Elsewhere, 8/10/2007

Twitch reviews Stardust, the latest Neil Gaiman adaptation. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since it came out — Stardust is probably my favorite Gaiman work — but everything I’ve been hearing suggests that I’ll have to lower my expectations an awful lot. Which isn’t a good feeling. And Overstreet’s review is some additional confirmation.

Also from Twitch, some news on Goemon, the new film by Kaz Kiriya (Casshern) and Even If You Walk And Walk, the new film by Hirokazu Kore-Eda (HANA, Nobody Knows).

Michel Gondry’s next film, Be Kind, Rewind, now has a trailer. Looks appropriately Gondry-ish, and could be either a lot of fun (like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) or not so much (like The Science Of Sleep).

Peter Chattaway on Helvetica, a documentary about the famous font, and typography in general: “Some of the typographers and graphic designers who were interviewed for the film get really passionate and animated about their profession, and I find being in the presence of such enthusiasm exhilarating, even when the enthusiasm is directed at something I am only partially familiar with.”

Stereogum has a preview MP3 from the North American release of Sally Shapiro’s Disco Romance (due out October 30 from Paper Bag). Pure disco pop heaven, is what it is, the perfect thing to brighten up your week.

Khoi Vinh interviews Olav Frihagen Bjørkøy, the creator of Blueprint, a framework for developing CSS that encourages the use of grids and solid typography.

IBM’s recent overview of the proposed elements for HTML 5 contains some potentially exciting developments that will make coding semantically-rich websites even easier.

Thanks to The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and United 93, Paul Greengrass is quickly becoming a director that I’ll trust implicitly. This Guardian interview only solidifies that feeling, especially this quote concerning his new film, Imperial Life In The Emerald City:

I think one should always beware of polemics. The book [on which the film is based] isn’t polemical at all. I think if you really want to understand what happened in Iraq you have to avoid condemnation and acquaint yourselves with an agenda of hope and engagement with the world. People talk about Bush and Blair as if two sovereigns met on a muddy field somewhere and decided to invade Iraq… I mean, I don’t find that a helpful way of understanding the world. I’m not justifying it, but when we make this next film we must explore things with compassion, not polemicism.

Ars Technica reviews the new iMac: “The iMac is also competitive on price with other all-in-one PCs, so if you absolutely love the all-in-one form factor, the iMac is one of lower-priced options available. If you’ve been holding on to your Power PC Mac and waiting for the right time to make the big switch to Intel, the appearance of the new iMac marks an excellent opportunity.”

July Skies has posted a couple of new tracks — or at least edited versions of some new tracks — to their MySpace page. The second track, “Playgrounds”, is especially intriguing, venturing off into more electronic, Boards of Canada-ish territory a la those Epic45 remixes on Where The Days Go (make sure you stick around for the second movement). Now, if only they’d actually release The Weather Clock sometime soon!

On a related note, the new album from fellow nostalgists Epic45, May Your Heart Be The Map, is now available from Make Mine Music.