The guys over at JibJab got some great new animations going. As always, they parody political (mis-)happenings. The first one, “What we call the news” shows how TV news humbly started in the ’60s and what they have become today. The second clip “Nuckin’ Futs” is a summary of the events in 2006, sung by children.
Sit back and enjoy the show:

Yesterday I watched Children of Men, a movie I haven’t heard of before seeing it in the “new releases” stand at the local video store. The blurb read interesting so I borrowed it. And what a great and fascinating movie it was!
I’ll try not to spoil the story for you, but the essence of it is: It is the year 2027, mankind is practically infertile, there has been no baby born sind about 18 years now. Britain is very isolated and tries to keep all the (illegal) immigrants from the mainland under control - with extremely harsh restrictions and lots of violence from the police and army. Everything is very dystopian, the world seems at its end.
But then a pregnant african-american woman surfaces, and the story around our everyman hero Theo (Clive Owen), his ex-wife and resistance-leader Julian (Julianne Moore) and their friends and foes begins to unfold.
That basically is the beginning, anything more and the spoilage would be too much, but rest assured, this is no Hollywood production where protagonists magically dodge bullets.

Anyway, the visual style of the movie is deeply impressing. In a world of ultra-fast-cut MTV-style action flicks, Children of Men scores with extremly long takes, documentary-style camerawork and of course, its brilliant character actors. The longest take in particular, that I had to watch 3 times in a row just to believe there wasn’t any cut in it, is as follows:
Our heroes are running through a dark tunnel towards the street where there is heavy fighting. They come along a T-crossing where some random guys get shot, there they get stormed by the resistance and are nearly executed on the spot. All of a sudden their would-be executers are shot themselves, and the party is on the run through the street again, with the camera chasing behind them. All this time there are cars coming around corners, people getting shot left and right, families running around and hiding, and so on. They get around a few corners, ride through a shot-up bus, and then watch as army troops shoot a building where the resistance hides with tanks. Between two shots they get into the building and up the stairs where there is more shooting and explosions. They don’t know what to do when tank shells explode on the walls of the building and troops come storming in.

The take doesn’t end here, but anything more and the ending would be really spoiled if you haven’t seen this brilliant movie.
I really love movies with long takes and slow cuts, because it emphasizes the actors (and cameracrews) performance on screen, and this one here did particularly well in that respect. Anyone can shoot 2 second takes and cut them together in the editing room so a half-way good movie comes out of it. But working with long takes really brings the actors to their limit, because everyone know if (s)he fucks up, the take is gone and there have to be another 5 or so hours of preparing the next take.

Apart from the brilliant execution, Children of Men is an inspiring movie about hope, the ability to stand above racism and see mankind as a whole, and loyality to one owns friends.
On top of all that I dig the fact that the movie has Michael Caine smoking and growing pot as a die-hard hippie. He cites the fact that in 2027 there are instant-death pills available everywhere (called “Quietus”) but Cannabis is still illegal. Food for thought.

Creating those self-made costumes must have been one hell of a job! I really dig the Optimus Prime one, but they are all great in their own respect.

At last, one of the biggest music distribution companies, EMI, is going to ditch the Digital Rights Management DRM. The company will offer all songs of their artists first on Apples iTunes store, but will charge a bit more per song (album prices stay the same) for better quality and a file free of DRM.
The only band still not available online are the Beatles, whos company Apple Corps still doesn’t want their songs to be downloadable.

Source: derStandard.at [german]
More information:

• EMI press release [emigroup]

• EMI unlocks anti-piracy software on music [reuters]
• Beatles catalog not in Apple deal [Forbes]

Rockstar Games released the first teaser trailer for Grand Theft Auto (GTA) IV today.

There isn’t much information in the trailer (as was expected) but now it is clear at last that the next part of the franchise will be settled in New York.

“The Secretary-General of the UN can be distinguished from the General-Secretary of the UN in that whilst one is in charge of the entire world, the other types letters and answers phone calls.”

from Wikipedia, “Ye olde Badd Giokes and other deleetid Nonsense” [sic]

There’s beer. Then there’s advertisments. And then there are really, really great beer advertisments. Budweiser often had them, Tuborg had a few good ones, Heineken also. But this one beats them all when it comes to big, epic ads - it even has its own Wikipedia article.

Inspired by Cheers Beer [Dan’s blog].

Do you know Jack? If you don’t, it’s no problem at all, because You don’t know Jack is back!

But the franchise isn’t coming back to CD-ROM games (or DVD-games nowadays), now it is a free online flash-game in your browser. Sweet!

Cookie, You don’t know Jack’s moderator of old is back with it too, and he is as witty and as cruel if you answer a question wrong as ever.
Each week a new episode is released featuring several questions, including a DisOrDat as well as Jack Attack round.

So wherever you are, be it at work, at home or even at the beach, go to www.youdontknowjack.com and play a few rounds of this great game, you might even learn something (you will laugh, that is for sure).

Superman and Batman discuss Supermans cheesy actions. Especially the comment “Made out with Lois a little bit, flew out into space, smiled for the camera” when Batman asks what Superman was up to made me crack up.

Found on: Dan’s Blog

Last year Google bought YouTube for 1,65 billion dollars - and now the aftermath has hit the fan: Viacom, owner of such tv stations as Nickelodeon and MTV, is filing a lawsuit against Google for “massive intentional copyright infringement”. The statement goes on, “In fact, YouTube strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.”

This is the first major company to go after the Google/YouTube connection and its alleged copyright infringement. If it goes well (for Viacom) maybe others will try to jump the wagon too. Only time and probably judges will tell what becomes of YouTube when major tv players go hunting for it.

More Information: “Viacom sues Google and YouTube” [guardian unlimited]

That’s what happens when even big broadcasting stations like NBC don’t check the sources their images come from. This one’s probably off of Google Images. “So good you’ll suck dick” - the anchorwoman even looks like she knew what was being shown there on the screenshot.

Did you know that there used to be a large forest swastika in germany, where some foresters planted larch trees in a pine area so people flying over it would see the swastika?
Have you ever heard of the little austrian town of Fucking?
Have you been to the penis museum in iceland?
Seen the tree that owns itself?
Did you know that the pin that holds the rotor to the mast of some helicopters is called a Jesus nut?

If such obscurities bring even a little smile to your face, the following page might be worth a visit: Unusual articles on the english Wikipedia

Students at the University of East Anglia in the UK are working on the Wikipedia online encyclopedia as part of their degree course. Wikipedia has recently divided academics when a US university banned the site because of fears that students could reproduce content from it without checking its accuracy. But there is hope when a project such as the middle east course embeds Wikipedia into university courses with tasks like “edit eight articles and then write your own article concerning the subject”.

Read more: Students assessed with Wikipedia [BBC]

Gmail is just great. I seriously could not manage my daily emails anymore without the conversation view it offers, and of course the best thing is the powerful labeling/taging capability. Instead of moving your mails into specific folders, you just assign (one or more) labels to them, so one mail can show up in more than one of the virtual label folders. This is a great way to organize your mail, and I still struggle with the normal IMAP email I have at my new workplace, at least there are a few extensions, particularly GmailUI for Thunderbird that make the free mail program at least behave like gmail (it uses the same shortcuts with the extension and archiving is also done in the same way, although labels still are missing).

But back to gmail itself: There is even more to it, you can use it as your personal nerve center, doing things such as: Using gmail as a personal database, getting real-time news updates, bookmarking, calendar and todo lists, and even write blog entries via mail.

Read more: Turn Gmail into your personal nerve center [micropersuasion]

I have always said that Windows Vista has a far worse user interface than XP has - everything there is bunched up, the sidebar with linux-like widgets doesn’t provide and really useful functions and on top of that isn’t customizable, the aero GUI is too flashy and nobody really needs the 3d flip-through taskswitcher, especially when you can’t even see the windows you are switching through because it looks like a shuffled deck of cards.
And now there is an independent study about Vistas user interface from Pfeiffer Consulting, a french market research institute. And of course the study showed that you need much less clicks in XP for stuff to do than in Vista.

I don’t know why Microsoft doesn’t get it that a flashy interface isn’t exactly the same as a resourceful and efficient interface. The first may get the product some new customers because it does look rather with all the eye candy, but the latter is what binds the consumers to the product - that you can do your work efficient and without the interface always getting in your way.