The Flip Ultra (Amazon: $100-$150.)

David Pogue in The New York Times, Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot:

“The lesson is one that the electronics industry seems to miss over and over again: that creeping feature-itis often impairs your product instead of improving it. In the Flip’s case, the size, shape, ruggedness, low price and one-button simplicity take it places where no real camcorder would go. Purses, coat pockets, beach bags. Skiing, playgrounds, house walk-throughs, museums, casual interviews, YouTube stunts, classrooms, airplanes — and, with the $50 acrylic sealed case, even underwater. (Just about everywhere but live performances and sports; the zoom just isn’t good enough.)”

Koolhaas Houselife: Trailer.

BêkaFilms – Koolhaas Houselife

“KOOLHAAS HOUSELIFE is a film by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine on one of the masterpieces of contemporary architecture of recent years: the house in Bordeaux designed by Rem Koolhaas / OMA.”

Zie ook Gizmodo, Koolhaas Transforming House Is Worthy of Iron Man, Batman, and Optimus Prime Combined.

‘Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture.’ (Helvetica Film)

Via Milo.

Installation of the exhibition, January 2008

Timewatch’ Omaha Beach in CGI. (YouTube – via)

Timewatch:

“One of the most fun parts of filming is for the computer graphics (CGI) sequences. Timewatch has its own team dedicated to CGI (Neil Wilson, Steve Flynn and Colin Thornton) who have come out to Normandy with a car laden with Rangers’ uniforms and fake plastic guns.”

Omar Little. Played By Michael Kenneth Williams.

Het vierde seizoen van de Amerikaanse tv-serie The Wire (wikipedia) wordt niet zelden ‘de beste serie ooit op tv uitgezonden’ genoemd. Onnodig overdreven, maar niet eens heel ver bezijden de waarheid. Hoe dan ook, vandaag 6 januari begint het vijfde en laatste seizoen:

“The fifth and final season of ‘The Wire’ centers on the media’s role in addressing – or failing to address – the fundamental political, economic and social realities depicted over the course of the series, while also resolving storylines of the numerous characters woven throughout the narrative arc of the show.

Explains series creator David Simon, “It made sense to finish ‘The Wire’ with this reflection on the state of the media, as all the other attendant problems of the American city depicted in the previous four seasons will not be solved until the depth and range of those problems is first acknowledged. And that won’t happen without an intelligent, aggressive and well-funded press.”"

In Nederland is The Wire overigens niet anders dan via bittorent te volgen. (Leesvoer en kijkvoer na de klik.)

Leesvoer:
The Atlantic, The Angriest Man In Television:

“Fiction can explain things that journalism cannot. It allows you to enter the lives and motivations of characters with far more intimacy than is typically possible in nonfiction. In the case of The Wire, fiction allows you to wander around inside a violent, criminal subculture, and inside an entrenched official bureaucracy, in a way that most reporters can only dream about. And it frees you from concerns about libel and cruelty. It frees you to be unfair.”

Slate in 2006, Analysing The Wire, the best show on television:

The Wire, which has just begun its fourth season on HBO, is surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America. This claim isn’t based on my having seen all the possible rivals for the title, but on the premise that no other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature.

The Baltimore Sun, ‘The Wire’ loses spark in newsroom storyline:

“Writing about the past four seasons of HBO’s The Wire has been one of the great pleasures of this job. But reviewing the fifth and final season, which begins next Sunday on the premium cable channel, is more of a mixed blessing.

(…)

The complicating factor for me is that creator David Simon turns his lens to the media this season – with a particular focus on a fictionalized version of The Sun newsroom. (Though some scenes were shot on Sun property, the paper did not review the scripts or have any involvement in the production.)”

The Wire eerder hier gelinkt: tag/the-wire.

Kijkvoer:

The Wire – McNulty and Bunk, the famous crime scene – fuck. (YouTube)

dinks… and i’m outie 5000. (YouTube)

Omar Hits Barksdale Stash House. (YouTube)

The Wire – How to Move a Desk. (YouTube)

The Wire season 4 – Michael learns how to kill. (YouTube)

Wat voorafging:
The Wire Season 1 Recap
The Wire Season 2 Recap
The Wire Season 3 Recap
The Wire Season 4 Intro

Klaus Nomi – The Cold Song (Henry Purcell, King Arthur)

Chocolate Bunny by Sander Plug – YouTube (via).

Virgin America Safety Video (YouTube)

night train from waterloo 1, by atomless – “passingby-looking-right”

Passing By:

“Passing By presents two films that piece together brief segments from many different journeys into ever growing sequences of sights-seen-along-the-way, while looking out of the window of a car, a train, a plane or even just pushing a shopping trolley around the local super market.”

The Dead by Billy Collins (via)

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Cure for insomnia. Meer aan- en afkondigingen uit Alfred Hitchcock Presents op YouTube.

Turning a sphere inside out: Outside in.