ATL - 10/06/08 OREGON I

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

MOVIE NEWS - "City of Ember" looks like Matrix meets the Golden Compass. "Quarantine" - your typical "help, the government has me trapped in an apartment building with rapidly mutating plague victims" - just looks messy. Blair Witch Zombies.

10/8 - If high gloss Hollywood seems a little...well...recycled, check-out Marlene Dietrich at the Goethe Institute in "Stage Fright (Die rote Lola)". A Hitchcock film in German with English subtitles. -goethe films-

10/8 - ...or if Marlene is too high-brow for you, check out the very low-brow "Christmas on Mars" at the Plaza. I know nothing about it except what I read: "When an oxygen generator and gravity control machine malfunction at a human colony on Mars during the holidays, hallucinations and a visit from a helpful alien make it a Christmas to remember."

ART NEWS - "Sex Right Across the Street" - If you were lucky enough to get a ticket ahead of time to her sold-out appearance, you can see Candice Bushnell present her new book "One Fifth Avenue" at the Margaret Mitchell House, tonight. (handy for Metropolis residents!) -MM House-

HIGH MUSEUM - The third and final presentation of works from the Louvre starts this week. Previews 10/9-11 for members. -high-

10/7...and if that's too high-brow, then you should DEFINITELY see "Pink Flamingos" at the Plaza, in combination with the art of Matthew K Manning. -plaza-

LOCAL NEWS - The Piedmont Park hostage crisis continues, with only the Dogwood Festival being allowed back into the park in 2009. Pride will continue to flounder at the Civic Center, the Peachtree Road Race will be allowed "limited use" of the park, the Jazz Fest will be in Woodruff, and Screen on the Green will continue at Centennial Park. -taps- -dogwood-

Following the Hurricane Ike refinery outage, Atlantans again have more readily available gas (and will invariably continue to use too much of it.)

10/8, 7-8:00 PM, The Laughing Skull Lounge - After visiting the urban jewel that is my hometown of Portland, Oregon, it's a good time to see how I can be involved in making Atlanta a better city. Midtown Neighbors' Association sponsors a Density and Urban Design presentation. -mna-

U.S. NEWS - MONEY, MONEY, MONEY - The market is falling, the market is falling! Wells Fargo and Citi Bank are fighting over my money! So what does Target do? Puts out the Christmas Crap. Animated, electronic Santas next to the Freddy Kruger masks.

...and speaking of Halloween, let's dress up like something really terrifying! Of course, slapping lipstick on a Jason Vorhees hockey mask is the obvious Sarah Palin tribute, but I'd really love to see someone dressed as that other harbinger of doom...Freddy Mac. (Foreclosure notices skewered on finger/blades?)

I'm not a big biofuel fan (at least not using frickin' food as the "bio"!), but an article in a Portland magazine made a good point: Fossil fuel use involves digging up hydrocarbons from the ground and burning them, releasing carbon into the air. As part of the biofuel process, carbon is first removed from the air by growing plants, before being burned and put back into the air and is therefore more carbon neutral. (Unless, of course, you are burning fossil fuels to create the energy needed to grow the corn and process the biofuel...)

$770,000,000,000 - Just wondering...where did all our money go? Why do banks need $770B? Just looking at Manhattan, "Along Central Park West a decade back, co-ops went for an average of $524 a foot; now, $1,548." $1000/ft increase. Now, I can't find a number for the total square feet of residential space in Manhattan, but for office space, it's 520 million square feet. At $1000/sq ft increase, that's $520B more value in the office market.

Don't "borrow" $770B from the "middle class taxpayer"; let's just sell Manhattan. -observer- -article-

FRENCH NEWS - Three French researchers have been granted the Nobel Prize for medicine for their research into the HIV virus. Congratulations to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier. -lemonde-

WEB NEWS - Cool fashion photographers -alek and steph-