["The idea of a Christmas promo from the company still makes me smile, but not the news that its library had been used as collateral on a loan that went into default and the company was shut down today. And, among the various modest honorifics that have ever came my way was being quoted on New Yorker DVDs from Tim Roth, Emir Kusturica and Claire Denis, even if the quotes are goofy. For Underground, it's something about beer and women; for Beau Travail, it's the ellipsis-heavy "A MASTERPIECE! Exquisite... Mysterious... Magical." Missing only a second exclamation point! Presentation treatments and the seven-to-fifteen second fanfares that accompany them have always given me a little rush, on films old or new. But the silent white-on-blue New Yorker logo that accompanied movies like Wim Wenders' American Friend is forever married in my memory to the low hiss and crackle of a well-distressed 16mm optical soundtrack."]

["My dad told me that, many years ago, Winters came through his old hometown—why, I don't know, because he's not from a very cosmopolitan area, but then again soem films have been shot there, so who knows—and spent her time there getting so hammered and behaving so badly that they had to throw her out. Of town! Who gets thrown out of whole towns anymore?
"]

["The contestant finds him- or herself embroiled in a plot by fellow National Socialist Party members to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The plot is spearheaded by Tom Cruise. As the plan begins to unravel, Cruise lures the contestant into an argument over the best way to proceed. When the contestant finally utters the catch phrase, "This is Howie Do It," Tom Cruise removes his eye patch and wig to reveal that he is, in fact, Howie Mandel."]

["Project H Design recently completed the installation of a "math playground," or Learning Landscape, at the Kutamba School for orphans of AIDS in rural Uganda. Part outdoor classroom, part spatially immersive lesson in arithmetic, the project gives students a place to study in at least two senses of the phrase. On the one hand, it's simply a forum for learning; on the other, it is literally a place to study: the space itself, if I've understood this correctly, serves as a model for play-based education."]

["The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds is an experiment in scale: By condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute, the video is a self-contained timepiece. Like a specialized clock, it gives one a sense of perspective. Everything?—?from the formation of the Earth, to the Cambrian Explosion, to the evolution of mice and squirrels?—?is proportionate to everything else, displaying humankind as a blip, almost indiscernible in the layered course of history. Each event in the Evolution of Life fades gradually over the course of the minute, leaving typographic traces that echo all the way to the present day. Just as our blood still bears the salt water of our most ancient evolutionary ancestors."]

***