It is currently Saturday and I am typing this with tiny T-rex arms on account of going wall climbing earlier because FITNESS. This is a demonstration of my dedication to the Pipwick Papers. This edition has ended up quite biology-focused although that wasn't intentional. Anyway, just think of me as a bird (descended from dinosaurs), flapping about and finding grubs to deliver to your faces. Except the grubs are weblinks and birds are rubbish at the internet.
Co.Design has this on the craftsmanship of The Grand Budapest Hotel to coincide with the publication of Matt Zoller Seitz's book. There's been a lot written about that movie's aesthetic and this piece is peppered with links to lots of them.
"We made a train. But the train wasn’t a real train. There was nothing much to it. It was exactly like a stage train, made out of cardboard and tape and sticks and painted black, with smoke coming out the top. We pushed it into the shot on dolly tracks from the right-hand side of the frame."
My Own Life by Oliver Sacks (author of one of my favourite non-fiction books, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat) was written for The New York Times after the professor learned he has terminal cancer – detached and determined is how I would characterise it as well as moving:
"Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life."
Here's Ben Mortimer over on Den of Geek talking about the realities of being a red carpet reporter. I've only done red carpet maybe a couple of times but my experience mirrored his. If you're curious, my own first time was when I was drafted in at the last moment to be a camera person for a Russell Crowe movie red carpet in Leicester Square. I spent a lot of time worrying that the camera was at the right height and it didn't look like I was pointing it up at him from my own shoulder a good foot below his head.
The Guardian has Greek finance minister (and Valve's former in-house economist) Yanis Varoufakis on "How I became an erratic Marxist"
Yet my aim here is to offer a window into my view of a repugnant European capitalism whose implosion, despite its many ills, should be avoided at all costs. It is a confession intended to convince radicals that we have a contradictory mission: to arrest the freefall of European capitalism in order to buy the time we need to formulate its alternative.
