On this day in television history - Blade Runner: Black Lotus (2022)

Blade Runner: Black Lotus
Season 1. Episode 8.

Episode entitled: The Davis Report.

Released January 2, 2022.

Developed by Kenji Kamiyama, Shinji Aramaki.

Directed by Kenji Kamiyama, Shinji Aramaki.

Written by Brandon Auman, Margaret Dunlap, Eugene Son, Alex de Campi.

Based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Opening theme: Feel You Now by Alessia Cara.

Music by Michael Hodges, Gerald Trottman.

Cast:

Jessica Henwick, Samira Wiley, Greg Chun, Josh Duhamel, Stephen Root, Elias Toufexis, Jim Pirri, Charles Halford, Laura Post, Sunil Malhotra, Keith Ferguson, Zehra Fazal, Takako Honda, Taiten Kusunoki, Arisa Shida, Yûya Uchida, Hôchû Ôtsuka.

On this day in music history: The album Play, by Roxanne Potvin (2011)

 

Play

by Roxanne Potvin

was released on January 2, 2011.

Track list:

Barricades; You Told Me; Let Me Go; Born to Win; Coral Reef Fishes; Magic Rainbows; Dis-Moi Que Tu M'aimes; Pretty Girls; Donnes Ton Mal; Seashells; I'm Too Sexy; Keep Your Head.

Happy New Year:

#HappyNewYear

Carl Sagan, on books and writing:

 

What an astonishing thing a book is.

It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.

Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions,
binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs.

Books break the shackles of time.

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
 
- Carl Sagan.

James Patterson, on reading and writing:

 

I learnt to love reading.
And then I started scribbling stories, and I liked that even more.
- James Patterson.

Recommended reading - Film Noir Compendium

 

Film Noir Compendium

Key Selections from the Film Noir Reader Series

by Alain Silver and James Ursini.
 
Published 2016.
Published by Limelight.
Illustrated edition.
Paperback.

ISBN-10: 1495058980
ISBN-13: 978-1495058981
 
Description:
 

In this essential study of film noir, editors Alain Silver and James Ursini select the most significant and influential articles on the movement from their highly respected Film Noir Reader series and assemble them into a single, convenient, heavily illustrated volume. Still included, of course, are many rare early articles and such seminal essays as Borde and Chaumeton's “Towards a Definition of Film Noir” from Panorama du Film Noir Americain, Paul Schrader's “Notes on Film Noir ” and “Paint It Black: the Family Tree of the Film Noir” by Raymond Durgnat. With newer studies such as “Lounge Time” by Vivian Sobchack, “Manufacturing Heroines in Classic Noir Films” by Sheri Chinen Biesen, and “Voices from the Deep: Film Noir as Psychodrama” J. P. Telotte, this collection of over 30 articles probes this most influential American film movement from varying angles: formalist, feminist, structuralist, sociological, and stylistic; narrative-thematic historical, and even from the point of view of a pure aficionado. There is something in this volume for every student or devotee of film noir. Plus like the readers that have proven an invaluable tool for academics planning a syllabus, it can serve as the most complete core text for any of the myriad of film noir courses taught throughout the world.

Born on this day – Betsy Ross:

 

Betsy Ross

Seamstress

Upholsterer

January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836

Creator of the First American Flag.

Postage stamp issued January 1, 1952 – commemorating 200 hundred years since her birth.

Depicted in the stamp are George Washington, being presented with the flag by Betsy Ross, with Robert Morris and George Ross.

Referenced in the following books:

Betsy Ross (First Biographies) (2007); Betsy Ross (Profiles in American History) (2006); Betsy Ross (Rookie Biographies) (2006); Betsy Ross and the Making of America (2010); Betsy Ross Issue / Smithsonian National Postal Museum (May 29, 2014); Betsy Ross’ Star / Blast to the Past (2007); Betsy Ross: A Flag For A Brand New Nation / Leaders of the American Revolution (2005); Betsy Ross: The Story of Our Flag / Easy Reader Biographies (2007); Betsy Ross’s Five Pointed Star (2005); Flag: An American Biography (2005).

 

Movies and television:

Betsy Ross (1917); Man vs. History / documentary (2021).