Links for the Day (August 13th, 2008)

1. "NYFF well stocked with Cannes titles": The 46th New York Film Festival lineup is announced. More at indieWIRE.

["The North American premiere of Clint Eastwood's "Changeling," Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" and a host of Festival de Cannes titles from Steven Soderbergh and other auteurs highlight the 46th New York Film Festival lineup. Seventeen of the fest's 28 foreign-language-heavy titles appeared at Cannes in May, including Soderbergh's four-hour-plus Spanish-language biopic, "Che." The Centerpiece spot for Universal Pictures' "Changeling" cements the Angelina Jolie-toplined Cannes entry as a prime Oscar contender, as well as the closing-night slot for "The Wrestler.""]

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2. Some Olympics news: "Olympic fireworks digitally faked" (from TechRadar); "China admits using 'cheer squads' at Olympics" (from Times Online); "China's Great Lip-Synch Forward" (from Gawker).

["The opening to the Bejing Olympics featured a staggering fireworks display, but those watching at home were tricked into thinking what they saw was real. Some of it was actually CGI. The fakery was unearthed by a local Chinese newspaper, The Beijing Times, which revealed that a 55-second sequence was created by a visual effects team, which included a series of giant footsteps made by fireworks. Confusingly, this actually took place in the real ceremony, but the organisers felt that the sequence of 28 footprints would not be accurately captured live, so they faked it."]

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3. "Potential Perils of the Director’s Cut": Catching up with an early August blog post by Jonathan Rosenbaum.

["Perhaps the biggest source of confusion regarding the term “director’s cut” is the fact that it can serve both as a legal concept and as an advertising slogan, and both as an aesthetic theory and as an actual aesthetic praxis. In some instances, it can serve all of these functions, but I would argue that most of these instances occur in France —-the only country, to my knowledge, where the legal concept is backed up by an actual law pertaining to les droits d’auteur. And even here, I’ve been told that this law is not always and invariably a guarantee of artistic freedom. A few years ago, while he was working on Le temps retrouvé, Raúl Ruiz told me in effect that in some cases it could function as a law that took on the characteristics of a deceitful advertising slogan—-which is to say, that it doesn’t always function as an enforceable law, especially when larger sums of money are involved and various kinds of coercion are available to producers who want to impose their will on certain creative decisions made by filmmakers."]

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4. "Unabomber objects to cabin display at Newseum": From The Associated Press.

["Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski wrote a letter to a federal appeals court complaining about a museum exhibit of the tiny cabin where he plotted an 18-year bombing spree. Kaczynski, who is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, says the display at the Newseum in Washington runs counter to his victims' wish to limit further publicity about the case. The 10-foot by 12-foot cabin is the largest of approximately 200 artifacts in the "G-Men and Journalists: Top News Stories of the FBI's First Century" exhibit, which opened in June. Other items include John Dillinger's death mask, Patricia Hearst's coat and the electric chair in which convicted Lindbergh baby kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann was executed. Kaczynski said in the three-page, handwritten letter to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that he learned his cabin was at the Newseum from a June 19 newspaper ad in the Washington Post. "Since the advertisement states that the cabin is 'FROM FBI VAULT,' it is clear that the government is responsible for the public exhibition of the cabin. This has obvious relevance to the victims' objection to publicity connected with the Unabom case," he wrote in the letter, dated July 15 and stamped as received by the court on July 28. "I don't think I need to say anything further," he added. "The Court can draw its own conclusions.""]

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5. "Movie Critic in Cigar and Cash-Smuggling Canadian Misadventure": Our plot is foiled!!!

["Movie critic Elvis Mitchell (remember him? crazy-but-readable Times crit in those glorious pre-Manohla fucking Dargis days?) had $12,000 seized by U.S. border guards as he tried to go back home to Detroit from Canada. Mitchell was hiding the money in a cigar box, along with some Cubans, and he declared only $80. When asked by border agents why he had $12,000 in a cigar box, "Mr. Mitchell told the ICE agent the money in the cigar box represented money he (Mitchell) had withdrawn from bank automatic teller machines over a two year period." We're not sure how that explains anything, but there you go. Agents allowed Mitchell to keep $117 of the $300 he had in his wallet. He'll need that to get back to the Turner Classic Movie studios to interview Peter Bogdanovich, right? Excerpts from the criminal complaint attached."]

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Quote of the Day: Don DeLillo, White Noise

"May the days be aimless. Do not advance action according to a plan."

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Guess who's a daddy.



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Clip of the Day: El Chupacabra has been caught on tape.

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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.