IN: Remment Lucas "Rem" Koolhaas (Dutch pronunciation: [rem ko:lha:s]; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Koolhaas studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Koolhaas is the founding partner of OMA, and of its research-oriented counterpart AMO based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In 2005, he co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman.

Following the signing of Treaties of Nice in May 2001, which made Brussels the de facto capital of the European Union, the then President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi and the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt invited Koolhaas to discuss the necessities and requirements of a European capital.  During these talks and as an impetus for further discussion, Koolhaas and his think-tank AMO - an independent part of OMA - suggested the development of a visual language. This idea inspired a series of drawings and drafts, including the "Barcode". The barcode seeks to unite the flags of the EU member countries into a single, colourful symbol. In the current European flag, there is a fixed number of stars. In the barcode however, new Member States of the EU can be added without space constraints. Originally, the barcode displayed 15 EU countries. In 2004, the symbol was adapted to include the ten new Member States.  Since the time of the first drafts of the barcode it has very rarely been officially used by commercial or political institutions. During the Austrian EU Presidency 2006, it was officially used for the first time. The logo was used for the EU information campaign, but was very negatively criticized. In addition to the initial uproar caused by the Estonian flag stripes being displayed incorrectly, the proposed flag failed to achieve its main objective as a symbol. Critics pointed the lack of capability to relate the signified (the mental concept, the European Union) with the signifier (the physical image, the stripes) as the major problem, as well as the presented justification for the order in which the color stripes were displayed (as every country in the EU should be regarded as equal in importance and priority).
QUESTION: what kind of symbol?
IN: David "Davy" Crockett (August 17, 1786 - March 6, 1836) was a 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. He is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives and served in the Texas Revolution. Crockett grew up in East Tennessee, where he gained a reputation for hunting and storytelling.

Crockett fell in love with John Canady's niece Amy Summer, who was engaged to Canady's son Robert. While serving as part of the wedding party, Crockett met Margaret Elder. He persuaded her to marry him, and a marriage contract was drawn up on October 21, 1805. Margaret had also become engaged to another young man at the same time and married him instead.  He met Polly Finley and her mother Jean at a harvest festival. Although friendly towards him in the beginning, Jean Finley eventually felt Crockett was not the man for her daughter. Crockett declared his intentions to marry Polly, regardless of whether the ceremony was allowed to take place in her parents' home or had to be performed elsewhere. He arranged for a justice of the peace and took out a marriage license on August 12, 1806. On August 16, he rode to Polly's house with family and friends, determined to ride off with Polly to be married elsewhere. Polly's father pleaded with Crockett to have the wedding in the Finley home. Crockett agreed only after Jean apologized for her past treatment of him.  The newlyweds settled on land near Polly's parents, and their first child, John Wesley Crockett, who became a United States Congressman, was born July 10, 1807. Their second child, William Finley Crockett, was born November 25, 1808. In October 1811, the family relocated to Lincoln County. Their third child Margaret Finley (Polly) Crockett was born on November 25, 1812. The Crocketts then moved to Franklin County in 1813. He named the new home on Beans Creek "Kentuck".  His wife died in March 1815, and Crockett asked his brother John and his sister-in-law to move in with him to help care for the children. That same year, he married the widow Elizabeth Patton, who had a daughter, Margaret Ann, and a son, George. David and Elizabeth's son, Robert Patton, was born September 16, 1816. Daughter Rebecca Elvira was born December 25, 1818. Daughter Matilda was born August 2, 1821.
QUESTION: Who did Davy marry?
IN: Gilliam was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Beatrice (nee Vance) and James Hall Gilliam. His father was a travelling salesman for Folgers before becoming a carpenter. Soon after, they moved to nearby Medicine Lake, Minnesota. The family moved to the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Panorama City in 1952.

Gilliam's films have a distinctive look, not only in mise-en-scene but even more so in photography, often recognisable from just a short clip; to create a surreal atmosphere of psychological unrest and a world out of balance, he frequently uses unusual camera angles, particularly low-angle shots, high-angle shots, and Dutch angles. Roger Ebert said that "his world is always hallucinatory in its richness of detail." Most of his movies are shot almost entirely with rectilinear ultra-wide-angle lenses with focal lengths of 28mm or less to achieve a distinctive style defined by extreme perspective distortion and extremely deep focus. Gilliam's long-time director of photography Nicola Pecorini has said, "with Terry and me, a long lens means something between a 40mm and a 65mm." This attitude markedly differs from the common definition in photography, by which 40 to 65 mm is the focal length of a normal lens, resembling the natural human field of view, unlike Gilliam's signature style, defined by extreme perspective distortion due to his usual choice of focal length. The 14-mm lens has become informally known as "The Gilliam" among filmmakers because of his frequent use of it at least since Brazil. Gilliam has explained his preference for using wide-angle lenses in his films:  The wide-angle lenses, I think I choose them because it makes me feel like I'm in the space of the film, I'm surrounded. My prevalent vision is full of detail, and that's what I like about it. It's actually harder to do, it's harder to light. The other thing I like about wide-angle lenses is that I'm not forcing the audience to look at just the one thing that is important. It's there, but there's other things to occupy, and some people don't like that because I'm not pointing things out as precisely as I could if I was to use a long lens where I'd focus just on the one thing and everything else would be out of focus. ...  [M]y films, I think, are better the second and third time, frankly, because you can now relax and go with the flow that may not have been as apparent as the first time you saw it and wallow in the details of the worlds we're creating. ... I try to clutter [my visuals] up, they're worthy of many viewings.  In another interview, Gilliam mentioned, in relation to the 9.8-mm Kinoptic lens he had first used on Brazil, that wide-angle lenses make small film sets "look big". The widest lens he has used so far is an 8-mm Zeiss lens employed in filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
QUESTION:
What's special about his film's looks ?