"We've never seen anything like it," added archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin, who is deciphering the hieroglyphs. Stuart acknowledged that "we don't know exactly what this is noting," but the Maya were looking at "patterns in the sky and intermeshing them mathematically."  Tulane University’s Marc Zender, another Mayan expert not involved in the work, said that “it’s about as exciting as discovering lost manuscripts of a famous mathematician like Archimedes. It’s an amazing privileged glimpse over their shoulders.”

Studio Ghibli follows its masterpiece wallpaper-as-magic Ponyo with the more stably realistic biome of Arriety, where highly fragile microbeings, humbler minature humans, live in secret parts of houses. A dying breed, they are met with a dying boy who falls in love with the updated Tinkerbelle archtype by way of Leia. She wears her sword pinned like a hem, slung like Errol Flynn. Ghibli chooses between girl's fables and boy's. Spirited Away and Howls Magic Castle are female narrated, Ponyo and Arriety are from a boy's perspective. The fantasy styles are directed towards the age group of the lead and seem to always involve a romance across mythic divides. Arriety is the latest masterpiece, a difficult to find house is the setting, hidden in a forest, the place where the ailing boy comes to rest before his operation. Immediately, on arrival, he spots a flash in the grass, a tiny girl, Arriety, a Borrower. They are a metaphoric form of Hobbit, a dwindling number who live in the shadows, under the floorboards (it's slightly like Hugo, at times she must mad dash for her secret entrance to the network of in-the-wall passages) a family: the girl and her parents, who live in a kind of utopian nook, hippie-like. Ghibli films gain their power by continuously referencing the dark sides of human encroachment: as the Borrowers make their way through the human areas at night 'borrowing' things not to be missed (tissue paper and sugar cubes) they must pass through a 'doll's house' that was made for them within the house, which they spurn. By offering the Tinkerbelle-like Arriety a forest-living Borrower suitor who says little and offers them a bite of his cricket leg, they upgrade the fantasy and the myth. Although less visually complex than Ponyo, Arriety is alive with scale weirdness and clever touches (staples become grip tight ladders 'hammered' into wood), the third act is introduced when the housekeeper eloquently named Hara becomes a Kong-like home invader; the best film of the year so far.

Former illustrator of the space-age, Ralph McQuarrie was an instrument of Boeing's military-industrial complex before he found his way to George Lucas. Through an unproduced project of friend and USC classmate Hal Barwood, McQuarrie came recommended (Barwood is a fount, he also offered up the logline of Lucas's key student film, pitching to him the logline of what would become THX-1138EB: Electronic Labyrinth).  McQuarrie's twenty or so Panavision shaped gouaches sold the seemingly incomprehensible Star Wars to the 20th Century Fox board, and launching the Lucasfilm publicity machine. These first images were so unique, when reproduced in lower resolutions in early fan magazines, they were mistaken as actual images from the film. Below, McQuarrie also served as a pinch-hitter matte painter, rendering 'live' what he once only drew as design.

Before Lucas avoided Empire's runaway spending nightmare finalizing the budget of Jedi, he planned a more epic film, a Wookie planet-battle (switched to lower cost Ewok costumes), an extended sequence on Tatooine, and Luke's joining Vader earlier instead of heading for Dagobah then Endor (get the joke, the trilogy may or may not be ending: End-or).  Luke's initially planned meeting of the Emperor on Coruscant involved first travelling into Vader's palace and taking an unusual elevator down where another realm existed, the actual surface of Coruscant would be found, a lava spilling nightmare where the Emperor ruled openly as Darth Sidious. The anachronism of the Imperial Shuttle's design is now explained by the forms that flow from its arrival here. Notice the elevator's corridor, the monochrome hallway that spills open to the underworld, is to the far left of the underworld's introduction, second from bottom. Images from "The Art Of Ralph McQuarrie".

 Lurking inside the Star Wars films is a hidden form-puzzle: Physical Cosmologies: Star Wars Episode IV

"Each epoch dreams its successor." - Michelet

Full Text of the book

Prosecutors hit Calabrese with an extortion charge for allegedly participating in a heated sit-down to discuss a financial settlement over a secret pizza sauce recipe that a Bonanno-associated Staten Island pizza joint allegedly stole from Brooklyn’s L&B Spumoni Gardens, which has ties to the Colombo crime family. Calabrese was caught on a secret FBI tape saying, “I went there and argued . . . I f--king had a screaming match with the f--king Colombo guys for three hours.”

Somewhere between Fleischer and Plympton is Bozzetto, whose 1976 satire of Fantasia sliced up animation's tropes and let loose. Rarely screened in revival. Many tangents in Allegro's animation, like other innovations of the 70's, were discarded by the mainstream.  A must see. Here's Sibelius's Valse Triste, where an anti-Aristocat makes wall art while exploring the edge's of Bozzetto's momentary genius.

An excellent tech-piece in Gawker.

Made as the radical underground began organizing into violent factions, Peter Watkins's Punishment Park is a window into late 60's extremism. Portrayed as a documentary, this fictional window into law-enforcement and justice showcases a brilliantly realized manhunt through desert terrain, with convicted extremists forced to run literally for their lives towards a 58 mile distant flag to escape sentences of up to 21 years for sedition. The deal is quite simple, make it to the flag and your sentence will be vacated. Told explicitly, with some threads well developed, others staccato (as if the crews lost their subjects), the film begins with the convicts' arrival at a makeshift court clearly outside the bounds of constitutional law, with a council of judges made up hastily from the locale status quo (California). A lone civil rights lawyer tries to add balance to the proceedings but is little more than a gnat in the face of a slowly moving elephant. It bears some resemblance to our current fears, the desert locale has an eerie nuance and the procedures seem to predict Guantanamo. Unknown actors provide pivotal performances. A cold satire of both sides. An early demonstration of hunting techniques by a policeman must be seen.