3D, Views, Bananas, Contagion, Volcano
The Life and Death of 3D
The Royal Ocean Film Society | YouTube | 31st March 2020
In 2008, film mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg called 3D "the next great frontier for filmmaking," and predicted that in 5 years every movie would be in 3D – yet in 2020, it is barely relevant to the filmgoing experience. One explanation is the failure of post-conversion 3D, as opposed to on-site "native" 3D. Or maybe audiences just don't care enough to keep it alive (17m32s)
This Video Has 5,841,430 Views
Tom Scott | YouTube | 6th April 2020
Tom Scott explains how open APIs (application programming interfaces) have allowed for both benign coding experiments – like this video's title – and serious public harm, like Russian Twitter bots or Facebook's invasive data harvesting. The white cliffs of Dover behind him serve as a metaphor for such websites; powerful cultural icons that will eventually be eroded into oblivion (10m38s)
Bananas, Sardines, and Sharks
Adam Westbrook | Vimeo | 12th January 2015
In 1954, the CIA ousted the president of Guatemala, because they (mistakenly) believed him to be a communist, which sparked a brutal 36-year civil war. All of this was orchestrated by the United Fruit Company in order to maintain its international banana monopoly. A somewhat forgotten case of catastrophic US foreign policy (7m48s)
I Can't Stop Watching Contagion
Folding Ideas | YouTube | 31st March 2020
A quarantine diary, projected onto its exhausted couch-bound author. "Disease does not have a narrative meaning – it does not have an eye for poetry, or twists, or closure. The only meaning is in how we respond. So, I watch Contagion, over and over and over again, because I need to practice emotions, and I need to live in a bounded world, and I need to believe we can choose better." (15m50s)
Striking Video of the Week
In vivid footage of the 2018 Kilauea eruption, lava consumes the forests of Hawaii's Big Island
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