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The eyes have it: Eye-catching movie posters that have a very similar look
05.16.2016
01:35 pm
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Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968).
 
In younger days I had a girlfriend who would often ask me to look into her eyes and see how much she cared. Perhaps lacking the imagination—or just that right amount of sensitivity—I only ever saw her eyes staring blankly back at me. Which may explain why we never lasted very long as a couple.

The eyes are said to be the windows of the soul. Or as the Roman philosopher Cicero wisely said:

The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.

The eyes reflect what we’re thinking or more poetically as Saint Jerome put it “confess the secrets of the heart.” How often has someone said “look me right in the eye and tell me the truth” as if the very truth were evident in those watery orbs for all to see? It is a common belief that our organs of sight do reveal everything—even as far as those detectives who believed photographing the pupils of Jack the Ripper’s victims would reveal the image of their killer. Those detectives were wrong, but in truth our eyes do reveal more than we know.

Last year in Sweden, scientists announced after a study of 428 individuals that every eye is unique—as unique as a fingerprint—and each iris can indicate different individual character traits. Apparently, the more pockets or “crypts” (threads which radiate from the pupil) in the iris, the more a person is supposed to be kind, sympathetic and warm-hearted. The more “furrows” (lines curving around the outer edge) the more neurotic and impulsive.

According to Matt Larsson, the behavioral scientist who led the study at Orebro University:

...people with different iris configurations tend to develop along different trajectories in regards to personality.  Differences in the iris can be used as a biomarker that reflects differences between people.

Then it’s true—our eyes do reveal secrets. But we must know how to read them first—and not just see them simply staring blankly back.

Advertisers have been canny to this idea for a long time. A big close-up of an eye on a movie poster tells the public exactly what to expect from a film—fear, terror, violence, alienation, or otherness. It is a well-used trope for horror movies—a vulnerable eye looking out in terror on which we can see the reflection of the killer getting ready to despatch another hapless victim.  As can be seen from this small selection of movie posters, this heavily-leaned on semiotic message can sometimes work exceedingly well (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), fail miserably (Blind Eye), explain the whole movie (The Day of the Jackal) or just be plain old weird (The Theatre Bizarre).
 
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Fred Zimmerman’s ‘The Day of the Jackal’ (1971).
 
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Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ (1971).
 
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John Boorman’s ‘Deliverance’ (1972).
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.16.2016
01:35 pm
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Floaters: So what are those damned moving amoeba things in your eyes, anyway?
12.10.2014
01:02 pm
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You know those floaty, amoeba-shaped things you can see if you press your closed eyes with your hands then look at a bright light? When I was a kid and saw those damned things I convinced myself that I had a special power where I had some sort of “microscopic vision” talent. I thought I could control them. I couldn’t. But it was fun to think so. Yep, I was a weird little kid. 

It still happens to me from time to time in my adult life, so I found this short TED-ed video—that explains exactly what that visual phenomenon is known as “floaters”—highly informative and fascinating.


 

 
Via World’s Best Ever

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.10.2014
01:02 pm
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