Salma Hayek
The annual Cannes Film Festival has run since the thirteenth of this month and continues until the twenty-fourth. The festival has generated its usual series of headlines, as well as a controversy about women attendees having to wear high-heeled shoes to be admitted to festival affairs and showings. The event is a highlight of celebrity fashion each year; those in the entertainment industry from all over the globe take great care to be seen in their most glamorous light.
Photographer Vincent Desailly recently took advantage of the glamour and high attendance levels of the festival to shoot these beautiful black and whites of celebrities looking their most alluring on the red carpet. There's nothing quite like black-and-white shots to evoke a classic style and beauty. See more of these monochrome gems, including shots of Rooney Mara, Jake Gyllenhaal, Matthias Schoenaerts, Diane Kruger and others at Desailly's Tumblr and Instagram.
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Those of you who've been to Madame Tussauds London know the eerie exactitude with which the exhibits project into their spaces. In this footage, the Tussauds Star Wars exhibit is being painstakingly prepared, and it's as if we're seeing the movies all over again.
An impressive thirteen to seventeen individual pieces are molded together to shape a character’s head, which is made up of ten to fifteen liters of colored wax. Generally ten thousand strands of hair are inserted to each head, though Chewbacca broke that hairy record. Via Gizmodo
Keith Carmouche encounters an alligator while driving his Nissan truck to his camping spot in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. The gator angrily strikes, and Carmouche tells the animal "Hey, watch my truck." Later, the man likely wishes that he had backed off and left the gator alone. -Via Tastefully Offensive
In this twenty-ninth episode of Anglophenia, current host Kate Arnell gets down and dirty, teaching us Yanks to swear like Brits. From show promo:
"Swearing ranks up there with taking tea and discussing the weather as a British pastime. If you’re uninitiated in the colorful world of British swearing, Anglophenia’s Kate Arnell offers you a master class in the latest episode of our YouTube series. Don’t worry: we won’t turn the air blue with the naughtier terms, but here’s a good start if you want to slide in a “bloody hell” or two into your daily conversation."
Via Laughing Squid
Warner Bros. Television
Friends, which ran from 1994 to 2004, wasn't a show containing lavish sets. Most scenes were filmed either in a coffee shop setting or in one of two apartments. What made this show so expensive was its cast. One situation that made it incredibly costly for management was that the actors in the cast banded tightly together for salary negotiations, insisting on fair payment for the entire ensemble. That made it impossible for the network powers-that-were to divide and conquer the actors when it came to salary talks.
According to Finances Online, as the popularity of Friends grew, the actors negotiated for more money in relation to the growth. By the time the show was producing its final season, each cast member was making $1 million per episode, causing the show’s budget to cost an exorbitant $10 million per.
Read about the six other most costly television shows ever made here.
The Night Medicine Men
Vintage Everyday attributes this compelling collection of 17 Native American photographs to famed western historical photographer Edward S. Curtis. These images are said to be part of Curtis' The North American Indian, captured between 1907 and 1930. The photos were an ethnographical study of numerous tribes that Curtis believed to be vanishing peoples in their last days whom he felt were incredibly important to document. See more images from this grouping at Vintage Everyday.
The Altar
The Drying Mummy
This older footage of a baby panda bear being introduced to his mother at Taipei, Taiwan zoo is likely making the rounds now due to its rare and precious nature. Mama and one-month-old baby, separated at birth for the safety of the cub, were reunited for a nursing and bonding session. -Via The Presurfer
Eighteen-year-old Angela Clayton (previously recognized at age sixteen for her fabulous, handmade Elsa cosplay) appears to be headed for a promising career as a costume designer, judging from her array of impressive projects.
After making a splash in the cosplay world, Clayton has graduated to creating a number of stunning period and fantasy costumes, which she features on her blog and recently-launched YouTube channel.
Read more about the talented Clayton and see additional pictures of her work in this BuzzFeed profile of her.
Images: doxiequeen1.wordpress.com
Clayton's re-creation of the dress from Raphael and Giulio Romano's painting Portrait of Doña Isabel de Requesens
Clayton says she drew inspiration for this white dress from Marchesa gowns
When five-year-old Josiah Duncan was troubled by the appearance of a homeless man outside of a Waffle House in Prattville, Alabama recently, he asked his mother a series of questions about the man's disheveled looks and what it meant to be homeless. Upset at the news that the man was likely hungry, the child begged his mother to buy the man a meal. The events that followed left few patrons of Waffle House untouched. Said Josiah's mom,
"Watching my son touch the 11 people in that Waffle House tonight will be forever one of the greatest accomplishments as a parent I'll ever get to witness."
Via The Daily Dot
Mental Floss writer Therese O'Neill compiled this fascinating list of advice for Russians planning to visit the United States. As one might imagine, many of the items on the list contain ideas with which Americans won't necessarily agree. Take number 10, for instance:
“U.S. etiquette requires that you smile in each and every situation," says the site Этикет США. "If you want to travel to America, be prepared to give a smile not only to friends and acquaintances, but also to all passers-by, in shops, to the staff at the hotel, police on the streets, etc. Don't whine about your problems or the troubles in your life, either: Sharing in this country can only be positive emotions—sorrows and frustrations are impermissible. In the U.S. you only complain to acquaintances in the most extreme cases. Serious problems are for close friends and relatives only."
This American cheerfulness isn't a put-on, according to the site.
"Americans: they are a nation that truly feels happy. These people get used to smiling from the cradle onwards, so they do not pretend to be cheerful. The desire for a successful happy life is inculcated from childhood.”
See the list in its entirety here. What do you think, readers? Can you think of any advice you'd give to a Russian planning to travel to the U.S.?
Image: TUBS
The American College of Sports Medicine's eighth edition of their American Fitness Index was released today. The report ranks the physical fitness levels of 50 major U.S. cities. This year's results find Washington, D.C. as the most fit city in America; Indianapolis, Indiana was at the bottom of the list. From the report,
"The rankings, based on outdoor exercise options and rates of smoking, obesity and diabetes, are designed to be a “call to action” for areas to improve their infrastructures so they promote healthy lifestyles, says Walter Thompson, chair of the AFI advisory board and a professor of kinesiology at Georgia State University."
See the full rankings of all fifty U.S. cities here.
Via USA Today | Image: Barek
In creating a map illustrating the causes of death most common in the citizens of each state, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went further than merely to show the main culprits such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes, which are basically equal opportunity killers across the board. Some lesser causes of mortality are far more common in some states than in others.
After performing several calculations in their line of research, the CDC revealed a list of 23 secondary causes of death. Read more about how the findings were calculated and see which of the 23 causes of death was most common in your state here.
Image: CDC
And now, from my "I'm so glad that happened to someone else" file, a Los Angeles woman was cleaning out her closet when she found a plastic bag full of surprises, one of them big, saw-toothy and hissing. I have to commend her for her bravery. I would have called a SWAT team or something of the sort.
The folks over at SomeeCards made these brutally honest food pyramids, five of them in all, to cover people ages 18-70+. They're kind of what your nutritionist might come up with if he/she were a smartass who never failed to see glasses as half empty. Either that or a comedian. See brutally honest food pyramids for all age ranges here. Bon appetit!