Somehow this amazing dance film completely illuded me through all of 2012. But now it’s 2013 and there’s no excuse: if you dig Girl Talk, dance, or just great DSLR driven cinematography all over NYC, you should check out this film.
Film critic Scott Mendelson on Zero Dark Thirty:
All because [director and writer] Bigelow and Boal didn’t spoon-feed their opinions to the audience in a way that made for easy digestion. They didn’t have a fictionalized scene where a character explicitly explains to the audience how they got each piece of vital information over the eight years during which the film takes place. They trusted the audience to make the connections… One must remember that the film initially began back when Bin Laden was still alive and it was presumed that he’d never actually be caught. It was initially a Moby Dick-esque story of futile obsession, and I’d argue the film still stays on that path even with the new ending.
Moral ambiguity. Presenting complex issues without trying to fall on one political side or another. Forcing you, as the audience, to engage, debate, ponder what we’ve been doing with our foreign policy for the last twelve years. That’s what Zero Dark Thirty is all about (and at least partially what makes it great) and I agree with Mendelson regarding the Bigelow snub. Ridiculous.
This Slate feature always crops up this time of year and never disappoints. At the time of this writing they have already had six entries and the writing team is really solid: Dana Stevens from Slate, Wesley Morris from Grantland, and freelancers Keith Phipps (formerly a senior writer at The A.V. Club) and Stephanie Zacharek (most notable for her writing at Salon and The New York Times).
Now that I’m dabbling more and more with Sass, I’m really excited to see the great Dan Cederholm will be releasing a whole book on the subject. (For those that haven’t read Cederholm’s CSS3 entry into the A Book Apart series, do so.)
Can’t wait to dig through these releases and give them a try.
I’m late in noticing this one, but hooray, the API docs for jQuery got a big design refresh! Responsive! Better color palette! I approve.
Dan McKinley, Etsy’s principal engineer, gives a really solid talk that supports small, incremental updates to test ideas before rolling out a massive new web feature. It’s not heavily technical and thus equally a good listen for web developers, designers, and project managers.
Robert Rath, writing for The Escapist, on Corvo, the protagonist of the stealth adventure Dishonored:
In the eyes of British honor culture, Corvo is a villain. His conduct is not that of a gentleman: he allows himself to be subjugated, he takes unfair advantage, and his vicious methods speak to his foreign origins. Interestingly, when we look at Dishonored from this perspective of honor culture, its themes appear very different.
This was a really fascinating read, and not just because I recently finished Dishonored. It’s primarily because there’s a lot of insights here on British vs. Italian honor culture that make solid contextual sense, both for history and this game.
Nick Bilton, writing for The New York Times:
The worship of design has also taken designers out of the back offices and into top executive jobs. Engineers are still in the mix, to be sure. But they don’t rule the roost in product development, which may also be why tech products are easier to use, more human.
As Bilton’s piece illustrates, this is a time where great web designers make or break websites. The collaboration level between designers and developers is key as well; without a great workflow, all the great design ideas in the world won’t be implemented.
Leave it to Reddit for someone to mashup the Swedish original with director David Fincher’s English remake. Nice side by side via animated gifs.