December 2010
38 posts
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Catfish :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews →
Saw this at my favourite fleapit (The Cameo, in Edinburgh) the other night:
Here’s one way to look at “Catfish.” Some filmmakers in New York City, who think they’re way cool, get taken apart by a ordinary family in Ishpeming, Mich. You can also view it as a cautionary tale about living your emotional life on the Internet. Or possibly the whole thing is a hoax. At Sundance...
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dianneohdeer asked: Further to our brief Flat White 'discussion' I went to Sacred off Caranby St today and almost burst into tears. IT FELT LIKE I WAS IN NEW ZEALAND! Amazing. Also yes, now I have actually had a proper flat white recently I can confirm Costa is pants. How many homesick kiwis spend their hard earned pennies in Sacred feeling like they are in Wellington do you think?!
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Border collie takes record for biggest vocabulary... →
Woof woof woof!
IN THE age-old war between cats and dogs, canines might just have struck the killer blow. A border collie called Chaser has been taught the names of 1022 items - more than any other animal. She can also categorise them according to function and shape, something children learn to do around the age of 3.
Woof woof grrrrr woof!
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How a Childhood Accident Led to the Unbreakable... →
Potted history of the G-Shock:
“There has never been a Japanese-made watch as beloved as G-Shock,” said Koichi Namiki, professor at Daido University in Nagoya, Japan, and a watch journalist and author. With its unique technological concept, “it destroyed the conventional notion that watches were supposed to be something delicate and beautiful.”
You never forget your first G-Shock. Mine was a...
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Bad Santa (2003)
Kid: Your beard's not real.
Willie: No shit. It was real, but I got sick and all the hair fell out.
Kid: How come?
Willie: I loved a woman who wasn't clean.
Kid: Mrs. Santa?
Willie: No, it was her sister.
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Black Watch, Barbican, review - Telegraph →
Looking for a quiet night at the theatre? This isn’t it:
In a great week for Caledonian theatre in London, the National Theatre of Scotland’s acclaimed Black Watch, about the famous regiment’s experiences in Iraq, has returned for a second run at the Barbican. It is a thrilling piece, combining verbatim theatre, in which the soldiers describe their thoughts and feelings about the war, with...
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Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid | |... →
If a “legitimate” news source is demonstrably propagating stupidity and lies, what place left for The Onion in this brave new world?
Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American...
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Five best places to get a Flat White in London
There’s a few coffee chains and pubs that now offer Flat Whites on their menu. Fair enough; they’ve caught wind of a popular new beverage, and they want to get in on the action. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to sell a coffee drink called a Flat White. It has to look and taste like one, as well.
Therefore, to correct the balance, here’s a list of independent establishments...
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Are Stieg Larsson and Dan Brown a match for... →
This is a tricky conundrum. Why condemn the books that people are reading, just so long as they’re actually reading, full stop? Edward Docx reckons we should:
It’s worth dealing with the difference again, since everyone seems to have forgotten it or become chary of the articulation. Mainly this: that even good genre (not Larsson or Brown) is by definition a constrained form of writing....
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A Brief History of Motown - TIME →
On a Motown listening binge today. Here’s some background from an information source other than Wikipedia (although that’s quite informative as well):
So what was the Motown Sound? Great melodies, lots of tambourines and hand clapping, blaring horns, interplay between the lead singer and his or her backup vocalists, driving bass lines and foot-slapping drum parts. In his still...
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Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's man behind Mario :...
A very long and very detailed profile, a must-read for any Nintendo devotee. Here’s a bit about the inspiration for Zelda:
A year after the début of Super Mario Bros., Nintendo released Miyamoto’s Legend of Zelda. Unlike Mario, which was linear, Zelda let you venture in all directions, exploring worlds within worlds, with an array of choice and depth never seen before in a video game. The...
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Duck Soup (1933)
Rufus T. Firefly: Not that I care, but where is your husband?
Mrs. Teasdale: Why, he's dead.
Rufus T. Firefly: I bet he's just using that as an excuse.
Mrs. Teasdale: I was with him to the very end.
Rufus T. Firefly: No wonder he passed away.
Mrs. Teasdale: I held him in my arms and kissed him.
Rufus T. Firefly: Oh, I see, then it was murder. Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first.
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The Quaid Conspiracy | Vanity Fair →
Oscar-nominated actor Randy Quaid and his wife are on the run. From their friends, their family and the law. Vanity Fair tracks them down:
Evi Quaid called from a pay phone in Vancouver to say that she and her husband, Randy, the actor, had tried to drive to Siberia, but they “couldn’t figure out how to get there.” She said, “We’re running for our lives.” She wanted me to meet them the next day...
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Videogame Lifer Interview | Ian Livingstone |... →
The “Godfather of the UK Videogame Industry” is asked which game has had the most influence on his career:
Probably Pong. That’s being a bit flippant, but it taught me many things. It taught me about compelling gameplay. When people ask me, ‘What are the three most important things in a game?’ I always say, ‘Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay.’
Graphics and...
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“We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the...”
– George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
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Was this the man who inspired Tintin? | Culture |... →
As a general rule, whenever you see a question mark in a newspaper headline, the answer is usually “no”;
Fresh-faced, freckled, with a snub nose, a shock of bright red hair and a penchant for plus-fours, 15-year-old boy scout and car showroom clerk Palle Huld left Copenhagen on March 1 and duly circled the globe – including then-wartorn Manchuria and foreigner-unfriendly Moscow – by...
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Harrison: Browsers hold key to industry’s future |... →
As far as technology predictions go, this one is pretty obvious, but worth reading nonetheless:
“The gathering storm that I’m talking about is about the technology that is going to go into a web browser that is going to power very rich, very impressive gameplay.”
“Somebody is going to win. Somebody is going to deliver console level 3D graphics, video and audio into a web browser. That...
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The Kubrick Site: Kubrick's Interview by Joseph... →
Stanley Kubrick explains the plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey in this 1969 interview:
You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man’s...
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How Ma Bell Shelved the Future for 60 Years →
The answering machine was first invented in 1934, but the technology was suppressed for decades by AT&T, the company that invented it:
But why would company management bury such an important and commercially valuable discovery? What were they afraid of? The answer, rather surreal, is evident in the corporate memoranda … imposing the research ban. AT&T firmly believed that the...