November 30, 2012

Charge your gear on the go using your travel bag

Filed under: Design,Gadgets,Technology by Orangemaster @ 5:11 pm

Dutch prototype travel bag Phorce will not only help you carry your smartphones, tablets, laptops and many more devices, but it can also charge them up while you commute, travel or just leave them in your bag. The Phorce can charge an iPhone 5 more than eight times and provide a MacBook Air with seven more battery hours. And you can charge several devices at the same time, surely not all of them bought from Apple.

Marijn Berk and James Jeffrey are trying to get their project crowdfunded on Kickstarter, and with just 22 days to go, they’ve almost collected their USD 150,000 they need. It’s the first time that a Dutch project has collected so much money on Kickstarter, which apparently doesn’t accept Dutch bank accounts for the funds.

The cost of a Phorce will start at USD 199 dollar (152 euro). If you drop them some cash, you can even vote on the fourth colour they will bring the bag out in besides red, black and dark green. Phorce can be used as a messenger bag, backpack and briefcase. As a consumer, to me this the 2.0 level of a Timbuk2 or Crumpler bag.

(Play spot the filming locations: Waterlooplein metro stop, EYE Film Institute and Brug 34 Utrechtsestraat)

(Link: www.bright.nl, www.getphorce.com, Screenshot Kickstarter)

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July 13, 2012

Film director Paul Verhoeven’s bridge to Hollywood

Filed under: Architecture,Film by Orangemaster @ 6:35 am

After hearing from two curators of Amsterdam’s Eye Film Institute (white building on the left, the other is the delightfully retro former Shell building) that Queen Beatrix really liked Sokurov’s The Russian Ark, which is known for having been filmed in one go with no editing, I also find out more about Hollywood heavyweight Paul Verhoeven.

To the Dutch, Paul Verhoeven is a major director who launched the career of fellow Dutchman Rutger Hauer, starring in films such as the 1973 Dutch classic Turkish Delight, while to Hollywood he’s the guy that came up with blockbusters such as Robocop, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers. Another face you may recognise in his films is Hollywood actor Jeroen Krabbé who played General Koskov in the Bond film The Living Daylights.

After 20 years of tinseltown Verhoeven came back to continue working on films in the Netherlands. In May he was present at the premiere screening of his restored 1980 film ‘Spetters’ (‘Hunks’ (male and female), but also meaning ‘spatter’ and even ‘ejaculation’). Lucky for some, it’s playing a few times with English subtitles in Amsterdam this month.

Spetters is being presented in its ‘uncut’ version, which means explicit sex scenes were put back in the way the film originally intended, including a blow job scene in the Rotterdam subway. Critics were very harsh on the film at the time, saying that it portrayed youth as amoral anti-gay bashers (one of the main character’s is gay) and the feminists had a field day with the blatant sexism and misogyny that actually makes the film amusing today and makes me wonder why the many women in Verhoeven films didn’t make it to Hollywood.

Here’s the Hollywood voice over trailer, with a wee bit of functional nudity:

And here’s the restored version of the trailer in Dutch. This one has explicit sex it in, which doesn’t need translation:

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