1. "Palme d'Or goes to France's 'Entre les Murs'": From the L.A. Times. The complete list of winners can be found here.
["What a difference 21 years makes. In 1987, the last time a French film won the Palme d'Or, the audience at the Palais du Festival was so angry at the choice of "Under the Sun of Satan" that it hooted furiously and the director, Maurice Pialat, yelled right back. But when Laurent Cantet's masterful "Entre les Murs" won the top prize at the Festival de Cannes on Sunday night -- one of only two unanimous votes, jury president Sean Penn revealed -- the audience erupted in ecstatic rhythmic applause, which only increased as most of the 24 middle-school students who made up the cast joined the director onstage."]
2. "Resistance Is Futile": A profile of Nintendo mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto, illustrating the Wii Fit in the picture above.
["Mario, the mustached Italian plumber he created almost 30 years ago, has become by some measures the planet’s most recognized fictional character, rivaled only by Mickey Mouse. As the creator of the Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda series (which have collectively sold more than 350 million copies) and the person who ultimately oversees every Nintendo game, Mr. Miyamoto may be personally responsible for the consumption of more billions of hours of human time than anyone around. In the Time 100 online poll conducted this spring, Mr. Miyamoto was voted the most influential person in the world."]
3. "Preserving Kubrick": Jamie Stuart rediscovers 2001: A Space Odyssey.
["My own personal favorite oddity in Kubrickian home video occurred when I switched from laser disk to DVD. For anybody who remembers, laser disks took up both sides of each giant disk — and the number of disks was determined by both the movie's length and also the bit rate of the transfer. Having bought the highest quality special edition, the movie took up three whole disks. Now, the final image of the Star Child came exactly at the end of side-5, and that being the end of the movie, I always hit stop. The lack of end credits made the picture seem practically divine. Of course, this all changed when I watched the DVD for the first time, because as soon as the picture faded out on the Star Child, on came The Blue Danube to accompany the end credits. This completely changed my perception; all of a sudden, this mythic work of art became Earthborn. That transition is probably my favorite moment of 2001 now: it's Kubrick deflating the hot air balloon."]
4. "20-Year Journey for 15-Minute Fall": Four world records in one.
["He has spent two decades and nearly $20 million in a quest to fly to the upper reaches of the atmosphere with a helium balloon, just so he can jump back to earth again. Now, Michel Fournier says, he is ready at last. Depending on the weather, Fournier, a 64-year-old retired French army officer, will attempt what he is calling Le Grand Saut (The Great Leap) on Sunday from the plains of northern Saskatchewan. He intends to climb into the pressurized gondola of the 650-foot balloon, which resembles a giant jellyfish, and make a two-hour journey to 130,000 feet. At that altitude, almost 25 miles up, Fournier will see both the blackness of space and the curvature of the earth."]
5. "Pilots run out of fuel, pray, land near Jesus sign": From MSNBC.
["It seemed like an almost literal answer to their prayers. When two New Zealand pilots ran out of fuel in a microlight airplane they offered prayers and were able to make an emergency landing in a field — coming to rest right next to a sign reading, "Jesus is Lord." Grant Stubbs and Owen Wilson, both from the town of Blenheim on the country's South Island, were flying up the sloping valley of Pelorus Sound when the engine spluttered, coughed and died. "My friend and I are both Christians so our immediate reaction in a life-threatening situation was to ask for God's help," Stubbs told The Associated Press on Wednesday."]
Quote of the Day: Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): One of the first images from Mars' north pole, courtesy NASA's Phoenix lander.
Clip of the Day: Trailer for David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, en Español.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Links for the Day (May 26th, 2008)
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3 comments:
That Kubrick post is great. I've been waiting for some LD collector to raise the issue of the Pavlovian effect that format's side changes could have on a viewer. So many movies--TAXI DRIVER, MILLER'S CROSSING, SE7EN, even the STAR WARS flicks--have permanent schisms in them for me that would be completely invisisble to others, and I always catch myself lunging towards the machine to flip the disc while watching them on DVD.
The best laserdisc side ending ever, IMHO, is side one of the "Alien 3" disc. While the space convicts are loudly arguing about what to do about the alien, it pops through a ceiling panel, hauls one of them up and sends a shower of blood down into the room. There's chaos, shouting, clattering chairs and plates, etc., and then the leader of the convicts yells, "Fuck!" and there's a cut to black. End of side one.
I actually made a VHS copy of Alien 3 from the LD. But because pause on VHS always maintained a 2 second delay, I got: "F-" Then it sloppily transitioned into the next scene.
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