These Wheelchair stairs are pretty awesome:
"These stairs/ramp are in Brussels. Apart from the visual appeal, I like this because it allows people in wheelchairs to navigate the stairs without segregating them from those on foot. Brilliant and beautiful!"
All sorts of great pictures from In Focus, Photos of the Week: 1/24-1/30 "This week we have images of lemurs in China, a Dalek in a pool in the UK, the blizzard that hit the U.S. East Coast, the liberation of Kobani, Syria, a rare megamouth shark, a wine cork portrait of the King and Queen of Spain, a Zanzibari fisherman, and much more."
io9 lists Every Time Travel Movie Ever, Ranked
"With the release of yet another time travel movie this week (Project Almanac), it's time for us to look back at the great time travel movies of our past. Here are all the major time travel movies ever, ranked. Here are the rules: No animation. No short films. And no movies that where someone is frozen (or something) and then they wake up in the future (so Mel Gibson's Forever Young, Encino Man are OUT)."
Normally I'd just read this and nod and humf at some. But they criminally ranked Timecrimes way too low so I had to take a crack at it:
These are good movies worth seeing roughly in order favorite to least
These are fine, worth catching on cable or renting:
I've seen these and they aren't good:
The Movies I didn't see:
Henry Farrell in The Washington Post's Monkey Cage explains Russia is hinting at a new Cold War over SWIFT. So what’s SWIFT?. I didn't know of any of this.
"Because SWIFT plays such a crucial role in international financial transactions. Russia’s own financial system relies on SWIFT and would likely be crippled if it were no longer able to use the system. Russian banks would have great difficulty in engaging in transactions with each other."
After Apple announced the most profitable quarter of any company ever, Ben Thompson writes Bad Assumptions.
And yet, the perception that Apple is somehow hanging on by the skin of their teeth persists. I was speaking to someone about Apple’s particularly excellent China results this afternoon, and was struck at how their questions were so focused on threats to Apple – “How will Apple respond to Xiaomi” for example. This is in stark contrast to the way most think about a company like Google, where their dominance in whatever field they choose to enter is assumed, just as Microsoft’s was a decade ago. Apple, though, is always a step away from catastrophe.
It’s difficult to overstate just how absurd this is, but here’s my best attempt: last quarter Apple’s revenue was downright decimated by the strengthening U.S. dollar; currency fluctuations reduced Apple’s revenue by 5% – a cool $3.73 billion dollars. That, though, is more than Google made in profit last quarter ($2.83 billion). Apple lost more money to currency fluctuations than Google makes in a quarter. And yet it’s Google that is feared, and Apple that is feared for.
I really don't like Vox's Buzzfeed headlines but I found 9 surprising facts about the sense of touch to actually be surprising.
This is my favorite Queen story: Queen Elizabeth II once terrorized King Abdullah — by driving him around.
Remember that animation of global wind, weather, and ocean conditions ? It's particularly interesting now and looks better moving:
So I haven't written a movie review in a while, let's correct that. I saw A Most Violent Year tonight and you shouldn't. I'm not sure why this movie is getting so much praise. It's written and directed by J.C. Chandor who's previous films Margin Call and All Is Lost I mostly liked.
First the basics. Oscar Isaac plays Abel Morales the head of a heating oil company in New York in 1981. He built the business himself and it's doing well and he's trying to expand by investing all his savings in a new storage facility. Straining his finances isn't his only problem. For the last six months many of his trucks have been hijacked and the oil stolen. He doesn't know who is doing it but suspects one of his competitors in this shady industry. The police have been no help and in fact the DA, David Oyelowo, is investigating him and the whole industry. But here's the hook, Abel is, in spite of all this adversity, trying to do the right thing. He's really trying to be honest in his dealings while being aggressive in his business. This is a marked difference from his competitors and his wife, Jessica Chastain. She's the daughter of a mob guy and keeps threatening to get her family involved if Abel doesn't step up. She also handles the company's books.
So that's a fine setup and the movie isn't horrible but it doesn't go anywhere. First, I didn't believe for a moment that Abel is successful. The film just states that he is, but he doesn't make any decision that a boss would need to make. If your trucks are being hijacked and your drivers attacked again and again, you have to do something to protect them. You can't just send them out and say they're stronger for going out again and the attackers are just cowards. Fine he doesn't want to arm them illegally, but how about giving them something to protect themselves with. Or hire security (or just more people) to sit in the trucks too. He also has no knowledge about the books of his business. A few times we see him in negotiations with others and he's horrible at it. It reminded me of the old Robin Williams joke about British police; "Stop! or I'll say stop again!" There are a couple of moments where he shows some skill, offering something for what he wants, but they don't add up to anything.
I also read a bunch of reviews raving about the cinematography. Ok, so it's set in 1981, they have the cars and outfits looking right. Otherwise it's mostly slightly dark with lots of brown tones. Meh. It's set in New York City and while you see some run down areas and some industrial yards and the occasional skyline, there's barely any people in it. The roads either have no one on them or are packed so that no one is moving. The conversations are all in rooms with just a couple of people. The offices of this up-and-coming company only ever have one other person in it, the one Abel has to talk to. It could be anywhere, so all those comparisons I've seen to Sidney Lumet are just ludicrous.
I don't know why this was set in 1981. Apparently that was the year in NY with the worst crime statistics, but it could have been now with no problem. Ok, perhaps it's useful to have no cellphones, but he has a radio that the company uses and there's at least one obvious time where I was practically screaming to have him use it to call the police.
A few things do happen but it doesn't add up to much. None of the characters have an arc or change in any but the slightest ways. Abel's constant refrain about doing the right thing I guess make's it a morality tale. Sure trying to be good is sometimes difficult, but a story should offer more to it than just repeating that. And I don't respect a character that's about always doing the right thing while simultaneously ignoring some problems and not wanting to hear about others. Well that could be interesting, but the film should point out the flaws in that folly. I think Stephanie Zacharek nails it, "It's not really that violent. But it sure feels like a year."
Amazon lists 100 Books To Read In A Lifetime. I'm surprised I've read 25 of them (and own a few more).
Because looking at photos from the moon never gets old...
In Focus takes A Look Back at Apollo 16 "In early April of 1972, NASA was preparing to launch the Apollo program's 10th manned mission, Apollo 16—the fifth to actually land on the Moon. This mission would be the penultimate trip in the Apollo program, carrying astronauts John Young, Charles Duke, and Ken Mattingly to the Moon, with Young and Duke headed to the lunar surface while Mattingly remained in orbit. Apollo 16 was the second expedition to bring a Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) along. The astronauts spent more than 20 hours exploring the surface of the Moon, driving 16.6 miles in their LRV, gathering 210 pounds of samples, and setting up a package of instruments and experiments. On April 27, 1972, the crew splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, after 12 days away from Earth."
The Atlantic Photo writes A Bioluminescent Bloom in Hong Kong "A bloom of Noctiluca scintillans, a large, green marine dinoflagellate that exhibits bioluminescence when disturbed, was captured in photos made earlier today in Hong Kong, with a long exposure showing an eerie glow along the seashore. The luminescence, also called Sea Sparkle, is triggered by farm pollution that can be devastating to marine life and local fisheries, according to University of Georgia oceanographer Samantha Joye. Noctiluca itself does not produce neurotoxins like other similar organisms do. But its role as both prey and predator can eventually magnify the accumulation of toxins in the food chain, according to R. Eugene Turner at Louisiana State University."
Sharp Football Analysis looks at the Patriots and their rates of fumbles. It's pretty amazing.
Ars Technica reports The Solar System may have two undiscovered planets
"The presence of the closer of the two planets had already been suggested in a previous work. The new study provides more evidence for its existence and adds a second planet. Both studies are based on observations of objects far beyond Neptune’s orbit, called extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs). These ETNOs display shared patterns in their orbits, which suggests they’re all being influenced gravitationally by heavier objects, much further away from the Sun. While this conclusion is based on a small sample (13 bodies), the authors confirm that their results are statistically significant and that at least two planets, orbiting far beyond Pluto’s orbit, are the most likely explanation for the observations."
Backchannel published A Teenager’s View on Social Media. It's a kinda interesting look at what one 19 year-old's social network uses to keep in touch. He followed it up with What Teens Really Think About YouTube, Google+, Reddit and Other Social Media. As he said, neither is a statistical study or an attempt to describe what every teen uses, but it's a nice survey of the options. There's been some backlash, the faults are described in An Old Fogey’s Analysis of a Teenager’s View on Social Media.
On the other end, Ars Technical wrote about Ars’ small taste of no-tech travel. A couple took a weekend trip (by train) and didn't use any tech for one whole entire day but did use it the next day and compared the results. Basically as you'd expect.
On the really high tech side, Microsoft’s new interface: FREAKING HOLOGRAMS. They demo'ed a new device that's apparently going to be available "in the same timeframe as Windows 10" that's a combination Oculus Rift and Kinect. It's goggles you wear, that can project images a la augmented reality, but that you can also interact with a la Kinect. Ars Technica, Re/code, and Yahoo Tech all got a hands-on demo and really liked it. The Verge says, Minecraft — more than anything else — could make HoloLens a hit.
Nice post on Medium on How PAPER Magazine’s web engineers scaled Kim Kardashian’s back-end. Yes it's safe for work.
It's a fairly technical description of what systems they set up to enable a site that normally handles "a couple million people per month " to be able to cope with something that will generate "at least 100 million page views". Their IT guy had 5 days notice to make this happen.
This is pretty amusing. Pirating the 2015 Oscars: HD Edition "Pirates are now watching films at higher quality than the industry insiders voting on them."
"But here’s the thing: screeners are stuck in the last decade. While we’re all streaming HD movies from iTunes or Netflix, the movie studios almost universally send screeners by mail on DVDs, which is forever stuck in low-resolution standard-definition quality. A small handful are sent in higher-definition Blu-ray. This year, one Academy member received 68 screeners — 59 on DVD and only eight on Blu-ray. Only 13% of screeners were sent to voters in HD quality."
Dara Lind reports in Vox 8 ways the GOP’s State of the Union response was different in Spanish — and why it matters
"For three of the last four years, the GOP has given one response to the State of the Union, but gave it twice: once in English, and once translated into Spanish. This year, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) delivered the speech in English, and Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), one of his party's lone immigration reformers, delivered it in Spanish.
The initial GOP press release billed the Spanish speech as a 'translation,' but it was clear to anyone who listened to both versions that these were two different responses to President Barack Obama's 2015 State of the Union — tailored to two different audiences.
Ernst laid out a version of the GOP agenda that dodged immigration reform, and other policy topics that are controversial among Republican voters — but important to Latinos. Curbelo included them, as well as making other substantial changes to the text of the speech. (Curbelo told the Miami Herald that he'd made the changes himself.)
The two speeches never contradicted each other; they weren't intended as doublespeak. But the omissions, additions, and nuances in phrasing added up to an impressive speech."
So they're literally talking with two faces to the English and Spanish speaking communites.
Brad Plummer in Vox concludes The Senate is pretty clearly a hoax
So now it's 2015, and the Senate is debating a bunch of amendments on a bill that would fast-track approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. On Wednesday, they were faced with one from Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) that said:
'To express the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.'
That one was pretty easy. The Senate voted 98 to 1 in favor of this amendment. So far, so good.
But then came a tougher question. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) put forward an amendment that said:
'To express the sense of the Senate that climate change is real; and human activity significantly contributes to climate change.'
In the end, just 50 senators voted 'yes' on the question.* But 49 senators voted 'no.' The amendment failed to pick up the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster."
There was also a separate, milder amendment from John Hoeven (R-ND) stating that "climate change is real and humans contributed to it." Even this one failed, but it ended up getting 59 "yes" votes in all.
So I guess it's now fair to say the GOP believes climate change is real but doesn't yet agree that it's man-made. The next amendment I would propose is:
'To express the sense of the Senate that climate change is real; and human activity could significantly contribute to alleviating climate change.'
Meanwhile, Republican leadership pulls anti-abortion bill that was tearing the caucus apart. Because remember that jobs are the most important thing for the Congress to be working on (and there's no war on women).
The Urban Institute has an interactive tool, Mapping America’s Futures "Test possible scenarios for how the US population might change by 2020 and 2030. The results will change depending on whether you choose low, average, or high rates for future births, deaths, or migration."
Wonkblog uses it with 4 maps that show how demographic change will touch every corner of the country
The Putins of the world should be terrified by what just happened in Sri Lanka. "In retrospect, former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa probably regrets his decision to campaign for reelection on the slogan that voters should stick with his administration because he was a "known devil" and his opponent was an "unknown angel." At the time, Rajapaksa's hold on power had seemed unshakable; his repressive, authoritarian government, rock solid. But on January 8, he was peacefully voted out — and, just as surprisingly, failed in what appears to have been an attempted coup to remain in office. Rajapaksa's loss of power shocked the world, and not just because so many expected him to hold on."
What the hell just happened in Yemen, explained. "The two rebellions are not directly linked, but the Yemeni government's inability to fight informs its failures against the other, and the weaker that the government gets, the easier it will be for both groups to grow unchecked."
Boko Haram's massacre in Nigeria: what happened and why. "The Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram launched its worst attack ever in the northeastern town of Baga, where it killed hundreds or possibly more. The motivation is unclear, but it appears aimed at intimidating Nigerians into not voting in the coming presidential election. Key context is the military's indifference to northern Nigerian lives. Its troops fled almost immediately, and had itself previously massacred Baga's residents." And also, Before-and-after satellite photos show the scale of Boko Haram's worst-ever attack.
I have to agree with Todd VanDerWerff, American Sniper’s Chris Kyle is John Rambo for the 21st century.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this. It's just that enough of the movie exists as a kind of shadow version of itself as to suggest that all involved want to question something but don't dare question the man at the center. Every time the movie pushes toward a question as simple as "Does killing over 100 people change you in some way?" it freezes up. Eastwood creates lots of dots, all over the film's landscape, but he refuses to connect even a couple of them.
Thus, Chris Kyle becomes the 21st century John Rambo, rapidly retconning a major world conflict and letting Americans know that we are still okay. Most films about the Iraq war have openly asked audiences to consider what part of America's soul was sacrificed in the process of fighting an unnecessary war. Those films' protagonists become empty machines, used up by the government. Ergo, we all have been used.
American Sniper will have none of this. Chris Kyle was a good guy. Chris Kyle was an American. Ergo, we are all good guys. The movie doesn't push or challenge viewers in any way. It doesn't bother making the conservative argument for the war, nor launching liberal attacks against it.
Wonkblog writes This powerful Reddit thread reveals how the poor get by in America. "The poor pay more for everything, from rolls of toilet paper to furniture. It's not because they're spendthrifts, either. If you're denied a checking account, there's no way for you to avoid paying a fee to cash a paycheck. If you need to buy a car to get to work, you'll have to accept whatever higher interest rate you're offered. If you don't have a car, the bus fare might eat up the change you'd save shopping at a larger grocery store as opposed to the local corner store."
Ezra Klein wrote What Obama would say at the State of the Union if he were being brutally honest. Read the whole thing, but here's the meat of it:
No one likes the answer I'm about to give, but it's the right one. The political system isn't built like a family. It's not designed like a business. It's much more like a football game.
In a family, everyone cares for each other, everyone is working towards the same goal, everyone would throw themselves in front of a truck to make sure the others are safe and healthy and happy. A family is built to find agreement.
The government isn't a business either. It doesn't work towards a single goal. It can't judge itself based off stock price or profit margin. And it isn't built to make decisions or to be held accountable for them. When a company has a disagreement about its direction, there's someone with the power — an owner, a CEO, a board — to make a decision. A business isn't built to find agreement the way a family is, but it's built to force a resolution to disagreements when necessary.
You want to know the truth? Government, or at least the political system, is like a football game. You ever think about why football games are they way they are? You have all these guys hitting each other so hard they cause each other permanent brain damage. So why do they do it? Why do kids who aren't getting paid a cent do it?
It's not because they hate each other. They're hitting their friends. In practice, they're hitting their teammates. They're hurting people they love.
They do it because that's how the game works. They do it because the rules are you line up in front of the other team and then you hit them as hard as you can. They do it because, for one side to win, the other has to lose. And they do it because, if they don't do it, they're off the team. Football has no place for conscientious objectors.
The honest truth is that that's how politics works, too. We've got two teams. And only one of them can win the election. So they line up and they hit each other as hard as they can. They don't cooperate because the rules don't let them cooperate. They don't agree because agreeing means losing — and losing is political death. Losing means you can't help the people you came here to help.
Here's a Rolling Stone Interview with Stanley Kubrick from 1987. It's about his film Full Metal Jacket and I don't think I've seen this interview before. It dispels some Kubrick myths and unlike most of the interviews with him I've read, gives some insight. Here are a couple of questions and answers:
"Full Metal Jacket is based on Gustav Hasford's book The Short-Timers.
It's a very short, very beautifully and economically written book, which, like the film, leaves out all the mandatory scenes of character development: the scene where the guy talks about his father, who's an alcoholic, his girlfriend — all that stuff that bogs down and seems so arbitrarily inserted into every war story."
So you distrust sentimentality.
I don't mistrust sentiment and emotion, no. The question becomes, are you giving them something to make them a little happier, or are you putting in something that is inherently true to the material? Are people behaving the way we all really behave, or are they behaving the way we would like them to behave? I mean, the world is not as it's presented in Frank Capra films. People love those films — which are beautifully made — but I wouldn't describe them as a true picture of life.
The questions are always, is it true? Is it interesting? To worry about those mandatory scenes that some people think make a picture is often just pandering to some conception of an audience. Some films try to outguess an audience. They try to ingratiate themselves, and it's not something you really have to do. Certainly audiences have flocked to see films that are not essentially true, but I don't think this prevents them from responding to the truth.
APOD: 2015 January 19 - Infrared Orion from WISE " The Great Nebula in Orion is an intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image, an illusory-color four-panel mosaic taken in different bands of infrared light with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory, shows the Orion Nebula to be a bustling neighborhood or recently formed stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the stars of the Trapezium star cluster, seen near the center of the above wide field image. The orange glow surrounding the bright stars pictured here is their own starlight reflected by intricate dust filaments that cover much of the region. The current Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years."
Ann Jones is asked “Has America gone crazy?” "Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and ‘exceptionality’ have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded ‘homeland,’ now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world."
And as I looked at the list of questions all I could think was: yup, and it's only one party that's gone crazy.
Eric Holder just did something to curb the civil asset forfeiture abuses.
The Washington Post reported Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges."
iMore describes Secret Safari shortcuts: Ten gestures to speed up your iPhone browsing. A few at the end were new to me.
Amazing sushi-roll art "Takayo 'Tama-cha' Kiyota is a Japanese chef who specializes in makizushi art: artistic sushi-rolls that use cunningly arranged food to create illustrations in the rolls' cross-sections. Her work is improbably amazing."
io9 had a good explanation of Why Frame Rate Matters. The only high frame rate movie I've seen is the first Hobbit movie. I saw it in 48 FPS in 3D and thought it looked terrible. Some friends said they got used to it after 15-30 minutes but I never did (and it was a long movie). It also didn't help that I didn't like the movie (I saw the second on cable and liked it even less and haven't seen the third).
Before the other week I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo. Since then I've heard a lot of things about their content and don't really know what to believe. This site is the best I've seen in helping me to Understanding the socio-political context of Charlie Hebdo cartoons "The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has received a lot of attention after the recent attacks at their office. Some of the criticism directed at Charlie Hebdo is uncalled for and inaccurate. This website tries to explain the cartoons within the context they were published so that they may be better understood."
io9's The Biggest Oscar Snubs Of 2015 is actually a pretty good list of various errors and omissions in the nominations. The one that surprises me isn't mentioned more is Chadwick Boseman not getting a nomination for his portrayal of James Brown in Get on Up.
ProPublica reports Zombie Cookie: The Tracking Cookie That You Can’t Kill "An online advertising clearinghouse relied on by Google, Yahoo and Facebook is using controversial cookies that come back from the dead to track the web surfing of Verizon customers."
"In November, AT&T stopped using the number. But Verizon did not, instead assuring users on its website that "it is unlikely that sites and ad entities will attempt to build customer profiles" using its identifiers."
Um, don't sites and ad entities explicitly want to build customer profiles to provide relevant ads?
It works like this: When a user visits a website that contains Turn tracking code, the company holds an auction within milliseconds for advertisers to target that user. The highest bidder's ad instantly appears on the user's screen as the web page loads. Turn says it receives 2 million requests for online advertising placements per second.
For its auctions to work, Turn needs to identify web users by cookies, which are small text files that are stored on their computers. The cookies allow Turn to identify a user's web browsing habits, such as an interest in sports or shopping, which it uses to lure advertisers to the auction.
Some users try to block such tracking by turning off or deleting cookies. But Turn says that when users clear their cookies, it does not consider that a signal that users want to opt out from being tracked.
The idea of advertisers trying to know me to give me relevant ads actually doesn't bother me too much. What does is that that same system can be used by others for purposes I might not approve of. E.g., the NSA tracking all my surfing, thieves tracking my purchases and location (when I'm not home), etc.
On This Day: The Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919 "On January 15, 1919, in Boston's North End, a 50-foot-tall tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, unleashing a deadly wave that rose nearly 25 feet high at one point. The destructive flood threw people and horses about, smashed buildings, and even damaged the steel supports of an elevated railway. Rescuers had to wade through knee-deep molasses and sticky debris to reach survivors. Twenty-one people died in the disaster, another 150 were injured, and the cleanup lasted for weeks. The cause of the failure was determined to be faulty construction and poor maintenance."
Oscar Nominations were announced this morning. Here's the full list. Not counting the 15 shorts (of which I've seen none), 46 different movies got nominations and I've only seen 17 of them. Here they are by number of nominations, not including shorts or foreign language films (well it includes Ida which got a second nomination). Those in bold I've seen.
The only category I've seen all of the nominees in is Visual Effects. Though catching American Sniper, Boyhood and Foxcatcher will complete 7 other categories.
I hadn't really thought about making predictions but I'm not too surprised by things. Birdman was a great film and a technical achievement. I'm a little surprised by the 9 nominations for The Grand Budapest Hotel, but mostly because it came out so early in the year. It looked gorgeous, as all Wes Anderson films do, and for me it was his most engaging film in a while. It makes sense it got Cinematography, Costumes, Makeup, Production Design, etc.; Picture and Directing are deserved but a bit surprising. It also makes sense to me that it got no acting nominations and Birdman got three.
The one I'm really happy about is Whiplash. That was a small independent film that was a lot of fun and very well made. It's five nominations are well earned.
Apparently the big snubs are Jennifer Anniston not getting Best Actress for Cake, in place of Marion Cotillard. I haven't seen either. Also David Oyelowo not getting Best Actor for Selma, apparently in place of Steve Carell in Foxcatcher. I haven't seen Foxcatcher yet but Oyelowo was very good (and the best thing about the film).
I'm okay with Selma not getting other nominations (only one for song). I found it a little too long and brooding. There were lots of scenes of actors contemplating and actual dialog was often brief. There were a few times where a character got a full name and I thought oh, they're going to get killed the next time we see them (and they did). My take was a great story and just a good movie.
I would have liked Interstellar to get some more recognition, maybe cinematography and a picture nomination (there were room for two more). The weakest thing about the movie was the ending (and it was much better than I had been warned about) but that does hurt your overall impression of the film (mores than a weak beginning).
I haven't seen any of the nominated documentaries though I've heard very good things about Last Days in Vietnam and good things about CitizenFour. I really really liked Rich Hill and The Overnighters. You can watch Rich Hill on PBS online through Feb 3rd.
I saw Inherent Vice yesterday. That's the Paul Thomas Anderson movie based on a Thomas Pynchon novel. I've tried Pynchon a few times and can't do it. I read The Crying of Lot 49, got a couple of hundred pages into Gravity's Rainbow a couple of times and failed to find the verb in the first sentence of Mason & Dixon.
I was curious how PTA would approach it, knowing that he was probably the only person who could. I suppose he did a good job, because I couldn't get into it either. There's a dense conspiracy plot that's really really hard to follow. I'm sure it holds together, but I don't think anyone on first viewing can follow who does what and who says what and oh yeah what did that character do the last we time saw them? I'm sure that's just like the novel (though it's apparently one of the easier Pynchon books to follow). It's a dense plot with a really weak narrative.
So it's really about the journey and the atmosphere the film creates. 1970s LA Noir with stoners. I have to say, I just don't care. Yes there are some funny scenes and from some friends who saw it, I could have had a better audience. I saw it with about 25 people who I think each (including me) laughed once, at a different scene. Friends saw it in a packed house with people laughing all the way through. Regardless, this is no Lebowski.
Anyway, Vulture lists Every Thomas Pynchon Novel, Briefly Ranked if you want to give it a shot.
Congress Just Gave One of the Most Important Science Jobs to a Senator Who Denies Science - Mic "As the new Republican majority takes over the Senate, they've put Sen. Cruz in charge of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, effectively giving him the reigns of NASA. The appointment is sure to be a disaster for both NASA and American scientific endeavors in general, and is yet another sign that the GOP is doubling down on its aggressive opposition to scientific research that doesn't toe the Republican Party line."
As Technica explains Why DNS in OS X 10.10 is broken, and what you can do to fix it "Resolving DNS names, resolving Bonjour machine names, resolving Bonjour service advertisement and discovery, and opening ports in NAT gateways to allow incoming network connections are all jobs that have been performed by the mDNSResponder daemon. This was introduced with Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar back in 2002. mDNSResponder is written in C and has been released as open source by Apple, and it has found its way to all kinds of non-Apple operating systems and hardware.
Again, as of OS X 10.10, mDNSResponder has been replaced by discoveryd. Curiously, discoveryd is (re)written in C++, not exactly one of Apple's favorite languages. It's not on Apple's list of open source projects. And apparently, the responsible people at Apple haven't been reading their Joel on Software. As per Joel Spolsky's dire warnings against rewriting software from scratch, discoveryd has its share of bugs. For instance, when the system is unable to resolve DNS names, discoveryd log messages indicate that it doesn't recognize the replies from the DNS server to its own requests. discoveryd is also a frequent guest in the CrashReporter logs."
It says it's the cause of the following issues (of which I've experienced the first three):
They provide instructions of how to restore mDNSResponder from a 10.9 backup and replace 10.10's discoveryd with it. I haven't tried this, but if it doesn't improve in a future update I just might.
Film Critic Hulk goes on at great length about NIGHTCRAWLER And Why Movies Don’t Need Character Arcs. As is usual, it rambles and covers lots of ground and is REALLY ANNOYING TO READ IN ALL CAPS, and yet I found it interesting and enlightening.
It took three tries tonight but I think I saw Comet Lovejoy. I needed binoculars (10x50) and it was dim (not visible with the naked eye). Here's how to find it.
It's basically to right of Orion. Over the rest of January it will move along the yellow line in this chart. It's easy to spot Aldebaran with the naked eye, that's the bright star to the right of Orion's shoulders. To confirm, move further right about the same distance and you'll see the Pleiades (aka the Seven Sisters). Tonight I could just make them out with the naked eye and could easily confirm it was them with binoculars. Then I scanned beneath Aldebaran to a bit below Orion's belt and saw the comet. It looked a little dimmer than this image (which I found online).
In Focus has some crazy amazing Photos of the Week: 1/3-1/9 "This week we have Belarusian wolves, snow-covered Roman ruins in Lebanon, rioting in Bahrain, the shooting and hostage crisis in Paris, scenes from the Dakar Rally, a New Year's fire in the Philippines, and much more."
(and they've changed things to make them more difficult to copy photos)
What If tackles, Lunar Swimming. "What if there was a lake on the Moon? What would it be like to swim in it? Presuming that it is sheltered in a regular atmosphere, in some giant dome or something"
"Floating would feel about the same on the Moon as on Earth, since how high in the water you float depends only on your body's density compared to the water's, not the strength of gravity. Swimming underwater would also feel pretty similar. The inertia of the water is the main source of drag when swimming, and inertia is a property of matter independent of gravity. The top speed of a submerged swimmer would be about the same on the Moon as here—about 2 meters/second. Everything else would be different and way cooler. The waves would be bigger, the splash fights more intense, and swimmers would be able to jump out of the water like dolphins."
Read the rest, it gets way more interesting.
You've probably at some point seen a picture of Eta Carinae, because it's so gorgeous.
NASA Observatories Take an Unprecedented Look into Superstar Eta Carinae
"Eta Carinae, the most luminous and massive stellar system within 10,000 light-years of Earth, is known for its surprising behavior, erupting twice in the 19th century for reasons scientists still don't understand. A long-term study led by astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, used NASA satellites, ground-based telescopes and theoretical modeling to produce the most comprehensive picture of Eta Carinae to date. New findings include Hubble Space Telescope images that show decade-old shells of ionized gas racing away from the largest star at a million miles an hour, and new 3-D models that reveal never-before-seen features of the stars' interactions."
Here's a great 4 minute video:
Ars Technica says USB 3.1 and Type-C: The only stuff at CES that everyone is going to use "I have a USB Type-C cable—yeah, the reversible one. I can't connect it to anything I own yet, but it's a real thing that's in production and shipping to companies. Most of CES amounts to so much smoke and mirrors and vague hand-waving about the Future, but I can say with confidence that this little port is a thing that everyone reading this will start using in the next couple of years."
The EFF makes a stink about the App Store's Developer Agreement, Sorry iPhone Users: Apple’s Dev Agreement Means No EFF Mobile App for iOS. Good for them. I think the App Store is generally a good thing but I basically agree with EFF's issues with the Agreement.
Nature published: A new antibiotic kills pathogens without detectable resistance. Here's the abstract:
Antibiotic resistance is spreading faster than the introduction of new compounds into clinical practice, causing a public health crisis. Most antibiotics were produced by screening soil microorganisms, but this limited resource of cultivable bacteria was overmined by the 1960s. Synthetic approaches to produce antibiotics have been unable to replace this platform. Uncultured bacteria make up approximately 99% of all species in external environments, and are an untapped source of new antibiotics. We developed several methods to grow uncultured organisms by cultivation in situ or by using specific growth factors. Here we report a new antibiotic that we term teixobactin, discovered in a screen of uncultured bacteria. Teixobactin inhibits cell wall synthesis by binding to a highly conserved motif of lipid II (precursor of peptidoglycan) and lipid III (precursor of cell wall teichoic acid). We did not obtain any mutants of Staphylococcus aureus or Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistant to teixobactin. The properties of this compound suggest a path towards developing antibiotics that are likely to avoid development of resistance.
Kelly Service explains a little more in Science, Microbe found in grassy field contains powerful antibiotic.
Many existing antibiotics, including penicillin, were identified by cultivating naturally occurring microorganisms—bacteria often try to kill each other with chemical warfare, it turns out. But the supply of novel microbes that will grow in a lab has been largely tapped out. In 2002, microbiologist Kim Lewis, along with his colleague at Northeastern University in Boston, microbial ecologist Slava Epstein, described a new technique for coaxing bacteria to grow: Put soil samples into tiny chambers sandwiched between permeable membranes and return these contraptions to the ground. The bacterial strains confined in the chambers will form colonies—thanks in part, the team suspects, to growth factors from neighboring organisms that cross the membranes. The resulting “domesticated” colony can then be removed from the chamber and sometimes will more readily call a petri dish home.
The researchers used a version of this approach to isolate and grow new bacterial colonies—many scooped out of soil in the backyard of microbiologist Losee Ling, who leads research and development at the startup company NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, formed to commercialize their approach. To test the antibacterial properties of these soil microbes, the team let each of them duel in a lab dish with Staphylococcus aureus, a cause of serious skin and respiratory infections. Then they isolated and tested individual compounds—10,000 in all—from the bacteria that most effectively killed the staph bacteria.
One bacterium, from a grassy field in Maine, produced a compound with powerful abilities to kill a variety of other bacterial species, including many human pathogens. Moreover, these pathogens failed to develop resistance to the compound: There were no surviving individuals that had evolved to withstand its attack. (Resistance usually develops when a small percentage of microbes escape an antibiotic because of a mutation and then those bacteria multiply.) Lewis initially took this total devastation as a discouraging sign—the mark of “another boring detergent.” (Bleach, after all, is a strong antibiotic, but it’s a little too effective at killing any surrounding cells.) However, it turned out that the new compound, which the group named teixobactin, was not toxic to human cells in a dish.
In Focus covers The 2015 Harbin Ice and Snow Festival "Every year, in northeast China's Heilongjiang province, the city of Harbin hosts the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, featuring massive ice and snow sculptures. At night, the sculptures are colorfully illuminated and visitors can climb and play on some of the structures. The festival officially opened on January 5 this year, and will run through the end of February. According to organizers, the winter festival now draws several million tourists each year, from China and from abroad."
Hubble Goes High Def to Revisit the Iconic 'Pillars of Creation' "NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image."
"The pillars are bathed in the blistering ultraviolet light from a grouping of young, massive stars located off the top of the image. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off the pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth. The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green."
Previous Years: 2013, 2012, 2011
In 2014 I saw 191 feature length movies and 30 short films (those under 40 mins). That's a little less than the last two years.
85% first run features is same as last year. For shorts, last year was 93%.
I rate on the Netflix 5 point scale where 1 is hated, 2 is didn't like, 3 is I liked it, 4 is really liked and 5 is loved.
I had a pretty average curve for me.
Same as last year I saw 67 features in the theater and most of the rest on cable. I only watched 9 films on Netlix this year, 6 on DVD and 3 streaming.
This year I didn't watch any DVDs and just watched one blu-ray, Inception on New Years I streamed nine films on Netflix. Shorts are different, aside from the Oscar nominated shorts in the theater, I basically watch them online, 90% of them on YouTube.
I've got a few theaters I go to regularly, though the Somerville gets so much because of IFFBoston. The shorts I see in the theater are the Oscar nominees when they show them at the Coolidge. Boston got a new theater this year at Assembly Row, next year there will be more food choices nearby so I'll probably go more often.
April and December are my big movie months and I see less in the summer. April is IFFBoston, and December is I guess holidays (and trying to reach a goal number of movies). Usually most of my shorts viewing is Oscar related, the spike in June was finding a lot of AFI shorts online.
Yet again, my viewing was really skewed towards recent films this year. I saw 61 features from 2013 and 68 from 2014.
I guess May and June are the barren months for Oscar nominated films. These are films from any year that got a nomination or won, not just from last year's Oscars. They also (obviously) don't include any films that came out this year that will get nominated at the end of the month.
Yet again I feel like I need to see more foreign films:
I break down films into five genres that I'm pretty happy with. I then use some sub-genres and I still have a hard time putting every film in one. There are lots of Dramas and Comedies that have no sub-genre. But here's how it looks for this year:
Here are all the films I saw in 2014:
| Seen | Title | Year | Length | Country | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 1 | Inception | 2010 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Jan 2 | Trouble with the Curve | 2012 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jan 3 | Pariah | 2011 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jan 3 | Hyde Park on Hudson | 2012 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jan 4 | For All Mankind | 1989 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jan 4 | Frankenweenie | 2012 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Jan 4 | Far From the Maddening Crowd | 1967 | Feature | Britain | 2 |
| Jan 5 | Her | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jan 10 | Identity Thief | 2013 | Feature | US | 1 |
| Jan 12 | American Hustle | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jan 13 | Admission | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jan 13 | A Good Day to Die Hard | 2013 | Feature | US | 1 |
| Jan 16 | Partysaurus Rex | 2012 | Short | US | 4 |
| Jan 16 | Justice League: New Frontier | 2008 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jan 16 | Oblivion | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Jan 17 | Bullet to the Head | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Jan 19 | August: Osage County | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jan 26 | Blue Jasmine | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jan 26 | All-Star Superman | 2011 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jan 28 | The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg | 1927 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Feb 1 | Lincoln | 2012 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Feb 1 | After Earth | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Feb 1 | The Wild One | 1954 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Feb 2 | Justice League: Doom | 2012 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Feb 6 | G.I. Joe: Retaliation | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Feb 8 | Magical Mystery Tour | 1967 | Feature | Britain | 2 |
| Feb 9 | The Juggler | 1953 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Feb 14 | Before Midnight | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Feb 16 | The Lego Movie | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Feb 18 | Trance | 2013 | Feature | Britain | 3 |
| Feb 22 | The Lone Ranger | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Feb 23 | Tim's Vermeer | 2013 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Feb 23 | Now You See Me | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Feb 25 | The Square | 2013 | Feature | Egypt | 3 |
| Feb 27 | The Voorman Problem | 2013 | Short | Britain | 4 |
| Feb 27 | That Wasn't Me | 2013 | Short | Spain | 4 |
| Feb 27 | Do I Have to Take Care of Everything | 2013 | Short | Finland | 4 |
| Feb 27 | Get a Horse | 2013 | Short | US | 4 |
| Feb 27 | Mr. Hublot | 2013 | Short | France | 4 |
| Feb 27 | Room on the Broom | 2013 | Short | Britain | 4 |
| Feb 27 | A La Francaise | 2013 | Short | France | 4 |
| Feb 27 | The Blue Umbrella | 2013 | Short | US | 4 |
| Feb 27 | Helium | 2013 | Short | Denmark | 3 |
| Feb 27 | Just Before Losing Everything | 2013 | Short | France | 3 |
| Feb 27 | The Missing Scarf | 2013 | Short | Ireland | 3 |
| Feb 27 | Feral | 2013 | Short | US | 2 |
| Feb 27 | Possessions | 2013 | Short | Japan | 2 |
| Mar 1 | The Croods | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Mar 1 | Cutie and the Boxer | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Mar 1 | Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Mar 1 | The Incredible Burt Wonderstone | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Mar 8 | Star Trek Into Darkness | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Mar 15 | Mission Impossible | 1996 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Mar 15 | Fruitvale Station | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Mar 16 | The Grand Budapest Hotel | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Mar 21 | The World's End | 2013 | Feature | Britain | 3 |
| Mar 22 | White House Down | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Mar 23 | Byzantium | 2012 | Feature | Britain | 3 |
| Mar 23 | The Transporter | 2002 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Mar 23 | Snitch | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Mar 23 | Stories We Tell | 2012 | Feature | Canada | 2 |
| Mar 29 | Heat | 1995 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Mar 29 | The Butler | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Mar 30 | Executive Suite | 1954 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Mar 30 | Particle Fever | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 2 | Under the Skin | 2013 | Feature | Britain | 1 |
| Apr 6 | Captain America: The Winter Soldier | 2014 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Apr 6 | Stripped | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 8 | Dear Mr. Watterson | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 13 | Jodorowsky's Dune | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 21 | The Princess Bride | 1987 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Apr 22 | The Case Against 8 | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 23 | Beneath the Harvest Sky | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 24 | The Overnighters | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Apr 24 | In Country | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 25 | Big Significant Things | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 25 | Palo Alto | 2014 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Apr 26 | Rich Hill | 2014 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Apr 26 | Jon Imber's Left Hand | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Apr 26 | The Starfish Throwers | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Apr 26 | In Search of General Tso | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Apr 26 | 20,000 Days on Earth | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 27 | Supermensch; The Legend of Shep Gordon | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Apr 27 | Dear White People | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Apr 27 | Vessel | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 27 | Fort Tilden | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Apr 28 | Locke | 2014 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Apr 28 | Wild Canaries | 2014 | Feature | US | 1 |
| Apr 29 | The Trip to Italiy | 2014 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Apr 29 | The Double | 2014 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Apr 30 | Mood Indigo | 2014 | Feature | France | 4 |
| May 4 | Only Lovers Left Alive | 2014 | Feature | Britain | 2 |
| May 6 | Chef | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| May 25 | X-Men: Days of Future Past | 2014 | Feature | US | 5 |
| May 25 | Fast & Furious 6 | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| May 29 | The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | 2005 | Feature | Britain | 3 |
| Jun 1 | The Dance of Reality | 2014 | Feature | Chile | 2 |
| Jun 2 | Duck and Cover | 1952 | Short | US | 3 |
| Jun 7 | Ender's Game | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jun 7 | R.I.P.D. | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Jun 8 | Edge of Tomorrow | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jun 12 | Flesh and the Devil | 1926 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jun 14 | The Tell-Tale Heart | 1953 | Short | US | 4 |
| Jun 14 | Free Radicals | 1958 | Short | Britain | 4 |
| Jun 14 | 2001 A Space Odyssey: A Look Behind the Future | 1966 | Short | US | 3 |
| Jun 14 | Gerald McBoing-Boing | 1950 | Short | US | 3 |
| Jun 14 | Motion Painting No. 1 | 1947 | Short | US | 3 |
| Jun 14 | Tulips Shall Grow | 1942 | Short | US | 3 |
| Jun 14 | Frank Film | 1973 | Short | US | 1 |
| Jun 15 | Snow White | 1933 | Short | US | 4 |
| Jun 15 | Obvious Child | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jun 15 | Why Man Creates | 1968 | Short | US | 3 |
| Jun 15 | Quasi at the Quackadero | 1976 | Short | US | 3 |
| Jun 15 | Runner Runner | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Jun 15 | Scratch and Crow | 1995 | Short | US | 2 |
| Jun 15 | Early Abstractions | 1987 | Short | US | 2 |
| Jun 21 | Wadjda | 2013 | Feature | Saudi Arabia | 4 |
| Jun 22 | The Wolverine | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jun 22 | Ida | 2014 | Feature | Poland | 3 |
| Jun 29 | The Counselor | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Jun 29 | The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jul 2 | The Italian Job | 1969 | Feature | Britain | 3 |
| Jul 5 | $ | 1971 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jul 6 | Pete Smalls is Dead | 2010 | Feature | US | 1 |
| Jul 6 | The Way Way Back | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jul 8 | Kiki | 1926 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jul 9 | About Time | 2013 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Jul 12 | Frozen | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jul 13 | Snowpiercer | 2014 | Feature | Korea | 3 |
| Jul 20 | Army of Darkness | 1992 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jul 20 | A King in New York | 1957 | Feature | Britain | 3 |
| Jul 20 | Dawn of the Planet of the Apes | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jul 20 | Thor: The Dark World | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Jul 23 | Valentine Road | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Jul 26 | Gravity | 2013 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Jul 27 | A Most Wanted Man | 2014 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Jul 30 | Lucy | 2014 | Feature | France | 4 |
| Aug 1 | Guardians of the Galaxy | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Aug 3 | Get On Up | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Aug 9 | Rush | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Aug 10 | Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Aug 10 | Sorcerer | 1977 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Aug 12 | Moonraker | 1979 | Feature | Britain | 2 |
| Aug 12 | The Kings of Summer | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Aug 12 | Thunderball | 1965 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Aug 15 | Escape Plan | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Aug 16 | Good Will Hunting | 1997 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Aug 16 | The Spy Who Loved Me | 1977 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Aug 17 | Calvary | 2014 | Feature | Ireland | 3 |
| Aug 24 | Frank | 2014 | Feature | Britain | 3 |
| Aug 29 | Guardians of the Galaxy | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Aug 30 | The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Aug 30 | Vincent & Theo | 1990 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Aug 31 | Ghostbusters | 1984 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Sep 1 | Serpico | 1973 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Sep 1 | Stalag 17 | 1953 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Sep 1 | On Her Majesty's Secret Service | 1969 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Sep 2 | Fat Man and Little Boy | 1989 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Sep 3 | Iron Man 3 | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Sep 6 | 12 Years a Slave | 2013 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Sep 7 | Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life | 1995 | Short | Britain | 3 |
| Sep 7 | The Congress | 2014 | Feature | Israel | 2 |
| Sep 13 | Goldeneye | 1995 | Feature | Britain | 3 |
| Sep 14 | The Drop | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Sep 20 | We're the Millers | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Sep 20 | Kick-Ass 2 | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Sep 21 | Wild Orchids | 1929 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Sep 21 | Pain & Gain | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Sep 21 | Grudge Match | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Sep 21 | The Skeleton Twins | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Oct 9 | Gone Girl | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Oct 12 | Torrent | 1926 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Oct 12 | The Natural | 1984 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Oct 12 | Art and Craft | 2014 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Oct 14 | Laggies | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Oct 15 | Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Oct 17 | The Search | 1948 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Oct 17 | The Monuments Men | 2014 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Oct 18 | Non-stop | 2014 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Oct 18 | Renoir | 2012 | Feature | France | 2 |
| Oct 19 | Lone Survior | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Oct 19 | Fury | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Oct 21 | Ping Pong Summer | 2014 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Oct 24 | A Tale of Momentum & Inertia | 2014 | Short | US | 4 |
| Oct 26 | Birdman | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Nov 1 | The Southerner | 1945 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Nov 1 | In a Lonely Place | 1950 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Nov 2 | Nightcrawler | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Nov 6 | Defiance | 2008 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Nov 8 | The Face of Love | 2013 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Nov 9 | John Wick | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Nov 15 | Percy Jackson - Sea of Monsters | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Nov 16 | Interstellar | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Nov 16 | Whiplash | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Nov 22 | Flyboys | 2006 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Nov 22 | It | 1927 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Nov 28 | Gravity | 2013 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Nov 30 | Big Trouble in Little China | 1986 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Nov 30 | Rosewater | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Dec 5 | The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | 2014 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Dec 6 | Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom | 2013 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Dec 7 | The Babadook | 2014 | Feature | Australia | 3 |
| Dec 9 | The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension | 1984 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Dec 10 | The Theory of Everything | 2014 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Dec 13 | The Book Thief | 2013 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Dec 13 | Sherlock Jr. | 1924 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Dec 13 | The Navigator | 1924 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Dec 14 | The Imitation Game | 2014 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Dec 20 | Muppets Most Wanted | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Dec 20 | The Cameraman | 1928 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Dec 21 | Top Five | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Dec 23 | The November Man | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Dec 24 | 22 Jump Street | 2014 | Feature | US | 4 |
| Dec 24 | Last Vegas | 2013 | Feature | US | 2 |
| Dec 29 | Divergent | 2014 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Dec 29 | The Hill | 1965 | Feature | Britain | 5 |
| Dec 31 | Love Actually | 2003 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Dec 31 | Doubt | 2008 | Feature | US | 5 |
| Dec 31 | Happy-Go-Lucky | 2008 | Feature | Britain | 4 |
| Dec 31 | Seven Chances | 1925 | Feature | US | 3 |
| Dec 31 | The Idle Class | 1921 | Short | US | 3 |
