On Tuesday January Jan 28, 2020 Europe’s biggest fire festival Up Helly Aa lit up the sky as Lerwick, in far nothern Scotland's Shetland islands, celebrated the Vikings who once ruled there. The event takes place annually on the last Tuesday of every January, and now attracts visitors from all around the world. While it starts with a morning parade through the snow, it’s at night that the festival is at its most enchanting, and when its strange costumes and customs come alive. As seen above, a replica Viking longboat is set alight during the Up Helly Aa festival in Lerwick, Shetland Islands, far northern Scotland.
Bong Joon Ho brings his singular mastery home to Korea in this pitch-black modern fairytale. Meet the Park Family: the picture of aspirational wealth. And the Kim Family, rich in street smarts but not much else. Be it chance or fate, these two houses are brought together and the Kims sense a golden opportunity. Masterminded by college-aged Ki-woo, the Kim children expediently install themselves as tutor and art therapist, to the Parks. Soon, a symbiotic relationship forms between the two families. The Kims provide "indispensable" luxury services while the Parks obliviously bankroll their entire household. When a parasitic interloper threatens the Kims' newfound comfort, a savage, underhanded battle for dominance breaks out, threatening to destroy the fragile ecosystem between the Kims and the Parks. SEE VIDEO WALL
Francisco Toledo, the celebrated Mexican artist and cultural philanthropist who drew on his indigenous pre-Colombian heritage to create striking works suffused with shamanistic animal imagery, died on Thursday. He was 79. Mr. Toledo was regarded by many as Mexico’s greatest living artist, one who could trace his lineage to the Zapotecs, who flourished before the 16th-century Spanish conquests in what is now the southern state of Oaxaca, his native region. His paintings, drawings, prints, collages, tapestries and ceramics were largely inspired by that heritage.
Snow and ice sculpture in Harbin dates back to Manchu times, but the first organized show was held in 1963, and the annual festival itself only started in 1985. Since then, the festival has grown into a massive event, bringing in over a million tourists from all over the world every winter. Harbin is well known for its beautiful ice and snow sculptures in winter and its Russian legacy and still plays an important part in Sino-Russian trade today.
