videos

Thursday various

  • If it was up to me, Christopher Walken would read everything, not just Lady Gaga lyrics. [via]

  • Is there a good Roger Ebert and a bad Roger Ebert? Roger Ebert examines the question.

    I think I fall somewhere in between Ebert and Schneider on this, though I’m much less analytic about film than the latter. I do think Ebert sometimes lets emotion sway him too far in a movie’s favor (Congo comes to mind, for example.) But I almost understand why he likes something I think is awful, and I can’t disagree with his assertion that “film itself is primarily an emotional, not a cerebral, medium.”

  • Dave Kehr on Blu-Ray and DVD:

    For Blu-ray to look its best it requires picture and sound images of the finest, most pristine quality. That’s not difficult to come by in a contemporary release like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (the best-selling Blu-ray of 2009), but is somewhat more problematic for a film made in Germany in 1926. Blu-ray exaggerates the faults in older material: the dust specks and scratches caused by decades of wear and tear, the softness of detail or harshness of contrast caused by duplication from sources several generations removed from the film that actually passed through the camera.

    He also shares this interesting statistic: “Turner Classic Movies online says that of the 162,984 films listed in its database (based on the authoritative AFI Catalog), only 5,980 (3.67 percent) are available on home video.”

    We will probably never achieve the utopian vision of having every film ever made available at the click of a mouse, but we are certain to move a little bit further in that direction in the decade ahead — with the cooperation of the studios or without them. (Copyrights will soon be expiring on the first wave of talkies.) In the meantime let us praise diversity. As confusing as the format wars may be, they keep hope alive.

  • Philip K. Dick on dreams and/or the universe’s practical jokes.

  • And finally, a famous Twilight Zone episode reimagined for a modern age. [via]

Wednesday various

  • A computer that can generate bad puns? Ladies and gentlemen, I have been rendered obsolete! [via]
  • “Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal.” Looks like dread Cthulhu has finally discovered Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
  • You know, if I was best known for smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer on stage, I might be a little mean and bitter too.
  • Oh my. Particle physicists have been searching for the “boob element” for decades! [via]
  • And finally, Unusual Stop Motion: Videogame [via]

Monday various

  • “US pop star Britney Spears, seen here in August 2009, took aim at some of the tabloid stories that have dogged her through 2009, publishing a list of the top 75 articles deemed to be the most ridiculous.” Number one on the list? That she used to be an internationally famous and successful recording artist.
  • “Everywhere I turned, I found pain and loss, a procession of wasted lives, people who never fought Ali and, thus, won’t ever have someone come looking for them.” Muhammad Ali fought 50 men. Only one disappeared.” [via]
  • “The gases which formed the Earth’s atmosphere — and probably its oceans — did not come from inside the Earth but from outer space, according to a new study.” [via]
  • MC Frontalot uses Dungeons & Dragons to quit smoking. [via]
  • And finally, “Are the Stars?” [via]