An Age of Magic

Cinematic set design has come a long way since Scarlett kissed Rhett

If you have seen Gone with the Wind you will have marvelled at the beautiful house, Tara, and the wonderful set designs of the day. There was quite a lot of trickery involved however and what you saw on screen was not what you actually got. The front of Tara, for example, was a layer of shots of different things. The front porch with it’s interior plantation shutters was actually the front of David Selznick’s office building superimposed with other images added to create the splendor that was Tara.

The scene where Scarlett walks through the masses of injured soldiers was ahead of it’s time in that shots of the ‘injured’ extras were recreated and superimposed to create the image of teeming thousands of men. Something done today as it would cost a fortune to film such scenes with real people. The colour process used to film was also a new innovation – GWTW might have been a story of times past, but in many ways it was ahead of it’s own time.

Popularity: 98% [?]

Will logging in replace the dole queue…?

If you ever wanted to believe anything the former British PM, Gordon Brown, ever said (and you’d not have a lot of company…) you could have agreed with him when he stated pre-election in 2010 that the days of standing in line on the dole queue are almost at an end. Considering that everything is done online these days you do wonder why people still have to front up regularly in person rather than simply log in and sign on in that manner.

And who would it apply to?  all recipients of all benefits or maybe just those with an incapacity who claim a social security disability pension and find it difficult to negotiate their way to the dole office on a regular basis. On the other hand, taking the dole queue to the internet could very well see people signing on from their annual holidays instead of fronting up in person…

Popularity: 100% [?]

Will books one day be extinct…?

I wish to state that, even though I believe that technology has benefited mankind in so many ways, there are some things that must remain sacred. Books – books are one of those things and I fear that those wonderful page-bound tomes are in danger of disappearing forever under the weight of technology. Sales of digital e-books have outstripped real books for the first time, according to Amazon.

Four years after the launch of electronic novels, the firm announced it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 printed books over the past six weeks. While e-book sales have previously outsold hardback books, never before have they exceeded sales of all books, in both hardback and paperback forms. The books can be read on a range of electronic devices – from Kindles to computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads and BlackBerrys.

In the U.K, where Amazon’s Kindle store opened only a year ago, e-books now outsell hardbacks at a ratio of two-to-one. Amazon began selling hard-cover and paperback books in July 1995. Twelve years later it launched e-books and by July 2010 Kindle book sales had surpassed sales of hardbacks. Six months later Kindle books began outselling paperbacks and now the format is more popular than all text books put together. The Kindle book-store offers more than 950,000 books for sale as well as more than 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books.

Popularity: 82% [?]