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Art
Who doesn’t know the bilious green, clumsy and yet endearing ogre with a heart of gold. »Shrek« is a series of computer animated motion pictures, which was the most costly computer animated production with their first part when it was released back in 2001, and awarded with an Oscar for best animation in 2002. The story is based on the children’s book »Shrek!« by the American cartoonist and children’s book author William Steig. The title derives of Yiddish and means »terror«. The movie was so successful that further sequels followed.
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“Full Moon Silhouettes” is an almost 4 minute real time video by the Australian photographer and visual effect artist Mark Gee, where the rise of the full moon is shown, above Mount Victoria lookout in Wellington (New Zealand). You can see an uncut sequence where the Moon rises from the lower right corner above the horizon, and ascends to the left upper side (because this takes place on the southern hemisphere!). The visitors on the lookout are visible as black silhouettes in front of the yellow Moon and its luna maria.
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»Moonstruck« is a romantic comedy from 1987, where next to Cher and Nicholas Cage, the full moon plays a leading part. It can be seen countless times in the film, in the night sky, quite differently compared to »Sleepless in Seattle« for example, where you can only see it on the movie poster. The word »moonstruck« in the title, refers little to the subject of sleepwalking, but rather to the fact that human behavior can be quite peculiar at times during the full moon.
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“Moonwalk” is a dance technique which fakes a forward motion by moving legs and feet, while in reality you are moving backwards. This is how the illusion is created that the floor is pulling away in a gliding motion, underneath the feet of the dancer. No other name can be more closely connected to this move than the name of Michael Jackson (who was born on 29th August 1958 on a full moon). Even though he is not the founder, in this case, one can refer to him as the figurehead. The key moment was Jackson’s performance of “Billie Jean” at the anniversary celebration “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever” in 1983. From this moment on, the moonwalk’s triumph was not to be stopped and Michael Jackson had shaped his signature move.
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It is fascinating how the French writer Jules Verne (1828–1905) envisaged the journey to the Moon 100 years in advance in his science fiction novels and was able to put it into words. Admittedly, he was quite taken with describing journeys to unimaginable places: from the deep sea (“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”), via the circumnavigation of the Earth (“Around the World in 80 Days”) through to the interior of the Earth (“Journey to the Center of the Earth”). Of course, space had to be part of this and this is how Jules Verne firstly wrote the novel “From the Earth to the Moon” (»De la Terre à la Lune«, 1865) and then later the sequel “Around the Moon” (»Autour de la Lune«, 1870).
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There are probably few painters who made use of the full moon in their paintings as often as Marc Chagall (1887–1985), the French artist of Russian-Jewish descent, who was regarded as »le poète« (the poet) amongst painters, due to his symbolic shapes and colors.
Chagall lived for almost a century and if one can classify his style at all, then it would have to be expressionism. He worked in Russia, France (primarily Paris) and in the US (primarily New York) and was on an inner and outer journey throughout his life.
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There are quite a few full moon songs, with Frank Sinatra’s »full moon and empty arms« leading the way, from 1945, which was inspired by Rachmaninoff’s piano concert No. 2 (you can hear this in the comparison). A newer example would be the »full moon song« by Peter Bradley Adams from 2011, or the song »full moon« by the British music duo The Black Ghosts (Theo Keating and Simon William Lord) from 2006, which achieved a high level of publicity in 2008 as the soundtrack of the movie »Twilight«. The song may have probably not been that successful, if the music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas hadn’t chosen it for the soundtrack.
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In his first solo album »The Dream of the Blue Turtle« from 1985, Sting published the Song »Moon over Bourbon Street«, which is not just about the Moon. He sings about the existence as a vampire, which he had turned into years ago, and which condemned him to follow passers-by in this street, in the moonlight and the pale lamplight …
It is characteristic for this song that it spares the bloody part of the crime and only leaves an indirect description. The word vampire is also not mentioned, however, it is clearly focused on, for example in the following line: »… you’ll never see my shade or hear the sound of my feet …«
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We had already told you about the paintings of romanticism by German painters Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) and Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810). And also the English painter William Turner (1775–1851) had the moonlight in his mind. Here we are looking at the next generation and find the Dutch-Belgian artist Petrus van Schendel (1806–1870), whose speciality were the nightly moonlight sceneries. What distinguished him from his predecessors and colleagues, was that it were precisely those depictions of nightlight, which brought him fame and not an insignificant financial success (which was not a given for many painters).
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Ansel Adams (1902–1984) was one of the most influential photographers in the US, who particularly became famous for his magnificent black and white photography of American landscapes and national parks. He is the role model of many photographers and set standards with his shots. And as chance would have it, one of his most renowned photographs is an image with the rising Moon in New Mexico.
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