I am preternaturally drawn to Leap Day. Can't really explain why. Maybe it's my love of things that are just ever so slightly "off" -- like pre-drilled screw holes from IKEA or error baseball cards or karaoke renditions of Alicia Keys.
This is actually the first time 11 Points has been around for a Leap Day -- I launched the site in June 2008, so we missed it. And I wasn't going to delay gratification and hold off until 2016 to write a list about February 29th. That's like tantric-level Leap Day patience.
So here are 11 random facts and bits of nonsense about Leap Day, aka February 29th, aka tomorrow, aka Ja Rule's birthday. Leap Day's not always there when you call, but it's always on time. So let's start livin' it up.
A surprising number of photos of frogs having sex come up when you search for Leap Day. Euphemism?
You've got a 1-in-1461 chance of being born on a leap day. Well, not you specifically. You were born on a different day. The royal you. (Also, about four million people worldwide have a February 29th birthday. Which makes me wonder...)
When do people with leap day birthdays celebrate it on non-leap years? The general response is, "February 28th, March 1st, whatever they want." And that's the general response because we live in the everyone-gets-a-trophy age of social hive-mindedness where everything everyone says is always right and important. Not on my watch. I want real answers. And who better to give us answers than the government, right?
Turns out February 29th birthdays are handled differently everywhere. In most U.S. states and places like the U.K. and Hong Kong, people with 2/29 birthdays don't hit legal milestones (drinking age, smoking age, rental car age, topless strip club with alcohol age, bottomless strip club without alcohol age) until March 1st. In places including China, Taiwan and New Zealand, February 28th is the legal birthday. So check with your local elected officials (or, I guess in some of the above cases, communists) to find out.
Well Mr. Burns had done it.
The formula for calculating which years do and don't have Leap Days is more complicated than you might realize. So one out of every four years is a Leap Year. That's true. Mostly. Now we get into the caveats that resemble Mr. Burns describing his baseball signals.
There's a Leap Day added every four years unless the year is perfectly divisible by 100, in which case there's no Leap Day. Unless the year is also perfectly divisible by 400, in which case the previous rule is nullified and there is a Leap Day. So 2000 had a February 29th because it was perfectly divisible by 400, while 2100 won't have one because it's only perfectly divisible by 100. Of course, that could all be thrown off if I tap my belt not once, not twice, but thrice.
Most of us won't ever see a Leap Day skipped in our lifetimes. The last time a Leap Day was skipped was in February of 1900. The next time will be in February of 2100. Sounless modern medicine is keeping us all alive and miserable well into our early 100s, most of the people reading this list will always get a Leap Day every four years.
On that note, I checked it out, and there are actually only 30 people alive right now who experienced the skipped Leap Day in 1900. And the odds are none of them remembers -- they would've been between a few weeks and three years old at the time. Meaning they were working in coal mines, not focused on zany calendar anomalies.
Because of the Leap Day, you may have to work on New Year's Eve this year.Leap Years are the only years where January 1st and December 31st are on different days of the week -- every other year they're on the same day.
That means December 31st will be on a Monday, not a Sunday. Which means you may have to go in to work that day, then leave so you can go out for a night that will be even more disappointing than the average New Year's.
Why WOULDN'T you release a movie called Leap Year in January of a non-Leap Year?
February 29th is the one day where women are traditionally expected to propose to men. And not just in Amy Adams movies. This actually is an Old Country (who knows which Old Country) tradition. And if the man turns you down, he's supposed to give you cash or clothing. Seems like a fair tradeoff for an eternity of humiliation, shattered self-esteem, and futile attempts to find someone who wants to buy a second-hand, unlucky engagement ring sized for a giant man-sized finger.
Leap Day doesn't hold up in court. People have tried all sorts of Leap Day tricks in court... and, apparently, they lose pretty much every time. Prisoners who have one-year sentences have to serve the extra day if their year crosses Leap Day. A woman tried claiming she was entitled to her husband's Social Security benefits because even though it looked like they got divorced just days before their 10th anniversary, counting their Leap Days as extra would push them over 10 years. A guy who had a certain number of days to file papers claimed February 29th shouldn't count as a day against him. In all cases, these moves failed.
Sweden once celebrated February 30th, too. In 1700, Sweden was planning to switch its calendar to the modern Gregorian calendar from the older Julian calendar... and they'd do it by eliminating Leap Days for 40 years. But then they got into the Great Northern War and forgot the plan. Eventually their times were so screwed up that they needed to add a February 30th to get back to normal. I can only imagine how much that cut into their Smarch.
James Milne Wilson, timely at dying.
There's a former world leader who was born on a Leap Day and died on a Leap Day. There's only one famous person who was born on a Leap Day and died on a Leap Day. And I use the term "famous" as loosely as a VH1 reality show. Sir James Milne Wilson, the eighth premier of Tasmania, wasborn on February 29th, 1812 and died on February 29th, 1880 -- his "17th" birthday. If it weren't for that, you'd probably only know him for work on growing free trade amongst the Australian colonies.
The Hindu and Hebrew calendars add a full Leap Month. They both use lunar-solar mixes, which makes everything crazy -- so to keep holidays consistent with their traditional seasons, they have to sprinkle in Leap Months every three-ish years.That's a massive correction, versus Leap Day which is a minor one.In iPhone terms, the Hebrew and Hindu leaps are like when you type in "nfjfnfnagt" and it autocorrects to "McKinney"... the Gregorian leaps are like when you type in "Yo" and it autocorrects to "To".
The Leap Day traditions presented in 30 Rock this year could become realities.30 Rock has pretty much fallen off a cliff but its recent Leap Day episode was perfect. So feel free to poke someone in the eye if they're not wearing blue and yellow on February 29th... dress up at Leap Day William... and trade candy for children's tears.
This could become a real Leap Day tradition. I mean, Festivus has pretty much become a real thing because of Seinfeld. Every year I listen to the Pennsylvania Polka and say "It's cold out there today / it's cold out there every day" on February 2nd because of Groundhog Day. And I gather dozens of my friends and make sure we're all brutally unfunny on both New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day. Movies and TV shows about holidays can really shape those holidays
Trust the Brits to produce visual art that is at once eye-candy and food for thought. After Banksy, here comes multi-skilled illustrator James Roper, with his personal brand of urban-inspired imagery. His outstanding series of paintings Exvoluta andHypermass, both featured below, explore iconic visual symbols taken from fashion magazines, game animation, comics, web-based found art, as well as the artist’s own photos and drawings. Says Roper, “I predominantly choose images and try to create forms which I feel register a visual ‘peak shift’, a term given to the phenomena of ‘neurological attraction’ that appears in both humans and animals to an extreme characterisation of an object. Peak shift has been suggested by the neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran as one of the ’10 universal laws of art’.”
Indeed, his work is imbued with a contemporary sense of psychedelic swirls, colors and loops, which provide the onlooker with plenty to think about. One image will trick you into believing you’re looking at a woman, while another is clearly a monster and yet another a video game hero. There is much to speculate regarding his unusual style, yet most conclusions will draw the viewer to the conclusion that it’s quite an effort to survive the daily onslaught of visual stimulation that we all have to survive, manage and sift through.
Emilio Gomariz exploits the Mac OS X desktop to create beautiful 'performances' from the various commands and functions which form everyday user experience...
From the meticulous arrangement of colour-coded folders, to setting up a sequence of 'maximising' windows, Gomariz's art looks at first glance to be the product of time spent simply idling away at the computer.
Spectrum Cube
This may well have informed his initial experiments (his first Mac piece, 2009's Folder Type, was created using 22,655 separate items) but a look at some of his more recent work suggests he takes his desktop organisation very seriously indeed.
And just with performance art, many of these pieces only 'exist' when Gomariz sets them off, recording the results as screen captures.
Folder Type
The Spanish born artist, who trained as a technical engineer in industrial design before experimenting with digital media, also runs the digital art blog, Triangulation. He has worked in video and digital painting, and created projects for clients such asDjango Django and the Fach & Asendorf Gallery (using another favourite tool of his: the animated gif).
But in 2009 he started using the Mac OS X interface to create interesting animations. "Folder Type came from using the colour feature to organise folders," says Gomariz. "I started toying with things – creating lots of folders, putting them in sub-folders, until I'd created a huge landscape of them which I then coloured and animated using the arrow keys and the scrollbar along the bottom."
Despite the complexity of the process, Gomariz says his Mac pieces don't take that long to create, the hours are put into seeing how different files can be manipulated over the desktop. "In the beginning I work on sketches, using few files as blanks," he says, "to just look at how the files act and move over the desktop.
"If I like it, then I extend it by adding more files and colours. But behind each different piece, there are quite a few hours of experimenting and looking for the final composition. I always work on them manually, too – by that I mean I don't use code to configure them."
Spectrum Horizont
The image at the top of this post is one of those experiments which was then developed into his new Spectrum series; Cube and Horizont are shown above. These pieces in particular rely on the exact placement of several ready made elements. There is of course a risk that the whole thing can come tumbling down if he clicks in the wrong place.
"With the Spectrum series I couldn't save the configuration of how the files were organised on the desktop," he says, "but I like that because they're then unique manifestations that lived on my computer. If I wanted to see something similar I would have to create it again."
It all requires a steady hand and mouse. "For Spectrum Cube, I placed around 75 different Text Edit files with exactly the same distance between them – again, manually – but I think this perfection is important, in this case, to get the great visual effect of the cube."
114.psd Type
In some of the Mac-based pieces like Spectrum Horizont and 114.psd Type, shown above, the dock is crammed with files ready to be 'maximised'. This functionality has, for Gomariz, a distinctly aesthetic appeal.
"I have to be careful with the rhythm when taking out the files off the dock, I often repeat the final screen capture until get a nice flow. Sometimes is difficult to click the files on the dock because it gets really small when is full of files. For example, I have one screenshot with 1,030 files on the dock. It is quite ridiculous, but funny, too.
"The Mac's basic default features [are] the first thing I see when I switch on the computer, so they are the first thing which inspire me to do something with. They offer sensual and attractive movements like the Genie Effect to minimize and maximize the windows to and from the dock, and there are a whole world of keyboard shortcuts which let me control all these options as a game; a very colourful palette for making folders, etc. So I use OS X both as a tool and as an aesthetic as well."
Ai Professional Workspace
Messing with the standard desktop applications to such an extent isn't without its risks. "A while ago, I had the biggest error/damage alert," says Gomariz. "I was experimenting with Text Edit in another way, copying and pasting thousands of huge, coloured special characters at the same time, and the software became blocked permanently. I couldn't use it anymore. I had to reinstall the OS X to get it back."
I’ve spoken before about the highs of Dario Argento’s early career and how it sits in direct contrast to the abysmally depressing filmmaker he’s become in the last two decades. But his filmography doesn’t have a timeline clearly separating the good from the bad. His best work remains the five features he made from 1975 to 1985 with everything before and after that period being a major mixed bag.
And that includes 1971′s Four Flies on Grey Velvet.
A rock drummer finds himself stalked by a masked killer out to frame him and make his life miserable, but who’s doing it and why? And more importantly, how will it affect the sales of his upcoming album?
“I’ve made a decision. Sticking it out here is better than going to prison.”
Roberto (Michael Brandon) is a professional drummer with a budding music career and a lovely wife named Nina (Mimsy Farmer) waiting for him at home every night. He also appears to have a stalker. One night he turns the table on the man who’s been following him and traces him to an abandoned theater. He confronts the stranger, a knife is pulled, and the nameless fan falls dead.
Suddenly a flash bulb goes off, and Roberto looks up to the balconies to see a masked witness documenting the crime in pictures.
The next day he finds copies of the pictures around his house and that night is attacked in his home by the same psycho paparazzi who warns him that his life is only going to get worse. Which it does as people around him began dying. Soon Roberto is letting the understandable stress get to him in the form of a short temper, nightmares and maybe an inclination towards infidelity with Nina’s incredibly attractive and willing cousin Maria (Laura Troschel). He takes the advice of a beach bum named God and hires a private detective to help find some answers before it’s too late.
There are elements here that work extremely well including the camera work and overall atmosphere that Argento would use to far greater effect just a few years later in Deep Red. Tracking shots move in and out of danger, knife strikes are mimicked with the camera’s eye and shadows are taken full advantage of in an effort to increase terror and suspense. The cinematography on display in the abandoned theater early on as well as a maze chase at night is slick and notably stylish.
The narrative itself is weighed down with some odd choices, but that should come as no surprise in an Argento film either. Roberto’s nightmares about a beheading in the Middle East are nonsensical, and dialogue flashbacks to a disappointed father are placed in such a way as to make it impossible to tell who’s actually “hearing” them. Are they Roberto’s memories or someone else’s? And the “recent scientific discovery” that the last thing a person sees is captured on their retina for several hours? Yeah. That’s here too.
But while a weak story is expected in an Argento film his protagonists (and the actors who portray them) are usually charismatic and/or interesting enough to engage viewers in their fate. Think David Hemmings in Deep Red, Jessica Harper in Suspiria or Jennifer Connolly in Phenomena. Brandon does a fine enough job here, but neither he nor his character ever really give viewers a compelling reason to watch.
The new Blu-ray from Shameless Screen Entertainment in the UK comes in a bright yellow case that will have no problem standing out on your Blu-ray shelf. This is the first HD transfer of Argento’s film (if I’m not mistaken), and the image looks quite good. The colors are vibrant, the definition is sharp, and the picture looks very clean. There are a couple times where the quality drops noticeably, but those are the added scenes that Shameless has integrated back into the film. The special features include:
Introduction & Exclusive interview with Writer & Assistant Director Luigi Cozzi
Restored film rebuilt with prior missing footage
New English audio remastered from original vault materials
Optional Italian audio + English subtitles
Trailers & Photo gallery
Four Flies on Grey Velvet bears several of the Argento calling cards fans have come to know and love, but they’re all somewhat muted compared to his later, more famous films. The set-pieces are far less elaborate, and the murders are far less graphic. It’s still a showcase for the director’s energetic and creative camera work though, and of course, it wouldn’t be Argento if the plot wasn’t more than a little convoluted. Fans of the director should definitely give it a watch, but it wouldn’t be the first of his films I’d recommend to newcomers. Or even the fifth.
The new Blu-ray from Shameless Screen Entertainment in the UK comes in a bright yellow case that will have no problem standing out on your Blu-ray shelf. This is the first HD transfer of Argento’s film (if I’m not mistaken), and the image looks quite good. The colors are vibrant, the definition is sharp, and the picture looks very clean. There are a couple times where the quality drops noticeably, but those are the added scenes that Shameless has integrated back into the film. The special features include: