Last year, Rotating Sandwiches took the top prize at the Tiny Awards. They're back for 2024 and nominations are open until June 23.
The Tiny Awards exist to 'celebrate people making stuff on the internet for the fun of it and the love of it and the hell of it." Their site is here:
You can view all of last year's nominees in this Google Doc and visit winner, Rotating Sandwiches, below.
Dead simple, drag & drop websites for anything can be created using mmm.page. A Tiny Bell was not made with this platform but it looks fun and like something others will find useful.
Want to know what it's like to drive in Barcelona? What about Glasgow? Beijing? St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Rio, or Paris? DriveAndListen.com has you covered. The audio defaults to off but you can toggle it on the right under where you choose your city. And yes, they have Toronto.
Click a city repeatedly to change cars / streets.
Andy Rutledge's book, Artistic Foundations of Bonsai Design, is online and free to read:
Andy Rutledge
"iN-PUBLiC was set up in 2000 to provide a home for Street Photographers. Our aim is to promote Street Photography and to continue to explore its possibilities. We are a non commercial collective. All the photographers featured here have been invited to the group because they have the ability to see the unusual in the everyday and to capture the moment."
Some truly fantastic stuff here.
"The entry is dated June 1981, and while I have no memory of writing it, the penmanship is unmistakably my own. There, between accounts of my grandfather dying and a game-winning double I hit in Little League, is an account of my being raped three years before. I concluded the entry by wondering what I would do if I ever met the man who'd raped me on the street once I myself was a grown man."
The above is from David Holthouse's article in Westword: Stalking the Bogeyman.
There is a follow-up: Arrested Development.
This American Life also did a piece on it.
Holthouse's website is here.
Wax Heads is a forthcoming game from Steam that allows you to "run a record store."
I have not played it as I don't have Steam and no longer play video games, but The Guardian did a piece on it yesterday. Sounds neat.
I've been a fan of Lem Dobbs since around 1987 or '88, back when he was known throughout Hollywood for writing Edward Ford, which many consider to be the greatest unproduced screenplay of all time. That script is one of the first things I sought when I got on the internet in the early 90s.
Today, Dobbs is likely best known as the writer of The Limey. Steven Soderbergh directed the film and Terance Stamp starred in it. I believe it's not only a great "gangster picture," it's also Soderbergh's best and one of the most accurate film portrayals of memory.
If you have the chance to listen to Dobbs' commentary on The Limey DVD, I highly recommend it.
There's a notorious 90 second scene in The Limey, which you can watch here:
In the commentary, Dobbs uses this scene to highlight a problem with film critics — and perhaps the public's understanding of filmmaking in general.
Dobbs notes that the film's negative press often referred to it as "underwritten," while the positive press praised Soderbergh's "brilliant direction." Many of them cited this scene and how the camera waits outside, forcing the viewer to imagine what's happening inside while increasing the menace as Stamp's character approaches after exiting.
The irony is that the script was not underwritten. Soderbergh cut out much of what the critics wanted. Furthermore, in the screenplay, which Dobbs wrote years before Soderbergh was involved, Dobbs instructed the camera to remain outside:
Dobbs took the blame for what Soderbergh changed and Soderbergh received credit for what Dobbs envisioned.
Such is the life of a Hollywood Screenwriter.
All this to alert you to this lengthy interview with Dobbs. Admittedly, not the prettiest website, but an interesting read nonetheless.
Anecdote Alert
For years, I used the name Dobbs as one of my heteronyms. Both Lem and I took the name from the same source: Humphrey Bogart's character in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. (Lem's birth name is Anton Kitaj. He is the son of painter, R. B. Kitaj.)
I have another very odd connection here. The scene in the clip above was filmed at the far end of this street in downtown Los Angeles:
To get to it (just prior to the clip), Wilson walks past the building on the left, which happens to be owned by a friend of mine. I've spent a great number of American Thanksgivings there over the years — the best dinner parties I've been to in my life have all been in that building.
On one of the first trips I took after my stroke, I ended up crashed here while my friend was out of town filming the devastation of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Another friend of his, filmmaker Noaz Deshe, was also staying there at the same time. I have fond memories of deep discussions of film history with Noaz. What was particularly delightful is that they were the first signs that my memory wasn't completely shorted-out from the stroke — something that had been deeply troubling me. In particular, we had a mutual fondness for Miklós Jancsó's films, The Red and the Black, and Round Up (posters below). Good times.
If you want to read the screenplay for The Limey, you can find a PDF here.
You can also get a PDF of Lem Dobbs' celebrated, unproduced script, Edward Ford.
If you're a fan of Terance Stamp, I recommend the audiobook for one of his memoirs: The Ocean Fell Into the Drop, which is unfortunately an Audible Exclusive.
Today I learned that in 1983, there was a Casablanca television show starring David Soul as Rick and Scatman Crothers as Sam. The cast also included Ray Liotta as Sasha, the bartender, and Hector Elizondo as Renault.
I couldn't find original episodes of it, but here's a Video Essay about it, from The Seventh Art.
