David Lidsky's Blog, page 3321
February 28, 2014
Cate Blanchett In A Cookie Commercial? See The Formative Roles Of This Year's Oscar Nominees
I loved you in Critters 3, Leo.
Cate Blanchett is such a beautiful, regal presence on screen that it's nearly impossible to imagine her staring in, say, a biscuit commercial. And yet early on, she appeared in a ridiculous spot for the cookie Tim Tam. Flavorwire has compiled a "before they were stars" reel of this year's Oscar nominees. You might remember Bradley Cooper in Wet Hot American Summer? But what about Jennifer Lawrence in Monk or Leo Dicaprio in Roseanne? When Bruce Dern and Judi Dench started out, movies were still filmed in black and white. And not all nominees have a past--two nominees are making their feature film debuts.
This Giant Space Dust Buster Just Launched To Help Clean Up Space Junk
Space junk whizzing around at thousands of miles an hour is a huge threat to satellites in space. Now Japan's space agency hopes a 1,000-foot stretch of wires can help cut down on the debris.
Space junk has been a problem since space travel began: When Sputnik launched in 1957, it left behind part of a rocket. Now, decades later, hundreds of thousands of marble-sized pieces of satellites and spacecraft are orbiting around Earth. Since the trash is traveling at up to 17,500 miles per hour, even a tiny fleck of old paint can be enough to damage new space missions.
California Tourism Dreams Big With Google, Releasing 24 Videos In 24 Hours
Dream 365 Project will take over the YouTube homepage for a day in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and United Kingdom.
California is the third biggest state in the U.S. and has more people than Canada. Between Eureka and San Diego there's so much geographic and cultural diversity that to pitch tourism under a single brand name is a tough proposition, even with the help of Hollywood.
Behind The Breakout Role: How Spirit Award Nominee Keith Stanfield Dug Deep For His "Short Term 12" Performance
Actor and musical artist Keith Stanfield got a Spirit nomination for Best Supporting Actor and critical acclaim for the song he wrote for the film. Here, he talks about catching the moment for a breakthrough performance.
A few months ago, Keith Stanfield was so broke he couldn't even check emails because he'd run out of minutes on his pre-paid phone. But this weekend, thanks to his soul-searing performance in Short Term 12, the 22-year old actor/rapper will be mingling with Hollywood big shots when he competes against Michael Fassbender, Jared Leto, Will Forte, and the late James Gandolfini for Best Supporting Actor recognition at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Why Restricting Tesla Sales In New York Is Bad For Innovation
Direct sales from the manufacturer create an unfair a competitive advantage, says the State Legislature. But that's the point.
Tesla is having itself a pretty nice year so far. Not only were sales of its first mid-priced sedan, the Model S, 20% higher than anticipated (helping land Tesla a nod on our Most Innovative Companies list), but Consumer Reports recently gave it top honors in its annual rankings of the best cars available for 2014.
At These Companies, Interns Make More Than The U.S. Median Household Income
The list, compiled by Glassdoor, is tech heavy, with Palantir, VMWare, and Twitter at the top.
It's time to do some serious life evaluation. Glassdoor has compiled a list of the top 25 companies with the best-paid internships, and annualized, interns at all of these organizations make more than the median household income in the U.S., which sits at around $53,000. With that kind of money, you know no one's fetching coffee.
Take A Stroll On New York's New High Line, Coming Soon To Queens
There are abandoned railway tracks across the city. This 3.5-mile piece of track that stretches across the borough might be the city's next amazing park.
New York City's High Line definitely wasn't the first abandoned rail line to be turned into a park--one of its inspirations came from the Promenade Plantee, built almost 20 years earlier in Paris. But the Manhattan park, opened in 2009, has spawned similar ideas around the world, from a crowdfunded skybridge in the Netherlands to an underground garden in London. And now there might be another elevated rail park in New York City.
The Surprising History Of The Warner Bros. Logo
Proving that great design is both timeless and infinitely adaptable, the Warner Bros. logo has had hundreds of different iterations over the years. Here are some of our favorites.
The Warner Bros. logo has always had the same basic premise: It's a shield floating in the clouds stamped with the initials W.B. Everyone knows it, and looking back at old Warner Bros. movies, it's tempting to say that it basically hasn't changed over the years: The emblem you see at the beginning of a movie today seems virtually identical to the one you would have seen 60 years ago.
How Oscar-Nominated Sound Sounds, From The Sound Editor of "Lone Survivor"
Academy Award-nominated sound editor Wylie Stateman discusses why and how Lone Survivor sounds the way it does, and putting the audience right in the frame with the movie's characters.
There is not one sound in a film that the audience hears by accident. Like every frame, every single noise is a conscious decision. As the supervising sound editor on the Academy Award-nominated war film, Lone Survivor, Wylie Stateman is responsible for the planning and execution of each and every one of those sounds, and how they're integrated into the film. Although Stateman's team includes foley artists, production mixers, composers, and many others, he is in charge of most creative decisions that determine what the audience hears.
How "Frozen" Director Jennifer Lee Reinvented The Story Of The Snow Queen
Frozen didn't click until the main characters were reimagined as sisters with a complicated relationship. Co-director Jennifer Lee talks with Fast Company about the collaboration that resulted in the highest-grossing Disney animated film of all time.
The fact that Jennifer Lee is a woman isn't the only thing that makes her one of the most unorthodox directors at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Lee, who co-wrote and co-directed the blockbuster Frozen, is the very first female director at the studio. But unlike most of her peers, who earned their degrees at places like CalArts and have spent years in the animation trenches, Lee started out in book publishing before getting her master's in film at Columbia University, where she was more immersed in New Wave and independent cinema than Dumbo or Shrek.
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