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Pink Floyd member Richard Wright dies at 65
Richard Wright, a founder member of Pink Floyd, has died at the age of 65 after battling cancer, his spokesman said.
Wright played the keyboard with the legendary band and wrote music in classic albums such as Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here.
His spokesman said: "The family of Richard Wright, founder member of Pink Floyd, announce with great sadness, that Richard died ... after a short struggle with cancer. The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this difficult time."
Wright's spokesman did not say from what form of cancer the star had been suffering.
The self-taught keyboardist and pianist met fellow band members Roger Waters and Nick Mason while at architecture school. He was a founder member of The Pink Floyd Sound in 1965, and the group's previous incarnations, such as Sigma 6.
In the early days of Pink Floyd, Wright, along with Syd Barrett, was seen as the group's dominant musical force. The London-born musician and son of a biochemist wrote and sang several songs of his own.
The Great Gig In The Sky
The Great Gig In The Sky, and Us And Them, both from 1973's seminal Dark Side Of The Moon album, were his most well-known compositions. He also made essential contributions to Atom Heart Mother, Echoes and Shine On You Crazy Diamond, the tribute to former band member Barrett.
After his relationship with Waters became increasingly difficult, he left Floyd following sessions for the album The Wall. Wright was retained as a salaried session musician during live concerts in 1980 and 1981. In 1983, Pink Floyd released the only album in which Wright does not appear - The Final Cut.
Wright played with the surviving members of Pink Floyd in 2005 at Live 8. He also performed at a tribute concert to Barrett last year, but Waters and Gilmour, who famously fell out more than 25 years ago, appeared separately. Wright had performed on every Pink Floyd tour.
He officially rejoined Pink Floyd following the departure of Waters and contributed vocals and keyboards to the 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason. In 1994, he co-wrote five songs on The Division Bell album, singing lead vocals on the track Wearing The Inside Out.
thanks to: Cynthia
John Currin - Bad painting, good art.
John Currin - Bad painting, good art.
"John Currin (born 1962) is an American painter. He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner.His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models.He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body.
Currin was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Connecticut, where he studied painting privately with a renowned traditionally trained artist from Odessa, Ukraine, Lev Meshberg. He went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he obtained a BFA in 1984, and received a MFA from Yale University in 1986.
In New York City in 1989 he exhibited a series of portraits of young girls derived from the photographs in a high school yearbook, and initiated his efforts to distill art from traditionally clichéd subjects. In the 1990s, when political themed art works were favored, Currin brazenly used bold depictions of busty young women, mustachioed men and asexual divorcés, setting him apart from the rest. He used magazines like Cosmopolitan along with old issues of Playboy for inspiration for his paintings. When criticized for being sexist, Currin did not deny it, but did remark that he felt that "at that time [he] didn't feel like a man and [he] didn't feel like a woman." In 1992 a subsequent exhibition focused, less sympathetically, on well-to-do middle-aged women.Nonetheless, by the late 1990s Currin's ability to paint subjects of kitsch with technical facility met with critical and financial success, and by 2003 his paintings were selling "for prices in the high six figures". More recently, he has undertaken a series of figure paintings dealing with unabashedly pornographic themes.
He has had retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Tate Gallery.
Currin is based in New York City, where he lives with his wife and fellow artist, Rachel Feinstein." - wikipedia
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
God of War with Light Sabers - Is it Christmas Already?
"September 13, 2008 - We're actually three months from Christmas, but for any gamer who likes a good action/button mashing game, it might as well be December 25th. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will not only appeal to the Star Wars fan, but to the average gamer as well. It's a combination of God of War and of course, Star Wars. In a nutshell, it's God of War with light sabers, and oh, force powers too. Sounds fun already, huh? On top of that it does have decent visuals and a lot of variety when it comes to gameplay. It's so damn good I don't know where to start, or maybe I do?If you haven't looked at the preview videos, the game's story line is about Darth Vader and his apprentice (whom Vader secretly trains). After the first couple of missions, you will know what I'm talking about. It's a brand new story to the Star Wars series and it will interest the Star Wars geek who can recite every Jedi out there, along with the newcomer who doesn't even know what a Jedi is.
When you first boot up the game, you'll be greeted by a very sleek menu. Lightning seems like a very continuous theme in this game. Every time you move up and down the screen, lightning bolts flash across, it's a nice visual. In addition, there will be this huge logo of the Force Unleashed on the top of the screen, with a bright light coming out of the "O" in Force, like the way it looks on the cover. To say the least, the presentation on this game is done very well. The menus are neat and of course, how can you not like the epic music of Star Wars?" - ign.com
"At first glance, I thought this game looked very average. If you put this game next to a game from the Battlefront series, there's not much of a difference. However, where the difference lies is the main character models, Vader looks absolutely awesome in the game, so does all the other major bosses you face. The average trooper on the other hand, looks kind of meh. The textures in this game aren't exactly well done either. But like I said, the character models of the main characters is where it's at. Another impressive thing they did with this game is the force power visuals. The lightning and force push actually give you the illusion that you actually have the force. Lightning bolts stretch around the entire screen when you perform lightning, when you use repulse, the entire screen is affected by a giant ball of wind, and when you go to throw some kind of an object or an enemy, a whoosh effect comes over the screen. The cut scenes in the game aren't well done though, they're basically the game's normal visuals. There are no CGIs in this game whatsoever. Overall, the visuals come across as decent. It suffers a lot on close ups, but it looks very good during gameplay and gives you the feeling that the force is indeed with you." - ign.com
"Force Unleashed's gameplay is what separates it from the normal action title. In some aspects, it's even better than God of War. Why? Variety. Yes, you can kill people with different moves in God of War, but they're all with the chain blades. In Force Unleashed, you can use your light saber and force powers numbering in the double digits. Now, that's variety! I've taken my enemies out with just pure lightning before. I've also used combinations that included repulse to knock them down and then a couple of light saber throws to finish them off. I've also choked my enemies to death while they're in the air. Ground slammed them and then electrocuted them with lightning. The possibilities are endless. One of God of War's biggest drawbacks on the PSP was that it had very few boss battles. I think there were about 5 boss battles in total? Force Unleashed has 5 boss battles in the first couple of missions. This game is beyond epic when it comes to boss battles. I've had three of them on the same mission before. They're usually with giant monsters or mechs and they usually end with a Jedi. In the midst of the battle, you'll have to do a lot of button mashing in what I like to call, "button-coordination mini-games" where you basically press the button accordingly when it tells you to. Sometimes it's mash as hard as you can, other times, it's press one button fast and you're done. Once you have enemies down to very low health (like 1/10 of their health bar) you can finish them off with a mini-game that asks you to press the action buttons that are displayed on the screen. Each boss fight usually ends that way. It might seem kind of repetitive at times, but in the end, you'll have fun. One of the game's biggest drawbacks is its camera. It's not user-controlled, instead the CPU centers it for you most of the time. You can ask it to re-center, but it won't always do it correctly. When you're in boss fights or just getting ganged up on, it's a complete mess. You have no idea what you're doing and you just press square repeatedly. Even with such a problem, I enjoyed the gameplay A LOT. It's not a huge issue, but it's definitely one that could of been improved.
Okay, I'm almost there. I'll end it here with audio and some replayability stuff. The voice acting is superb, it wouldn't be a LucasArts production if it wasn't. The music can say the same because once again, it's LucasArts. We don't have to be Star Wars geeks to at least enjoy Star Wars music. Now, onto replay value. Although there is no infrastructure play, there is Ad-hoc, so you an duel with your buddies. In addition to that, Sony's new firmware update will allow users to take ad-hoc only games online by the use of a PS3, so that could be excellent for this game. In addition, there are historical missions you can do with many different Jedi. There's also missions where they will throw a bunch of enemies at you at once and you'd have to kill all of them to move on, called Order 66. So basically, there's a lot of replay value on this game without infrastructure.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is truly an epic game. With good visuals, stellar gameplay, and great presentation, this game is a must-buy for any action game fan or Star Wars fan. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be Kratos and Darth Vader at the same time, this is the game for you and your dream will become true. This is probably one of the best ports on the PSP this year and in my book, it's the third best PSP game of the year after God of War and Crisis Core." - ign.com
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