event was successful, the idea has slowly expanded to be featured in over 120 cities across the world – Paris, Brussels, Rome, Madrid, Riga, Bucharest, and Valletta to name a few. In Europe, several of these capital cities work together to share and exchange ideas and artists, keeping up with the theme of community.

Canada of course is not one to shy away from opportunities to support the arts, and has slowly integrated each of it’s capital cities and major urban centres into the mix. Edmonton hosted it’s first Nuit Blanche last year on Saturday September 26th in Edmonton’s downtown. It had over 30 artworks and 50,000+ attendees, which was pretty awesome.

I wasn’t able to attend at the time, but as I mentioned previously, a number of my friends in the arts admin scene were talking about it like crazy. So I decided to check it out this year, and report back with my own findings later.

This year, Nuit Blanche Edmonton will be putting on Petite Nuit, a smaller scale version of contemporary art and urban spaces. Featuring 5 artworks and taking place on both Friday night (September 23) and Saturday night (September 24) between 7pm and midnight. You will need to go to Beaver Hills House Park (10440 Jasper Ave NW
Edmonton, AB) in order to see the exhibits, but you can easily get there via LRT, bus, bicycle or car.

I hope you’ll be there, because it’s near Enterprise Square, and you wouldn’t want to get caught being one. But that’s just a theory. I hope you creative cuties have an excellent weekend, and I’ll see you on Sunday with the new episode of Cross Talk.

Tim!

Bad To The Bone (Cross Talk Ep. 7)

Posted on July 17, 2016 by Tim Kuefler

Bad content abounds. Man, does it ever.

The funny thing about bad content is that sometimes people enjoy it even more than good content. Actually, maybe amusement is a better way of looking at it. People are amused by some obviously horrible things.

Filmdom is riff with examples of this too though, it’s not just a thing in music.

Well, give us some examples timotheories!

The Room, Troll 2, Road House, Showgirls, Batman &Robin, Battlefield Earth, Anaconda, Splice, and Howard The Duck are all poorly conceived movies. And that’s just a small sample of the options available to us. If we really started to dig into genre specific examples I could easily come up with 100s of films that don’t cut the mustard.

Which is why we decided to focus mostly on action movies in this week’s Cross Talk episode. And we didn’t want to just go on a rant about action without making a big deal out of it, so for the first time EVER, we are pleased to introduce K. G. Singh! Singh is our resident action movie expert; he practices martial arts and is a screenwriter to boot, so you know he has the goods to back up his claim.

Now you’re probably wondering what the topic is for today, if we called in an action expert. Ever heard the expression “that movie is so bad it’s good” dear readers? Well, we recognize that there is a difference between a bad movie versus a movie that is so bad that it becomes amazing. And so, Episode 7 of Cross Talk arrives at your digital door.

The challenge comes down to recognizing the elements of quality, intent, emotions, authenticity, and motivation. Of course subjective experience factors in too, which is why this is an episode you won’t want to miss! And if you have an interest in movies like Sharknado, Mortal Kombat, and RoboCop but don’t know where to slot them on the spectrum, all the better.

I’ve included a direct link to the full video for you here, but as always (and conveniently apt for today), the real action is just below for your convenience. Otherwise, please sit back and enjoy Episode 7 of Cross Talk!

I’m out of theories for now, but please check back tomorrow for an album about avalanches and wildflowers. It should be a good one! Please comment, subscribe, and share this with friends. We want to hear your feedback!

Tim!