Amélie Was Really a KGB Spy: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Re-Edits His Beloved Film, Amélie, into a New Comedic Short

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No French film of this century is more beloved than Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie. Or rather, no protagonist of a French film in this century is more beloved than Audrey Tautou’s eponymous Amélie. Hence, no doubt, why the movie is best known by that short version of its title rather than by the long version, Le…

Behold an Astonishing Near-Nightly Spectacle in the Lightning Capital of the World

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Extreme weather conditions have become a topic of grave concern. Are floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and catastrophic storms the new normal?

Just for a moment, let’s travel to a place where extreme weather has always been the norm: Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela.

According to NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission‘s lightning…

Explore the Hereford Mappa Mundi, the Largest Medieval Map Still in Existence (Circa 1300)

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If you wanted to see a map of the world in the fourteenth century, you could hardly just pull up Google Earth. But you could, provided you lived somewhere in or near the British Isles, make a pilgrimage to Hereford Cathedral. There you would find the shrine of St. Thomas Cantilupe, the…

David Byrne Picks Up His Big Suit from the Dry Cleaners and Gets Ready for Stop Making Sense to Return to Theaters

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First released in 1984, Jonathan Demme’s acclaimed concert film Stop Making Sense featured the Talking Heads at the height of their creative and musical powers. The film starts with David Byrne, alone on a bare stage, with a boombox and his big white suit, performing “Psycho Killer.” Then, with each new song, he’s joined…

New Order’s 1983 Classic “Blue Monday” Played with Obsolete 1930s Instruments

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Released 40 years ago this week, New Order’s “Blue Monday” (hear the original EP version here) became, according to the BBC, “a crucial link between Seventies disco and the dance/house boom that took off at the end of the Eighties.” If you frequented a dance club during the 1980s, you know the song.
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