October 2011
A Designer's (Amateur) Review of Drive - Core77 →
Drive is far from a perfect film, but for what it lacks in depth and complexity, it makes up for in strides with its precision, aesthetics, and style. And that sounds a lot like 2011.
“I sympathize with people who didn’t like the MacGuffin because I never liked the...”
– Steven Spielberg on Indy IV.
Deep Intellect : Inside the mind of the octopus |... →
fascinating creatures :
Another measure of intelligence: you can count neurons. The common octopus has about 130 million of them in its brain. A human has 100 billion. But this is where things get weird. Three-fifths of an octopus’s neurons are not in the brain; they’re in its arms.
“You can decide to throw birds at pigs. You can decide to check in on which...”
– Merlin Mann, on Instapaper
The Tits Have It: Sexism, Character Design, and... →
So, this happened on the East Meets West, Art Direction for a Worldwide Audience panel at NYCC:
In describing his influences, Jacques-Bellêtete [art director of Deus Ex: Human Revolution] mentioned he was heavily influenced by Metal Gear and Final Fantasy. Then he went into a two minute riff about “always trying to have very beautiful female characters,” noting that these were characters he...
Draw the Universe
RobotRollCall on the askscience reddit:
How would you respond if I asked you to draw Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata for me? Well, you’d probably write it down in musical notation. “No, no, no,” I’d say. “Everyone keeps trying to explain it with notes.”
So you might draw a guy sitting at a piano. “That’s not it at all,” I’d...
4chan Founder: Facebook and Google Do Identity... →
Christopher Poole:
Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, but we’re actually more like diamonds.
Look from a different angle, and you see something completely different… Facebook is consolidating identity by making us more simple than we truly are.
Review: The Adventures of Tintin: Secret Of The... →
Free flowing Spielberg cinematography sounds oh-so yummy:
[Steven Spielberg] delivers one thrilling set-piece after another in a way that suggests that [he] has not only pulled out his Indiana Jones toolbox but has decided to pack anything and everything into Tintin that the logistical, budgetary realities of shooting live action won’t let him do. Let off his leash, he’s clearly having a...
“Once you have your character sitting right there in your head, all you really...”
– An interview with Sir Terry Pratchett
"Jeez... write about THAT." →
Aaron Sorkin was asked by Steve Jobs to write a Pixar movie. Here’s how it went:
But it’s his last call I’ll always remember. He wanted me to write a Pixar movie. I told him I loved Pixar movies, I’d seen all of them at least twice and felt they were small miracles, but that I didn’t think I’d be good at it.
STEVE: Why not?
ME: I just—I don’t think I can make inanimate objects...
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NYFF 2011. Steve McQueen's "Shame" on Notebook |... →
“Steve McQueen’s Shame is the latest entry in what we’ll call the sad sex subgenre,” suggests Michael Koresky in Reverse Shot. “In a sad sex film, partners don’t enjoy each other’s flesh, they rut. They bump uglies. They shudder….
Ed Gonzalez in Slant: “Shame articulates a shallow, even mundane, understanding of an uninteresting man’s...
“Or maybe the truth is even more disturbing - that there are lots of things that...”
– Adam Curtis: THE CURSE OF TINA PART TWO
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Rise of the Machines: Why We Keep Coming Back to... →
Wells composed [War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and Island of Doctor Moreau] as a warning; one that, like an intellectual replicant, now endlessly reproduces itself in new cinematic forms.
When we thrill to the “Rise of the Machine” plots in the Terminator and Aliens series, we are reading H.G. Wells.