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aotopmha · 3 years

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asdfgh can I also just add: Eren was like "Imma commit genocide" and Historia follows with "What were you to say if I got a child?" she recovered very quickly and found way to save herself from being fed to Zeke. I probably sound like a hater but I never paid much attention to her and now seeing people thinking she did a 180 in the finale, just makes me feel..the evidence had been in front of us the whole time, maybe I missed sth why people are giving her the benefit of the doubt

I read this and the previous ask I got, but I couldn't figure out if you were the same anons, so I'll treat these as separate asks.

People have been saying that characters have made a 180 for a number of characters at play here.

Apparently Reiner is back to where he started and preposterously cares for his friends on Paradis (when in reality he probably just got to rest a little bit and he didn't actually end up hating any of them and felt intense guilt for hurting so many people on Paradis).

Apparently Eren is unrecognisable from his character (when he has been a very impulsive and single-minded character for pretty much all of the story *together with* the changes in his character, there are a lot of moments where he cares about Mikasa, he even directly asks what she is to him and we know for a fact memories are screwing with him).

Apparently Mikasa never got an arc (when in reality she killed the person she loved the most to save the world). The most frustrating elements for me in terms of criticism I see for Mikasa's arc is that she should "grow independent" from Eren.

It's been a criticism for as long as I remember, but I think that would be a lonely and miserable thing. Eren's and Mikasa's relationship is complicated, but it slowly grows more healthy as the story goes on. I think her suddenly just stopping to care about Eren would be the solution that would be wrong. Remembering him for the good moments they had is absolutely the way to go. It could've been empowering if Eren was an uncomplicated abuser, but he's not.

Immediately pairing her up, more specifically her "needing another man in her life" as some people put it is the actually sexist thing to do, too. A woman should be allowed to have feelings, even if it is about another male character.

Giving her personal time and solace in good times and friends coming to see her instead of instantly pairing her up with another guy is the more respectful move because pairing her up with another guy immediately after the person she cares about dies would be treating her like a prize passed over from guy to guy.

(In fact I like that none of the female characters are left off as solely to be mothers. Even Historia.)

But speaking of Historia, to finally directly address your ask, I think her motives absolutely were selfish, she probably did this with the reasoning to survive/refuse the Titan cycle, but at least her ultimate desire was a world free of Titans.

I do not think she is cheering on the death part of it at all, at the very least.

I have a firm wall between fiction and reality so I don't particularly care about the moral implications if you zoom in there to the very basics, rather I care about the framing of this entire thing.

Is Eren actually celebrated as some grand hero who saved humanity here, textually and subtextually?

No. Armin is the hero here.

For stuff like this, morality and scale of a situation is actully pretty irrelevant.

Evangelion's Shinji gets shit for this very same reason. His hesitation is putting many lives in danger, but this is technically irrelevant to framing and what the story wants to say. I think the world wasn't at stake a lot of people wouldn't rag on his character so much.

What is the intention here? Because I think if Eren would've killed any amount less and the story would say he was a great hero and he would get a good life with his friends, it would still be horrendous storytelling in my eyes because the point would be that what he did was okay. I can nitpick the details of the situation all day, but that really doesn't mean anything if a narrative delibrately paints disgusting stuff in a positive light.

I think this is the primary reason why fascists are disowning this story. The vibe and points made don't check out. The big parade and Eren's motto are framed in a sinister light, not for heroes coming home.

This even goes for the general claims I see around for the tone of the ending.

It's not a pure power of friendship ending: 80% of humanity is dead, the Yeagerists are still alive on Paradis and for all we know, just like Pieck says, their ship could just be sink the moment they arrive.

It's a hopeful ending, but it is also the beginning of a new struggle.

Thank you for the ask!

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #AoT 139 #SnK 139 #Reiner #Reiner Braun #Eren #Eren Jaeger #Eren Yeager #Mikasa Ackermann #Mikasa #Historia Reiss #AoT #SnK #Asks #Historia

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letterboxd · 3 years

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The Eyes of TIFF.

Programmers for the 46th Toronto International Film Festival chat about the degrees of intensity they look for in a festival film, and help us zoom in on the gems from TIFF’s 2021 program, by genre and region.

“Intensity can be achieved in so many different ways. I know it when I feel it. You feel it in your gut.” —Cameron Bailey

It’s almost business as usual for TIFF this year. In-person events and red carpets return, but a healthy virtual program is also available for Canadian-based folk unable to travel, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues its onslaught.

TIFF co-head and artistic director Cameron Bailey has been with the festival for just over half its life, and says while some of the technology has changed in that time—“you’re no longer sitting in front of a TV monitor with VHS tapes… or waiting for 35mm prints to be spooled up and projected for you”—the “basic process of falling in love with movies” has not.

It’s a challenge, Bailey says, to winnow down the films he falls in love with for the final TIFF lineup. And even then, it is an annual challenge for film lovers tight on time to narrow down their own selections. So, ahead of the fest, Bailey joined fellow TIFF programmers for a Twitter Spaces conversation with our editor in chief Gemma Gracewood, in order to help Letterboxd members make some watchlist decisions.

Joining Bailey were Thom Powers (TIFF Docs), Peter Kuplowsky (Midnight Madness), Robyn Citizen (senior programming manager), Diana Sanchez (Special Presentations, Spain, Latin America, Portugal and the Caribbean), Diana Cadavid (International Cinema) and Nataleah Hunter-Young (Africa, “the Middle East” and the Black Diaspora).

Edited highlights of the conversation follow, so have your watchlists close at hand.

‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’, written by Abe Sylvia and directed by Michael Showalter.

Thank you all for joining me today. You watch a lot of films as you’re going through the selection process. How does one make itself stand out to you? Cameron Bailey: For every programmer it’s going to be something different. For me, it comes down to an intangible quality of intensity. That can be emotional intensity, it can be the intensity of formal elements, the cinematography, the performances, the writing. Some sense of concentrated emotion and momentum, where you get the sense that a filmmaker is trying to find a way to distill the essence of what they’re trying to do and communicate it to an audience through all of the tools that cinema provides. That doesn’t mean the movie has to be fast-paced or have a lot of dramatic jolts, as intensity can be achieved in so many different ways. I know it when I feel it. You feel it in your gut.

What would you say are some of the performances that have struck you the most this year? CB: Jessica Chastain is the lead in a film we’re premiering called The Eyes of Tammy Faye, directed by Michael Showalter. If you were watching TV in the ’80s and ’90s, you will remember Tammy Faye Bakker, and her husband, Jim Bakker, who were TV televangelists. You couldn’t miss Tammy, as she had these giant eyes and makeup with giant eyelashes, and this is essentially her story. It’s hard to know at first that it’s Jessica Chastain underneath all of that makeup, but she gives a performance that’s not just about the exterior. It’s about a woman who is shaped by a difficult upbringing, shaped by this incredibly deep need she has for affirmation, to be on TV, to be in front of the camera, and that guides her decisions into extremes. She’s fantastic in it.

Benedict Cumberbatch is back with two films. He is the lead in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. It’s an understated, slow-burn performance in some ways, which he can do so well. He’s also in a film that’s on the opposite end of the dramatic spectrum, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain. It’s based on a real person, and when you watch the film you will be amazed that this person actually existed. Wain, in the early part of the twentieth century, was a prodigious painter who turned his talent towards painting thousands of cats. Cute cats, big eyed cats, fuzzy, adorable cats. He’s largely responsible for cats becoming as big as they are as domesticated pets. It’s a wild story.

I’m still recovering from watching The Power of the Dog’s trailer earlier today, and had to promise myself that I wouldn’t take up this entire time talking about Jane Campion’s obsession with hands. The Spencer trailer dropped as well, which has a lot of buzz around it. CB: Yes, Spencer is a remarkable portrait. Some of us remember Princess Diana, some of us have watched The Crown, and so have a very recent image, but this is a completely different performance that Kristen Stewart gives. She’s remarkable in it. I think everybody’s going to want to see this film.

‘Charlotte’, written by David Bezmozgis and Erik Rutherford, directed by Tahir Rana and Éric Warin.

Are there any other titles you’d like to get the buzz started for, Cameron? CB: On the animation side, I would say people should look out for a film called Charlotte, by Tahir Rana and Éric Warin. It’s a Canadian film telling a story based in World War II Europe about a woman in a Jewish family [exiled] in France during the occupation of France by the Nazis. She can feel what is coming. She decides to paint everything about her life, and her family’s life, trying to document what she feels is going to be very fragile, and what she might lose altogether.

As it turns out, before the end of the war she was taken away to a death camp by the Nazi regime, and she didn’t survive, but her paintings have survived and they were turned into a book, along with the story of her family. The animation is just gorgeous. I think that’s one that awards bodies are going to be paying attention to. It’s one of the best animated films I’ve seen in quite a while.

Thom, what are some of the documentary titles that you and the team think those awards bodies will have their eyes on? Thom Powers: A big one to pay attention to is The Rescue, by Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who won the Oscar for their last film, Free Solo. Their new film is looking at the Thai cave rescue [in 2018], when a group of young soccer players and their coach got trapped by monsoon floods in a cave. When we were watching the news, we were seeing the journalists reporting from outside the cave. What this film does is bring you inside that rescue using footage that’s never been seen before. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin are masters at the documentary adventure genre, and also [at] bringing a real human side to the people involved, which they do again here.

I’ll also mention Becoming Cousteau, by Liz Garbus, and Julia, a film about Julia Child, directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who made the Oscar-nominated documentary RBG a few years ago. So many of us during the pandemic had to rediscover ourselves in the kitchen, and Julia Child’s life was about making people feel more comfortable in the kitchen, which makes it a terrific film to watch at this time.

‘Saloum’, directed by Jean Luc Herbulot.

Peter, what’s a movie from this year’s Midnight Madness lineup you’d love to recommend? Peter Kuplowsky: We’ve got a lot of firsts at Midnight this year. We have Saloum, the first time a West African film has ever been in Midnight. We’ve also got Zalava, which is the first Iranian film to play in Midnight. Our opening film for Midnight Madness is Julia Ducournau’s Titane, which is playing at the Princess of Wales theater, and will be a spectacle to behold. When I’m looking for Midnight Madness, I like hearing the audience make certain noises in the room, whether that’s a gasp or screams or laughter. I feel that every note on the scale is going to be played during Titane by the audience.

Brilliant. Now, we’re going to bring in some audience questions. First up is Vincent, who says that one of their favorite films is Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, and asks if there are any films in this year’s TIFF lineup you could recommend for a fan of that film? PK: I’ve really been encouraging people to check out the films I just mentioned, Zalava and Saloum, and I think Zalava especially would fit here, as it’s more of a horror-drama. It begins as something that is steeped in the supernatural, but as it escalates it becomes something of a pitch-black comedy while still maintaining a gravitas to it. I think it’s one of the most fascinating discoveries in the genre space this year.

CB: I’d also add Good Madam, by Jenna Bass, from South Africa. It is a chilling movie, with a bit of an Eyes Without a Face vibe. If you like that sort of approach to cinema, I think you’ll like that.

PK: Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash just won the Golden Leopard at Locarno. With a title like that, this is a film that feels like it’s going to be sort of a strictly pulp crime film, but it’s so much more. It’s deeply romantic, incredibly eclectic, and beautifully shot on 16mm film. It feels like a film that was hidden away, shot in the late ’70s or early ’80s. It’s a throwback to 1980s Hong Kong action films, while also, I can’t stress this enough, being one of the most romantic films in the festival. You’ll fall in love with this relationship while it’s also working in fight sequences and magical realism.

Nataleah, what’s something you would recommend from your TIFF selections from Africa, “the Middle East” and the Black Diaspora? Nataleah Hunter-Young: One I’d highly recommend is Costa Brava, directed by Mounia Akl, from Lebanon. Even amidst what’s going on in Lebanon right now, the film offers a beautiful and engrossing portrait of a family that includes a grandmother who’s a non-actor, but has impeccable comedic timing (that travels through the subtitles if you don’t speak Arabic).

‘Snakehead’, written and directed by Evan Leong.

Robyn, what’s a movie that surprised you most during your selections this year? Robyn Citizen: I always recommend that people check out our Discovery section because that’s where we find new talent and nurture new voices. The film that really surprised me this year was Snakehead, by Evan Jackson Leong. Some people will know him from a documentary called Linsanity, and he did another documentary about evangelism in Korea. Snakehead has been a ten-year labor of love for him. He had to do a Kickstarter for the film, which is loosely based on the life of a woman named Sister Ping, who had a human trafficking ring that was the biggest trafficking ring for about 20 years.

The film tackles what’s going on now with vulnerable populations being trafficked into America, in particular Chinatown in the US, and the main character, played by Shuya Chang, has to fight to find her daughter. It’s an exciting film, and very moving. It’s extremely tightly edited, and it looks fantastic.

We’ve got our next question here from a member who says their favorite genre is science-fiction. While Dune is at the top of their watchlist, are there any other sci-fi selections you could recommend? PK: I would recommend After Blue (Dirty Paradise), which is a perverse science-fiction by Bertrand Mandico. It reminds me a lot of the French animated film Fantastic Planet. This one is about a planet which is inhospitable to men because of the way hair grows. The plot follows a young teenage girl who accidentally unleashes a notorious criminal that she and her hairdresser mother have to stalk through the alien landscape that is full of bizarre creatures and liquids and gases. I feel it’s kind of like the inverse of Dune, and an opportunity to explore a bizarre ecosystem.

NHY: I would totally insist that this member see Neptune Frost, from Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman. It’s a difficult film to put into words, but I’ve been summing it up by calling it an Afro-sonic sci-fi musical.

Whoa, that sounds like a whole new subgenre. NHY: That’s just the beginning. There’s a lot to experience in this film. It’s a cosmic romance that follows an intersex hacker and a coltan miner who make their way to this kind of dream space where they connect with others as they travel through these lush mountainous regions of Rwanda and Burundi. It’s a beautiful anti-narrative that is impeccably colored and totally consuming. It’s a must-see for anybody who loves cinema.

Diana, what would you say is the best debut feature that you’ve seen among this year’s international selections? Diana Cadavid: There are so many wonderful new talents, but I think I’ll go with an Argentinian filmmaker named Agustina San Martín. Her film, To Kill the Beast, is a co-production between Argentina, Brazil and Chile, and she worked for nine years to put this all together. She started working on it when she was 21, and we were actually having a conversation yesterday about her process, and how it’s a film that deals with the growth of a woman, and female desire. There’s this idea of the beast, something that’s either from inside or from outside forces, trying to control the human mind and body. It’s a very interesting film, gorgeously shot and very atmospheric.

‘Yuni’, written by Prima Rusdi and Kamila Andini, directed by Andini.

We’ve got another question here from David, who says their favorite films are humanistic dramas, citing Hirokazu Kore-eda as one of their favorite directors. Would anybody have any recommendations for David? CB: I can recommend at least one film, called Yuni, an Indonesian film from Kamila Andini. This is a naturalist drama about a high-school girl who is one of the top students in her class, and has a great group of friends. We slowly begin to see that her life is being constrained by one man after another, and then something happens at school, which begins to narrow her possibilities for her future. She’s trying to figure out things like sexuality and romance and what she wants to do with her future, and all of these obstacles keep getting placed in her path. It’s told in a very gentle way, but very incisive as well. Each scene really matters, taking you deeper inside this girl’s life.

RC: Our senior programmer Giovanna Fulvi programmed a film called Aloners, a South Korean film by Hong Sung-eun. This is her first feature, and it’s very much a film of our time. It is about a woman who works in the gig economy at a credit-card customer-service call center. It’s a very transient existence. She doesn’t talk to anybody, she eats by herself, she doesn’t really want to associate with the people in her apartment building. One day, one of her neighbors who has tried to talk to her many times passes away, and she has to re-interrogate the way that she’s been living her life, and figure out if it’s worth starting to form some human connections.

Next up is a question from Matt Neglia, from the Next Best Picture podcast. Matt says that he’s a massive fan of epics, whether they’re three hours long or just telling an expansive story with lots of world-building. Apart from Dune, are there any other films in the lineup that you would describe as epic? CB: While Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World might not strike you on reading its synopsis as an epic, I think it actually is an emotional epic. It’s the story of a young woman who’s trying to figure out her life. Her romance with one boyfriend doesn’t quite fit the bill for her, and she begins this looking and exploring. Trier and his writer and lead actor do remarkable work, blowing open the idea of a person trying to define who they are at this turning point in their life. They make these stakes massive and they have all kinds of interesting, innovative, formal elements in [the film] as well. It’s incredibly cinematic. If you’ve seen Joachim Trier’s other films, this is kind of the conclusion of a trilogy that he’s made.

‘Listening to Kenny G’, directed by Penny Lane.

Next up, we have Sarah, who is looking for movies about music, and also some body horror. CB: We’ve got a number of great music docs this year. I have to mention Dionne Warwick, the queen of Twitter, who is the subject of Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over. It tells the story of this incredibly talented, determined and glamorous musician who broke so many barriers. She toured in the south during the Jim Crow era, making gains as a Black woman in the music industry and in the pop-music industry, not the so-called race-record or Black-music industry, which simply wasn’t done at the time. This documentary tells that story, and also shows her later work in the ’80s contributing to the fight against stigma and hysteria during the AIDS crisis.

PK: I’ll follow up Cameron by mentioning the Alanis Morissette film Jagged. We’ve also got a film about the great jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson, called Oscar Peterson: Black + White. Lastly, there’s a film about Kenny G, called Listening to Kenny G.

Diana Sanchez: For the body horror, I’d like to mention the debut film by Ruth Paxton, titled A Banquet. It’s about a young woman who insists her body is no longer her own, and is a service to a higher power. Her mother has no idea what to think. She stops eating, and her mother doesn’t know [whether] to believe her or not. I love Ruth Paxton’s work, the way she shoots the film, the way she shoots the food. It’s almost, as she refers to it, pornographic. It looks delicious and gross all at the same time.

I’d also like to flip to comedy quickly to mention Official Competition. The film stars Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez. Cruz plays a filmmaker who puts together a well-known theater actor and a well-known box-office glamor guy, played by Banderas. The film speaks to the tension between high art and more popular art, testing those boundaries. It’s incredibly funny.

We’d love to squeeze a few more films out of everyone for our watchlists. Could you each recommend one film and try to sell it in ten words or less? CB: Let me try. Sundown, by Michel Franco. Tim Roth falls apart beautifully in Mexico.

TP: I’m going to go with the Mexican documentary, Comala. Filmmaker Gian Cassini explores the legacy of his father, who was a Tijuana hitman.

PK: I’ll go with Saloum, which is basically From Dusk Till Dawn in West Africa.

RC: I’m going to say The Wheel, a movie by Steve Pink. If you like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, this is like that with a younger couple in a much more humane, intimate key.

DS: I’ll say I’m Your Man, a sci-fi where Maren Eggert dates a robotic Dan Stevens.

PK: I know Diana has been recommending a film called OUT OF SYNC, about an artist who begins to experience the sound of the world going out of sync. She starts hearing sounds from the past because people and things are out of sync with their surroundings.

NHY: I’ll go with The Gravedigger’s Wife, directed by Khadar Ahmed. It showcases the horn of Africa unlike you’ve ever seen it on screen.

Finally, for Cameron: with fall coming, what is the best TIFF 2021 movie to watch under a blanket, either because it’s cozy or because you’re terrified, or both? CB: Great question, which gives me a chance to talk about Earwig, the new film by Lucile Hadžihalilović. If you’ve seen Innocence or Evolution, her two most recent films, you’re prepared in terms of tone, but you’ve not even seen Lucille make a film quite like this. It’s eerie, disturbing, hypnotic, mesmerizing. You can’t stop watching, but you’re always afraid that something awful and horrifying is about to happen… and maybe it might.

‘Night Raiders’, written and directed by Danis Goulet.

To bring it all back home, what would you say is the Canadian film of 2021? CB: It’s always hard to say, but I think in a year where we have Danis Goulet’s feature Night Raiders, that’s got to be the one. Danis has made some exceptional short films over the last few years that people might know. Her feature takes on the horrific, devastating story of residential schools and children torn from Indigenous families and put in institutions where the goal was to erase their Indigenous identity. She takes that terrible, real history that we’re grappling with right now in Canada, and turns it into a piece of speculative fiction, a kind of propulsive thriller.

By turning it into fiction rather than reality she can use all of the tools of cinema to tell a terrific story that’s exciting and has high stakes, but also has this deep resonance of a truth that we are, I hope, coming to terms with in this country.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 9 to 18. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Follow TIFF on Letterboxd, and follow our Festiville HQ for regular festival updates.

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fujifilmx-t2 · 2 years

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Back to cameras the fujifilm camera is the most important. First the cobtrol dials, I like manually turning knobs and having switches, I like the physical aspect of the camera, the ergonomics, there everything I have always wanted and dreamed of, however I would like to test other ones and I would like to see other display options that make it more fun to use this camera. And the size is so perfect I would like to see other ones which are larger and see how I feel then. I enjoy the Sony and its similar cause I can keep it in my pocket. But the fujifilm fits with a lens, and also feels like a camera has always looked. I would prefer to shoot in black and white, and have a colorist or editor who will be able to due there job effectively if I'm doing mine correctly. I can use the film simulations and acheive I can get any desired color scheme or grey scale, I will have to compare to the Sony a7s which I found the menus slightly intimidating but picked them up quickly and noticed that I only need to spend so much time figuring out the + & - of each setting. The film simulations or LUTS are the same as the film I used from my first camera a canon elf with advantix film, easy film without the actual roll which didn't catch on but should have eased people into digital or gave them options. Fuji already had digital cameras in the early 1990's, 80's and probably further back in other parts of the world with CCTV lenses I believe go back as far as the 1970's because I had a Fuji CCTV zoom lens that was at least 1980's and everyone can make there own conclusion on how they filmed satellites and any space explorations. I will have to compare again to the Fujifilm X-T2 but I'm fairly confident that the camera is already perfect, but I need more time to accurately check on the LCD screen and the external monitors. I probably won't compare to other cameras cause for the look I imagine and see on the LCD and viewfinder allows me to focus accurately and get the right luminosity and color temps, etc, without signal monitors, waveforms, color,light etc. However I have not had any good footage or photos to show for, and no subjects or any actors, I may consider using myself but I refuse to step on that side of the camera. And I purchased this camera used and it was the cheapest camera with the most pros that I prefer to use. However again for many reasons I as in artist have been disappointed because I have made no tangible progress, but it was important for me to go through this process and slowly revert back to other art forms or mefiums. I started as a child listening to everyone and then drawing vary little, and then painting, and playing guitar basics & then found dj music an art form that clearly stands in its own and stretches across to everything in life. The DJ or conductor has disappeared, along with the journalist, hiding or remaining underground. And the musicians are also underground along with many other worlds, and people, souls and beats or pulses.

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newenglandcus · 4 years

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In fact, homeowners are continuing or expanding projects (57%) at more than twice the rate of those who are cutting back or canceling altogether (23%).

As a result of the coronavirus, digital conferencing, family video calls and online happy hours have become an integral part of the new normal. In just four months, Zoom’s daily meeting participants jumped from 10 million to more than 300 million. With so many people opening their virtual doors to friends, family and coworkers, many are reevaluating their space.

LightStream recently conducted a home improvement pulse survey through Wakefield Research and found that two-thirds of American homeowners have a part of their house they just don’t like. Additionally, of those who have ever made a video call in their home, 64% have been embarrassed to show parts of their home, including the kitchen and bathroom (each at 20%) and the garage, basement and outdoors (each at 16%). No surprise to anyone who has been working from home with kids: 80% of parents are feeling this way versus 55% of non-parents.

After months of spending nearly all their time with roommates or loved ones, some homeowners indicated that they are ready for some intra-house social distancing. More than a third (36%) reported a lack of personal space in their home, with Millennials feeling the most cramped (62%) compared to Gen Xers (44%) and Baby Boomers (20%). And once again, parents are feeling the squeeze more than non-parents, with 57% reporting they are unable to get personal space compared to 25% of non-parents.

“As a result of COVID-19 shutdowns that closed offices, businesses, schools and more, self-isolation has forced Americans to take a much closer look at their homes,” says Todd Nelson, senior vice president of strategic partnerships at LightStream.

With summer approaching, nearly half of those planning home improvement projects plan to tackle outdoor projects (49%), followed by home repairs (35%), bathrooms (33%) and kitchens (32%).

https://www.cepro.com/news/home-remodeling-hold-strong-coronavirus-outbreak/

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#kitchen renovation near me #Luxury Home Remodelers Merrimack #small bathroom remodel budget near me

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prtcll · 4 years

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【Release Info】 Leo Okagawa [Ulysses] (Glistening Examples / 20 Mar 2020) - CD-R / Digital

https://glisteningexamples.bandcamp.com/album/ulysses

【Tracklist】 1. Ulysses (42:42)

This is Okagawa's 2nd title for Glistening Examples, following up on The Notional Terrain from 2017. https://glisteningexamples.bandcamp.com/album/the-notional-terrain

"Ulysses" is a collage work based on James Joyce's philosophic theme of 'stream of consciousness'. Okagawa visited many different places, capturing the environmental sounds of each location, and arranged these passages to inspire a dynamic flow of imagination for the listener.

Artwork by Leo Okagawa Layout and design by Jason Lescalleet

Recorded in Tokyo in 2019 Edited and mixed January/February 2020 Mastered by Jason Lescalleet at Glistening Labs USA

Glistening Examples Bandcamp Page Leo Okagawa Bandcamp Page Ftarri (Tokyo, Japan) Art into Life (Tochigi, Japan)

【Review】 Tone Glow: Because acousmatic sound operates outside of the traditional musical vocabulary of structure, technique, and performance, field recordists rely on the aesthetic gesture of the frame in the same way that photographers operating within the regime of painting had to do. Some nature recordings have the sweeping grandeur of an Ansel Adams, while others barely maintain the interest of somebody else’s vacation snapshot; some street sounds have the immediacy of a Garry Winogrand, while others are as busy and blurred as a drunken Instagram photo. What’s missing in even the best field recording, as in photography, is narrative movement within the frame. Leo Okagawa has solved this problem with one word. By titling his new piece Ulysses, he frames his audio collage as the experience of one day, à la Joyce’s novel of the same name. This turns the natural disorientation of the listener of acousmatic sound into inspiration for, in Okagawa’s words, “a dynamic flow of imagination for the listener.” I followed my imaginary character from their morning perambulation to a recycling plant, back for a quick lunch before the street fair and then a drink on the porch—your own results will vary. Mundane, yes, but as in Joyce’s novel the mundane is defamiliarized and transformed into an epic of Homeric proportions. At a time when even a trip to the grocery store feels like a life-or-death proposition, one can’t scoff at a seemingly small scale. Rather, like Cartier-Bresson, Okagawa has zoomed in on the decisive moments that reveal the dramatic tension in the everyday. (words by Matthew Blackwell)

よろすず (note): 都内を中心にエレクトロニクスを用いた演奏活動を行い、音源制作においてはフィールドレコーディングを多く用いるアーティストLeo Okagawaの2020年リリースのアルバム。リリースはJason Lescalleetが運営するレーベルGlistening Examplesから。本作は同じくGlistening Examplesより2017年にリリースされたアルバム『The Notional Terrain』と対になる形で制作されており、“具体音をどう抽象化するか”という視点で環境音に電子音を足していく手法をとった『The Notional Terrain』に対し、『Ulysses』は“抽象的な具体音(物音や風の音)に対してどう物語的なキャラクターや展開を与えるか”という視点で素材を編集することをメインに制作されています。また、本作のタイトル『Ulysses』はアイルランドの作家ジェイムズ・ジョイスの同名小説からとられており、本作のキャプションにはジョイスが作品に取り入れた手法であり元々は心理学の概念である「意識の流れ」をベースにしたとの記述もあります。（以下の文章では都合上Leo Okagawaの作品を『Ulysses』、ジェイムズ・ジョイスによる小説を『ユリシーズ』と表記します）

1トラック42分ほどの本作は環境音を中心に、というかほとんどそれのみに聴こえるような素材で形成されており、いくつかの場面が切り替わっていくという構成を持っています。本作において私が興味を引かれたのはこの（多少は電子音やエフェクトも用いられていますが多くの場面が）フィールドレコーディングによって構成されている点と、その切り替えによって生まれる効果の部分です。フィールドレコーディングを用いた作品においては、それがドキュメント的というか、環境音以外の音響を用いないような純粋なかたちであればあるほど録音者の存在が色濃く意識され、結果的に作品が一人称的になるという傾向があるように思うのですが（それは例えばアルフォンソ・キュアロンの映画において長回しが続けば続くほど撮影者という存在が鑑賞者の脳内にチラついてくる現象に似ています）、本作における場面の切り替わりは（『ユリシーズ』の群像劇的な構成が予め情報として頭にあったからかもしれませんが）単純な録音環境／空間だけでなく人称の変更点としても機能しているように感じられます。先の映画の例えになぞらえるなら、長回しが続いた後にどこでどういう動機でカットを切るかと考えた時に、人称の切り替えというのは力を持つ選択肢になるでしょうし、『Ulysses』における時にショッキングであり時になめらかな切り替わりはそのような力点であるように私には思えました。本作における環境音は場面ごとに（例えばハイファイな録音とカセット録音のように）ひどく録音の質が違ったりということはなく、ある程度統一感を感じさせるものなので、この部分は一人称的な印象を強める部分が大きいのですが、低音の存在に耳を向けてみるとその有無や響きの違いが各場面の空間の違いをより際立って認識させるところもありますし（特に13分辺りの車内を思わせる響き方は印象的です）、それは人称の切り替わりという意識を持って聴くことを後押ししてくれる要素にも思えます。フィールドレコーディングにおいて所在の知れない低音は多くの場面で混入してくるもので、例えばそれを素材として何かを制作する際にはカットしてしまったほうが都合がよかったりもするのですが、『Ulysses』では場面にもよりますがそれを混入させることで空間のシグネイチャーに用いたりまたは錯乱させたりという意図が感じられて面白いです。『Ulysses』は一人の人間によって録音された様々な場面の環境音が移ろっていく作品で、そこでは“物語”が意識されているようですが、その物語は群像劇的なものであるように思え、故に情景の移り変わりには旅路のような強い必然性のある流れであったり、出発から到着のような明瞭なカタルシスはありません。場面の切り替わりによる風景や音量の変化も、前後の場面から受け取り受け渡していく何かを生み出すというより、そういった巨視的な物語へ回収されずただその場にたたずむ（それぞれ異なった）意識の存在を印象付けるだけのものといった風情があります。私はどちらかというともっとわかりやすくカタルシスに繋がるようなストーリーテリングが好きな人間なため、本作を現時点をもってLeo Okagawaの作品で最も好きなものだとは思いませんが、フィールドレコーディングを用いた作品における人称の存在や低音の扱いなど非常に興味深いものを感じさせてくれる作品でした（本作以前にフィールドレコーディングと人称についてきちんと考えたことはあまり記憶にありません）。本作を聴くことによって得られたこのような観点はLeo Okagawaの過去作を聴く際にはもちろん、自分がフィールドレコーディングを作品に用いる際にも少なからず影響してくるものになるでしょう。本作の内容には人称の切り替えと群像劇的な構成という観点からみるとマイナスに作用しているような点がなくはないので、ここで述べたような方向性を作者本人が強く意識していたかはわかりませんし、本稿を読んだ後に初めて『Ulysses』を聴かれる方にはまずはこういった観点にあまり縛られずに聴いてほしいですが、少なくとも最初の20分ほどはそのような観点から鑑賞して非常に刺激的なものでした。

Vital Weekly: The first time I heard music by Leo Okagawa was his first release by Glistening Examples, 'The Notional terrain' (Vital Weekly 1076) and since then I learned his work is mainly based on edited field recordings. I assume that is still the case and here too, we can see some references to the work of Mark Vernon, which has become the reference here since that's where our journey started. The main difference is that Vernon has shorter pieces and Okagawa one long piece (42'42, if that is of some significance). Like the James Joyce of the same title, Okagawa sees this piece as one stream of consciousness', culled from field recordings from different places. I assume that these locations don't mean much and they have been mixed in the creation of the piece. There is no mentioning of these locations anyway. But I would gather that we hear different locations at the same time. The stream of consciousness idea works out pretty well and unlike Vernon, which I think has more of a story to tell, Okagawa lets it all out, sound upon sound, loud street recordings cut with a ski-lift, some electrical currents, cars on top of a bridge, a shopping mall and the kitchen of a restaurant. I would think these sounds are not processed, and perhaps only coloured with some additional EQ. It is a fine work for sure, but why 42"42'? Why not 60"00'? or 80"00'? Why on a CDR? Why not a three-hour release on Bandcamp or SoundCloud? The all-night mix? You get my drift, perhaps. If it is all a stream of consciousness, so many more configurations could be possible. Perhaps nitpicking. This works perfectly well as another fine display of what he does. (by Frans de Waard)

墓場: あちこちで録音したフィールドレコーディングを繋ぎ合わせたコラージュ。岡川氏の作品では珍しく具体的なサウンド（お祭りの音とか）が使われていて、ジョイスの小説をテーマにしたのも頷ける一人称視点の作品となっている。主観的に比喩されることを避けるように断片的な構成になってはいるのだが、それさえも乗り越えて「早く外に出て遠くを歩きたい」と思わせてしまうコロナ騒ぎの罪深さ。後半のノイズ・コンクレート地帯は氏の味が出ている。

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antiques-for-geeks · 5 years

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Atari 8-bit lucky dip!

The Atari 8 bit was never a popular machine in the UK. Given its relative obscurity here (...if there's one thing I'm a sucker for it's the obscure) and the fact that it's a product of a fertile period for one of the most famous gaming brands, I've always been interested in getting one to play with.

After a bit of fishing on Ebay I managed to get a 600xl for a reasonable price; old hardware is getting pretty expensive and A8's seem more expensive than most. The 600xl is the smaller brother of the flagship 800xl, and is appealingly diminutive for an 8 bit micro. It does have one main disadvantage - it only comes with 16k of ram, so until I can upgrade it to 64k I'm left with a machine that will only be able to play simpler, earlier titles.

Scrubs up quite well!

I bought a flash cart (an UNO cart, which has worked flawlessly) and loaded it with games that should play on my 16k machine. Among the conversions of popular arcade titles of the time, there were many that I didn't recognise. Over the coming weeks I'm going to trawl through all of the games I can get to work and give them each a short review ...for better or worse...

Abracadabra

TG Software / 1983

Wander round a single screen maze blasting wizards with your magic, collecting keys and treasures. To make things more exciting, the walls move periodically, changing the layout of the maze.

I really thought I was going to like this game. These single screen maze shooters are often a lot of fun, but sadly the movement of main character is stiff and awkward here. He seems to want to follow a narrow path even where it looks like you have a wider area to move in, leading to frustrating moments where you push a direction and nothing happens. If there's one thing an arcade style maze game needs it's precise control, so I can't recommend this one.

Alien Ambush

DANA / 1983

This is a fairly basic vertical shooter with a scrolling star background. The graphics are chunky, but a bit muddy - more like an early C64 game. One or two aliens appear on the screen - simply shoot them and avoid their wreckage. Sometimes they split into smaller enemies when hit. It’s competent enough, but there's not much to make this one stand out.

Alpha Shield

Sirius Software / 1983

This seems like a simplified Star Castle rip-off, and is a game which I remember previously playing on the Atari 2600. This version is very similar, though a touch more colourful. The original version seemed like a clunky attempt to get around the limitations of the 2600, substituting the Asteroids style point and thrust controls of the arcade for more traditional directional control. While it qualified as a decent effort for that machine it’s a bit out of place on the much better equipped 8-bit.

Anteater

Romox / 1983

Extremely similar to the arcade game Dig Dug with most of the excitement sucked out. A single anteater follows your ant through the tunnels left behind as you dig through the layers of earth. The goal here seems to be to collect ant eggs from a pile on the surface and bring them back to your nest. It might well get more exciting as the levels progress, but I found the first one so tedious I refuse to give it any more of my precious time ...especially as I know there are 2 different official conversions of Dig Dug itself coming up later!

Asteroids

Atari / 1981

F-ugly but functional take on one of my favourite games ever. Asteroids is one of the handful of early arcade games I always enjoy playing. It's an ageless classic, so a mediocre conversion like this is a real shame. It has chunky and jerky graphics, and the movement of the ship is too crude to properly capture the feel of the original. It's not the worst game ever, and has a handy 4 player mode if you're using an Atari 400/800 with enough joystick ports... but it's not a patch on the 7800 version, and even the cut down Atari 2600 is probably more playable despite it's inaccuracy.

Astro Chase

First Star Software / 1982

Can I skip the intro where astronaut walks slowly to their ship and takes off please? This has quite nicely drawn graphics for an early game. You fly through a maze of planets, scrolling in 4 directions. You can shoot some enemy spaceships... but what the hell am I supposed to be doing here? I’m not sure instructions will improve matters, because there seems to be no urgency or excitement to this game at all.

Atlantis

Imagic / 1983

A conversion of the Imagic Atari 2600 classic - like a simplified version of missile command designed to fit in with the limitations of the VCS. You have control of 3 defensive turrets protecting a city from an attacking space fleet. When I say ‘control’ what I mean is that you can choose to fire lasers from one of the turrets, but you cant change where they fire; one goes left, one right and one straight up. It’s purely an exercise in timing shots, made more difficult by the possibility of one or more of your turrets being destroyed. This is just a small graphical upgrade over the 2600 version. It's a playable game for sure, and gets quite frantic, but I never found it quite as fun and well balanced as its inspiration.

BC's Quest For Tires

Sierra On-Line / 1983

A sort of proto-typical endless runner, this has very bold cartoon graphics for early 80's game. You control a cave-guy riding ever rightwards on a single stone wheel. You start off by jumping pot holes and ducking under branches. There are some sections later where you have to time a jump over a river on some bobbing turtles backs. It's got some entertainment value, but I found it pretty repetitive stuff and I got stuck timing the river jumps. Bit of a theme forming here - games that wowed people with fancy cartoon graphics are often exposed as hollow experiences after a few decades have passed!

Beamrider

Activision / 1984

This is more like it! A solid version of a fun old-school shooter. This could be described as being like a simplified version of the arcade game Tempest, played out on a flat plane. You fly over a grid toward an infinite horizon, blasting enemies as they travel down fixed lanes toward your ship. I liked this one on the Atari 2600, and I like it here too. It's got the right mix of stylish but abstract graphics and frantic game-play to feel like it could have been an arcade effort of the time, something that many of these games clearly aspire to.

Berzerk

1983 / Atari

<Thwak!> ... boots Atari across the room ... I can't get this to work on my flash cart for some reason. I love this game, and I know from past experience that this is probably the best home version around (or at least the best that was released at the time). The game-play is spot on, and it has quite a bit of the metallic robot speech that livened up the arcade version. When I get a working copy of this it will get the full review it deserves.

Blaster

Williams / 1984

The only home version of a really obscure Williams into the screen arcade shooter, this is blocky and slow, with crazy psychedelic line drawing graphics. Apparently this was made before the arcade version, but was never officially released. It’s as basic as they come; you avoid things and shoot things. The game-play is shallow, the controls are treacly and the graphics are possibly seizure inducing .... and yet I somehow found this one quite appealing!

Boulder Dash

First Star Software / 1984

A stone cold classic dig-a-thon. You move through a scrolling level, hollowing out the earth a behind you to collect all the diamonds. Once all are collected you can exit to the next level. Making things more difficult, rocks dotted about will fall when undermined - a crush danger - and butterfly like enemies follow you through the tunnels you leave behind in the earth. The levels take on a heavy puzzle element - much more so than in Dig Dug, from which this takes some inspiration. The patterns of rocks have to be worked round with careful consideration to get all the diamonds. This seems like a great version that I'd like to spend more time with.

Bristles

First Star Software / 1983

Here is quite a likable single screen platformer where you catch lifts to visit different parts of the screen in order to paint all the walls. As expected, there are enemies to avoid who will bump you down a level on contact. There's also a 'lady' who wanders the halls leaving dirty hand prints on your new paint work. These have to be repainted to complete the level and she'll make you swear with rage before too long. When all the walls have changed colour on move to the next level with more walls to paint and more enemies to avoid. Being repeatedly bumped down the levels by errant enemies and lifts can frustrating, but once you have the hang of what the game expects of you it's fairly compelling.

Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom

SEGA / 1983

A conversion of the early SEGA into the screen shooter. This one appeared on many of the computers and consoles of the time, no matter how primitive - there's even an Atari 2600 version. The arcade game must have been very impressive at the time, using scaling sprites to convey the impression of barriers and enemies rushing toward you from the horizon. Sadly, like most of these home conversions, this version looks crude in comparison, sporting flickery graphics and jittery controls. It's also missing a 'trench run' stage present in the arcade which I'm sure could have been re-created in some form on the home hardware. It's not a terrible game, but has aged poorly and is ultimately pretty dull. I did like the colourful psychedelic flashing when a level is complete!

Captain Beeble

Inhome Software / 1983

This one didn't look much at first viewing, but turned out to be quite good fun, if frustratingly difficult at times. Fly around caverns on a jet-pack, fighting against the effects of gravity and blasting all the aliens on each scrolling level. Making things much more difficult, large crushing blocks fly across the level and deadly walls fry you on touch. I've always enjoyed games where you had to fight against gravitational effects, and it adds quite a bit to what would otherwise be a simple game. The graphics are quite plain, and this would be an easy game to overlook - give it a go.

#review #atari #8-bit #retrogaming #antiquesforgeeks

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aceofanxiety · 7 years

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This is Viktor. He is a smol boy. He is made out of a small shard of plastic found in an LED that i cut in half with plyers to see how the inside of an LED looks. The Black and White Images were taken on a Scanning Electron Microscope by me, and I took them earlier today and I discovered Viktor so I took pictures of him. He is very cute and I love him. Just for clarity on size he is very small, comparing his length so his longest side is approximately 2.5 micrometers and to put that in proportion the thickness of a human hair is about 20 micrometers so seven Viktors could lay end to end along the thickness of one human hair. Or 14,000 Viktors could dance on the head of a common pin (with room to spare to groove).

Here is a hand(Paint) drawn picture of Viktor incase anyone was confused where on the image I was referring.

This is a picture of the planchet that Viktor’s LED home is on. The big section of where he is is marked by the red circle.

This is a very low Magnification image of Viktor’s Neighborhood, to scale it to our size this would be showing a 3 mile radius around where you live. The circle again marks where the next image will be zooming in on.

This is a closer magnification of where Viktor Lives. and this is where if you look very very closely one can see Viktor as a tiny speck for the first time.

(There was an error in labeling, this is actually 15000 Magnification my apologies)

Viktor can be truly seen for the first time here surely this is an extraordinary picture. He is in the very center of the circle.

Here is a better closeup of Viktor. The resolution from here on is pretty poor and I apologize but the Scanning Electron Microscope that I use is an old Hatachi from the late 80s and it cannot get better resolution then this.

Here is a close up of Viktor’s head notice the beauty of his eye and the horn on the top of his head.

This is the highest magnification where the image is still at all visible. This image is however very zoomed in do not misconstrue. At this mag if this image was 8k by 8k Pixels each pixel would be only one atom.

Thank you for looking at my smol boy Viktor.

Pictures courtesy of David Dietz (me) on a Hitachi 6300 Scanning Electron Microscope, as well on a Dinoscope(tm) optical microscope.

#Viktor #Science #picture #cute #scanning electron microscope #microscopy #tiny #smol #LED #very small #small #microscopic #atom

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carmineri · 7 years

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Daisy’s Best Week Ever, August 17, 2017: Goodbye Old Friends

By Daisy Lauren

Hello, friends! Well, it’s a sad week for the Best Week Ever crew. In case you haven’t been plugged into Disney news lately, last week Universe or Energy and The Great Movie Ride closed their doors forever. As an 80s kid that means I lost attractions that I held pretty close to my heart. It seems only fitting that we pay tribute to each this week, starting with the Universe of Energy.

Everyone noticed the mirrored building front, but around the sides were colored walls. It seems like just yesterday these were being repainted to their original colors. I only have vague memories of the original Universe of Energy, but I frequented Ellen’s Energy Adventure when it took over in 1996.

Want to take a look inside each of these attractions? Click to read more.

Just inside the entrance was this amazing tile mosaic with a countdown clock to the next show. The image represented our sun and a tiny dot on the wall represented Earth. I don’t know if something like this could be saved, but I hope so much that this mosaic can be preserved to live on somewhere else.

When entering the pre-show you’d find a large, open space with benches lining the walls. In this area we were introduced to Ellen, Bill Nye, and their Energy Adventure. I can honestly say I was a big fan of this attraction. I went to see this show every time I was at Epcot by myself. But, I can understand that it didn’t appeal to most people. Just two days before the announced closure this was the waiting area.

I was the first person to board the moving theater, but I was only joined by about 20 other people. The ride vehicles were so unique. The entire theater rotated and the vehicles would run single-file through show scenes. Of course, the highlight was the dinosaurs!

The trouble is that those dinosaurs were sandwiched in between about 30 minutes of very dated video footage. Because of that, I’ve decided to share photos of the dinosaurs and ignore the rest. These were the most stunning show scenes! I’m secretly hoping that maybe these beauties will make an appearance in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy attraction.

Another thought is that Disneyland has dinosaur scenes along their railroad. Maybe with the Tron construction they can find room on the WDW railroad for these guys? I’ve seen lots of attractions come and go, but I hate to lose these beautiful figures. Here’s hoping that Disney has plans for them!

I zoomed out to give an idea of the scale of these figures. It really felt like you were rolling through a prehistoric world. It’s a shame this was only a small part of the ride. While this attraction never attracted big crowds, many people did turn up to ride one last time before it closed forever. By the time I was leaving for the day the pre-show area was filling.

There were so many different dinosaurs to see along the way. These guys would spit water into the ride vehicles! I think they were my least favorite because of the number of times they spit on my camera.

The last show area had deep red and orange lighting with pterodactyls. Some time ago there was an Ellen animatronic and a scary looking dino, but that was retired. This attraction was a bit of a time capsule. While I found that charming, I understand why it needed to be replaced. I’m hopeful that the new Guardians ride won’t be too scary! What do you think? Are you tired of slow-moving educational rides and hoping for thrill rides instead?

Now, a replacement that I may never understand is The Great Movie Ride. To say I was surprised about this one is an understatement. This has always been one of my favorite rides and that starts out front with all the exquisite details. Just that a look at all the painting and sculptures. I’m hopeful at least the facade will live on.

The Great Movie ride used similar ride vehicles to Universe of Energy. With both of these attractions closing, these are now a thing of the past. I always liked the idea of a moving theater and I’m sad these won’t exist anymore. What do you think? I am the only one that thought these were cool?

To begin your journey into the movies you’d roll under this gorgeous neon sign while “Hooray for Hollywood” played over the loud speakers and your guide welcomed you. In recent years this welcome was a recording of Robert Osborne, but I’ll always remember when the cast member in vehicle delivered the full script.

The first scene was the Busby Berkeley film Footlight Parade. Overhead bubbles would float down into your ride vehicle. I’ve always heard that when the park opened these figures spun in circles and sprayed water. I don’t remember ever seeing that, but I was just a kid. Was anyone lucky enough to see this in the original form?

Also, I have to extend enormous thanks to WDWNT.com. They hosted an event where we were allowed to walk the track of this ride and take photos. I don’t know that I could properly put into words what this meant to me. I’ll be forever grateful for this last experience and the photos I’m able to share with you because of it.

Next was Gene Kelly in Singing In The Rain. The animatronic was so fluid and I still remember being amazed as a kid that actual water was used. I’d never seen this movie when the ride sparked my interest, and now it’s one of my all-time favorites. I’m sad this classic ride won’t be around to introduce other kids (and adults!) to older films.

From there we were whisked to the rooftops of London to visit Mary Poppins. These two would sing “Chim Chim Cheree” as we rolled past and into the seedy underbelly of the gangster world.

Depending on which ride vehicle you were in, you might have been hijacked by a Gangster in this room! As you entered a traffic light would either stay green, allowing you to pass, or turn red causing your host to stop. Almost immediately after stopping you’d encounter trouble as a Gangster approached and a shootout ensued. It was a crazy experience and something I’ve never seen before or since! The scene ended with the Gangster taking over control of the ride vehicle and driving into the next scene with our original guide nowhere to be found.

The next scene was the old west where we’d encounter John Wayne. If you hadn’t been stopped by the Gangster then here you’d encounter a Bandit (or Cowboy) that was robbing the bank. Again, they would threaten our guide and steal the ride car as their escape vehicle. What made this incredible was that the Bandit would throw dynamite into the bank. It caused an “explosion” and real fire came through all the bank windows! For this reason, when the ride wasn’t busy only the Gangster scene was run. As the ride aged it became tougher and tougher to see the Bandit in action.

You’d also see Clint Eastwood as you moseyed along through the old west. If your car had already encountered the Gangster, the animatronics in this scene would still come to life accusing them of robbing the bank. The Gangster always had pretty funny responses and it encouraged the car to hurry along through the scene to catch up with other cars.

Now, after dealing with your ride vehicle being taken by a Bandit or Gangster you’d think Disney would have a little down time. Think again! You were immediately submerged in the word of Alien. As a little kid this scared me to death. I covered my eyes for years through this scene! It wasn’t just the gritty appearance that was off-putting, but alarms would sound saying the ship would self destruct.

Here you’d also see Sigourney Weaver hiding from the Alien. Behind her you could see “drool” falling through the ceiling while just awful Alien noises played in the background. Years before ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter opened at Magic Kingdom this was the scariest thing I’d ever seen at any Disney park!

Then you’d actually encounter the Alien! Depending where you were seated you might see this one pop out from a wall or one plunge at you from the ceiling. All the while, the Gangster or Bandit would make funny remarks about this odd adventure they’d found themselves on. The experience really was stunning and as an adult I still felt a little bit of the amazement I felt when I rode as a kid.

Next you’d see Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Of course, the scene was covered in snakes!

After Indy, you would come to another show scene where the Cowboy or Bandit would decide they needed to steal a large gem from a statue of Anubis. A cloaked figure warned not to disturb the treasure, but was ignored. From a puff of smoke it was revealed that our villain was now a skeleton and our original tour guide had been hiding under the cloak. Now that’s what I call movie magic!

With our original tour guide back in place we continued through the horror genre. Many skeletons would surround the car and some even appeared to be leaning in towards the vehicle. Luckily, this was the end of the really scary stuff!

On the other end you would emerge to see Tarzan, Jane, and Cheetah. Tarzan would actually swing back and forth between the trees on the right.

Next was Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the finale scene from Casablanca. The plane in this scene was cut in half to be used in two different places in the parks. The front was here in The Great Movie Ride. The back half was dropped into the Jungle Cruise at Magic Kingdom.

Just past this was a screen playing the Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene from Fantasia. I didn’t include a photo so I can gush a little bit extra about The Wizard of Oz. This was easily the largest set in the entire ride. As you entered the munchkins would start singing “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” while all the ride cars caught up to each other. You’d then encounter The Wicked Witch of the West. Even as an adult my husband thought she was a real person and not an animatraonic his first few rides!

After fending off the Wicked Witch, the munchkins would sing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” as you moved along to the final scene of the ride. There you’d see Dorothy and her friends getting their first glimpse of The Emerald City. In one last room a montage of movie clips was shown encouraging guest to go find their own great movies. I know it inspired me to do just that! I’d love to hear your favorite memories of either of these two rides in the comments below.

With that I’ll say goodbye to a couple of my old favorites and look forward to the future with all of you. What new attraction are you most excited about? I tried the new RELAUNCHED! Mission: Space and enjoyed the new, calmer experience on the green side. I’m hopeful Disney has more of these less thrilling experiences in their plans.

That’s it for this time. Thanks for joining me for another week of fun! Please let me know if you have requests next time around. Until then – I hope you’re having the best week ever.

Daisy’s Best Week Ever, August 17, 2017: Goodbye Old Friends is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

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newyorktheater · 4 years

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The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is going online. (Check out the thirty below.) Now, officially; the oldest and largest fringe festival has been canceled because of the pandemic. But the festival wants to “Keep the Fringe spirit alive” by encouraging theater companies to put their shows online. This offers New York theatergoers a chance to get a Fringe fix in August for the first time since 2016, when the International Fringe Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary, then shut down for a year — and then announced it was moving to Octobe

Edinburgh’s Fringe is not New York’s Fringe. It’s unjuried, and it’s….overwhelming. In 2018, there were reportedly 3,548 different shows performed in 317 venues; in 2019, more than three million people attended, which was more than six times the entire population of this city in Scotland. The New York Fringe never had more than 75,000 theatergoers attending some (juried) 200 shows in 16 venues.

There was never a way to offer an adequate preview of the Edinburgh Fringe (the way I did every year of the New York Fringe), and it’s not much easier now when Edinburgh is coming to your living room — or, in at least one case, your bathroom.

“Play In Your Bathtub,” an audio play that I reviewed when it debuted in April is going to Edinburgh. It’s one of eighty shows “all written and produced in lockdown” that are being presented for free over the next three weeks at The Space UK, which this year is a virtual space. This is just one venue at Virtual Edinburgh, but even 80 is too much. So below are the 30 that are going online starting this Saturday, August 8th at TheSpaceUK website. A new batch of roughly the same number will go online every Saturday for the rest of August. Click on each poster to read the descriptions.

For what it’s worth, the ones that most intrigue me include two from the Edinburgh-based Anomaly Theatre Company: “Interrodated, “He thinks he’s interrogating a suspect. She thinks she’s on a blind date. This is not going to end well.” “Glitch” A driverless car runs over a woman, and has to learn grief. and “Bookshelf Ballad,” in which the books we always see behind the TV pundits are given voice to say what THEY are thinking.

after/before Out of Kilter Theatre Struggling with feelings of loss and detachment Alicia, waking from a vivid dream, is disorientated; is she really awake? Then an unlikely companion offers an opportunity to find an answer … and perhaps a chance for the contact she craves. @outofkiltermcr

After the Turn: The Mystery of Bly Manor Nine Knocks Theatre Five years after the tragedy of Bly Manor, the world wants answers. Now researchers begin to uncover the sinister truth. Based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, Nine Knocks presents a modernised tale of the ghosts within ourselves. @Nine_Knocks

At the Ghostlight Blue Fire Theatre Co. An Elizabethan Superstar and a heroine of Music Hall meet at the theatre ghostlight and have a “water cooler moment”. Whilst they muse over their life choices, the stars of their rivals, Will Shakespeare and Marie Lloyd shine ever brighter. @bluefire_tc

Awakening The Nottingham New Theatre ‘AWAKENING’ explores the dangers of forced ignorance and deception when it comes to the lives of young people; a group of schoolchildren trying to navigate the unknowns of adolescence leads to disastrous consequences. @thenewtheatre

Being Posy Four in a Bed Theatre Company A reflective look at coming of age, coming out and coming some conclusions. Written during lockdown uncertainty, Posy explores sexuality, friendships and standing out whilst fitting in this light hearted and heart warming show.

Bookshelf Ballad Anne Rabbitt What are the books saying behind the TV pundits? Using only titles found on her own shelves, Anne gives them voice in a poignant poem that is both tender and funny. You’ll never arrange your books alphabetically again. @RabbittAnne

Boom Room Our Star Theatre Company Adrian bravely attempts to enter the Boom Room for a school reunion. However, technological and personal challenges along the way lead to an experience that will probably resound with many people right now, as he struggles to be digitally woke! @ourstartheatre

Bubble Show with Dr Bubble and Milkshake Bubble Laboratory Ecological Bubble Show presents different ways we can save the planet through bubbles. Physical comedy with environmental awareness and bubbles, it contains square and smoke-filled bubbles, rainbows, spinning carousels, vortexes, juggle bubbles, bubble snakes, floating bubbles and a grand finale.

Coronavirus Underwood’s New Taskforce Grubby Gnome Productions Goodly folks the country over volunteer to help the aged and infirm during lockdown. Except in Underwood, where the people who volunteer have ulterior motives more to do with helping themselves rather than others. Apart from Felicity of course.

Defying GraviTT The Fabulous TT With 2020 hindsight (magnified by her new designer reading glasses) The Fabulous TT aka Tish Tindall asks where the year has gone, why she will never be painted green, and what on earth happened to her under-there-webcam-wear? @FabMusicals

Detachment Blueberry Goose Theatre Group A 10-minute drama, set in COVID-19 lockdown and inspired by real events, about lust, betrayal, revenge and tins of pain(t). @goose_group

Glitch Anomaly Theatre Company First we taught Artificial Intelligence to drive. Then we taught it to feel. But when a driverless car runs over Neil’s girlfriend, both Neil and the A.I. are having to learn grief. Is emotion just a glitch in our programming? @AnomalyTheatre

Haunted Three Chairs and a Hat Do you believe in ghosts? When there’s no-one else in the house, it can be difficult to decide. Three Chairs and a Hat present HAUNTED, a study of isolation and obsession, written and performed by Nia Williams. @ChairsHat

Hyper-Nice: Passive Aggresive Co-vid Poetry David Watson Comedy Poetry born in lockdown . The new hell of the Friday night zoom cocktail hour and the schadenfreude behind the Thursday Clap provide the subject matter for poetry @hypernice2

Interrodated Anomaly Theatre Company He thinks he’s interrogating a suspect. She thinks she’s on a blind date. This is not going to end well. @AnomalyTheatre

Lockdown Drag-out Batty Hatsters At first, Audrey revels in the unexpected gift of time at home, but outside influences force changes that could destroy her and all she has worked so hard to achieve.

Love , Loss and Quarantine The Swells A brief story with three songs, rejoicing in new-found love during lockdown after the pain of personal bereavement. A 15-minute show that was put together two metres apart without breathing!

Play in Your Bathtub Flying Solo! and This Is Not A Theatre Company This Immersive Audio Spa for Physical Distancing is a site-specific immersive experience taking place in your own bathtub (or a foot bath or bucket of water). Join us for poetry, singing, and Dances for Small Appendages. Soundtrack at [email protected] @notatheatreco

Rehearsal Etiquette Swell Theatre This short play captures one small theatre company’s attempt to rehearse for their new musical during lockdown, an online rehearsal spirals into chaos as they discover that rehearsing online is easier said than done. @swelltheatre

The Silly and Unnecessary Variety Show Lori Hamilton Live from New York, it’s comedian Lori Hamilton’s one-woman variety show. Featuring Opera Product Placement • Lori’s Cats Tell Kid’s Jokes • Winning at Work During Covid • A Tipsy Midwest Mom • Audience Questions!! What more could you ask for? Cats @TheLoriHamilton

Spring The Nottingham New Theatre ‘SPRING’ tells the story of a group of teenagers, as they rebel against their controlling parents, struggle to navigate love, and deal with tragedies around them; they begin to discover their individuality, their sexuality, and ultimately their freedom of choice. @thenewtheatre

The Murder(ed) Musketeers Highly Suspect Join acclaimed ‘Mystery maestros’ Highly Suspect for a hilarious interactive online murder mystery which you, the audience, must solve! There’s a fiendish plot, evidence to examine, and cryptic clues to crack, but can you catch the killer and deduce whodunnit

The Plague Thing Putney Theatre Company Enid’s enjoyment of her twilight years has been overshadowed by government guidelines produced for care homes in response to a global pandemic. In this moving monologue, Enid invites you into her world in the age of lockdown. @PutneyTheatreCo

The Van Raised Voices Life is hard just now, for everyone. For those who’s life was hard before though, well you can imagine. Watch a snapshot into the lives of some who struggled with everyday life in normal times, you might just be surprised.

The Writings on the Wallpaper Paper Dolls Theatre A light-hearted comedy following the clueless Tim and Samantha, as they sit down to interview hopeful applicants for their brand new tech firm. Get your CV ready as we beg the question… ‘on the scale of 1 to 10’ @paperdolls2020

Those Girls JAM Productions Those Girls shines a light on the important issues riddling our youth today: sexual abuse, discrimination and mental health. Award winner, Abigail Cook’s poem, “How We Survive (Girlhood)” is reinvented and reimagined in this striking, hopeful piece of digital theatre.

Too bored to stay in, too scared to go out! Nigel Osner Cabaret songs and monologues reflecting the varying implications of Covid-19 for male and female characters. ‘Tremendously talented and very entertaining’ and Fringe Review said ’a performer with finesse and charm’ (Scotsman) @nigelosner

Under Heaven’s Eyes Christopher Tajah A new 45 minute solo-play which asks; Did George Floyd’s killing mark a turning point for real change or another false dawn? While exploring how systemic and systematic societal racism squeezes’ BAME communities to the margins. @ctajahofficial

Until the Ad Break Maverick Charles Productions Until the Ad Break is an absurd comedy sketch set just before the end of the world. Follow plucky daytime TV hosts Francine, Dale, and their weather reporter Gabriel as they come to terms with impending apocalypse live on air. @MCharlesProd

When Judas Met John – songs of Dylan and Lennon Brothers Broke Irish duo Brothers Broke compare, adapt and perform selected songs by both artists, and consider their compositions and influences on each other.Presented in an acoustic bluesy style with tight sibling harmonies.

Edinburgh Fringe in Your Home! The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is going online. (Check out the thirty below.) Now, officially; the oldest and largest fringe festival has been canceled because of the pandemic.

#Edinburgh Fringe #Fringe

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Test Drive Unlimited drew a new horizon for racing games • Eurogamer.net

Did you know that they’re making a new Test Drive Unlimited? It’s true! Kylotonn, the French studio behind the well-regarded WRC and Isle of Man TT series, has acquired the Test Drive licence from Atari, and there are veterans of the Eden Games team that made it working at the studio. It’s exciting, but also a little scary. Kylotonn is a small studio owned by a small publisher. Test Drive Unlimited was something of a scrappy underdog in its day, too, of course, but back then its only competition in open-world racing was Need for Speed, a very different beast. Now, a new TDU would be going up against a game that has taken its rough frame and polished it to a gleaming finish: Playground Games’ Forza Horizon. Why bother?

It is, however, only fair that the French series returns to try to grab a slice of this pie: it wrote the recipe. Forza Horizon simply wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for 2006’s Test Drive Unlimited. Released so early in the last generation that it beat the PS3 to market, TDU dreamed of a different kind of real-world road racing to the studious lapping and tweaking of Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport. Inspired by the original 1987 Test Drive’s winding ribbon of cliffside tarmac, this would be a game about the glory of the open road; about exploring exotic, sun-kissed landscapes; about freedom and danger as you weave through traffic; about cruising as well as going flat out.

Revisiting the game on Xbox 360 now, it’s almost hard to believe it launched on the same platform that hosted the first Forza Horizon in 2012. It wobbles on what was then new hardware, stretching the limits of what the Eden team could achieve with it. The visuals now look muddy and plain, the car handling is agricultural, the frame tears and stutters and the human characters all look like weirdly sarcastic shop mannequins. (Did I mention the game is French?) Some aspects of the game seem embarrassingly dated now: the fashion brands (remember when people wore Ecko Unltd hoodies with cargo shorts?); the glossy, Second Life-style lifestyle MMO elements; the missions that require you to give ladies a lift home with their shopping. Suddenly the noughties seem like a distant land.

But good lord, it can still intoxicate too. It turns out that there are a few specific ingredients in Test Drive Unlimited that haven’t been successfully copied by Forza Horizon or, for that matter, anything else. So here is my entirely unsolicited advice to the Kylotonn team on what they need to preserve from the original TDU to set the game apart.

Let me choose my upholstery colour. Long before Forza Vista, TDU offered the ultimate car-shopping experience. You could poke around the car in the showroom, rolling down the windows, turning the ignition, listening to the reassuring thunk of the doors. And although its customisation options are dwarfed elsewhere, this is the only game I can think of that lets you match paint and upholstery colours straight out of the factory catalogue to find the perfect combination. Beautiful.

Don’t put too many cars in it, and don’t let me have all of them. The art and licensing teams can thank me later for this one. But it’s not just about reducing the scope to something a small developer can manage. It’s about the amazing sense of ownership TDU achieves. The way the game paces its economy, combined with the slowly expanding number of garage slots it gives you, forces you to make tough choices about what to buy; for the longest time, you can only afford one car in each performance band as you unlock them. You really invest in these machines, and consequently you love them all the more. Forza boasts an incredible selection, but its Gacha machine spits them out at a rate you can never keep up with. It becomes collection for collection’s sake, and looking at your garage is overwhelming. Going to your garage in TDU – which, by the way, is a physical space at your home – you feel the glowing pride of the curator.

Keep it real. Where Forza goes for condensed, fantasy versions of real-world locations, crafted to provide excitement wherever you turn your wheel, TDU and its sequel recreated the islands of Oahu and Ibiza more or less to scale, with a more or less accurate road map. It isn’t all thrilling; there’s a lot of freeway. But it feels like a real place, and driving fast there feels illicit, whereas Playground’s wonderful creations feel like, well, playgrounds: the real shrunk down and smoothed out into a sort of racing paradise.

Pile on the traffic. Comparing TDU to the latest Forza Horizon, I notice that in the latter game, the traffic is spaced out just enough that, with a bit of skill, I can thread through it without ever having to take my foot off the gas. Not so in the former. You’re constantly having to lift off, swerve, tap the brakes, check your speed. When you hit long stretches of freeway, every mile per hour you can add feels hard won and puts your heart further in your mouth. The great sensation of speed here has nothing to do with a dolly zoom camera effect or a whooshing sound in the audio mix – it’s all to do with your awareness of the risk you’re taking.

Do the car delivery missions. All of the above come together in my favourite part of TDU: missions that ask you to deliver an exotic car, one you probably can’t afford yourself yet, from one end of the map to the other. Crucially, there’s no time limit, but every scrape you add to the car knocks thousands of dollars off your fee. You can dawdle at 30mph the whole way if you like, but then you will have missed the chance to hear this Ferrari Enzo in song, to see what it can really do. So you watch the traffic, and the lights, and the junctions, cautiously but with an eye to an opportunity to open up the throttle. You spot your chance, floor it. The thrill is incredible.

No other racing game has ever made me feel like that. In no other racing game do I consciously move between different registers of driving: relaxed, fast or racing. I just go as fast as I can because that’s what you do. TDU showed another way. It was a gem, and a new one will always be welcome to show us a different way to drive.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/test-drive-unlimited-drew-a-new-horizon-for-racing-games-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=test-drive-unlimited-drew-a-new-horizon-for-racing-games-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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itsworn · 5 years

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Backstage in 1962 With Shelby, Breedlove, Roth, Stanley Mouse, Mickey Thompson, Jet Cars, Dobie Gillis, and the First Ford Mustang

Boom!

The first wave of post-WWII Americans was flooding DMV offices with license applications. Millions more of us were right behind, pacifying ourselves with model kits and slot cars and go-karts and magazines until that magic 16th birthday made the real thing possible. Tri-Five Chevys were just used cars, cheap and abundant. Networks of indoor winter shows brought California’s latest customs to enthusiasts across North America. Automaker dollars flowed freely to motorsports for the first time in five years, since spooked automakers and suppliers pledged to stop supporting racers and promoting speed. Henry Ford II personally announced his factory’s return while mocking secret skunkworks programs that enabled rival manufacturers to win races on Sunday and sales on Monday during the so-called ban. Ford Motor Company simultaneously dispatched an elaborate Custom Car Caravan of modified new cars and display engines. Most of Detroit’s new, lightweight compacts were optionally available with small V8s. The species of muscle car was not germinated just yet, but the gleam was in the eye. What a great year to be a gearhead!

Archive images exposed outside and inside L.A.’s long-gone Great Western Exhibit Center support Tex Smith’s Apr. 1962 HOT ROD appraisal of NHRA’s second Winternationals Rod & Custom Show as, “The major hot rod exposition in the nation” and “the biggest show ever staged that we know of.” The hit-making bands of guitarist Dick Dale and drummer Sandy Nelson undoubtedly contributed to four-day admissions exceeding 65,000, according to HRM. Later, the vast City of Commerce facility hosted the 1968-1979 L.A. Roadsters Shows prior to its demolition.

It’s impossible to imagine such a cohesive hot-rodding world evolving without the media network created by the Petersen Publishing Company. Even after two ex-PPC employees opened Argus Publishers and launched Popular Hot Rodding this year, Petersen monthlies had virtually no competition on a national scale (with the exception of Road & Track, which always stayed ahead of Petersen latecomer Sports Car Graphic). News-hungry enthusiasts had no reliable alternative to coverage arriving two, three, or more months late, sterilized in Hollywood to portray the hobby positively (and ignore drag racing outside of NHRA’s). On paper, Robert “Pete” Petersen appeared to be printing money. Editors never let on how close he—and we—came to losing it all.

There’s a business expression about how strong cash flow will invariably cover up mistakes—until it won’t. Early employees have said that the fledgling company thrice fell perilously behind on printing bills in the 1950s and survived only by the grace of sympathetic, patient printers and bankers. “Pete got a little carried away with his spending,” recalled photographer Bob D’Olivo, who was hired on in 1952 and stayed for 44 years. “The company was growing, and Pete wasn’t seeing all the figures. He hired a general manager to take some of the load, but if you wanted to talk to him in the afternoon, call the bar just down the street, and he willtake your call!”

When Car Craft’s Bud Lang stopped by this Sherman Oaks upholstery shop to report on a T-bodied AA/Modified Roadster under construction out back, Tony Nancy happened to be building a custom oxygen mask. We know that “The Home of Bitchin’ Stitchin’” did its usual fine job because later, when Spirit of America crashed into the water, Craig Breedlove feared that he was trapped and doomed until realizing that the breathing hose was keeping him connected to the submerged cockpit.

D’Olivo said the “major change came in the early 1960s, after two financial guys named Doug Russell and Fred Waingrow came aboard. Tighter control was needed on salaries, projects, travel, and so on. A management-and-numbers guy was needed, and that job went to Fred. All publishers and directors would now report directly to him, about 28 or so. This is when I was given the title of photographic director.”

A tradition of acquiring competitive titles and spinning off experimental ones was paused. As strict formulas were imposed upon individual publications, unprofitable or inconsistently profitable titles were either killed off (e.g., Kart and Rod & Custom Models) or reinvented (e.g., Motor Life became Sports Car Graphic) to free up operating capital and reduce debt. The painfulprocess worked: President Waingrow steered the ship back into the black, and the founder retained full ownership of a company that he would ultimately sell, in two installments, for nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Since setting up shop at the 1958 Michigan State Fair at age 18, Stanley “Mouse” Miller drew crowds and eager customers wherever he appeared in the Midwest and Northeast. If $6 seems like too little to charge for a custom airbrushed sweatshirt, that would be about 55 bucks today. The kid could whip out one every hour and do it in color, instead of the basic black outline drawn by competitors. His operation must have impressed Wally Parks, who waded through the sea of ducktails to get the shot. Burned out on monsters by 1965, Mouse returned to his native California (where his animator father used to work for Walt Disney) and found work creating posters for San Francisco music promoters and album art for local bands, most notably the Grateful Dead. Mouse is still painting at 80, and still offers prints of Freddie Flypogger and other lovable “weirdoes” (MouseStudios.com).

Sure, had this virtual monopoly come apart early, competitors would have tried to fill the abandoned niches, but how well, and for how long? Just like the tree that falls in a forest with no one around to hear it, how else in 1962 could all of us, together, have followed Zora and Shelby, hot rods and customs, Roth and Mouse, Tony Nancy and Craig Breedlove, Cobras and Sting Rays, model cars, slot cars, sports cars, old cars, new cars? No way would the photo archive that Bob D’Olivo organized in 1955 and protected had stayed intact, in which case the most complete pictorial record of hot rodding and American motorsports would not exist for us to study and enjoy in a magazine directly descended from Pete’s first one. We’ll be feeling lucky all over again as each coming issue digs deeper into the 1960s.

Decades before IRS became commonplace in domestic cars, Pontiac chief engineer John DeLorean attached this exotic suspension, two-speed-automatic transaxle, and torque tube to entry-level 1961-1963 Tempest compacts with just a few bolts. How convenient for Mickey Thompson’s busy skunkworks, which the factory commissioned to hurriedly convert a stocker for the NHRA’s Winternationals introduction of Factory Experimental classes. Regular visitor Eric Rickman obviously had his run of M/T Enterprises—and a hunch that future readers might appreciate a peek at the world’s fastest man’s junk pile. We are left to wonder how the faded body panel wound up here, and whether some magazine staffer was responsible for separating the piece from an unknown open-wheel race car. (Help, longtime Car and Driver followers?)

Here’s the kind of historical image that could easily go undiscovered without the magnification enabled by modern scanning and digitizing. Only after zooming in to confirm the identity of Zora Arkus-Duntov (with helmet) did we realize that his waiting ride was a test mule made by joining the front half of the upcoming second-generation Corvette with the back half and roofline of a first-gen Vette. Sports Car Graphic tech editor Jerry Titus was granted exclusive access to private January tests at Daytona and Sebring on the condition that he ignore the “blue disguised prototype” that joined a red ’62 model and Zora’s baby, the CERV I single seater, for some brake development. Titus snapped the photo literally behind the distracted engineer’s back in late January, nearly a year before most folks saw a new Corvette in person. (See Apr. & May 1962 SCG.)

Jerry Titus was probably the best racing writer or writing racer ever employed by Robert E. Petersen. At the conclusion of Chevy’s Florida testing, Zora offered a few laps of Sebring in a priceless test car previously driven only by Stirling Moss, Dan Gurney, and Duntov himself. In the May 1962 SCG cover story, Titus described his 172-mph straightaway speed as “conservative” in a 1,700-pound package pushed by at least the 380 hp conceded by Chevrolet. Later, Titus was tabbed by Carroll Shelby to shake down and race the G.T. 350.

Help, readers: Does this scene ring any bells? None of our sources can recall a movie or TV production involving the channeled, 283-powered ’31 highboy that New York transplant Bill Neumann (not pictured) brought to L.A. prior to joining Car Craft and, ultimately, taking over Rod & Custom after PPC editorial director Wally Parks fired the whole staff. Neumann’s classified ad in R&C’s May 1962 Bargain Box mentioned “over 90 trophies,” but no asking price. A born promoter, he helped organize the Speed Equipment Manufacturers Association in 1963 (later renamed the Specialty Equipment Market Association, or SEMA) before opening Neuspeed Performance Systems.

Leave it to George Barris to add life-size TV stars Robert Young and Dwayne Hickman to a Barris Kustoms display that brought three famous hot rods to the Winternationals Rod & Custom Show. Barris’ own AMBR-winning ’27 T played a role in Young’s short-lived Window on Main Street series, while the former Chrisman & Cannon competition coupe costarred with Hickman and beatnik sidekick Bob Denver in an episode of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Behind them is the Ala Kart, the roadster pickup that survived the 1957 Barris Kustoms fire to become the first repeat winner of Oakland’s tall AMBR trophy. (See Apr. 1962 HRM; May 1962 R&C.)

Yes, slot car racing was both a participant and spectator sport at its peak. Model-maker AMT staged regional competitions on elaborate tracks like the setup at the NHRA’s February show. This showdown matched up winners from 1,100 West Coast hobby shops. Later in the year, AMT cheerleader Budd Anderson unveiled the gamechanging, steerable, 1:8-scale Authentic Model Turnpike system for home use during a six-month, fulltime modeling stint at the Seattle World’s Fair. (See May 1962 CC.)

Pontiac stockers prepared by factory contractor Mickey Thompson enjoyed another dominating season, starting with February’s second Winternationals. What appears to be a late round of Mr. Stock Eliminator—a bonus, heads-up showdown bringing back the quickest 50 stockers, win or lose—finds S/S Automatic champ Carol Cox, the first female allowed to enter an NHRA national event, out in front of stick-class-winner Jess Tyree, an M/T mechanic driving the same 167-mph Catalina that set multiple international speed records over the winter at March Air Force Base. Waiting to run at Pomona are previous-round winners Lloyd Cox, Carol’s husband (Pontiac, right); Gas Ronda (Ford); and eventual runnerup Dave Strickler (Chevy), who would fall in the Mr. Stock final to Don Nicholson (not shown). The barn across the street is long gone, but last time we looked, the two-story house remained. (See May 1962 HRM, MT & CC.)

The ragtag bunch of drag and dry-lakes racers that test-fired Craig Breedlove’s $500 military-surplus engine at Los Angeles International Airport in June, just two months before this homebuilt tricycle’s scheduled Bonneville Nationals debut, must have seemed unlikely to make the builder-driver a household name worldwide. The official team truck’s wooden signboards announced the “Spirit of America World Land Speed Record Attempt.” The low-buck team made it to Speed Week, but the semifinished car/trike was limited to static testing at the adjacent Wendover airbase. (See Sept. 1962 MT.)

Despite the convergence of five jet-powered vehicles on the salt during and immediately following Speed Week, a piston-powered streamliner remained the world’s fastest land vehicle all year—to the certain relief of Revell, which had entered the hot rod market by miniaturizing the 406-mph Challenger I and Ed Roth’s revolutionary Outlaw street roadster. Rather than follow the shady example of fly-by-night model makers that blatantly reproduced identifiable race cars without attribution or remuneration, Revell licensed and heavily promoted the men along with their machines. Revell’s national advertising blasted Roth’s brand and zany image far beyond the hot-rodding press and car-show circuit. (See Nov. 1962 R&C.)

It didn’t take long for an unidentified slot car hobbyist to power one of Revell’s snap-together streamliners. Reader Rick Voegelin, the former Car Craft editor and a lifelong slot racer, squinted at the photo through old eyes and semipositively identified the dual motors as Pittmans, likely swapped out of powerful locomotives.

It’d be a stretch to suggest that muscle cars and Funny Cars were invented here, but the roots of both American inventions run through this very engine compartment. Two years before the second-gen Tempest begat the GTO, Pontiac assigned the Super Stock Division of Mickey Thompson Enterprises to create a prototypical factory hot rod for the NHRA’s new A/Factory Experimental class. Beyond a mandate to stick with genuine Pontiac hardware wherever visible, in-house engineers Hayden Proffitt and Lloyd Cox (pictured) virtually rewrote the rulebook as they converted a four-cylinder ’62 Tempest into the year’s quickest and fastest late model, a runaway A/FX champ at both of the NHRA’s national events. By the time this photo was snapped in late June, displacement of M/T’s Super Duty 421 had soared from 434 to 487 cubes, according to Motor Trend, and Cox had assumed the wheel vacated when Proffitt took a 409 Chevy deal and opened his own shop. Meanwhile, Holman-Moody and Dragmaster were secretly developing 480-inch strokers for Ford and Chrysler, respectively. Understandably alarmed, Wally Parks halted drag racing’s arms race—temporarily—by capping 1963 displacement at 427 for NHRA-legal competition. However, the horse had left the barn, and the Big Three’s monster-motor lessons would not be lost on so-called “outlaw Super Stock” racers running independent meets and run-what-ya-brung match races. (See Sept. 1962 HRM; May & Dec. 1962 MT; June 1962 R&C; Jan. 2017 HRD.)

If you remember being faked out by this photo, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger; so were the rest of us subscribers and newsstand browsers. Art director Al Isaacs’s clever positioning of the car’s shadow and of editor Don Evans’s right forearm clinched the delusion that Monogram’s 1:8-scale “Big T” was a real roadster. Inside, the description of Bud Lang’s cover shot joked that because the car is only 16 inches long, Evans and his “lovely cousin, Sharon Huss … were shrunk for photo.” Either way, such juxtaposition was a neat trick when Xacto knives, layers of physical film, and steady hands were required to do the layout work done digitally now.

Staff photographer Pat Brollier shot the B&W photos for CC’s inside story, which Isaacs laid out like a typical car feature. Despite a steep retail price of $10.98—10 times that of the usual $1.98 kit—strong sales inspired Monogram to rush-order a fullsize running version for use as a promotional vehicle. Customizer Darryl Starbird delivered that bigger-yet Big T to the model maker’s booth at NHRA’s late-summer car show in Indianapolis. (See Oct. 1962 CC; Dec. 1962 R&C.)

This one had us baffled until a regular research source, the American Hot Rod Foundation, came through in a big way. AHRF director David Steele recognized the back wall from later photos of Carroll Shelby’s Cobra factory, while AHRF curator Jim Miller instantly identified the last Scarab that Phil Remington built just before Reventlow Automobiles Inc. was shut down under IRS scrutiny. Its all-aluminum Buick V8 shared technology and major components with similar engines that Mickey Thompson developed for this year’s Indy 500. The suspiciously empty Venice, California, space and much of Reventlow’s workforce were taken over by Shelby not long after photographer Pat Brollier visited in early July. Lance Reventlow personally debuted the sports car in September with an impressive second-place SCCA finish at Santa Barbara and made at least two more starts before selling to John Mecom, who installed a small-block Chevy. Augie Pabst eventually acquired this rarest of Scarabs and still has it, as far as our AHRF friends know. (See Dec. 1962 SCG.)

Lance Reventlow was the husband of actress Jill St. John and the son of infamous heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton. Mom’s fortune financed the boy’s dream of all-American sports cars, built and driven by homegrown hot rodders to beat the best European factory racers. His trio of front-engined Scarab roadsters did exactly that starting in 1958 with a shocking upset at Riverside’s International Grand Prix and the national SCCA championship. Two subsequent attempts at building formula cars and competing in Europe were expensive failures, however, and the Internal Revenue Service was unconvinced that the cash-burning business was really a business. Lance fatally crashed a private plane in 1972, at age 36. His alcoholic, drug-addicted mother followed in 1979, leaving behind just $3,000 of a trust fund that had once been the equivalent of nearly $400 million in today’s money.

Wally Parks became HOT ROD’s first fulltime editor in 1949, cofounded the NHRA in 1961, and simultaneously guided the publishing company and the sanctioning body through the end of this year. In early 1963, he resigned as editorial director of Petersen’s automotive publications to run the NHRA fulltime.

Two years after designer-builder Athol Graham was killed chasing the unlimited LSR in the homebuilt Spirit of Salt Lake, his widow, Zeldine, and former helper, Otto Anzjon, brought the rebuilt streamliner back to Bonneville to prove that Graham’s design was sound. The inexperienced driver followed officials’ instructions to gradually build speed to the 225-mph range before attempting this first full pass, which lasted about 100 feet before Allison-induced wheelspin exploded the right-rear tire. (See Dec. 1962 MT; Jan. 2017 HRD; Jan. 2019 HRD.)

NorCal drag racers Romeo Palamides and Glen Leasher didn’t get to Wendover until the last day of Speed Week, in August, which is normally restricted to prequalified record runs. They were granted one low-speed shakedown run that reportedly revealed “unexpected chassis problems.” The monstrous Infinity went home to Oakland to prepare for a private session on September 10. Leasher, who’d acquired jet-car experience in Romeo’s busy Untouchable dragster, made a troublefree checkout pass and turned around. On the return trip, he unexpectedly accelerated on “full ’burner,” veered off the course, flipped repeatedly, and was dismembered. (Later that day, Romeo called another Bay Area slingshot driver about fulfilling his jet dragster’s commitments and created a colorful career for “Jet Car” Bob Smith, who miraculously survived crashes in a whole

In late August, the original Ford Mustang was captured in the L.A. shop of famed bodybuilders Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes. Barely a month later, the tube-framed, midmounted-V4, front-drive, 1,480-pound prototype made exhibition laps and fans at both the Watkins Glen and Riverside Grands Prix. Ford described it as a “study vehicle for possible production of a sports car.” Motor Trend predicted that its “Impact should hit squarely and cause excitement in three or four or five years,” adding, “Unlike so many styling projections and dream cars offered so far, this one is crammed full of usable ideas.” (See Nov. 1962 HRM; Dec. 1962 SCG; Jan. 1963 MT; Feb. 1963 CC.)

Judging by other film negatives documenting Robert E. Petersen’s fall hunting trip, the boss got the last laugh by bagging both an elk and a bear.

The day before the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix in Riverside, Carroll Shelby (right) and Ford upstaged Zora Arkus-Duntov (left center) and Chevrolet by sneaking the second Cobra ever built into a so-called Experimental Production class and race that SCCA conceived for brand-new Sting Rays; in particular, the fearsome foursome of Z06 fastbacks entered by Mickey Thompson. Despite Bill Krause’s sizable horsepower handicap, his spunky, 260ci roadster swapped leads with Dave MacDonald’s 327ci Corvette (background) until the Cobra’s rear hub carrier failed an hour into the 300-mile enduro. (See Jan. 1963 SCG; Jan. 2017 HRD.)

These had to be the trickest transporters at Laguna Seca for October’s SCCA showdown. Meister Brau beer outfitted one of the earliest tractor-trailer rigs in the photo archive for hauling the high-dollar Scarabs and Chaparrals campaigned by Harry Heuer, a member of the brewing family. Norm Holtcamp had other ideas and started from scratch on his Cheetah, sliding an electric-load-leveling Mercedes sedan chassis under a ’60 El Camino cab purchased at GM’s Van Nuys Boulevard plant. A hot-rodded ’57 Corvette 283 and three-speed Chevy trans mount amidships. We don’t know whether Holtcamp hit his target of 112 mph fully loaded, but you can be sure that second-owner Dean Moon wrung top speed out of the Cheetah before parking and neglecting it for years at Moon Equipment Company. Longtime HRD readers will recall a small color snapshot in our May 2013 issue of the disembodied remains in the yard of collector Geoff Hacker, who tells us that full restoration is scheduled to start later this year at JR’s Speed Shop (Venice, Florida).

Longtime PPC photographer Bob D’Olivo identified art director Art Smith, but neither the blonde nor the legs. Not much work was getting done the day that SCG editor John Christy wandered by, two weeks before Christmas.

The Mysterion signaled the beginning of Ed Roth’s asymmetrical (some would say dysfunctional) stage. The dual-engined gas dragsters that proliferated during these fuel-ban years might have inspired the twins that buddy Budd Anderson procured from Ford (said to be 406s, but probably ordinary 390s). During transport between shows, their combined weight repeatedly cracked and ultimately collapsed the Swiss-cheese frame, which was stripped and junked along with the body. Reader Don Baker saw the HOT ROD Network preview of this article and sent in a memory of riding bikes with his childhood pals to a show at Devonshire Downs (San Fernando Valley). Lacking money for admission, they arrived early that morning and sat outside, watching the show cars arrive, “when Big Daddy rides in, towing Mysterion. He was alone and asked us to help getting it off the trailer. We pushed it right onto the show floor. Pretty cool at that time.” We found the image on one of the final rolls exposed by staff photographers this year, yet the Mysterion was completed in time for the start of the indoor show season in January. (See Dec. 1962 & Sept. 1963 R&C.)

The post Backstage in 1962 With Shelby, Breedlove, Roth, Stanley Mouse, Mickey Thompson, Jet Cars, Dobie Gillis, and the First Ford Mustang appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network https://www.hotrod.com/articles/backstage-1962-shelby-breedlove-roth-stanley-mouse-mickey-thompson-jet-cars-dobie-gillis-first-ford-mustang/ via IFTTT

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eddiejpoplar · 6 years

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First Drive: 2019 Audi E-Tron

To our left, a herd of impalas is fanning out into the setting sun. To the right, a solitary springbok stands frozen by a mix of curiosity and fright. In between, sand, salt, and stones stretch all the way to a horizon separated from the dark blue sky by a panoramic cloud of dust. The flat tableland at the bottom of Namibia’s Kalahari desert is ten times the size of a football field for giants—all that´s missing are the goals, the corner flags, and the faintest trace of grass.

For one day only, this flat, open expanse has been converted to a kind of freestyle rallycross stage for six 2019 Audi E-Trons coated in psychedelic swirls not unlike the rock paintings of ancient residents. Water is a precious commodity in this scorching hot basin, but thanks to a few rows of makeshift solar panels, freshly harvested electricity is not. It´s an eerie scene, spectacular yet unreal, a handful of Audis drifting almost noiselessly through no-man´s land, never changing gear or hitting a redline. Vorsprung durch CO2-neutral powerslide, so to speak.

When the dust finally settles, one can decipher cones, an unusually wide racing line, and a white tent next to what must be the start-finish line. We get five laps per driver through a nearly mile-long ribbon of corners fast and slow. The surface looks like a thin coating of toasted breadcrumbs, but it is as slippery as loose snow on frozen earth. Even with ESC on, the handling attitude changes with every blip of the throttle. Deactivate it, and your inner Sebastian Loeb will grin from ear to ear before switching to attack mode. Back in the pits, the crew routinely adjusts the tire pressures and checks the state of charge. While the miles-to-empty readout dropped a couple of digits during our fun, the battery never failed to deliver full power on demand.

Audi’s new E-Tron, aims squarely at the new Jaguar I-PACE, Mercedes EQ-C, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, and Tesla Model X. The silent newcomer, loosely based on the Q5 and Q7 crossovers, will be priced around $90,000. It fields two electric motors rated at up to 402 hp and 490 lb-ft, and a 95-kWh battery good for a driving range of around 250 miles.

“The E-Tron is not a one-hit wonder,” says Markus Siewert, one of several project engineers. “We can do repeat action better than anybody else. The E-Tron, for instance, accelerates ten times from nought to sixty without dropping a single tenth over the entire cycle. On the autobahn, you are invited to nail the pedal to the metal for twenty long minutes—and I promise you the top speed will not budge one bit over time. Eventually, power is progressively scaled back to prevent overheating. A similar measure is taken when the car struggles to reach the nearest charge point. But even in case the range meter drops to zero, we still have a buffer built into the system.” Although the numbers are not yet cast in stone, one source claims that the driving range of the E-Tron will be certified at 265 miles according to the WLTP norm, though how that might translate to an EPA rating for the U.S. is unclear. Even in winter, with cold motors and cold batteries, Audi says 200 miles of range is a realistic point-to-point average.

Inside, the E-Tron is more Q8 than A7. There are four displays vying for the driver´s attention. The main instrument cluster offers two different views; one prioritizes the map, the other zooms in on the two round instruments. A head-up display floats above the instruments, while the center console accommodates two touchscreens. The whole set-up looks familiar, and yet it is different in that you operate the transmission via a chrome tile which sticks out of what used to be the electronic gear selector. There´s R for reverse, D for drive, N for neutral and P for park. It’s a single-speed box, so that one and only ratio takes you all the way to 124 mph, where the limiter steps in. On paved surfaces, the electric Q can use its boost mode to accelerate to 60 mph in just 5.5 seconds. Take away that power boost and the stopwatch will read somewhere in the mid-six-second range. The car from Ingolstadt feels far from slow, but in this comparison the Audi loses a fair few ticks to the least powerful Tesla Model X, which also offers a 6-mph higher top speed

Late next year, insiders are expecting a performance version of the E-Tron rated at approximately 503 hp, but right now the maximum power output is 402 hp. Even this number is only available for ten seconds in boost mode. The next step down is called peak mode. It musters 355 hp and 414 lb-ft for up to 60 seconds. Under normal driving conditions, the E-Tron will use the rear motor primarily, which is good for 188 hp and 231 lb-ft of torque. If the driver requests more grunt, the second motor rated at 168 hp/182 lb-ft will jump in to drive the front wheels. All-wheel drive and torque vectoring are activated within milliseconds, providing top-notch traction and laser-beam stability. With ESC switched off, the rear-wheel bias invites you kick the tail out, which is a lot easier on an African salt lake than on high-grip European blacktop. Our test car was fitted with 21-inch energy saving tires, which destroyed the ride but offered plenty of cornering grip. Although the steering always tells the full story, it feels somewhat artificial throughout its range.

Powering the two induction motors is a 95-kWh high-voltage energy cell, weighing in at a whopping 1,543 lbs. The battery can be fast-charged with up to 150 kW at a network of service stations currently under construction. Audi has partnered with Electrify America to build 500 fast-charge stations in 40 states by 2019. While fast charging takes about 20 minutes, plug-in charging at home is an eight-hour affair. To speed up the process, Audi is offering a more powerful wall box and a second onboard charger. The killer app of the fast-charger? An 80-percent charge in just 30 minutes.

Inside, the E-Tron does not differ dramatically from the new Q8, A8, A7, and A6. The only obvious exceptions are the optional camera-based rear-view devices, which are lighter, narrower, and more aerodynamically slippery than conventional mirrors. They also take time to get used to, because your eyes must learn to focus on the displays in the top forward corner of the door panels. This works ok on the passenger side, but the driver finds the upright, non-adjustable screen much harder to read. On the credit side, the slim camera-equipped view finders will switch to a smaller image on the autobahn to emphasize the speed difference between fast and slow moving traffic, the system automatically extends the lateral view as soon as the indicator is set, and it dials in a bird´s eye perspective paired to a curbside zoom when parking. By tapping the intelligence of the cloud, the E-Tron driver is led to empty parking spaces, receives fog, black ice, and accident warnings, and is cautioned should a mobile speed trap pop up.

In typical Audi fashion, there are seven different choices of tune, from eco to dynamic. In addition, you are invited to dial in one of three overriding settings labeled comfortable, balanced, and sporty. The fourth option is individual, which allows you to preset stability control from steadfast to leery, dampers from quite firm to quite comfortable, steering effort from featherweight to heavyweight, and drivetrain from attentive to aggressive. The standard air suspension can be jacked up in two steps by 1.38 inches (35 mm) in allroad and by 1.97 in (50 mm) in off-road mode. Above 62mph, it automatically lowers the ride height by about 1 in (26 mm). The electronic e-quattro AWD system is significantly quicker to act and react than its combustion-powered counterpart. In fact, the energy flow to the four wheels is so rapid that the car responds to a puddle almost before it hits it. The battery pack, made up of 36 modules, is mounted between the axles as low as possible to push down the center of gravity. Measuring 193 inches in length and sitting on a 115.3-in wheelbase, the E-Tron is shorter than the Q8, narrower than the Q5 and lower than the Q7. Its cargo bay holds 28.5 cubic feet of gear (57 with the rear seats down), and yet the drag coefficient is a best in class 0.27.

The first all-electric Audi is an amazingly quiet zero-emission cruiser. Wind noise, road noise, and drivetrain noise are so well muffled that one instinctively reaches for the non-existing outside manual claxon to warn cyclists and pedestrians. The silence is in fact so overwhelming and persistent that half a decibel of extra kickdown whine would probably be quite welcome. After all, the E-Tron puts speed into perspective in a way that makes you wonder whether full throttle actually unleashes all the forward thrust there is. If our first encounter is anything to go by, the acceleration from 60mph upwards is overshadowed by the unreal mid-range urge of a Tesla 100D, the fierce low-speed pick-up of the 294-kW Jaguar i-Pace and the awesome tip-in of the 300-kW Mercedes EQ-C. The E-Tron is a quick car, no doubt. But it does not release that torque avalanche with quite the same urge and enthusiasm as its rivals.

Waftability is a key target for every electric car, and this also applies to the all-electric Audi, which comes prepared for level 3 autonomous driving as soon as it becomes legal. The vibration-free motors, the absence of virtual or actual gear changes, the punchy power delivery, and the hush-quiet noise level make this a perfectly relaxed and sufficiently brisk grand. The laid back dynamics are supported by a flat ride, nicely suppressed body movements, and enough instant oomph to pull away from trouble. Dislikes? Nose dive under hard deceleration, go-for-it take-off squat, a steering that is too light in comfort mode and too heavy in dynamic, and a set of brakes that deserves its own paragraph, together with the Audi energy regeneration strategy.

Intelligent recuperation helps to extend the driving range by up to 30 percent, says Audi. There are two different methods working hand in hand: lift-off regeneration and brake regeneration. In both cases, the e-motors act as generators and convert kinetic energy back into electric energy. By pulling the up- and downshift paddles behind the steering wheel, you may increase or decrease regeneration in two steps. Up to 0.3g of deceleration, you can either coast or make use of the regen, which is strong enough to create that coveted “one pedal” driving experience. Beyond 0.3g, the hydraulic 18-in disc brakes take over.

In regenerative braking stage 1, the car slows down at lift-off, but nine out of ten stopping maneuvers can still be executed without even touching the pedal. Stage 2 virtually doubles this regeneration effect, which explains why it is better at charging the batteries than at putting a smile on your face. At this point, the E-Tron is the only BEV which can recuperate via e-motor, hydraulic brakes, and a combination thereof. The transition from passive to active stopping power is smooth and seamless, but since this Audi is by nature more interested in saving energy than pushing braking points further forward, it takes a determined and heavy right foot to reel in the car to a total standstill.

In the heart of the Bitterwasser salt plains, we locked ESC in play mode, set all systems in dynamic and worked the car hard until the state-of-charge readout dropped to single digits. By the time we were done, we’d scattered the local wildlife to the horizons except for a pair of wheeling vultures watching like stone-age drones as the future unfolded below them.

2019 Audi E-Tron Specifications ON SALE Mid-2019 PRICE $75,795 MOTOR Dual AC induction motors, 188 hp/168 hp, 402 hp combined BATTERY Lithium-ion Polymer/95 kWh TRANSMISSION 1-speed reduction gear LAYOUT 4-door, 5-passenger, two-motor, AWD crossover EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 193.0 x 76.3 x 65.5 in WHEELBASE 115.3 WEIGHT N/A 0-60 MPH 5.5 sec (est) TOP SPEED 124 mph

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newenglandcus · 4 years

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Room Additions Bedford Small Bathroom Remodel Tel: +16032621715

Do you find yourself trying to find additional info involving modern bathroom remodel?

Keep On Track And On Budget With These Home Improvement Tips

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Install ceiling fans to circulate the air in your home. During summer the fan can be adjusted to blow down, and during the winter it can adjusted to draw the air up. This increases the efficiency of the utilities in your home so that you pay less in heating and cooling costs and save energy.

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Rearranging your furniture can be fun, but oftentimes you need visual aides to determine where to put everything. A great way to arrange furniture with visual aiding is by taking a piece of graph paper and cutting out square shapes in a scaled format to represent your different pieces of furniture. You can easily toss your graph paper pieces around and decide how everything can fit together. It definitely saves you the trouble of pushing your furniture around first.

If you are looking for a functional home improvement project, try "building up." Walls create a lot of wasted space. Add matching bookcases in your living room or build a window seat where your family can sit and read. Simple projects like these can make every space in your home usable and valuable to your family.

Now you see that home improvement is a lot more than just buying and painting things in your house. It takes skill and an eye for pleasant aesthetics. You don`t want your home to look slovenly, so why not take some time to learn how to do it right? The above tips should have given you some helpful advice.

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Home Remodeling to Hold Strong Despite Coronavirus

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https://www.cepro.com/news/home-remodeling-hold-strong-coronavirus-outbreak/

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jonathanbelloblog · 6 years

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First Drive: 2019 Audi E-Tron

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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How Fans Helped Hasbro Build Its Biggest Star Wars Ship Ever

Toys and Star Wars are inextricably linked forever and ever. Star Wars creator George Lucas famously waived part of his directing fee and retained the insanely lucrative rights to Star Wars merchandise in a deal that has gone down in history as a catastrophic blunder on the part of 20th Century Fox. The studio was skeptical this oddball space movie would resonate with audiences, even if its critters, spaceships, and memorable villains seem like obvious toys in hindsight.

After the first film hit, everything changed. Famously, licensees had to scramble to meet demand for Star Wars goods after the movie became a surprise sensation. Christmas 1977 saw Kenner hawking empty boxes full of promises instead of action figures. Since then, Kenner's 3-3/4-inch scale toys, and yes, the vehicles, have become highly collectible icons of pop culture for nostalgic, well-heeled adults.

Hasbro, which acquired Kenner in the early 1990s, is now turning to the same nostalgic fanbase to fund its future Star Wars ambitions. Using a crowdfunding campaign back in March, Hasbro raised $4.5 million to build what might be the most impressive Star Wars toy ever—a molded plastic recreation of Jabba the Hutt's sail barge from Return of the Jedi.

3-D Printed Childhood Dreams

Tackling Jabba's barge (known as "The Khetanna" in the Star Wars universe) is a move few would have expected. In February, Hasbro debuted a rough, early version of the craft at the New York Toy Fair. All unpainted white plastic with 3D-printed components, the barge was nowhere near what the finished product would look like. That didn't matter—fans were flabbergasted.

"When we announced it at Toy Fair there was this audible gasp in the room … they just couldn't believe it," says Hasbro senior marketing director Kristin Hamilton. Sized to fit the traditional 3-3/4-inch tall action figures, the barge is not quite correctly scaled, but at 80 percent of the correct scale, it's still a whopper.

This 49-inch-long toy is by far the biggest Star Wars ship Hasbro has ever made. And it has a pedigree too—it's designed by veteran Kenner and Hasbro employee Mark Boudreaux.

If you ever zoomed a Star Wars ship around your house as a kid, you probably have Mark Boudreaux to thank. "Mark is one of a kind. He is the 40-year history of Star Wars toys at Kenner and Hasbro," says Steve Sansweet, chief executive at Rancho Obi-Wan, the Guinness Book-ranked museum with the largest Star Wars collection in the world.

The campaign rules were laid out: 45 days, $500 each, 5,000 backers or bust.

The attention to detail on the ship is superb. Under the removable side panels, it hides details not even seen on screen, like a cockpit with two captains' chairs, a kitchen, and a jail cell (complete with the corpse of an Ithorian). Jabba sits tall on his dais, surrounded by alien trophies. Up top, cloth sails fly in a brilliant orange-red just like in the movie.

The Kickstarter-style campaign rules were laid out: 45 days, $500 each, 5,000 backers or bust, with the countdown starting on February 17th. If the Khetanna wasn't funded within the six-week window? "We would have had a very rare single prototype," says Steve Evans, Hasbro's Star Wars development director. Hasbro branded the initiative HasLab, making it clear the company hopes to fund other, non-Star Wars toys in the future.

Unlike the crowd-designed, democratized Lego Ideas project, HasLab has one mission: to create the wildest, craziest toys fans would die for.

"[Crowdfunding] was a natural way for us to bring those dream products to life that our fans have been clamoring for," says Hasbro's Hamilton.

Sansweet, who has penned books about Hasbro's past action figure efforts, was impressed by the the ambitious first HasLab project. "I'd never conceived of anything like that. It was a way for them to do something that they ordinarily would not have dared to do because of the risks involved," he says.

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The expectation for any crowdfunded product is that backers aren't just buyers—they're encouraged to participate in the process and give feedback. Despite its long reputation for secrecy, Hasbro gave backers a peek behind the curtain, and the opportunity to watch a prototype sail barge inch closer to production. "This was a partnership between us and our community. We needed them, they needed us. It was a symbiotic initiative," Hasbro's Evans told me.

Stay on Target

Even the most compelling Indiegogo or Kickstarter campaign has a lull at some point. In the case of The Khetanna, the 45-day run had one hell of a fallow period, petering out after a solid initial burst. Many, myself included, felt like this campaign might share the fate of the barge's movie counterpart—blowing up in spectacular fashion.

"If it didn't succeed, I don't know that we would have heard anything more about HasLab."

Steve Sansweet of Rancho Obi-Wan

"I kept looking every couple of days and frankly, I was sure this was not going to work," Sansweet says. "I was very pessimistic about it. It's a fairly high price, limited to North America. It looked to me like it wasn't going to make it."

That's when Hasbro upped the ante, showing off more images of The Khetanna, this time fully decked out in screen-accurate paint. The company also announced that each toy would get a limited-edition action figure, and one with significance to collectors.

"Yak Face was a background character in Jabba's Palace and on the sail barge," Sansweet says. "The figure was released in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and even in Canada on a card with a coin. Yak Face was never released in the United States."

Hasbro's Evans waxed nostalgic about the pick. The team could have picked from dozens of other creatures, he says, "but there was something so pure and magical about Yak Face that we couldn't not do it. Yak Face was impossible to get as a kid and we carried that with us through our lives as collectors. Because we were delivering the impossible vehicle, it was a no-brainer."

With the campaign's window closing, Hasbro was still falling far short of the 5,000 backers required—and much more than just a gigantic, expensive Star Wars toy was hanging in the balance.

"About a week before, they were still, gee, 1,500 short," Sansweet says. "Frankly, this was a very important one. If it didn't succeed, I don't know that we would have heard anything more about HasLab." Fans and toy blogs helped spread the word via social media using the hashtag #BacktheBarge, but the needle barely budged.

Hasbro's Hamilton confessed the sail barge was "a nail-biter" of a project. "I think we would have all cried if it didn't make it," she says. "There was a lot of passion for this product internally."

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The WIRED Guide to Star Wars

A New Hope

Like in any Star Wars story, the middle chapter is when the heroes are at their lowest point and a triumphant ending is almost inevitable. In late March, barge watchers noticed a sharp uptick in backers. "All of a sudden, the numbers started climbing dramatically. Adding hundreds in half a day." Steve Sansweet was ecstatic—it meant the two Barges he bought for the Rancho Obi-Wan collection might actually materialize. By March 30, Hasbro welcomed its 5,000th backer.

Once HasLab crossed the threshold required to make the product, thousands of additional backers quickly jumped in. "It shot past 5,000 and past 8,000. It warmed my heart and really shocked me," says Sansweet. He and 8,809 other fans were guaranteed to get toys once HasLab reached its end date of April 3.

Steve Evans expressed his relief that, like Luke Skywalker's one-in-a-million torpedo shot, backers won the day. "There was a sense of elation certainly within Hasbro and on the fan sites. It was like a perfect 45-day roller coaster ride. It was emotional!"

Hasbro plans to ship the finished product to backers in 2019, and has taken fan feedback into consideration when finalizing the design. "We introduced it to the fans earlier than we ever would normally," Evans says. "The discussion at conventions, online, and in forums informed how we're finishing off the product, purely because we were able to show it early. That's something new for us."

With one success under its belt, Hasbro is free to tap into its other beloved franchises to give fans products they otherwise couldn't. Whether it's Transformers, My Little Pony, or GI Joe, there are plenty of opportunities to come up with even crazier products. It has yet to be seen whether or not we'll get a banquet table-sized recreation of the USS Flagg or an epic die-cast Optimus Prime.

Sansweet has one dream Star Wars product he'd like to see in a future HasLab: a giant Death Star toy he once saw in prototype form.

"Hasbro asked me to bring a bunch of fellow collectors to chat about the future of Star Wars and how to move forward," he says. "This was 1995 or so. They had this modular Death Star. And of course, [when I picture it] in my mind's eye it was just an incredible piece. I can't even give you the diameter—maybe three or four feet in radius. It had different levels, and each level had scenes from a movie … we were all going, 'Oh my God! That's amazing! When are you gonna make that!?' Those of us who were there talked about that for years afterwards. If they can do the sail barge, they can do something like that too."