The premise

Set over the course of a week in 1937, Me and Orson Welles is the story of high school student, and acting hopeful, 17 year old Richard Samuels (Zac Efron), who wins the role of Lucius in Orson Welles’ (Christian McKay) variation of Shakespeare’s play, “Julius Caesar”.

Directed by filmmaker Richard Linklater, who is behind the “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” films, “Me and Orson Welles” is his adaptation of Richard Kaplow’s 2008 novel of the same name, and takes us behind the scenes during final preparations for the play’s opening, at New York’s Mercury Theatre, which was established by Welles, also in 1937.

The play

Like many of us Richard yearns for a more exciting life, away from dull school classes (or day jobs), and opportunity presents itself after an unexpected, impromptu, audition on the steps of the Mercury Theatre lands him a part in Welles’ ambitious – though trouble plagued – production.

He quickly makes the acquaintance of Welles’ sassy assistant, Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), who believes that one has play themselves up – read outright lie – in order to get ahead, or stand out from the crowd. Richard is captivated and they are soon, at least to his mind, an item.

But seldom does one rise to stardom in such fairytale fashion. Welles’ is a hard taskmaster, who expects perfection on the first take, and is scathing in his criticism when it is not forthcoming. He frequently clashes with the cast and production crew, including Richard, which leaves many wondering whether the play will actually open.

The wrap

“Me and Orson Welles” brilliantly recreates the look and feel of the late 1930s in New York, and McKay’s portrayal of the irascible, charismatic, and larger than life, Welles is said to be spot on. Welles isn’t all bravado however, and he certainly had his share of insecurity and self-doubt.

Needless to say Richard’s week in the limelight proves to be an eye opening experience, and if nothing else, he comes away from it appreciating his youth and knowing that – at 17 – he has it all in front of him. This may be escapism, but it’s finely made escapism.

Some weekend reading should you so desire… Cool Tools has put together a list – 89 at last count – of what they feel are the best magazine articles ever published.

The three minute – give or take – music single evolved mostly as a result of the constraints of recording technology in the early-twentieth century, and represented the maximum capacity of ten-inch vinyl 78rpm record discs.

Even though current digital storage formats – such as MP3s – allow songs to be – theoretically – of any duration, three minutes nevertheless remains the happy balance, in terms of song length… it’s just enough to give listeners a taste of what they want to hear, while also – hopefully – enticing them to play it again.

Convention has it that pop songs are all about brevity. Ever since Elvis Presley stepped up to the microphone at Sun Studios, the consensus has been that less is more. Pop is meant to be lightweight and disposable, an art form that values instant gratification over depth or longevity. And doesn’t a good performer always leave his or her audience wanting more? Three minutes, or thereabouts, is surely enough time in which to thrill your listener and make them reach for the rewind button.

Ampersand Food Groups the clever juxtaposition of complimentary foods on ampersands, from a series of illustrations by Dan Beckemeyer.

It may be possible to mind-meld with others without having to resort to the Vulcan technique of doing so…

When two people experience a deep connection, they’re informally described as being on the same wavelength. There may be neurological truth to that. Brain scans of a speaker and listener showed their neural activity synchronizing during storytelling. The stronger their reported connection, the closer the coupling.

Some of us have been designing the web for over 15 years, yet are working with a range of applications that are not primarily intended for the design of websites, or if they are, have major shortcomings. What therefore are the best tools for the job?

Design is a multifaceted problem. How something behaves is interdependent on how it looks, sounds, reads, moves, and responds. We can’t separate these from the end result, but we can divide and conquer them during the creative process. Web design is not merely building. It’s not just designing. It’s not only the rest of the myriad disciplines and titles we all align ourselves with, but the culmination of all these things.

From the simple drawings of our house and garden we drew as children, to more detailed maps we draw of the town or country we live in as adults, we become better at perceiving, and creating representations, of our surroundings as our minds mature, a process which also happens to mirror the development of cartography.

As we go through this process of intellectual maturation, we are also acting out the entire history of mapmaking. Mankind’s first maps, scratched in the dirt with a stick or carved into a stone with another stone, were as rudimentary as the scribbles of toddlers. Eventually the drawings became more realistic, outlining the actual proportions of a space, a space that often extended well beyond what could be seen with the eye.

A fascinating, though mildly disturbing, article about “geolocative” social networking applications, such as Foursquare, which allow members to broadcast their exact whereabouts (often cafes, bars, railway stations, or other public places) in real time, via their Twitter or Facebook accounts.

In the name of research, Guardian writer Leo Hickman, decided to find out how close he could get to someone who was making their movements public in this manner…

Louise has straight, auburn hair and, judging by the only photograph I have of her, she’s in her 30s. She works in recruitment. I also know which train station she uses regularly, what supermarket she shopped at last night and where she met her friends for a meal in her home town last week. At this moment, she is somewhere inside the pub in front of me meeting with colleagues after work.

I don’t a mind a little social networking oversharing from time-to-time, but I’ve never been a fan of the geolocative apps. I mean is anyone really that interested in whether I am at XYZ bus stop right now, anyway?

While I’m not sure about living forever, the ability to remain fit and active to our final days is another matter, a state of affairs medical science may be able to bring about while trying to figure out to live eternally.

The researchers profiled by Stipp are seeking to master the mechanisms of our decline, so that we can frolic vigorously for eight or nine decades before dying in a brief and efficient fashion. Weiner’s muse is prophet, maverick, and crank Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge University, whose vision is more ambitious. A theoretician in the gerontology field, he challenges bench scientists to come up with the necessary biological fixes so humans can reach something close to immortality.

The main problem with immortality – as I see it – is trying to keep ourselves amused for, like, forever. It occurs to me that slow technology may be part of the solution though.

For instance, due to various technology failures this morning it’s taken two hours to churn out the last two posts here. Software therefore that hinders or throttles our progress, to the extent we end each day having taken two steps forward and one back, will ensure we always have something to do the next day.

Say what you will about Inception (over-hyped, ridiculous), but it is an increasingly rare example of originality in filmmaking. Yet most film producers are loath to try new ideas, fearing they will not be popular at the box office.

The outlook therefore for movie audiences? More sequels and remakes by the looks of it…

The reason movies based on new ideas aren’t being brought to market (and the reason why dearly beloved old TV and film franchises are therefore being prostituted) is that new ideas represent a gamble: you can never be sure the public will actually like them. Old ideas are, on paper, safer. And in recent times film-making has become a risk-averse business.