Saturday, May 27, 2017

If my films don't show a profit, I know I'm doing something right...


If my films don't show a profit, I know I'm doing something right...


Oscar Wilde once said: “When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss art.  When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.”


I visited Tatranske Pleso Cemetery in the High Tatra Mountains, in the middle of summer of 1998. It was 5 degrees out, with a 70 kmh wind, cloudy, cold and dreary. For a Spoiled Sydneysiders that is colder than a well digger’s butt... It is almost June St Jan name soon and Wylie Baths is warm as piss no winter to speak off ...

The author is Alexander Todorov, and the subtitle is The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions.  Here is one short excerpt:
When Israeli and Japanese women rated these faces on trustworthiness, their impressions were predictably influenced by what they considered typical.  As the face became more similar to the typical Israeli face, Israelis trusted it more and Japanese trusted it less and less.  As the face became more similar to the typical Japanese face, the opposite occurred.  We trust those who look like members of our own tribe. MEdia Dragon has too many tribes KGB was maiden one ;-) since then MI5 and 6 and CIA and ASIO ... 

 SAVE YOUR CAT-5 CABLES BOYS, ETHERNET WILL RISE AGAIN: Scientists Have Found a Way to Photograph People's Faces Through Walls Using Wi-Fi


Speaking of Sciences and CIA, CIA releases Officially Released Information System database with 50 yrs of FOIA request documents - Muckrock’s work and posting as follows: “The results of the Agency’s ambitious project to track all the information its made public will soon become a valuable tool for government transparency. In 1985, citing concerns regarding “difficulty determining what has been publicly disclosed,” the CIA had a truly great idea that would serve both the Agency and the public’s interest in government transparency – a “proposal to establish a focal point to record CIA information released to the public.” The resulting Officially Released Information System, or ORIS, would take years to finally implement, and thanks [to a recent FOIA] (https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/officially-released-information-system-contents-35179/#file-1338090) – and the CIA’s agreement to release and waive all fees – it might finally become the transparency tool it has the potential to be. The problem of knowing what had already been acknowledged wasn’t a new problem to the Agency, either. The issue extended back to the 1970s for them, and had been brought up again in 1983. Previous attempts had all failed or resulted in incomplete division-specific systems. CIA needed an Agency-wide solution, and it was finally beginning to be technologically feasible.”



British Writers Aren’t Cool With Hollywood’s ‘Pathetic’ Treatment



Part of the problem, award-winning screenwriters say? Directors. “The generally held view is that the director is all-powerful. You never hear a writer mentioned. Hardly ever. They don’t say ‘this is a marvellous film written by’ but ‘this is a wonderful film directed by.’ … There’s nothing you can do to change it, but that’s how the industry is. The director has taken over the whole film world.”
A class action seeks money because a movie compendium whose promotional literature described it as containing “All of the Bond films gathered for the first time in this one-of-a-kind box set” lacked the 1967 David Niven spoof version of Casino Royale and 1983’s Never Say Never Again. The latter is sometimes denied canonical status by Bond-film buffs even though it stars Sean Connery, having been made by a screenwriter who had worked with Ian Fleming “to create the Thunderball story and was given the green light by a London court to make his own film after claiming co-authorship of the characters and elements.” MGM responds that a reasonable consumer would not have been misled because the box set package and its promotion list the films it includes. [Ashley Cullins, Hollywood Reporter

This is what it’s like to be struck by lightning Mosaic


A Writing Workshop That Runs Itself – And Has Served 15,000 People In New York



“At the beginning of each session the leader gives a prompt, and, after the requisite grumbling and staring into the middle-distance, the whole group, leader included, spend 15 or 20 minutes in silence, scribbling in their notebooks. Then those who feel like it read what they’ve just written.” And feedback has to be positive, or it can’t happen at all.
  
Astronomical Percentage Of Students Willing To Pay For College With Sex. “What does it mean? We don’t know yet, but openness to the idea of becoming a sugar baby is far higher than we had predicted.”



James Daunt, chief executive of Waterstones, contends that the resurgence of the physical book is real and sustainable. Furthermore, a focus on the book as object of desire has been central to his turnaround of Waterstones 

"What a world. It could be so wonderful if it wasn't for certain people."

 -Radio Days (1987)

Laura Kipnis goes in search of that rare thing, amemoir of midlife with no epiphanies and no life lessons. Nothing’s figured out and nothing gets better  Waiting Room For God  

New Zealand navy paid $700000 to firm mired in 'Fat Leonard' sex and bribery scandal


Despite the many other enormous advances of modern physics, little has changed in this regard. As Wigner wrote, “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”

The Passion of Michel Foucault. He was a surrealist, masochist, militant, Maoist, reformist, structuralist, comrade, and lover. He was also suicide-obsessed and hard to ignore. Hard To ...


A decade ago, highly confessional first-person writing began to flood the internet. Now it’s nearly vanished. What killed the personal essay?... Mystery 

THE CRUELTY IS UNIMAGINABLE: Swedish Workers Told To Have Sex On Their Own Time. “Finding the right work-life balance is always a challenge. But in Overtornea, Sweden, residents are going to have to have sex on their own time, just like everywhere else. The New York Times reports a 31-member town council on Monday voted down a local pol’s proposal to grant the municipality’s 550 workers ‘subsidized sex’—in other words, one hour of paid leave each workweek in which they could scurry home to get it on. Proponents of Per-Erik Muskos’ plan said it could help boost the town’s birth rate, as well as pull marriages out of ruts.”

Veronica Forrest-Thomson wrote one volume of criticism before dying at 27. Her ideas are so central that we’ve lost sight of her...  Vierka 

 … Hear 2,000 Recordings of the Most Essential Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Education | Open Culture