Special Ops 'still await green light for bin Laden'
Report: Plan held up in Washington by numerous disagreements
--New York Times
U.S. steps up black ops in Iran
$400 million approved to interrogate, undermine, investigate
--New Yorker
 Voice of America |
Bush's covert game in Iran?
Los Angeles Times - The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh thinks so, and reports in this week's issue that Congress agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert activity against Iran -- aimed at destabilizing the country's regime by ...
US covert action inside Iran on the rise: report
Confirmation: US covertly begins war against Iran
Secret US military plan for Pakistan on hold-report
Reuters - WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) - Top Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan late last year to make it easier for US Special Operations forces to operate inside Pakistan's tribal areas, but Washington turf battles and the diversion of ...
Report: Al-Qaida strategy mired in dispute
Ground lost to al-Qaeda as terror network rebuilds in Pakistan
Fears livestock herds will be culled because of soaring corn-feed prices
--Reuters
'I don't normally do this to anybody, but ...'
--Grand Junction Sentinel, Colorado
'It was an innocent mistake on the (part) of the company'
--The State, South Carolina
'Young people are acting like it's some kind of revolution'
--Reuters
KKTV 11 News - The man who saved the day, didn't want us to use his name but says everybody calls him Grandpa. It all went down on Thursday night on Sunflower Road off Cascade Ave in Colorado Springs.
Washington Post - Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the District must allow residents to keep handguns at home, the biggest questions in the social and political rift over the Second Amendment are resolved, right?
 Crave |
GameSpot - Sony officially outlines medal-based leveling system for its console; trophies not retroactive, background music game-specific. By Tor Thorsen, GameSpot Following a spate of leaks last week, Sony has officially announced the PlayStation 3's trophy ...
PlayStation 3's In-Game XMB: All the Details
PS3 firmware update ratchets up competition with Xbox 360
The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company by David A. Price (Hardcover - May 13, 2008)
“The first comprehensive look at the phenomenon of Pixar…[that] successfully brings to life the band of animation enthusiasts behind Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. The book deserves a thumbs-up for its artful recounting of the studio’s formative years ….full of fascinating characters, all struggling–in classic Pixar film style–to overcome seemingly impossible odds.”
–Business Week
“Unprecedented detail about the notoriously press-shy company’s workings, a story that abounds with lessons for business people and creative artists alike.”
–Wall Street Journal
“David A. Price, a tough, unsentimental reporter, ferrets out lots of backstage drama from fresh sources, weaving a commendably unvarnished history.”
–Entertainment Weekly
“It’s quite a story, and David Price has finally got it right, it’s details and the players. This is the definitive history of Pixar.”
–Alvy Ray Smith, co-founder of Pixar
“[A] brisk history of an entertainment juggernaut that is also the history of computer animation…a heck of a yarn, full of vivid characters, reversals of fortune and stubborn determination: Pixar should make a movie out of it.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“A tale of our times, and David Price tells it with page-turning drama, total veracity, and wonderful wit.”
–Mark Cotta Vaz, author, of The Art of Finding Nemo, The Art of The Incredibles and Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of King Kong
Product Description
The roller-coaster rags-to-riches story behind the phenomenal success of Pixar Animation Studios: the first in-depth look at the company that forever changed the film industry and the “fraternity of geeks” who shaped it.
The Pixar Touch is a story of technical innovation that revolutionized animation, transforming hand-drawn cel animation to computer-generated 3-D graphics. It’s a triumphant business story of a company that began with a dream, remained true to the ideals of its founders—antibureaucratic and artist driven—and ended up a multibillion-dollar success.
We meet Pixar’s technical genius and founding CEO, Ed Catmull, who dreamed of becoming an animator, inspired by Disney’s Peter Pan and Pinocchio, realized he would never be good enough, and instead enrolled in the then new field of computer science at the University of Utah. It was Catmull who founded the computer graphics lab at the New York Institute of Technology and who wound up at Lucasfilm during the first Star Wars trilogy, running the computer graphics department, and found a patron in Steve Jobs, just ousted from Apple Computer, who bought Pixar for five million dollars. Catmull went on to win four Academy Awards for his technical feats and helped to create some of the key computer-generated imagery software that animators rely on today.
Price also writes about John Lasseter, who catapulted himself from unemployed animator to one of the most powerful figures in American filmmaking; animation was the only thing he ever wanted to do (he was inspired by Disney’s The Sword in the Stone), and Price’s book shows how Lasseter transformed computer animation from a novelty into an art form. The author writes as well about Steve Jobs, as volatile a figure as a Shakespearean monarch . . .
Based on interviews with dozens of insiders, The Pixar Touch examines the early wildcat years when computer animation was thought of as the lunatic fringe of the medium.
We see the studio at work today; how its writers, directors, and animators make their astonishing, and astonishingly popular, films.
The book also delves into Pixar’s corporate feuds: between Lasseter and his former champion, Jeffrey Katzenberg (A Bug’s Life vs. Antz), and between Jobs and Michael Eisner. And finally it explores Pixar’s complex relationship with the Walt Disney Company as it transformed itself from a Disney satellite into the $7.4 billion jewel in the Disney crown.
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