We share five of our favourite links, videos and articles from around the internet this week.
No, Actually: Debunking a Christmas film favourite
Love, Actually, Richard Curtis’s celebrity-packed ensemble film that launched a thousand holiday season copycats (Valentine’s Day, anyone?) was on television again last night. Karen Pickering watched it and wrote down all the reasons it’s ‘offensive garbage’ - from a savvy analysis of the way the women characters are all mere vehicles for the men, to locating it as the cause of a truly awful movie trend.
FYI, telling your best friend’s new wife that you’re in love with her (using twee flashcards) is about the most selfish, creepy, dick move imaginable and if she doesn’t tell her husband then I fear for their embryonic marriage.
Writing for free
The subject of whether writers should write for free - and if so, under what circumstances and how often - has been one of our hottest in this year’s Dailies. We’ve hosted discussions by Karen Pickering on why you shouldn’t write for free and Helen Razer on why writing for free can pay off.
This week, the conversation exploded all over Twitter when Marieke Hardy asked Mia Freedman why her commercially successful website Mama Mia doesn’t pay its writers (you can read Freedman’s response here). Elmo Keep has written about the subject this week too, saying the argument is ‘so old it needs cassettes’ - but questioning online publications whose business models don’t plan for paying their contributors.
And here’s writer Harlan Ellison getting pretty fired up over the whole issue of not paying writers (and of the free work given by amateurs affecting his own bottom line). ‘I sell my soul but at the highest rate,’ he says.
Watch the world’s largest iceberg break-up ever filmed
We’ve shared images from Chasing Ice, James Balog’s mission to document the Arctic ice being melted by climate change, in a past Friday High Five. Now, we can share a video from the forthcoming film, showing the largest iceberg calving ever filmed. ‘It’s like Manhattan breaking up in front of your eyes.’ Breathtaking and terrifying.
Storyboards for classic films
Flavorwire has uncovered the original storyboards for a whole host of classic films, from Spartacus to Sound of Music. It’s pretty cool to see the seeds of some of the most popular and ingrained images of popular film culture.
NASA explains why the world will not end in 2012
Are you spooked that the Mayans knew something we don’t? Are you ticking off the items on your bucket list, expecting it all to be over in a matter of days or weeks? Well, NASA is here to tell you that the world will not end in 2012 after all. And to explain how to accurately interpret the end of the Mayan calendar. Sit back, relax and figure out how you’re going to live the rest of your life, after all.