I. M. Pei – Great minds of our time

RIP I. M. Pei 貝聿銘 (2017 – 2019). I picked up my copy of “I.M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture” in the early 90s as I began my lifelong love of beautiful architectures. So thanks to Mr. Pei for your inspirations.

I like to remember the recently passed with their own words if I can, here he talked about the various challenges and ideas in redoing the Louvre.

I. M. Pei at MIT – Tech Day 1994

American Architecture Now: I.M. Pei, 1980

I. M. Pei: A Centennial Celebration – Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD)

Video description: //The GSD is proud to celebrate the 100th birthday of Ieoh Ming Pei, MArch ’46. Both I. M. and his wife Eileen Pei GSD ’44 studied at the GSD, as did their sons Chien Chung (Didi) Pei, MArch ’72, and Li Chung (Sandi) Pei, MArch ’76. Pei was also an assistant professor of architecture at the GSD. This event, with guests including Harry Cobb AB ’47 MArch ’49, moderated by Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of Harvard GSD and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, will focus on the formative years of I. M. Pei’s career as well as some of his special friendships, influences, and projects.//

P.S. There are some archival news footage of the building of Louvre in this clip.

(Hopefully more to be added later.)

Designing the Canadian Flag

I recently watched the documentary “Design Canada – The History of Graphic Design in Canada” via online streaming service Kanopy (free thanks Calgary Public Library) and LOVE it! Especially loving the segment about the design history of the Canadian flag! I love that Canadian flag segment so much that I looked up more online and found some extra cool info produced by CBC News in 2015 to celebrate the 50th birthday of our lovely flag!

CBC News, Feb 16, 2015, “The real story behind the Canadian Flag”

Have a read of the lovely historical and insightful four-page document “Dr. George F.G. Stanley’s Flag Memorandum – “the genesis of the Canadian flag”” as shown in the above CBC News report.

Here is a trailer of “Design Canada – The History of Graphic Design in Canada”

P.S. I love Canada and the Canadian flag and I’ve requested a Peace Tower flag that has flown on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and hoping to receive it around the year 2060, hopefully I’ll still be alive to receive it!

I like the Greek proverb (?), “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” In requesting the Peace Tower flag that had a waiting list of 46 years at the time, I made myself a commitment/promise of sort to love, cherish, and to try to make Canada a little bit better than I found her!

Hello 2019

Love to learn from others and will keep doing it. Graham Norton is one of my favourite talk show hosts and here you can find a lot of inside insights. “Exclusive: Graham Norton Reveals Secrets From His Show | Studio 10“.

I also watched these three clips of Hillary Clinton: a) Hillary Clinton Wishes She Had Done This During the Debates, b) Hillary Clinton didn’t want to attend Trump’s Inauguration, c) Hillary Clinton Is Worried About Donald Trump’s Tweets.

Q&A with Neil Gaiman (one year after Neil’s great commencement speech!)

C-SPAN: Joe Wong at RTCA Dinner

(Ref: Joe Wong: Building A Wall Didn’t Work For China, clip of .@JoeWongComedy wants to bring Chinese and Americans together – by making them both laugh)

In the quest to build a better battery

I’ve always love and curious about battery technologies. CBC News has this interesting news article, “In the quest to build a better battery, a Canadian is energizing the field“. Will see how things pan out in the coming years with Canadian Don Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at MIT. (Prof. Sadoway “did both his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Toronto, receiving his PhD in 1977”.)

2012 Ted Talk Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy

2015 World Economic Forum, Unlocking Renewables | Donald Sadoway

Good movies online @Kanopy! Thanks @CalgaryLibrary!

Here is a list of good movies online via the Kanopy streaming service. Calgary Public Library (CPL) users get to watch up to 10 movies each month. Hope you will enjoy these movies. (Note: Movie links are for CPL. A quick Google confirms public libraries in Toronto and San Francisco are also subscribers of the Kanopy service.)

1. Guangzhou Dream Factory (documentary) (5/5 stars), trailer (added: 20181206)
2. Patema Inverted (Japanese Anime) (4/5 stars), trailer (20181206)
3. Hearts Beat Loud (drama) (5/5 stars), trailer, SXSW Q&A with Nick Offerman and Director Brett Haley, Sundance Q&A (20181206)
4. Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (documentary) (4/5 stars), trailer (20181206)
5. Sweet Bean (Japanese drama) (5/5 stars), trailer (20181206)
6. Like Someone in Love (Japanese drama) (4/5 stars), trailer (20181206)
7. After The Storm (Japanese drama) (5/5 stars), trailer (20181206)

P.S. I love Calgary Public Library system’s awesome collection of books, audio books, and, in recent years, massive DVDs and Blu-rays collection! The brand new Central Library is really a work of beauty! Library users can actually make five (5) suggestions per month to the library (via our online account) to buy new books, DVDs, or Blu-rays to add to its collection! So far two out of my five suggestions have been accepted.

Recently Guangzhou Dream Factory was rejected as a purchase but I was told that the film is actually available to watch online via Kanopy ! Truly a case of one door closes, a window opens!

At Eternity’s Gate – starring Willem Dafoe as van Gogh

The Oscar nominated director (and painter) Julian Schnabel‘s film At Eternity’s Gate about the final years of painter Vincent van Gogh‘s life seems fascinating.

Insightful short clip via TIFF: AT ETERNITY’S GATE director Julian Schnabel on art and creating

AT ETERNITY’S GATE – Official Trailer

AT ETERNITY’S GATE – A Journey Inside the World of Vincent van Gogh

At Eternity’s Gate’ Press Conference | NYFF56

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Inside Black Mirror from co-creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones

Black Mirror is one of the best anthology science fiction television TV series on air (on Netflix) right now. I just LOVE it. Now thanks to UK Guardian, we get to look deep inside Black Mirror with insights from co-creators, awesome master class with Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones!

Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones: Inside Black Mirror – (87 minutes)

Nov 5th, 2018 Correction: While I wish Charlie and Annabel are co-creators, I should correct and state that they are co-show runners while is Charlie the creator of Black Mirror according to the book info of Inside Black Mirror (available Nov 20 2018) they are plugging.

//[via Amazon] About the Author
Charlie Brooker (Author)
Charlie Brooker is an award-winning writer, producer and broadcaster whose career has spanned television, radio, print, and online media.

Brooker is the creator and writer of Black Mirror, whose fourth season launched on Netflix at the end of 2017 and won a BAFTA Craft Award and has recently picked up three BAFTA TV Awards nominations. The critically acclaimed, mind-bending anthology series originally launched on Channel 4 in 2011 and over its four seasons has collected awards including Primetime Emmys® for Outstanding TV Movie and Outstanding Writing for a TV Movie, Producers Guild of America, Rose D’or, BAFTA, International Emmy® and Peabody.

Annabel Jones (Author)
Annabel Jones is a long-term collaborator of Charlie Brooker’s. She serves as co-show runner and executive producer on Black Mirror. Previously Jones executive produced a number of shows presented by Charlie Brooker including three series of the BAFTA-nominated BBC Two satirical review Weekly Wipe; all seven editions of the annual shindig Charlie Brooker’s End of Year Wipe, which won a BAFTA for its 2016 edition; How Video Games Changed the World; Newswipe, which won the 2009 Royal Television Society Award for Best Entertainment Programme; Gameswipe; and the How TV Ruined Your Life series for BBC Two.

Jason Arnopp (Co-author)