JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Not safe sex, as the church would have us believe, but climate change.

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Some view even this notion as too simplistic. Karl Butzer of the University of Texas at Austin, who has studied the collapse of civilisations, thinks the role of climate has been exaggerated. It is the way societies handle crises that decides their fate, he says. “Things break through institutional failure.” When it comes to the Akkadians, for instance, Butzer says not all records support the idea of a megadrought.

In the case of the Maya, though, the evidence is strong. Earlier this year, Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton, UK, used lake sediments and isotope ratios in stalactites to work out how rainfall had changed. He concluded that annual rainfall fell 40 per cent over the prolonged dry period, drying up open water sources. This would have seriously affected the Maya, he says, because the water table lay far underground and was effectively out of reach…
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This is not an exaggeration: the Bourne trilogy changed the face of action movies. They cut the fat out of the big-budget action flick and streamlined it for the audience whose patience was being shortened by the Internet (The Bourne Identity came out in 2002).

They also changed the whole notion of “action star”. Prior to Bourne, action stars were usually muscle-bound, rather…limited actors of the Stallone-Schwarzenegger school (They are now retro, as in The Expendables). The role of Robert Ludlum’s amnesiac secret agent went to Matt Damon, an acclaimed dramatic actor. Damon and Bourne were the perfect match: Damon became one of the biggest stars on the planet, and Bourne gained a critical reputation that was usually denied action flicks. Critics were forced to take action movies seriously.

Read The Bourne Legacy: Not bad, but not a Bourne movie, our review at InterAksyon.com.

P.S. No one wanted to come to the premiere with us because the invitation specified formal attire and we didn’t want to go alone in case we got a relapse so we brought the one person we know who will never decline an opportunity to wear a gown: our cross-dressing guy friend.

Unfortunately the gown wouldn’t zip up so he wore a little black dress and snakeskin shoes with 3-inch heels.

Photo from Gourmet Pigs

is the title of a movie by Yasujiro Ozu. Green tea over rice or chazuke/ochazuke is a traditional Japanese dish served towards the end of the meal. Green tea or hot water is poured over cooked rice and topped with nori, wasabi, pieces of salmon.

Yesterday we were so hungry we crawled out of bed and crashed our friends’ lunch at Sugi. So there we were with this wonderful menu and so many great dishes to choose from, and we must’ve been ill still because the only item that appealed to us was chazuke. Followed by fruit gelatin, which was amazing because we never eat Jell-O.

A craving for bland food. Who knew it was possible.

Thank you for all your kind wishes. Take care of yourselves, the air is rife with viruses.

The idea that being good at something demands harried, exhausted martyrdom is a relatively new idea. “Only in recent history,” as Nas­sim Nicholas Taleb puts it, “has ‘working hard’ signalled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura.” If we really want to be good at something, we should stop wasting time exhausting ourselves.

What some people call idleness is often the best investment by Ed Smith in New Statesman

We also believe that one must exert all effort to make her work look effortless. In time it becomes second nature.

And the loser is – Citizen Kane. After 50 years at the top of the Sight & Sound poll, Orson Welles’s debut film has been convincingly ousted by Alfred Hitchcock’s 45th feature Vertigo – and by a whopping 34 votes, compared with the mere five that separated them a decade ago. So what does it mean? Given that Kane actually clocked over three times as many votes this year as it did last time, it hasn’t exactly been snubbed by the vastly larger number of voters taking part in this new poll, which has spread its net far wider than any of its six predecessors.

So does 2012 – the first poll to be conducted since the internet became almost certainly the main channel of communication about films – mark a revolution in taste, such as happened in 1962? Back then a brand-new film, Antonioni’s L’avventura, vaulted into second place. If there was going to be an equivalent today, it might have been Malick’s The Tree of Life, which only polled one vote less than the last title in the top 100. In fact the highest film from the new century is Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, just 12 years old, now sharing joint 24th slot with Dreyer’s venerable Ordet…

The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time

The Top 10 in the British Film Institute poll:
1. Vertigo (Here, again, is Chris Marker’s wonderful essay, Free Replay.)
2. Citizen Kane
3. Tokyo Story
4. The Rules of the Game
5. Sunrise
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. The Searchers
8. Man With A Movie Camera
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc
10. 8 1/2

Now that we’re well enough to get up and change the disc we can stop watching Babar and re-view the Top 10. (We miss the Quiapo Cinematheque.)

Dammit who borrowed our Murnau?

We want this: This is a limited first edition of Sweet Tooth, signed before publication by the author and published in association with Jonathan Cape. The edition comprises 100 copies, 75 of which have been quarter-bound in Harmatan Yellow 30 fine leather with letterpress patterned sides on Mohawk Loop Ginger paper, numbered 1 to 75, and 25 fully-bound in the same leather, numbered i to xxv. All copies have Bugra Brown endpapers, coloured tops, head and tail bands, and Dubletta-lined slipcases. For more details and to pre-order, visit our website: lrbshop.co.uk/sweettooth

“Under the weather” is accurate—we feel like there’s a low pressure area roiling under our skin and we’re going to rest until it passes. In the meantime, here’s an open post for whatever topics you wish to go on about.

Suggestions: the RH bill (There’s an anti rally??), the Olympics, Brave, Cinemalaya (we didn’t see anything), and why the premiere of The Bourne Legacy on Sunday requires formal attire (You want formal attire? We’ll show you formal *thunder and lightning*. Hey are they implying that the stars will show up?)

Zen and the Art of Archery, illustrated: Blurry Target is no trouble for ace archer

Gore Vidal Dies at 86: Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer