Russian Ark

Went and saw Sokurov’s Russian Ark, aka Russkij kovcheg tonight at Rainbow. Bloody place was packed, too. This is the film everyone is talking about that was shot in a single take – and in uncompressed HDTV format. One shot, 96 minutes. It takes place in one interior location, the Hermitage Museum, but involves hundreds of actors and actresses in period costumes, able to perform like clockwork.

Historically, it is very significant. Technically, it was a stunning achievement. Unfortunately, the plot left something to be desired (what was with the narrator anyway? Was he travelling through time? Or a dream?). I think if it took place in the Met or the ROM, it would be more relevant, but it’s in Russian and about Russian history, which I really don’t “get”.

Netscape is dead, long live Mozilla

Netscape Then...

First, it was the maintenance workers taking the Netscape letters off the AOL-Netscape buildings in Mountain View. Then, a new jazzed-up Mozilla.org website announces that the Mozilla open-source code and developers will be spun off from AOL as the Mozilla Foundation.

Today, the shoe finally drops – AOL dissolves Netscape, the web’s first techno-pioneer, the creator of the modern WWW browser, the cradle of Silicon Valley’s first dotcom millionaires. All staff are laid off.

Seems AOL has got what it wanted from the big N – a bargaining chip in lawsuits against Microsoft to get a favourable deal on IE engine licensing with the AOL browser. Mission accomplished.

So AOL gives the Foundation $2 mill as severance pay, no hard feelings, and they are still free to use Mozilla open source for Compuserve or AOL for Mac. Except they don’t have to pay for development anymore.

Asa Dotzler is keeping pretty mum. Ben Goodger has (half-jokingly?) posted a PayPal fund toward the purchase of his new G35 coupe.