A Van Gogh opportunity!

Several interesting items came to me in the past few days, via Facebook and email.  With this post I'd like to share them with you.

Van Gogh Talking Painting Movie Project: UCA Honors College student Taylor Lea Hicks sent me a curious link, one that I just have to share with Creating Van Gogh readers.  It's an opportunity from Kick Starter not only to find out about a fascinating Van Gogh-themed movie project but to get involved yourself as a minor investor.  The plan for the movie is to tell Van Gogh's life story by having his paintings and drawings "come alive" and talk to the viewer.  Cool!  If you click on this link and watch the short video, you'll see an example of what the producers mean. Sounds like an exciting and extremely innovative project.

The "Van Gogh" photograph.  Could it be real after all? Several months back I first started posting about a controversial photograph, one that the historian of photography Joseph Buberger is convinced depicts the adult Vincent Van Gogh.  In a previous post, I passed on some evidence that suggests pretty strongly that the photograph was taken in Quebec, Canada by a Canadian photographer, making it unlikely that the photograph's subject could be Van Gogh, who never traveled outside of Europe.  But Joseph is still convinced and still seeks evidence to support his claim.  Last week he sent me two emails containing curious links.  Click on this link to see a colorized version of the photograph.  Very compelling.  The second link takes you to an article about Van Gogh in which Joseph's photograph is used, without comment, to show the reader what Van Gogh looked like.  Joseph's photo, despite the questions that surround it, certainly manages to stay in circulation!

Shameless plug/free stuff opportunity: Redacted Story, a just released, pleasantly perverse anthology from publisher KY Story, can be downloaded to your Kindle for FREE if you do so soon.  Click on this link to get the free download.  The 5-day free download deal began last Friday, which means there are only two days left!  Act soon!  As you probably guessed, the anthology includes a story of mine: a comic--even silly--sci-fi story about dogs on Pluto.  Yeah, that's right.  

Less shameless plug: On my other blog, Payperazzi, I've been carrying out a discussion about the 5 star rating system that is so often used to rate books.  The discussion has generated some Facebook and Goodreads discussion.  Click on this link to see my first post from last week and this link to see my followup post, featuring comments from reader Doug Luman.