Marie writes: Welcome to "Good Books", an online bookseller based in New Zealand. Every time you buy a book through them, 100% of the retail profit goes directly to fund projects in partnership with Oxfam; projects which provide clean water, sanitation, develop sustainable agriculture and create access to education for communities in need. To increase awareness of Good Books' efforts to raise money for Oxfam, String Theory (New Zeland based agency) teamed up with collaborative design production comany "Buck" to create the first of three videos in a digital campaign called Good Books Great Writers. Behold the award winning animated Good Books Metamorphosis.
Marie writes: Now this is really neat. It made TIME's top 25 best blogs for 2012 and with good reason. Behold artist and photographer Gustaf Mantel's Tumblr blog "If we don't, remember me" - a collection of animated GIFs based on classic films. Only part of the image moves and in a single loop; they're sometimes called cinemagraphs. The results can be surprisingly moving. They also can't be embedded so you have to watch them on his blog. I already picked my favorite. :-)
Marie writes: Did you know that if you wear your contact lenses too much and too long during the cold, winters months - and with the windows closed and the heat cranked-up, that you can develop an annoying eye condition? Because you can. Ahem. And so for the time being, I'll be spending less time staring at my monitor and more time resting my eyes. The Newsletter will still arrive as usual each week, but it won't be as huge. That said, it will contain a few extra goodies to make up for it, by way of curious finds. And speaking of finding stuff...."On Thursday, March 7, 2013, SpaceX's Grasshopper doubled its highest leap to date to rise 24 stories or 80.1 meters (262.8 feet), hovering for approximately 34 seconds and landing safely using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control. Grasshopper touched down with its most accurate precision thus far on the centermost part of the launch pad. At touchdown, the thrust to weight ratio of the vehicle was greater than one, proving a key landing algorithm for Falcon 9. The test was completed at SpaceX's rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas." - by Neatorama
Marie writes: Allow me to introduce you to Bill and Cheryl. I went to Art school with Bill and met his significant other Cheryl while attending the graduation party; we've been pals ever since. None of which is even remotely interesting until you see where they live and their remarkable and eclectic collection of finds. (click to enlarge images.)
Marie writes: you've all heard of Banksy. But do you know about JR...?(click to enlarge image)
View image How many movie references can you spot in this image from "5-25-77"?
Most of this is true. The rest is even truer. -- Opening disclaimer, "5-25-77"
"To everybody else, movies are something to do when you're tired of living real life. To you, real life is something to do when you're tired of watching movies." -- from Patrick Read Johnson's "5-25-77"
View image How about this one?
In James Bridges' "September 30, 1955" (1978), Richard Thomas (then best-known as John-Boy Walton on TV) played an Arkansas college student devastated by the death of his idol James Dean on the title date. In Patrick Read Johnson's "5-25-77," John Francis Daley (best-known as the great Sam Weir in "Freaks & Geeks") plays, basically, Patrick Read Johnson, who visited his idol Steven Spielberg on his spring break in 1977 (while Spielberg was finishing up "Close Encounters"). As the story goes, Johnson got to see an early screening of "Star Wars" (which opened on the title date 30 years ago) while there were still dogfight scenes from old WW II movies in place of the spaceships, and proclaimed himself the world's #1 "Star Wars" Fan. In his semi-autobiographical movie -- "from the producers of 'Star Wars' and 'American Graffiti'" (Fred Roos and Gary Kurtz) -- Johnson tells a version of his own story, about growing up in a small Midwestern town and trying to make it to a showing of "Star Wars" on the first day of its release. Teaser trailer here -- at least for the time being. (BTW, Anybody else remember with fondness the episode of "That '70s Show" in which Topher Grace and pals were smitten with "Star Wars" mania? It captured the now-bittersweet utopian euphoria the movie inspired at the time.)
And here?
Twitch had some sympathetic ruminations about "5-25-77" and the "Star Wars" phenomenon last year that I'd like to share with you on the 30th anniversary of that Portentous Day: I've learned the hard way that there is a basic generational gap involved with "Star Wars" fans. There is the current crop for whom the prequel trilogy was their first exposure, and then there are the rest of us.
While I'm not quite old enough to have seen "A New Hope" on its first run it is no exaggeration at all to say that "Star Wars" populated the landscape of my imagination like nothing else at least until I hit puberty. The "Star Wars" universe is where I lived out my childhood. [...]
No comment.
The current crop of "Star Wars" fans can't seem to understand why us older lot are so bothered by the over-digitization of our childhood dream-world. But Patrick Read Johnson does. And how. "5-25-77" is his loosely autobiographical film about the impact of "Star Wars" on his own life as a teenage geek in love with the movies. We linked to an early, very rough teaser a while back but we have just been sent the full length trailer and if the film comes anywhere close to living up to this Johnson has made one of the most loving odes to geekdom ever. It is simply fantastic.
Great Movies
