This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Uncut "Metropolis" Discovered In Argentina

2008-07-02T15:56:55Z

Lost scenes of 'Metropolis' discovered in Argentina

Lost scenes from German-Austrian director Fritz Lang's legendary silent film "Metropolis" have been discovered in Argentina, German weekly newspaper Die Zeit reported on Wednesday.

Paula Félix-Didier, head of film museum Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, discovered an uncut version of the 1927 science fiction film when she looked into reports that a tape in the archive was unusually long. She travelled to Berlin with a copy of the film and met with experts who say they are certain it is the missing original-length version of Lang's masterpiece that reveals key plot scenes and an expansion of minor roles, Die Zeit said ahead of the publication of its Thursday edition.

"The film's original rhythm will be re-established," Martin Koerber, the man responsible for the current restoration of the film, told the paper.

Head of Berlin film museum Deutsche Kinemathek told the paper it was a "sensational discovery."

In 1927, Fritz Lang presented the film in Berlin after producing it in the city's Babelsberg Studios. At that time it was the most expensive film ever produced in Germany, but it was not well received by its German audience. A radically shorter version was subsequently edited in the US, after which historians believed the original version to have been lost.

According to Die Zeit's reconstruction of events, Buenos Aires film distributor Adolfo Z. Wilson brought a copy of the original version to Argentina in 1928. Film critic Peña Rodríguez later attained the film, which he sold in the 1960's to Argentina's national art fund. In 1992 copy then went to the Museo del Cine - where discoverer Félix-Didier took leadership this January.

I'm sure there's a joke about Germans and hiding in Argentina somewhere in here, but I just can't come up with it at the moment.

Ignoring that, this is just a "Wow" moment. Most people don't seem to realise just how much was cut from Metropolis for the US-release (about 2 hours), and just how much is missing from even the most complete restorations (about one hour). As a Fritz Lang fan, I'm simply speechless.

(Comment on this entry)

Facebook Activism

2008-06-23T15:51:30Z

From watching various sites and being sent links to join them, it would seem that the prevailing trend in methods of voicing displeasure online has moved away from the free, online petition towards the Facebook group.

I can't help but wonder, however, whether the Facebook group method is any more effective than the free, online petition method — which seemed to have an effectiveness rating of 0%.

I suppose it all comes down to: do people actually do things with these groups? (e.g. Arrange campaigns/schedule events and actually follow through.) Or is it just largely composed of people who either join and bitch/swap conspiracy theories on the group wall and or who join as a method of voicing their displeasure and never do anything else?

If it's the former, then good on them for finding a way of adapting the Internet to suit more widely-distributed participants. If it's the latter, which the pessimist in me thinks that it is, then they serve little more point than slapping a ribbon magnet on one's car and never doing another thing — feel-good actions that assuage one's conscience about doing something without the effort of actually doing anything.

(Comment on this entry)

The New Yorker & The GOP

2008-06-05T13:06:58Z

The New Yorker ran a column a few weeks ago called The Fall of Conservatism: Have the Republicans run out of ideas?. I'm of the opinion that it's an interesting read, regardless of whether one agrees with the author's overall conclusion that American conservatism as a movement is dying and can't survive in its present form.

Particularly, his thesis is that the American conservative movement as exemplified by the Republican party, has primarily fallen afoul of two items: the obvious first being the collapse of the Soviet Union and the associated loss of one the major raison d'êtres of the movement. The second merely being the passage of time and failure to adapt since Nixon's wins, as explained by the following quote from former Bush-speechwriter David Frum:

"Republicans have been reprising Nixon's 1972 campaign against McGovern for a third of a century. As the excesses of the 1960s have dwindled into history, however, the 1972 campaign has worked less and less well. […] How many more elections can conservatives win by campaigning against Abbie Hoffman and Bobby Seale? Voters want solutions to the problems of today."

It's a bit of a long read, I'll admit, but I feel it's worth it. The author posted some responses to it in a later blog entry, but for the most part I don't really think that they're substantial enough to comment on, save to say: if Michelle jihadists-under-the-bed Malkin represents the future of the American conservative movement, then the movement as it exists may as well start shopping around for a nice cemetery plot.

(This entry also acts as a test of the "new" server hardware. Things should hopefully be slightly snappier.)

(Comment on this entry)

CNN Shirt?

2008-05-14T15:37:34Z

Every now and then I come across something so mind-boggling, so bizarre, that I'm left sitting going "What marketing genius came up with that? And who were they sleeping with/related to in order to actually have it move from the concept to implementation stage?"

Case in point: CNN Shirt.

Ever had $15 that you didn't know what to do with? Well, why not buy a T-shirt that was auto-generated with one of their headlines from the Latest News section, the date the headline was posted, and the tagline "I just saw it on CNN.com"?

Now, I could possibly understand if they were headlines of some historical, pop-culture, or even just entertainment value — sort of a "Best of" type of thing. Or alternatively, if they were shirts with low-notability headlines but made available as free promotional items. But instead, it's a commercially-available shirt with a choice of slogans consisting of select headlines from the Latest News section, regardless of how ephemeral the story itself is.

All of which leads me to believe that their FAQ is missing the most important question: why did anybody even think that this was a good idea?

(Comment on this entry)

That Was The River, This Is… Uh… A Much Bigger River

2008-05-01T15:16:07Z

It's annual spring flood season in Fredericton again, and it's currently shaping up to be the highest since 1973. For those of you who don't have me added on Facebook (and if I actually know you then why haven't you?), here are a number of photos of downtown Fredericton from last night.

I think I'm going to have to go downtown again tonight. Some recent pictures I've seen suggest that Officers' Square has gone from soggy mess to small lake.

(Comment on this entry)

Cock-Up Before Conspirary

2008-04-14T13:32:40Z

Ah. Now I remember why I love The Register:

"The tinfoil-clad analysts who fingered various sinister conspirators as being behind the events - theorised to have been orchestrated by the CIA, US Navy, aliens, Iran, MI6 etc - will no doubt refuse to be taken in by this flimsy cover story of incompetent merchant seamen and anchors."

From Dubai impounds cable slicing ships.

(Comment on this entry)

A Cage Went In Search Of A Bird

2008-03-15T22:00:20Z

So it has been brought to my attention that July 3^rd marks the 125^th anniversary of Franz Kafka's birth.

I'd like to do something to celebrate this, but sitting around moping and eventually developing TB just doesn't seem that fun. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has them.

(This is being posted far in advance, as I'm also open to suggestions that require a fair amount of preparation.)

(Comment on this entry)

Start Your Engines

2008-02-06T01:12:42Z

One of the other developers at the Fredericton office recently left for a new job, and it appears to have put the company into a bit of a panic. (Given that the number of developers in Fredericton could be counted on one hand, and that's before he left.) What's the point of mentioning this? Well, today was my annual performance review, and I was offered what, considered percentage-wise, amounted to a significant raise — far more than I was expecting, and I was expecting a fair amount.

Unfortunately, the developer who left was also my car pool. This means that I'm stuck taking the bus to get to and from work, something that Fredericton's bus routes & schedules leave as a less than pleasurable experience. So, I've started thinking about cars, and what I'd like to get sometime as the year gets closer to summer. I could buy something used (and undoubtedly will), but where's the fun in that? Instead, I've been looking at new cars.

But not just any new cars. I've been looking at the ones on Transport Canada's ecoAuto list of eligible 2008 models. From there I've been narrowing it down. Basically, I want a car to commute to work (10-15 minute drive), and to run occasional errands in; the grocery store is close enough that, on days when the weather isn't nasty, it's not worth it to drive most of the time. As such, I don't want something expensive. I've set under $20,000 before taxes but after various dealer fees as my goal, which narrows the list down to three options:

Smart ForTwo Coupe
Toyota Yaris (both the sedan and hatchback)
Honda Fit

Each has something to recommend it: the Yaris is the cheapest of all the models, the Fit is four-door and comes with a good variety of options, and the ForTwo comes with the largest ecoAuto rebate and a smug sense of self-satisfaction that can otherwise only be found via a "Sorry about your small penis." bumper sticker.

Likewise, they each have something going against them: the Yaris may be cheap at its most basic model but comes with none of the options standard on other models (ABS, anyone?), the Fit is the most expensive of the models, and the ForTwo lacks cargo space (not a huge deal, mind you).

Granted, these are all just theoretical options at this point. There's only one thing that's a given: due to a variety of reasons, Becca can't drive, so I can be free to look at manual transmissions.

(Comment on this entry)

Whoop! Whoop!

2008-02-03T01:25:06Z

I admit, I still read comics. Though I've pretty much given up following regular series and stick to minis and trade-paperback collections of runs that I enjoy, I do still read them.

I've got a soft spot for a number of things, some of which I intend on mentioning someday when I finally get around to writing up some of my favourite graphic novels. But for the meantime, I merely mean to mention my favourite character, one who has only ever been collected in graphic novels where he appears in cameo. One who i meant to write a long entry on a while back, but forgot. (Yes, you may breath a sigh of relief.)

The character in question is called Ambush Bug — a character who once berated the Superman letterer for the overuse of the 'Whoosh!' sound effect, fought a mask-wearing intelligent sock, locked horns with real-life former DC editor-in-chief Julius Schwarz in numerous comics, and applied for jobs working for Morpheus, Swamp Thing, and the Grant Morrison-era Doom Patrol (among others) — definitely falls into the sillier section of stuff I like.

That said, I still maintain that any fan of early '90's DC comics, especially the Vertigo titles, should read 1992's Ambush Bug: Nothing Special #1, where Ambush Bug tries to find employment throughout the DC Universe. However, that was the character's last appearance in his own title. Barring one or two panel cameos in other titles and appearances in 2003's Lobo Unbound (which even Lobo fans are better off not reading; trust me on this one) and one issue of 2006's 52 miniseries, he's been pretty much dead for the past decade and a half.

Which is why the announcement of a new miniseries, written and drawn by original creators Keith Giffen (plotting and pencils) and Robert Loren Fleming (scripts), fills me with glee.

(Comment on this entry)

2008.02.01

2008-02-01T16:48:21Z

The Globe & Mail has been running Shifting Sands, a week-long series of articles on the underside of the Alberta tar sands boom. For those who haven't seen them, I recommend them all, though my preferred articles are Part III, on the possible long-term economic and demographic effects of the boom on small towns in the Atlantic provinces; Part V, on the future post-boom economy (using Norway as an example); and the latest part, Part VI, on the growing environmental problem caused by it.

A few choice quotes from the latter:

Today, says Randy Mikula, the head of tailings research at Natural Resources Canada who has been studying the problem since the 1980s, there is enough suspended clay floating in the ponds to fill a ditch 20 metres wide and 10 metres deep from Fort McMurray to Edmonton to Ottawa.

By 2010, Suncor says it will have reclaimed its first tailings pond, a 217-hectare body of waste water that sits next to the Athabasca River, but the company is doing so by moving most of the watery tailings to another, newer, lake.

(Comment on this entry)