icine.org

Thank Chaos for engaging films.

Tyrell Choren — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:09:04 +0000

It appears that we’re predisposed to be engaged by certain movies over others. This doesn’t mean that we like or enjoy them more, just that they can hold our attention.

An article over at National Geographic breaks down the findings. According to James Cutting, a cognitive psychologist at Cornell University, the pace of a film is what really draws us to it, and that the closer the pace approaches the nebulous 1/f pattern, the more interesting we’ll find the film. He found this ratio by comparing a film’s average shot length vs. the length of any one scene. The 1/f pattern isn’t anything new; it’s a popular ratio within chaos theory that is found in things like nature, music, and economics.

However, the films that come closest to approaching the 1/f pattern, aren’t necessarily considered the greatest films. Using IMDb as a judge (which we all know is the epitome of determining a film’s worth) he found no correlation between a film’s pace and its ranking. So, while Rebel Without a Cause, The 39 Steps and The Perfect Storm are some of the most engaging films of all time, none of them manage crack IMDb’s top 250 best films list.

Cutting found all this by studying 150 films over the last 70 years, which once again shows that the only difference between me and a professor is that nobody gives me a grant for what I do. He found that within the last 30 years, more and more films approach the 1/f ratio. To me, this suggests that subconsciously directors are aware of this pattern in other films and do their best to emulate it.

Though I probably wouldn’t understand a word of it, I’d love to see the raw data for this study. The article suggests that overall, action films are the best at reaching the 1/f ratio, but I’d really like to see how certain films ranked, and if there were certain genres that didn’t follow the pattern at all. Cutting mentions that film noir don’t adhere to the ratio, but I wonder more about horror and suspense films. Often these are movies that are specifically designed to be off-putting and upsetting to us. It’d be bizarre if they approached this ratio. Imagine if a film like Irreversible, whose director purposefully inserted a low frequency noise in the background designed to make the audience physically ill, had perfect pacing. I’d also love to see how some of my favorite films, and some of my guilty pleasures stack up. Is Armageddon better paced than Jaws? What about 300 vs. The Godfather?

As usually science has answered some questions I never thought to ask, but hasn’t answered the questions I’m now thinking of.

CoverBrowser, the Awful VHS Cover Archive

Amber Lombard — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:48:41 +0000

I’m not sure what the point of all this is, but it’s awesome. I never realized just how many awful VHS covers existed until just now. No doubt future generations will look back upon this memory of late 1970s through early 2000s box art and barf. In between laughing about the concept of big, huge plastic tapes being purchased for the low, low price of $19.99.

There is no rhyme or reason to this site. The videos aren’t in order by any discernible schematic. They aren’t alphabetical. They aren’t in there by date. It’s a glorious mess.

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/vhs-videos

How to trick out your WordPress install

Amber Lombard — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:09:41 +0000

The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog

Very helpful guide. Included are initial configurations, must-have plugins (I learned a lot from the foregoing two), how to customize the theme, and ‘advanced trickery’ (I have yet to plumb the depths thereof). The author frequently writes for Lifehacker, and if you want some real amazement, check out the blog of the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg.

Twilight: New Moon soundtrack has unexpectedly awesome music

Amber Lombard — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:56:23 +0000

Or perhaps this was a measured attempt to get hipsters to quit bashing the franchise. Ha, good luck to them, though it’s unlikely to happen. This has already been demonstrated by the froth despite the many, many photographs of the stoned age couple out and about, eyelids never above half-mast, and hipster looks they generally sport.

“New Moon” Track List Reveals New Music From Thom Yorke, Killers, Muse

The track list for the upcoming soundtrack for Twilight sequel New Moon was revealed today on author Stephanie Meyer’s official Website. In addition to Death Cab for Cutie’s first single “Meet Me on the Equinox,” the soundtrack will feature contributions from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Muse, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver (who duets with fellow Breaking artist St. Vincent) and the Killers.

As it turns out, Yorke’s song on the New Moon soundtrack is neither of the two tracks featured on his new single “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses” b/w “The Hollow Earth.” The Radiohead frontman has recorded a new song called “Hearing Damage” for the disc, which is out October 20th, a month to the day before New Moon hits theaters. The Killers also provided a new track called “A White Demon Love Song,” while Muse remixed their The Resistance song “I Belong to You for the soundtrack.

New Moon will also feature new music from Lykke Li, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Band of Skulls, Sea Wolf, Hurricane Bells, Anya Marina, Editors and the film’s composer Alexandre Desplat. OK Go, who gave the film a new track called “Shooting the Moon,” talked to Rolling Stone earlier this year about their tune, which they described as a sad song written from the perspective of an astronaut.

New Moon soundtrack track list:

1. Death Cab For Cutie – “Meet Me On The Equinox”

2. Band Of Skulls – “Friends”
3. Thom Yorke – “Hearing Damage”
4. Lykke Li – “Possibility”
5. The Killers – “A White Demon Love Song”
6. Anya Marina – “Satellite Heart”
7. Muse – “I Belong To You (New Moon)”

8. Bon Iver and St. Vincent – “Roslyn”
9. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “Done All Wrong”
10. Hurricane Bells – “Monsters”
11. Sea Wolf – “The Violet Hour”
12. OK Go – “Shooting The Moon”
13. Grizzly Bear – “Slow Life”
14. Editors – “No Sound But The Wind”
15. Alexandre Desplat – “New Moon (The Meadow)”

The Jewish Service heard ’round the world: Live from Aachen, Germany, October 29, 1944

Amber Lombard — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:31:13 +0000

“The memory of evil will serve as a shield against evil;
…The memory of death will serve as a shield against death”

- Elie Wiesel
Nobel Lecture, 1986

This touching reminder appears at the end of a video presentation on the October 29, 1944 Jewish broadcast in Aachen, Germany.

After a month of bitter fighting, and still a long six months away from the capitulation of Berlin and the events of Der Untergang, and yet still longer since the beginning of the terrible war which began for Americans in 1941 but for Europeans in 1939, there came a night when the first Jewish service was heard over the airwaves in Nazi Germany. Here’s the story.

A Soldier’s Voice Rediscovered

Like many veterans, Max Fuchs did not talk much about what he did in the war. His children knew he landed at Omaha Beach. Sometimes, they were allowed to feel the shrapnel still lodged in his chest.

And once, he had told them, he sang as the cantor in a Jewish prayer service on the battlefield.

On Oct. 29, 1944, at the edge of a fierce fight for control of the city of Aachen, Germany, a correspondent for NBC radio introduced the modest Sabbath service like this:

“We bring you now a special broadcast of historic significance: The first Jewish religious service broadcast from Germany since the advent of Hitler.” . . .

Well-known in its time, the battlefield service became lost in obscurity, where it might have remained except for an archivist’s chance find and then, fast forward, unlikely fame on YouTube — where the 1944 service has drawn 310,000 hits — for Mr. Fuchs.
His grandchildren have been beside themselves with pride, relatives say, and the rabbi at Congregation Ramath Orah on West 110th Street, where Mr. Fuchs and his wife worship, is insisting that he sing at services on Saturday, which is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year — though Mr. Fuchs says his voice is not what it used to be.

His performance on that 1944 broadcast, heard throughout the United States and later in Germany, however, brought a special poignancy to the 10-minute open-air service — partly because of his well-trained, stately voice, partly because a few seconds before he began the traditional “Yigdal” hymn, and for the three minutes it took to finish it, the crack of artillery shells exploding nearby could be heard clearly in the background.

A private first class in the First Infantry Division, Mr. Fuchs volunteered to sing that day because there was no cantor available. In fact, Mr. Fuchs had been studying to become a cantor, when the war broke out. But he had left his studies and was drafted, and never considered the chaplaincy.

His parents emigrated from Poland in 1934, when he was 12. Some of his aunts, uncles and cousins who remained were killed after the German invasion in 1939, he said in the interview. He wanted to fight the Nazis.

For 20 years afterward, Mr. Fuchs said, he suffered recurring nightmares about the war. He tried not to think about it too much.

He married Naomi Groob, they had five children, he worked in the diamond district and served as a cantor at the Bayside Jewish Center in Queens.

When his children were growing up, there was a photograph on the wall of their living room in Bayside, showing him with a prayer shawl over his Army uniform, singing while a radio reporter held a microphone in front of him.

Of the picture, “He would say, ‘Yeah, that was when I did the service. They recorded it. It was on the radio,’ ” recalled his daughter, Ester R. Fuchs, now a professor of public affairs and political science at Columbia.

But that was all he said. And deferring to his reticence, his wife never said more.

It was half a century before Mr. Fuchs’s children, born after the war, would know more than their father’s incomplete and almost shrouded version of the event.

In 2000, Professor Fuchs read a newspaper interview about the historic “Aachen service” with a former NBC radio reporter, James Cassidy. She began to put two and two together.

“Is that what you were talking about?” she asked her father.

“Yeah, like I said, it was on the radio,” Mr. Fuchs relied.

If the stories he told were sketchy, his emotions unexposed, it was because there was too much, he said, sitting at a table with his wife and daughter. “On the beach, the corpses every couple of feet. Guys I knew, their feet blown off. Their arms. It was not a pretty picture.”

As a Jew, and as a man with a web of intimate childhood connections to cousins and other relatives in Poland who were gassed and murdered, “there was a lot of anger, too.”

He remembered singing and looking over the assembled soldiers in that open field and thinking there was not a single one of them at that service who had not lost family to the Nazis.

Yet even then, while all of them understood and felt deeply the import of the service they were holding, “There wasn’t much talking going on. We were in a war.”

The American Jewish Committee had helped make the event possible, locating Sidney Lefkowitz, a chaplain to several hundred Jewish soldiers in the First Infantry Division, and arranging to have his service broadcast that day.

But even it had lost the institutional memory of the Aachen service.

Charlotte Bonelli, the organization’s chief archivist, did not know anything about it. She was researching the history of the organization’s radio division when she found a reference to it in 2004, and began to try to recover it.

Neither the committee nor NBC had the recording. Eventually she found it at the Library of Congress and commissioned a short documentary about it, which was presented at the group’s annual meeting in 2005.

As an afterthought, she posted it on YouTube.

David Harris, the American Jewish Committee’s executive director, said its Web master began noticing “some traffic” beginning in early 2006. “There were 1,000 hits, then 3,000, then it was in a lull for a while and all of a sudden it was hundreds of thousands.”

Max Fuchs’s name, however, was not mentioned on the original YouTube recording. He never asked the photographers at the scene to take his name.

The diatribe against Obama is racist, I have proof

Amber Lombard — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:14:20 +0000

Maureen Dowd excellently encapsulates the problem at the root of some – though certainly not all – of the reactionary right-wing.

Up ’til now, I’d have loved to pretend that racism really doesn’t exist except in hidden, smirking, low-class and dank corners of our society. It’s certainly my experience that people are far more virulently anti-racist than racist.

But I live in a large country. I live in the country with the third-largest population in the world, and arguably the most diverse. This doesn’t include simply diversity of ancestral origin, but diversity of culture and thought. And having grown up in the Northwest, the Deep South is about as far as anything I can imagine both geographically and culturally. And this article opened my eyes to the fact that there is real, live racism afoot in a part of my country that is as unknown as any jungle, any ocean trench, to me – and that just because I and other young, progressive believers in multiculturalism are a force to be reckoned with doesn’t mean we can ignore the pernicious effects of this one, nor any other that is contrary to the tide we’re a part of.

Boy, Oh, Boy

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

I, to be fair, didn’t hear this at all. I heard a scuffle off to the right, and the booing. I had heard at one point a sound like a muffled “fffwwWWHHYYY!!” from the distant back of the room, and I didn’t know what was going on but I was concentrating on the content of Obama’s speech, eager as I was to hear his plan – finally, his plan for healthcare coverage for the American people. I didn’t even take notice until people started talking about it later. And yes, he’s a douchebag, and yes, ultimately completely ignorable. Except.

Except except except…

Those who might be called the drama mavens of our national political scene wouldn’t let him be ignored. The White House was fine with the offered apology – I get the feeling they felt it was as significant or important as I did at the time, which was to say not at all. But his fellow Congressman and a portion of the American public I personally have no way of connecting with took it and ran with it.

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president.

WHAT?

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan. Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.” Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money.

Rusty DePass? I consider myself an informed individual, such as my busy life allows me to have time to peruse the internet. I hadn’t heard of Rusty DePass or his truly awful joking about gorillas. Neither had my husband, who peruses different blogs than I and generally keeps more up to date on political issues. For those for whom this is their first exposure, here are the apelike antics of Rusty DePass.

No, I do believe now. I believe with those lines that we are in fact in the midst of a civil war that never ended, that left our country permanently rent but never allowed it to separate and heal. The wounds have boiled under the surface ever since for some folks, and they will never, no, never forget it.

Herein is a valuable lesson for learning how cultural elements, including those of intolerance and hatred, are passed down from one generation to the next, over hundreds of years. And therein have various attempts – civil rights, bussing, forced integration – been based, to some success. Things have changed. Except where the culture had more of a stranglehold than did the law.

It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some. “My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said.

Er.. really. The best I can come up with for such a baffling statement is: Gee, those cultural divides sure are deep! If my parents ever told me anything, it was that I could be anything that I wanted, despite coming from a poor family living in a destitute place.

From the comments, I found this to be an excellent summation of the situation we face:

These are ominous times. The healthcare ‘debate’ has gone far beyond the topic of healthcare, exposing the troubling division in our country. New code words for racism emerging nightly. DeMint this morning telling the crowd that Obama would ‘call out’ anyone who disagreed with him. I heard Obama’s speech. He said anyone who ‘lied.’ Mr. DeMint appears to be one of those liars. He along with Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity are setting us on a dangerous path. I wonder has the revolution started? I think it is too late for America. The right has gone too far, forgetting the very notion of loyal opposition.

Change has come quickly to the uneducated and the undereducated who know only that things don’t feel right in their world. They feel so threatened in our evolving world they can’t even see how they are being used. Prisoners of their own prejudice. They seem unaware that they are working against their own self interest. They cannot ask how the rest of the world manages to provide healthcare for their citizens. They do no research preferring instead to believe fantastic tales of death panels hoping to catch the infirm, posted on the websites of their leaders and bellowed on hate radio. I read a sign that said ‘Youth in Asia wants to kill Grandma.’ It took me a minute to decode the meaning.

I find myself thinking of these mobs as ‘other’ people. They are ‘others’, the first step in objectifying people and I am sure they think of me in the same terms. We are becoming the Hutus and the Tutsies of the US. I don’t know that we can have any rational discourse, as Joe Wilson proved on Wednesday night, or make a difference using our system of government. I have called my representatives but found them uninterested and see them as purchased by big pharma and insurance companies, a new sort of corporate slave.They reinforce my perceptions and prejudice about corporate rule and plutocracy. This leaves little possibility for change. The question is how do we stop this madness? I fear we cannot persuade the anti-reformists with reason nor even confront them about their own fear and racism. I read the comments of the ‘others’ hitting back angry, paranoid, racist, yes racist, and defensive. I watch their aggression grow on the nightly news. Is their fear really about the changing demographics in our country? Is healthcare merely the symbol of this change?

I hope our path is not to revolution. Revolutions are living entities with a life of their own, not at all controllable and revolutions start with one small act. In the meantime we squabble with each other, divisive and angry, while the plutocrats and corporations make off with the wealth. Ominous times indeed.

There you have it, folks. Incontrovertible evidence of what is going on in the state of our national politics today, whether amongst politicians or the normal folk. This is your carte-blanche to tell anyone who disagrees with Obama’s policies that they are a racist, and really mean it.

…

Just kidding on the last line, of course.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Update: Bob Herbert’s wonderful column addresses this, and as usual the comments are well worth reading.

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul, and Mary – 1936-2009

Amber Lombard — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:26:39 +0000

Who among us has not had their childhood touched by “Puff, the Magic Dragon”? I know I used to sing it often in childhood. It is with great wistfulness and not a little bit of sadness that I consider that Mary Travers has left us after a four-year battle with leukemia that saw her bravely confronting the disease with a bone marrow transplant. Ultimately, she died from complications from chemotherapy, which probably has something to do with how very much leukemia as a disease wears down those it inhabits. Bravo for your brave, lengthy battle, Ms. Travers, and thanks for what you gave all of us in your time here.

A farewell, for Henry Gibson

Amber Lombard — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:06:31 +0000

“A poem, by Henry Gibson.” That’s how audiences first got to know the actor on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, who left us today at 73. He leaves behind an impressive body of work. While he was never a leading man other than in such turns as Nashville (for which his fans insist, quite rightly, that he was robbed of an Oscar), his career is an inspiration to anyone who’d like to work in the business. Be good, be reliable, be long-lived. Sadly, not long-lived enough. It was cancer that took him from us, cancer that ended his life after many decades in which we were able to enjoy his presence, but too soon still.

Rest in peace, Henry, and thanks for the memories.

Milla Jovovich completely, gorgeously bares all for Purple magazine

Gnome Sayin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:40:42 +0000

I doubt it’ll work as advance promotion for the latest Resident Evil scheduled for August 2010, because this is sorta all you want to see. In fact, I would have sooner laid down ten smackeroos and bought popcorn for the unveiling of these shots on the big screen than another Paul W.S. Anderson (her husband) turd. Magnificent, these are. Advance to the next page for all the goods (nudity, NSFW).

What changed between 2000-2008

Amber Lombard — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:37:05 +0000

This map gives a good start. Perhaps it doesn’t sum up all the changes of the Bush years, and perhaps it’s just meant to surprise. But our world changed mightily in less than a decade, and this collection of statistics is an excellent attempt at a summation.

Source

An Education (2009) with Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson; written by Nick Hornby

icine.org — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:15:23 +0000

Nick Hornby of “About a Boy” and “High Fidelity” fame returns to adapt Lynn Barber’s memoir of her 1960s London experiences.

http://festival.sundance.org/2009/film_events/films/education

The 1960s were a time of change. So is life when you are 16. That combination propels An Education, set in London in 1961, and makes it an unforgettable coming-of-age story.Attractive, bright, 16-year-old Jenny is stifled by the tedium of adolescent routine; she can’t wait for adult life to begin. One rainy day her suburban existence is upended by the arrival of a much older suitor, David. Urbane and witty, David instantly charms Jenny and introduces her to a glittering new world of classical concerts, art auctions, smoky bars, and late-night suppers with his attractive friends. He replaces Jenny’s traditional education with his own more-dangerous version. Just as the family’s long-held dream of getting their brilliant daughter into Oxford has seemed within reach, Jenny is tempted by another kind of life. Will David be the making of Jenny, or her undoing?Every so often a performance comes along that is so captivating that it becomes an instant classic. Carey Mulligan’s enchanting performance as Jenny is one of them. Channeling the spirit of a young Holly Golightly, she makes Jenny’s character blossom on screen from a girl into a woman, and transforms herself from an actor into a star. Director Lone Scherfig’s complete understanding of Nick Hornby’s extraordinary script brings its many dimensions to vivid life.

Recipient of the World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic and the World Cinema Cinematography Award: Dramatic.

CAST
Peter Sarsgaard, Carey Mulligan, Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1174732/

Trailer:

The Voice of a Conservative, 2009

Sue C. — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:23:33 +0000

I have an innate reverence for the founders of this republic, their unique genius and the genius of the foundation they laid for this nation – the greatest, most prosperous and freest nation that has ever existed on this earth.

“Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty. Government represents power in the hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men. And power, as Lord Acton said, corrupts men. ‘Absolute power,’ he added, ‘corrupts absolutely.’” [1] For that reason our founders, students of that history, clung tenaciously to the principle of limited government.

I have a news flash that was not news to our founders: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS UTOPIA. At least there is no such thing on this earth. Power hungry tyrants promise to remove from our path all of the risks and responsibilities of living in exchange, of course, for just a little of our liberty, which in the end will be all of our liberty. Citizens no longer need to care for aging parents or even handicapped children. In exchange we have burdensome taxes and a bloated, corrupt and unaccountable bureaucracy that cannot be controlled or even comprehended. All of the things that used to be the concern of extended families, charitable societies, and churches are now the purview of an invasive government. It would be hard to truly make the case that society is better for it. Our prisons and parole lists are full of people who never learned any family loyalty or duty. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who trade liberty for security will have neither liberty nor security.”

Conservatism is simply loyalty to the principles upon which this nation was founded. It does not change from decade to decade or generation to generation. Some today claim to be conservatives but they mostly buy into all the massive federal programs to spend and control but claim they will spend less or administer these programs more benignly. It would be difficult to come up with the name of one true conservative in the Congress of the United States today.

As a young person I was intensely interested in government and politics. As I said, it was innate. It was not a by product of the family in which I grew up. I watched with keen interest the televised portions of both the Democrat and Republican Conventions. I attended a couple of meetings of the John Birch Society (too far out for me). I read much. During the summer of 1964, between my sophomore and junior years in high school I read “The Conscience of a Conservative” by Barry Goldwater and I found my home in the Conservative Movement. As conservatism is timeless so is Senator Goldwater’s book. My little paperback edition still sits on my bookshelf 45 years later. “State power, considered in the abstract, need not restrict freedom: but absolute state power always does. The legitimate functions of government are actually conducive to freedom. Maintaining internal order, keeping foreign foes at bay, administering justice, removing obstacles to the free interchange of goods…” [2] These are still words to live by for me.

Since conservatism is timeless, it needs no update, but does need to be constantly restated. A recent restatement is the concise and incisive “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto” by Mark R. Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation. I endorse this book as a framework for more current issues to be examined in light of the constitution.

True conservatives like me and Mark Levin have become dinosaurs in this day. I am approaching 62 years old and welcome this forum to express my deepest political convictions but I do it with some nostalgia and sorrow. I have been politically active all of my adult life until recently. I must confess I have given up. The corruption in our government I think is more massive than most of us can conceive. The dumbing down of our citizenry is just about complete. Government schools have become social cesspools where little true education takes place. The philosophy of getting something for nothing is pervasive. All I can do is sit back and watch as my fellow citizens clamor for more government programs like universal health – I’m not sure whether to call it “care” or “insurance” because it will be neither.

I take some heart in the demonstrations and voices of those who are opposing this massive government take-over but I truly believe they will not win out when it comes to voting out the corrupt politicians that dominate our Congress. And so my remaining years will be spent concentrating on my family and grandchildren but not in any political activity. I will still be an observer because the habit of being a political news junkie would be too hard to break. And I will still pray that God will bless America.

[1] Conscience of a Conservative by Senator Barry Goldwater, 20^th printing November ,1963, pp 16-17

[2] Ibid. p. 17

Teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

icine.org — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:07:25 +0000

“Inception” is director Chris Nolan’s follow-up to “The Dark Knight.” He also directed “Memento” and “The Prestige.” “Inception” stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

More details and information here. Image Credit: Slashfilm.

Planck doesn’t deserve his own constant

Tyrell Choren — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:18:25 +0000

Why is it that Planck has his own constant named after him when someone as great as Archimedes has a constant that’s more commonly known as Pi? Pi is so important and Archimedes was the first to determine that 223/71 < π < 22/7. You know how he did that? He inscribed circles in polygons and then calculated the perimeters of those polygons. He eventually used the perimeter of a 96 side polygon to get as close as he possibly could. 96! That’s some straight up awesome shit!

You know what Planck did? He studied black body radiation. You know what that is? It’s radiation emitted from matter that absorbs all light. Planck’s constant tells you what the quantized energy of photons coming off of a black body is, assuming you know their frequency. Whoop de doo!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been with a friend who has said something like, “You know, this roll of toilet paper is slightly bigger than this other one, but I don’t know how much bigger it is. I know! I’ll use pi to figure it out. Then I can be sure of how much more bum-wiping goodness I’ll get out of it,” or “That’s a cool looking cup, but I wonder if my hand will be able to grip it comfortably. Sure I could just pick it up, but if there was only some way to measure whether my hand, which I know the length of, could possibly fit around the cup. Oh! I forgot I could use pi!”

You know how many times one of my friends has looked up at a piece of black body and said, “Hey, I wonder how much quantized energy is being radiated from that black body. If only I knew the frequency of the photons, I could use Planck’s constant to figure that shit out”? Once! One time has a friend said that. Hardly worthy of some old nerd getting his name eternally attached to some number.

Physicists have such lame flamewars.

(500) Days of Summer

flacktard — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:33:31 +0000

It’s been a while since American audiences have been treated to a realistic look at the rise and descent of young love. In fact, as far as realistic films about young twenty-somethings falling in and out of love go, they’re a rare species. When one eventually comes along a chord is struck with the generation it documents, and if we’re lucky, brings insight to those of a age and/or lifestyle. With the release of (500) Days of Summer, we arrive at such an occasion.

The film begins with a warning that “this is not a love story.” Some have said that this is misleading or a lie, but the truth is, this is a “relationship story,” one that truthfully–and sometimes brutally–examines the ups and downs of trying to find or create a love story in the twenty-first century. We begin at the end: Summer (Deschanel) has broken up with Tom (Gordon-Levitt) and his friends come to his aid, hoping to get him out of a rut they’ve found him lying in before. And so begins the relationship story.

Read the rest at Flacktard’s Film Fancies.

(500) Days Of Summer (2009)
Directed by Marc Webb
Written by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
Starring Joesph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel

Redbox and Netflix vs. the studios

Tyrell Choren — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:13:42 +0000

This can only end badly…for the customers.

First Fox wanted to put a hold of 30 days on their dvds before you could rent them from Redbox

So Redbox decided to sue

Then WB decided that this all sounded like fun and upped the ante with a dick move to Netflix

Basically, the studios think that Redbox and Netflix are destroying DVD sales. Apparently they haven’t heard of that whole ‘recession thing’ that people keep blathering on about.

It seems to me that DVD prices have risen sneakily since I bought them on a regular basis. The standard used to be $20 for a new disc, regardless of whether it was a single disc edition or deluxe 2 disc edition packed with extras, and it would always be cheaper on the week it came out. Now it’s $20 for the single disc edition while the extra special 2 disc editions are $25 dollars. There’s also a huge drop off in prices if you just wait a couple months. The other problem I had with the ‘buy it the day it comes out’ mentality is that you amass a huge collection, most of the discs being watched only once. When I had a disposable income this wasn’t a problem, but now it’s ridiculous to think that I’d end up buying something that I would only watch once every couple of years when I could just as easily add it to my Netflix queue numerous times.

Here’s the other, big thing that could contribute to the lower dvd sales. DVDs are now the inferior product, with Blu-Ray being the new standard of excellence. Blu-Ray discs have gone down significantly in price since they came out, and you’d expect DVD prices to lower accordingly, but they haven’t. Even though I don’t yet own a Blu-Ray player, I sometimes find it ridiculous to think of buying a new movie on DVD because I imagine myself just replacing it down the road with a Blu-Ray. It makes more sense to rent it, and wait than to buy it twice.

Anyway, I hope Netflix and Redbox win, because this just seems like a way for the studios to screw over the consumers.

Sexy Underwear: JBS and the naughty

Amber Lombard — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:44:16 +0000

JBS thinks that men shouldn’t have to look at other men for their underwear ads. To that end, they’ve created a provocative series of ads that have brought them renown – and gratitude, we’re certain – the world over.

Personally, when I look at these, I love roiling in the decadence. Girls can be one of the guys? You go, chica guapa.

Paris, Paris

Amber Lombard — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:05:04 +0000

The infamous girl’s name has received a huge boon for chillens comin’ on up the age ladder. The scary part is the time at which new parents were naming their daughters Paris – it indicates it was when the most infamous of Parises was becoming famous.. for a sex tape. Really, parents, why would you do this to your girls? And en masse like that? Let’s at least pray that these parents simply heard the name enter pop culture and didn’t investigate the particulars before deciding on the name for their new little spawn. As one studio mogul once claimed, “No one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public.” In the coming decades, Paris will be eventually known as a really stylish girls’ name, moving back toward its beginnings as the capital of the most stylish country on Earth and away from being associated with the less than tasteful.

This is due in large part to so many girls having been named Paris. Surely some of them will live up to it. Michael Jackson’s daughter, for instance, even though her life will be dragged through the same tabloid treatment her unfortunate father’s was, looks to be a strong young lady who may well rise above it all.

Where is Paris from, anyway? As a girl’s name, we mean? The most famous Paris was that Paris who fought for Helen of Troy. But where does it originate now? Etymology tells us that the boy’s name Paris \p(a)-ris\, also used as girl’s name Paris, is pronounced PARE-iss. It is of Greek origin. Greek mythology: Paris was the young and beautiful prince of Troy whose love affair with Helen caused the Trojan war. Paris has also been used in English as a surname for immigrants from the capital of France. The city was named after the Gallic tribe that founded it, the Parisii. Indeed, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… there are at least thirteen towns in the United States named Paris – in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucy, Texas, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennyslvania, Virginia and Vermont. This doesn’t explain the surge in the late 1980s that appear in the graphs at the bottom of the page, though. But wait…

According to the 1990 United States Census, Paris ranked as the 2,006th most popular female first name, the 1,060th most popular male first name and the 2,319th most popular last name. In the United States, the name ranked in the Top 1,000 most popular girls’ names each of the last three decades and in the Top 1,000 most popular boys’ names in the 1960s through the 1990s.

According to the Social Security Administration, in the 21st century, the name ranked in the Top 600 most popular girls’ names every year from 2000 (474th) through 2006 (260th).

United States Popularity of the girl’s name Paris in the 21st Century:
Year: 2006 Rank:260th
Year: 2005 Rank:205th
Year: 2004 Rank:157th
Year: 2003 Rank:272nd
Year: 2002 Rank:464th
Year: 2001 Rank:508th
Year: 2000 Rank:474th

Ah. Now it’s all starting to come together. You see, decades ago, when our grandparents were young and vigorous, Paris was a boy’s name. And like so many things – boxer shorts, freshly laundered button-down shirts.. the girls stole the name from the boys’ underwear drawer, and never gave it back. We may never fully know where Paris hysteria arose from. But the name is now here to stay.

How to figure the (financial) failure of ‘Funny People’?

Gnome Sayin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:56:49 +0000

A $23.4 million opening weekend for what had been widely billed as the major comedy event of the summer seemed a tepid shrug of a reaction, and certainly not in line with the expectations and media buzz preceding it. But it won the weekend, however weak the competition was, and there remained room to suggest that a more serious, challenging Judd Apatow comedy would need time to catch on, and could become a long-player with solid word-of-mouth. But last weekend, down 65% to less than $8 million, serves as a nail in its coffin, business-wise. To put that in perspective, The Hangover opened to twice as much and fell only 27% and 18% in its next two frames, and hasn’t fallen more than 36% in any of its ten weeks in release. It’s one of Adam Sandler’s worse openings and will surely be one of his lowest grossers. The superstar marriage of Hollywood’s most reliable comic star and Apatow’s new school crew of Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and company turned out to be irrelevant in any mass entertainment or cultural sense. A disappointing non-hit, yet probably too big and broad to ever be hip again.

One could tangent off in several directions trying to explain. Is this a specific rebuke of the Apatow brand, following an oversaturation of his produced efforts during the past two years? Do audiences hammered by depressed economic conditions only want to spend their dwindling discretionary dollars on escapist fare? The runaway success of a thundering dud Transformers sequel and the welcome reception to a terrible-buzz G.I. Joe flick that everyone knew was going to suck but a great many saw anyway suggest that may be the case. J.J. Abrams’ glitzy Star Trek reboot is representative of what has taken off at the box office this year: fun, bright, but empty. Any more serious attempt to delve into the intellectual side of the old Trek in addition to the abundant nostalgic kick would have bogged down its prospects.

Maybe Funny People the movie isn’t too dour. Most of us wouldn’t know anyway, as comparably few saw it. Perhaps more to the point, it’s the marketing that dropped the ball. The restrained trailers and ads seemed content to apply a very soft sell, coasting on pedigree and providing jarringly few funny examples of these funny folks’ funniness. There was an ironic potential to that juxtaposition of blunt comedic title and downbeat tone that clearly didn’t take hold. No clear concept or vibe was established by the mystifying ads, something the ones for this year’s comedic smashes both funny (The Hangover) and shitty (Paul Blart) did well. Sandler was front and center, but it wasn’t the agreeably goofy schlub Sandler that fans embrace. Was Rogen a star here or just doing an extended cameo? That confusion hurts, because it was names being sold over premise. To be fair, a 2 1/2 hour dramedy about mortality presents a challenge to any marketing department. But in this case it felt like no massaging whatsoever was done. Showing random clips would have had the same effect this big studio campaign for a $75 million comedy did.

I haven’t written about the movie itself yet, because we have an excellent piece up by flacktard centered around Sandler’s performance, and I really don’t have a whole lot to say. He connected with it much more acutely. I haven’t been a fan of any of Apatow’s directorial efforts, and Funny People didn’t exactly make me one. It’s bloated and plodding and some of it sticks and a lot of it doesn’t, but I will say that it’s far and away his most mature, probing attempt. There is an incisive quality to how it captures the duality of the torment and insecurity present in nearly every good comic’s psyche, especially stand-ups. Sandler is better than decent and anchors the movie over some rough, draggy patches. It’s disappointing that every time he embraces growth as an actor, audiences give him the cold shoulder ($19 million for Reign Over Me, $42 million total for the $90 million budgeted Spanglish, $18 million for Punch-Drunk Love), and doesn’t net much street cred. Why would he at this point do anything but more Zohans and Chuck & Larrys?

Nothing funny about that.

Source: Box office totals from Box Office Mojo

Coco Chanel: First Lady of Fashion

Amber Lombard — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:12:20 +0000

At the time that the Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel) movie starring Audrey Tautou bears down on us in theaters, and Karl Lagerfeld channels her for Harper’s Bazaar, we should take a look at the iconic woman behind the name. Was she enigmatic? Yes; her reputation doesn’t lead astray in that regard. Perhaps the best overview of the life of Coco was done in Time’s Top 100, wherein she was the only haute couture designer to make the cut and be included. Here are the relevant portions.

Coco Chanel wasn’t just ahead of her time. She was ahead of herself. If one looks at the work of contemporary fashion designers as different from one another as Tom Ford, Helmut Lang, Miuccia Prada, Jil Sander and Donatella Versace, one sees that many of their strategies echo what Chanel once did. The way, 75 years ago, she mixed up the vocabulary of male and female clothes and created fashion that offered the wearer a feeling of hidden luxury rather than ostentation are just two examples of how her taste and sense of style overlap with today’s fashion.

Chanel would not have defined herself as a feminist–in fact, she consistently spoke of femininity rather than of feminism–yet her work is unquestionably part of the liberation of women. She threw out a life jacket, as it were, to women not once but twice, during two distinct periods decades apart: the 1920s and the ’50s. She not only appropriated styles, fabrics and articles of clothing that were worn by men but also, beginning with how she dressed herself, appropriated sports clothes as part of the language of fashion. One can see how her style evolved out of necessity and defiance. She couldn’t afford the fashionable clothes of the period–so she rejected them and made her own, using, say, the sports jackets and ties that were everyday male attire around the racetrack, where she was climbing her first social ladders.

It’s not by accident that she became associated with the modern movement that included Diaghilev, Picasso, Stravinsky and Cocteau. Like these artistic protagonists, she was determined to break the old formulas and invent a way of expressing herself. Cocteau once said of her that “she has, by a kind of miracle, worked in fashion according to rules that would seem to have value only for painters, musicians, poets.”