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Reviews of current films written by Fr. Dennis Zdenek Kriz, OSM of St. Philip Benizi Parish, Fullerton, CA
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Game Night [2018]
IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J.. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review
Game Night [2018] (codirected by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, screenplay by Mark Perez) is an amiably goofy comedy about a 30 something couple of (mostly old-school board) game fanatics -- Max (played by Justin Bateman) and Annie (played by Rachel McAdams) who literally met at a collage scrabble (or what-not) tournament and began to date after "becoming allies" one evening after playing Risk with friends. "Oh come on, Alliances never last" warned their friends ... Yet, they took their Alliance all the way to the Altar and 10 years later, seem to be as happy as ever, their weekly "Game Night" with friends being the cement of their relationship.
Okay the premise is rather corny and though the two love gaming, neither seems to "need to win." Instead, they seem to "game" for literally for "the love of the game" (almost any game). Moreover the circle of friends with which they game seems to be of the same spirit. As such, though nerdy, the characters, even at their nerdiest -- and neighbor cop, still smarting over why his wife left him, Gary (played wonderfully by Jesse Plemons) is one heck of a slow-moving nerd -- remain fundamentally like-able.
Their quaint if fundamentally happy existence is rattled, a bit, with the re-entry of Max's far cooler and apparently far more successful brother Brooks (played by Kyle Chandler). Now, HE'S super competitive and so soon after he arrives HE invites Max, Annie and their group to HIS (much larger than Max/Annie's) house for the next "Game Night" where he promises to take their quaint weekly night of gaming "up a notch."
When they arrive, it appears that Brooks had set-up for them an "evening murder mystery" game, 'cept ... of course Brooks _isn't_ what he seems. Yes, he has a lot of money, but it isn't because "he invested in Panera" really "early in the game." Instead, he has apparently several groups of mobsters chasing after him. SO ... this initially "friendly evening murder mystery game" begins to blend reality and fiction in ways that both take the story somewhere and ... at times gets confusing (how many groups of mobsters were after him, and why?).
Still, as experienced gamers, it turns out that Max and Annie and friends become what Brooks really needs in this moment of crisis and confusion (even he might not have fully realized how many baddies were after him).
It all makes for a kinda fun, and generally harmless movie, though some of the jokes are definitely geared to an R-rated audience. And so, it's not necessarily a bad film for a "date night," but leave the kids at home ;-)
A pretty job folks! Pretty good job!
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Posted by Dennis Kriz at 12:04 AM No comments:
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Black Panther [2018]
IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review
Black Panther [2018] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Ryan Coogler along with Joe Robert Cole based on the Marvel comic by Stan Lee [wikip] [IMDb] and Jack Kirby [wikip] [IMDb]) premiered in Los Angeles at the annual 26th Annual Pan African Film Festival held at the Rave Cinemas in the Baldwin Hills. Yes, it was a big deal.
The release of the film was a big deal because it is the first superhero film involving an Afrocentric story and cast. Yes, the story fits into Marvel Comics' (Avengers) Universe [MC] [Wikip]. But it also stands on its own.
Set largely in a fictionalized kingdom called Wakanda [wikip] [MC] located "somewhere in the mountains of central Africa," a kingdom that was able to cloak its technological prowess (FAR MORE ADVANCED than the rest of the world) from the outside world thanks its sitting on an enormous deposit of "vibranium" a mineral brought to the mountains of Wakanda eons ago by a meteorite.
The mineral proved able to store and redirect energy, which made even ancient Wakandan battle axes and spears more effective than their rivals' weapons. Over the centuries the Wakandans found all sorts of ways to take advantage of "vibranium's" properties, to build (and again, even _cloak_) their entire technologically advanced civilization based on the material.
The central question facing said Kingdom and especially its Royal Family was the degree that the Kingdom ought to engage with the outside world.
After all, Africa is supposed to be backward and poor. Indeed recently our (U.S.) President apparently declared the entire continent of Africa to be made-up of "s-hole" countries... Yet here, in Marvel Universe [MC] [Wikip] was a [fictionalized] country, Wakanda [wikip] [MC], that did not fit the image.
Now truth be told, Africa IS a continent that's ENORMOUSLY RICH in mineral wealth, from OIL to GOLD to DIAMONDS to VARIOUS METALS / SEMICONDUCTIVE SUBSTANCES that drive the world's reusable batteries and cell phones -- A good part of the reason for the nearly decade long conflict in the 1990s across the Democratic Republic of the Congo [wikip] [CIA Factbook] in Central Africa was PRECISELY ABOUT control of those deposits of SEMI-CONDUCTIVE SUBSTANCES present there. Yet, of course, most Africans remain desperately poor. Why?
Well, a good part is, of course, the legacy of the exploitation that occurred during the European Colonial Era. Yet, there remains much more current problem of endemic corruption:
I remember about a decade ago attending a presentation "Bottom of the Barrel" at the annual Catholic Relief Services Conference in Washington D.C. about the oil wealth existing in central West Africa and being surprised to hear the CRS officials asking us to lean on multinational oil companies working in those countries to declare how much oil they were actually extracting in that region. This was because OIL PRODUCTION STATISTICS WERE ACTUALLY BEING HELD AS _STATE SECRETS_ by VIRTUALLY ALL THE WEST CENTRAL AFRICAN COUNTRIES INVOLVED. Why? Well ... the governments of pretty much all of these countries DIDN'T THEIR OWN PEOPLES TO KNOW how much oil was being drilled AND SOLD / EXPORTED out of their countries. Why? Because their leaders were pocketing the ABSOLUTELY STUNNING PROFITS from these sales.
And Dear Readers, this is just one commodity -- Oil. North Africa is sitting on lakes of Oil. Central Africa has Copper, Chromium, Diamonds various rare semiconductive materials as well as Oil. Southern Africa has GOLD, Diamonds (again) and Coal.
So there _is_ an ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY BEING MADE in Africa, it's just that it's "hidden" (KEPT FROM) the vast majority of its people [Transparency Int'l] [CRS].
Well, in the story here, the fictional mountain kingdom of Wakanda [wikip] [MC], perhaps modeled after some of the more isolated African kingdoms like Lesotho [wikip] [Recent Film] in Southern Africa, untouched by colonization because it seemed just too remote and (unbeknownst to the Western Imperial Powers cloaked by a "vibranium" powered shield) appeared "just as poor" as the rest of Africa to bother with. This allowed the Kingdom of Wakanda [wikip] [MC] keep its independence and continue its remarkable "vibranium driven" development path, respecting traditional African institutions (notably the Monarchy) free from Western interference.
To be sure, the Wakandians prudently sent both spies and diplomats to the West to learn how things were going in the outside world, but they were _very reluctant_ to share with outsiders as to how things operated at home. Keeping the level of its technological prowess secret actually proved quite easy as most Westerners considered Wakanda to be "just another poor isolated African "s-hole" of a country ... AND ACTUALLY many Wakandians from the Royal Family on down WERE JUST FINE WITH THAT. Western dismissive Racism actually kept the Wakandians safe.
Yet even as Wakanda [wikip] [MC] proved capable of keeping the level its technological development a secret ... its diplomats and spies had become keenly aware of the poverty, backwardness and sufferings of their African neighbors and kin. What to do?
That becomes the central question of the film. T'Challa who becomes "The Black Panther" King (played by Chadwick Boseman) after his father's death, initially wished to continue to keep the true capabilities of his Kingdom secret. However, his cousin, M'Baku (played by Winston Duke), whose father had been one of those spies sent out by Wakanda [wikip] [MC] to better learn about the ways of the outside world returns to the Kingdom with the demand that Wakanda use its vibranium-based technological power TO HELP ARM / FREE their African (and African American) brothers and sisters suffering outside.
Also appalled by the way Africans and African Americans are treated, yet wanting to protect his own Kingdom, T'Challa has to "grow into the job" of being King quickly to chart a wise and sustainable course.
The rest of the story ensues ...
Now Dear Readers there are some great performances, often by women, in this film -- notably Leticia Wright's performance as Shuri, T'Challa's ever smiling technologically savy teenage younger sister, Danai Gurira who plays Okuye the head of a bad-A all African female "vibranium spear-wielding" Palace Guard, and Lupita Nyong'o who plays T'Challa's once and presumably future fiancee' Nakia, and as also a trained Wakandian spy, is no wilting flower either.
Yet, I've chosen to focus my attention on here on the story's central question -- what should a good / wise African "with some means" DO in face of the sufferings of so many Africans and members of the African descended diaspora around the world? -- because it's a question that the Catholic Church has actually challenged Africa's political leaders with as well. Some 25 years ago, in the aftermath of the Synod on Africa, some of Africa's political leaders (many of which remain in power to this day, or until recently ...) apparently asked then Nigerian Cardinal Arinze: "Do you want us all to become 'Saints'?" To which he famously responded: "Yes, Africa needs a number of its Leaders to become Saints."
I've noted above that Africa is rich in all kinds of special and often extremely valuable minerals. There should be a way that this mineral wealth could used to transform the destinies of the vast majority of Africa's people for the better rather than just make a very small number of people (both African and non) mind-bogglingly rich.
Africa does need strong leaders with superhuman wisdom and honesty. Yes, (like all the world) it needs its Saints [1] [2] [3] [4].
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Posted by Dennis Kriz at 12:27 AM No comments:
Saturday, February 10, 2018
The 15:17 to Paris [2018]
IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review
The 15:17 to Paris [2018] (directed by Clint Eastwood, screenplay by Dorothy Blyskal
.based on the book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Spenser Stone and Jeffrey E. Stern [Atlantic] [GR] [Amzn] [IMDb]) despite lackluster reviews (above) is thematically a quintessential Clint Eastwood directed movie (of this time):
For this is the story of three utterly average guys, Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Spenser Stone in their early 20s, okay two of them were in the U.S. military, who knew each other since middle school (the three play themselves as adults, and Paul-Mikél Williams, Bryce Gheisar and William Jennings play them as tweens). Near the end of a "reunion trip" of sorts -- Stone, a male nurse serving in the U.S. Air Force was stationed in Portugal, Skarlatos took some R&R near the end of his Oregon Army National Guard tour in Afghanistan and together they convinced Sadler, still in college, to "just get himself a credit card" and fly out to meet them in Italy -- while on the 15:17 train from Amsterdam to Paris on August 21, 2015, they found themselves suddenly present to nascent terrorist attack.
A young Moroccan man, Ayoub El Khazzani (played in the film by Ray Corasani), had entered one of the train's bathrooms with his suitcase, pulled-out the weapons / cartridges that he prepared, stepped-out of the bathroom and started shooting. The first two passengers that he passed, tried to tackle him and one of them was shot / seriously wounded. But then the three heroes in the film were present a little further down the first compartment that he had entered (and were actually sitting in the wrong part of the train -- they had "cheated," sneaking-up into 1st class to use the train's wifi ;-). THEY charged, tackled and disarmed him. And Stone though himself somewhat wounded, since he was a nurse, was actually able to save the life of the passenger who first tried to tackle the assailant and had been shot by him.
It all made for A REMARKABLE STORY all the more so because the three really were utterly "regular people" who simply "stepped-up" BIG-TIME in a moment that they needed to.
Yes, a fair number of reviewers complained that the three's lives were perhaps _too average_, BUT THAT WAS CLEARLY Clint Eastwood's point. These were three regular guys who did EXACTLY THE RIGHT THING in the moment when they were called to do so.
And then honestly, to me, IT DIDN'T HURT THAT THE THREE WERE CHRISTIAN (perhaps even Catholic -- as one of them, again A TOTALLY "REGULAR GUY," liked praying the Prayer of Saint Francis -- "Lord make me an Instrument of your Peace...")
I loved the movie, applaud Clint Eastwood's willingness to do it, and even in the way that he did it, with the three heroes simply playing themselves, and find the film's message VERY VERY NICE -- We all need to be prepared (and brave enough) to do the right thing at the right time when circumstances call us to "step up."
Excellent film / story!
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Posted by Dennis Kriz at 12:51 AM No comments:
Friday, February 9, 2018
12 Strong [2018]
IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review
12 Strong [2018] (directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, screenplay by Ted Tally and Peter Craig based on the book The Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Doug Stanton [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) tells the in good part truly remarkable story of a unit of U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, led by Capt. Mitch Nelson (played quite admirably by Chris Hemsworth) who were dropped into Afghanistan some six weeks after 9/11, to link up with a General Dostum (played in the film by Navid Negahban), the leader of one of the factions in Afghanistan's then quite tattered Northern Alliance.
Riding on horseback with said Afghan warriors, while repeatedly calling-in absolutely devastating B-52 airstrikes from the sky, they helped the previously tattered Northern Alliance army capture just IN THREE WEEKS a key Taliban supply choke-point that led to the Taliban regime's collapse in Afghanistan ONLY A FEW MONTHS LATER.
IT IS A REMARKABLE STORY _definitely_ deserving both a best-selling book / film.
But there are some "nagging issues" that _in fairness_ deserve to be mentioned here as well:
(1) We AMERICANS actually _don't_ have a monopoly on these kind of films. In recent years, RUSSIA, POLAND and even INDIA (and these are just the countries / films that I know of) have made SIMILAR MOVIES involving true stories of individuals and/or units in legitimately "against all odds" situations who "came through for their countrymen-women" or "their country's honor." These films include:
The Russian film Kandahar (2010)[MC.ru]*, about the resourcefulness of the members of a Russian civilian flight crew after finding themselves taken hostage by the Taliban in Kandahar in 1995,
the Polish film Karbala [2015], about a Polish unit (as part of the "Coalition of the Willing") in Iraq that held off Sadr's Shiite Militia in that holy city during an uprising there in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, and
the Indian film Airlift (2016) [FiBt] [IMDb] about an initially cynical Indian expat businessman who found himself along with his family trapped in Iraq-occupied Kuwait and who organized the evacuation of some 170,000 of his countrymen-and-women from the country in the weeks just before the commensement of the Persian Gulf War; and
(2) While this film is about a unit of twelve U.S. Green Berets who were dropped into a hostile country where in all honestly, at least initially, they could not trust ANYBODY, what this seemingly "little band" of American soldiers did have is A SKY SEEMINGLY FULL OF B-52 BOMBERS that could be called-in at any time to _absolutely obliterate_ ANYTHING in front of them.
Well that's what we pay for with our Defense dollars. And in the nearly two decades since 9/11 we've developed a fleet of drones that make even the small squads of human Green Berets largely obsolete.
And I do think that this is (largely) GREAT because it allows our troops to be deployed far more safely than otherwise.
Still to portray this story as an "against all odds" or even "fair fight" is NOT EXACTLY TRUE. Indeed, there is a dimension to this movie that resembles the still early 1960s era British film Zulu (1964) [wikip] [IMDb] which was apparently made to commemorate the 85th Anniversary of "the stand" during the 1870s-80s "Zulu Wars" of 150 red coated British soldiers who ARMED WITH GATLING GUNS ... "fended off" (cut-down / massacred) hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of (to the British, utterly incomprehensible) spear-and-shield charging Zulu warriors (who were arguably just trying to KEEP THEIR LANDS THEIRS, FREE OF BRITISH IMPERIAL ENCROACHMENT / OCCUPATION).
Anyway, the current film is a compelling story of a squad of 12 American soldiers who (backed by THE WHOLE OF OUR NATION which has invested (probably rightly) so heavily in our Air Force that we literally OWN THE SKY) led a previously tattered rebel Afghan army to victory in a key battle over the Taliban.
IT IS A GREAT STORY, but as much as we'd like it to be, it's not exactly "David and Goliath." Still I'm certain that the twelve soldiers involved (as well as families) certainly WOULD NOT CARE. Those B-52s kept those twelve soldiers, OUR twelve soldiers, on task and ... alive.
Good / great job!
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Posted by Dennis Kriz at 12:46 PM No comments:
Saturday, February 3, 2018
Have a Nice Day (orig. Hao ji Le) [2017]
IMDb listing
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Abrams) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review
Have a Nice Day (orig. Hao ji Le) [2017] (written and directed by Jian Liu) is a fun / irreverent Quentin Tarantino-ish CHINESE INDIE (!) animated film, that "displeased" the censoring authorities in China (it was banned there ;-).
To understand the achievement of this film, think honestly of Quentin Tarantino deciding to set Pulp Fiction [1994] in China's equivalent of (though more prolitarianish) South Park [1997-]. And from this perch of a random Chinese industrial town in the middle of nowhere, the writer / director skewers absolutely everyone / everything, from capitalists to communists to even simple random small-town consumerists.
This is because film is setup with a rather desperate robbery: a construction worker Xiao Zhang (voiced by Zhu Changlong) who also serves as a driver for a local crime boss "Uncle Liu" (voiced by Siming Yang) decides one day to steal a bag filled with money from said crime boss' "bag man." Why? He _needs_ (or "needs") money to send his girlfriend all the way to South Korea repair the results of botched, presumably locally-performed, cosmetic surgery...
The robbery sets of in motion the rest of the film as "Uncle Liu," clearly unhappy / "disappointed" sends out his men, notably a normally quite efficient old-time enforcer named "Thin Skin' (voiced by Xiofang Ma) to recover the money. However, with it becoming known through the grape-vine that "there's a large bag filled with money" out on the streets, all kinds of people, INCLUDING some arguably RELATIVES of poor Xioa Zhang, come out of the woodwork to try to get a hold of that "bag of cash" as well.
In the midst of this all kinds of other smaller "dramas" playout -- two other enforcers for "Uncle Liu" discuss religion: "Tell me, who's bigger? God or the Buddha?" "I don't know, I'd imagine that they're both BAD-A Dudes." "Yes, but I want to follow the bigger one." ;-)
Then poor "Thin Skin" on THIS particular day, EVERY TIME, he's about _whack somebody_, gets interrupted by his cell phone: "No I'm NOT interested in any Shanghai investment opportunities _right now_ ..." ;-)
A particular joy is an utterly random Big Lebowski [1998]-like detour / music video which envisions two of the film's characters (the girl is actually related to Xiao Zhang) suddenly being thrown into a EuroVision-like song contest, with the random music video SPECTACULARLY conflating BOLLYWOOD DRAMA / SOUND, still 1950s-60s (Mao era) SOCIALIST-REALIST ICONOGRAPHY with DC / MARVEL COMICS (as well as some traditional Chinese Buddhist / Imperial) IMAGERY thrown in as well.
That video is a JAW DROPPING experience and about as gleefully "South Park-ish" as it gets. It alone probably killed (indeed gleefully SELF-IMMOLATED) the film's chances with China's censors ;-).
Anyway, while certainly violent and often gleefully irreverent, hence not for everyone, I LOVED THE FILM, AND ITS MERE EXISTENCE. For this film reminds us of THE VALUE OF FREEDOM. Sure the film is often "stupid" but it's a "stupidity" that's often knowing and pointed. And the "powers that be" -- ALL "POWERS THAT BE" -- ought to be BIG ENOUGH to either answer _directly_ the film-makers' challenges (rather than try to "ban" the film, as China's authorities apparently have) or simply laugh along as well saying: "You know, it's a bit more complicated than you portray, but we get your point ..."
GREAT FILM! (if again, NOT for kids and many adults will probably find offence in the film as well ;-).
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Posted by Dennis Kriz at 1:10 AM No comments:
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AMSTERDAM — Marc Dreesmann remembers well how his father, Anton, a third-generation department-store owner and art collector, hung a particular artwork in pride of place in the entryway of their home in Amsterdam.
The landscape painting of a river view, which Anton bought in 1987 from a Dutch art dealer, had been attributed for years to a little-known, but highly esteemed, Dutch 17th-century printmaker and painter, Hercules Segers. But it had been discredited in the 1970s by a top Segers scholar who said he was uncertain about its authenticity.
Still, Mr. Dreesmann recalled recently, his father "was very adamant that everyone had to see the picture and ohhh and ahhh and say how very Segers it was." He added: "We were always believers." In 2002, two years after his father died, Marc and his siblings sold their father's art collection at Christie's auction house in London, and Marc bought back the landscape for 94,000 pounds, or $135,000 at the time.
His belief in the work has now been corroborated. New research has led the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to conclude that six new works — all of them in private collections, like Mr. Dreesmann's — should be part of the Segers canon.
The museum has spent the past two years examining and conducting technical studies on about 100 known, and questioned, Segers paintings and prints all across the world. Among the newly authenticated paintings is "River Landscape with Figures," which Mr. Dreesmann hangs in the entryway to his house near Antwerp, next to a copper concave mirror sculpture by the British artist Anish Kapoor.
"I'm excited, and I also feel a bit of vindication of my dad's opinion," said Mr. Dreesmann, who learned about the authentication of his work a few months ago. He hasn't yet had the work reappraised. Henry Pettifer, head of the Old Master Paintings department at Christie's in London, said that the authentication "could add value" to the work, but it is impossible to predict how much because works by Segers "so rarely appear at auction, and because there's so much controversy about attribution."
The Rijksmuseum is presenting the six works among 18 paintings, and 110 impressions of 44 prints in a large-scale retrospective, "Hercules Segers," from Oct. 7 to Jan. 8. It will then move to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it will open on Feb. 13 as "The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers." By presenting these "new" works to a list of about a dozen accepted Segers paintings in the world, the Dutch national museum has vastly expanded the oeuvre of one of the Golden Age's most experimental and mysterious artists, who was admired by and influenced Rembrandt, among others.
"He's one of the most innovative painters of the 17th century, who has an oeuvre smaller than that of Vermeer," said Taco Dibbits, the director of the Rijksmuseum. "To be able to add to that oeuvre is just an amazing thing."
An Van Camp, assistant keeper of Northern European Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, who curated an exhibition of Segers prints at the British Museum in 2012, said she could not comment on the specific attributions until she had seen all the evidence. But she was impressed by the scope of the endeavor, which included infrared reflectography, X-ray fluorescence, ultraviolet photography and dendrochronological research, or tree-ring dating, which determines the date of the wood panels used for the paintings.
"It's spectacular that the Rijksmuseum and the Metropolitan have done this research and mounted this exhibition, especially because it's an artist that literally no one of the general public has heard of, and it's a bit of a risk for them to stage this," she said in a telephone interview. "This is the best research you can get with the tools available to us today."
Other Segers scholars, including Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, professor emeritus of New York University, who was responsible for the authoritative monograph of Segers' complete etchings, also declined to comment on the findings until they had a chance to look at the pictures and the evidence.
Segers could be thought of as a kind of Vincent van Gogh figure, born about 300 years earlier. The Dutch artist lived in quiet obscurity struggling to create a new visual language, rarely sold any of his work, and died penniless under mysterious circumstances. Born to a Flemish family in Haarlem in 1589, he apprenticed in Amsterdam, and spent his working life there and in Leiden, Utrecht and The Hague, where he died in 1640, apparently by falling down the stairs while drunk.
Like van Gogh, Segers experimented with materials and created haunting imagery, though his subject was almost always landscapes — some based on real places he'd seen and some that came straight from his imagination, with ghostly, craggy, vistas.
"In his play with material, and all the experiments he does you can really see that it's like a modern artist more or less," said Huigen Leeflang, the Rijksmuseum's prints curator. "These landscapes are also very beautiful; you can really wander around and dream and fantasize."
Also like van Gogh, Segers was appreciated after his death both by his fellow artists of his own time, and generations of artists to come. His admirers include Rembrandt, who was born about 17 years after Segers, the German printmaker Alexander Friedrich and the Dada and Surrealist Max Ernst. The contemporary filmmaker Werner Herzog has called Segers "the father of modernity in art," among those "great visionaries appear who seem to anticipate the course of our culture."
This deep admiration is the subject of a simultaneous exhibition, planned in coordination with the Rijksmuseum, at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam, "Under the Spell of Hercules Segers: Rembrandt and the Moderns," also opening Oct. 7. Rembrandt owned eight works by Segers, and even used one of Segers' etching plates, most likely bought at auction, as the basis of one of his own prints.
The research at the Rijksmuseum was conducted by Pieter Roelofs, the institution's paintings curator, and Mr. Leeflang, who are co-curators of the exhibition, with help from Arie Wallert from the University of Amsterdam. The researchers started by establishing a core oeuvre of undisputed works by Segers to get a sense of how he probably worked in his studio.
The Rijksmuseum owns only one painting by Segers on panel, and two oil sketches on canvas, but it possesses the largest collection of the artist's prints anywhere in the world, which were donated to the museum in 1708. Segers was known primarily as a printmaker, and there are more than 180 unique prints left of his work still extant, built up from 53 etching plates; the Rijksmuseum owns 74.
His paintings are far more rare. Many of them were previously attributed to artists such as Rembrandt, Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael, often well into the 20th century. At the same time, the name Segers was often given to any unidentified landscape painting that had a similar look and appeared to be from the early 17th century. These six works will still need to be examined by outside scholars, who may yet have other opinions of them.
The newly minted "Segers" works are all on loan to the Rijksmuseum for the length of the retrospective, and two or three of them will be shown in New York. The other five private owners — all from Europe — have so far remained anonymous, and the Rijksmuseum said it did not know what their plans were for the works.
Mr. Dreesmann, like his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, is an art collector; and his Segers painting is one of about 250 works he owns. He said that he has no plans to put "River Landscape with Figures" on the market any time soon.
"It goes to the Rijksmuseum and then to the Metropolitan,'' he said, "and then back home.''

subset: commoncrawl


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Point Zero Workout of the Week: GHD Paddles
This week's Point Zero workout of the week is:
For time:
100 GHD Paddles (50 forward, 50 backward)
**Rest as needed**
Set the foot pad position of the GHD close enough so that your glutes are out in front of the top pad. While maintaining the hollow body position (glutes and quads engaged, head neutral), complete 50 forward paddles with the PVC, then 50 backward paddles with the PVC. Work up to completing this workout unbroken.
At-Home Version
Alternatively, to complete this at home, for 100 reps (50 forward and 50 backward), take a broomstick and hold it behind your shoulder blades as pictured, below. Hold the hollow body position for as long as possible.
Broomstick behind shoulder blades, similar to the back squat position.
Close the gap between your lumbar spine and the floor.
Point those toes!
Engage your quads and glutes.


text:
The cheapest way to wire money to someone in Vietnam is to arrange a bank money transfer from an outside bank to one in Vietnam.
If the intended recipient has an account at a Vietnamese bank, it may be best to send it to that bank. Otherwise, consider Vietcombank, which has headquarters in Hanoi and branches in many provinces, or an international bank, such as Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which has fewer branches but keeps longer hours.
A more expensive but usually faster option is to use a service like Western Union.
Assemble your recipient's relevant information: name, bank name and routing number and bank account number, if available.
Visit your bank and ask to speak with a teller or manager about wiring money.
Ask about the transfer fee, which can be paid in advance, deducted from the amount you are sending, or paid by the recipient.
Wire the money and wait until the next business day to hear from your recipient for confirmation that it has been received.
Western Union Transfer
Make sure your intended recipient can find a Western Union location. He or she will need to visit in- person to pick up the wired funds.
Visit the Western Union branch nearest you, or the Western Union website, to wire your money.
Keep your receipt and Money Transfer Control Number, which will help you track the transfer of your funds.
Call your recipient to make sure the funds have gone through.
Photo Credits
- money money money! image by Ben Twist from Fotolia.com


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Alpine, NJ – Long dogged by allegations of unfair behavior, the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police is finding itself under scrutiny yet again after an announcement Monday by the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office appointing a monitor to supervise the department's activities.
According to reports on NorthJersey.com (https://njersy.co/2zohmRJ) County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal said that a deputy chief from his office would be investigating the parkway police and its procedures.
Grewal refused to share any details about what prompted the appointment saying only "there were a number of incidents that occurred over the last year that gave us reason to look further."
But James Hall, executive director of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, said that he believes the action to be related to two separate fatal incidents involving parkway police pursuits.
A Fort Lee man died in May after crashing his motorcycle while attempting to elude parkway police and a Bronx man who ran into the woods during a drug stop by parkway police died after falling off a nearby cliff in July.
A memorandum of understanding sent to VIN News by Grewal's office said that the monitor and his staff will be conducting an expansive review of department policies and procedures to ensure that they are in compliance with guidelines established by the attorney general and the prosecutor and all relevant laws.
Among the areas to be investigated are the department's administrative policies, internal affairs, training, evidence collection and storage, special services, personnel and information technology.
The monitor will remain in place for an unknown period of time at the discretion of the prosecutor and will have full authority to correct any problems identified during the review.
The Palisades Interstate Parkway Police has found itself in the media spotlight before. Chaverim founder Aron Kohn criticized the department for ticketing a member who stopped to help a stranded motorist change a flat tire at the Mobil station at the base of the northbound highway in 2016 as previously reported on VIN News (http://bit.ly/2mQG2wa).
At the time, Kohn described ticketing a good Samaritan as "so not American" and noted that both Hatzolah and Chesed Shel Emes have had run ins with parkway police.
But Police Chief Michael Coppola defended his officer's actions, saying that only authorized service providers are allowed to render aid on the parkway and that his department works closely with Hatzolah.
Efforts by lawmakers to disband the force in 2009 and to place it under the authority of the New Jersey State Police in 2010 because of alleged profiling both failed, with Hall noting that complaints of that nature had dropped significantly after the department installed dashcams in its police cruisers in 2008.
Chief Coppola did not immediately return calls for comment on the matter. An official statement on Grewal's decision has yet to appear on the Palisades Parkway Police Department's website as promised.


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In the op-ed pages of the New York Times this week, the president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald S. Lauder, expressed his view that Israel's new Jewish National State Law "correctly reaffirms that Israel is a Jewish state".
"Israel is a miracle", he opines.
"The Zionist movement," he asserts, "has been unwaveringly democratic from its very start."
"And when Israel was founded, it immediately became the first and only democracy in the Middle East."
This is all a very nice sound legend. But that's all it is: Zionist mythology.
The historical truth of the matter is that Israel was not founded upon democracy, but upon a profound rejection of democratic principles.
The Zionists, far from being "unwaveringly democratic", rejected the right of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine to self-determination.
Israel was founded not through any kind of legitimate, democratic political process, but through violence and the ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population from their homes in Palestine.
Learn more by reading my article "The Jewish Nation State Law: If Israel Practiced Democracy, It'd Be Called Palestine".


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I've been in Germany for about a month now and classes still haven't started. Yes, Tübingen University starts late, and I arrived earlier than I probably needed to. But I've not had nothing to do. I have a book to write (still not finished, but this draft is getting there!), and of course there's cooking, cleaning, sorting out the last bits of paperwork (which seem to take the longest… Never mind this "your year abroad is the best year of your life!" stuff; I swear all I've done on mine so far is get stressed over admin). And last week (12th – 15th October) there was also welcome week!
(If you haven't read my previous Year Abroad posts, you can find them through the following links: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.)
Welcome week at Tübingen is not like Fresher's Week back home. There were a few events and a few introductory lectures for students beginning their first semester, but as far as I could tell, unless you're an international student, that was it.
Luckily for me (and the length and interestingness of this blog post), I am an international student, so I have a little more to talk about. The university offers an orientation course called "How to Study at a German University", which sounded pretty useful, so I signed up.
I think the best thing about this course was getting to meet people. The three weeks I'd spent in Germany prior to that, I had mostly spent alone, so it was nice to be able to socialise again. I found some more English people and made a few friends.
The postgrad students who ran the course talked us through some of the basics of living and studying in Germany, organised social events, helped us get to grips with how the Mensa (cafeteria) works, and showed us around our relevant uni buildings and around the town. And for those of us who needed it, they helped us with matriculation, registering at the residents' office, and opening a German bank account. Since I'd already done all that, I got to have a lie in that morning.
The other most helpful thing the course did, in my opinion, was show us how to use the uni's online systems. Yes, plural. There's the CAMPUS-Portal for getting registered on your modules, ILIAS for any information you need during the modules like handouts etc, and the uni email account. It's pretty important stuff, and without having a lecture on it all, I wouldn't have had a clue how to work CAMPUS (it's not exactly easy, especially when you're not as confident with the language as you should be!), and I wouldn't have even known that ILIAS existed.
I do wish, however, that this orientation course had been earlier. Given that the CAMPUS/ILIAS lecture was on Friday, the day before the end of the course, and many classes started on the following Monday. And since the system is designed for students to sign up to their modules well in advance, it has closed by the time international students get here. No problem, we're told: the uni staff know about this, and save extra places for international students. You just have to email them and ask for a place.
Which sounds all well and good, I suppose. It can't be a bad thing for an international student to get in touch with their lecturer before classes begin. But it does mean that the students whose classes started last Monday had only the weekend to work out their courses and email all the professors and seminar leaders, which I feel is a little unfair. It can also lead to confusion: most of my classes start this Monday, but one of them started last Monday, which I didn't realise until I'd missed it, as I thought I had all of last week to write and send all my emails.
And I'm sure I'm not the only student who gets themselves worked up about emails, and will take days putting them off and writing them and worrying over them and dreading checking the inbox. It is neither simple nor convenient (wait, which lecturers have I and have I not emailed? Am I even doing this right??). It has not made me feel welcome as a foreigner trying to live and study here; it's just made me even more confused than I already was. It feels like I'm in some sort of limbo where the floor beneath my feet is made of a few mere emails rather than the concrete official registrations that it should be made of. Not exactly what I want when ERASMUS and my home university have requirements that I need to fulfil during my year abroad for it to count for something.
But, overall, the orientation course has been incredibly helpful and I'm so glad I signed up to it! I feel it's a shame that there were limited spaces and not all new international students were able to join it, because for me it was essential for helping me get settled. Even now, I still don't feel like I'm quite settled, but I'm getting there.
|After the tour of Tübingen, me and Alex went up the tower of the Stiftskirche 🙂
You can read Part Five here.


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Really 39 weeks, Cant do nothing but sleep, pee, and eat. I really didnt think i would reach 37w much less 39w. I'm still in awed. but they move like crasy so no worrys. i have slight swelling in anckles and hands but i'm not hurting. My kids are excited, i let them feel the babys move around and you should see there eyes pop out. lol.
I'm at the point where i just going to be prego forever and ever. It feels like my first baby, she was 42w&3days late. but she came out ok at 6lb7oz. She is now my 16yr old who will help us during delivery. Well in still here.


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While most manufacturers have declined to set up shop in a country with no long term wind market beyond Proinfa, Fuhrländer is investing BRL 12 million ($5.4 million) in a manufacturing facility on a 16 hectare site in Ceará, near Fortaleza, in Brazil's windy Northeast. "We expect to start production in March or May depending on the speed of construction," says company president Joachim Fuhrländer.
Production will start with 1 MW turbines, extending to 1.5 MW units in 2007 and 2.5 MW machines in 2008. The family-owned company will also make components such as blades by the end of 2006.
"The company has 466 MW under contract," says Fuhrländer. "We expect to have a capacity of 65 MW next year, with 208 MW in 2007 and 300 MW in 2008." So far Fuhrländer claims to have four Brazilian clients and four local and international investors. "We are not here for a one night stand," says Fuhrländer. "We will start a training and educational facility for over 200 young people aged 14-18 years." The new factory will also create 400 jobs.
Despite Enercon's ten year head-start, Fuhrländer believes the Brazilian wind power market will be big enough for the both of them. With 54 wind projects with a combined capacity of 1244 MW contracted under Proinfa, "I believe the cake is big enough to be shared," says Fuhrländer.
Wobben Windpower has been serving the Brazilian market since 1995 from a factory at Sorocaba in São Paulo, which also produces components for export. Wobben Windpower's Pedro Angelo Vial told local media that exports are expected to dropto 20% of production this year from 80% in 2004. The company estimates that is has more than doubled turnover from BRL 90 million ($41 million) in 2004 to BRL 200 million ($91 million) in 2005.
Wobben is confident of its ability to meet demand. "Our production capacity is sufficient for our present and future potential contracts under Proinfa law," says Renata Lellis, Wobben's marketing manager.
Wobben has been expanding its operations and recently announced new factories in the north-east and south of Brazil to produce concrete towers. "We are producing blades, towers and generators in our factories at Pecém [north-east Brazil], Sorocaba and at Gravataí [Rio Grande do Sul]," Lellis says. Wobben has invested a total of $80 million in Brazil, according to local newspaper reports. The company is supplying the Água Doce (9 MW), RN Rio do Fogo (49.3 MW), and Osório (50 MW) wind farms already under construction as part of Proinfa.


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For Better Tomorrow Join...
Welcome to Holy Faith Education, a student-centered middle school for students. Throughout primary we all strive to create opportunities for children full of wonder and exploration. We partner with parents and community members to provide a program that supports student growth socially, emotionally, physically, and academically.
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We invite applications for key positions from qualified educationists and administrators. Sensitivity and understanding of different cultures are essential as we are a multi-cultural learning community. At the Holy faith Education, we are committed to educational excellence. We provide an innovative learning environment that truly international in quality.
Holy Faith Education is a venture by a Team of highly motivated group of individuals who excelled in various fields and at various levels of education for more than 2 years.
Holy Faith Education endeavor to make available International Standard Education right from the age when Children start developing their Basic skills necessary to survive as Human.
Our vision is to make available to Children the Best of Modern Education by integrating the Best of Varied Curricula across the World and blending with Right values and Culture in an Environment filled with Love, Care and Child Focused People.
Art Session
Holy Faith Education students participates in the art competition
Our students showing their Excellence
Sport Training
Holy Faith Education students participates in the sports training
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Holy Faith Education students participates in the music session.
Dance Session
FHoly Faith Education students participates in the dance competition
Athletic Meet
Holy Faith Education students participates in the athletic competition
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text:
Last week (2-8 April) the partners' Koin.S.Ep. Hecate, "" Volunteer Environmentalists Attica "," EL.IN.A.AS "and" KLEOS SA "with the active support and participation of the bank under establishment" Human Bank "and the NGO" Human Solidarity "held the implementation of the following social activities:
a) Collection of bread and bakery leftovers from stoves Athens and then delivering them to social messes Ag. Triada Ambelokipi and City of Athens Homeless Reception Center (KYADA). Total delivered more than 500 pounds (80-100 kg daily).
b) Concentrated quantity of drugs (two large cartons) from donors pharmacists and will be delivered to social pharmacies (Municipalities Byron, Hymettus, Argyroupoli, Athens etc.) upon request and depending on the needs of each.
c) A planting ornamental plants in flower beds streets and squares of Pagrati area.
d) Concentrated amount of clothing and footwear (eight large boxes) and delivered to the organization "Human People" for distribution to supported homeless of Athens.


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Monday, May 21, 2012
First Look: Arrow
You got to hand it to the CW - they at least waited nearly a year after Smallville's end until deciding to go down the path of giving the Green Arrow his own show with Arrow and if the trailer is anything to go by, it looks like I'll be getting over my disappointment that Justin Hartley is not playing the role.
Instead it's Stephen Amell who's donning the role of rich playboy Oliver Queen and his more heroic alter ego, Green Arrow as the man returns to the city in a story that's more about the character's origins than we saw on Smallville. Katie Cassidy (Supernatural) will be playing Queen's love interest, Dinah Lance as well as Dresden Files actor Paul Blackthorne as a cop and with the rather gritty-ish feel to it, this definitely looks like it could be a sweeping success for the CW.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViFb0paKdgg
Arrow airs on the CW from September 26th 2012.
Posted by shawnlunn2002 at 5:43 AM
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Luxxotica and Essilor may not be household names, but you may very well have one of their products on your face right now. If you've visited LensCrafters or Pearle Vision for your eyeglasses or contacts, or Sunglass Hut for sunglasses, you've done business with the Italian eyewear conglomerate Luxxotica, and if you bought Varilux or Transitions lenses during that visit, you've done business with the French lens company Essilor. [More]
LensCrafters And Ray-Ban Parent Company To Merge With Lens Maker, Form Eyewear Voltron
Maria Sharapova & 6 Other Pro Athletes Who Blew Big Endorsement Deals Overnight
All over the world, sports fans set their heroes up on high pedestals. So when scandals hit, it's a long way for professional athletes to fall, and they often lose lucrative endorsement deals on their way down. [More]
A Screen Capture Is Not Legally Binding Proof Of An Online Description Change
Should a screen capture be legally binding in any way? We like to think that taking a screencap of a great price or another problem is a foolproof way to hold on to evidence, but there's a small flaw in that plan. It's called "image manipulation." Or, to use a trademarked term, Photoshop. This is probably the reason why Amazon refuses to take the screencap that Anthony took of a sunglasses description as rock-solid proof that they had an error in their listings. He says that he grabbed the image for a different reason, but was glad to have it when Amazon claimed that the sunglasses he bought as polarized were actually non-polarized. [More]


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Introduction: How to Make a Two Part Mold and Cast Crystal Clear Medieval Knight Action Figures
Learn How to Make a Two Part Mold And Cast Crystal Clear Medieval Knight Action Figures
Step 1: Prepare the Knight
First Push the Knight into clay and shape the clay so that half of the Knights body is covered in clay. This is a very important step if you want to minimize seam lines and control how the two parts come together.
Then place the Knight into a mold box. I glued a lid onto the deli container and cut a slot for pouring.
At this point spray or brush on a mold release. I did not use a mold release Because the Knight has a smooth texture and is unlikely to stick to the mold.
Next spray a medium coat of Bubble Buster. Bubble Buster is great for reducing surface tension and preventing bubbles from sticking to objects.
Step 2: Create the Mold
While the Bubble Buster is still wet, pour the melted ComposiMold until it covers the entire exposed half of the Knight. ComposiMold can be melted in the microwave a double boiler or a chocolate melter.
This mold took about three hours at room temperature before I could remove it from the mold.
Before pouring the second half, remove the clay, coat it with mold release and cool the first half. Wait until the liquid ComposiMold has cooled but is still pourable before pouring it over the first half. The ideal pouring temperature is between 120 to 135 F.
As you can see the mold separates nicely and the detail is perfect!
Step 3: Duplicate!
Now it's time for the resin. For this project I used clear casting plastic which is a two part epoxy resin that when cured it becomes a rigid transparent plastic. The two parts are mixed equally with a 1 to 1 mix ratio by weight or volume.
To guarantee a bubble free part carefully measure and mix the two parts.
Once the two parts are thoroughly mixed prepare to inject the resin into the mold. I chose to poke a hole at the top of the head but you can also start at the foot and let the material rise.
Fill the syringe and inject the resin until the mold is filled. If there is a trapped air bubbles, stick a nail through the mold and guide the bubble out especially at the top of the head.
The resin should be left for at least 14 hours before removing from the mold, and it will take about 3 days for it to completely cure.
Step 4: Enjoy Your Crystal Knight!
Once the model is removed observe the crystal clear highly detailed Knight.
Please let us know If you have any questions or comments.
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Published at Tuesday, January 14th, 2020 - 07:57:51 AM. Bedroom Ideas. By Adalrik Meyer.
Think about spending a long hectic day in office and gifting your partner a bucket of exquisite roses that she can comfortably place near the bed. Your entire office tension will fade away during that time. In order to achieve this you must need to choose good quality paint and other elements. The simplest way to get them is to carry out a comprehensive market research on internet. Internet is the best medium to search anything right from the best matching furniture to an almirah for your home. There are thousands of home décor websites sharing hundreds of bedroom ideas for a romantic marriage life.
Paint the walls gray, as earthy tones are normal Italian colors. Place an Italian round leather bed of sunshine brown color in the center of the room. Hang five mirrors of various geometric shapes about the wall behind your bed. Place a long glass top table while watching bed and decorate it having a plant. Keep sleek leather chairs much like study chairs on each side of this glass table. Use gray or brown upholstery for that room, and your modern Italian bedroom is prepared.
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Talk:Blowfish (cipher)
|WikiProject Cryptography / Computer science
|(Rated B-class, High-importance)
Anyone inclined to talk about endianness issues with implementations? Including efficiency questions about using htonl() and ntohl() or equivalent?
Isn't a blowfish a kind of, well, fish? And what about Hootie and the?
Errr, possibly, but not in my country. I guess this is the reason that the data compression algorithms are all subpages. Maybe encryption algorithms should be too, to make sure they don't clash with more mundane topics of the same name. Not a problem for RC4 and triple-Des, but there is a Tiger and a Serpent. Anyway, i just wrote this because there was an open link to it from one of the crypto pages. Better track that down and fix it if this moves.
Added a note on the same. The fish is usually called a puffer, so the collision between the two isn't too bad. :)
What does "symmetric, secret key, block cypher" mean? --LMS
- "symmetric, and secret key" means that it uses the same secret key for both encryption and decryption (compare public key cryptography), and "block cipher" means it encrypts data a block at a time (compare stream cipher).
What is the time complexity of the blowfish encryption/decryption algorithm? --DWB
- Quite obviously, O(1) for a single block, O(n) for n blocks since the number of rounds is constant regardless of key size. -- intgr 22:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Another question: The article says it cannot be used with some applications. Which applications? Can anyone expand on which applications it works well with and which applications is does not work well with so I don't have to get a degree in cryptography or have a user's applications crash to find out? Thanks! -DSp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 126.96.36.199 (talk) 17:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
- Just like it says: if the key changes a lot, you'll spend all your time handling new keys. There's no application it's insecure in, just some it's very slow in. ciphergoth (talk) 09:25, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
The removal of cryptoanalysis result by Schmidt[edit]
On an email correspondense, I pointed out to Dieter Schmidt that the conclusion of his cryptoanalysis paper is wrong, and after this he retracted his article. The problem is, that while subkeys P3 and P4 do not depend on P1 and P2 (and this is a somewhat interesting observation), this does not mean that P3 and P4 do not depend on 64 bits of userkey. This is because the userkey bits will be cycled into the P-array, before any subkey encryptions take place. So if, for example, the userkey is 448 bits long, the first 64 bits will go to P1 and P2, and ALSO into P15 and P16. Then, P15 and P16 (and thus the first 64 bits) WILL affect the encryption iteration whose final value will be put into P3 and P4. -- 184.108.40.206 13:04, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks for letting us know. (The paper has been withdrawn from ePrint: [1]). — Matt Crypto 13:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
"Diagram on the right" isn't[edit]
Somewhere along the line a diagram went missing. The second paragraph refers to "the diagram on the right" that describes the F-function, but there is only one diagram. --Joe Sewell 20:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
- I can see two diagrams - one on the right in the infobox, and the other on the left under the "The algorithm" section. This particular paragraph refers to the image in the infobox. Now that I see it, I agree that it can be confusing. Unfortunately, moving infobox around is out of the question, and duplicating the image would be silly as well. Any ideas how to improve it? -- intgr 22:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is this algorithm called 'blowfish'?[edit]
If I look at the image, I would think it's called 'blowfish' because it blows up the plaintext while encrypting (the S-boxes have an 8-bit input and a 32-bit output). If someone knows the official reason or explanation why this algorithm is called 'blowfish', please add it to the article. --Bernard François 15:37, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
- My memory is that the analogy was to the pufferfish which defends itself well by both armed and poisonous. A good cypher algorithm would do something similar, metaphorically. Having said that, however, I can't connect it to any particular source, and so I'm not sure it belongs in the article. ww 02:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
- Actually the pufferfish is also called blowfish. It blows itself up like a balloon to impress. The input of the S-boxes gets blown up in a similar way... --Bernard François 15:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Is the description of the Blowfish decryption right?[edit]
Please pardon me if I am wrong, but it seems the use of P17 and P18 in the Blowfish article is misleading if not wrong. The article states:
"Blowfish [...] can be inverted simply by XORing P17 and P18 to the ciphertext block, then using the P-entries in reverse order"
Though it seems reasonable at the first glance, I beleive that after application of XOR to P18 and Ln (the left part of the of the ciphertext), you will NOT get the intput of the last rounds F function, which is the case in the simpliest Feistel network. Instead one gets the input scrabled by XOR with F17 (or F18, depending on how you understand the fraze "using the P-entries in reverse order"). This means that there would be not guarantee in general that the first decryption round F() xor Rn will give the correct L[n-1].
If, instead, we just use P18 instead of P1, P17 instead of P2, and so on, in a regular Blowfish net, we will get a correct input for the last F() function in the first round (namely, Ln xor P18). The F(Ln xor P18) xor Rn will give you (L[n-1] xor P17), because xor is commutative and associative. The result will be later XORed with P17 to yield the L[n-1] in the second round -- the correct input for the second F(); by induction, one gets at the last round the correct input for the last F(), which is L0 xor P1, and by using this F() in (F() xor R1) we get (R0 xor P2) (since the xor with P2 was not yet undeone). The final XOR operation will perform (R0 xor P2) xor P2 = R0 (since we use P2 instead of P17) and (L0 xor P1) xor P1 = L0, thus reconstituting the plaintext.
If the above is right, then the correct recomendation of how to use Blowfish should read: "use P1, P2, ..., P18 entries in reverse order to decrypt". The "XORing P17 and P18" recommendation is wrong and should be omitted. The similar wording to the one I suggest is used, by the way, by Bruce Schneier himself in his blowfish paper:
If my understanding is right I suggest that the article part describing Blowfish decryption is corrected accordingly...
Sincerely, Saulius Grazulis ((grazulis) commercial-at (akl) period (lt)) 22.214.171.124
Saulius has a point. It is definitly wrong (and misleading)! Change it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.8.131.52 (talk) 22:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
Changed lede not to say Twofish gets more attention than Blowfish[edit]
While Twofish did get much more attention than Blowfish during the AES process, that no longer seems to be the case: Blowfish is still interesting because it's widely used in SSH implementations and so forth, but fewer applications use Twofish and it's no longer on a standards track. If this seems incorrect, revert. 22.214.171.124 21:44, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
sign extension bug[edit]
The sign extension bug existed as early as 1994 (Dr. Dobb's Journal) and as late as 2004 (from the code available at Schneier.com) and was confirmed by Schneier and his employees. The sign extension bug is quite serious for keys chosen at random. (No problem for ASCII keys, though, due to no sign extension of ASCII characters). Ra2007 (talk) 20:54, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
- Just checked, although the sign extension bug has been confirmed at various places, the source code credited to Bruce Schneier at schneier.com still has the sign extension bug http://www.schneier.com/code/bfsh-sch.zip even today (12-10-2007). The ohter links above should help confirm that this is a real bug and provide sources. Ra2007 (talk) 21:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Advising against Blowfish?[edit]
"Bruce Schneier now advises against the use of Blowfish, and recommends using Twofish instead."
I think this sentence should be cleaned up - it doesn't appear to be accurately referencing its source.
Bruce Schneier does comment that he recommends Twofish instead. However he only indicates that he's "amazed" that Blowfish is still being used -- he doesn't explicitly state nor imply that Blowfish should not be used. Offering an up-to-date alternative is not an advisory against using the still-secure Blowfish algorithm.
This sentence should be cleaned up for clarity and for the sake of faithful referencing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 22.214.171.124 (talk) 00:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
- I edited the Twofish recommendation to read in a less "Blowfish negative" fashion; I hope it now reflects more closely what Schneier said in the referenced interview. -- Rydra Wong (talk) 05:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
"4KiB is relatively large" vs. "relatively small"[edit]
An earlier post was reverted that changed "relatively large" to "relatively small" and the boilerplate "thanks for experimenting" template appeared on the IP address talk page. I have reinstated the reverted change. My justification for doing so is as follows.
The revert was based on a misinterpretation of the context in which the wording was placed. The sentence mentions "early smartcards" at the end, and the reverting party used this as justification for a 4KiB Blowfish implementation being referred to as "relatively LARGE," because for most smart cards, it certainly would be, as the capacity of those devices is measured in single- or double-digit kibibyte counts, and 4KiB out of a card with a 12KiB EEPROM is 1/3 of the total storage on the card. Relative to most modern embedded devices, 4KiB is very, very small. An ancient Linksys 802.11b wireless router (BEFSR11) is an excellent example, with 512KiB of ROM and 2MiB of RAM; a 4KiB Blowfish implementation, uncompressed, would consume 1/128 of the total ROM. That being a router from many years ago, newer SOHO routers often have specifications exceeding these significantly.
Given that the statement refers to the "relative" size of a 4KiB chunk of code, the question to ask is "relative to WHAT?" Given that most embedded devices that can even handle a 4KiB Blowfish implementationin the first place tend to have specifications far exceeding 4KiB of code space, I would argue that "early smartcards" (or PIC microcontrollers, or an Intel 8051, or a W65C02) are not an appropriate basis for the relative size of said chunk of code. If you disagree, please do so before reverting the edit again. Daivox (talk • contribs) 21:15, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
- Since I have worked with crypto in embedded systems and happen to watch this page I should perhaps comment: Last time I worked with embedded systems was in 2000. The cars (as in automobiles) we programmed for then had 16 kilobytes of RAM and about as much ROM per node, and up to 23 such nodes in one car. They also had a main node in the car with anything from about 100 kbyte to 4 Mbyte of RAM depending on type of car. Note that that was high end luxury cars. Most cars had much less computing power than that. Similar numbers were also valid for the nodes on engines for big ships that we also programmed at the same company. Now that was 8 years ago so if Moore's law applies to computers in cars then modern cars perhaps have about 512 kbyte of RAM in the smaller nodes.
- Back then we did prefer to use ciphers with a RAM footprint of tops 258 bytes or less. (258 bytes = RC4.) But I guess today Blowfish with a 4 kbyte footprint would be okay. Although compared to XTEA Blowfish has a pretty huge RAM footprint. So it depends on if you compare the size with the space available in the embedded systems or with other ciphers.
- --David Göthberg (talk) 23:35, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
- Perhaps the statement regarding relative size of the algorithm's implementation should be removed, leaving only the size figure; as you have stated, Blowfish is not necessarily going to be practical in very small embedded systems anyway (i.e. smart cards) and so any thoughts about embedded application should be omitted and left to the reader's imagination, with the 4KiB figure as one point of reference. Also, I've noticed that there are zero citations in the "Blowfish in practice" section, which I feel should be remedied by someone who cares more than I currently do. Who knows? I may have been arguing a moot point since there's no proof! :) Daivox (talk) 00:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, simply removing the words "relatively small" is probably a good suggestion, since as you and I now have realised both "small" and "big" is true depending on what you compare with.
- --David Göthberg (talk) 03:24, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Pop culture reference[edit]
Blowfish is specifically mentioned as being used by Agent Renee Walker to encrypt data in the "9:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m." episode in season 7 of 24. --Nlaverdure (talk) 00:41, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
- In my opinion they went WAY TO FAR. One thing is to "invent" in a TV-Show that you can break a "super-duper" cipher in a few seconds and without any software tool claiming your know "super hidden back doors". Another completely different thing is saying the cipher is called Blowfish and also have the character saying that he knows the inventor (this guy has a name and he's Bruce Schneier) and, last but not least claiming that Blowfish is riddled with backdoors and breakable in a few seconds! I can't even break a zip file in a "few seconds". If I was Schneier I would take serious offense to that. Up to date there is no proven attack that works with Blowfish, then Blowfish has a key size between 32bit and 448bit, so it seems to me pretty obvious that if you need to encrypt a secret you'd go for 448bit also due to the fact that for a modern CPU it makes not much difference in computational time and so why bother choosing a key of a middle size, in "24" however the FBI analyst says that it had been encrypted with a 148bit key which doesn't seem a possible number to me since it is not divisible per 8. Why do they love to screw up details so much? They could have invented a hypothetical new cipher, nobody would have argued then. Why hurting Bruce Schneier? --Legba (talk) 22:08, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Decryption description is wrong![edit]
Saulius has a point. It is definitely wrong (and misleading)! It's OK now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.108.40.206 (talk) 22:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
blowfish are cute! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.8.131.52 (talk) 17:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Link to online version of blowfish[edit]
I added the following link to the "External Links" section -- however Intgr removed it citing "Spammy Link"
However I see no reason for why it should not be included. The link provides an easy way to encode/decode a message with blowfish, and it is very relevant to the subject. There are no advert or other non-relevant content on the page/site linked, and I am not owner or affiliated in any way with the site. Looking at the "linking rules" I don't see any rules which excludes from having such a link to a subject-relevant-useful-resource. Is there some history between webnet77 and wikipedia which I would be unaware of that would warrant banning of linking? User:Sorenriise 07:40, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Addendum -- Disabled my adblocker and found that the site _does_have a banner ad -- however looks pretty light to me..., would still suggest that linking would be worth it User:Sorenriise 07:48, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
- With slogans like "Webnet77 Web Hosting", "High intensity Hosting!", "Affordable Quality Hosting with Fast Friendly Service", Google ads, a flashing banner ad, etc. I'd say it's hard to make a case that the link is not spammy.
- From a security point of view, this link is obviously useless for encrypting/decrypting actual messages. Not only does it go over an insecure connection, through someone else's servers, but the block cipher is only a part of cryptography — real encryption software would also need block cipher modes of operation, MAC and KDF/key strengthening. It's just a toy, hardly useful for any purpose. -- intgr [talk] 08:44, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
- Yes it is a toy, and no it cannot be used for any real security purpose -- however it does illustrate the working of the algo -- im not sure what you finding more objectionable, 1) that it is an illustration and not production worthy implementation, or 2) that the site has a banner ad? -- I.e. if I could find a similar illustration without a banner ad would that be acceptable in your POW? or would the changing of the link description to "Illustration" fix objections? Some indication of what would be a good way to fix, rather than just "no-dont-like" would be great.. sorenriise [talk] 15:25, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
- I object mainly because it provides no value. For such a link, it displays too much glaring affiliation and ads.
- What's there to illustrate? That you get back random-looking hex digits in the output? That's worse than nothing IMO, because some people will get the false impression that hex = Blowfish and that the output is twice as long as the input. People who do know what hex is are no wiser either. -- intgr [talk] 19:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
448-Bit vs 576-Bit[edit]
Just a thought, but wouldn't the extra P-Values increase total meta-difficulty (Decrypting a set of hashes) so long as the number of blocks affected is random enough per key? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.8.131.52 (talk)
Inclusion of "Bcrypt" utility[edit]
@Widefox: Wrt this revert, why do you think this "bcrypt" encryption utility even warrants a mention on Wikipedia? Are there any reliable sources covering it? -- intgr [talk] 20:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
- Good question intgr. To now I was ensuring I moved someone else's content from the wrong article bcrypt to the right article (here) and disambiguated it. If we delete it then the hatnote should go too. Neutral on the content itself....let's have a look...it arguably has at least one RS, so I'm happy to leave in. Widefox; talk 21:53, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
External links modified[edit]
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Isn't the sentence "Blowfish provides a good encryption rate in software and no effective cryptanalysis of it has been found to date." in contradiction with the section "Weakness and successors"? Specifically, "the SWEET32 attack demonstrated how to leverage birthday attacks to perform plaintext recovery (i.e. decrypting ciphertext) against ciphers with a 64-bit block size such as Blowfish."? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:67C:1220:80C:C4E7:4F99:A58F:5989 (talk) 15:09, 9 October 2017 (UTC)


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You've found your way past the trials at the entrance of the Shrine of Zemail and you've solved the puzzle trap door and seen the stairway descend into the darkness below. With an Arcane Knowledge check (bonuses for familiarity with Zemail ACSD) of 80 or higher, a character descending the stairs remembers a saying that "The heart of the mighty oak is in its taproot." If the Arcane Knowledge check is 100 or higher, the character also remembers that the taproot is the root that goes deepest, toward the water table. If someone recites the saying, all party members obtain a second Arcane Knowledge check to know what a taproot is (bonuses for familiarity with botany ACSD) and if 90 or higher, they remember that the taproot is the root that goes deepest. They step out of the stairs into the Middle Tunnels:
Nine, winding, root-like tunnels are immediately apparent to party members with ultraviolet or infrared vision, or to all if they have a decent light source. Gnomes and goblins could detect them if they put their echo-location to use. Three of the tunnels curve up into tunnels above, six wind downward. If they are lucky, they might glimpse the tail of a giant snake disappearing down a tunnel, moving into a position more favorable for taking the prey from behind.
This is a three encounter dungeon, meaning that the dungeon has enough enemies for 3 solid encounters. The first two encounters are made up of giant snakes, left by the defiling priests of Wesarin. The snakes will be a mix of constrictors and venomous snakes and ideally ambush the party in two level appropriate encounters. We formulate these encounters for the minimum level party. A 4 person party approaching this dungeon should be at least level 6 when it enters.
That would mean 4 giant snakes in each encounter. The Master Weaver should make an effort to have the party at a point where it levels up before reaching the final chamber of the dungeon (perhaps with fights with lizardfolk outside the shrine). If this happens between the two snake encounters, an extra snake can make the next an even fight again.
The defiled sanctum and altar of Zemail is in the lower tunnels, guarded by a single drude (appropriate for 4 level 7 characters). Stairs occupy the majority of the sanctum, meaning uneven footing for fighters that do not vie for the area around the altar. Uneven footing can lead to tripping, especially for people trying to dodge. With the drude tongue capable of hitting all over the sanctum from just about anywhere, there will be plenty of dodging going on. The drude may use its jumping ability to cross the room in a single bound, but the room is small enough most fighters could move back into melee range and attack without missing a turn. A more effective tactic for the drude may be to possess enemy fighters, making the fight complicated.
With the drude defeated, the party would have free access to the alter. Since the drude was a foe of both Zemail and Wesarin, this serves either the goal of cleansing the shrine or defiling it again in Wesarin's name.
It of course also allows access to whatever valuable items are laying around the inner sanctum. There will be silver coins and other silver trinkets left as offerings to Wesarin while the Empire of Wesarin controlled the shrine. The transition of control from the priests of Wesarin to the drude happened suddenly when a loose drude possessed a priest in the chaos and assassinated the lizardfolk in the area. Among the lizardfolk remains in the sanctum the players will find divine Wesarin artifacts. These could include Bite Plates, Miasmic Knives, or even The Serpent Rod. Less likely to be found are divine Zemail artifacts. The followers of Wesarin probably cleaned it pretty thoroughly while they controlled it. Still, there may still be some of her Vinecorns and Thorncorns hidden in the cracks and corners.
Given the great importance of the shrine to controlling the Cloying Forest, if the shrine is claimed for either Zemail or Wesarin, that deity will not only have improved favor with the cleansers, but will also appear and grant a token.
If the party is higher level than 6 upon entering, a snake or two can be added to each encounter to make up the difference. With snakes on his side, the drude may use snake form to misdirect and confuse.
Did the Shrine of Zemail offer a satisfactory adventure? Were you satisfied with the ending? How would you run it as a Master Weaver? Let us know below.


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Through Johansen's work I have discovered her stories to be focused on the adventure, with mystery and love all thrown into the mix. An Unexpected Song is a softer side of love but still danger is behind every corner.
Taking the stage that evening, Daisy Justine had no idea that she was auditioning for her life. Watching from the darkness beyond the footlights was the world-famous composer Jason Hayes. The reclusive genius was seeking a new star to play the tragic heroine in his latest wrok, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello.
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Read The Latest Articles By Dr. Peter Hall
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text: Wearing two new accessories from my GentsBox subscription: The golden skull pin and the skull tie in blue. Do you like skull design? Most women are really liking it. I say, it works if you combine with more elegant pieces like my new west, and having a shirt with cuff links. What do you think? And there are other vendors who offer similar services. This service is nice but not super extravagant. I think I will cancel the 12 months deal.


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81-717.6 and 81-714.6 cars were built on the basis of previous 81-717.5/81-714.5 models. They meet the most strict requirements to passenger transportation safety. Video surveillance system, forced overhead ventilation enabling air exchange not only on the move, but during stops either, are installed in saloons. Luminescent lamps of the so called "light line" type are applied for lighting. Low-combustible moulded plastic panels are used for interior walls finishing. Seats are made based on fiberglass shells. Wearproof linoleum is applied for floor covering.
An emergency exit is provided in the front part of the cabin. A vibration absorbing and air-adjustable driver's seat is used to ensure for driver's labour conditions meeting modern requirements.
Metrovagonmash has been cooperating with Nizhny Novgorod Metro since its establishment in 1985. In total, Nizhny Novgorod Metro operates 27 81-717.6/714.6 cars and 64 cars of 81-717.5/714.5 model built in Mytyschi over the years. The previous delivery was made in 2013.