The Amazing Gecko-Man: a superhero future made possible by probable science originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink
Technology Review | 
Cornell University | Email this | CommentsSource: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/18/the-amazing-gecko-man-a-superhero-future-made-possible-by-proba/
listeria kendall hunter 50 50 50 50 gene simmons family jewels dream house dream house
PARK CITY, Utah ? Independent films that may have been years in the making get their first audiences at this week's Sundance Film Festival. That could also mean careers in the making for unknown directors and actors whose movies connect with the right crowds.
Robert Redford's independent-cinema showcase was opening Thursday with 117 feature-length films, 64 short films and a lot of anxious filmmakers on the agenda during its 11-day run.
Some are established directors showing their latest work, such as Spike Lee with his urban drama "Red Hook Summer," in which he reprises the character he played in "Do the Right Thing"; Stephen Frears with his sports-wagering caper "Lay the Favorite," starring Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rebecca Hall; documentary veteran Joe Berlinger with his Paul Simon portrait "Under African Skies"; and Julie Delpy with her relationship comedy "2 Days in New York," in which she stars with Chris Rock.
Other films are from up-and-comers competing for prestigious Sundance prizes, such as Sheldon Candis' coming-of-age story "Luv," featuring rapper Common and Danny Glover; Ry Russo-Young's domestic drama "Nobody Walks," with John Krasinski, Olivia Thirlby and Rosemarie DeWitt; and Youssef Delara and Michael D. Olmos' hip-hop story "Filly Brown," starring newcomer Gina Rodriguez, Lou Diamond Phillips and director Olmos' father, Edward James Olmos.
What makes Sundance the place to be for rising film talent every January?
"There's a combination of factors. First, it's the beginning of the year. That's a very good time to start the year with a whole variety of new films, which Sundance brings together and curates rather well," said James Marsh, who returns to the festival for the third time with his Northern Ireland drama "Shadow Dancer," featuring Clive Owen and Andrea Riseborough.
"And Sundance has an international profile beyond North America. We know it's a place that careers can get made and films get noticed," said Marsh, whose Academy Award-winning "Man on Wire" premiered at the festival in 2008 and won Sundance's top honor for world-cinema documentaries.
Sundance organizers say this year's films are all over the map in style, story and tone. Yet they see a general theme of unease and uncertainty about life that may have grown out of worldwide political, social and economic unrest of the last few years.
"We're seeing people questioning the status quo of the American dream. Like what is family, having babies, should I get married, is marriage even something I want to consider?" said festival director John Cooper. "A lot of stuff we took as status quo is being put to the test these days."
Along with a program of short films, the festival was beginning Thursday night with one film from each of its four main competitions:
? Actor-turned-director Todd Louiso's U.S. dramatic entry "Hello I Must Be Going," a love story between a 19-year-old man and a 35-year-old divorcee that stars Melanie Lynskey.
? Australian filmmaker Kieran Darcy-Smith's world-cinema drama "Wish You Were Here," a dark story of a vacation gone wrong featuring Joel Edgerton and Teresa Palmer.
? Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul's world-cinema documentary "Searching for Sugar Man," a portrait of promising 1970s singer-songwriter Rodriguez and his fade into obscurity.
? Lauren Greenfield's U.S. documentary "The Queen of Versailles," examining the housing boom-and-bust story of a couple trying to build a palatial 90,000-square-foot mansion.
The competitions, a midnight film program and Sundance's star-laden lineup of non-competition premieres have produced many critical and commercial hits over the years, including "sex, lies and videotape," "Precious," "The Blair Witch Project," "Clerks," "Winter's Bone" and "In the Bedroom."
Actors and filmmakers owe their careers to Sundance and the exposure they got there, among them "Super Size Me" director Morgan Spurlock, "Girlfight" star Michelle Rodriguez and "Napoleon Dynamite" star Jon Heder, who returns to the festival this year with writer-director So Yong Kim's child-custody tale "For Ellen," starring two other Sundance veterans, Paul Dano ("Little Miss Sunshine") and Jena Malone ("Donnie Darko").
"I feel like I owe Sundance everything as a filmmaker," said "Queen of Versailles" director Greenfield, a photographer whose debut film, the eating-disorder documentary "Thin," premiered at Sundance in 2006.
"I feel like I had a really charmed entrance into the documentary world by being able to have my first film at Sundance," he continued. "I wasn't really looking for a second career, but Sundance allowed me to feel like a filmmaker and really get confidence in that part of my voice as an artist."
Delpy, whose Sundance premiere "2 Days in New York" is a sequel to her 2007 film "2 Days in Paris," said the warm and appreciative audiences at the festival help take the edge off the nerve-racking experience of showing a film for the first time.
She likened filmmaking to laying an egg ? not as in something she expects to bomb at the festival but as in something that cost her effort and struggle.
"It was painful and it hurts, but it's an egg, and it's out of me," said Delpy, who does not want to be so attached to her creation that its Sundance reception could do her harm.
"I take the business very seriously, and I'm super-professional," Delpy said. "But at the same time, I'm not going to kill myself about it. I'm very happy with the film, and we'll see. You never how people react until you show the film."
___
Online:
http://www.sundance.org
wcc hugh jackman theme steiner ranch prn winnipeg jets corsica
1. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James, Knopf
?2. Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George, Dutton
?3. The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, Knopf
?4. The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain, Ballantine
?5. 11/22/63, by Stephen King, Scribner
?6. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson, Knopf
?7. State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett, Harper
?8. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, Doubleday
?9. 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, Knopf
?10. The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, FSG
?11. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, Little Brown
?12. The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson, Random House
?13. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, Bantam
?14. The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje, Knopf
?15. The Litigators, by John Grisham, Doubleday
ON THE RISE:
?16. How It All Began, by Penelope Lively, Viking
?Lively's latest novel explores the powerful role of chance in people's lives and the surprising ways lives intersect.
Published Thursday, January 19, 2012 (for the sales week ended Sunday, January 15, 2012). Based on reporting from many hundreds of independent bookstores across the United States. For information on more titles, please visit IndieBound.org
arrested development arrested development shannon tweed shannon tweed don lapre aladdin weird al yankovic
LISBON, Portugal ? Portugal is to cut holiday entitlement, introduce more flexible working hours and cut compensation for layoffs in a package of labor reforms aimed at reversing the country's steep economic decline, officials said Tuesday.
Outdated labor practices were among the factors blamed for a decade of slender growth and mounting debts that compelled Portugal to take a euro78 billion ($99.6 billion) financial rescue package last year.
Its financial plight has aggravated Europe's sovereign debt crisis and brought fears that its economic downturn, compounded by austerity measures, could eventually force it to follow Greece and restructure its debt.
Standard & Poor's last week downgraded Portuguese debt to junk status amid forecasts the economy will contract by 3.1 percent this year. Portugal went into a double-dip recession last year when Moody's and Fitch Ratings, the other two leading ratings agencies, classified the country's debt as junk. The yield, the interest rate Portugal pays on its debt, for a 10-year bond has risen to 14.2 per cent following the S&P downgrade.
The jobless rate, meanwhile, has climbed to a record 13.2 percent, with unions staging strikes and protests against the center-right government's policies.
The labor law changes were agreed in the early hours of Tuesday morning after 17 hours of talks between the government, trade unions and business leaders.
Portugal committed to the reforms in return for the bailout granted by its European partners and the International Monetary Fund. The European union and other international bodies had long pressed Portugal to modernize its labor laws.
The bailout deal was signed by all the country's main political parties, but agreement on detailed measures required months of negotiations with unions and business confederations.
Economy and Employment Minister Alvaro Santos Pereira said the reforms would make the Portuguese economy more competitive and drive fresh growth.
He said the agreement "shows the world and the markets ... that we are laying the foundations to beat this crisis."
Full details of the agreement, which is due to be signed at a ceremony with Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho on Wednesday, were not immediately available.
However, delegates who attended the talks did say the changes included: shortening workers' annual vacation entitlement from 25 days to 22, scrapping at least three public holidays, reducing layoff payouts, cutting overtime pay levels, and giving companies 150 work hours per employee without overtime to be used by employer as and when they were needed.
Also, jobless people who accept work that pays less than their unemployment benefit are to keep 50 percent of that benefit.
But the government had to ditch its controversial proposal allowing companies to demand that staff work an extra 30 minutes a day without overtime pay. The novel measure, the government claimed, would have reduced unit labor costs and thereby made exports cheaper.
But trade unions balked at the idea, saying it would overturn labor movements' long struggle for an eight-hour day, and the main opposition Socialist Party also opposed it, arguing there was no economic study to support the government's claim. Business leaders were also lukewarm on the measure, saying it would bring limited benefits.
Tuesday's agreement won the blessing of the General Workers' Union, one of the country's two main trade union confederations. However, the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers, the other group, said it would fight the measures.
2011 bowl schedule bcs games heath bell tiger woods eddie long ncaa bowl schedule ncaa bowl schedule
Science Talk |
More Science
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative to help climate science education.
January 16, 2012?|
Subscribe via iTunes
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative for climate science education. ??
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=f5d7f381caa053927d4cfceba700ea7f
jose aldo vs chad mendes lana del rey shipwreck john 3 16 alex smith 49ers bill moyers patriots
WASHINGTON?? Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry on Sunday accused the Obama administration of "over-the-top rhetoric" and "disdain for the military" in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows four Marines urinating on corpses in Afghanistan.
Perry's comments put him at odds with Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said the images could damage the war effort.
"The Marine Corps prides itself that we don't lower ourselves to the level of the enemy," McCain said when asked about Perry's position. "So it makes me sad more than anything else, because ... I can't tell you how wonderful these people (Marines) are. And it hurts their reputation and their image."
No one has been charged in the case, but officials in the U.S. and abroad have called for swift punishment of the four Marines. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week that he worried the video could be used by the Taliban to undermine peace talks.
Other political news of note
A military criminal investigation and an internal Marine Corps review are under way. The Geneva Conventions forbid the desecration of the dead.
Texas Gov. Perry said the Marines involved should be reprimanded but not prosecuted on criminal charges.
"Obviously, 18-, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that's what's occurred here," Perry told CNN's "State of the Union."
He later added: "What's really disturbing to me is the kind of over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military."
Later appearing on the same show, McCain said he disagreed.
"We're trying to win the hearts and minds" of the Afghanistan population, he said. "And when something like that comes up, it obviously harms that ability."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Feelin' blue and lookin' blue, too?
Katy Perry may be licking the wounds from her failed 14-month marriage to Russell Brand -- he pulled the trigger with a Dec. 30 divorce filing -- but that has nothing to do with her latest hair color, which she debuted Thursday in Santa Barbara, Calif. during a shoot for an Adidas ad.
PHOTOS: Katy's drastic hair evolution
"Katy wanted to go this particular color blue for a few weeks now," the newly single singer's colorist Rita Hazan told Us Weekly in an exclusive chat.
The blonde shade that Perry, 26, showed off in December (with Brand, 36, at her side!) "was not an interim shade," Hazan points out. "She knew it wouldn't be permanent -- just another Katy Perry look!"
PHOTOS: Katy's crazy cleavage
"It didn't take long to transition to this color as we have been working together previously," the celeb stylist adds. "We have a great relationship -- Katy is the ideal client because she loves to be creative and unpredictable with her look."
PHOTOS: Katy and Russell's bygone romance
"She was great, really nice. She seemed happy," Perry fan Eric Berlanger said of Perry's demeanor on the Adidas set Thursday.
Adds a pal close to the "Firework" singer: "She is all about moving on now."
Get more Us! Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Facebook, Subscribe to Us Weekly
playoffs empty nest supercross presidential debate braveheart nbc sports bengals vs texans
