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Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Doris Day: A Hip Sex Goddess Disguised as the Girl Next Door

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The Hollywood Reporter obituary for Doris Day describes her in the headline as “Hollywood’s Favorite Girl Next Door,” which is reasonable enough, if not terribly imaginative. Day, who was 97 when she died on Monday, broke through as a singer in the mid-1940s and crossed over into movie stardom in the next decade. She’s still often remembered as an avatar of the postwar, pre-counterculture pop culture mainstream: wholesome, friendly, sexless. Accordingly, the first adjective applied to her in that article’s summary is “virginal.”

That word evokes a leering one-liner attributed to the musician and wit Oscar Levant, who said he “knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” Levant’s joke depends on a category mistake, confusing the persona of a star with her person (Day was married three times), even as it misses the joke tucked into the persona itself. The v-word applied to Day signals the acceptance of an alibi that was never meant to be believed in the first place, the literal-minded gloss on a text that was only there to beckon us toward the subtext.

The truth, hidden in plain sight in so many of her movies and musical performances, is that Doris Day was a sex goddess. That’s not a term we use much anymore (for good reason), and in its heyday it was generally applied to actresses who wielded their erotic energies more nakedly, so to speak.

[Read our obituary of Doris Day. | Stream four great Day movies (and one TV show).]

Day wasn’t a glamorous blond enigma like Grace Kelly or Kim Novak — though she did, like both of them, work with Alfred Hitchcock. She was not a Hollywood bombshell in the manner of Marilyn Monroe (or Mamie Van Doren, with whom she competed for Clark Gable’s attention in the 1958 comedy “Teacher’s Pet”). And she certainly didn’t work in the same erogenous zone as European actresses like Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, who promised sophisticated American moviegoers a glimpse of freedom from Puritanical inhibition, and sometimes also from clothes.

But it’s too easy to say that Day was simply the opposite — the prim, prudish, all-American avatar of Eisenhower-era repression, with her hair in a neat chignon and her figure sheathed in a soberly tailored suit. To see her that way is to take at face value an archetype that she did everything in her formidable power to subvert.

Really, though, the whole virgin thing doesn’t even rise to the level of archetype. It’s an artifact of a movie censorship system that was, in the years after the Kinsey Report, rapidly losing touch with the realities of American behavior, and with the rest of popular culture as well.

In the canonical romantic comedies she made with Rock Hudson — “Pillow Talk” and “Lover Come Back” two years later — Day, in her late 30s, played unmarried New York career women.

Jan Morrow in “Pillow Talk” is an interior designer with a thriving, if hectic, business. Her counterpart in “Lover Come Back,” Carol Templeton, is a high-ranking executive in a Manhattan advertising firm. They are (implicitly) virgins by fiat of the production code, but really it’s up to the audience to decide how credible it is that neither one has managed to sleep with anyone until Hudson shows up. (When Hudson and Day reunited for “Send Me No Flowers” in 1964, they were playing husband and wife, and it wasn’t as much fun.)

The simple, sexist premise of these movies — and also of “Teacher’s Pet,” in which Day’s uptight professor is seduced by Gable, her most unlikely student — is that Day needs a raffish he-man to come along and ruffle her feathers with his sheer masculine irresistibility, getting her into bed with the benefit of clergy. But that pursuit is played out by means of a plot that relishes its own ridiculousness. The color schemes and production designs in the Hudson-Day comedies pulsate with whimsy. The atmosphere is pure camp, of the zany rather than the melodramatic variety. Every line sounds like a double-entendre. Every encounter is full of implication and innuendo, every character a collection of mixed signals.

These movies are naughty beyond imagining, and as clean as a whistle. In “Pillow Talk” — in effect the first movie about the pleasures and consequences of phone sex — Hudson and Day take a bath together. It’s a split-screen shot, but still.

The plot of “Lover Come Back” turns on the mass marketing of a powerful, possibly hallucinogenic drug. Heterosexual courtship under the mandate of matrimony has rarely looked so kinky. We’re not even talking about what it means that Rock Hudson is the male lead. The ambiguity is ambient. The deniability is perfect, and perfectly preposterous.

Day is the key to it all, because her presence simultaneously upholds the pretense of virtuous normality and utterly transgresses it. She is a walking semiotic riot with a pert nose and a winning smile, keeper and scrambler of a whole book of social norms and cultural codes.

To see what I mean, consider a scene from “Pillow Talk” in which Jan takes Brad Allen (Hudson’s playboy classical-music composer) to a nightclub. It’s maybe daring for his square sensibilities, which is to say that the music is being performed by black people. (The clientele is all white.) It turns out that his date is familiar with the musicians, and the music. Midway through a song called “Roly Poly,” the pianist and singer (Perry Blackwell) invites Jan to take a verse — “come on Miss Morrow, you know this one” — and pretty soon Brad is clapping along. By the chorus, he and Jan are playing patty cake, and pretty soon the whole joint is singing about the satisfactions of a lover who is built for comfort rather than for speed.

It’s impossible not to interpret this number as a cringe-inducing spectacle of cultural appropriation, pushed to and past the point of parody. The sexual and racial undercurrents eddy and swirl under a surface of pure silliness. In old Hollywood movies, African-American music is a complicated signifier, not least for the white characters who appreciate it. In not-so-old movies, too. When, for example, Ryan Gosling takes Emma Stone to listen to jazz in “La La Land,” he is telling her, and us, something about the kind of guy he is. He’s claiming access to, and a share of, what the music represents. Passion. Authenticity. Sex, too, of course.

In 1959, one name for this transaction — which might look from one angle like a gesture of respect, from another like an act of brazen existential plunder — was “hip.” It was a noun as much as an adjective, and it was not a word that anyone would have thought to apply to Doris Day. Partly because she was too canny to take it seriously, notwithstanding her serious interest in African-American music.

In “Love Me or Leave Me,” a show-business biopic from 1955, she performs a version of Irving Berlin’s “Shaking the Blues Away,” wearing a low-cut bright-blue gown slit up to her thigh. The lyric’s absurd evocation of religious revivals “way down South” gives way to a stageful of male chorines in top hats and tails, as Day belts out a paean to dancing that is a rollicking celebration of … something else. She’s singing the language of rock ’n’ roll at the moment of rock ’n’ roll’s emergence, but what she’s doing is … something else. She’s messing with all our categories. Which was her great and underappreciated gift.

The Hollywood Reporter obituary for Doris Day describes her in the headline as “Hollywood’s Favorite Girl Next Door,” which is reasonable enough, if not terribly imaginative. Day, who was 97 when she died on Monday, broke through as a singer in the mid-1940s and crossed over into movie stardom in the next decade. She’s still often remembered as an avatar of the postwar, pre-counterculture pop culture mainstream: wholesome, friendly, sexless. Accordingly, the first adjective applied to her in that article’s summary is “virginal.”

That word evokes a leering one-liner attributed to the musician and wit Oscar Levant, who said he “knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” Levant’s joke depends on a category mistake, confusing the persona of a star with her person (Day was married three times), even as it misses the joke tucked into the persona itself. The v-word applied to Day signals the acceptance of an alibi that was never meant to be believed in the first place, the literal-minded gloss on a text that was only there to beckon us toward the subtext.

The truth, hidden in plain sight in so many of her movies and musical performances, is that Doris Day was a sex goddess. That’s not a term we use much anymore (for good reason), and in its heyday it was generally applied to actresses who wielded their erotic energies more nakedly, so to speak.

Day wasn’t a glamorous blond enigma like Grace Kelly or Kim Novak — though she did, like both of them, work with Alfred Hitchcock. She was not a Hollywood bombshell in the manner of Marilyn Monroe (or Mamie Van Doren, with whom she competed for Clark Gable’s attention in the 1958 comedy “Teacher’s Pet”). And she certainly didn’t work in the same erogenous zone as European actresses like Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, who promised sophisticated American moviegoers a glimpse of freedom from Puritanical inhibition, and sometimes also from clothes.

But it’s too easy to say that Day was simply the opposite — the prim, prudish, all-American avatar of Eisenhower-era repression, with her hair in a neat chignon and her figure sheathed in a soberly tailored suit. To see her that way is to take at face value an archetype that she did everything in her formidable power to subvert.

Really, though, the whole virgin thing doesn’t even rise to the level of archetype. It’s an artifact of a movie censorship system that was, in the years after the Kinsey Report, rapidly losing touch with the realities of American behavior, and with the rest of popular culture as well.

In the canonical romantic comedies she made with Rock Hudson — “Pillow Talk” and “Lover Come Back” two years later — Day, in her late 30s, played unmarried New York career women.

Jan Morrow in “Pillow Talk” is an interior designer with a thriving, if hectic, business. Her counterpart in “Lover Come Back,” Carol Templeton, is a high-ranking executive in a Manhattan advertising firm. They are (implicitly) virgins by fiat of the production code, but really it’s up to the audience to decide how credible it is that neither one has managed to sleep with anyone until Hudson shows up. (When Hudson and Day reunited for “Send Me No Flowers” in 1964, they were playing husband and wife, and it wasn’t as much fun.)

The simple, sexist premise of these movies — and also of “Teacher’s Pet,” in which Day’s uptight professor is seduced by Gable, her most unlikely student — is that Day needs a raffish he-man to come along and ruffle her feathers with his sheer masculine irresistibility, getting her into bed with the benefit of clergy. But that pursuit is played out by means of a plot that relishes its own ridiculousness. The color schemes and production designs in the Hudson-Day comedies pulsate with whimsy. The atmosphere is pure camp, of the zany rather than the melodramatic variety. Every line sounds like a double-entendre. Every encounter is full of implication and innuendo, every character a collection of mixed signals.

These movies are naughty beyond imagining, and as clean as a whistle. In “Pillow Talk” — in effect the first movie about the pleasures and consequences of phone sex — Hudson and Day take a bath together. It’s a split-screen shot, but still.

The plot of “Lover Come Back” turns on the mass marketing of a powerful, possibly hallucinogenic drug. Heterosexual courtship under the mandate of matrimony has rarely looked so kinky. We’re not even talking about what it means that Rock Hudson is the male lead. The ambiguity is ambient. The deniability is perfect, and perfectly preposterous.

Day is the key to it all, because her presence simultaneously upholds the pretense of virtuous normality and utterly transgresses it. She is a walking semiotic riot with a pert nose and a winning smile, keeper and scrambler of a whole book of social norms and cultural codes.

To see what I mean, consider a scene from “Pillow Talk” in which Jan takes Brad Allen (Hudson’s playboy classical-music composer) to a nightclub. It’s maybe daring for his square sensibilities, which is to say that the music is being performed by black people. (The clientele is all white.) It turns out that his date is familiar with the musicians, and the music. Midway through a song called “Roly Poly,” the pianist and singer (Perry Blackwell) invites Jan to take a verse — “come on Miss Morrow, you know this one” — and pretty soon Brad is clapping along. By the chorus, he and Jan are playing patty cake, and pretty soon the whole joint is singing about the satisfactions of a lover who is built for comfort rather than for speed.

It’s impossible not to interpret this number as a cringe-inducing spectacle of cultural appropriation, pushed to and past the point of parody. The sexual and racial undercurrents eddy and swirl under a surface of pure silliness. In old Hollywood movies, African-American music is a complicated signifier, not least for the white characters who appreciate it. In not-so-old movies, too. When, for example, Ryan Gosling takes Emma Stone to listen to jazz in “La La Land,” he is telling her, and us, something about the kind of guy he is. He’s claiming access to, and a share of, what the music represents. Passion. Authenticity. Sex, too, of course.

In 1959, one name for this transaction — which might look from one angle like a gesture of respect, from another like an act of brazen existential plunder — was “hip.” It was a noun as much as an adjective, and it was not a word that anyone would have thought to apply to Doris Day. Partly because she was too canny to take it seriously, notwithstanding her serious interest in African-American music.

In “Love Me or Leave Me,” a show-business biopic from 1955, she performs a version of Irving Berlin’s “Shaking the Blues Away,” wearing a low-cut bright-blue gown slit up to her thigh. The lyric’s absurd evocation of religious revivals “way down South” gives way to a stageful of male chorines in top hats and tails, as Day belts out a paean to dancing that is a rollicking celebration of … something else. She’s singing the language of rock ’n’ roll at the moment of rock ’n’ roll’s emergence, but what she’s doing is … something else. She’s messing with all our categories. Which was her great and underappreciated gift.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

The Best Place for Self-Driving Cars Is Not America. It's a Place Like Dubai

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The Best Place for Self-Driving Cars Is Not America. It's a Place Like Dubai

The hotbeds of the nascent self-driving car industry today are places like Mountain View, California, home of Google, and Pittsburgh, where Uber and Carnegie Mellon University both have research hubs. Driverless cars already dot the streets there, giving residents a glimpse of the probable future in which fleets of commercial driverless vehicles share the road with human drivers.

I say “probable future” because, as inevitable as Silicon Valley technologists and prognosticators make it seem, it is still not a given that the American public and government will accept a world in which hordes of vehicular robots share the road with human drivers, even if all the still-daunting technological hurdles can be surmounted.
And yet it’s looking increasingly likely that mass adoption of commercial driverless cars will happen somewhere, even if that somewhere isn’t the United States.
For instance, it could happen in a place like Dubai.
The AP reported last week that the emirate’s leader has called for driverless vehicles to account for 25 percent of all trips on its public streets by the year 2030. Dubai has struck a deal with a French company called EasyMile to allow tests of its boxy, 10-passenger autonomous vehicle, the EZ10, on local roadways. And it is promoting a video of an autonomous concept car that looks like a Tesla Model S to get residents excited about the possibility of being ferried around by cars with no one in the driver’s seat. (It isn’t a real Tesla, and the carmaker has not announced any plans to expand sales to Dubai.)
That 2030 target would be pretty ambitious for a country as vast and diverse as the United States. Obama’s Department of Transportation does support the development of autonomous vehicle technology, and it recently mapped out a plan to create designated testing corridors around the country. However, this prudent approach is not likely to lead to rapid nationwide adoption.
For a city-state such as Dubai, however, 25 percent by 2030 seems like a target that should be relatively easy to achieve. For one thing, Dubai has the advantage of being both small in area and geographically homogeneous.
The hardest thing about building fully driverless cars for a market like the United States is ensuring that they have the capability to perform equally well in every conceivable driving situation. They have to navigate not only Mountain View and Pittsburgh, but the gridlock of Midtown Manhattan, the single-lane covered bridges of the rural Midwest, and the forested dirt roads of the Appalachians. They have to work in rain, snow, and fog.
In a place like Dubai, however, much of that isn’t necessary. There are some adverse conditions, such as heat and fog, and the urban roads can be heavily trafficked. But by and large, it’s a very car-friendly place: The streets are relatively well-paved and marked, and they aren’t as clogged with unpredictable bicycle, pedestrian, or rickshaw traffic as those of many other big cities around the world. It never snows, and it rains just 25 days a year. Oh, and the government is an absolute monarchy that can more or less impose its will on the populace.
In short, if driverless cars can work anywhere, they can probably work in Dubai. And if they do work in a place like Dubai, that makes them less likely to be a technological dead end, even if they suffer serious setbacks in the United States and elsewhere.

IBM brings quantum computing to the masses

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For the first time, the general public will be able to access previously theoretical quantum computing systems through International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)'s quantum processor on its cloud service.
"This moment represents the birth of quantum cloud computing," IBM Research senior vice president and director Arvind Krishna said in a company release. "By giving hands-on access to IBM's experimental quantum systems, the IBM Quantum Experience will make it easier for researchers and the scientific community to accelerate innovations in the quantum field, and help discover new applications for this technology."

Monday, January 25, 2016

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 Story Mode Preview

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Naruto-Shippuden-Ultimate-Ninja-Storm-4-logo
I have been a big fan of Naruto since I was in high school and while the anime and manga were always awesome, my real passion for the franchise has always come from its video games. The Naruto Storm series of games have always managed to capture the epic battles of the Naruto-verse in ways that no other adaptation has ever been able to. Sure most anime gets its own video games, but Naruto Storm seemed to just feel so authentic and more true to its source material than any of its competitors.

I guess that’s why I felt a little bittersweet when I sat down to try out the story mode for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Storm 4. With the manga wrapping up not long ago and the anime not far behind, Storm 4 is the last game in the franchise, and in my two hours with the game I faced epic challenges, laughed, held back tears and just genuinely had an absolute blast that I cannot wait to revisit.

naruto-storm-4-screenshot-04

Since this is the last game in the Storm series, Storm 4 focuses on the last few arcs of the Naruto story, mainly those related to the Great Ninja War. The story opens up with a flashback to the past where Madara Uchiha and Hashirama are facing off against one another. This provides a great introduction to the game itself and you learn some of the new mechanics (which I will discuss shortly). Following this, the narrative shifts between the past and the present, exploring in detail the life of series antagonist Obito Uchiha and his parallels with Naruto himself. We get little info on Naruto’s story, since it has always been done before in previous games. This is a bit of a double edged sword as the focus on the latter parts of the Naruto story means the game isn’t overly accessible to newcomers. That being said however, as a long time fan of the franchise I loved seeing the colossal battles from the end of the manga without having to worry about all of the filler and stuff I have seen before.

When Storm 3 was released a few years ago the anime and manga were still ongoing so instead of leaving the story on a cliffhanger an ending was created specifically for the game. The ending that was presented was thematically inconsistent with the source material and where the writers of the manga were taking it, so it left a bit of a bitter taste in many people’s mouths. Thankfully this time around the story is actually complete so what is presented is actually pretty damn close to the original manga conclusion. This means there are a few spoilers for whose who haven’t caught up but at the same time the game serves as almost a cliff notes summary of the plot, meaning there is still a lot to enjoy from the anime/manga.

I was able to breeze through the game’s story mode in under a few hours, but for those of you who are worried about the single player component being too short, you needn’t worry anymore. Not only are there alternative missions and branching story paths for you to follow, but each battle has a set of alternative objectives like “use your Jutsu 3 times,” or “Complete the battle with 70% Health.” These objectives add a lot of replayability to stages and actually give you something to aim towards in future attempts.

naruto-storm-4-screenshot-01

For those who have played a Naruto Storm game before then you will feel right at home here. Like its predecessors, Storm 4 is a third person fighter where you use your selected ninja’s attacks and Jutsu to take your opponent down. Being the lady game in the series, Storm 4 has the most robust character selection of any Narutom game and includes characters as far back as the original Naruto all the way through to 10 Tails Jinchuriki Obito. The wide gamut of characters means that there is certain to be something for everyone. Many characters retain their special abilities and moves from previous instalments too, so you don’t have to change your main just to stay competitive in this game.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 is the first (and I guess last) Naruto Storm game to be made for and released on next-gen consoles and it really does show. Every single thing in this game looks absolutely stunning, from the character models, to the battle animations and particle effects all the way through to the locals themselves and the amazing cell-shading and lighting. This is one of the best looking anime games to date and Namco and CyberConnect2 have managed to nail the look and feel of Naruto.

naruto-storm-4-screenshot-01

One last thing I want to talk about is the dynamic actions that can happen during a battle. As you fight, clothes can be torn, fires can be started, armour pieces chattered and weapons even deposited into the arena. All of these work in unison to create a really fluid and dynamic battle field that just feels alive and real. It is the little touches like this that make Storm 4 feel like the best game in its class, and one that I absolutely cannot wait to play more of when it releases on February 5th

Friday, December 25, 2015

Tis the season! Papercraft models line up for the 3rd Google holiday doodle

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On Christmas Day, Google has posted the third in its series of Holidays 2015 doodles - yet another papercraft doodle. Starting December 23, Google has been posting a new doodle each day till the New Year, wishing everyone happy holidays.
The doodles have been created by artist Robinson Wood and here's what he has to say about the festive doodles:
"The mouthwatering aromas of freshly prepared food, the warm glow of candles, the beautiful colors of festive decorations... whatever makes your season bright, we think getting together with family and friends to celebrate is one of the best parts of the holidays.
With these values in mind, the Doodle team and I wanted to honor as many different traditions, peoples, and celebrations as possible. Which — as you might guess — was quite the challenge! After a few false starts, we found our way back to the simple ideas of togetherness and home. As the scraps of paper settle, we hope that by focusing on bright colors, simplified forms, and warm lights, we’ve been able to create a fun and festive doodle."
Google's holiday doodles are not only to view on Google homepages around the world but also todownload, print and make your own papercraft models.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Dragon’s Dogma PC release date announced

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dr
PC players can get their hands on Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen from January 15, 2016.
Capcom has announced the release date and system requirements for Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen on PC.
Writing on Capcom Blog, the company said the game is “finally realized in 4K and running at silky-smooth 60 FPS.”
The PC version will support 4K resolutions and an uncapped framerate, giving players the option to go beyond 60FPS if their hardware can handle it.
Those with limited hardware can choose to lock the framerate at 30 or 60 FPS, if they wish to avoid possible framerate drops and performance issues.
Capcom has also announced that the game will support both mouse and keyboard and controllers.
Steam, Xbox One and PS4 controllers will all be supported straight out of the box, all you have to do is connect them and you’re good to go.
Check out the system requirements below:
Minimum PC System Requirements:
  • OS: Windows Vista or newer
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-660 CPU or equivalent
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Radeon HD 5870 or equivalent
  • DirectX: Version 9.0c
  • Storage: 22 GB available space
Recommended PC System Requirements:
  • OS: Windows Vista or newer
  • Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K or equivalent
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 or equivalent
  • DirectX: Version 9.0c
  • Storage: 22 GB available space
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is currently available for pre-order on Steam for £23.99, set to release on January 15, 2016.
If you pre-order now you gain access to a digital artbook and the official soundtrack.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Mozilla upgrades Firefox, adds 64-bit client for Windows and more

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Mozilla just pushed out a major update to its popular Firefox web browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The Firefox update version 43 brings in a slew of features and improvements over version 42 adding a little something to every platform. 

Most notably, the web browser now supports 64-bit architecture on Windows over the outgoing version which was 32-bit. Mozilla already offers a 64-bit version Firefox on Mac and Linux.
The Firefox update version 43 which will work on Windows 7 or above is an important update for Windows with regards to speed and security. The outgoing 32-bit version of Firefox can only use 4GB of address space which although 'good enough' for most applications can't handle large Web applications as effortlessly as the 64-bit version. 

Updating Firefox to 64-bit makes the browser future-proof on Windows, an OS that ships with its own branded browser, aka Edge in Windows 10.

Mozilla has reiterated that since the 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows offers limited support for plugins currently, some websites -- that need plugins - will be incompatible on the new browser.

Moving on, Firefox update version 43 aims to strengthen the new Tracking Protection feature in Private Browsing, which was first introduced in version 42. All versions of Firefox can now choose a strict blocklist for Web trackers. "A basic protection list is on by default in Private Browsing with Tracking Protection and it shields against many ad, analytics and social trackers. 

If you want increased protection from tracking, Firefox now allows you to choose a 'strict' protection blocklist which will block additional content trackers such as those often found in video, photo and embeddable content. Choosing this list comes with a tradeoff because Disconnect has received reports from users of some sites not working properly and in some cases being unusable, when this 'strict' list is used," according to Mozilla.

Firefox for Android on the other hand brings in tab audio indicators, a feature that was earlier brought to desktop. This means users on Android will now know which tabs are producing sound.