The Making of Pulp Fiction: Quentin Tarantino’s and the Cast’s Retelling

When Pulp Fiction thundered into theatres a year later, Stanley Crouch in the Los Angeles Times called it a high point in a low age. Time declared, It hits you like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. In Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman said it was nothing less than the reinvention of mainstream American cinema.

Made for $8.5 million, it earned $214 million worldwide, making it the top-grossing independent film at the time. Roger Ebert called it the most influential movie of the 1990s, so well-written in a scruffy, fanzine way that you want to rub noses in it—the noses of those zombie writers who take ‘screenwriting’ classes that teach them the formulas for ‘hit films’.

Pulp Fiction resuscitated the career of John Travolta, made stars of Samuel L Jackson and Uma Thurman, gave Bruce Willis new muscle at the box office, and turned Harvey and Bob Weinstein, of Miramax, into giants of independent cinema. Harvey calls it the first independent movie that broke all the rules. It set a new dial on the movie clock.

It must be hard to believe that Mr Tarantino, a mostly self-taught, mostly untested talent who spent his formative years working in a video store, has come up with a work of such depth, wit and blazing originality that it places him in the front ranks of American filmmakers, wrote Janet Maslin in The New York Times. You don’t merely enter a theatre to see Pulp Fiction: you go down a rabbit hole. Jon Ronson, critic for The Independent, in England, proclaimed, Not since the advent of Citizen Kane … has one man appeared from relative obscurity to redefine the art of movie-making — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Where Men See White, Women See Ecru

If you’ve ever found yourself at a paint store with a member of the opposite sex trying to decide between, say, laguna blue and blue macaw, chances are you’ve disagreed over which hue is lighter or looks more turquoise.

Take comfort in the fact that the real blame lies with physiology: Neuroscientists have discovered that women are better at distinguishing among subtle distinctions in color, while men appear more sensitive to objects moving across their field of vision — via redwolf.newsvine.com

France to invest €20bn in high-speed broadband for the entire country

French president François Hollande has confirmed plans to give every single household in the country high-speed broadband within the next 10 years, with around half getting getting superfast coverage by the end of 2017.

High-speed broadband strengthens [France’s] businesses competitiveness and the quality of [its] public services. [It] will bring more fluidity, more simplicity for communications between business, their customers, and the public sector as well, Hollande said on Wednesday, adding the rollout could directly generate 10,000 jobs — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The vast differences between the NBN and the Coalition’s alternative

The Coalition’s broadband policy slogan states that that they will Complete the current NBN cheaper and faster. This simply isn’t true.

We’ll continue to cover the sketchy claims of being faster and cheaper in other articles but for now we’ll focus on the supposed similarities and differences.

The Coalition’s NBN alternative is different by almost every measure. It uses different technologies to connect the bulk of the country; it has different uses and applications; it affects Australia’s health service differently; it provides different levels of support in emergencies and natural disasters; it requires a different amount of power to operate; the cost of maintenance is different; the overall cost, the return on investment and the re-sale value are different; the management, ownership, governance, competition and monopoly factors will be different; it has a different life-span and upgradability issues; the effect on businesses (of all sizes) and GDP is different; the effects on television are different; the effect on Senior Citizens is different; the viability and potential for cost blowouts is different; the costs of buying broadband will be different; the reliability is different; the effect on property prices will be different; the timescale is different; the legacy is different. Ultimately, it has completely different aims.

In just about every case the Coalition’s alternative compares unfavourably to the current plans – and usually in dramatic fashion. That’s based upon the facts and the information currently available in the public domain — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Craft, Entertainment, Wildlife

Applejack’s Apple Harvest Automaton / morisato54

No pony appreciates a good days work more than Applejack. She loves the hard-earned life so much that she doesn’t even look like she’s working at all! Of course, not everybody is gifted with the talent for apple bucking. It’s also an untold mystery as to how she can send each and every single apple into a bushel with nary a one touching the ground. But I think her ever faithful, canine companion Winona has rooted that secret out. That or she’s on the lookout for bad apples.

The figures, stand, tree and bushel are carved out of Philippine mahogany while the gears and apples are made out of Narra hardwood. They’re painted in enamel and protected by clear flat lacquer. Applejack stands at 5 1/8″ tall (with her hat down) while the entire complete piece measures 11 3/4″ high, 9 1/2″ long, and 3 1/2″ wide. It took 161 hours to complete — via Youtube

Yahoo CEO Mayer Now Requiring Remote Employees to Not Be (Remote)

According to numerous sources, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has instituted a HR plan today to require Yahoo employees who work remotely to relocate to company facilities. The move will apparently impact several hundred employees, who must either comply without exception or presumably quit. It impacts workers such as customer service reps, who perhaps work from home or an office in another city where Yahoo does not have one — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Mystery as tourist’s body found in hotel water tank in Los Angeles

Police are trying to determine whether the death of a 21-year-old Canadian tourist at a Los Angeles hotel was an accident or a murder.

Elisa Lam, of Vancouver, British Columbia, was discovered in a water tank on the roof of the budget 600-room Cecil Cecil Hotel after guests complained of low water pressure, AP reported.

Police sources told the LA Times mystery surrounds her death and it was hoped an autopsy would yield more clues because there appeared no obvious trauma on her body.

It was also not yet known how long she had been in the tank — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Forget Dropbox, here’s Drobo-box: Small-biz array meets Barracuda cloud

Security appliance maker Barracuda Networks has agreed to marry its online file-sharing service to storage biz Drobo’s box of hard drives called 5N.

People can upload and download files to and from Barracuda’s Copy cloud, and share their data between desktop computers, iPhones, iPads, iPods, Android devices and Microsoft’s Surface slabs. The accompanying app and basic service offers 5GB of space for free. There are also group sharing functions.

Now Drobo, as part of today’s announced partnership, will plug its 5N desktop filer into Copy’s systems: each box will be able to extend its local storage and document sharing into the Barracuda cloud and back up its data to the remote service. An app for the 5N that can access Copy will ship in March — via redwolf.newsvine.com