In this weekly column, filmmaker Danish Aslam will be your purveyor of the finest quality random facts, useless trivia and other esoterica from the world wide web. He lives mostly behind a keyboard and may or may not be a wizened old green man who speaks in grammatically incorrect aphorisms. You can find more on his home page http://pictually.me/dontpanic
A Week In Flight
Human flight. This phrase was an oxymoron for a great part of human evolutionary history. And even though we now mimic the real thing while being carried around in giant metal cylinders, there'll always be a small part inside of us that watches the beautifully shot flying scenes in 'Chronicle' with a certain wistfulness in our hearts. Until such time as we get touched by radioactive objects from outer space, we have pilots like Jakub Vik who make hypnotic time-lapse videos over a week from a pilot's-eye-view that put you as close to the real thing as you can get from the comfort of your chair.
How To Be Obama
Is anybody else here a fan of The West Wing? Apart from being from the mind of the man with the magic pen - Mr. Aaron Sorkin - this was one of the most fascinating shows on TV because of the feeling that you were actually getting a peek into life behind the scenes at that iconic structure. A close second is this article written by Michael Lewis for Vanity Fair after spending six months with the man at the centre of it all. It's one of the best profiles of any political figure I've read. And the fact that the politician here is a basketball-playing, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Obama makes it even better. Lewis intercuts the narrative with the story of downed Air Force navigator Tyler Stark, juxtaposing the reality of a soldier behind enemy lines with the man who took the decision that put him there. Excellent read.
The Future Of Modelling
Stanyslas Fedyanin is a 16-year old Russian supermodel who weighs 45kg and has done several international campaigns. Stanyslas Fedyanin is a boy. Apparently, he's representative of a new generation of androgynous male models who are open to a more feminine model of maleness. And if you saw the portfolio shots without having read these lines, there's almost no way that you could tell. Check them out for yourself.
How To Convince Someone To Watch TV
We all have our own favourite TV shows and like last week's post on how to be a TV fan, I'm pretty sure we've all had heated conversations where we've tried to convince people that not watching this particular masterpiece would be akin to chopping off a limb voluntarily while pouring hot pepper into both eyes. But you should always know your target audience and this comic over at Nerd Approved shows you how to pitch different shows to different sets of people. I know it's meant to be funny but some of it actually makes sense!
TMI About Movies
We all know that The Lord Of The Rings was a mammoth project, especially those among us who've seen the Peter Jackson-hosted Behind The Scenes videos. But just how much detailing went into the movie becomes clear only once you know that every piece of chain mail *under* the armour of the different soldiers during the Battle Of Helm's Deep (which is basically visible only if you pause the movie at any shot of a soldier and stare very, very hard) was created by the costume department by hand over two years, link by painful link. This and other astonishing facts about details in movies that you would only know of if the last vestiges of even the pretense of a life have fled you ages ago, comprise this piece on Cracked. For once, the name of the site seems to make sense.
Audio Gear For Your Man Cave
The headline pretty much says it all. This purse-string loosening, temptation-ridden post comes to you courtesy the good folks over at Wired. Side note: have you noticed that the addition of wood automatically elevates any audio component from ‘good' to 'classy'?
The 50 Most Interesting Articles on Wikipedia
Now I'm just being lazy. Here's the link. Adios!
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