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The lyrics include references such as a steam train, bumper cars, a Big Dipper, roller coaster and a fruit cage. It also includes references to the reproduction of plants, mentioning pollination, fruit and bees.
"Sledgehammer" spawned a widely popular and influential music video directed by Stephen R.Johnson. Aardman animations and the Brothers Quay provided claymation, pixilation, and stop motion animation that gave life to images in the song. The video ended with a large group of extras jerkily rotating around Gabriel, among them: Gabriel's daughters Anna and Melanie, the animators themselves, and director Stephen Johnson's girlfriend. Also included were six women who posed as the back-up singers of the song. Gabriel lay under a sheet of glass for 16 hours while filming the video one frame at a time.
In 1987, it won nine MTV video music awards, a record which still stands as of 2008. It ranked at number four on MTV's 100 Greatest Music Videos Ever Made (1999). MTV later announced that "Sledgehammer" is the most played music video in the history of the station. "Sledgehammer" has also been declared to be MTV's number one animated video of all time.
The video was also voted number seven on TMF's Ultimate 50 Videos You Must See - first aired 24 june 2006. It ranked at number 2 on VH1's "Top 20 Videos of the 80's" as well as being named the (1) "Amazing Moment in Music" on the Australian TV show 20 to 1 in 2007.
The portion of the song featuring the synthesized flute solo was realized in the video by first one and then two oven-ready chickens, headless and featherless, animated using stop-motion. These were animated by Nick Park (of Wallace and Gromit fame) who, at that time was refining his work in plasticine animation.
This video is amazing it couldn't of been any better. it must of taken them ages to create the video taking pictures all the way thru. every frame is eye-catching, i would say his target audience is everyone, who would not love a great video with bright colours and a catchy song to go with it.
The beautiful people is a song from Marilyn Mansons's second full length album, Antichrist superstar, released as a single in September, 1996. An alternative metal hit written by Marilyn Manson and Twiggy Ramirez, and produced by Trent Reznor, Dave Ogilvie and Manson, its lyrics discuss two major themes: what Manson refers to as (the culture of beauty), and that culture's connection to Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of master slave mortality, the song's (weak ones), who are (always wrong), are oppressed by and exist solely to (justify [the existence of] the strong) (the so-called beautiful people).
When i watched the video of The beautiful people i had no idea what Marilyn Manson was trying to communicate to the audience. The video looked like something like of a horror movie gone wrong, but i found it really interesting to watch and i couldn't take my eyes of the video.
A porcupine skin, Stiff with bad tanning, It must have ended somewhere. Stuffed horned owl Pompous Yellow eyed; Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig Sooted with dust. Piles of old magazines, Drawers of boy's letters And the line of love They must have ended somewhere. Yesterday's Tribune is gone Along with youth And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach The year of the big storm When the hotel burned down At Seney, Michigan.
Food food absolutely appetising Food food absolutely tantalising The way it makes your stomach jump at its mention The way it melts on your tongue when you go to taste it The way the mouth waters at its mention or sighting The uncontrollable breathing for some impatient people As the food is prepared the intensity of its appeal The race to the table to secure a seat at the buffet The enjoyment as the food passes down the throat With a nice cold drink to was it down with How quickly everyone disappears at the sight of empty dirty dishes Food food absolutely appetising Food food absolutely tantalising |
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
FROG ‘N’ SNAIL (Marion Benoist/Fred de Fred)
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Mademoiselle |
I glued a handmade paper over the surface of the mask. The paper is black with little bits of gold leaf and tinsel in it. I trimmed the edges of it to match the mask once the glue dried. Then I glued on a strip of maribou feather for hair. This went on even easier than the mask surface, as the paper held the glue better. Small pieces of gold webbing were glued over the eyes on the inside of the mask. A gold paint pen was used to outline the eyes and to paint the lips. Artistically, I'm really happy with it. To wear, it's just ok. These masks only wear as well as the generic form fits your face. I find it gets kinda close and humid very soon in it. The eye effect is nice, but my own eyelashes brush the webbing when I wear the mask which is a little distracting. 2 I made a second mask using a pre-made mask form, this one was just a half mask. I had a big hackle of maribou that I was all set to use, and fringe, so that gave the basic shape to the mask. For the mask face surface, I used Friendly Plastic. It heats up in hot water, becoming stretchy and then hardens again when it cools. I had a bunch of pink glitter FP that I got on sale or something, so I decided to use it for the mask. The nice edge on the feathers and the fringe made gluing all the trims onto the plastic easy. The plastic stuck pretty well to the fabric-like surface of the mask, but I glued it in a few places for good measure. I glued fabric on the inside as a lining too. Artistically I was happy with this mask, and it wore pretty well. The only thing was the plastic made the face part of it pretty heavy. It's not a mask for a long night out. 3 Wanting to make masks that fit better and where I could design all the facial features, I turned to papier-mache to make my mask bases. Since I was taking a mask-making class in college, I got to make a plaster cast of my face. Once I had the cast sculpture of my face, making a mask form became a case of putting plasticine on the casting and then sculpting it into the face I wanted the mask to have. By working on a form of your own face, you automatically have the fit working. Once the sculpture part was done, the papier-mache was made using torn brown paper grocery bags and a mix of 50/50 Elmer's Glue and water. You want to tear the paper bags into small pieces. DO NOT CUT THE PAPER BAG. You really need the torn, rough edge to make successful mache, a cut edge won't dry flat and your mask will have little ends curling up all over it. By overlapping these little torn bits of paper, you actually wind up building a very strong and lightweight structure. Papier-mache masks can then be painted with gesso and sanded (you'll need to do a few coats) which will make the surface totally smooth and blank, ready for any sort of art finishing. I've also done masks where I used tissue paper, and the mask coloring forms naturally with the application of the colored tissue paper. Masks like that take a LOT of layers to be strong enough. Handmade papers from Japan and India are fantastic for mask-making. The half-mask here was built of grocery bag papier-mache and then painted with an acrylic paint to seal it against moisture as well as decorate it. A tiny round of feathers, meant for hats, was cut in two and the pieces were glued into the deep eye sockets to make the wild eyelashes. I will mention one mask I made this way where I didn't hardly build up the features much from my own. The finished mask fit so tightly to my own face, I couldn't move it hardly or talk while wearing it, so don't be afraid to exaggerate those facial features a bit more. It makes for a much better mask wearing experience. 4 For most of my years of mask-making, I tended to make masks that didn't fit over my glasses. However, I got tired of not being able to see where I was going, and I'm really more of an eyeglass girl than a contact lens girl. I was sitting in on a class on masks given at a WesterCon when the topic of using sheet foam for making masks came up. The foam is lightweight, slightly cushy, flexible and can be molded a bit when heated using an embossing tool that blows hot air. I hadn't used this material for masks before, but I was determined to when I got home from the convention. This is the second foam-based mask that I've made, and it took me about an hour and used less than $5 worth of materials! I enlarged the Squidoo logo and traced a paper pattern to get my shapes. I glued those bits together with a glue that works on foam. Then I used markers to add the details and taped the mask onto my own eyeglasses! If you don't wear glasses like I do, it would be easy to glue this sort of mask onto a pair of cheap sunglasses with the lenses snapped out. | ||||