Documentary in which Ros Savill, former director and curator at the Wallace Collection, tells the story of some incredible and misunderstood objects - the opulent, intricate, gold-crested and often much-maligned Sevres porcelain of the 18th century.
Ros brings us up close to a personal choice of Sevres masterpieces in the Wallace Collection, viewing them in intricate and intimate detail. She engages us with the beauty and brilliance in the designs, revelling in what is now often viewed as unfashionably pretty or ostentatious. These objects represent the unbelievable skills of 18th-century France, as well as the desires and demands of an autocratic regime that was heading for revolution.
As valuable now as they were when first produced, Sevres' intricacies and opulence speak of wealth, sophistication and prestige and have always been sought after by collectors eager to associate themselves with Sevres' power. Often the whims and capricious demands of monumentally rich patrons were the catalysts for these beautiful and incredible artistic innovations.
The film explores the stories of some of history's most outrageous patrons - Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, as well as their foreign counterparts like Catherine the Great, who willingly copied the French court's capricious ways. Ros tells how the French Revolutionaries actually preserved and adapted the Sevres tradition to their new order, and how the English aristocracy collected these huge dinner services out of nostalgia for the ancient regime. In fact, they are still used by the British Royal Family today.
Like the iPads of their day, these objects, ostentatious to modernist eyes, were the product of art and science coming together and creating something beautiful yet functional. Ros re-connects us with the fascinating lives and stories of the artists, artisans, painters and sculptors whose ingenuity, innovation and creativity went into making some of the most incredible and incredibly expensive ice cream coolers, vases and teapots of their day. We also see inside the factory, still open today, and witness the alchemic creation process for ourselves.
Taking us behind the museum glass and into some incredible private collections, the film reveals stories that are as louche, extravagant and over-the-top as some of the objects themselves. They might be unfashionable or even unpalatable to minimalist modernist tastes right now, but in this documentary we are taken back to a time when these objects were universally loved and adored, when they were the newest and most incredible things that had ever been created.

Andrew Graham-Dixon and Giorgio Locatelli's latest Italian adventure brings them to Rome in search of the greatest food and art that they can find off the beaten track.

曾经惊艳世人的纪录片《地球脉动》，再次由来自BBC的制作团队倾力奉献出最新的第二季。在这一季里，观众们将继续见证地球各个角落动物、植物平凡而精彩的生命瞬间。本季总共六集，分为岛屿、山脉、丛林、沙漠、草原和城市，树懒、巨蜥、狐猴、海鬣蜥、帽带企鹅、雪豹、金雕、蜘蛛猴、美洲豹……大自然的神奇之手创造的万千生物以其各自的习性自幼生活在生身土地之上。他们顺应着严苛的自然环境，顽强追逐着明日的朝阳。然而人类肆无忌惮的活动则侵蚀着其他生物的生存环境。
它们渺小而伟大，通过BBC的镜头，生命的光辉得以放大，闪耀在地球的每一个角落。

在这部纪录片里，大卫·马龙聚焦四位无与伦比的数学家：乔治·康托尔、路德维格・玻尔兹曼、哥德尔和阿兰·图灵。他们的天才光耀千古，他们的智慧深刻地影响了后世的我们。但是当同时代的人用尖刻的、猛烈的批评表达他们的反对意见时，它能产生一种悲剧性的结果，使他们精神错乱，最终都以自杀结束了自己的生命。
本片也与目前最著名的学者进行了对话。包括Greg Chaitin——纽约IBM TJ华生研究中心的数学家，以及罗杰·彭罗斯等人，他们仍在孜孜不倦地探寻世上到底是否有数学家不能弄明白的事。
《危险的知识》抓住了一些现实的深刻的问题，目前数学家仍在力图给出解答。请看一下下面的信息：这是一部完整的纪录片，只是因为技术原因才分为两部分。观看的时候要看完，而且请不要在看第一部分之前看第二部分。
1 of 2　上帝的信使
这部片子从乔治·康托尔开始讲起。他是一位伟大的数学家，创立的集合论已被尊为20世纪全部数学的基础。他认为自己是上帝的信使。因为他的老师利奥波德·克罗内克痛恨并敌视他以及他的理论，来自数学权威们的巨大精神压力终于摧垮了康托尔，结果康托尔精神失常，最终被疯狂所驱使，力图证明自己的无穷数理论。事实上，他的晚年是在精神病院度过的。
路德维格・玻尔兹曼力争证明原子和概率的存在，而奥斯特瓦尔德和马赫的强烈批评使他深感失望，导致了他最后的自杀。
2 of 2　谜团
哥德尔是爱因斯坦的一位性格内向的密友，一位智慧巨人。哥德尔定理粉碎了逻辑最终将使我们理解整个世界的梦想，同时也引发了许多富有挑战性的问题。他证明了形式数论（即算术逻辑）系统的「不完全性定理」：即使把初等数论形式化之后，在这个形式的演绎系统中也总可以找出一个合理的命题来，在该系统中既无法证明它为真，也无法证明它为假。哥德尔最终在一家疗养院绝食而死，因为他认为那些食物有毒。
阿兰·图灵，恩尼格玛密电码的破译者，计算机科学 “人工智能之父”，同性恋者。图灵为证明一些永远不能被证实的事情而死，外界的说法是服毒自杀，一代天才就这样走完了人生。（献给本文所有伟大而孤独的悲剧英灵。喵喵驴驴译，错误之处烦请各位达人指正，谢谢。部分资料来源于网络。）
In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.
The film also talks to the latest in the line of thinkers who have continued to pursue the question of whether there are things that mathematics and the human mind cannot know. They include Greg Chaitin, mathematician at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York, and Roger Penrose.
Dangerous Knowledge tackles some of the profound questions about the true nature of reality that mathematical thinkers are still trying to answer today. see notes below:1 documentary, only split for technical reasons. broadcast in 1, watch in 1, get both parts, don't start to watch pt2 before pt1.
1 of 2 God's messenger
The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.
Ludwig Boltzmann's struggle to prove the existence of atoms and probability eventually drove him to suicide.
2 of 2 The Enigma
Kurt Gödel, the introverted confidant of Einstein, proved that there would always be problems which were outside human logic. His life ended in a sanatorium where he starved himself to death.
Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable.
转自VeryCD