text:
IMAX® is releasing the all new Kanye West film, Jesus is King, exclusively in IMAX theatres. Filmed in the summer of 2019, Jesus is King brings Kanye West's famed Sunday Service to life in the Roden Crater, visionary artist James Turrell's never-before-seen installation in Arizona's Painted Desert. This one-of-a-kind experience features songs arranged by West in the gospel tradition along with new music from his forthcoming album Jesus is King — all presented in the immersive sound and stunning clarity of The IMAX Experience®.
Jesus is King
35 min
IMAX Entertainment
In den Kinos (USA): Oktober 25, 2019


text:
If you want to keep your cool, you might want to pass up those greasy wings and gooey dessert. A new study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that people whose diets are higher in trans fats are more prone to aggression.
Trans fats, or hydrogenated oils, have made the news in recent years because studies have strongly linked them to heart disease and cancer, and some locales have passed laws restricting their use. They are still common, however, in restaurant food and many grocery items.
Beatrice Golomb, a physician and associate professor of medicine at U.C. San Diego, wondered if trans fats might affect behavior, after noting how they interact with a type of healthy fat. Past studies found that docosahexaenoic acid—or DHA, a long-chain omega-3 fatty acid—has a calming, antidepressant effect. Trans fats disrupt the chemical process that leads to the conversion of fatty acids into DHA, which led Golomb to suspect that trans fats might be linked to aggression.
Her study, which was published in March in PLoS ONE, involved 1,018 men and women older than 20 who filled out a food questionnaire and several other surveys that measure impatience, irritability and aggression. Even after considering other influences, Golomb's team found a strong link between the intake of trans fats and aggression. "Trans-fatty acids were a more consistent predictor of aggression than some traditional risk factors such as age, male sex, education and smoking," Golomb says. The findings were consistent across both sexes and across all ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic groups.
Although the correlation was strong, the study does not prove that trans fats are causing the aggressive behavior. It is possible that naturally aggressive people tend to eat less healthy food. Or perhaps other ingredients found in processed foods, such as added sugars, are the real culprit. "We like to think we're in charge of our behaviors, but in fact there are many factors that influence us, food being one of them," Golomb says.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Your Guide to Recreating Elements of the Isotope Demo for Grav
The Overlay Toggle particle gives visitors the ability to quickly toggle the overlay, giving them access to the Overlay Sidebar and Overlay Main sections.
Here are the topics covered in this guide:
|CSS Classes
|Sets the CSS class for the content of the particle.
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|Menu Text
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text:
Can any xylophone play my favourite song?
Professional xylophones will often take requests, but you will need to give them plenty of notice. Please also keep in mind that xylophones may ask for an small additional fee to prepare songs that aren't already on their song list. You can view the xylophone's song list on their Encore profile.


text:
Esjis - Run-time routines for Sjis.pm
use Esjis;
Esjis::X ...;
# "no Esjis;" not supported
This module has run-time routines for use Sjis software automatically, you do not have to use.
I have tested and verified this software using the best of my ability. However, a software containing much regular expression is bound to contain some bugs. Thus, if you happen to find a bug that's in Sjis software and not your own program, you can try to reduce it to a minimal test case and then report it to the following author's address. If you have an idea that could make this a more useful tool, please let everyone share it.
This Esjis module first appeared in ActivePerl Build 522 Built under MSWin32 Compiled at Nov 2 1999 09:52:28
INABA Hitoshi <email@example.com>
This project was originated by INABA Hitoshi. For any questions, use <firstname.lastname@example.com> so we can share this file.
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Split string
@split = Esjis::split(/pattern/,$string,$limit);
@split = Esjis::split(/pattern/,$string);
@split = Esjis::split(/pattern/);
@split = Esjis::split('',$string,$limit);
@split = Esjis::split('',$string);
@split = Esjis::split('');
@split = Esjis::split();
@split = Esjis::split;
This subroutine scans a string given by $string for separators, and splits the
string into a list of substring, returning the resulting list value in list
context or the count of substring in scalar context. Scalar context also causes
split to write its result to @_, but this usage is deprecated. The separators
are determined by repeated pattern matching, using the regular expression given
in /pattern/, so the separators may be of any size and need not be the same
string on every match. (The separators are not ordinarily returned; exceptions
are discussed later in this section.) If the /pattern/ doesn't match the string
at all, Esjis::split returns the original string as a single substring, If it
matches once, you get two substrings, and so on. You may supply regular
expression modifiers to the /pattern/, like /pattern/i, /pattern/x, etc. The
//m modifier is assumed when you split on the pattern /^/.
If $limit is specified and positive, the subroutine splits into no more than that
many fields (though it may split into fewer if it runs out of separators). If
$limit is negative, it is treated as if an arbitrarily large $limit has been
specified If $limit is omitted or zero, trailing null fields are stripped from
the result (which potential users of pop would do wel to remember). If $string
is omitted, the subroutine splits the $_ string. If /pattern/ is also omitted or
is the literal space, " ", the subroutine split on whitespace, /\s+/, after
skipping any leading whitespace.
A /pattern/ of /^/ is secretly treated if it it were /^/m, since it isn't much
use otherwise.
String of any length can be split:
@chars = Esjis::split(//, $word);
@fields = Esjis::split(/:/, $line);
@words = Esjis::split(" ", $paragraph);
@lines = Esjis::split(/^/, $buffer);
A pattern capable of matching either the null string or something longer than
the null string (for instance, a pattern consisting of any single character
modified by a * or ?) will split the value of $string into separate characters
wherever it matches the null string between characters; nonnull matches will
skip over the matched separator characters in the usual fashion. (In other words,
a pattern won't match in one spot more than once, even if it matched with a zero
width.) For example:
print join(":" => Esjis::split(/ */, "hi there"));
produces the output "h:i:t:h:e:r:e". The space disappers because it matches
as part of the separator. As a trivial case, the null pattern // simply splits
into separate characters, and spaces do not disappear. (For normal pattern
matches, a // pattern would repeat the last successfully matched pattern, but
Esjis::split's pattern is exempt from that wrinkle.)
The $limit parameter splits only part of a string:
my ($login, $passwd, $remainder) = Esjis::split(/:/, $_, 3);
We encourage you to split to lists of names like this to make your code
self-documenting. (For purposes of error checking, note that $remainder would
be undefined if there were fewer than three fields.) When assigning to a list,
if $limit is omitted, Perl supplies a $limit one larger than the number of
variables in the list, to avoid unneccessary work. For the split above, $limit
would have been 4 by default, and $remainder would have received only the third
field, not all the rest of the fields. In time-critical applications, it behooves
you not to split into more fields than you really need. (The trouble with
powerful languages it that they let you be powerfully stupid at times.)
We said earlier that the separators are not returned, but if the /pattern/
contains parentheses, then the substring matched by each pair of parentheses is
included in the resulting list, interspersed with the fields that are ordinarily
returned. Here's a simple example:
Esjis::split(/([-,])/, "1-10,20");
which produces the list value:
(1, "-", 10, ",", 20)
With more parentheses, a field is returned for each pair, even if some pairs
don't match, in which case undefined values are returned in those positions. So
if you say:
Esjis::split(/(-)|(,)/, "1-10,20");
you get the value:
(1, "-", undef, 10, undef, ",", 20)
The /pattern/ argument may be replaced with an expression to specify patterns
that vary at runtime. As with ordinary patterns, to do run-time compilation only
once, use /$variable/o.
As a special case, if the expression is a single space (" "), the subroutine
splits on whitespace just as Esjis::split with no arguments does. Thus,
Esjis::split(" ") can be used to emulate awk's default behavior. In contrast,
Esjis::split(/ /) will give you as many null initial fields as there are
leading spaces. (Other than this special case, if you supply a string instead
of a regular expression, it'll be interpreted as a regular expression anyway.)
You can use this property to remove leading and trailing whitespace from a
string and to collapse intervaning stretches of whitespace into a single
$string = join(" ", Esjis::split(" ", $string));
The following example splits an RFC822 message header into a hash containing
$head{'Date'}, $head{'Subject'}, and so on. It uses the trick of assigning a
list of pairs to a hash, because separators altinate with separated fields, It
users parentheses to return part of each separator as part of the returned list
value. Since the split pattern is guaranteed to return things in pairs by virtue
of containing one set of parentheses, the hash assignment is guaranteed to
receive a list consisting of key/value pairs, where each key is the name of a
header field. (Unfortunately, this technique loses information for multiple lines
with the same key field, such as Received-By lines. Ah well)
$header =~ s/\n\s+/ /g; # Merge continuation lines.
%head = ("FRONTSTUFF", Esjis::split(/^(\S*?):\s*/m, $header));
The following example processes the entries in a Unix passwd(5) file. You could
leave out the chomp, in which case $shell would have a newline on the end of it.
open(PASSWD, "/etc/passwd");
while (<PASSWD>) {
chomp; # remove trailing newline.
($login, $passwd, $uid, $gid, $gcos, $home, $shell) =
Here's how process each word of each line of each file of input to create a
word-frequency hash.
while (<>) {
for my $word (Esjis::split()) {
The inverse of Esjis::split is join, except that join can only join with the
same separator between all fields. To break apart a string with fixed-position
fields, use unpack.
Processing long $string (over 32766 octets) requires Perl 5.010001 or later.
$tr = Esjis::tr($variable,$bind_operator,$searchlist,$replacementlist,$modifier);
$tr = Esjis::tr($variable,$bind_operator,$searchlist,$replacementlist);
This is the transliteration (sometimes erroneously called translation) operator,
which is like the y/// operator in the Unix sed program, only better, in
everybody's humble opinion.
This subroutine scans a ShiftJIS string character by character and replaces all
occurrences of the characters found in $searchlist with the corresponding character
in $replacementlist. It returns the number of characters replaced or deleted.
If no ShiftJIS string is specified via =~ operator, the $_ variable is translated.
$modifier are:
Modifier Meaning
c Complement $searchlist.
d Delete found but unreplaced characters.
s Squash duplicate replaced characters.
r Return transliteration and leave the original string untouched.
To use with a read-only value without raising an exception, use the /r modifier.
print Esjis::tr('bookkeeper','=~','boep','peob','r'); # prints 'peekkoobor'
Chop string
$chop = Esjis::chop(@list);
$chop = Esjis::chop();
$chop = Esjis::chop;
This subroutine chops off the last character of a string variable and returns the
character chopped. The Esjis::chop subroutine is used primary to remove the newline
from the end of an input recoed, and it is more efficient than using a
substitution. If that's all you're doing, then it would be safer to use chomp,
since Esjis::chop always shortens the string no matter what's there, and chomp
is more selective. If no argument is given, the subroutine chops the $_ variable.
You cannot Esjis::chop a literal, only a variable. If you Esjis::chop a list of
variables, each string in the list is chopped:
@lines = `cat myfile`;
You can Esjis::chop anything that is an lvalue, including an assignment:
Esjis::chop($cwd = `pwd`);
Esjis::chop($answer = <STDIN>);
This is different from:
$answer = Esjis::chop($tmp = <STDIN>); # WRONG
which puts a newline into $answer because Esjis::chop returns the character
chopped, not the remaining string (which is in $tmp). One way to get the result
intended here is with substr:
$answer = substr <STDIN>, 0, -1;
But this is more commonly written as:
Esjis::chop($answer = <STDIN>);
In the most general case, Esjis::chop can be expressed using substr:
$last_code = Esjis::chop($var);
$last_code = substr($var, -1, 1, ""); # same thing
Once you understand this equivalence, you can use it to do bigger chops. To
Esjis::chop more than one character, use substr as an lvalue, assigning a null
string. The following removes the last five characters of $caravan:
substr($caravan, -5) = '';
The negative subscript causes substr to count from the end of the string instead
of the beginning. To save the removed characters, you could use the four-argument
form of substr, creating something of a quintuple Esjis::chop;
$tail = substr($caravan, -5, 5, '');
This is all dangerous business dealing with characters instead of graphemes. Perl
doesn't really have a grapheme mode, so you have to deal with them yourself.
Index string
$byte_pos = Esjis::index($string,$substr,$byte_offset);
$byte_pos = Esjis::index($string,$substr);
This subroutine searches for one string within another. It returns the byte position
of the first occurrence of $substring in $string. The $byte_offset, if specified,
says how many bytes from the start to skip before beginning to look. Positions are
based at 0. If the substring is not found, the subroutine returns one less than the
base, ordinarily -1. To work your way through a string, you might say:
$byte_pos = -1;
while (($byte_pos = Esjis::index($string, $lookfor, $byte_pos)) > -1) {
print "Found at $byte_pos\n";
Reverse index string
$byte_pos = Esjis::rindex($string,$substr,$byte_offset);
$byte_pos = Esjis::rindex($string,$substr);
This subroutine works just like Esjis::index except that it returns the byte
position of the last occurrence of $substring in $string (a reverse Esjis::index).
The subroutine returns -1 if $substring is not found. $byte_offset, if specified,
is the rightmost byte position that may be returned. To work your way through a
string backward, say:
$byte_pos = length($string);
while (($byte_pos = Sjis::rindex($string, $lookfor, $byte_pos)) >= 0) {
print "Found at $byte_pos\n";
Lower case string
$lc = Esjis::lc($string);
$lc = Esjis::lc_;
This subroutine returns a lowercased version of ShiftJIS $string (or $_, if
$string is omitted). This is the internal subroutine implementing the \L escape
in double-quoted strings.
You can use the Esjis::fc subroutine for case-insensitive comparisons via Sjis
Lower case first character of string
$lcfirst = Esjis::lcfirst($string);
$lcfirst = Esjis::lcfirst_;
This subroutine returns a version of ShiftJIS $string with the first character
lowercased (or $_, if $string is omitted). This is the internal subroutine
implementing the \l escape in double-quoted strings.
Upper case string
$uc = Esjis::uc($string);
$uc = Esjis::uc_;
This subroutine returns an uppercased version of ShiftJIS $string (or $_, if
$string is omitted). This is the internal subroutine implementing the \U escape
in interpolated strings. For titlecase, use Esjis::ucfirst instead.
You can use the Esjis::fc subroutine for case-insensitive comparisons via Sjis
Upper case first character of string
$ucfirst = Esjis::ucfirst($string);
$ucfirst = Esjis::ucfirst_;
This subroutine returns a version of ShiftJIS $string with the first character
titlecased and other characters left alone (or $_, if $string is omitted).
Titlecase is "Camel" for an initial capital that has (or expects to have)
lowercase characters following it, not uppercase ones. Exsamples are the first
letter of a sentence, of a person's name, of a newspaper headline, or of most
words in a title. Characters with no titlecase mapping return the uppercase
mapping instead. This is the internal subroutine implementing the \u escape in
double-quoted strings.
To capitalize a string by mapping its first character to titlecase and the rest
to lowercase, use:
$titlecase = Esjis::ucfirst(substr($word,0,1)) . Esjis::lc(substr($word,1));
$string =~ s/(\w)((?>\w*))/\u$1\L$2/g;
Do not use:
$do_not_use = Esjis::ucfirst(Esjis::lc($word));
or "\u\L$word", because that can produce a different and incorrect answer with
certain characters. The titlecase of something that's been lowercased doesn't
always produce the same thing titlecasing the original produces.
Because titlecasing only makes sense at the start of a string that's followed
by lowercase characters, we can't think of any reason you might want to titlecase
every character in a string.
See also P.287 A Case of Mistaken Identity
in Chapter 6: Unicode
of ISBN 978-0-596-00492-7 Programming Perl 4th Edition.
Fold case string
P.860 fc
in Chapter 27: Functions
of ISBN 978-0-596-00492-7 Programming Perl 4th Edition.
$fc = Esjis::fc($string);
$fc = Esjis::fc_;
New to Sjis software, this subroutine returns the full Unicode-like casefold of
ShiftJIS $string (or $_, if omitted). This is the internal subroutine implementing
the \F escape in double-quoted strings.
Just as title-case is based on uppercase but different, foldcase is based on
lowercase but different. In ASCII there is a one-to-one mapping between only
two cases, but in other encoding there is a one-to-many mapping and between three
cases. Because that's too many combinations to check manually each time, a fourth
casemap called foldcase was invented as a common intermediary for the other three.
It is not a case itself, but it is a casemap.
To compare whether two strings are the same without regard to case, do this:
Esjis::fc($a) eq Esjis::fc($b)
The reliable way to compare string case-insensitively was with the /i pattern
modifier, because Sjis software has always used casefolding semantics for
case-insensitive pattern matches. Knowing this, you can emulate equality
comparisons like this:
sub fc_eq ($$) {
my($a,$b) = @_;
return $a =~ /\A\Q$b\E\z/i;
Make ignore case string
@ignorecase = Esjis::ignorecase(@string);
This subroutine is internal use to m/ /i, s/ / /i, split / /i, and qr/ /i.
Make capture number
$capturenumber = Esjis::capture($string);
This subroutine is internal use to m/ /, s/ / /, split / /, and qr/ /.
Make character
$chr = Esjis::chr($code);
$chr = Esjis::chr_;
This subroutine returns a programmer-visible character, character represented by
that $code in the character set. For example, Esjis::chr(65) is "A" in either
ASCII or ShiftJIS, not Unicode. For the reverse of Esjis::chr, use Sjis::ord.
File test subroutine Esjis::X
The following all subroutines function when the pathname ends with chr(0x5C) on
A file test subroutine is a unary function that takes one argument, either a
filename or a filehandle, and tests the associated file to see whether something
is true about it. If the argument is omitted, it tests $_. Unless otherwise
documented, it returns 1 for true and "" for false, or the undefined value if
the file doesn't exist or is otherwise inaccessible. Currently implemented file
test subroutines are listed in:
Available in MSWin32, MacOS, and UNIX-like systems
Subroutine and Prototype Meaning
Esjis::r(*), Esjis::r_() File or directory is readable by this (effective) user or group
Esjis::w(*), Esjis::w_() File or directory is writable by this (effective) user or group
Esjis::e(*), Esjis::e_() File or directory name exists
Esjis::x(*), Esjis::x_() File or directory is executable by this (effective) user or group
Esjis::z(*), Esjis::z_() File exists and has zero size (always false for directories)
Esjis::f(*), Esjis::f_() Entry is a plain file
Esjis::d(*), Esjis::d_() Entry is a directory
Available in MacOS and UNIX-like systems
Subroutine and Prototype Meaning
Esjis::R(*), Esjis::R_() File or directory is readable by this real user or group
Same as Esjis::r(*), Esjis::r_() on MacOS
Esjis::W(*), Esjis::W_() File or directory is writable by this real user or group
Same as Esjis::w(*), Esjis::w_() on MacOS
Esjis::X(*), Esjis::X_() File or directory is executable by this real user or group
Same as Esjis::x(*), Esjis::x_() on MacOS
Esjis::l(*), Esjis::l_() Entry is a symbolic link
Esjis::S(*), Esjis::S_() Entry is a socket
Not available in MSWin32 and MacOS
Subroutine and Prototype Meaning
Esjis::o(*), Esjis::o_() File or directory is owned by this (effective) user
Esjis::O(*), Esjis::O_() File or directory is owned by this real user
Esjis::p(*), Esjis::p_() Entry is a named pipe (a "fifo")
Esjis::b(*), Esjis::b_() Entry is a block-special file (like a mountable disk)
Esjis::c(*), Esjis::c_() Entry is a character-special file (like an I/O device)
Esjis::u(*), Esjis::u_() File or directory is setuid
Esjis::g(*), Esjis::g_() File or directory is setgid
Esjis::k(*), Esjis::k_() File or directory has the sticky bit set
The tests -T and -B takes a try at telling whether a file is text or binary.
But people who know a lot about filesystems know that there's no bit (at least
in UNIX-like operating systems) to indicate that a file is a binary or text file
--- so how can Perl tell?
The answer is that Perl cheats. As you might guess, it sometimes guesses wrong.
This incomplete thinking of file test operator -T and -B gave birth to UTF8 flag
of a later period.
The Esjis::T, Esjis::T_, Esjis::B, and Esjis::B_ work as follows. The first block
or so of the file is examined for strange chatracters such as
[\000-\007\013\016-\032\034-\037\377] (that don't look like ShiftJIS). If more
than 10% of the bytes appear to be strange, it's a *maybe* binary file;
otherwise, it's a *maybe* text file. Also, any file containing ASCII NUL(\0) or
\377 in the first block is considered a binary file. If Esjis::T or Esjis::B is
used on a filehandle, the current input (standard I/O or "stdio") buffer is
examined rather than the first block of the file. Both Esjis::T and Esjis::B
return 1 as true on an empty file, or on a file at EOF (end-of-file) when testing
a filehandle. Both Esjis::T and Esjis::B doesn't work when given the special
filehandle consisting of a solitary underline. Because Esjis::T has to read to
do the test, you don't want to use Esjis::T on special files that might hang or
give you other kinds or grief. So on most occasions you'll want to test with a
Esjis::f first, as in:
next unless Esjis::f($file) && Esjis::T($file);
Available in MSWin32, MacOS, and UNIX-like systems
Subroutine and Prototype Meaning
Esjis::T(*), Esjis::T_() File looks like a "text" file
Esjis::B(*), Esjis::B_() File looks like a "binary" file
File ages for Esjis::M, Esjis::M_, Esjis::A, Esjis::A_, Esjis::C, and Esjis::C_
are returned in days (including fractional days) since the script started running.
This start time is stored in the special variable $^T ($BASETIME). Thus, if the
file changed after the script, you would get a negative time. Note that most time
values (86,399 out of 86,400, on average) are fractional, so testing for equality
with an integer without using the int function is usually futile. Examples:
next unless Esjis::M($file) > 0.5; # files are older than 12 hours
&newfile if Esjis::M($file) < 0; # file is newer than process
&mailwarning if int(Esjis::A_) == 90; # file ($_) was accessed 90 days ago today
Available in MSWin32, MacOS, and UNIX-like systems
Subroutine and Prototype Meaning
Esjis::M(*), Esjis::M_() Modification age (measured in days)
Esjis::A(*), Esjis::A_() Access age (measured in days)
Same as Esjis::M(*), Esjis::M_() on MacOS
Esjis::C(*), Esjis::C_() Inode-modification age (measured in days)
The Esjis::s, and Esjis::s_ returns file size in bytes if succesful, or undef
unless successful.
Available in MSWin32, MacOS, and UNIX-like systems
Subroutine and Prototype Meaning
Esjis::s(*), Esjis::s_() File or directory exists and has nonzero size
(the value is the size in bytes)
Filename expansion (globbing)
@glob = Esjis::glob($string);
@glob = Esjis::glob_;
This subroutine returns the value of $string with filename expansions the way a
DOS-like shell would expand them, returning the next successive name on each
call. If $string is omitted, $_ is globbed instead. This is the internal
subroutine implementing the <*> and glob operator.
This subroutine function when the pathname ends with chr(0x5C) on MSWin32.
For ease of use, the algorithm matches the DOS-like shell's style of expansion,
not the UNIX-like shell's. An asterisk ("*") matches any sequence of any
character (including none). A question mark ("?") matches any one character or
none. A tilde ("~") expands to a home directory, as in "~/.*rc" for all the
current user's "rc" files, or "~jane/Mail/*" for all of Jane's mail files.
Note that all path components are case-insensitive, and that backslashes and
forward slashes are both accepted, and preserved. You may have to double the
backslashes if you are putting them in literally, due to double-quotish parsing
of the pattern by perl.
The Esjis::glob subroutine grandfathers the use of whitespace to separate multiple
patterns such as <*.c *.h>. If you want to glob filenames that might contain
whitespace, you'll have to use extra quotes around the spacy filename to protect
it. For example, to glob filenames that have an "e" followed by a space followed
by an "f", use either of:
@spacies = <"*e f*">;
@spacies = Esjis::glob('"*e f*"');
@spacies = Esjis::glob(q("*e f*"));
If you had to get a variable through, you could do this:
@spacies = Esjis::glob("'*${var}e f*'");
@spacies = Esjis::glob(qq("*${var}e f*"));
Another way on MSWin32
# relative path
@relpath_file = split(/\n/,`dir /b wildcard\\here*.txt 2>NUL`);
# absolute path
@abspath_file = split(/\n/,`dir /s /b wildcard\\here*.txt 2>NUL`);
# on COMMAND.COM
@relpath_file = split(/\n/,`dir /b wildcard\\here*.txt`);
@abspath_file = split(/\n/,`dir /s /b wildcard\\here*.txt`);
Statistics about link
@lstat = Esjis::lstat($file);
@lstat = Esjis::lstat_;
Like Esjis::stat, returns information on file, except that if file is a symbolic
link, Esjis::lstat returns information about the link; Esjis::stat returns
information about the file pointed to by the link. If symbolic links are
unimplemented on your system, a normal Esjis::stat is done instead. If file is
omitted, returns information on file given in $_. Returns values (especially
device and inode) may be bogus.
This subroutine function when the filename ends with chr(0x5C) on MSWin32.
Open directory handle
$rc = Esjis::opendir(DIR,$dir);
This subroutine opens a directory named $dir for processing by readdir, telldir,
seekdir, rewinddir, and closedir. The subroutine returns true if successful.
Directory handles have their own namespace from filehandles.
This subroutine function when the directory name ends with chr(0x5C) on MSWin32.
Statistics about file
$stat = Esjis::stat(FILEHANDLE);
$stat = Esjis::stat(DIRHANDLE);
$stat = Esjis::stat($expr);
$stat = Esjis::stat_;
@stat = Esjis::stat(FILEHANDLE);
@stat = Esjis::stat(DIRHANDLE);
@stat = Esjis::stat($expr);
@stat = Esjis::stat_;
In scalar context, this subroutine returns a Boolean value that indicates whether
the call succeeded. In list context, it returns a 13-element list giving the
statistics for a file, either the file opened via FILEHANDLE or DIRHANDLE, or
named by $expr. It's typically used as followes:
$atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks) = Esjis::stat($expr);
Not all fields are supported on all filesystem types; unsupported fields return
0. Here are the meanings of the fields:
Index Field Meaning
0 $dev Device number of filesystem
drive number for MSWin32
vRefnum for MacOS
1 $ino Inode number
zero for MSWin32
fileID/dirID for MacOS
2 $mode File mode (type and permissions)
3 $nlink Nunmer of (hard) links to the file
usually one for MSWin32 --- NTFS filesystems may
have a value greater than one
1 for MacOS
4 $uid Numeric user ID of file's owner
zero for MSWin32
zero for MacOS
5 $gid Numeric group ID of file's owner
zero for MSWin32
zero for MacOS
6 $rdev The device identifier (special files only)
drive number for MSWin32
NULL for MacOS
7 $size Total size of file, in bytes
8 $atime Last access time since the epoch
same as $mtime for MacOS
9 $mtime Last modification time since the epoch
since 1904-01-01 00:00:00 for MacOS
10 $ctime Inode change time (not creation time!) since the epoch
creation time instead of inode change time for MSWin32
since 1904-01-01 00:00:00 for MacOS
11 $blksize Preferred blocksize for file system I/O
zero for MSWin32
12 $blocks Actual number of blocks allocated
zero for MSWin32
int(($size + $blksize-1) / $blksize) for MacOS
$dev and $ino, token together, uniquely identify a file on the same system.
The $blksize and $blocks are likely defined only on BSD-derived filesystems.
The $blocks field (if defined) is reported in 512-byte blocks. The value of
$blocks * 512 can differ greatly from $size for files containing unallocated
blocks, or "hole", which aren't counted in $blocks.
If Esjis::stat is passed the special filehandle consisting of an underline, no
actual stat(2) is done, but the current contents of the stat structure from
the last Esjis::stat, Esjis::lstat, or Esjis::stat-based file test subroutine
(such as Esjis::r, Esjis::w, and Esjis::x) are returned.
Because the mode contains both the file type and its permissions, you should
mask off the file type portion and printf or sprintf using a "%o" if you want
to see the real permissions:
$mode = (Esjis::stat($expr))[2];
printf "Permissions are %04o\n", $mode & 07777;
If $expr is omitted, returns information on file given in $_.
This subroutine function when the filename ends with chr(0x5C) on MSWin32.
Deletes a list of files.
$unlink = Esjis::unlink(@list);
$unlink = Esjis::unlink($file);
$unlink = Esjis::unlink;
Delete a list of files. (Under Unix, it will remove a link to a file, but the
file may still exist if another link references it.) If list is omitted, it
unlinks the file given in $_. The subroutine returns the number of files
successfully deleted.
This subroutine function when the filename ends with chr(0x5C) on MSWin32.
Changes the working directory.
$chdir = Esjis::chdir($dirname);
$chdir = Esjis::chdir;
This subroutine changes the current process's working directory to $dirname, if
possible. If $dirname is omitted, $ENV{'HOME'} is used if set, and $ENV{'LOGDIR'}
otherwise; these are usually the process's home directory. The subroutine returns
true on success, false otherwise (and puts the error code into $!).
chdir("$prefix/lib") || die "Can't cd to $prefix/lib: $!";
This subroutine has limitation on the MSWin32. See also BUGS AND LIMITATIONS.
Do file
$return = Esjis::do($file);
The do FILE form uses the value of FILE as a filename and executes the contents
of the file as a Perl script. Its primary use is (or rather was) to include
subroutines from a Perl subroutine library, so that:
is rather like:
scalar CORE::eval `cat stat.pl`; # `type stat.pl` on Windows
except that Esjis::do is more efficient, more concise, keeps track of the current
filename for error messages, searches all the directories listed in the @INC
array, and updates %INC if the file is found.
It also differs in that code evaluated with Esjis::do FILE can not see lexicals in
the enclosing scope, whereas code in CORE::eval FILE does. It's the same, however,
in that it reparses the file every time you call it -- so you might not want to do
this inside a loop unless the filename itself changes at each loop iteration.
If Esjis::do can't read the file, it returns undef and sets $! to the error. If
Esjis::do can read the file but can't compile it, it returns undef and sets an
error message in $@. If the file is successfully compiled, do returns the value of
the last expression evaluated.
Inclusion of library modules (which have a mandatory .pm suffix) is better done
with the use and require operators, which also Esjis::do error checking and raise
an exception if there's a problem. They also offer other benefits: they avoid
duplicate loading, help with object-oriented programming, and provide hints to the
compiler on function prototypes.
But Esjis::do FILE is still useful for such things as reading program configuration
files. Manual error checking can be done this way:
# read in config files: system first, then user
for $file ("/usr/share/proggie/defaults.rc", "$ENV{HOME}/.someprogrc") {
unless ($return = Esjis::do($file)) {
warn "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
warn "couldn't Esjis::do($file): $!" unless defined $return;
warn "couldn't run $file" unless $return;
A long-running daemon could periodically examine the timestamp on its configuration
file, and if the file has changed since it was last read in, the daemon could use
Esjis::do to reload that file. This is more tidily accomplished with Esjis::do than
with Esjis::require.
Require file
This subroutine asserts a dependency of some kind on its argument. If an argument is
not supplied, $_ is used.
Esjis::require loads and executes the Perl code found in the separate file whose
name is given by the $file. This is similar to using a Esjis::do on a file, except
that Esjis::require checks to see whether the library file has been loaded already
and raises an exception if any difficulties are encountered. (It can thus be used
to express file dependencies without worrying about duplicate compilation.) Like
its cousins Esjis::do, Esjis::require knows how to search the include path stored
in the @INC array and to update %INC on success.
The file must return true as the last value to indicate successful execution of any
initialization code, so it's customary to end such a file with 1 unless you're sure
it'll return true otherwise.
Current position of the readdir
$telldir = Esjis::telldir(DIRHANDLE);
This subroutine returns the current position of the readdir routines on DIRHANDLE.
This value may be given to seekdir to access a particular location in a directory.
The subroutine has the same caveats about possible directory compaction as the
corresponding system library routine. This subroutine might not be implemented
everywhere that readdir is. Even if it is, no calculation may be done with the
return value. It's just an opaque value, meaningful only to seekdir.
To install Sjis, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm Sjis
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Sjis
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.


text: OldGrayOwl 10 Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 Here is one that I have used both as a SM Minute and as a short, "on the trail" message: Hot Chocolate Wisdom A group of Eagle Scouts, well established in their careers, were discussing their lives at a Troop reunion. They decided to go visit their old Scoutmaster, now retired, who was always an inspiration to them. During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work, lives and relationships. Offering his guests hot chocolate, the Scoutmaster went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups. Some cups were porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite. He invited each to help themselves to the hot chocolate. When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the Scoutmaster shared his thoughts. "Notice that all the nice looking; expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup that you are drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink." "What each of you really wanted was hot chocolate. You did not want the cup . . . but you consciously went for the best cups, leaving the plain ones behind." "Now friends, please consider this . . . "Life is the hot chocolate . . . your job; money and position in society are the cups." "They are just tools to hold and contain life." "The cup you have does not define, nor does it change, the quality of life you are living." "Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us." Always remember this . . . . . . . . . . God brews the hot chocolate; He does not choose the cup. The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything that they have!! Leave the rest to God. ~ and remember ~ The richest person is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least. Link to post Share on other sites


text:
Would you make a play for this Game Boy dress?
This fashion statement is also a recipe for an instant marriage proposal from the nearest geek.
Hey ladies, if you're looking to make the geek of your dreams fall for you in an instant, this homemade Game Boy dress I found on Etsy is better than a gallon of Love Potion No. 9.
In my mind, a woman who wears this sends the message to her suitor that she's the total package -- a crafty, confident geek -- and if you're lucky, maybe you'll get to push her buttons.
This handmade creation from a woman named Amber who calls herself a "one-woman sweatshop" will set you back $78, but it seems to sell fairly well, as it has been spotted around the world. Some Game Boy dresses spotted are Amber's, and some are apparently imitations, which they say is the most sincere form of flattery.
If a clingy dress isn't your style, Amber also offers a T-shirt version and all kinds of cool 8-bit mustache gear that also caught my eye.
Finally, I know what many of you are wondering at this point, and I have some bad news for you: Amber's already married.


text:
Chinese internet users expressed their anger after six Danish tourists were witnessed urinating in the middle of a busy overpass in Shanghai.
Their behaviour on Saturday was first revealed online when an eye witness photographed them and published it on Sina Weibo, China's twitter-like microblogging platform. The photo showed six foreign men lining up in the middle of an overpass road, next to a coach, urinating.
The woman who took the photo, surname Huang, told the news outlet, kankanews.com, the men were grinning as they relieved themselves.
Police officers later reviewed surveillance video and traced it back to the bus according to its licence plate number. The bus driver told police the passengers were Danish tourists who had just completed a tour of Shanghai's Formular One Circuit.
While he was driving along the overpass, the driver said they forced him to stop. "They even tried to grab the steering wheel… and could have caused a traffic accident," he said.
The driver said the Danish tourists had been drinking a lot of beer.
Traffic police said they would continue investigating and might take action against the men.
The news sparked considerable discussion online. Many people expressed outrage and said the men should be punished.
A taxi driver asked whether the bus had violated any traffic rules. "I think the vehicles were not supposed to park [in the middle of highway overpass] in normal circumstances," he said.
One Shanghai resident said the men's actions could have been "dangerous".
On weibo, a blogger appealed to police to take a tougher line with badly-behaved visitors.
Another said the visas of the six should be cancelled.
However, another blogger said the incident might have been due to a lack of public toilets


text:
Rares sont les moments où un art est sur le point d'être profondément remis en question par une évolution technique. C'est pourtant ce qui semble arriver, ces derniers mois, avec le brusque réveil de la troisième dimension au sein d'un cinéma qui redécouvre là quelque chose qu'il avait déjà rencontré il y a de cela des décennies.
En effet, depuis la sortie sur les écrans d'Avatar, de Cameron, (ou plutôt, depuis la sortie hors des écrans d'Avatar, puisque la troisième dimension a ceci de particulier qu'elle ne se contente plus de simplement projeter sur une surface plane des images en mouvement, mais elle génère un effet de relief, et de profondeur qui semblent excéder la surface de projection, remettant en question, de manière fondamentale, les données essentielles de ce qu'on appelait, jusque là, « cinéma »), cette technologie semble, pour de bon, prendre son envol. Même si la large diffusion des moyens techniques permettant la diffusion d'oeuvres ainsi conçues en relief est handicapée par le coût des équipements nécessaires, et la contrainte de devoir chausser d'étranges lunettes, qui constituent, qu'on le veuille ou non, une séparation d'avec ce qui est à voir, tout en le rendant possible (un cadre a priori de la perception en relief, pour ainsi dire), on voit trop bien la mesure dans laquelle les jeux vidéo vont forcément tirer parti de cet artifice, et comment une certaine catégorie de films vont se jeter dans la brèche s'ouvrant, vers des expériences nouvelles, du moins dans l'artifice.
Pour autant, rares sont encore les réflexions théoriques portant sur la manière dont le cinéma pourrait être, en profondeur, bouleversé par l'apparition de cet effet pour le moins spécial. Or on sait bien comment l'apparition de la perspective, à la Renaissance, a participé à la genèse de la subjectivité moderne. Il n'est dès lors pas illégitime de chercher à analyser, plus en profondeur, la manière dont la troisième dimension spatiale va agir sur la forme même qu'auront, à l'avenir, les films, mais aussi sur la structure même de l'esprit. Peu de penseurs se sont encore attaqués au problème, mais une ébauche de réflexion est proposée dans le New-Yorker du 8 Mars 2010, sous la plume d'Antony Lane, critique cinéma au sein du période new-yorkais depuis 1993. Au-delà d'un rappel de l'histoire même de la technique tridimensionnelle au cinéma, qui permet de se souvenir que l'affaire n'est pas vraiment nouvelle, puisque par exemple, Sirk et Hitchcock avaient déjà tourné chacun un film en relief (Taza, son of Cochise (1954), pour le premier, seul western de Sirk, projeté en « super 3D living », Dial M for murder, (1954, lui aussi, Le meurtre était presque parfait, en VF), pour Hitchcock, dont de nombreux plans furent tournés spécifiquement en prévision des effets de trois dimensions, mettant le fameux téléphone, ou les tout aussi fameuses clés au coeur de l'action). Mais plus essentiellement, on s'y demande, aussi, si l'ajout de la profondeur au film ne renforce pas, paradoxalement, sa superficialité. Là, une réflexion plus profonde, mettant en jeu tant Platon que Godard, serait utile, pour creuser les pistes que cet article ébauche. On s'aiderait avec intérêt, ici, en confrontant Avatar, tourné en 3D, mais dont le relief présente un intérêt avant tout spectaculaire, et Alice in Wonderland, de Burton, dont les effets 3D furent ajoutés en post-production, mais jouent un rôle central dans la structure même de la mise en scène, perçant comme des trous dans les différentes dimensions dans lesquelles les personnages évoluent.
Comme tout le monde lit désormais l'anglais couramment, je colle ici l'article tel qu'il fut écrit, en V.O. non sous-titrée.
Did you enjoy "Rottweiler"? How about "Bwana Devil" or "Black Lolita"? Maybe you preferred "International Stewardesses," although you might know it under the more thoughtful title of "Supersonic Supergirls." You will not need reminding that these are among the crowning achievements of three-dimensional cinema: its "Grand Illusion," its "Psycho," its "8½." There are people who track down rare 3-D screenings of "Comin' at Ya!" and "The Disco Dolls in Hot Skin" the way regular buffs flock to a new print of "The Searchers" or dream of the lost, unbutchered portions of von Stroheim's "Greed." For those who have kept faith with 3-D, and have withstood the taunts of skeptics over the decades, no illusion has been grander, or harder to attain.
"Bwana Devil," set in Africa but filmed in Malibu, is a case in point. As one scours the histories of the medium, this is the title that swells with revolutionary significance. Think of it as "The Birth of a Nation" with an added z-axis. It was shot with a dual-camera rig, with two cameras facing weirdly lens to lens, and a pair of mirrors between them; light from the scene would be reflected via the mirrors, angled at forty-five degrees, into each lens. The resulting full-length feature, screened through twin projectors, viewable with 3-D spectacles, and released on November 26, 1952, initiated a short but golden period of 3-D, "with more than fifty stereoscopic films released between 1952 and 1955." So says Ray Zone, one of the foremost experts in the field, and certainly the most exquisitely named. Was he given the name at birth, and thus obliged to enter a suitable area of study, or did a fascination with 3-D lead him to assume this nom d'image?
In a series of interviews with leading practitioners of 3-D, Zone spoke to Arch Oboler, the director of "Bwana Devil," more than thirty years after the film's release. Like most of his peers, Oboler seemed excited to be dredging up the past, but not half as excited as he was by the glories yet to come:
Until there is some artistic level of choice of stories in the studios, we may have the same reaction to the present 3-D excitement that we had back in the "Bwana Devil" days. The audience will become surfeited with gore, with bad stories. The only hope for 3-D is that someone will come along with taste and understanding, and do a good story without regard for the extremes of 3-D, using it in terms of the story itself.
All of which sounds like a drumroll for James Cameron. The greatest compliment that one can pay to "Avatar," apart from the small matter of two and a half billion dollars and counting, is that almost none of the arguments that have stormed around the movie since its release, in December, have centered on its extra dimension. "The technology should wave its own wand and make itself disappear," Cameron said in advance, and, as he predicted, the visual depth of the film has become a given. People have plunged into "Avatar" like vacationers lining up for the high board of a pool, and when they emerge nearly three hours later, removing their glasses and rubbing the bridge of their noses, the question that they want to thrash out is whether the pool was a swamp of liberal eco-mush or a trough of hot-blooded American rampage. The one thing they agree on is that 3-D was its most fitting form—and, by implication, that there is no way back. 3-D is good to go. From here on, "the mind feels its way into the very depths of the picture. The scraggy branches of a tree in the foreground run out at us as if they would scratch our eyes out." Those are not the words of Oboler, though, or of the triumphant Cameron. They were written in The Atlantic Monthly, in June, 1859, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
from the issuecartoon banke-mail this.How did Holmes, of all people, find time for another dimension? Somehow, while in his post as professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard Medical School, and notwithstanding his poems, the essays that he contributed to The Atlantic Monthly, the novel that he published in the same journal, and his membership—along with Emerson, Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell—in the Saturday Club, he also delved into the field of stereopsis. This is the process by which our binocular vision yields a sensation of depth, with each eye giving a slightly different account of the same object; "by means of these two different views, the mind, as it were, feels round it and gets an idea of its solidity," Holmes wrote. He was hardly the first to notice this; the physician Galen had pointed it out some seventeen hundred years earlier, and it has been a continuing cause for regret, among medical historians, that Galen did not live to see his theories come to fruition in "Jaws 3-D" or "Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn." But Holmes was the first to lyricize the lure of stereopsis, and to grapple imaginatively with its dramatic potential:
I scale the huge mountain-crystal that calls itself the Pyramid of Cheops. I pace the length of the three Titanic stones of the wall of Baalbec,—mightiest masses of quarried rock that man has lifted into the air; and then I dive into some mass of foliage with my microscope, and trace the veinings of a leaf so delicately wrought in the painting not made with hands, that I can almost see its down and the green aphis that sucks its juices. I look into the eyes of the caged tiger, and on the scaly train of the crocodile, stretched on the sands of the river that has mirrored a hundred dynasties.
We are a breath away from the forests of "Avatar." Look at the verbs that Holmes deploys—scale, pace, dive—and the gusto with which he zooms from the hulking shapes of a landscape to the thirst of a single insect. All that he is actually discussing is the pleasure of leafing through a collection of stereo photographs (paired views of the same scene, which a stereoscope resolved into a single, 3-D image), yet you can feel him egging the technology on to keep pace with human attention. That is why, finding a few minutes to spare, around 1860, he designed his own stereoscope—an elegant viewing tool, carved in wood with glass lenses, which could be held in the hand for the convenient scrutiny of the dual images. He was not the inventor of the stereoscope; that honor belongs to Charles Wheatstone, a British scientist who had built a more cumbersome device twenty years earlier. But Holmes's lighter version sold en masse, and, in an even more fervid article from 1861, he guided stereoscopists on a grand verbal tour of the world, and promised them a trance—"a dream-like exaltation of the faculties, a kind of clairvoyance, in which we seem to leave the body behind us and sail away into one strange scene after another." Vision, from now on, would be visionary; and you sense that impatient souls like Holmes, who had a thousand-strong collection of stereo photographs, were willing the cinema into being.
To trace the progress of stereo viewing, in the wake of this early enthusiasm, is to embark upon a comedy of bright ideas, brand names, dashed hopes, and quackery. Ray Zone, who is nothing if not exhaustive in his "Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of the 3-D Film, 1838-1952," brings us news of the Cosmorama, the Motoscope, the Thaumatrope, the Phenakistoscope, the stereophoroskop, the Kinimoscope, the photobioscope, the Praxinoscope, the Heliocinegraphe, the Zoopraxiscope (not to be confused with the Zoopraxinoscope, otherwise known as the Zoogyroscope), the Kinetoscope, the Mutoscope, the anaglyph, the polarizer, the Alethoscope, and the Vitagraph, which at least had the advantage of being pronounceable. The most significant of these was Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, which ran a strip of film through a system of rollers, and the patent for which, issued in 1893, mentioned "means for moving said film or surface rapidly forward at a regulated speed." The result would have been a kind of hasty peepshow—pictures in motion rather than a motion picture—and, in any case, as Zone points out, no functioning Kinetoscope was ever constructed.
What matters here, amid the melee, is that the dream of 3-D predated the arrival of the movies; and what saddens proponents of 3-D is that not until recently has it caught up. Worse still, some of the earliest films partook, consciously or otherwise, of visual sleights and habits to which a public fed on years of stereoscopy was already accustomed: yet another instance, if any were needed, of an art form consuming its forebears without so much as a thank you. Thus, in "The Great Train Robbery," a smash of 1903, the final image of the film—after the thieves have been tracked down and shot in the woods—shows one of them, alive and unharmed, raising his pistol and firing directly at the camera. Whether audiences flinched from this, as legend suggests, we cannot be sure; but to shatter the fourth wall in so blatant a fashion, so early in the history of the medium, was not just astounding. It was also a 3-D moment in all but name, with the viewer's brain instantly gauging the distance and the velocity of the bullet's path. From there to our privileged position atop the thrumming arrow in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" (1991), or to any of the slugs that barrel toward us in the "Matrix" trilogy, is no more than a hop. These are not 3-D movies, yet the ghost of 3-D hangs over them and haunts their spatial desires.
The slaking of such desires reached a feverish peak in the early nineteen-twenties. Was it pure coincidence that, even as poets and novelists sought to splinter and elasticate our common experience, so the newest permutation of popular culture likewise played merry—and profitable—havoc with traditional narratives? If you were of catholic tastes, you could spend 1922 inching through "Ulysses" and "The Waste Land" and then relax, in December, at the Selwyn Theatre in New York, where a round viewing machine with a revolving shutter stood on a snakelike metal neck in front of your seat. This was Teleview, which brought you a 3-D bundle of slides, travelogues, and something called shadowgraphs; two years later, 3-D won its first wide commercial release in the form of a portmanteau of short novelty films known as Plastigrams. The dogged R. M. Hayes, in his book "3-D Movies," reprints a great poster for Plastigrams, with its barked instructions: "You Will Thrill!—Scream at this Wonder Novelty. Special Glasses Absolutely Essential. Provided Free of Charge. Get Yours at the Door."
The kicker, though, lies at the foot of the poster. For thirty-five cents, you got a double bill: squeezed below Plastigrams was a small announcement for the second half of the program, D. W. Griffith's "Way Down East." And so the scene was set. 3-D had the bells and whistles, but maybe that was all it had; it was a Wonder Novelty, but a novelty nonetheless. Meanwhile, real movies, less showy but more substantial, could get on with business as usual. And that is where the matter rested. In 1936, for instance, audiences for M-G-M's "A Tale of Two Cities" were treated, beforehand, to a short 3-D film called "Audioscopiks," for which the company made three million pairs of red-and-green lorgnette spectacles. You held them up to your eyes to watch a guy pitch a baseball ("Don't Forget to Duck!" the tagline ran), then lowered them for the Dickens, which remained a tale of two dimensions. Not until the end of last year were the two halves of that entertainment fused into one, as Robert Zemeckis's "A Christmas Carol" saw Jim Carrey, in the role of Scrooge, rocket past us into the night sky clutching a chimney pot. This was not because the same thing occurs in the original story but because 3-D loves a human projectile even more than it does a baseball. That's the rule: wonders must never cease.
To survey the filmography of 3-D, from the days of "Bwana Devil" to a movie like "Jaws 3-D," which, in 1983, earned eighty-eight million dollars worldwide, is to trespass upon a mythical land that is both laughed at and lost. It's like hearing from survivors of Atlantis that the place was a bit of a dump. And yet the myth is untouchable, because we cannot return to inspect it for ourselves. Were I to nourish a fixation with the films of 1954, I could easily buy a DVD of "Rear Window" or "On the Waterfront," but I can no more grasp what it was truly like to put on my 3-D spectacles and watch "The French Line," with Jane Russell, than I can spirit myself back among the congregation of St. Thomas's Church in Leipzig, two hundred and twenty years earlier, to hear a Bach cantata. There was a chance to see "The French Line" four years ago, when it screened as part of a magnificent-sounding roster of films at the World 3-D Film Expo II, at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, alongside such gems as "Those Redheads from Seattle" (1953) and "Taza, Son of Cochise" (1954). If you missed the show, however, all that remains of "The French Line" is the poster, with its portrait of Russell, arching her back in a bustier, and supported by the delicate slogan "J.R. in 3D: It'll Knock Both Your Eyes Out!" There's no proof that Howard Hughes wrote that line, but it has his paw marks all over it.
"Taza, Son of Cochise" is a special case, because it starred Rock Hudson and was directed by Douglas Sirk. Those for whom 3-D is, by definition, doomed to frippery tend to claim that no one of any distinction or sensibility would touch the stuff; yet a trawl through the record reveals any number of first-rate stars and directors who reached into the third dimension. There was "Dial M for Murder," which Hitchcock shot in 3-D, although he was annoyed by the bulk of the camera. There was Curtis Bernhardt's "Miss Sadie Thompson," with Rita Hayworth, which proffered, among other delights, "special clip-ons for those who already wear glasses." John Farrow directed John Wayne in "Hondo," and Rudolph Maté, who, as a cinematographer, had shot masterpieces such as "The Passion of Joan of Arc" and "Gilda," directed Robert Mitchum and Jack Palance in "Second Chance." You could watch the Three Stooges, perhaps confusingly, in 3-D, in "Pardon My Backfire," and you could watch Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in 3-D in "Money from Home." I still wonder how the première went. Martin, living as he did in a bifurcated fuzz, was presumably the only man in history who could watch a 3-D movie without needing the special glasses.
Yet, to be brutal, one has to ask: how many of these movies have endured, in any format, in the course of the fourth dimension? We still cling to "Dial M for Murder," but mainly for Grace Kelly, and for Hitchcock's masterly handling of her trial scene. To be fair, "Kiss Me Kate," the M-G-M musical with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel, was a 3-D hit, though mainly for the Cole Porter songs, like "Always True to You in My Fashion" and "Too Darn Hot," which existed long before the movie did and will resound after it has crumbled into dust. "Taza, Son of Cochise" now feels like a hiatus in Sirk's career between "All I Desire" and "Magnificent Obsession." 3-D, he said, "was just an experiment," and one is tugged toward the mean suspicion that, though often a boost to a film's immediate prospects, it soon became something that we could take or leave. Worse still, it may have hardened into a hindrance. When David Thomson, in "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film," describes "Inferno," a Robert Ryan picture of 1953, as "a modest venture, handicapped by 3D," is he revealing an unjust prejudice, or a bitter truth of the time?
Certainly, Oliver Wendell Holmes could not have conceived of a more ironic fate for his beloved stereoscopy; namely, that the very quest for depth should dwindle into a grim guarantee of superficiality. Was it the blandishment of the quick shock which insured that, for seventy years or more, almost every adventure in 3-D would wind up as little more than an extended Plastigram? As late as last year, in "My Bloody Valentine," a naked blonde hurled a pistol across a parking lot at a no-good truck driver's head—or, apparently, through the screen and straight at our heads, for the sake of a passing "Ooh," with no thought as to the rupture of dramatic flow. That is why so many 3-D films have taken refuge at the cheesier end of the market, in horror and pornography, where the slash of a knife or the swell of a bosom can allow the technique to strut its stuff. This is fatal for the maturing of any medium, as the fundamental need to tell a story, or to conjure a subtlety of mood, is trounced and swept aside by the sudden opportunity to show off. I clearly recall sitting through "Amityville 3-D" and "Friday the 13th, Part III" and feeling the last traces of genuine atmosphere drain away, to be replaced by a litany of giggles. As for "Jaws 3-D," I was mildly surprised that the offending shark should feel so much less frightening than it had in Spielberg's original, given that we were now being introduced, as it were, on a snout-to-snout basis.
The comedy of such encounters became inescapable, nowhere more so than when fish were replaced by the even wetter business of sex. Laughter is never far from the conjoining of bodies onscreen; it is, in its way, a hangover of our Puritan pudeur, but, with the approach of 3-D, it drowned out any hope of a softer cry. The heart, along with every other organ, sinks as one follows R. M. Hayes in his steady, alphabetical assessment of the boom in 3-D erotica. How relieved are you that you didn't bruise your libido with a trip to "Scoring" or "Campus Panty Raids" or "The Starlets"? The last of these arrived in 1976, in QuadraVision, of which Hayes remarks, with some severity, "The fourth dimension was supposed to be the explicitness of the hardcore sex scenes." The level of realism delivered by "Secrets of Ecstasy '72," according to one advertisement, meant that "you can almost feel the pulsing warmth," but the faint regret in that "almost" is fleshed out by an interview that Ray Zone conducted with Arnold Herr, who shot 3-D porno films, mostly in the nineteen-seventies, for a company called Deep Vision. His memories of "The Playmates" are fondly exact: "She's grinding and moaning. The camera moves up to her right breast. Then you see this enormous tongue from the lower part of the frame move up and start to lick her breast." The tongue in question, it transpires, came from a cow, though any fears that the rest of the cow was still attached to it are quickly laid to rest: "We had it on a broom handle and we had something under it to animate it. We also spritzed it to make it look moist."
Clearly, something had to give. This on-the-hoof inventiveness, though enterprising enough, offered almost nothing to serious filmmakers, and still less to cattle breeders. If 3-D was to stay alive, it had to break new ground. By good fortune, the ground ahead was digital.
We should not be taken aback by the pace with which digital production has invaded our moviegoing and colonized our eyes. Nonetheless, it is still bracing to take one's seat for Tim Burton's new "Alice in Wonderland" and realize how snugly the whole experience has accommodated itself to the shape of modern film. For a start, there are the glasses. Most early viewers knew only the anaglyph—a red lens over one eye, a blue or green one over the other, complementing the dual projection of the film itself. The nineteen-thirties saw increased competition from polarizing glasses, each lens of which blocked out part of the light from the screen. These two technologies have duked it out ever since. Anaglyph, which was ideal for black-and-white, and seemed bound for the scrap heap, has enjoyed an odd resurgence among computer users, for 3-D games. But moviegoers no longer want to be fobbed off with a piece of torn-out cardboard and plastic, which begs to be bent and scratched; they want to look like downhill skiers, their wraparound mirrored lenses flashing on the slopes. Polarization, therefore—preferably circular rather than linear, which means that you can tilt your head without getting a bad case of color-bleed—has carried the day.
Then, there are the coming attractions. When I saw "Alice," all of them were in 3-D; a child being taken to the cinema for the first time would presume that no other options were available. People sighed with comfortable anticipation at the imminence of "Toy Story 3," and rustled with bewilderment at "Tron Legacy," which is apparently designed to trap us like rabbits inside a digital world. Indeed, until Alice made her entrance, in the main feature, no real people had passed before our gaze. "Curiouser and curiouser," she said, having stepped through the tiny door into Wonderland, yet what followed grew less and less curious, as we realized how tightly Burton had stuck to the blueprint of twenty-first-century extravaganza. Lewis Carroll's tale is as brisk and bright as the Victorian child at its heart, more anecdotal than plotted, and Burton, spotting this, overcompensates by trading the domestic for the apocalyptic. Humans galumphing bareback on outsized beasts, and blasted war zones, where ignorant armies clash by night: we could be back in Narnia, or in the set pieces of "The Golden Compass"—leagues away from the spiky language games that enliven Carroll's pages. The most troubling aspect is that, while 3-D lends an undoubted texture to these duels and pursuits, it also makes them strangely obvious; we now demand nothing less than constant, localized amazement, and we therefore get nothing more. No one should play down the hard, ingenious labor that such a project entails, yet something about it, as Alice sprang through the darkened air and slew the Jabberwocky, felt too easy.
There is also the "Avatar" problem. "Alice in Wonderland" was shot in two dimensions and then converted, during postproduction, into three, and, to a theatre full of pedants—which is what we have become—there are holes to pick in the screen. The flora through which our heroine passes is every bit as luxuriant as we expected, but not once do we sense ourselves yearning to catch and stroke it as we did those glowing woodland floaters—half jellyfish, half thistledown—that bloomed from the digital mulch of "Avatar." The bar, in short, is being raised at a vertiginous rate, and today's 3-D viewers deride the effects that felt so special in "The Polar Express," all of six years ago. Those smooth, not quite real faces in which the director, Robert Zemeckis, likes to deal (and continues to deal, to judge by "A Christmas Carol") now verge on the embarrassing, such is our craving for an alternative world in which we can place our trust. Before our eyes, the idea of 3-D vision has gone from hobby to heavy industry, from a treat to an essential, and from a creed to a need. For devotees, it had to happen:
For today's 3D, riding on all-digital production pipelines, the benefits extend far beyond principal photography into postproduction and distribution. Considering that 1950's 3D is said to have been crippled by image-quality issues that couldn't be tackled in the analog age, this distinction is crucial. Basically, a digital 3D movie should not give you a headache.
That is Bernard Mendiburu, writing in "3D Movie Making: Stereoscopic Digital Cinema from Script to Screen" (2009). As a technical manual, it bristles with good advice, but, as a book of prophecy, it will scare the pixellated daylights out of anyone over forty. Once the newfangled 3-D is up and running, Mendiburu proposes,
it will be unavoidable and ubiquitous, to the point that the very mention of "3D" will disappear from posters. At some point in the near future, you will go to see a "flattie" for nostalgia's sake, just as you sometimes watch black-and-white movies on TV today.
I hate to break it to Mendiburu, but there are film lovers who still go to the cinema to watch flatties that are not merely in black-and-white but are sometimes silent, too. And we do so not out of nostalgia but precisely because those films are anything but period pieces. Not long ago, I saw a new print of "Gun Crazy," Joseph H. Lewis's bad-couple thriller of 1950, and it felt considerably more dangerous and less dated than most of the new releases. Not that such danger will deter the acolytes of 3-D, who, far from scorning our preferences, will kindly offer to help. According to recent reports, Reliance Big Entertainment, the Mumbai-based company that last year invested three hundred and twenty-five million dollars in DreamWorks Studios, has entered into partnership with In-Three, a California firm that converts 2-D movies to 3-D. And not just new 2-D, but old 2-D as well. If all goes according to plan, "Twelve Angry Men" could be coming back. And they'll be angrier than ever.
There is more in this announcement to startle the movie nut than in any rumor of "Avatar 2: Blue Crush." Faced with the thought of a 3-D "Casablanca," one is torn between outrage at such blind desecration and a sneaking wish to know—well, what the hell would it look like? The mind runs riot, in search of screenings past. Imagine the older couple dancing, with slow grace, in "The Magnificent Ambersons," with the younger pair behind them, watching in admiration from the stairs; imagine the gentle ascent of the camera, at the end of "Ugetsu Monogatari," as the child lays an offering on his mother's grave, and we gaze beyond him to the workers, with griefs and rituals of their own, toiling in the distant fields; imagine the arrival of the train at the start of "Once Upon a Time in the West," with those seamed, all-knowing faces so close to us and the railroad stretching so far; imagine the flirtatious darting between trees, in "Smiles of a Summer Night," as the maid half seeks to flee the randy groom in the background, both of them blessed and maddened by the midnight sun. All these scenes depend on figures held in separate planes, and on the unspoken feelings that brim in the spaces between them; would it weaken or intensify those feelings if the spaces were given solid form? Try asking Patrick von Sychowski, the chief operating officer at Reliance MediaWorks, quoted in the London Times: "You can't just press a button and have a computer do it. You have to take artistic decisions, such as what's going to appear in the foreground." Ah.
It is no slur on the skills of Reliance and In-Three to suggest that, statistically, they are unlikely to have a Welles, a Mizoguchi, a Leone, and a Bergman all sharing the same water cooler in Mumbai. Maybe the past should be left in peace. On the other hand, a name as distinguished as any of those was behind the most messianic tribute ever paid to 3-D. Sergei Eisenstein, in his last article, published in 1949, wrote that "mankind has for centuries been moving towards stereoscopic cinema." Hostility to such progress told of a reactionary stubbornness: "Does not the musty conservatism with which news of work on the stereoscopic front is met in the West sound absurd and, in its way, insulting to the eternally developing tendencies of a genuinely vital art?" Even if you're not convinced that "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" did that much to overthrow, or even lightly radicalize, a snoozing bourgeoisie, you have to be stirred by Eisenstein's call to arms, not least when he summons, as a witness, a passage from his own film "Ivan the Terrible, Part I":
The most memorable montage piece in this scene shows the boundless snow-covered space in the background of the composition, the general view of the Moscow peasants' procession moving across it, and, in the foreground, the greatly enlarged profile of the Czar's head bowing to them.
There's just one hitch. The scene works fine as it is. Watch it again and—even in miniature, on YouTube—you absolutely get the point, as the formal disposition of figures in the frame yokes together the ruler and the ruled. It may, like "The Great Train Robbery," owe something to 3-D, but the posthumous application of 3-D would not sharpen—and might even vulgarize—its moral thrust. Is that not, after all, how we have learned to read a painting since the time of Giotto? We know that perspective is a trick, and that a flat surface stands for a denser and more far-reaching world, but it is an illusion of which art—in drawing and painting, in still photography, and in two-dimensional films—has availed itself with unstinting intelligence, relying on our instinct to decipher the code. What 3-D movies say to us is: You have been fooled. You were duped, all this time, into thinking that a window was a world. Only now will you get the real thing.
But that, too, is a lie. "We seem to leave the body behind us," Holmes said of the stereoscope, but we never really leave. We don't even leave our seat, and soon we won't leave our couch, since the signs are that 3-D will not just conquer the movie theatres but edge with greater assurance into our homes. True, these are early days; I watched a DVD of "My Bloody Valentine," which came with a pair of crummy anaglyph glasses, and it was like having my eyeballs rinsed in lemon-lime Gatorade. Word is, though, that Blu-ray disks offer a better service by far, and who's to say, in any case, that feature films will be the major draw? An outfit called 3ality Digital has produced a three-dimensional broadcast for the N.F.L., and before long it won't be just the halftime commercials during the Super Bowl which require us to don our glasses. It will be the game. We will rise magically above the end zone, at the climactic play, and watch the football rifle toward our eyes. And if we feel like grieving at the end, and need to stream some 3-D porn to cheer ourselves up, it will not be because our team lost; it will be because the vision is over for the night. Those members of the "Avatar" audience who said that they felt blue, in every sense, as the movie ebbed away were the most accurate critics of all. 3-D will ravish our senses and take us on rides that no drug could match, but my guess is that, like so many blessings, it won't make us happy. It will make us want more. »
lien de l'article : http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/03/08/100308crat_atlarge_lane?currentPage=all
Illustrations :
1 – Photographie de Miles Aldridge (qui, s'inspirant pas mal des travaux de David Lachapelle, oeuvre assez souvent pour les grands magazines de mode américains.
Puis, les affiches de :
2 – Taza, son of Cochise, de D. Sirk (1954)
3 – Dial M for Murder, de A. Hitchcock (1954)
4 – Avatar, de J. Cameron (2009)
5 – Alice in Wonderland, de T. Burton (2010)
6 – Tron Legacy, de J. Kosinski (2010)
7 – Sucker Punch, de Z. Snyder (2011)
8 – Green Lantern, de M. Campbell (2011)
Et :
9 – Un arrêt sur image dans Resident Evil 5, premier jeu à être proposé en 3D, dans sa version PC, pour les rares joueurs disposant d'une carte graphique, d'un écran, d'une paire de lunettes et d'yeux 3D-ready.