Archives for April 2010

чужие еще

25 April 2010 | Cinematograph | No Comments

да, и к слову о Питере Селлерсе: недавно смотрел так же великолепный “Being There”[1] режиссера Пола Эшби как раз с Селлерсом в главной роли (а так же с удивительными Ширли Маклэйн и Мелвином Дугласом) — фильм о том, как легко стать Богом, за минуту до этого будучи лишь выброшенным на задворки дня великовозрастным ребенком. плюс, и сатира, конечно — о том, как мы воспринимаем чужие слова, о том, как устроенно общество. и о том, что ищем в этом устройстве мы сами.

Селлерс очень хороший, одним словом. а совсем не только “Розовая пантера” или “Вечеринка”.


[1] — рассказ и сценарий Ежи Косинского определенно напоминают “Карьеру Никодима Дызмы” Тадеуша Доленги-Мостовича.

  

чужие

25 April 2010 | Cinematograph | 1 Comment

вслед за Андерсоном пересматривал фильмы Сатьяджит Рея (именно его работы, кстати, и вдохновили постановку “The Darjeeling Limited”): “Devi”, “Mahanagar”, “Shatranj Ke Khilari” и даже веселый “Joi Baba Felunath” — прекрасные безмерно, магическим волшебством кадра, буйством индийских жизней и в то же время совершенной общечеловечностью проникающие в самую суть вещей.

случайно выяснил так же что Сатьяджит планировал снимать ленту и о пришельцах:

‘The Alien’ was supposed to have its roots in “Bankubabur Bandhu” (‘Banku Babu’s Friend’), a short story that Satyajit Ray had written for Sandesh, the Ray family magazine. The script revolved round a spaceship that landed in a pond in rural Bengal. The villagers began worshipping it as a temple risen from the depths of the earth. The alien established contact with a young village lad named Haba (Moron) through dreams and also played a number of pranks on the village community in course of its short stay on planet earth. The plot contained the ebullient presence of an Indian businessman, a journalist from Calcutta and an American engineer. What perhaps differentiated ‘The Alien’ from hitherto done sci-fi films was the portrayal of an intruder from outer space as a benign and playful being invested with magical powers and best capable of interacting with children. “The Alien” never got made in spite of the repeated efforts of Columbia, Ismail Merchant, Sellers’ ex-agent and others

“E.T.”, то есть, один в один:

In 1982, when Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster E.T. was released, the plot bore a striking similarity to Ray’s script for The Alien, and was produced by the same company that had contracted with Ray in 1967. The similarity was considered by some, including Ray, to be more than mere coincidence. He told the Indian press that E.T. “Would not have been possible without my script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies.”

а жаль, у Рея бы обязательно получилось:

In 1967 Ray wrote the script to a science fiction film he wanted to make called The Alien. Peter Sellers was interested in the lead role, and Marlon Brando in the second lead. With those two stars on board, Columbia Pictures contracted to do the picture, but things did not go well from the start.

<...>

For his part Spielberg has denied plagiarizing Ray’s script. “I was a kid in high school when his script was circulating in Hollywood,” Spielberg told the press in 1982, when the issue was first raised. Whatever the truth may be, The Alien, if it had been made, certainly would have upstaged E.T., and probably Spielberg’s previous effort, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well–not to mention forced Ridley Scott to seek another title for his 1979 production, Alien.

великий режиссер и к, сожалению, крайне недооцененный сегодня:

Ultimately though, Satyajit Ray was an artist who didn’t need the help of Hollywood to make great films, and his international reputation and enduring legacy were established without the enormous budget needed to produce a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet in spite of his international acclaim, an assessment report made by David Shepard, director of the Film Preservation Associates and a member of the Academy in 1993, found 18 of Ray’s early films badly deteriorated. To make matters worse, the original negatives of six of Ray’s classics were destroyed in a London film laboratory fire the same year.

  

камень, ножницы, бумага

24 April 2010 | Art | No Comments

весна ручьями вынесла на берег очередные прекрасные бумажные кораблики.

via.

  

перестройка

23 April 2010 | Facebook, Google, Internet | 1 Comment

добро пожаловать в новый дивный интернет:

Today at Facebook’s F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg laid out his plan to turn the Web into “instantly social experiences.” The building blocks to this super-social Web are Facebook’s new Open Graph and Social Plugins, which include new “like” buttons everywhere on sites outside Facebook.com, auto-login capabilities for those sites without clicking on Facebook Connect, and even a Facebook social bar which includes several of these plugins plus Facebook chat (goodbye, Meebo).

We’ve reported on all of these new features before, but today Zuckerberg put them into context: “we are building a Web where the default is social.” How is Facebook doing this? First and foremost, Facebook has redesigned its Graph API for developers so that not only can they see the social connections between people, but they can also see and create the connections people have with their interests—things, places, brands, and other sites. Zuckerberg calls it the Open Graph (as opposed to the Social Graph). It is really an Interest Graph.

и дальше уже Брет Тэйлор:

The most interesting thing Taylor said was that Facebook’s stance is that social connections are going to be just as important going forward as hyperlinks have been for the web.

ага:

So that’s Taylor selling Facebook’s Open Graph to thousands of startups out there. And many are likely to bite. There’s no denying that social graphs are the key to a service being sticky, and there is no better social graph than Facebook’s.

Companies will have to choose whether to fight against this, and attempt to launch their own graph, or get in line. “When we connect our graphs together, the web is gonna get a whole lot better,” Zuckerberg promised.

  

поколение

22 April 2010 | Hardware, Literature, Software | 5 Comments

25 лет назад вышла книга Стивена Леви “Хакеры: герои компьютерной революции” (когда-то я уже признавался ей в любви). и Леви к юбилею написал колонку — смешную, наивную и патетичную, но все же довольно милую.

  

кляп

19 April 2010 | Censorship, Copyright, Internet | No Comments

очевидное продолжение старой истории — как говорится, отключим газ:

An important High Court decision today allowing Eircom proceed with cutting off internet access to illegal music downloaders, mainly peer-to-peer music sharing groups, has major implications for all other internet service providers.

Legal sources predict the judgment by Mr Justice Peter Charleton may compel other internet service providers to cut off services to illegal downloaders who fail to heed warnings to desist what the judge described as “theft”.

The judgment arose from a settlement last year of proceedings by four major record companies – EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner -against Eircom over the use by others of its services for illegal downloading. Other cases are pending.

главное — это найти причину.

  

чужие слова

18 April 2010 | Literature | No Comments

The complete list of words that David Foster Wallace circled in his American Heritage Dictionary.

via.

  

роясь на антресолях

17 April 2010 | Design, Hardware, Software | No Comments

а насколько все-таки были замечательны в свое время рабочие станции Xerox Star — объектно-ориентированные, между прочим, и это в 1981 году.

  

чисто поржать

16 April 2010 | Technology | No Comments

цитата номер один:

The company leader [RIM’s co-chief Mike Lazaridis] also dismissed the importance of touchscreen phones. While it’s important to give customers what they want, touch-only phones like the iPhone aren’t that popular, Lazaridis argued. He claimed that most of the people buying touchscreen phones are going back to phones with hardware QWERTY keyboards, like those that made RIM “famous.”

цитата номер два:

здорово конечно, но запрашиваемых денег он не стоит. Особенно учитывая, что шустрые китайцы выпустили аналогичный девайс раньше и куда более мощный по функциям и железу. Эйфория от iPad даже меньше чем от iPhone, когда он был выпущен…

  

колом о молоко

16 April 2010 | Music | No Comments

песня “Бой”[1] с последнего альбома Леонида Федорова, на мой взгляд, — одна из самых жизнеутверждающих[2] в истории музыки:

You’ve scrobbled this track 61 times.


[1] — студийный вариант все же, кажется, лучше, именно своей отрешенной и стерильностью; чистая энергия, как она есть, не меньше.
[2] — но я вообще странный ебанутый