Weekend Reads: Indiana Jones, U2, Netflix Animation, "Lord of the Rings," Juneteenth
Recommended weekend reading material for June 19, 2021.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
In honor of Raiders of the Lost Ark turning 40 this month, Brian Phillips celebrates what makes the movie so special in the first place.
Consider: Raiders features the greatest movie star of his generation working with the greatest blockbuster director of his generation working with the greatest pop world-builder of his generation; all of them, in their own way, supreme and uncompromising weirdos. It would have been so easy for their quirks and temperaments to blow each other up, like the scenery in one of the movie’s Rube Goldberg action sequences. Instead, the lit match of Harrison Ford’s jadedness somehow did not ignite the spilled gasoline of Steven Spielberg’s ego just as the runaway fighter plane of George Lucas’s imperiousness rolled into it. Raiders is not a perfect movie — more on that later — but if you’re on its wavelength, there’s very little that can rival it as a pleasure-delivery device. Everything just works.
Another important pop culture icon is about to celebrate an anniversary: Sonic the Hedgehog is turning 30 and Sega is planning some new games to mark the occasion. There’s also a second Sonic movie coming out next April. (Full disclosure: The first Sonic movie, surprisingly, did not suck.)
Jeff Terich sings the praises of U2’s triumphant third album, War.
Whatever U2 purged of themselves with War, arguably the first U2 album to suggest the level of soaring heroism that would become their stock in trade, in doing so they pushed themselves harder than they’d ever gone. War is a loaded title for an album. It also captures both the state of the band and the state of the world with a clearer view than their two previous albums; Bono’s deepening interest in global affairs and conflicts — nuclear proliferation, the Polish Solidarity movement — was matched by a sound marked by heavier rhythms and sharper edges. The album opens with Larry Mullen Jr.’s heavy, militant drum work on “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” and though there are moments of levity and lightness, a sense of austerity pervades throughout the album.
I’m fully of the opinion that U2 could’ve called it quits after War and they’d still be considered one of the greatest rock bands of all time.
Shy Thompson explores the otherworldly sounds of Japanese environmental music.
While kankyō ongaku, a Japanese term meaning “environmental music,” does to some degree refer to the natural world, the word “environment” in this context is being used much more broadly. Rather than simply meaning “nature,” it is meant to describe any space people inhabit — man-made or otherwise. And it doesn’t exactly mean music inspired by those spaces either, although it can. Instead, it’s a term used to describe music that’s made to supplement the environment in which it exists, and bring out more of its latent character. Kankyō ongaku got its start in Tokyo in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, but you have to look a little further back to see the complete picture of its origins.
Animation fans get happy: Netflix recently announced a slew of upcoming animated titles. The lineup includes Twilight of the Gods (a Norse-themed series by Zack Snyder), Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway (plus several Gundam movies), Exception (a horror/sci-fi anime by Hirotaka Adachi and Yoshitaka Amano), a samurai-themed prequel to Bright, and Godzilla: Singular Point.
I’ve never been the biggest Gundam fan, but Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway looks pretty cool. It apparently begins streaming on Netflix on July 1.
Polygon’s James Grebey sits down with Brett Beattie to discuss his time as Gimli’s double in the Lord of the Rings movies.
Initially, Beattie was hired to do horse stunts. (“I did that for two weeks and out of everything I’ve done, my god, that was dangerous.”) However, casting soon picked him up because he was an able scale double and could stand in for Rhys-Davies — who, despite playing a dwarf, was the tallest member of the main cast at 6-foot-1. But once it became clear that the facial prosthetics needed to bring Gimli to life triggered a nasty allergy in Rhys-Davies’ skin, Beattie became the go-to Gimli.
“I am aware that a lot of the people, even hardcore Lord of the Rings fans, assume that a lot of the shots are some tricky sort of camera angle or some CGI shrinking John Rhys-Davies down,” Beattie says with a good-natured laugh. “I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubbles, but I can only think of a couple of shots where CGI was used to shrink Rhys-Davies down.”
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was such a massive production, and I love reading stories about its lesser known aspects — and participants.
Research indicates that five-hour work days can boost productivity, but not without some side effects.
The eight-hour working day is a relatively new concept, widely accepted to have been cemented by Ford Motor Company a century ago as a means of keeping production going 24 hours a day without putting undue demands on individual members of staff. Ford’s experiment led to an increase in overall productivity; but proponents of five-hour days, including Californian ecommerce business Tower Paddle Boards and German digital consultancy Rheingans, say they experienced a similar phenomenon when they moved to compressed-hour models.
Via 1440.
Now that June 19th, aka Juneteenth, is officially a national holiday, Fabiola Cineas explains the day’s history and significance.
A portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth,” Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when a group of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned that they were free from the institution of slavery. But, woefully, this was almost two-and-a-half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. As much as Juneteenth represents freedom, it also represents how emancipation was tragically delayed for enslaved people in the deepest reaches of the Confederacy.
Nick Heer looks at some of Apple’s impending design decisions for their Safari browser — and he’s not necessarily a fan.
Over the past several releases of MacOS and iOS, Apple has experimented with hiding controls until users hover their cursor overtop, click, tap, or swipe. I see it as an extension of what Maciej Cegłowski memorably called “chickenshit minimalism”. He defined it as “the illusion of simplicity backed by megabytes of cruft”; I see parallels in a “junk drawer” approach that prioritizes the appearance of simplicity over functional clarity. It adds complexity because it reduces clutter, and it allows UI designers to avoid making choices about interface hierarchy by burying everything but the most critical elements behind vague controls.
I’ve always loved Apple’s design emphasis, but in some cases — like these changes to Safari — it can feel like they redesign things simply for the sake of redesigning them.
Also, adding complexity by reducing clutter is a conundrum that I constantly face as a UI designer. It’s always tempting to just hide those features and functionality that are deemed unimportant.
Finally, Coca-Cola’s market value lost $4 billion after soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo dissed the soft drink during a recent press conference.
In a Monday press conference ahead of Portugal’s first Group F match against Hungary, Cristiano Ronaldo took a seat and noticed two Coca-Cola bottles near his microphone. He was absolutely disgusted, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. The soft drink company is an official partner of Euro 2020. Coca-Cola also sponsors a ton of top tier international sporting events, too. You’ll see a lot of ‘em at next month’s Olympic Games.
Once the Portuguese captain saw the soda, he looked around, picked the two bottles up, and moved them out of the shot.
Related: Sometimes I marvel at the fact that we’re a soccer family.
From the Blog
Pixar’s Luca is now streaming on Disney+, so I’ve compiled a round-up of reviews and reactions from some of my favorite movie critics.
Directed by Enrico Casarosa, who turned heads with his delightful 2011 animated short La Luna, Pixar’s Luca has been described as a celebration of childhood friendship and “a love letter to the summers of our youth” — but with sea monsters.
Click here to read all of my review round-ups.
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