Posts Tagged ‘Steven Spielberg’
Diagramming (famous) sentences…
From Flowing Data‘s Data Underload: Famous movie quotes.
As we practice our deliveries, we might recall that it was on this date in 1975 that then-27-year-old director Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel Jaws premiered. Released “wide” (to 500 theaters at once, as opposed to rolling out in a few theaters first, as was then customary) and backed by a (then substantial) $700,000 marketing campaign, Jaws grossed $7 million in its opening weekend (on its way to over $450 million worldwide). Prior to Spielberg’s triumph, summer had been the studios’ dumping ground for their weaker films; Jaws ushered in the era of the summer blockbuster.
Don’t know much about history…
Readers may know that there has accumulated on YouTube quite a collection of “adaptations” of pop hits turned to the teaching of history… e.g., “William the Conqueror” (to Justin Timberlake’s “Sexyback”), “Joan of Arc” (“Seven Nation Army” by White Stripes), “The French Revolution” (Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”), “The Spanish Inquisition” (The Human League, “[Keep Feeling] Fascination”), and dozens of others… The work of Honolulu-based “historyteachers” (“Mrs. B” and “Mr. H”– “history teachers, duh”), the videos are both amusing and illuminating…
But surely their masterpiece– and equally surely their most profoundly strange piece of work– is a little ditty devoted to Genghis Khan’s gift to Europe (via the Genoese at Kaffa)…
As we tap our toes, we might recall that it was on this date that Schindler’s List opened in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto; it went on to gross $96.1 million in the United States, over $321.2 million worldwide, and to win seven Academy Awards– including director Steven Spielberg’s first.
The long and the short of it…
To every new movement there is a backlash… so as a soon as one encountered the phenomenon of TinyURL, the service that compacts long web addresses into a few characters (the easier to cut and paste), one might have anticipated GiantURL— the service that takes URLs of ordinary length and makes them longer– much longer.
Consider your correspondent’s own LawrenceWilkinson.com; with the help of GiantURL, it becomes:
http://www.gianturl.com?UncwSwXkNRdC3x,B6,8p6,,Y2,2WKtw9XF0,GR3,8,SqN80z3w7jh,0BYHZ2lrVLqR
,x9z8w6N,,,9Yx32mCRnb3G,R8gq,,Lw3nC9wLp,W8N,8g1FXVLwP9s9,Z0CNj1qPQxRgs6,vm7mkXnm
SDd,,,Nlm3Z8,,YP2Mc0,DMh2x,6jxFvhsPbv9m2RZ3LNct3td8,3FW0HwzmW7DWKn,Fz4q,0mxvL9nr,,m
lb,YT2F1Ylh,H4w,9,4v,9sQWXgv2nZ6j,,7y,cYlx,0hT2T2W0bD5,k1snz7pxMCDpb6,GHw,dY,mZQRq
Wc6r7x4X,qW3Rf03pFSwl7XvN9,pm,Lx5kW6j,y,,0XF7g1BZCKgC8r4tQ1FRv4lBNbRmq8,jq7yhJkj
DGfbCnS,g1Q2qzDR1Zl5mFKs7jz4mnXwkjZ,s2h4CJ4JS,,3x,7,4PW0PkzqG6JVQkgR,3zZ0mk,,4cxfvl
sgwSL2H3,j,,C7,y7w4rn4bQZSbf9zH9cdh5mRw,jk,3d,5B2T0tQ6Kl2j,d7dpDLHbs3rJDtyx,sxX,,,
Mq5c1t2RRr,7,l81vBYzl9Nl,6pgsTWt3rJ8b,ccK6TL9f7,,SRdK7,6h,0YZr0,VK,L,t6Fck5qn,zr
K,rc,xQnn7F0t,W,5Yk0,DRz5pj3,pQlcnKvw8t5KQ2TS,w5vx8B7,Z7L,xyL5,N,mhTj6lZ0llg,1wlfns
IbwFab
..which, if pasted into one’s browser, does in fact take one there.
And further to the recently-featured Universal Packing List, another option: PackWhiz.
As we think like expansionists, we might recall that it was on this date in 1933 that the Inverness (Scotland) Courier newspaper related an account of a local couple who claimed to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (as the Courier’s editor called it) became a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound reward for capture of the beast. While accounts of an aquatic beast living in Scotland’s Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, this was the first modern sighting, and the inauguration of the Loch Ness “fever” that one knows and loves…
It’s probably no coincidence that, on this date exactly 39 years later (1972), Steven Spielberg began the production of Jaws.
Spielberg and “Bruce,” one of the articulated models used in the filming
You must be logged in to post a comment.