kottke.org posts about lists
A list of 20 things everyone needs to know how to do, written by experts in their prospective fields: how to iron a shirt, how to hit a tennis ball, how to listen (“I never learned anything when I was talking”), and how to sleep.
Update: This has disappeared behind the Independent’s paywall. Sorry. But the tips were all taken from this book, The Experts’ Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do. (thx, brian and joe)
Update: Here’s a mirror of the original full-text article. (via get rich slowly)
An extensive listing of all the promotional merchandise from Pixar/Disney’s Cars. Over 70 licensees will be offering themed merchandise like toy cars, cross stitch kits, books, staplers, shower curtains, sippy cups, and a boatload of Kellogg’s cereals. Holy overload.
A chronological list of the largest cities through history. The five most recent cities and when they became the largest: Constantinople (1650), Beijing (1710), London (1825), New York (1925), and Tokyo (1965). The first city over 1 million was Baghdad.
Short list of hot dog places in NYC. What, no Crif Dogs? That’s unpossible.
Playboy lists the 25 sexiest novels ever written. I’ve read only 2 of the 25: Lolita and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Probably a little NSFW.
A list of the 100 most influential persons in the world and what religion each practiced. The list should more properly be called the 100 most influential men in the world + Queens Elizabeth I and Isabella I. (via rb)
List of sounds that different animals make in different languages.
Update: Bzzzpeek and Sounds of the World’s Animals both let you listen to how these different animal sounds are pronounced. (thx finn, lizette, and justine)
What Is the best work of American fiction of the last 25 years? Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In a companion piece, A.O. Scott writes: “I was surprised at how few of the highly praised, boldly ambitious books by younger writers - by which I mean writers under 50 - were mentioned. One vote each for ‘The Corrections’ and ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,’ none for ‘Infinite Jest’ or ‘The Fortress of Solitude,’ a single vote for Richard Powers, none for William T. Vollmann, and so on.” (via, sps)
The Onion AV Club is not impressed with this year’s crop of blockbusters in their 2006 Summer Movie Preview.
Film critic Jim Emerson recently compiled a list of 102 movies that you should see before you can consider yourself movie literate:
…they [are] the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”
I’ve reproduced Emerson’s list here and marked with an asterisk those that I’ve seen.
* 2001: A Space Odyssey
* The 400 Blows
8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien
All About Eve
* Annie Hall
* Apocalypse Now
* Bambi
The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
The Big Sleep
* Blade Runner
Blowup
* Blue Velvet
Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
Bringing Up Baby
Carrie
* Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
* Chinatown
* Citizen Kane
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Crying Game
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Days of Heaven
* Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
* Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
Double Indemnity
* Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
* E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial
Easy Rider
* The Empire Strikes Back
The Exorcist
* Fargo
* Fight Club
Frankenstein
The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
* Gone With the Wind
* GoodFellas
* The Graduate
Halloween
* A Hard Day’s Night
Intolerance
It’s a Gift
* It’s a Wonderful Life
Jaws
The Lady Eve
Lawrence of Arabia
M
Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
The Maltese Falcon
* The Manchurian Candidate
Metropolis
Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
The Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
* North by Northwest
* Nosferatu
* On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
Psycho
* Pulp Fiction
Rashomon
* Rear Window
Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
* Scarface
The Scarlet Empress
* Schindler’s List
The Searchers
* The Seven Samurai
Singin’ in the Rain
Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
* Taxi Driver
The Third Man
Tokyo Story
* Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
Vertigo
* West Side Story
The Wild Bunch
* The Wizard of Oz
That’s 40 out of 102. My pre-1970 movie knowledge is just plain pathetic, but I’ve seen all six movies on the list made since 1990 (and 5 out of 7 of the 80s movies). And I think I’ve seen Bambi (when I was a kid), but I marked it as seen even though I’m not completely sure. As for what’s missing from the list, I’m not even going to go there given my poor showing. There are some hardcore movie fans reading this…anyone seen them all?
This list of the 50 best book to film adaptions that I posted yesterday inspired Michael Hanscom to mark which of the movies he’s seen and which of the books he’s read. Here’s my list:
1. [BM] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. [M] American Psycho
4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. Brighton Rock
6. Catch 22
7. [BM] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. [M] A Clockwork Orange
9. [BM] Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. [M] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. [M] Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. [M] The Godfather
21. [M] Goldfinger
22. [M] Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [B] The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. Jaws
26. The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. [M] LA Confidential
29. [M] Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. [BM] Lolita
31. [M] Lord of the Flies
32. The Maltese Falcon
33. Oliver Twist
34. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. [BM] The Outsiders
37. [BM] Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. [M] The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. [M] Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. [M] The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. To Kill a Mockingbird
49. [M] Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. Watership Down
Note: In the cases of more than one movie adaptation (e.g. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), I marked it as viewed if I’d seen any version of the movie. Also, like Michael, I have no idea why the “top 50” list has 51 items.
The World Heritage List consists of natural and man-made wonders from around the globe. Thirty-four of the sites are currently on the “in danger” list, in some cases because of a site’s inclusion on the master list (and subsequent dramatic increase in tourism).
Five suggested Flickr tags. Merlin brings the funny. “Rows Of Seated White Men Typing At Conferences”.
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