Today's Doonesbury: nicely done.

P Z Myers goes to the movies:

Big bad immortal vampires get shot multiple times at point blank range with a shotgun, and shake it off with a snarl; but when Sir Derek Jacobi, following in the fine British tradition of slumming in some well-paying American trash, finds the movie so embarrassingly bad that he has to get out, the movie makers decide that the way to have his immortal character die is to poke him with something pointy, followed by a languorous death scene in which Jacobi completely turns off his ability to act. It was impressively flat, a cinematic vampire death scene that ranks right up there with Pee Wee Herman's in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, yet utterly different.

[Via More Words, Deeper Hole]

The Steadicam Operator's Manual of Style.

3. Arrival

[...]

The Steadicam gives the operator gives a unique format for self expression – it can actually become the billboard of your personality. All told there are 3.27 square feet of potential advertising space on the Camera Mounting Platform alone all waiting for your personal touch. But be careful The addition of non functional personalizations on your equipment such as decorative emblems, clever sayings, logos from sports, or other technologies could all easily backfire should you actually encounter difficulty with a shot above your current level of skill. Therefore, these additions should be employed in conjunction with (and representative of slightly less than) the actual level of your experience.

[...]

6. Humping The Big Guy

Taking the monster off the stand is probably the most challenging part of operating, the greatest test of flare and style, and your best opportunity to truly bull shit an audience. Everyone will be watching your face, looking for a sign in your expression, waiting for you to sag into a puddle of crushed bone and proto plasm or be dashed into the ground and simply disappear from sight. Desperate to catch even the glimpse of a tear before you finally expire or some eloquent howl at your disintegration, they will stand transfixed.

But you can fool them. Not only will you not die an untimely and repulsive death, but the smile will never leave your face. You will continue the conversation which you have previously planned and executed, without missing a beat, laughing as you lift your burden and all the way to the bank. You will defy the laws of gravity ands cowl at Newton, fly through the shot in one take, save the production and wed or bed the star. It's important to have a positive attitude.

[...]

[Via Totally Unauthorized]

If I don't post for the next couple of days, it'll probably be because I'm preoccupied, playing with this marvelous toy.

[Via PureLandMountain]

Jigsaw puzzles based on film posters. I find this sort of puzzle fiendishly difficult at the best of times, even for the films with posters I know quite well. I certainly don't have what it takes to try the puzzle of Being John Malkovich.

[Via PosterWire]

VideoSift is a site devoted to highlighting the best videos posted to Google Video and YouTube.

Their RSS feeds don't seem to be working very well right now, but even so the site itself is clearly going to be extremely useful. How else would I have found a video like 500KV switch fails in Nevada, 20 meter spark ensues?

[Edited to update link to video, due to impending closure of Google Video. JR 17 April 2011]

[Via A Whole Lotta Nothing]

Wes Craven has had a really terrible idea. He was talking to Daniel R Epstein of SuicideGirls about the DVD release of Red Eye and got onto the subject of remakes and sequels:

DRE: Is anyone bugging you about a Red Eye sequel? Is it possible?

Craven: I think it is completely possible if you extended those characters because they had such incredible chemistry. Whether those two actors would want to come back again or would be affordable, I don’t know. But I thought it would be fascinating to have something like Rippner being held hostage by the government and needing her help for some reason. So they get thrown into bed together, so to speak. In a way that they’d be the oddball duo, they hate each other and eventually become a tight-spun team. I think Carl was sketching out stuff. I know the studio was interested. [...]

I'm appalled at the idea that a taut little thriller like Red Eye is seen to be in need of a sequel, and even more astonished that Wes Craven thinks it'd be a good idea.

Fortunately, with his next breath Craven explains why this bright idea probably won't come to pass:

[...] Rachel would be trickiest for them to get because she has a manager who's extremely cautious about her career. They’d have to have a really terrific script and I'd jump at that job in a minute.

As co-founder of the UK Bloggers' Branch of the Rachel McAdams Fan Club I can only urge Ms McAdams' agent to resist the temptation to revisit the world of 'peril on a plane' movies.

Boston College has put up an online preview of an exhibit on Book cover design and the spirit of Magritte.

On the face of it, I'm not sure that I can see that every single one of them was inspired by Magritte: for example, other than their both featuring two faces in close proximity I don't see a great resemblance between these two images. It's entirely plausible that the cover artist may have acknowledged Magritte's influence, but I don't think you'd know it from the cover image alone.

[Via Kottke.org remaindered links]

Another day, another oriental tradition that involves wielding fiery objects. This time, it's the Japanese festival of hiburi kamakura:

[In this...] event, celebrants also brandish burning straw rice bags by gripping the end of about a one-meter long rope attached to the bag. The rice bags are set on fire by the burning firewood in the kamakura. People pray for the sound health and well-being of their family while the bag is burning.

The Japundit article linked to above has a couple of pictures of this ritual: the second one (taken from this page) is quite remarkable.

As if the forthcoming National ID Card wasn't bad enough, the Guardian reports that plans are afoot for us all to be offered a second ID, this time for use by the Government Connect system which will link everyone up to their local authority's records and be used in day-to-day transactions.

Government Connect: because one large, complex address database wasn't bad enough.

This Contract of Wifely Expectations – actually presented to his bride-to-be by one Travis Frey, 33, of Iowa – is quite mind-boggling:

[...]

My Time
When we are at home and alone as a family, from when you are to be naked until 12.00am, or for three hours, whichever is the later, will be My Time. This time will be time you will devout (sic) solely to me, whereas you will be in my service to do anything and everything I want, which may or may not be sexual in manner.

When we are not at home or not alone as a family, My Time will be modified as follows: you will have your clothes, you will be able to speak openly, and you won't have to perform anything sexual before we are in bed, however all other rules still apply. [...]

According to The Smoking Gun she didn't sign the contract, but she still married the guy anyway. After reading the four page contract, you might not be surprised to discover that he's now facing criminal charges for kidnapping his wife.

For the record: yes, it's possible that the contract was evidence of a dom/sub relationship. Consenting adults operating behind closed doors can agree to whatever they want. No doubt the jury will hear arguments on that score eventually.

[Via MetaFilter]

Call me a coward, but if anyone puts on a display of Dashuhua in Newcastle's Chinatown I'm going to watch from a safe distance. The People's Daily Online describes the art, complete with photos:

A man performs Dashuhua, a traditional folk art with a history of some 300 years to celebrate the Lantern Festival, in Yuxian, a county in east China's Hebei Province, on Feb. 11, 2006. The performer wearing a sheepskin coat and a wet terai scoops out molten iron with a special wooden spoon and slosh it on the rampart, splashing colorful sparkles.

Throwing molten iron around is a "traditional folk art?" OK…

I would have linked to the photograph of Dashuhua where I first saw it, but unfortunately MSNBC wrap up their The Week in Pictures content in a pretty but hermetically sealed Flash interface so that I can't link to a particular image: the best I can do is link to the list for that week and tell you to look at photo number seven.

[Via MSNBC The Week in Pictures]

More Little People. (See this post for the first set of images.)

[Via Qwghlm del.icio.us feed]

Lars Wirzenius, former officemate of Linus Torvalds and co-creator of the Linux Documentation Project, remembers the early days:

[...]

You all know Linus, at least by reputation. The wonder-child. The coding wizard. The hacker god. Well, it wasn't always like that. What I'm about to say next may shock the most devout Linuxers in the audience, but that's all right. This is a free country, and anyway, I've been promised police protection.

I've already told you that Linus didn't always know everything. I'm not saying he isn't omniscient now. After all, he might now be a god and I'm not lightning-proof. So I'm only going to talk about old times. I'm sure he'll forgive me that.

Not only did Linus not know everything about C, he also didn't know anything about PC's. In fact, he didn't even have one when I first met him. When he bought his first PC, he didn't even start hacking it right away. Instead, he played computer games, especially one called something like Prince of Persia. I've never understood that part of him. I mean, what's a computer game worth if it doesn't simulate playing cards? No, give me solitaire, if you want me to play with a computer.

Even a few years later, when Linux was already a success, Linus had this strange fascination for silly computer games, such as Doom and Quake. By then he'd already learned some social skills and knew that one just doesn't admit to liking computer games after the age of 12. So when he was playin Doom, he used to explain that he was debugging and stress testing memory management and the X server.

[...]

(From a talk originally given in 1998.)

[Via MetaFilter]

David Wong lists The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed.

10. The "Real" Alien 3
1992, Directed by, oh, let's say Ridley Scott

The most excited I've ever been to see a movie ever in my life was the moment I saw the first Alien 3 "teaser" trailer in 1991 (teasers are shot well before the movie itself is finished filming). It's the one that promised the aliens were coming to freaking Earth.

No, I didn't dream it. They really did show that trailer (they even have a copy of it HERE), sending it to theaters before they had even started production, before they had even picked a script. Visions of awesomeness flashed through my head, a Blade Runner-ish Earth with sprawling, filthy buildings, huge flashing billboards with giant Asian women on them, beat-up flying cars whooshing by and steam always rising from the streets for some reason. And then the aliens start breeding in the miles of dank sewers that tangle under the bustling streets, the creatures boiling up out of manholes by the hundreds, cut to pieces by Marines with pulse rifles and maybe in the climax the Army has to nuke the city…

"This movie can't possibly not be awesome!" I said to my little friend John at the time. "This is gonna make Aliens look like ET! I hope it's directed by the guy who will in the future direct Fight Club!"

A year and thirty fucking screenplays later (including this rejected script by William Gibson) they came up with the movie that killed the franchise, squatted over the face of the corpse and farted. [...]

You know, Alien 3 wasn't terribly good but I quite liked it. It certainly didn't kill the franchise for me; that honour fell to the next film in the series.

[Via Cinemarati Blog]

Sad news: actor Andreas Katsulas, best known to SF fans for five years of superlative work playing G'Kar on Babylon 5, succumbed to cancer on Monday.

Katsulas and his partner in crime Peter Jurasik may not have been the top-billed cast members on Babylon 5, but they acted out the most compelling – the most human – storyline in the entire five-year story arc as their characters feuded and argued and came to understand what fate had in store for them.

[Via The Sideshow]

Instructions on how to clean your toilet with a little help from your cat.

[Via Look At This...]

Mocking James Lileks. Such fun:

[...]

As I mentioned last week, Lorraine and my wife had been selected to represent Minneapolis at the 2006 Personal Trainer's convention in Cancun, Mexico, and Gnat and I were both really proud. My wife was so excited that she almost forgot to kiss me as she got into Lorraine's Subaru. "Mommy loves her girlfriend," said Gnat as the two of them pulled away, and all I could think was how sad it'll be when the public schools start punishing her for calling women "girls." Toddlers have a wonderful natural conservativism, and it's a shame the educational industry forces them to mature out of it.

My wife pointed out that she and Lorraine were going to be very busy the whole time, what with workouts and conferences and exhibitions, and that I should only call her in emergencies. I figured the pHisoHex thing qualified. I caught her in the middle of a workout, though. "James," she said, "this really isn't a good time for me to talk." She was panting. It must have been a hard workout. I heard Lorraine's voice in the background. "Tell Lileks what you're doing!" she said. "I- I want to," said my wife, between breaths. "Lorraine, I don't think I can take any more!"

"Put your back into it, honey!" I said. Sometimes she needs a little encouragement. "I'm sure you'll get there!" But then Gnat threw up again, and I had to hang up. It turned out club soda worked just fine on the rug.

[...]

[Via Wis[s]e Words]

Scariest. Ski. Masks. Ever!

[Via web-goddess]

I'm sorry, but selling a wedding cake top featuring figures of Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker is Just Wrong.

[Via cheesedip.com]