Sunday, April 20, 2014

Tumacácori National Historical Park, Arizona

Tumacácori National Historical Park is located in the upper Santa Cruz River Valley of southern Arizona. The park protects the ruins of three Spanish mission communities, two of which are National Historic Landmark sites.

The Spanish Colonial architecture Franciscan church at San José de Tumacácori (seen in the image above) dates to the late 18th century. The earlier Jesuit missions that were established at Tumacácori and Guevavi in 1691 are the two oldest missions in southern Arizona.

The third unit, San Cayetano de Calabazas, was established in 1756. The Guevavi and Calabazas units are not open to the general public and can only be visited on reserved tours led by park staff. The main unit of the park, the Tumacácori Mission, has a visitor center and museum and is open to the public every day except Christmas and Thanksgiving.

More than just adobe, plaster, and wood, these ruins evoke tales of life and land transformed by cultures meeting and mixing. Father Kino’s 1691 landmark visit to an O’odham village when he established Mission Tumacácori was just one event among many. Wave after wave of change has passed across this realm proving the land and its people are not static.
  • Operating Hours: 9:00AM-5:00PM daily, except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day
  • Entrance Fee: $3.00 per person, age 16 or older, which is valid for seven days.
  • Tumacácori Annual Pass: $10.00 (admits pass holder and three adults. Children under 16 enter free.)

 Here's a short photo montage I put together of the main church site:

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NPS Tumacácori… 

Friday, April 18, 2014

British Pathé Newsreel Library Online

Seriously, how can anyone not love the Internet? It won't be too long before all human culture and knowledge; the arts, films, books, music, and languages, you name it, will all be available somewhere online.

Take for example the entire newsreel library of the British Pathé archive. Their entire collection of more than 85,000 newsreel films is now available for your viewing pleasure at YouTube. If you are too young to know what newsreel film is, ask your parents, or better still, your grandparents. They will certainly remember their trips to the cinema when the main feature was always preceded by a cartoon or two and fifteen minutes of news footage from around the world.

This from their YouTube page…
The world's finest news and entertainment video film archive. Since the invention of the moving image in the 1890's, British Pathé began recording every aspect of global culture and news, for the cinema. With their unique combination of information and entertainment, British Pathé's documentaries, newsreels, serials and films changed the way the world saw itself forever.
With it's unparalleled collection of historical events and vast catalogue of changing social activity, British Pathé encompasses one of the world's most prodigious and fascinating documents of the modern age. From fashion to warfare and sport to travel, British Pathé is the definitive source for the 20th century in moving images.
All 85,000 newsreels are now searchable and viewable on YouTube. This equates to 3,500 hours of filmed history. 
The range and scope of this collection is nothing short of mind-blowing. Imagine finding a treasure trove of film covering an eighty year span of history from say, 1790 to 1870, or even earlier; 1590 to 1670. While it may seem like nothing more than a curiosity now, in another one or two hundred years this collection of films will indeed be regarded as a unique window into our lives, as documented during one of the most interesting and turbulent periods in human history.

Pathé eventually stopped producing the cinema newsreel in February 1970, as they could no longer compete with television, but the legacy the organisation has left to future generations will live on long after you and I, dear reader, are gone.



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Saturday, April 5, 2014

Getty Museum Free Virtual Library

Here’s  one for the booklovers.

This image crossed my ‘desk’ via my Facebook page, and not only did I have to check out the free books for myself, but I also had to share the good news here.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center, in Brentwood, and Getty Villa in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

Like all major museums, the Getty produces exhibition catalogues and art books focussing on specific areas of their massive collection. The museum also publishes on a regular basis the J. Paul Getty Museum Journal. The free publications available through the museum site includes all three publication types as well as symposium papers and other material.

All of the books are available as PDF downloads only, which means the content of each has a fixed format. The downside of this is that the text can not be enlarged or reduced in size to assist reading, but hopefully this is a small price to pay for having access to an amazing range of wonderful publications. You can also read the books online, although this is probably not the best way to read them. However, you might do as I did, and check out titles of interest online first, and then download those books that interest you the most.

If you are interest in art, check out the free collection at the Getty Museum site…

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Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Making Tracks

So there I was at 10:32 am, sitting in theatre 13 at my local Megaplex waiting for the 10:15 am start of Dallas Buyers Club, and wondering why it had yet to begin. Finally, at 10:40 the lights dim and the pre-show adverts and previews begin. Another ten minutes and ... Tracks, the new Australian movie unfolds on the big screen.

Dammit, I'm in the wrong theatre!

Since it is far too late to find the right screen I figure one film is as good as the next. As disappointed as I was to miss Dallas Buyers Club, I am delighted that I got to see Tracks, a movie I really enjoyed.

Filmed mostly in outback South Australia (my home state), and the Northern Territory, the movie recounts the 1977 trek Robyn Davidson made across 1700 miles of Australian desert. The trek became the cover story for the May 1978 edition of National Geographic magazine, and subsequently the story of her journey was recounted in her best selling book, Tracks, published in 1980.

I’ve never read Davidson’s book, so I can only assume this film is as true to her story as modern movies are capable of depicting it―short of her story being retold in documentary form.

Robyn Davidson was born on a cattle station in Queensland. Tragically, her mother committed suicide when Davidson was 11, and she was largely raised by her father's unmarried sister. She went to a girls' boarding school in Brisbane, where she received a music scholarship but did not take it up. Elements of her background are recounted in the film in the form of flashbacks.

In the 1970s, Davidson moved to Alice Springs where she trained camels for two years, and learned how to survive in the Australian desert. All this was in preparation for the journey across Australia she was then planning. This period of her life is depicted during the first third of the film.

In 1977, Davidson set off from Alice Springs for the west coast, with a dog and four camels. Apparently, she had no intention of writing about the journey but eventually agreed to write an article for National Geographic Magazine. The American photographer, Rick Smolan (with whom Davidson had an “on-again, off-again” relationship during the trip), became the official photographer for the journey. However, Smolan did not travel with Davidson, but instead arranged to meet her at designated points along the way during her nine-month trek.

Screen shot from the film, Tracks
There is much to like about Tracks, not the least of which is the stunning Australian landscape. Mia Wasikowska, as Robyn Davidson, is often dwarfed by her three adult camels, and all in turn, are dwarfed by the vast desert locations that form a vital part of this incredible story. As a backdrop, the Australian outback, as depicted in the film is immense, hot, and unforgiving, especially to those who venture out into it uninformed and unprepared. Clearly, Davidson had done her ‘homework’, and was as well prepared as she could have been, given the amount of time she devoted to working with camels and learning to live in that harsh environment before starting out.

Apart from the small number of profession actors in Tracks, the film makes generous use of numerous non professional actors, particularly members of local Aboriginal communities. This gives a sense of authenticity to the film, especially with the introduction of Roly Minuma as Mr. Eddie, an Aboriginal elder who escorts Davidson through territory containing sacred sites that are normally off limits to women. Mr. Eddie also imparts important cultural information during the shared part of their journey.

Since the early 1980s, there have been at least five attempts to turn Robyn Davidson’s book into a film. Among the actors mooted to play the lead role have been Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett. The idea that Julia Roberts might have been required to adopt an Australian accent for the film makes me shudder just thinking about it. Cate Blanchett on the other hand seems just a bit too elegant and sophisticated to fill the role. But maybe I am being too harsh.

Mia Wasikowska on the other hand, brings a certain vulnerability to the role, which I think it calls for. Cleary, Davidson’s journey from the centre of Australia to the Western Australian coast must have taken enormous amounts of courage and resourcefulness. Yet as depicted in the film, she also had to deal with many moments of doubt, loneliness, and sadness, and Wasikowska portrays all that and more.

While there are a couple of scenes in Tracks which didn’t quite ring true, I can only hope they did in fact occur during Davidson’s trek. It would be a shame to find that the scenes were introduced into the film simply to add some drama to a story that surely must have had more than enough moments of genuine drama to fill 100 minutes or so.

Screen shot from the film, Tracks
I kept hoping and waiting for a great ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ moment in Tracks. That is, something inspired by the scene in David Lean’s movie when Omar Sharif, as the character Sharif Ali appears out of a desert mirage in a beautiful long shot that has become a classic of modern cinema.

There were several moments in Tracks when I thought the audience was about to be treated to a similar scene, but numerous edits and close ups destroyed the effect. Maybe the director John Curran, and editor Alexandre de Franceschi wanted to steer clear of such a moment to avoid charges of plagiarism. If so, that’s a pity. I myself would have regarded it as a tribute to David Lean, but then, I was neither director nor editor.

In the trailer below you can catch a very quick glimpse of one of these scenes at the 1:36 minute mark.

This is definitely a film worth looking out for when it comes to a cinema near you. But for goodness' sake―make sure you walk into the right theatre!

Here's the trailer...

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