Nikki Finke has the numbers: “Early
overseas estimates from Paramount have Iron Man 2
grossing just over $100 million from 53 markets. And some large
territories haven’t even opened yet, like Germany, Japan, and China. In
local currencies, the film opened 25% ahead of the original Iron
Man (despite the fact that in those two years both the British pound
and Euro have dropped significantly). IM1 opened at $99
million (that opening also included Germany). The largest opening was
the UK ending the weekend with $12M including previews. Second was Korea
at $11M. Third was Australia at $9M. Fourth was France at $8.5M.”
Nikki goes on to guess at a $155 million opening weekend in America this weekend, with an outside chance of topping The Dark Knight‘s 3-day record of $158.4 million.
Despite the modern framing at the end of this book arguing about whether or not this was a tragedy or a happy ending by bringing computers into the whole thing to support the side of happy, which puts a pimple onto something that is quite near-perfection otherwise, I will say that this is, in the imperfect vernacular, freakin’ awesome.
Being an Aristotelian and Thomist (Thomas Aquinas, 13th C.), mainly an Ethicist and Metaphysician, though I am acquainted with modern philosophies, they are not my favourite dance floor. I am neither adept at nor a fan of analytical philosophy – where they turn premises and sentences into symbols like mathematical equations. So I am absolutely gobsmacked that three Greek guys and one Italian-French chick got a hold of Bertrand Russell (19th-20th C. Logician, Mathematician), and not only made this titled noble Welshman from Cambridge comprehensible, but a sympathetic human character.
How did these wacky geniuses – Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie DiDonna – manage this great feat in all their fabulous geekitude? Very simply. They went straight to the heart of what makes Philosophy philosophical. It is the human quest. Every Philosopher is on it and always has been for nearly 3000 years.
Philosophers are, as a general lot, idealists. They are insane enough to dare to view the best and then to try to find a way to get there, through the Labyrinth, past the Minotaur, and give us mere mortals a map by which to follow along (maps being symbols of reality). The story is framed by our authors as they try to write this book and get it published and, just like their philosophical hero, they got turned down in their initial efforts, but persevered ‘til you have what is now before you.
The artwork is sweet, gentle, old-fashioned, nostalgic, very well-suited to this story starting in Victorian times and running through both World Wars, in Britain and across Germany, Austria, and Belgium. It’s approachable and easy on the eyes, but never talks down to the reader or the material – this is not Russell for Dummies. This is Russell for honest seekers who really want to understand him and his related colleagues but just aren’t wired for 360+ pages of symbols to indisputably prove that 1+1 = 2.
LONDON (Reuters) – Spider silk isalready tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made itthree times stronger by adding small amounts of metal.
The technique may be useful for manufacturing super-tough textiles andhigh-tech medical materials, including artificial bones and tendons.
“It could make very strong thread for surgical operations,” researcher Seung-Mo Lee of the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany, said in a telephone interview.
Lee and colleagues, who published their findings in the journalScience, found that adding zinc, titanium or aluminum to a length ofspider silk made it more resistant to breaking or deforming.
They used a process called atomic layer deposition,which not only coated spider dragline silks with metal but also causedsome metal ions to penetrate the fibers and react with their proteinstructure.
Lee said he next wanted to try adding other materials, including artificial polymers like Teflon.
The idea was inspired by studies showing traces of metals in thetoughest parts of some insect body parts. The jaws of leaf-cutter antsand locusts, for example, both contain high levels of zinc, making themparticularly stiff and hard.
Yeah, sure. We know where they really got inspired– Web of Spider-Man #100.
Born on March 19, 1888 in Bottrop, Westphalia, Germany, Josef Albers was a designer, photographer, typographer, printmaker, and poet, but he is best remembered as an abstract painter and theorist.
A professor at the prestigious Weimar Bauhaus for many years (from 1922 to 1933), Albers moved to the U.S. and joined the faculty of Black Mountain College in North Carolina after the Nazis shut the Bauhaus down. He took a job teaching design at Yale in 1950, and taught there until his retirement in 1958.
Albers continued to paint and write in New Haven until his death in 1976. His work is often considered a bridge between traditional European and new American art, and he heavily influenced the Op artists, among others.
Filmmaker Uwe Boll, whose work on big-budget flops such as Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne has made him a favorite target of critics and movie fans, recently announced that he plans to return to low-budget films now that the tax shelter that provided backing for his projects has been banned in Germany.
After making a career out of producing big-budget adapatations of videogame properties, his latest project, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, continued the filmmaker’s streak of both commerical and critical failures at the box office. Despite his string of big-screen flops, Boll’s ability to continue producing big-budget films due to German tax shelter funding has long been a subject of discussion among online movie fans and critics alike. In 2006, after BloodRayne was universally savaged by critics and fell more than $20 million short of making back its production costs, Boll earned even more notoriety by challenging some of his most vocal critics to a boxing match. The critics who took him up on the offer received a fairly one-sided beating.
"In the future, I will focus on small films such as (the video game adaptation) Postal or (the Vietnam war drama) Tunnel Rats, " [Boll] said. "These are films that represent my true passion, and they can be done with small budgets."
…
"Because of the Boll reputation, it is not easy to get audiences into the cinemas," said Mychael Berg, head of distribution at 20th Century Fox in Germany, which released King locally. "We finally managed it, and we are quite satisfied with the abut 250,000 people who watched the movie (in Germany). We proved that you can make money with a Boll film."
Boll’s next project? The filmmaker plans to helm an adaptation of the videogame Zombie Massacre.
One hundred and thirty years ago this past Wednesday, Thomas Edison made the first ever audio recording, which consisted of him reciting "Mary Had A Little Lamb". It entered the charts at #1.
But twenty-five years ago today, the world’s first compact disc was produced at a Philips factory in Germany, ushering in a new world of audio and laying the groundwork for digital copying, MP3s, Napster… well, at least we got rid of all the hisses and pops, right?
Variety reports today that Spider-Man 3 set opening day records in 10 of the 16 markets in which it opened yesterday. In Italy, for example, it earned $4 million, beating the previous record of $2.5 million, held by The DaVinci Code. Sony invested $3.3 million in marketing there.
In France, SM3 earned $6.8 million, ahead of Star Wars: Episode III. In terms of ticket sales, that’s 175,334 for Spidey, 124,664 for the Sith.
Records were also set in Germany, Belgium and Egypt.
I’m figuring if I go Monday, I might be able to get a seat.
Often inspired by his artistic superheroes Dave McKean, Frank Miller, Diane Fenster, and the ever-groovy René Magritte, Jamie enjoyed creating digital art. Recent work includes book covers for his father Michael Bishop’s Brighten to Incandescence and A Reverie for Mister Ray as well as Mike Jasper’s now ironically-named short story collection Gunning for the Buddha.
Despite a penchant for art, Jamie received both his B.A. and M.A. in German at the University of Georgia. Between 1993 and 2000 he lived for four years in Germany where he spent most of his time, in his words, "learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer, and wooing a certain Fräulein," Dr. Stefanie Hoder, who would later become his wife.
Jamie’s art portfolio, along with a dated version of his biography, can be found at http://www.memory39.com/, which is also the name of the piece of art above. The Los Angeles Times has an article about Jamie here.
Emile Hirsch, the relatively unknown actor, has been cast as Speed Racer in Joel Silver’s live-action adaptation of the beloved Japanese anime from the 1960s.
Hirsch has already been seen in Alpha Dog and Lords of Dogtown and will next be seen in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, opening in September. He told E! the film would be “Blade Runner meets Andy Warhol meets pop art.” No other casting has been confirmed thus far.
Speed Racer is on track for its May 9, 2008 release with filming set for Potsdam, Germany this spring and summer. Silver has already announced that the film will be intended for all audiences and is aiming at a high octane G-rating.
Based on the 1960s anime, Speed Racer will be filmed in Germany at Studio Babelsberg, according to the Hollywood Reporter, by — the Wachowski brothers? This is a return to where they shot V For Vendetta. The Warner Bros. movie is currently in pre-production.
Nikki Finke has the numbers: “Early
Scientists make super-strong metallic spider silk
One hundred and thirty years ago this past Wednesday, Thomas Edison made the first ever audio recording, which consisted of him reciting "Mary Had A Little Lamb". It entered the charts at #1.
