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7 deadly reads
Sitdown Sunday: Meet the special effects team who changed movies forever
The very best of the week’s writing from around the web.
IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
In 1990, Flint, Michigan was possibly the worst place to live in America. Soon, drug dealers were out in force. The local police used rather unusual ways to catch them – including throwing a fake wedding and inviting only suspects.
(The Atlantic, approx 36 mins reading time, 7339 words)
“Cops used to offer parolees free tickets to the Detroit Lions, then arrest them,” recalls Peggy Lawrence, a Flint historian. On one occasion, Moon quietly arrested and locked up stolen property dealer, announced his death in the newspaper, and arrested gang members who showed up at his fake funeral. “Sometimes you gotta do things that are simply funny,” Moon later told a television reporter.
2. These people changed film forever
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) was set up by George Lucas in 1975, and was responsible for creating the world of Star Wars. Now, 40 years later, it can say its approach to special effects has changed the movie world.
(Wired, approx 32 mins reading time, 6596 words)
Photoshop was invented, in part, by an ILM employee tinkering with programming in his time away from work. Billions of lines of code have been formulated there. Along the way ILM has put tentacles into pirate beards, turned a man into mercury, and dominated box office charts with computer-generated dinosaurs and superheroes.
3. How Netflix is making TV suck less
Netflix needs great TVs to make its business better. Here’s how it’s teaming up with companies to ensure it works at its best, by using a new app.
(The Verge, approx 10 mins reading time, 2169 words)
Instead, Netflix’s program has been designed only to address what the company believes are things that make using its software on those sets the best possible experience. If you don’t even plan to use the TV’s built-in Netflix app, and believe you’ll use it through a set top box, or HDMI stick like Roku, then this will have little impact.
The story of everything we know so far about JJ ABrams, Bad Robot, and the forthcoming Star Wards movie.
(Vanity Fair, approx 31 mins reading time, 6328 words)
…at one point during the effects review, while watching a sequence with spaceships flying low over a desert planet, Abrams asked to pause the scene. With a light pen, he drew a little squiggle on a sand dune. “I have a thought about putting Jar Jar Binks’s bones in the desert there,” he said. Everyone laughed. Abrams laughed, too, but insisted, “I’m serious!” He pointed out that the shot zips by in a second, if that. “Only three people will notice,” he said, “but they’ll love it.”
The US military has the highest PTSD rate in its history. Journalist Sebastian Junger knows what it’s like to be in the grip of the disorder, and delves into the horror that it creates.
(Vanity Fair, approx 36 mins reading time, 7323 words)
I had no idea that what I’d just experienced had anything to do with combat; I just thought I was going crazy. For the next several months I kept having panic attacks whenever I was in a small place with too many people—airplanes, ski gondolas, crowded bars. Gradually the incidents stopped, and I didn’t think about them again until I found myself talking to a woman at a picnic who worked as a psychotherapist.
6. The family that keep poo in their freezer
It’s for a good cause – Justin and Eric Sonnenberg are pretty obsessed with their guts – but it’s ok, because that’s the field they work in. And they’ve discovered what you eat really can affect your life.
(NY Mag, approx 41 mins reading time, 8312 words)
I’d recently started an experiment in living according to the precepts of the Sonnenburgs’ new book, The Good Gut, which attempts to correct this seemingly dire state of affairs by offering suggestions for how to nurture a thriving community of bacteria. Much of their advice comes down to two basic ideas: (1) Stop trying to sterilize your home as if it were a surgical theater, which kills off more good bacteria than bad, and (2) eat lots and lots and lots of fiber, which is digested in the lower intestine.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
In 2011, Lucky Chance (born Toby Benham) was out BASE jumping when he was badly injured in a mountainside crash. Elizabeth Weil details how he started his life all over again.
(Outside, approx 23 mins reading time, 4623 words)
That day in Magland, Lucky’s persona or worldview or whatever you want to call it caught up with him. With his wide harlequin’s smile and BASE-jumping backpack, he launched himself off the cliff, threw a complicated set of aerials, and hit a rock ledge almost 450 feet below the exit point. According to reports from other jumpers, the day was very windy, and Lucky freestyled (did airborne gymnastics) where he needed to track (put his body in the best position to gain distance from the wall)
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