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Old-fashioned yarn-spinning, Irving's "Legend" told at the Old Dutch Church, a bone's throw from the spot where Washington Irving is buried. |
Now, it's enlisted Bill Irwin, the Tony-winning Clown Prince of Broadway, who leads the cast of a new movie, "The Unsilent Picture." It will be screened for 16 nights only throughout October in a 444-seat tent theater, down an appropriately spooky lantern-lit trail at the back of the Philipsburg Manor property. |
Historic Hudson Valley is not resting on its All Hallow's laurels. It has commissioned "The Unsilent Picture," which isn't just any movie. |
Cortlandt-based director Alex Harvey, a friend of longtime Nyack resident Irwin (who now calls Manhattan home), has created an original black-and-white silent movie, accompanied by live musicians on accordion, cello and electric guitar. There's also a hardworking sound-effects specialist (called a Foley artist) who add... |
Hence the movie's name: "The Unsilent Picture." |
As the action unfolds, the live soundtrack created by the musicians and Foley artist mesh with the action on the screen and one hardly notices the sound isn't physically part of the film. |
Based on one of Irving's "Strange Stories by a Nervous Gentleman," the film — which was shot in seven days on location this summer at Van Cortlant Manor (home of The Blaze) — tells the story of a "man of science," Dr. Geoffrey Crayon, who is invited on a hunting weekend at the home of his niece and her husband. |
It is clear that the good doctor does not belong from the outset. For one thing, he's the only guest on this hunting trip who is a vegetarian. |
He's not buying what they're selling. But what man of science would? |
The story turns with a simple question as the guests prepare to retire for the night and the bedroom chambers are assigned: "Who gets the haunted chamber?" |
Irwin's Dr. Geoffrey is then thrust into a fitful night that has plenty to say about fear and the unknown. Irwin's rubber face are put to full use, in service to a spooky story. |
A trip to "The Unsilent Picture" can be paired easily with a visit to "Horseman's Hollow," which is on the same property. Both last about 30 minutes. |
And both will have you checking your chamber door before turning in for the night. |
What: Screenings of Alex Harvey's silent film "The Unsilent Picture," starring Bill Irwin and based on Washington Irving's "The Adventure of the Mysterious Picture" |
Where: Philipsburg Manor, 381 N. Broadway, Sleepy Hollow. |
When: Oct. 5-7, 12-14, 19-21, 25-31. Screenings at 6:15, 7:15, 8:15, and 9:15 p.m. |
Tickets: $18. Historic Hudson Valley members get $5 per ticket discount. |
Call: 914-366-6900 ($2 per ticket surcharge for telephone orders and for tickets purchased onsite, if available). |
Note: Recommended for ages 10 and up. It contains scenes of drinking alcohol, smoking and snuff tobacco use, implied violence and mature themes. |
When: Oct. 4-31, Nov. 1-4, 7-11, 15-17, 23-24. Sells out fast. |
Where: Van Cortlandt Manor, 525 S. Riverside, Croton-on-Hudson. Onsite parking available and the site is walkable from Croton-Harmon train station. |
Tickets: $22 adults ($27 Friday-Saturday); $16 children 3-17 ($20 Friday-Saturday); children under 3 admitted free. All admissions are by advance purchase timed ticket only. |
What: Philipsburg Manor becomes much more than a haunted house, inspired by "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and its Headless Horseman. |
When: Oct. 5-7, 12-14, 19-21, 25-31. Sells out fast. |
Tickets: $20 (Saturdays, $25). Best for ages 10 and up. |
What: Storytellers Jonathan Kruk and Jim Keyes spin Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," accompanied by organ music. |
When: Oct. 5-7, 12-14, 19-21, 25-31. |
Where: The Old Dutch Church. Park across Broadway at Philipsburg Manor, 381 N. Broadway, Sleepy Hollow. |
Schedule: Kruk performs Monday through Fridays at 6:15, 7:30 and 8:45 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 5, 6:30 and 8 p.m.; Keyes on Saturdays and Sundays at 11:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. |
There Is No Third Console Curse. Don't Believe It. |
The next Xbox will be Microsoft's third video game console. And there are already those who say the still unannounced machine is doomed. You see, some believe in a Third Console Curse. |
Whether it's gamers on the IGN boards or GameFaqs, there's chatter of a "dreaded console curse." Heck, even as early as 2009, there were individuals online saying the next Xbox would be cursed! |
Typically, the examples—no, victims—given of the dreaded curse are the PlayStation 3, the Nintendo 64, and the Sega Saturn. Oh, some also say the Atari 7800 fell victim, too. |
Those examples are wrong. What's more, there just isn't a curse. It's hogwash. |
Because it's freshest in our minds, let's start with the PlayStation 3. Sure, the rollout was horrible, but would you really call the PlayStation 3 cursed? Selling over 70 million consoles? That's cursed? Really? |
There isn't a Madden Curse. And there certainly isn't a Third Console Curse. |
Just because you say something is cursed and point to follies, that doesn't mean it's been fated. With the Red Ring of Death fiasco and spectacular failure in Japan, you could argue that the Xbox 360 is cursed! It's not. Neither is the PS3. And saying either is cursed is plumb silly. Same goes for Microsoft's next cons... |
Sure, the PS3 didn't match the PS2's numbers, but that's because the PlayStation 2 is the most successful home console of all time. Following the PS2 is like going on stage after The Beatles: a tough act to follow. |
Then, there's the Nintendo 64. Before you even start to dig into the argument that the Nintendo 64 was cursed, it's important to clarify whether or not the N64 was actually Nintendo's third console. |
Before Nintendo released the Family Computer (aka "Famicom") in Japan in 1983, it released the Nintendo Color TV Game in 1977. While a total of five Color TV Game consoles were released, wouldn't the dedicated gaming machine also be a console? It allowed you to play video games in your home. Or are we only counting mac... |
And if we do say the Nintendo Color TV Game was a console, do we count each machine as separate? If so, then the third console would be Color TV Racing 112, which was not a failure. But if we count the Color TV Game series as a single console, then the third console would be the Super Nintendo. That console was a treme... |
Even if we say the Nintendo 64 was Nintendo's third console (and let's go ahead and do just that), the machine was also a success, especially when you compare it to the console that followed, the GameCube. Imagine if people thought the GameCube was Nintendo's third console! Just think of the conspiracy theories and dea... |
Then, there's the Sega Saturn. Just to be clear: the Sega Saturn was not Sega's third console. Sega had already made a handful of game machines before the Saturn, and depending on what consoles you count, the Sega Genesis, which was released before the Saturn, is Sega's third console. It was also one of the best consol... |
The logic for naming the Sega Saturn the third console is to skip over earlier consoles, like Sega's SG-1000. That's the thing with conspiracy theories and curses: they are selective with history. |
And finally, there's the Atari 7800. As with Nintendo, Atari made dedicated game consoles, such as Pong. But after the Atari 2600, the pricey Atari 5200 with its awful controller wasn't the hit Atari hoped for. But neither was its successor the Atari 7800. Neither was its successor the Atari XEGS. Neither was its succe... |
The history of video games is littered with consoles that never made it. Some of them were later machines. Others were first or second efforts. |
At some point you have to scratch failure up to mismanagement and bad products, instead of curses—and vice versa for a console's success. Judge the next Xbox on the decisions that Microsoft makes, the games the console gets, and the experiences you have. Forget the hocus pocus. |
Franz Ritter, scholar and dreamer, is troubled. It appears that his great love is unrequited, which may render his situation poetic if only barely tolerable. At least he can expect emails from her. Yet far worse, for Ritter and for the reader, who is very much on his side, perhaps he has simply failed to assert his int... |
As Ritter is bedridden in his Vienna apartment when we meet him, ill and depressed, and has decided that his adored Sarah’s thesis could be approached as “a catalogue of melancholics, the strangest catalogue of adventurers into melancholia of different kinds and from different cultures”, this is a delightful, and devas... |
Few works of contemporary fiction will yield as much pleasure as Compass. Reading it amounts to wandering into a library arranged in the form of an exotic sweet shop, full of tempting fragments of stories guaranteed leaving you wanting more. Quite an achievement for a novel approaching 500 pages. |
Compass spans one night in the imagination and memory of a sympathetic individual who recalls Ivan Goncharov’s famously apathetic Oblomov. A gracious old-world quality prevails as the French maestro Mathias Énard lovingly spins his spell, but this novel of ideas is laced in intent as well as intriguing stories and pers... |
Énard is the author of Zone, in which a Croatian mercenary, sitting on an express train hurtling between Milan and Rome, reflects on his vicious record as part of humanity’s savagery. Énard has an uncanny gift for merging the glories of the past with the ravages of the present. It is ironic that Compass, which appears ... |
The theme is the conflict between East and West, and the incalculable debt western culture owes to the genius of the East. It is significant that Ritter, his narrator, is a musicologist whose investigations into eastern influences on western classical composers. Ritter’s feelings are intensified because Sarah, the beau... |
Aside from Énard’s having fun with praising Beethoven for having the wit to abandon Bonn for Vienna – subtext: leave Germany for Austria – he sees Vienna as the gateway to the East. Énard distances himself from France by allowing his story to be told by an Austrian who does not quite understand France, any more than he... |
Compass is translated by Charlotte Mandell, who so brilliantly conveyed the single-sentence, 500-page urgency of Zone. This new book takes its title from a gift that Sarah gave to Ritter: a compass once owned by Beethoven. The composer had it altered so it always pointed due east, not north. |
Énard is a scholar of Arabic and Persian. He has lived in Syria, and Ritter recalls his experiences in Damascus and Aleppo. Tehran becomes particularly significant because of a quasi-romantic near-miss. There is vivid fluidity about the descriptions. |
The narrator sees Istanbul as “the limit of European music”, where Liszt had ventured almost as an evangelist. Grillparzer, an Austrian, wrote Beethoven’s funeral oration. Énard delights in making these connections. |
It should be a showy performance, yet it is not. Mandell, the translator, conveys Ritter’s tone of wistful regret. True, one wonders exactly how exhausting it must be to reside inside Énard’s burgeoning mind and memory, but all the better for the reader. |
Compass won the 2015 Prix Goncourt, holding off a challenge by the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal’s fancied and controversial dystopian prerace favourite, 2084: The End of the World. Sansal’s fable, championed by Michel Houllebecq, pays homage to George Orwell. Its objectives are fiercely satirical, yet Énard’s equally... |
In Compass Goethe, Hugo and Balzac emerge as readers intent on adventure. Énard pays tribute to the pioneering Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, who spent 50 years translating works from Persian, Arabic and Turkish literature and introducing them to eager readers such as Goethe. Literature and art are p... |
The obvious irony is that, whereas the literature could be translated, read and shared,the artefacts were removed, usually forcibly. The built heritage is now being destroyed. |
For Sarah, knowledge is a personal quest, the intensity of which nearly dehumanises her. Yet traces of tenderness filter through; two friends hover on the edge of romance and fail to make a decision. Ultimately, Énard’s glorious dreamscape celebration of art, music and history is a romance, although his own love affair... |
Longlisted for this year’s Man Booker International Prize, Compass is beautiful, engaging and self-indulgent. Énard conjures up the wonders of the Middle East in a sorcerer’s cornucopia, alive with illusions and allusions, which is itself a cultural compass and so much more. |
There are certain inevitable cycles in the universe: The tides that comes in must also retreat, the sun will rise and eventually set, and Samsung and Apple will release a new generation of smartphones. |
Like the Egyptian gods Ra and Apep, the two smartphone titans seem destined to clash time and time again. Their battle is our gain, as each new generation of smartphones seems more incredible than the last. The latest flagship phones from each company — Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and Apple’s iPhone 6S — are marvels of consume... |
Apple’s iOS 9 is fast in general, though it can occasionally lag on older hardware. Bugs are to be expected early in an OS update’s lifecycle. Search functions and notifications are more useful and 3D Touch gives iPhone users new ways to interact with the touchscreen and OS. The iPhone 6S is powered by Apple’s new A9 p... |
The iPhone 6S runs much faster than the previous generation, and can go toe-to-toe with any of its competitors, including the Galaxy S7. In one speed test, the iPhone 6S defats the Galaxy S7 handily. One test isn’t conclusive, of course, but it’s still interesting. |
The S7’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 (which is the chip used in U.S. models, while phones made elsewhere have the Exynos 8890) has outstripped most competitors in early benchmark tests, and the S7’s 4GB of RAM — twice that of the iPhone 6S — give it the advantage on paper. In real life, it’s harder to tell a difference in ... |
iOS is efficient and runs well on the iPhone 6S with no major lag. If it’s anything like the S6, the Galaxy S7 may suffer from lag over time in TouchWiz. That’s not to say it isn’t fast. In benchmarks, the Galaxy S7 performs very well. Users who play games and other demanding apps on their phones will appreciate the S7... |
Storage is another area where the S7 triumphs. While both phones offer 64 and 128GB of storage for increased prices, the base model S7 comes with 32GB of storage, while the iPhone 6S comes with a pitiful 16GB. It is bewildering that Apple would release a new flagship phone with so little storage space. Modern users dev... |
Apple has always embraced aesthetics. Each product it releases is as much a piece of modern art as a useful device, and the 6S is no exception. Its slim profile and brushed aluminum casing give it a monolithic look. The screen is wider and taller than previous iPhones without becoming cumbersome. The 6S is easy to hold... |
Samsung is hardly a philistine, however, and the S7’s neo-futurist look, all chrome and curves, is impressive. The phone is layered with Gorilla Glass, and the AMOLED screen offers clear, colorful images. Like the 6S, the Galaxy S7 fits perfectly in the contours of a human hand. Unfortunately, the glass screen seems to... |
In Japanese aesthetics, the term wabi-sabi encompass the ephemeral beauty of the material world. Like flowers in the fall, both the S7 and 6S seem oh so fragile; one drop can shatter their screens or scuff their siding, and the S7’s glass is particularly expensive to repair. Whichever you choose, consider buying a stur... |
All phones have to pull double-duty as cameras these days. It wouldn’t surprise us if people spent more time taking photos with their phones than talking on them. Both the S7 and iPhone 6S feature high-end cameras, with 5-megapixel front-facing cameras and 12-MP rear-facing cameras capable of immaculate selfies or land... |
One of the latest iPhone’s biggest innovations is Apple Live Photos. This feature allows the iPhone 6S to record a brief snippet of video before and after a picture, allowing for GIF-like moving images. It’s a seemingly small addition, but one that gives iPhone users some extra avenues for creative expression. With the... |
Both can record video in 4K (2160p), enabling users to record shockingly crisp videos at the expense of huge amounts of storage space. |
It’s hard to say which camera is best in the end. Samsung’s Galaxy S7 has one of the best cameras of any Android smartphone, but when it comes to producing natural results effortlessly, the iPhone 6S wins. If you want stronger low-light performance and don’t mind slightly over-saturated images, the Galaxy S7 is the one... |
Both phones start in the same price range. The 6S comes with the added wrinkle of small storage; it simply might be too constricting for users, thus pushing them to buy a more expensive version with extra space. The 64 GB and 128 GB cost $750 and $850 respectively, so a comparable amount of storage to the S7 will requi... |
Over the years, Samsung’s Galaxy has been one of the few legitimate contenders for the iPhone’s throne. The rivalry only seems to grow more intense, as the newest models for both lines, the Galaxy S7 and the iPhone 6S, push the concept of smartphones to new levels. Both phones are incredible, and it is difficult to cro... |
The S7’s mighty processing power makes it ideal for those who want to play games on their phones. The 6S, like all Apple products, is the pinnacle of user-friendly design, and features like Live Photos turn the smartphone into an instrument of creative expression rather than a mere tool for communicating. In the end, w... |
Like it, Love it, or LOL it? How are people reacting to news on Facebook? |
Great 1.09 acre corner lot in Wittmann! Close to Carefree Hwy and Lake Pleasant. Room to build your dream home. Room for horses, rvs, boats, trailers, and more! Come see it today! |
Wow, my horoscope says I should get ready to travel at any moment. -- Duke Liddell, Malverne, N.Y. |
Aha! "Tornado coverage. See below." -- Brendan Powers, Fort Myers, Fla. |
A master’s degree from an accredited tertiary institution in Political Science, Law, Political Economy, Government, International Development or International Affairs, Democracy and Governance, Economics, Conflict Resolution or any related field. A minimum of eight (8) years’ post-qualification relevant working experie... |
The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) invites applications from suitably qualified Ghanaians, who are dynamic, goal-oriented and results-driven with exceptional leadership qualities for appointment to the under-mentioned positions. |
To provide technical and operational support in International Policy and Governance for the achievement of the mandate of the Commission. |
Serve as in-house resource person on political governance and democracy, institutional reforms, local governance, conflict management and resolution, and global affairs, especially during NDPC policy dialogues on governance with sector ministries, department and agencies, and formulation of national development policy ... |
Plan and coordinate on a continuous basis comprehensive research programmes and review of study programmes, identifying data and research needs as related to political governance and democracy, institutional reform, local governance, conflict management and resolution, and global affairs, within the Development Policy ... |
Lead the preparation of policy papers/notes, statements, briefs, press articles, and periodic updates on political governance and democracy, institutional reform, local governance, conflict management and resolution, and global affairs, and make presentations at both national and international conferences. |
Coordinate and facilitate nation-wide policy advocacy and dialogue on issues related to political governance and democracy, institutional reform, local governance, conflict management and resolution, and global affairs, with key stakeholders (comprising public institutions, Parliament, universities/research institution... |
Assess the information needs of the public and other stakeholders – i.e., ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), development partners, civil society organisations – and design appropriate strategies for engagement with the public throughout the country to enhance citizen participation at all stages of the develop... |
Manage events and preparation of publications on issues related to political governance and democracy, institutional reform, local governance, conflict management and resolution, and global affairs and dissemination of main report findings. |
Very good knowledge of planning, policy analysis and formulation, and performance measuring, monitoring and evaluation methodologies. |
Ability to lead in the determination of the effectiveness of policy dialogues with government, Parliament, civil society, research institutions and universities, the media, multilateral and bilateral donors, is a prerequisite for this position. |
Effective capacity to conduct research, qualitative and quantitative data analysis and interpretation. |
Ability to communicate complex developmental policy issues. |
Understanding of globalization, regional integration and cooperation. |
Extensive experience in policy-related work, planning and management of development cooperation, projects and programmes. |
Excellent computer skills, including full working knowledge of standard word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software packages. |
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