• With 35mm film dead, will classic movies ever look the same again?
• Furthering that pretty good Prometheus theory (though still not redeeming the whole thing because that’s goddamn impossible): The Second Coming of Space Jesus
• On that, here’s a really great theory on Blade Runner and the whole Deckard/Replicant thing
• Fuck me, a developed ‘auto-targeting’ sniper rifle for anyone to use (and probably shouldn’t)
• King David: Why generals shouldn’t run the CIA
• Trevell Coleman: The Man Who Charged Himself With Murder
• The 72-year-old grandpa who models for teen-girl clothing (and totally rocks it)
• Live From the Inside: a radio show run by psychiatric patients
• The Aokigahara Forest: the world’s second most popular suicide destination
• The average person glances at their phone 150 times per day
• Website: Virtual Piano (and keyboard friendly)
• Also, the hosts of some show called NFL Kick Off crammed as many Princess Bride references as they possibly could into their half hour show and it’s been compiled here

Almost 20 years after Baraka, Director/Cinematographer Ron Fricke is returning to cinema with Samsara and the film looks nothing short of fucking amazing.

Filmed over 5 years, 25 countries and 100 locations, Fricke’s follow up will also be devoid of dialogue, text and narrative and instead, tackle the theme of “humanity’s relationship to the eternal” purely through music and images.

Goddamn beautiful images at that.

The movie was shot entirely on 70mm film, but is set to be released via digital 4K projection, with no plans for a 70mm print; which is a damn shame and hopefully not another nail in that looming coffin for 35mm and film (stock). Mind you, I’ll be just as happy to get an actual theatrical of this awesome looking film considering a supposed ‘lack of market’ in NZ.

Anyhow, check it out (and in HD if that wasn’t obvious enough).

• So Long Judy Freudberg, Sesame Street Veteran; Writer Behind Land Before Time and American Tail
• Goddamnit… 35mm Film is About to Die – Studios Plan to Go With All Digital Projection by 2014
• Oh please fucking yes: HBO Considering Bored to Death Movie
• Video: a very brief online peek at upcoming Life of Pi adaptation
• The Evolution of Aesthetics: The Origins Of Music And Visual Art
• Bad astronomer on Will we ever… live on the Moon?
• Concerned Scientists Fight Back Against Ignorance in Washington DC by building a Center for Science and Democracy
• Opinion: Obama Might Lose (And He Might Win)
• Why Are Traffic Lights Red and Green? (sorta explained)

And today’s trailer is Julie Delpy’s sequel to 2 Days in Paris, now with more glasses…

Europe: A crisis of the centre
“There were two “moments” in the defeat of liberal centrist politics in Germany, Austria, Spain etc. in the 1930s: the first, where polite society realised the working classes were swinging to the right and left, but patronisingly reassured themselves that the world of Jazz, surrealist poetry and foreign holidays could never end. That is, they said to themselves: the workers are clinging to the past, but we, avatars of a more liberal and progressive future, have economic history with us, which points only in the direction of liberalism and economic co-operation.” [full article]

Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling
This year, for the first time in history, celluloid ceases to be the world’s prevailing movie-projector technology. By the end of 2012, according to IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service, the majority of theaters will be showing movies digitally. By 2013, film will slip to niche status, shown in only a third of theaters. By 2015, used in a paltry 17 percent of global cinemas, venerable old 35 mm film will be mostly gone. [full article]

Cassini Sees Objects Blazing Trails in Saturn Ring
“I think the F ring is Saturn’s weirdest ring, and these latest Cassini results go to show how the F ring is even more dynamic than we ever thought,” said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member based at Queen Mary University of London, England. “These findings show us that the F ring region is like a bustling zoo of objects from a half mile [kilometer] in size to moons like Prometheus a hundred miles [kilometers] in size, creating a spectacular show.” [full article]

Does the Internet Make You Smarter?
These claims were, of course, correct. Print fueled the Protestant Reformation, which did indeed destroy the Church’s pan-European hold on intellectual life. What the 16th-century foes of print didn’t imagine—couldn’t imagine—was what followed: We built new norms around newly abundant and contemporary literature. Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society. [full article]