Dear Pixar: You had me at her hair… With a resplendent mane of fiery red curls, Merinda, the hero of Pixar’s latest animated feature “Brave” is truly the hallmark of a princess whose time has come. And not just because the animation of her volume of hair required a technological breakthrough, which it did. Six years in the …
Continue reading “Great Expectations: Pixar anoints its first female protoganist in “Brave””
Do you earn more or less than the world’s average wage? World average monthly wage: $1,480 Luxembourg – $4,089 United States – $3,263 Canada – $2,724 Germany – $2,720 China – $656 The average wage, calculated by the International Labour Organization, is published here for the first time. It’s a rough figure based on data …
The Unfinished Swan is a game about exploring the unknown. The player is a young boy chasing after a swan who has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished kingdom. The game begins in a completely white space where players can throw paint to splatter their surroundings and reveal the world around them. It’s being developed …
Continue reading “Beautiful and interesting game – The Unfinished Swan (trailer)”
The second season of “Game of Thrones” is over and the long wait for Season 3 has begun. The only question now is: Are you going to sit and wait on your couch or on your made-to-order $30,000 life-size replica of the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms? HBO is now selling replicas of the …
Continue reading “HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ begins selling – $30,000 Iron Throne”
Philadelphia, the city that gave us Poor Richard, cheese-steak sandwiches and the American Constitution, just opened a new treasure: the Barnes Foundation, one of the premier privately assembled collections of painting in the U.S. with more dreamy Renoirs and searching Cézannes than in the whole of France. Its arrival in May halfway between the landmark …
Continue reading “Barnes opens in Philadelphia – with more Renoirs, Cézannes than all of France”
They were a couple of auto mechanics with a pronounced Boston brogue and, improbably, degrees from MIT. They hadn’t a clue how to perform on radio, much less public radio. So Tom and Ray Magliozzi just decided to have a good time. The result was “Car Talk,” which shattered the perception that public radio is …
Continue reading “Click and Clack to retire – NPR’s Car Talk – final show this Fall”
Daily Streamer: “Jeff Who Lives at Home,” with Ed Helms, Mark Duplass & Susan Sarandon. On Netflix Instant. My review: bit.ly/zVotDj — Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) June 10, 2012
Had you polled theater pundits in recent years about which they thought would be in better shape today, the Broadway musical or the Broadway play, it’s hard to imagine any of them choosing the drama. Yet one of the unexpected developments of the past season is the robust showing of what used to be called …
Continue reading “The heartening resurgence of the American play”
It seems pretty straightforward right? Draft a story and get an illustrator to come up with some imagery to coincide with the storyline and you’re off to the presses. Not quite! Here’s a quick overview of the illustration process Where Albatross Soar has gone through. A fascinating process, here are just a few steps: …
Continue reading “The illustration process for children’s books”
For several years scientists have been begging to test their theories about Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun. You see, the radar signals come back showing ice exists on the planet, but how could ice exist on a planet so incredibly hot? NASA sent the spacecraft MESSENGER to orbit the planet and figure the …
Continue reading “MESSENGER sends first data back to Earth – uncovers ice on Mercury”