ATL - 8/11/08 - NYC

Brothers & Bladerunner; oldest Jonas was born 5 years after the film was made...
Off-broadway advertising directly on garbage cans; who needs a critic?
Rent is ending on Broadway; "No day like today"...to quit...
What is Wall-e pointing at?
Cool art in the New York Times building
Bridges and clouds
Lobbies
Clouds and buildings

MOVIE/ART/LOCAL/U.S./FRENCH/WEB NEWS

MOVIE NEWS - "Tell No One" - This French thriller had its U.S. release last week and has garnered much international acclaim. See it at "Landmark". There is something unusual about it that some reviews have been spoiling! Don't read any reviews!

"Star Wars - The Clone Wars" ("Here's the premise...people already paid to see 3 new, half-assed Star Wars 'prequel' flicks. To get them to pay to see a 4th, we intentionally left out key plot points that take place before prequel #3; we then made a whole new movie out of that! A threequel! And it's animated; no actors to pay! A freequel!") No-need-quel

Also in release 8/15 - "Mirrors" - Kiefer Sutherland in a horror movie that seems to last more than "24" hours - and "Tropic Thunder" - where Robert Downey Jr. plays a black guy and Ben Stiller plays a dumb guy (only one of them is acting).

ART NEWS -Fox Theater - “High School Musical”: — Aug. 15-24. "The national tour of “High School Musical” will play its final engagements at the Fox Theatre, where it was born in January 2007."

(...and speaking of milking a franchise..."we had no confidence in this little made-for-TV-musical... but wait! Kids loved it! So, even though they can see it for free on TV, we'll make money selling DVDs! And mp3s! ...and now, tickets to a stage version with music they already know being sung by kids they don't!")

Whole World - "Boys in the Band" running through September 13th.

8/15 - Friday Jazz at the High.

8/16 - King-Sized "Elvis" at Variety Playhouse.

LOCAL NEWS -Today, we killed our TV, cutting off satellite service for a trial period and depending entirely on Netflix for video entertainment. High Def --> Low Def --> No Def. (Not paying for satellite TV for 1 year saves us $840. Can you say "ticket to Paris?" Call 800 531-5000 to suspend DirecTV programming ... and billing! ... for up to 6 months without penalty.)

8/12, Metropolis has Grill Night! If you are I.T.B, see you on the 8th floor!

8/14, Hakes reads from his book at Mitchell House. ..."most Americans understand the need for American energy independence. Yet our political dialog tends to focus on the most extreme positions, leaving most citizens scratching their heads about what to do. A Declaration of Energy Independence takes a nonpartisan, honest approach to these fundamental questions and obliterates the political and economic myths of both conservatives and liberals."

U.S. NEWS -Michael Phelps is on his 3rd of 8 possible gold medals.

Issac Hayes and Bernie Mac died. Heaven just got a little more soul.
Some anti-terrorist investigators are of the opinion that there are Al Qaeda members against large-scale attacks on the U.S. & that some even believe their attacks on 9/11 were a mistake. Strikes on the U.S. need to be carefully calculated; big enough to provide their own people with little victories (U.S. Cole, 1st World Trade Center bombing, embassies in Africa), but not so big as to provoke a large scale counter offensive...

...which is the 1st war George got us into. Iraq is the 2nd. Now, Russia's invading (the other) Georgia, possibly because they think the U.S. is too distracted with the first 2 to get into a 3rd. (I don't see how Russia invading Georgia over gas pipelines is any different than Iraq invading Kuwait.)


FRENCH NEWS -Sometime when you are bored, compare these musical themes; how much of an influence was Jean Michel Jarre (1977) on Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, 1981)?

French relay swim team lost to Michael Phelps' American team by 8/100s of a second. "Nous sommes numero deux!" The average hummingbird beats its wings 50 times per second, or 2/100s of a second per beat...

WEB NEWS - I googled "silly pointless things to do on the web" and got urban75.org.