91. In brief
There’s a wonderful animated film on Amazon Prime Video that lasts less than an hour: Look Back. It’s about two girls who find each other thanks to their love of drawing manga stories. They’re as different as night and day, and perhaps that’s why they lift each other to a higher level. Through flashbacks, you follow snippets of their lives, until you get a punch in the gut and find yourself watching the credits in silence. Based on a manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, who is causing a sensation with the bizarre Chainsaw Man.
---Yousef Gnaoui (Sef) and Pepijn Lanen (Faberyayo) have created a six-part TV series for VPRO called Yous & Yay in the Wild. Each episode features a different artist/director as a guest who is interviewed. Interspersed with this, you see mini-portraits of the topics discussed and enjoy voice-overs by Noraly Beyer. This programme is brilliantly directed in a way that lends every conversation a slightly eerie quality.
---I’ve basically had enough of everything Coldplay’s done since Viva La Vida. Until I saw this video for the new song All My Love, a tribute to the American comedian and actor Dick Van Dyke. He turns 99 next week. It’s irresistibly touching. I can’t quite explain why, but it reminds me emotionally of the heart-warming feel of The Muppets. With Chris Martin as Kermit.
---New York Magazine describes the popularity of podcasts on YouTube. In the US, most people now go to YouTube for podcasts, rather than Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I myself am also watching podcasts with video more and more often, although I still listen to a greater proportion via the Overcast app on my phone. Ben Cohen writes in The Wall Street Journal that podcasts are no longer a new form of radio for younger listeners, but rather a new form of television.
Notre-Dame has reopened five years after the devastating fire. The New York Times has a brilliant article on the cathedral’s miraculous return on the cathedral’s return. France celebrated the reopening in style and you can watch the entire event on YouTube. The best part is how the organ finally roars through Notre-Dame again after the archbishop’s closing prayer. What a spectacle.
---Everyone knows that in Connect Four, you have the best chance of winning if you go first and place your disc in the middle column. All you then need to do is play it out perfectly, and this video explains how to do that.
---Fancy hanging a screen on the wall that plays this website? Pong Clock looks like Pong, plays itself, and the score is the time. The right-hand side (the minutes side) wins every single day.
For fans of the Alan Wake games, this is well worth a look. A fan film that manages to capture the atmosphere of Alan Wake II surprisingly well.
---Rough weather outside, Christmas tree inside and a virtual log fire on. Have a look at this one from NASA.
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