Just the other day I posted a link and embedded video of “dashcam” footage of New York circa 1926 (you can read about it here). I noted that while the website claimed the video from 1926 might be the oldest dashcam footage ever, I found that doubtful. I recalled silent films from that era and before that also featured dashcam footage, so while old and unquestionably fascinating, I was reasonably certain the 1926 footage was not the “first” of its kind.
Well, to the website’s credit they have found and posted an even older dashcam footage. Considerably older.
The footage below is from 1907 Vancouver! Given the year, the footage presented isn’t from an automobile, rather was made via streetcar. Still, incredibly fascinating to watch:
For more information on the footage, plus equally fascinating information on the man who filmed it (and died a mere five years later in one of the most famous maritime disasters of all time), click on the following link:
Excellent news: David Bowie has just released the first single from his new album, “Where Are We Now?”:
The single is currently available at iTunes and the album itself will appear by March of this year. This is Mr. Bowie’s first new work in (gasp!) ten long years. For a while there, it appeared he might be retiring but I’m glad we’re getting at least one more taste of his (to my ears) very unique and compelling work.
UPDATE: All right, I’ve given the above song a few listens and I have to say I’m very impressed. The song is haunting, introspective piece that grows on you with each listen. Certainly fills me with optimism and curiosity regarding the entire album. The album, titled “The Next Day”, has 17 (!) tracks on the iTunes “Deluxe” edition.
Follow this fascinating link to find footage from the archives of the Fire Department of New York which show a car transporting Fire Chief John Kenlon from the Brooklyn Fire Department to a storage warehouse fire on East 123rd Street.
If you’re not interested in reading the entire article, you can see the actual dashcam footage here:
Now, I suspect this is not the earliest “dashcam” type footage out there. I seem to recall seeing plenty of silent films that featured vehicular adventures and footage from the front seat. Further, there is an interesting bit of…I wouldn’t quite call it controversy but rather “questions” regarding the exact date this footage was filmed. The date of the video is listed as April 24, 1926. But, according to Ian, one clever poster for the article, records indicated that day in NY was actually quite warm. Perhaps the footage was filmed at an earlier (snowier) date rather than the late spring date given?
Regardless, fascinating stuff and an extended look at what the streets of New York looked like nearly one hundred years ago. My only wish is that they could slow down and correct the rate the footage is presented. Things are a little too “sped up”.
Consider me one of those people who are fascinated by Disney’s 1946 animated/live action film Song of the South. To this day, it is the only film that the Disney company refuses to release, despite the fact that it features one of their more famous songs (“Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”) and the additional fact that the Disney parks have a ride based on the film (Splash Mountain).
However, the film has not been re-released for obvious (racial) reasons. For years I accepted the contention made by others that the movie was a “product of its time”. Turns out I should have been more skeptical of those claims.
Check out this paragraph from the book’s review:
(Jason Sperb) first punctures the myth that the racial caricatures in Song of the South were “a product of its time.” This is an argument that the film’s defenders trot out reliably, when, in fact, Disney took uncharacteristic pains to undercut the Harris tales’ potential offensiveness. As Neal Gabler’s biography reveals, Disney hired a leftist screenwriter, Mauric Rapf, to modify the original script by southerner Dalton Reymond; Disney Company reps met with producers of the racially controversial 1943 film Stormy Weather to hear about their marketing experiences; and Disney publicists warned management of potential racially charged blowback. Walt Disney himself even invited NAACP president Walter White to California to oversee script revisions, though the meeting never occurred.
It is stuff like this that really intrigues me. I may just have to give this book a look.
When I first stumbled upon the “Brands that Will Disappear” kind of lists, I was genuinely shocked to find the giant bookseller Borders on the list. That list, which appeared a couple of years ago, proved accurate as in 2011 the chain of stores officially ended their run.
What brands are in danger today? Follow the link to the Daily Finance page and you shall find your answers!
A while back someone wrote about their favorite “guilty pleasures” and it got me thinking about what mine were/are. This proved to be both an easy and rather hard thing to do. The first thing that sprung to my mind was the Resident Evil movies. Hard because, other than that series of films, I found it difficult to think of anything else that fell into a genuine “guilty pleasure” category…for me.
“Guilty pleasures,” I feel, are things you know in your heart are not all that good (you may even be willing to describe them as “bad”) yet you can’t help but enjoy the product, be it a book, a movie, or an album. To my mind, the Resident Evil movies are far from (a) original or (b) terribly coherent. But what they are…or at least have been…are reasonably enjoyable time killers and, yes, the definition of a “guilty pleasure”.
Until now.
Resident Evil: Retribution, the fifth installment in the franchise, starts with the finale of the previous film, 2010’s Resident Evil: Afterlife. But immediately after this, the film goes off into its own direction and for the most part ignores pretty much everything that happened after that previous movie’s cliffhanger. It’s telling that the film’s makers could have cut that recap sequence out completely and simply started the movie with our imprisoned heroine, Alice (Milla Jovovich), and move on from there.
So what does this latest movie in the series offer?
Well, we do have the return of some old characters, from Michelle Rodriguez’s Rain to Sienna Guillory’s Jill Valentine to Oded Fehr’s Carlos Olivera. If you’re familiar with the series, you immediately realize that two of the characters mentioned above were killed in previous Resident Evil films, and part of what got me interested in seeing this newest film was to see how they went about returning these characters to the series.
Alas, it turned out the returning characters were both good and evil clones. Period end of story.
Speaking of story, the story here is beyond simple. Alice wakes up after the events of the previous film’s cliffhanger, finds she is trapped in some kind of Umbrella Corp. base, and works to break out while a group of ally soldiers are heading toward her to meet in the middle of the base and then, together, get out. Much mayhem follows.
Sadly, the characters this time around are incredibly, ineptly defined. It almost seemed like the film’s makers decided to focus entirely on the action set pieces and move everything forward to the end so that they could set up the cliffhanger to the next film (which, by the way, they most certainly do). The problem lies in the fact that because the characters are so badly defined this time around we simply don’t care about any of them. When one after the other mercenary/soldier sent to help Alice dies, we’re not bothered in the least. There’s also the insertion of a child into the story that I couldn’t help but feel was a too blatant attempt to tap into the whole Aliens story dynamic (one of the more obvious “inspirations” to this series as a whole) of Ripley trying to save the last survivor of LV-426. But while Aliens built up the tension and relationship between the characters extremely effectively, the relationship between Alice and her child was, like all else in this film, presented in a too rushed manner.
So, overall, my guilty pleasure really let me down this time around. This movie, like the other Resident Evil films, made a ton of money and I suspect the sixth film in the series is already in the works. Whatever they decide to do, I hope they focus on giving us more of a story and character next time around.
Who am I kidding? It’s Resident Evil. I suspect the next film will offer much more of the same.
