DuVernois Blog

35th anniversary of the Cannonball

Brock Yates is still reveling in his 15 minutes of fame. But it was a great moment. "At no time did we exceed 175 mph." Hopefully they'll figure some way of pulling off a 2007 version of the race...

Diebold isn't happy with the HBO documentary on its voting fraud machines

Poor Diebold! You can pay off Congress to not investigate, but it appears that a cable entertainment corporation is more responsible.

Jihadist war videos

I think the first of these that I saw were from Chechnya. Squads would video their ambushes and then the videos would appear on the web eventually. There were some of the attacks into the neighboring republics as well. I think there might have been some older Afghan-Russian ones as well.

Anyway, the NYT has an article about the proliferation of these videos onto youtube and other video sites. The most famous of the sniper videos (right hand photo on the NYT article) has a related story in the Army Times. The medic who was hit in the video (unharmed due to body armor) treats the wounded sniper a little while later.

Making new history the right-wing way

Don't like history? In this case, want to put all of the blame for 9/11 on Clinton? Make a movie and have Disney and ABC show it for you. "Not a documentary," but how many of the viewers are fooled? Maybe the same ones that thought there was a connection between Iraq and bin Laden?

Hmmmm...

Awful videos

You know, they can be almost like, well, watching a car crash...

Never get out of the car while it's still going.

BBC news interview in Iraq. Oddly enough, I had just been asking this question about subtitles a few days ago.

And this gem from Iraq.

The private contractors have been having fun as well.

How easy is it to steal a bike in NYC?

A blowtorch would have been a bit too much I guess.

I'd call it a good review

A Scanner, Darkly.

Al Gore's presidential moment

Okay, truth be told, he's had several presidential moments and we all know that's a few more than the current occupier of the oval office. Still, what to say about An Inconvenient Truth? I saw the movie over the weekend and came away with a string of opinions and a fear that someone would note that I had driven to the movie theater rather than walked...

• The science looked accurate. Scientists in the relevent field agree with a few minor caveats. Still, it's an interesting experience to hear a politician get facts straight.
• The animated bear and frog are just ridiculous.
• Not a bad powerpoint (or Keynote) presentation. I suspect that the interns/staff has a lot to do with it.
• Apple advertising! (Thanks Anne for the thought.) If this movie gets the US working towards lowering carbon emissions, someday Apple will use it in an ad.
• The bear and frog? Drop them in the director's cut.
• The whole human interest bit with Gore's son, hit by a car, reeked of cheap manipulation. The story of his sister (who died as a smoker of lung cancer while the family farm grew tobacco) was much more effective.
• There's a decent review of what's happening here from the New Haven Advocate.
• And the NYT talking about geoengineering "solutions" to ameliorate the global climate change.

Altman's PHC

A quite positive review in the NYT.

Inconvenient truth review from the City Pages

Hmmm...a glorified powerpoint movie? Still, it's one of the classic cases of the fight between style and substance. Will review it when I see it myself.

Brand new in the "hey, it was a movie, you know, fiction" category

Geek fight club. Bet you thought I was going to mention the Da Vinci Code instead.

Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia?

Probably not a wise choice. One reviewer commented, "not convincingly virginal." Thanks Leni!

C for Cookie

The Sesame Street characters meet V for Vendetta. What if the government restricts our freedom to cookies?

It's back! (Chicago-land specific blog entry)

Wild Chicago! With the original host even. Good stuff. Hmmm...a Minneapolis equivalent?

"It is absolutely massive. I have seen its prints and they are huge, bigger than a deer. It is a brute of a thing."

It's a real-life curse of the were-rabbit! Grower Jeff Smith, 63, said: "This is no ordinary rabbit. We are dealing with a monster." The BBC thoughfully links to older rabbit stories and to Wallace and Gromit.

Snakes on a plane?

The quote tracker.

Cell phones in movie theaters

I personally like the water pistol idea near the bottom of the article. Though of course the physicist in me is more interested in paints that absorb efficiently in the cell bands.

Welcome to the brain of the Don

The Donald Rumsfeld that is. Plastic has an excellent resume of web links from his halcyon days in the Nixon and Ford administrations to leading two failed wars (see what sort of freedom and democracy has brought to Afghanistan?) for Dubya.

Read his own words, justifying what has been accomplished in the past three years in Iraq. Believe any of it? Like Rummy's $50 billion dollar and 5 week estimates of the war costs and length? And what's up with his comparisons of very and sundries with Hitler? Do we really fear that a 1000 year Venezualan Reich is right around the corner? Or is he projecting a bit?

Going back to the resume, we have to reflect on his successful running of the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon and his back-room efforts to help get the US out of the Vietnam War. For that he was shuffled off to be NATO ambassador. Then triumph as chief of staff and defense secretary under Ford, fighting against the whole nastiness of detante. Off to the private sector until Dubya decides to bring the Nixon crowd all back to the White House. The epic Shinseki-Rumsfeld fight seems now to be a footnote in the story, but certainly marked part of the White House team's decent into unreality.

Afghanistan. Iraq. Some investigations into what Rumsfeld has wrought.

V for Vendetta

Okay, so it's hard to imagine how any film could be more apropos today in the US than a film version of Alan Moore's warning about fascism. On the other hand, there's the movie business making disposible imitations of movies. the net result, well, I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds moderately good or at least worth a watch. Now on to the real task of nipping the jack-booted republicans before they install the ovens.

Japanese shirt folding?

The Nation on the Torino Olympics?

Well, I cared about the biathalon and the cross-country skiing, though not really skeleton (scary as it looks). Otherwise I think the Nation did a good job highlighting the horror that was the television coverage of the games and the bizarre spectacles that have eclipses even the curling competition. Who indeed came up with the Bode Miller concept? Fired, I trust.

A Bollywood remake of Fight Club?

Yup. The first rule of Fight Club: Sing and dance.

Google tricks

Type in asshole and click "I feel lucky." It should direct you to Film Strip International. If it didn't, well, too many people prolly complained. Did I mention that the links are not especially work safe?

"where's the media?"

Raised, most interestingly, at Sundance. I haven't read anything more useful coming out of the festival this year than the asking of this question. Not really answered I suppose.

How stuff works entry of merit

Check it out! I like the cutting PVC pipe bit myself.

And I suppose, thinking about Star Wars brings us to an important ethical dilemma.

Just like a movie

Police officer killed just months before retirement. Partner deeply saddened.

An excellent bit on myths of Challenger (20 years on)

The myths article appears here. And the top level 20th anniversary stories are here.

So, I was walking home from school, we had had exams that day and I was finished for the day. When I got home my mother had heard it on the radio. I remember the next day watching the footage again and again in school and noticing when someone decided to add the explosion sound to the tape. It wasn't delayed at all. You saw the explosion and heard the bang. I remember that faking of the news video almost as much as the whole tragedy at NASA sort of thing. Columbia bothered me a lot more---probably by being closer to NASA and the space program at that later date, and also understanding it as the end of the era. (Or maybe of the error of the shuttle.)

Terrorist attacks and uploading a film before the DVD release

Both are federal crimes in the States. Any guesses as to who financed the passage of a bill in Congress for the latter?

Oak Street Theater

Our best local independent cinema is in serious financial trouble. There have been a lot of rumors over the troubles there, but this is the first time I've seen it all spelled out. Repetory theaters must be having a tough time with the much easier availability of foreign and rare movies purchasable or rentable online.

Hamas TV

With cartoons and suicude bombers, oh my!

Continuing on the car theme...

Take a look at Top Gear's comparison of racing the NSX on a game machine and in real life.

And comparing modern road cars to race cars of the past.

Great videos. And why doesn't the US have either good car magazines or video magazines like the Brits? Check out Evo, Car, or Top Gear and compare them to the waste of paper that is the US auto magazine industry.

Bad ideas for movies

Real ones that are coming soon:

• The A Team: The Movie.
  
• A Knight Rider Movie?
  
• Dallas Maybe J.R. will start a war in the Middle East under false pretenses while wrecking havoc on the domestic scene?
  
• The Munsters Movie starring Keenen Ivory, Shawn, and Marlon Wayans.
  
• Miami Vice at long last!
  
• Die Hard 4: Die Hardest Yeah, that sounds like a thrilling flick.
  
• I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer Truly, is a sequel needed?
  
• Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. AKA Global Warming isn't the fault of large corporations, or the emission of greenhouse gases, it's just a funny opportunity for animated characters to surf where there used to be a glacier.
  
• Mrs. Doubtfire 2 (As we move into the "save us all" category.
  
• The Power of the Dark Crystal
  
• Rambo 4 No comment.
  
• A remake of the The Pink Panther.
  
• and Porky's.
  
• Did I mention Rock and Roll High School?
  
• And finally, Glenn Close will star in a musical remake of Sunset Blvd.
  

And some others that we can only hope for:

• Taxi Driver 2
  
• Snakes on a Plane. More here.
  
• Passion of the Christ II
  
• Citizen Kane: Part 2 (Definitely Tarrantino.)
  
• On Golden Pond in 3-D
  

The Guardian dissing Narnia

I have to admit my own ambivalence. I read the Chronicles of Narnia a little late, so the religious aspects were hitting me over the head, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have otherwise.

Philip Pullman's take on Narnia.

Making Fiends!

Wow! If you haven't seen this web-comic/film series, you have been missing something special. Be sure to check out episode 17. In Bulgarian.

Sony's virus oddity

It appears that not only did they anti-CD-copying software attempt to prevent copyright-infringement, but it was itself a violation of the GNU Public License and a violation of copyright. So, to "protect" a copyright, Sony violated a copyright, infected thousands of computers with malware (heck, a virus essentially) and then made "ammends" by withdrawing the CDs from the market. These are the folks who claim $500,000 in damages for each copied song on your computer. What do they owe those whose computers are infected then? Nothing?

Kazakhstan threatens the Ali G show with legal action

You mean you haven't seen it? Run, do not walk, to the video store and rent the DVDs. See here for the "official" website. Granted, it's not as funny finding a dead turtle in your coffee but it is quality entertainment.

Just when you thought patent applications couldn't get any worse

Someone goes off to try, in full seriousness (see the middle of the second link), to patent fiction. Perhaps in a stunning turn of events to obvious ridiculousness of this application will cause the Patent Office to also overturn software and genetic patents, and summarily reject trivial "practices" patents as well.

Here's the Patent Application.

And Groklaw's analysis. "They have at last invented a way to destroy all cultural development forevermore. That's an achievement of a sort."

Geek culture

Time Magazine interviews Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman.

Nightmare before marriage?

Corpse Bride review from the City Pages. Is there a reference in the movie to Kill Bill? There really should be I think.

Hayao Miyazaki interview

In the Guardian.

March of the penguins

Okay, those conservatives (including Michael Medved) who are using March of the penguins as a stirring celebration of monogamy (and intelligent design!) need to remember that those penguins are monogamous for one season. Next year, next Mr. and Mrs. Penguin. See this NYT mention of the crazed right-wing lunies, though no mention of serial monogamy.

Added 9/22...there's a plastic.com discussion of this.

Jesus in the mailbox

Just bizarre, these folks are trying to distribute a universally panned movie from the 1970s to every mailbox in America. To save your sole.

Today's thought

"Survival Kit Check...
- one .45 caliber automatic
- two boxes of ammunition
- four days concentrated emergency rations
- one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills
- one miniature combination Russian (pronounced 'Rooshan') phrase book and Bible
- one hundred dollars in rubles
- one hundred dollars in gold
- nine packs of chewing gum
- one issue of prophylactics
- three lipsticks
- three pair of nylon stockings

.... Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Reno with all that stuff."

[from: Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb]

Too geeky for words

Spacecraft sizes. Small, medium, large, ridiculously large, and larger still.

Bombay thoughts...

Travel for lack of a better suggested category.

Bombay, Bollywood, Monsoon season. It was quite an experience seeing the city shortly after the huge, killer floods. Garbage, sewage, and water all over the streets. But not over all of the streets. And no longer waist or neck deep.

Random thoughts:
- saw about 1/2 hour of a Bollywood flick at a little shack/street vendor...ate samosas there and watched the film...looked like he was stealing electricity for the TV with a bunch of tangled wires running down from a building...I am going to get the plague I fear, but the food was good!
- speaking of food...Indian food...yup, it's one of the luxuries of the US I think...we get good food of most every type (okay, I know, we also have some really crappy food, but we have good stuff of most types available)...so the good Indian food I've had here is not too different from good Indian food in the US...Udupi in Minneapolis for example
- my hotel in Bombay (or Mumbai, we can talk about those politics some other time) also tried to do "English breakfast" with limited success...they had potatoes with "paprika" but the paprika was some truly hot pepper...tasty, but not exactly what was planned I think...and it's hard to picture some older Brit biting into a four alarm breakfast
- Garlic Naan, yay!
- Politics also...what to say? It definitely feels evil to stay in a nice hotel, drink bottled water, type on a laptop, while outside people slop around in sewage, live on the sidewalks, scrounge for a basic existence. Of course that's true whether I'm here visiting or not. Whether I'm in my first world home in the States or my substitute first world hotel home in India. But what to do about it?
- The meeting looks a bit muddled at this point. There's no posted schedule. In theory there will be transportation tomorrow AM to the meeting leaving from the hotel. No one seems to know about that.

Dawn recommends a website for all of you

Tom Cruise is Nuts dot com.

"Coalition of the willing" fatalities animations

You can learn quite a bit from this little animation. Well done little bit of data processing.

Other Iraq links for today:
Op-ed, NYT, "Dangerous Incompetence"

Another op-ed piece, "America held hostage"

Report on the ground in Iraq. Fight for an area and then leave it to the insurgents. Sound familar?

Stella has lost her groove again

Terry McMillan, author of "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," is divorcing the subject of the book, who she says is gay and was looking to get US citizenship.

Being a superhero

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad." - Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

From Forbes Magazine, the cost of being Batman!

And just how rich are those fictional characters anyway?

The new way to check the weather in LA

From David Lynch...

The new Doctor Who!

Bad Wolf! Since it's being compared to Pynchon, this is looking like more than a show for old Dr. Who fans.

And a great Clive James quote: "Good schlock is always better than bad art."

How one video changed many (Serbian) minds

Documentary footage of some of the atrocities. Leading pretty much directly to the current active manhunt for Mladic.

Star Wars and the American experience

An evil dictator, a war built on false principles, the senate cheering for the loss of democracy, "with me or against me," and the scapegoating of minority groups. Is it Star Wars or is it the news?

Aardman, Cleese, Wallace, Gromit, and Cannes

Read all about it in the BBC News. John Cleese will write the next feature film, a tale of the French and the English which explores the origin of the English Channel! But before that, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit!

People with too much time on their hands

Counting the time "fuck" is said in the TV show "Deadwood."

A neverending story. A crisis in three parts.

A film setup on the Golden Gate, in theory to capture "day/year in the life of" turns into a document of Golden Gate Bridge suicides.

So, who has left for Canada?

The urban legend of the "jelly bracelets." AKA the sex bracelets.

Another reason I don't have a TV...

Sci-Fi channel...Stargate and a remake of Battlestar Galactic? With former Playboy bunnies as Cylons? VH1...reviewing the nineties, including David Duke and Public Enemy. Nostalgia already? "Turn it up. Bring the noise."

Spud on the dark side?

Darth Tater?

I Zimbra

David Byrne / Brian Eno / Hugo Ball

GADJI BERI BIMBA CLANDRIDI
LAULI LONNI CADORI GADJAM
A BIM BERI GLASSALA GLANDRIDE
E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRA

BIM BLASSA GALASSASA ZIMBRABIM
BLASSA GLALLASSASA ZIMBRABIM

A BIM BERI GLASSALA GRANDRID
E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRA

GADJI BERI BIMBA GLANDRIDI
LAULI LONNI CADORA GADJAM
A BIM BERI GLASSASA GLANDRID
E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRA

For some reason, tonight after waking up, tossing and turning, with bad dreams and with general unhappiness at myself, I sat at this computer sending email (in an apology of sorts) and thinking about the Talking Heads song I Zimbra. From Fear of Music. Always liked it and Life During Wartime off of that album. Life During Wartime is also a fantastically good novel by Lucius Shepard. Sort of science fiction, sort of an attempt to exorcise the ghosts of Vietnam with a magical realist Central America and the next war of "liberation." Seems all the stronger with the current events. (Oddly enough, there's a Life During Wartime blog which seems to be mostly bitching about the economy, the election, and bad jobs.) Anyway, back to I Zimbra. Hugo Ball doesn't get many liner note references. Now, during the 1980s, or even back in the day of the Cabaret Voltaire and Dada over Zurich.

Glossolalia of a sort, wasn't it? The Dadaists certainly made that connection to the Pentecost but I'm not too sure that David Byrne intended anything along those lines. Nor is it Sumerian eliminating a non-casual link to Stephenson. African rhythms and the "nonsense" words of Hugo Ball. (You didn't expect this posting to lead anywhere, did you?) The first time I heard the song I assumed that the words were in a language, prolly some African language. Glancing at the liner notes, I caught the vaguely familiar H. Ball and had to look it up. Was England's Dreaming already written at that point? No, it couldn't be, Jon Savage was still working on the official biography of the Kinks at that point. (Look it up!)

So, I Zimbra got me to look up who the heck these dadaist were. A few years later, in my college library I discovered a copy of the Futurist Cookbook by Marinetti and that led to a whole 'nother world of weird books for me. The line from the Talking Heads to the Situationist Internation to the Temporary Autonomous Zone is far from straight (perhaps like the roads in Boston, paving over old cow paths) but the connections are there. Which brings us to Fight Club (see A., I'd have to bring it up in the blog eventually) where the connections between fascism (a la Marinetti and, well, a bunch of blue collar folks unifying with two shirts, black, one pair boots, black...) and the Temporary Autonomous Zone (if a fight club isn't one, then the Code Duello meant nothing).

So, is that in some way a positive fascism? A friendly fascism? Certainly George Bush and company are more sinister than any Project Mayhem. Where we were supposed to be revolted, we cheered for the waiters and projectionists and testicular cancer survivors. And we hated ourselves for it. The Futurists wanted impressive architecture, and we got ovens, we wanted Pax Americana and got Iraqis in black hoods, like Hugo reciting his poem Karavane in the photo to the left.

"Our cabaret is a gesture. Every word that is spoken and sung here says at least one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect. What could be respectable and impressive about it? Its cannons? Our big Drum drowns them. Its idealism?That has long been a laughingstock, in its popular and its academic edition. The grandiose slaughters and cannibalistic exploits? Our spontaneous foolishness and our enthusiasm for illusion will destroy them.” - Hugo Ball

Film culture, 2005-style

• Another version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• Two different versions of War of the Worlds. Spielberg and a small British version which follows the book.
• A remake of Willy Wonka/Charlie and the Choolcate Factory.
• Another Star Wars flick.
• Another Batman flick.
• Another random comic turned into a movie: The Fantastic Four. Though their transformation into superheroes did involve cosmic rays...
• Another version of the Narnia story.
• Another Harry Potter film.
• And a movie version of Bewitched?

What has Mr. T been doing lately?

I think we've all followed the careers of the former A-Team actors with great interest, but Mr. B. A. Barachus has dropped out of sight for the most part. Well, here he is acting in paranoid Christian flicks. Pity the man.

Can you spot the parody movie review?

Shark Tale is pro-homosexual?

Incredibles, not as incredible as Jesus?

A winner for the worst campaign journalist? How did this sneak in here?

Could this be the end?

Of Godzilla? Possibly.

Of the MPAA? Only in your dreams.

The Last Place on Earth. A great read. The definitive Antarctic exploration book of the Scott-Amundsen race for 90 South.

Do you fast forward through recorded commercials?

Do you know that that might be made illegal? It's one aspect of the new legislation governing intellectual property in front of the Congress. Upset? Well certainly anyone who reads that would vote against it, right? Mmmmm...but no one read the Patriot Act, whether they voted for or against it.

Though fast forwarding through objectionable scenes in a movie would be okay.

For some reason, Latin verbs have been on my mind this morning

[Brian is writing graffiti on the palace wall. The Centurion catches him in the act]
Centurion: What's this, then? "Romanes eunt domus"? People called Romanes, they go, the house?
Brian: It says, "Romans go home. "
Centurion: No it doesn't ! What's the latin for "Roman"? Come on, come on !
Brian: Er, "Romanus" !
Centurion: Vocative plural of "Romanus" is?
Brian: Er, er, "Romani" !
Centurion: [Writes "Romani" over Brian's graffiti] "Eunt"? What is "eunt"? Conjugate the verb, "to go" !
Brian: Er, "Ire". Er, "eo", "is", "it", "imus", "itis", "eunt".
Centurion: So, "eunt" is... ?
Brian: Third person plural present indicative, "they go".
Centurion: But, "Romans, go home" is an order. So you must use... ?
[He twists Brian's ear]
Brian: Aaagh ! The imperative !
Centurion: Which is... ?
Brian: Aaaagh ! Er, er, "i" !
Centurion: How many Romans?
Brian: Aaaaagh ! Plural, plural, er, "ite" !
Centurion: [Writes "ite"] "Domus"? Nominative? "Go home" is motion towards, isn't it?
Brian: Dative !
[the Centurion holds a sword to his throat]
Brian: Aaagh ! Not the dative, not the dative ! Er, er, accusative, "Domum" !
Centurion: But "Domus" takes the locative, which is... ?
Brian: Er, "Domum" !
Centurion: [Writes "Domum"] Understand? Now, write it out a hundred times.
Brian: Yes sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir.
Centurion: Hail Caesar ! And if it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.

Holy anniversary tubeman! Vacuum tube turns 100 years old.

Audiophiles rejoice. The rest of us ponder the meaning of THD and even versus odd order harmonics. And read the announcement or the discussion on slashdot.

Since the radio stations you listen to run on tube RF power amps, the microwave ovens do as well, and you might even be looking at this on a CRT, the age of the tube (or valve for our Brits) isn't quite over. Now, if someone knows a good source of new-old stock RCA 6L6GC matched pairs at a good cost...

Six months before 9/11 there was the...

Lone Gunmen Pilot episode.

Featuring a jumbo jet headed for the World Trade Center

Crazed fascists in the government

A FOX TV show

Spun-off from the X-Files

But a happy ending

Until the End of the World

"All things turn to junk. Do our images also turn to junk?" - Wim Wenders

Had loaned this film to a friend of mine and I was trying to explain why it is my favorite movie and realized that it's not the easiest thing/process to describe. As a fan of road movies (Highway 61 anyone?), this score high, perhaps it's the ultimate road movie as we cross four continents with impressive cinematography and a vaguely noir aesthetic.

1999 was the year the Indian Nuclear Satellite went out of control. No one knew where it might land. It soared above the ozone layer like a lethal bird of prey. The whole world was alarmed... Claire couldn't care less. At the time, she was living her own nightmare. The same dream arrived each night. She was gliding over an unknown land, pleasantly at first, but then the gliding would turn into falling, the falling into panic, and then she'd wake up.

The videotape version is about 2.5 hours, about half of Wender's planned length. DVD releases have been delayed repeatedly. There are rumors now of some sort of Italian release DVD. Anyway, another way of looking at this film, starting from the science-fiction aspects (which are relatively few) is as a fully-realized P. K. Dick novel on the big screen. Dreams, love, nightmares, the tyranny of images.

I said: Thank you, girl; thank you, girl I'll love you till the end of the world with your eyes black as coal and your long, dark curls and with the horses prancing through the fields, with my knife in my jeans and the rain on the shield; I sang a song for the glory of the beauty of you waiting for me in your dress of blue. - Nick Cave

If you have patience with it, this movie rewards you. The epic scale looms over small characters existing in the shadows of right and wrong. Family loyalty and addiction. Hey, it's a good film that seems to either click or not (see the Amazon reviews for the range of opinions).

The Strange Case of Until the End of the World.
UtEotW.
Wim Wender's site.

Enjoy...