(I’ve basically read none of the things I’m linking this week, only skimmed them. Far too much going on in the world right now. Many of these links are via the marvellous Nextdraft.)
Longreads has pulled out from their archive some long pieces on Robin Williams.
This mash-up of the Muppets (doing Danny Boy) and the Beastie Boys is one minute of perfection.
Journalism: You’re a teenager and you’re a pedophile. You don’t want to hurt anyone. What do you do? – Plus an interview with the writer of that piece.
More on the methodological knife fight going down in my academic field, social psyc.
Weirdly effective: the opening credits of Twin Peaks, in 8-bit form.
The Wonder Years: An Oral History
Organize your life: be like a chef. (Sound right, Gator?)
The New Zealander who is the best Scrabble player on Earth.
Spacewar! – a computer game from 1962
“The assumption is that history is linear – from ignorance to enlightenment. It’s true that we’re closer to racial justice than we were, say, a century ago, but here’s the paradox: while we might be more diverse, more tolerant and more committed to racial justice than our ancestors, we’re committed to an ideology that makes racial justice impossible – colorblindness.” Morgan Godfery on the insidious racism built into NZ culture.
How high-quality action movies are made now – this sequence, lasting all of two seconds, is a blur of cool people doing stuff when first seen. But when inspected closely, as you do in this age of blu-ray and animated gif, you can see exactly what is going on – and what is revealed is way way cooler than you ever guessed. This is storytelling happening in such density that you can only pick up on it through detailed study (or by following this link). Amazing.
And finally (again via Dangerous Minds): the ambient sound of a Star Wars X-Wing, for 12 hours.
I’d like to see someone do a similar analysis on two or more seconds of a fight scene from The Bourne Supremacy or a Christopher Nolan Batman movie. I bet what they’d find is that there’s no reason why Batman or Jason Bourne or whoever wins the fight apart from that being what the script dictates.
The Bourne I saw seemed pretty clearly choreographed, but I was watching it on a TV and not paying much attention, so.
Nolan: yes. And Michael Bay’s stuff resists this kind of analysis entirely, it rejects the whole notion of coherence.
I think it’s not so much “organization” as much as “I better have my shit together or I am screwed for service.”
That being said, like in REAL life, those that are more prepared are those that sweat the least and achieve more with less space/energy/waste. (Though I have worked with people who had done the same job for years, and they would challenge themselves by throwing wrenches into the works quite often.:
It’s the Paul Greengrass Bourne movies that I suspect are incoherent. Doug Liman’s first one is fine (and his Edge of Tomorrow depends on its action being clearly choreographed to work).