LONDON (AFP) Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by researchers.
(via Daring Fireball)
David Simon, producer of “The Wireâ€, in the New Yorker:
Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We are in a post-industrial age. We don’t need as many of us as we once did.
I tried “The Wire†a year or so ago and gave it a few episodes before giving up but now I have nearly kicked my “West Wing†addiction I think I should give it another go.
John Rogers, the Kung Fu Monkey, on working with Tim Hutton in the pilot for the show Leverage:
On the next take, in the middle of five pages of dialogue, he delivered a line as he stepped forward – then stopped without warning. He took two steps back to reset just that line among dozens, and said it again on the move. But this time, he shifted about eight inches to the right and on the step-in landed not just perfectly into a glorious foreground light, but with slightly better framing of the intricate background for the complete shot composition.
He’d been watching his stand-in to memorize the light layout and composition from camera view, and then used it to map out his moves within inches to give us the best shots. All while slamming the performance home.
That is, to be blunt, pretty goddam sick. That’s how the grown-ups do it, kids. Next time you rush off the set as soon as the director calls “cut” so you can text your agent on your Razor, keep that in mind.
James Ellroy on Dashiell Hammett:
Hammett’s male-speak is the gab of the grift, the scam, the dime hustle. It’s the poke, the probe, the veiled query, the grab for advantage. It’s the threat, the dim sanction, the offer of friendship cloaked in betrayal. Plot holes pop through Hammett’s stories like speed bumps. The body count accretes with no more horror than pratfalls in farce. It doesn’t matter. The language is always there.
(via The Guardian)
fRINGE Underground was started by me and a friend because we felt that no one had taste anymore. I mean, I understand people who fire on all cylinders all day long who want to shut down the engines and escape with a romance novel or slasher flick. But people were no longer seeing guilty pleasures as anything other than pure pleasure. Crap bands, lousy movies, unwatchable TV shows and boring books were rocketing to popularity because people simply didn’t want to think. Thanks to Coldplay, Adam Sandler, The King of Queens, and Oprah’s book club, people with no taste actually thought that simply because they liked what everyone else liked they were digesting quality.
So we started fRINGE to try and offer alternatives that never got any publicity–art films that died quiet deaths, artists that never sold a record, books that never got a fair shake. We wanted to at least be one voice in the wilderness crying out that you don’t have to listen to John Maher when there’s Elliott Smith, you don’t need to waste time seeing a Matrix sequel when there’s Wes Anderson, and while you were watching Everybody Loves Raymond quality shows like Freaks & Geeks were getting cancelled. And if you need Oprah Winfrey to pick your books for you, the only thing you should be reading is an eye chart.
(from Gothamist, Dec 2006)
The children of Bougainville, the island that Mr. Jones locates in the vicinity of Papua New Guinea, learn to treat Pip as a mixture of deity, best friend and rock star.