video vault

 

DVD Pick of the week: Kiss Me Deadly (The Criterion Collection)

 

Ralph Meeker perfectly embodies Mickey Spillane’s twofisted private eye Mike Hammer in this wild, weird 1955 film noir classic from ace director Robert Aldrich.

The frost of the Cold War hangs over the heated proceedings, wherein Hammer tracks down a murderer while tangling with the LA cops, the FBI, and a shadowy conspiracy that clearly represents nefarious foreign interests. There’s plenty of tough-guy talk and action, yet the film also boasts an offkilter, almost satirical surrealism.

The supporting cast includes Maxine Cooper as Hammer’s faithful secretary Velda and Wesley Addy as Pat Chambers, his only ally on the police force. Albert Dekker and Paul Stewart provide the requisite villainy, as does Gaby Rodgers as a femme fatale, and look for Jack Elam, Strother Martin and Cloris Leachman (in her screen debut) lurking in the background.

The film was more successful with audiences than critics when released, but has since gained hugely in stature and respect, influencing many filmmakers along the way. Ever wonder where Quentin Tarantino got the idea for the mysterious suitcase in Pulp Fiction? Wonder no more.

Special features include an audio commentary, retrospective documentaries, the alternate ending, and more. The DVD retails for $29.95, the Blu-ray for $39.95.

ALSO Available

COYOTE TRAILS (Alpha Home Entertainment): Tom Tyler triumphs over horse rustlers in this predictable but zippy 1935 B Western.

ELVIRA’S MOVIE MACABRE (Entertainment One): The “Mistress of the Dark” (AKA Cassandra Peterson) lends her buxom, bawdy charms as hostess for a pair of DVD doublefeatures: Night of the Living Dead (1968) and I Eat Your Skin (1964); The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Werewolf of Washington (both 1973). Each DVD retails for $14.98.

EULOGY FOR A VAMPIRE (Water Bearer Films): Producer/director Patrick McGuinn’s gay-themed vampire thriller stars Angelo Tursi as a young drifter who bewitches a group of monks sequestered in a monastery in upstate New York. Intriguing premise (a la The Beguiled ) spoiled by ponderous pacing, overripe performances and cheesy cinematography.

“GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD NIGHTS” (DC Entertainment/Warner Home Video): Six animated stories showcasing the DC Comics superhero (voiced by Nathan Fillion), being released in conjunction with the new live-action film. The voiceover cast includes Elisabeth Moss, Jason Isaacs, Henry Rollins, Kelly Hu and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. The DVD retails for $19.98, the DVD/Blu-ray combo for $24.95.

Cameron Shorter: Memoirs of a Cat Herder - Coordinating OSGeo-Live ...

I’m about to share some insights into how to build a successful open source community.

Actually, a bit more than that - also how to tap into, and coordinate the expertise of seventy-odd world leading developers, packagers, technical writers, project managers, marketers, translators and educators. And have all these people volunteer their time for free.

Because we have actually done all this - in building the OSGeo-Live project. At its core, OSGeo-Live is a DVD pre-configured with close to 50 geospatial Open Source applications, along with accompanying data and documentation, available in multiple languages. It is used in workshops and is handed out at conferences all around the world. I think I'm safe in claiming that in 3 years, OSGeo-Live has grown into a highly successful project, and that we have a learned a number of key lessons worth sharing.

We started OSGeo-Live in 2008 with the aim of building a DVD of geospatial open source which was to be handed out at the international conference for free and open source software for geospatial, or FOSS4G . The FOSS4G conference provides an attractive international marketing pipeline that we could offer projects. And as some of us were on the FOSS4G organising committee we were able to say, "if you get your application installed on OSGeo-Live, then we will hand this DVD out to all attendees at this highly targeted conference".

We laid out a very clear vision of our target deliverable - namely a stable release of Open Source and accompanying marketing documentation. This clear and simple goal helped us many times by providing a framework to test the multitude of decisions that are inevitably encountered in such a project.The process of building our first version of OSGeo-Live involved installing geospatial applications on a base ubuntu distribution. We followed install instructions, configured applications, resolved dependencies and conflicts, asked questions on email lists, and finally, after much hard work, we produced our first release for the 2008 FOSS4G conference. This was a very important first step as it showed that we had the commitment to follow through and deliver.

However, it also highlighted a number of our failings. We had followed a fully manual install process, so when the next ubuntu release came out, we had to start the installation process again, from scratch. This was completely unsustainable. We needed to automate the install process, and we needed projects to show us how.

German life and letters

Herder's interest in the identity of the author of the Remarks also shows in Bückeburg. ... but Fuseli's influence on Herder has left its mark. ...

Fact and theory in social science

Herder's contributions to, or more accurately anticipations of, ... teleologi- cal frame of reference seems to this writer equally short of the mark. Herder ...

National union catalog, a cumulative author list representing Library of Congress printed cards and titles reported by other American libraries

G4R36 80464714 MARC Sprache und Metaphysik : tur Kritik der sprachlichen Vernunft bei Herder und Humboldt / Alfons Reckermann. — München : W. Fink. 1979. ...

Herder and the poetics of thought, unity and diversity in On diligence in several learned languages

... mark of Herder's theory of historical development. ... That Caesar was, in addition, himself an author of distinction adds that much more to the image ...

Benedict de Spinoza, his life, correspondence, and ethics

With the living presence and advocacy of a man of mark like Herder, backed by a reputation second only to that which Lessing, lately dead, ...