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absencesrepetees · 2 years

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most anticipated in 2022

crimes of the future (david cronenberg, w/ viggo mortensen, kristen stewart, lea seydoux)

the stars at noon (claire denis, w/ margaret qualley, joe alwyn) + both sides of the blade (w/ juliette binoche, mati diop, vincent lindon, grégoire colin)

irma vep (series) (olivier assayas, w/ alicia vikander, carrie brownstein, alex descas, adria arjona, jeanne balibar)

infinity pool (brandon cronenberg, w/ alexander skarsgard, mia goth)

decision to leave (park chan-wook, w/ tang wei)

the zone of interest (jonathan glazer)

eureka (lisandro alonso, w/ viggo mortensen)

master gardener (paul schrader, w/ joel edgerton, sigourney weaver)

coma (bertrand bonello)

human flowers of flesh (helena whitmann w/ angeliki papoulia, denis lavant)

scarlet (pietro marcello, w/ louis garrell)

the curse (series) (josh & benny safdie/nathan fielder, w/ emma stone)

kimi (steven soderbergh, w/ zoe kravitz) + full circle (series)

new hong sang-soo films (?)

showing up (kelly reichardt, w/ michelle williams, andre benjamin, john magaro)

men (alex garland, w/ jessie buckley)

hellraiser (david bruckner, w/ jamie clayton)

passages (ira sachs, w/ franz rogowski, ben wishaw, adele exarchopoulos)

broker (hirokazu koreeda, w/ bae doona, song kang-ho)

the brutalist (brady corbet, w/ joel edgerton, marion cotillard, mark rylance, sebastian stan, vanessa kirby, raffey cassidy, stacy martin)

three thousand years of longing (george miller, w/ idris elba, tilda swinton)

the northman (robert eggers, w/ alexander skarsgard, anya taylor-joy, nicole kidman, willem dafoe, bjork)

sharpshooter (zhang yimou, w/ zhang yi)

blonde (andrew dominik, w/ ana de armas, adam brody, bobby cannavale)

shining sex (lucile hadzihalilovic, sion sono, hélène cattet & bruno forzani, kleber mendonca filho, bertrand mandico)

armageddon time (james gray, w/ anne hathway, oscar isaac, jeremy strong, cate blanchet, robert de niro)

after yang (kogonada, w/ colin farrell, jodie turner-smith, haley lu richardson)

mona lisa and the blood moon (ana lily amirpour, w/ jeon jong-seo, kate hudson)

a woman escapes (sofia bohdanowicz, blake williams & burak cevik, w/ deragh campbell)

el estado del imperio (amat escalante)

r.m.n. (cristian mungiu)

women talking (sarah polley, w/ frances mcdormand, jessie buckley, rooney mara, claire foy)

killers of the flower moon (martin scorsese, w/ leonardo dicaprio, brendan fraser, jesse plemons, lily gladstone, robert de niro)

the killer (david fincher, w/ michael fassbender, tilda swinton)

the fabelmans (steven spielberg, w/ paul dano, michelle williams, seth rogen)

les cinq diables (léa mysius, w/ adele exarchopoulos, noée abita)

on the count of three (jerrod carmichael, w/ christopher abbott, jerrod carmichael, tiffany haddish)

black glasses (dario argento, w/ asia argento, stacy martin)

ambulance (michael bay, w/ jake gyllenhaal, yahya abdul-mateen)

ecole de l'air (robin campillo)

please baby please (amanda kramer, w/ harry melling, andrea riseborough, demi moore, karl glusman)

tar (todd field, w/ cate blanchett, noémie merlant, nina hoss, mark strong)

the sky is everywhere (josephine decker, w/ grace kaufman, cherry jones, havana rose liu, jason segel)

bullet train (david leitch, w/ brad pitt, andrew koji, logan lerman, aaron taylor-johnson, brian tyree henry, zazie beetz)

one fine morning (mia hansen-love, w/ lea seydoux)

tokyo vice (series) (michael mann, w/ ella rumpf, rinko kikuchi, odessa young, ken watanabe)

cha cha real smooth (cooper raiff, w/ dakota johnson)

am i ok? (tig notaro & stephanie allynne, w/ dakota johnson, sonoya mizuno)

sharp stick (lena dunham, w/ kristine froseth, jon bernthal)

retreat (series) (brit marling & zal batmanglij, w/ emma corrin)

cuckoo (tilman singer, w/ hunter schafer, sofia boutella, gemma chan)

#lists

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mrfahrenheit92 · 4 years

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#Heaven Knows What #Josh Safdie #Benny Safdie #Safdie Brothers #Arielle Holmes #Caleb Landry Jones #Buddy Duress #Necro #Isaac Adams #Diana Singh #Benjamin Hampton

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ladymacbeth3759 · 3 years

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Films I watched in February (1)

Carol (2015) dir. Todd Haynes

Marriage Story (2019) dir. Noah Baumbach

Happy Together (1997) dir. Wong Kar-wai

La Traviata (1983) dir. Franco Zeffirelli

Beetlejuice (1988) dir. Tim Burton

Sonata for Viola (1981) dir. Alexander Sokurov

Uncut Gems (2019) dir. Joshua Safdie & Benjamin Safdie

Suspiria (2018) dir. Luca Guadagnino

Lazzaro felice (2018) dir. Alice Rohrwacher

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 4 years

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NEW TECHNIQUE LOOKS FOR DARK MATTER TRACES IN DARK PLACES So far, the only direct evidence we have for the existence of dark matter is through gravity-based effects on the matter we can see. And these gravitational effects are so pronounced that we know it must make up about 85 percent of all matter in the universe. But we know little else about dark matter, including whether it is made up of as-yet-undiscovered particles. There are many competing theories for the composition and properties of dark matter, and for whether dark matter has any visible markers to at last unmask it. Among the theorized dark matter particle candidates are WIMPs (weakly interactive massive particles), axions, and sterile neutrinos -- and physicists have searched for each type using a variety of Earth and space-based instruments and methods. Nearly 20 years ago, physicists suggested that the theorized sterile neutrino form of dark matter could be responsible for emitting light at a specific energy as its particles decay away in space, and in 2014 a study detailed a light signature, called the “3.5 keV line,” found in very large galaxy clusters -- keV is a measure of energy that represents a thousand electron volts or kilo electron volts. The study theorized that this line, which had no confirmed source, could be the smoking gun for dark matter decay that scientists had been searching for. But a new study by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), UC Berkeley, and the University of Michigan -- published online this week in the journal Science -- concludes that this explanation of sterile neutrino decay is now essentially ruled out as the source of this line. “Our finding does not mean that the dark matter is not a sterile neutrino, but it means that...there is no experimental evidence to-date that points towards its existence,” said Benjamin Safdi, a study co-author and an assistant professor of physics at the University of Michigan. The researchers’ approach, which analyzed X-ray telescope observations of dark places within our own galaxy where dark matter was expected, did not find evidence of the 3.5 keV line. “Our limits are so strong that they are likely to cause difficulty for any simple models of dark matter,” said Nicholas Rodd, study co-author and a physicist affiliated with the Berkeley Lab theory group and the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, which has faculty members from UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab. Rodd has been working with Safdi for several years in researching possible visible manifestations of dark matter in space. The technique the researchers developed, which is detailed in the latest study, also has the potential to analyze, with extreme sensitivity, other possible dark matter signatures in space. “While this work does, unfortunately, throw cold water on what looked like might have been the first evidence for the microscopic nature of dark matter, it does open up a whole new approach to looking for dark matter which could lead to a discovery in the near future,” Safdi said. Instead of looking at other galaxies and galaxy clusters -- places expected to be especially rich in dark matter -- for signs of this 3.5 keV line, the researchers analyzed data from more than 20 years’ worth of X-ray telescope images of “empty” space within our own Milky Way galaxy where you might expect the presence of dark matter but nothing else. Based on observed gravitational effects associated with dark matter, galaxies including our own Milky Way galaxy are expected to be surrounded by so-called halos of dark matter. Such halos would explain observations showing that objects nearer to a galaxy’s center orbit as the same speed as objects at the outskirts, which defies explanation if you only take into account visible matter. “Everywhere we look, there should be some flux of dark matter from the Milky Way halo,” Rodd said, owing to our solar system’s location in the galaxy. “We exploited the fact that we live in a halo of dark matter” in the study. Christopher Dessert, a study co-author who is a physics researcher and Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, said galaxy clusters where the 3.5 keV line has been observed also have large background signals, which serve as noise in observations and can make it difficult to pinpoint specific signals that may be associated with dark matter. “The reason why we’re looking through the galactic dark matter halo of our Milky Way galaxy is that the background is much lower,” Dessert said. The researchers used data from the XMM-Newton (X-ray Multi-Mirror) mission, a space-based X-ray telescope launched in 1999 by the European Space Agency. They restricted the data they used to a collection of images from about 800 so-called “blank sky” regions in space that were sampled within 5 to 45 degrees of the Milky Way’s galactic center -- areas expected to have higher concentrations of dark matter. They compared their own analysis to others’ analyses that were based on observations of regions in space thought to be rich in dark matter, such as the Perseus Cluster of galaxies and the Andromeda Galaxy. Rodd said the team’s analysis technique could be used to reanalyze data taken from other X-ray telescopes’ observations to scan in high detail for other light signals emitted across a far broader range of energies. “How can we extend this technique to look at more cases?” Rodd said. “There are tons of other datasets out there that we don’t say anything about in this study. If you are looking generically for dark-matter decay and you want to have more sensitivity, this is the way. This is a general tool that anyone searching for dark matter can use.” IMAGE....In this composite image, theorized particles of decaying dark matter should produce a spherical halo of X-ray emission – represented here as colorized matter concentrated around the center of the Milky Way (in black and white) – that could be detectable when looking in otherwise blank regions of the galaxy. (Credit: Zosia Rostomian and Nicholas Rodd/Berkeley Lab; Christopher Dessert and Benjamin Safdi/University of Michigan; Fermi Large Area Telescope)

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #dark matter

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antoineproulxllc · 4 years

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Antoine Proulx’s New ET-211 End/Bedside Table - Inspired by Ancient Egypt Architecture and Brutalist Architecture.

Ancient Egypt Structures

The Philae Temple Complex

The Arnak Temple Complex

Brutalist Architecture

Photo Credits

BA1 -

UTEC University - Lima,Peru. @utecuniversidad

Grafton Architects. @graftonarchitects

Photo by Arnau Rovira @arnauroviravidal

BA2 -

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Library. @umassd

Architect: Paul Rudolph (1963). @paulrudolphfoundation

Photo: @umassbrutt

BA3 -

Habitat 67 , housing complex in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. @habitat67montreal

Architect: Moshe Safdie. @safdiearchitects

BA4-

National Bank of Georgia HQ , Tbilisi @nationalbankofgeorgia

Architects: George Chakhava and Zurab Jalaghania (1975)

Credits

Furniture:

ET-211 End/Bedside Tables

Finish: Charcoal Gray Ash with Bronze Metallic center cube

BD-75B Bed

Finish: Charcoal Gray Ash with Bronze

Lighting:

Brazo Led Table Lamp by Pablo @pablodesignssf

Wall Art:

Photograph of Provincetown Pier by Julie Tremblay. @julietremblaygallery

Bedding:

Throw Blanket by Rosemary Hallgarten @rosemaryhallgarten

Portrait pillows: Passage du Grand-Cerf, Paris

Wall Paint:

Benjamin Moore: White Dove and Dragon’s Breath. @benjaminmoore

Floors:

Tarkett @tarkettofficial

Collection / Family : Defiant™ Oil and Grease Resistant Rubber Tile

Texture: Raised Round Rubber in Arctic

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vanessakirbyfans · 4 years

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Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf play a couple shattered by the loss of their newborn baby in Kornél Mundruczó's intense English-language debut.

Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó broke through internationally in 2014 with his snarling social parable about the downtrodden rising up against their oppressors, White Dog. He puts aside political allegory to drill deep into the heart of family tragedy in his first English-language feature, Pieces of a Woman. Puncturing a brittle European veneer with spikes of more American emotional volatility, the drama wears influences from Ingmar Bergman to John Cassavetes — not always lightly. Despite some contrived script passages and unsubtle symbolism, the first-rate cast keeps it gripping.

Written by Kata Wéber, the director's partner and frequent collaborator as both screenwriter and actress, the new film is expanded from a multimedia theater piece they developed together. It opens with a superbly controlled pre-title sequence running almost a full half-hour, which will be harrowing for anyone contemplating parenthood.

Martha (Vanessa Kirby) seems serene as she receives congratulations at an office baby shower, and her partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf), a construction engineer on a Boston bridge project, is already bursting with pride about becoming a dad for the first time. Even his irritation at the shade implied by her controlling mother Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) buying them a car ("She got it gray like her soul; that's her spirit color") can't dampen his high spirits. He gives Martha a gift of framed ultrasound photos of their daughter to hang in the nursery.

Having prepared for a home birth, they call their midwife when contractions start. But Martha begins to freak mildly when the woman is unavailable, caught up in the middle of a difficult labor. Sean tries to keep the mood light with jokes and romance as Martha's water breaks and the replacement midwife, Eva (Molly Parker), arrives at the house. She reassures Martha that her nausea is normal and only begins to show concern when the baby's heart rate slows between contractions. Within minutes of their daughter being born, apparently healthy, the infant abruptly turns blue, and the paramedics arrive too late to save her.

This is a startling sequence of events, made more urgent by the restless agitation of DP Benjamin Loeb's camerawork, darting among the three adults in the house. The meticulous blocking that went into setting up this virtuoso scene must have been head-spinning. It all happens so fast that even with the immersive sense of participating in real-time trauma — shot in a single take using a gimbal — you find yourself later struggling, along with the characters, to piece together specific details as doubts, recriminations and unfounded guilt begin surfacing, both in private and public.

The absence of conclusive findings from medical examiners only compounds the couple's lack of closure. Sean, who has a history of addiction, reacts with violent frustration while Martha becomes cold and closed-off, horrifying her mother with her stubborn decision to donate her daughter's body to science. Elizabeth, an iron butterfly who wears her hair like a lacquered helmet, barrels ahead with legal action against the midwife, a witch-hunt stoked by the medical establishment. She enlists Martha's slick attorney cousin Suzanne (Sarah Snook), who's confident they can win both criminal and civil cases against Eva.

The action is punctuated by shots of the harbor and date stamps, marking intervals over the seven months following the tragedy, during which the lawsuit is pushed forward while family relations break down.

In one strong ensemble scene that points to the material's stage roots, tensions boil over during a lunch gathering at Elizabeth's home, to which Martha's sister Anita (Iliza Shlesinger) and her car salesman husband Chris (Benny Safdie) also are invited. Chris and Sean get into an animated back and forth about grunge bands and the weird period when The White Stripes were passing themselves off as siblings instead of spouses. Suzanne feigns interest, having zero engagement in pop culture, while Elizabeth dithers about, working on her own plan to help Martha move on.

Loeb's nimble camera again is a valuable storytelling tool as it ricochets among the guests in another feat of single-take dexterity, zigzagging between rooms but rarely taking its eye off Martha's pressure-cooker state for long. Her explosive anger makes it clear she doesn't share the hunger for justice that her mother supposedly "needs." This prompts an overwritten but nonetheless effective speech delivered in bristling close-up by the formidable Burstyn, in which Elizabeth spits out the harsh history of her own birth as a Holocaust survivor in Central Europe.

While LaBeouf brings his customary physicality to some punchy scenes, ranging across uncontrollable rage, caginess and crushed vulnerability as grief poisons the couple's relationship, the movie's shattered core, as its title would suggest, is Kirby's Martha.

She visibly hardens in the wake of her devastating loss, discarding the lovingly assembled elements of the nursery with a resolute absence of emotion. A scene where she returns to work — silently absorbing the pitying looks of her colleagues with the air of a woman as dangerous as she is damaged — is one of many such moments of charged intensity. And when she gazes at children on the street or the subway or in a department store, her eyes could be expressing tenderness or resentment. The remarkable Kirby gives a tough performance, bleeding beneath her armor-plated guard but refusing to soften Martha's abrasive sides as she undertakes the isolating work of learning to live with her loss.

In smaller roles, Snook and Parker both make incisive impressions, and Safdie is always an interesting screen presence, too infrequently seen beyond his movies with his brother. Jimmie Fails, such a revelation in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, is under-utilized.

Mundruczó's command falters in climactic courtroom scenes that seem pedestrian and too movie-ish compared to the edgier psychodrama that's come before, especially when Martha gets stuck with a big heart-stirring trial speech. Such flaws are heightened by increasing overuse of Howard Shore's intrusive score in the latter sections. There are also clumsily obvious touches like Martha's interest in sprouting apple seeds as a metaphor for rebirth, or clunky allusions to bridges as tricky structures that sometimes need to be burned.

It's unclear who the audience will be for a drama so unflinching that its sunny coda feels almost like a betrayal. But those with the stomach for a forcefully acted representation of the gut-wrenching impact and long-range after-effects of sudden infant death will be rewarded with moments both powerful and affecting.

#Vanessa Kirby #Pieces of a Woman #Review #Articles

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shrivinglust · 4 years

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I deadasss want a biography on this long headed ass bitch. Like, why did he become this way??? Childhood trauma?? Very spoiled when he was a child and became a man child??? The "bad" teenager at school who was smart but never paid attention and did illegal things (shoplifting) because school was boring?? I read an article that Howie could have ADHD but 🤷

#uncut gems #howard ratner #adam sandler #julia fox #idina menzel #lakeith stanfield #safdies brothers #josh safdie #benjamin safdie

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hollywoodnewssource · 4 years

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2020 Spirit Awards Press Room Interviews with Bong Joon-Ho, Adam Sandler, Olivia Wilde & More

We attended the 2020 Independent Spirit Awards and were on site to record the press room interviews while there. Check out the footage from the press room below! Top honors were handed out at the 35th Film Independent Spirit Awards ceremony to The Farewell, Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Marriage Story, Judy, Booksmart and…

2020 Spirit Awards Press Room Interviews with Bong Joon-Ho, Adam Sandler, Olivia Wilde & More was originally published on Hollywood News Source

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symptom3000 · 4 years

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youtube

Oneohtrix Point Never "The Pure and the Damned" (2017)

director: The Safdie Brothers (Joshua Safdie, Benjamin Safdie)

#MV #MV2017 #MV2010s #Oneohtrix Point Never #The Safdie Brothers #Joshua Safdie #Benjamin Safdie

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homeplanetreviews · 6 years

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Best Films of 2017 by: Will Whalen

Hello everyone! I know, we’re already a month into 2018 but some films that were 2017 releases didn’t come out near me till 2018 and I just had to wait and see them. However, it didn’t change much because (for the most part) my top films list is nearly the same as it was when I made it in December. So, here it is! This was a terrific year for film but these are my absolute favorites of 2017.

First, I have a few honorable mentions: Molly’s Game, Alien: Covenant, John Wick 2, Get Out, My Life as a Zucchini, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, Call Me By Your Name, and All the Money in the World.

So, here we go!

15. The Disaster Artist

I was really surprised by The Disaster Artist because I was really excited for it because of The Room and I was expecting it to be a comedy about how The Room was made. And if you’ve ever seen The Room, anyone would be excited for that reason. However, what I got was a surprisingly super touching film about friendship and achieving your dreams no matter what the cost is or no matter how many times someone says you can’t.

14. Dunkirk

Dunkirk was a war film from the incredible mastermind Christopher Nolan that wasn’t a typical war film. It wasn’t some character drama on top of being a war film but instead a more accurate look at war. It was about survival and this horrible situation that these brave men were stuck in and basically all had to fend for themselves. I only got to see it once and I was lucky enough to see it in 70mm film but I can’t wait to revisit it.

13. Good Time

Good Time was actually a great time (bad pun intended) and was one of the most stressful, thrilling and non stop downward spirals of a film I have seen in recent memory. Robert Pattinson also gave his best performance and really should’ve been nominated. It was also directed excellently by the Safdie Brothers who took risks. They did things in this that most filmmakers would never dare to do. If you’re easily stressed, maybe stay away from this movie. But, its a good time...

12. It

You’ll float too… when you see It. It was one of the best horror films I’ve seen in quite a long time and definitely one of the funniest movies of last year. We finally got a It film and it was so wonderful. Andy Muschietti did a great job helming this work and the phenomenal cast from all the talented young actors involved make this movie one of a kind and one of the best Stephen King adaptations.

11. A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story was such a special movie. This film explores death, grief, and the afterlife in one of the most beautiful films of last year. Casey Affleck also gave one of the best performances of his career and he was under a sheet the whole time. His performance spoke volumes and I would’ve liked to have seen him get some recognition. This film floored me and if you haven’t seen it, do check it out. It’s not a horror movie but it will haunt you.

10. Thor: Ragnarok

This was one one of Marvel’s best to date. Takai Waititi takes the Thor story into a new direction and made one of the funniest and one of the most all out entertaining films of the entire year. Just on a pure fun and comedic level, this was one of the best and definitely one of the most fun films of last year. Also, Waititi gave us Korg and I don’t think we can thank him enough for that.

9. T2: Trainspotting

Aye ya doss cunt! This is a sequel to one of my top favorite films of all time, Trainspotting. Trainspotting came out in 1996 and now here we are, 20 years later with a sequel. This could’ve easily not been good but with Danny Boyle once again behind the camera, our favorite skagboys back and with a wonderful script, this was a fantastic sequel and a beautiful one too. Plus, it’s Trainspotting! Plus, there’s a great soundtrack once again.

8. Baby Driver

B-A-B-Y Baby! Baby Driver was an all out blast. It’s a fast paced, thrilling, exciting and wonderful film that has one of the best soundtracks to any film that has come out in a long time. All this is due to the amazing Edgar Wright who has made yet another great film with Baby Driver.

7. Logan

Logan is the wolverine film we’ve all dreamed about. An R rated Wolverine film is exactly what the world of superhero films needed. In Hugh Jackman’s supposed final performance as the Wolverine, we got one of the all time best superhero films. It was directed gorgeously and had a story that I was in love with. It didn’t even feel like a superhero movie but more like a western. Patrick Stewart also gave a phenomenal performance and I wish our two main actors would’ve gotten some more praise. If this really is Jackman’s final portrayal as Logan/Wolverine, then what a hell of a way to send out on.

6. Split

M. Night Shyamalan makes a grand return to the screen with Split. It felt so incredibly good to be seeing a great M. Night Shyamalan film in theaters. James McAvoy gives one of the best performances of last year and this was absolutely snubbed at the Oscars. I won’t spoil this film but if you have never seen Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, watch it and then watch this. Trust me. I loved this film so much and absolutely cannot wait for Glass. Also, the dance scene... just watch this movie.

5. War for the Planet of the Apes

This is the third and (I think) final film in the new Apes series and was, believe it or not, a mesmerizing masterpiece. What they did with this film is absolutely mind boggling. It’s not some big over the top action movie. There are action scenes, sure. But no, instead it was a psychological warfare, revenge and prisoner of war film that was absolutely beautiful. Andy Serkis gave a chilling and insanely great performance as Caesar. What he did with this character in this film, was just wonderful. If you’ve never seen these films, they’re all great and I highly suggest watching them.

4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

This film was one of the most fun times I’ve had the theater in quite some time. Rian Johnson took over for Episode 8 and took the Star Wars saga into a new direction and did something new, unique and just awesome. Of course, “fans” got pissed but anyone that loves film and any legit Star Wars fan, will love this one and appreciate what Johnson did with this. The Last Jedi also includes some of the best scenes in any of the Star Wars films. Sure, it does have flaws but this was a phenomenal spectacle and there’s one scene that I’ve been thinking about at least once a day since I saw this on opening night.

3. Lady Bird

This magnificent coming of age film is written by Greta Gerwig and is her directorial debut. This is a really special type of movie. It doesn’t even feel like it’s a movie but instead, just you watching people live their lives. And movies that feel so natural like that, are special. It’s also special because it’s so relatable. Whether you’re a boy or a girl or whatever, anyone can watch this and in some way, relate to it. It’s got excellent performances and it’s clear that Greta Gerwig has some real talent. I can’t wait to see what she does in the future. Lady Bird is going to be a teen classic for years to come.

2. The Shape of Water

When I saw this, I thought it may have taken place as my number one favorite of the year. Guillermo del Toro wrote and directed this and this is without a doubt, his best film yet and a beautiful masterpiece. Sally Hawkins is electric in this film alongside Oscar worthy performances from all of her costars. The Shape of Water absolutely floored me and left me in a puddle of tears. What blows me away, is how a movie like this gets 13 Oscar nominations. However, it’s well deserved.

1. Blade Runner 2049

Here it is folks. My personal favorite of the year. The movie that I thought was better than all the rest and that’s the cinematic marvel that is Blade Runner 2049. This was one of the best films I have ever seen. That’s not even a joke. On every level, it was so far beyond anything else I had ever seen. Denis Villeneuve directs this flawlessly but the cinematography from Roger Deakins, is probably the actual best from any other film I’ve ever seen. Each frame of this is dripping with dystopian neon noir and I couldn’t get enough of it. The score from Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch was so special and so hypnotizing. This is my favorite score to any film from last year as well. Ryan Gosling is in my number one film of the year yet again and this man is incredible. He gives such a subdued performance but one that spoke high volumes. It was also great to see Harrison Ford return as Deckard who also gave an amazing performance. Blade Runner 2049 should’ve been nominated for Best Picture and Best Director but I’m just happy it got some recognition. Either way, this film is a flawless masterpiece and was my number one of 2017.

That’s it folks! My top 15 of the year. I apologize about the delay, but hey, at least I finally did it! Stick around for many other review for the year!

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sciencespies · 3 years

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Traces of A Mysterious Particle Predicted Decades Ago May Have Been Detected

https://sciencespies.com/space/traces-of-a-mysterious-particle-predicted-decades-ago-may-have-been-detected/

Traces of A Mysterious Particle Predicted Decades Ago May Have Been Detected

Evidence of a long-sought hypothetical particle could have been hiding in plain (X-ray) sight all this time.

The X-ray emission coming off a collection of neutron stars known as the Magnificent Seven is so excessive that it could be coming from axions, a long-predicted kind of particle, forged in the dense cores of these dead objects, scientists have demonstrated.

If their findings are confirmed, this discovery could help unravel some of the mysteries of the physical Universe – including the nature of the mysterious dark matter that holds it all together.

“Finding axions has been one of the major efforts in high-energy particle physics, both in theory and in experiments,” said astronomer Raymond Co of the University of Minnesota.

“We think axions could exist, but we haven’t discovered them yet. You can think of axions as ghost particles. They can be anywhere in the Universe, but they don’t interact strongly with us so we don’t have any observations of them yet.”

Axions are hypothetical ultra-low-mass particles, first theorised in the 1970s to resolve the question of why strong atomic forces follow something called charge-parity symmetry, when most models say they don’t need to.

Axions are predicted by many models of string theory – a proposed solution to the tension between general relativity and quantum mechanics – and axions of a specific mass are also a strong dark matter candidate. So scientists have a number of really good reasons to go looking for them.

If they exist, axions are expected to be produced inside stars. These stellar axions are not the same as dark matter axions, but their existence would imply the existence of other kinds of axions.

One way to search for axions is by looking for excess radiation. Axions are expected to decay into pairs of photons in the presence of a magnetic field – so if more electromagnetic radiation than there should be is detected in a region where this decay is expected to take place, that could constitute evidence of axions.

In this case, excess hard X-radiation is exactly what astronomers have found when looking at the Magnificent Seven.

These neutron stars – the collapsed cores of dead massive stars that died in a supernova – are not clustered in a group, but share a number of traits in common. They are all isolated neutron stars of around middle-age, a few hundred thousand years since stellar death.

They are all cooling, emitting low-energy (soft) X-rays as they do so. They all have strong magnetic fields, trillions of times stronger than Earth’s, powerful enough to trigger axion decay. And they are all relatively nearby, within 1,500 light-years from Earth.

This makes them an excellent laboratory for looking for axions, and when a team of researchers – led by senior author and physicist Benjamin Safdi of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – studied the Magnificent Seven with multiple telescopes, they identified high-energy (hard) X-ray emission not expected for neutron stars of that type.

In space, however, there are many processes that can produce radiation, so the team had to carefully examine other potential sources of the emission. Pulsars, for instance, emit hard X-radiation; but the other kinds of radiation emitted by pulsars, such as radio waves, are not present in the Magnificent Seven.

Another possibility is that unresolved sources near the neutron stars could be producing the hard X-ray emission. But the datasets the team used, from two different space X-ray observatories – XMM-Newton and Chandra – indicated that the emission is coming from the neutron stars. Nor, the team found, is the signal likely to be the result of a pile-up of soft X-ray emission.

“We are pretty confident this excess exists, and very confident there’s something new among this excess,” Safdi said. “If we were 100 percent sure that what we are seeing is a new particle, that would be huge. That would be revolutionary in physics.”

That’s not to say that the excess is a new particle. It could be a previously unknown astrophysical process. Or it could be something as simple as an artefact from the telescopes or data processing.

“We’re not claiming that we’ve made the discovery of the axion yet, but we’re saying that the extra X-ray photons can be explained by axions,” Co said. “It is an exciting discovery of the excess in the X-ray photons, and it’s an exciting possibility that’s already consistent with our interpretation of axions.”

The next step will be to try to verify the finding. If the excess is produced by axions, then most of the radiation should be emitted at higher energies than XMM-Newton and Chandra are capable of detecting. The team hopes to use a newer telescope, NASA’s NuSTAR, to observe the Magnificent Seven across a wider range of wavelengths.

Magnetised white dwarf stars could be another place to look for axion emission. Like the Magnificent Seven, these objects have strong magnetic fields and are not expected to produce hard X-ray emission.

“This starts to be pretty compelling that this is something beyond the Standard Model if we see an X-ray excess there, too,” Safdi said.

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

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