I spent the last four evenings and this afternoon in movie theaters watching music films of the (I think) first and (I think) only music film festival in Austria called Poolinale. Altough I really suck at writing reviews I will now try to review all eight of these movies. Because that’s how you learn stuff.
The festival started with an Austrian music road movie. Five musicians from different bands, two filmmakers and one author travelled through Austria by train and played a concert at each stop. However, they didn’t perform much at concert halls or clubs but more often at farms, communes and train stations. And in the church of a prison. Most of the time they would exchange music for a bed and food. If you ever have the chance to see this film I can highly recommend it. The music is really good and the movie is very funny.
Likewise, another Austrian band, which will release their first album later this year, also toured through Austria and played in the living rooms of their friends and fans. This 15 minute short film was ok, but nothing special. However, I really like the music of Likewise.
In 2008 Clen Hansard and Markéta Irglov√ɬ° won the Oscar for Best Original Song for Falling Slowly. They formed the band The Swell Season and became a couple. The movie documents the fall of their relationship. Some scenes in this movie were a little bit too long and boring but in general it was a really personal and sad movie with great music.
Immediately after watching The Swell Season we saw Get Along. The movie is actually divided up into three short films about Tegan and Sara. The first film “States” is about the start of their career, “India” shows Tegan and Sara touring through India and the last film “For The Most Part” shows an intimate concert of Tegan and Sara in Vancouver. Although there was no real story I enjoyed watching it since Tegan and Sara are two really fun and cute persons.
This was the most disappointing film of the festival. It was actually not a real film but rather a collection of live sessions of musicians of the label 4AD. One problem was that it was too long (nearly two hours) and that some of the artists selected were, let’s put it that way, strange. After an hour and a little bit I left the theater during the second performance of the band Gang Gang Dance.
Sigrídur Níelsdóttir started recording albums at the age of 70. When she stopped recoding seven years later she had recorded 59 albums and became a cult figure in the Icelandic music scene. I was really surprised by this movie because it is really funny and interesting.
Link: Grandma Lo-Fi
Some of you now maybe will hate me but I don’t really like Sigur R√ɬ≥s. Although the filming was really impressive I got really tired and bored and I was glad when it finished after 74 minutes. Or maybe it was not the films fault but mine since I was already tired before the movie started and because it was shown at 10pm.
Martin Scorsese 209 minute long documentation of George Harrisons life was the last film of the Poolinale. It aired today in the afternoon with a 20 minute break in between (which was absolutely necessary). I learned a lot about The Beatles in general and about George Harrison. For example, I had not known that George was a friend of Monty Python and that he had financed Life of Brian. I also learned a lot of other stuff since I had never read much about the history of the The Beatles before. Great movie and highly recommendable if you are interested in The Beatles or George Harrison.
Views.fm is a site which allows you to share stuff from your Dropbox. I believe that the USP (Unique Selling Point) is that it offers a web views for shared files. Although I do not see an immediate need for such a tool I wanted to try it out by creating a private view. If you look at the screenshot above the big question is: How can I create a new view?
Look at the screenshot. How the fuck can I create a new view?
Solution: The button you are searching for is the link labeled Browse in the top navigation. Seriously?
Pro-Tip: If you found a startup or create a project or some other website make it easy for your users to use your service by labeling stuff accordingly.
Wells Riley:
It’s so much more than that. It’s a state of mind. It’s an approach to a problem. It’s how you’re going to kick your competitor’s ass. This handy guide will help you understand design and provide resources to help you find awesome design talent.
Awesome.
Facebook today has added a Listen-Button to all artist pages. The buttons opens Spotify, MOG or Rdio depending on which service you have previously used with Facebook (via The Verge).
Jordan Mechner:
This archive contains the source code for the original Prince of Persia game that I wrote on the Apple II, in 6502 assembly language, between 1985-89. The game was first released by Broderbund Software in 1989, and is part of the ongoing Ubisoft game franchise.
Nice.
Marco Arment:
The Innovator’s Patent Agreement is a nice sentiment, but the loophole potential is simply too great, and it doesn’t (and can’t) address the fundamental problems and dysfunction in the patent system.
The IPA is not as good as I previously thought.
Design Is a Job from Mike Monteiro is the latest book in the A Book Apart series. In order to promote the book he started a photoshop contest. Now people are photoshopping his book into historic moments. This is probably the most fun campaign I have seen to promote a book.
The image above is my favorite submission to date from Derek Rosenstrauch.
Adam Messinger:
The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.
Twitter just introduced the Innovator’s Patent Agreement. With this agreement the company guarantees its engineers and designers that they will use patents only for defense purposes. This is great news. Now we have to hope that more companies are going to implement the IPA and that they do not become Yahoo.
The text of the IPA can be found on Github.