Scanners | Roger Ebert

Dr. Bordwell Goes to Hong Kong

View image Photo by David Bordwell

When I met David Bordwell at Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival last spring, he had recently returned from Hong Kong with a cool new Fuji FinePix camera, a model that wasn’t available in the United States. It’s really good in low light and he had the luscious pictures to prove it — what he called his Wong Kar-Wai shots.

View image Photo by David Bordwell

“Hong Kong just LOOKS like one of his films,” says the Jacques Ledoux Proffessor of Film Studies, Emeritus, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bordwell, as all film students know, is the author of such books as “Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment,” “Figures Traced in Light:” and “The Way Hollywood Tells It.” He and his wife, Dr. Kristin Thompson (who has a book coming out called “Frodo, Fantasy and Franchises: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood”), are also the authors of the two most popular film textbooks, “Film Art” and “Film History.”

View image Photo by David Bordwell

David made me the star (or, as Robert Bresson would say, the “model”) of some impressively elaborate, Coen Bros.-style demonstrations shots, taken in movie mode, inside the warm light of the Virginia Theater between movies. Kind of like intricate, hand-held crane shots, from close-up to long shot and back again. But these eye-popping Hong Kong images were so delicious I asked him if I could post a few to share with you. Feast your eyes! (And Christopher Doyle — eat your heart out!)

(More images after the jump.)

December 14, 2012

Opening Shots: ‘Stranger Than Paradise’

View image Eva in The New World.

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From Christopher Long, Reviewer and Features Editor, DVDTown.com:

In terms of narrative structure, the opening shot of Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger than Paradise” is a perfect “mini-movie.” The film opens with a shot of Eva (Eszter Balint, seen from behind) standing to the far right of the frame; in the background, we see a plane park on an airport runway. Eva watches a plane land, very slowly picks up her luggage (a ratty suitcase and a shopping bag), turns around (glancing around in almost a full circle) then walks (again, very slowly) left and towards the camera until she exits the frame.

The shot lingers, however, long after Eva has departed to witness the parked plane as it begins its takeoff. Here is the entire story laid out in miniature: “Stranger Than Paradise” begins with an arrival by plane (Eva coming to America from Hungary) and ends with a departure by plane (Willie [John Lurie] flying to Budapest).

December 14, 2012

Opening Shots: Keep ’em coming!

It’s really not that difficult.

I’ll be publishing your Opening Shots submissions all this week. And I’ll provide the answers to both my Opening Shots Pop Quizzes (and further appreciations of the shots themselves) on Friday or over the weekend. While nobody’s correctly identified all the shots on either of the quizzes, all shots except one have been identified by at least one person. The Most Mysterious Shot: Number 8 on Quiz #2. Also, I thought some of the images were showing up dark on my desktop PC (though not on my PowerBook), so I lightened ’em up a bit.

Remember, send quiz entries and your nominations for great Opening Shots (along with your explanations for why they work at setting up the film) to jim at scannersblog dot com. (Link above.)

Also, if you want to discuss individual shots, I’ve enabled Comments on some of these new posts. I still have to approve them before they’re published (Sun-Times policy), but I’m hoping it will help generate more lively and informative discussion hereabouts.

December 14, 2012

Hitchcockian chills

Hitchcock

I’ve been loading my thousands of CDs (most of which have been in boxes for about three years) into iTunes in recent weeks and it’s been quite a revealing experience. (It explains, for one thing, why I’ve never been able to accumulate any money. And this project is going to require two 2TB external hard drives, because I’m using lossless compression.) Sometimes it’s embarrassing or mystifying. What void was I trying to fill with a Kurtis Blow’s greatest hits? I already had “The Breaks” — one of the earliest non-Sugarhill rap/hip-hop hits — and “Hard Times” on various compilations… but it sounds good. And I do love compilations, especially those from obscure jazz, soul and R&B labels from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s (like Minit or Specialty or Sue or Excello), up to the better-known Vee Jay and Okeh and Ace and Commodore, or the bubblegum label Buddah (yes, it’s spelled that way). And, of course, various label, period, artist and thematic anthologies put together by Rhino (including the massive Stax/Volt and Atlantic boxes). The “Beg, Scream & Shout!” box is the greatest.

But the reason I’m writing this now is my reencounter with Robyn Hitchcock. I did a piece a while back about the cinematic imagination of Joni Mitchell, and I was happy to reacquaint myself with “My Wife and My Dead Wife” on the album “Fegmania!” It’s quintessentially Hitchcockian, reflective of Robyn’s eerie ectoplasmic humor (though much of his work is more surreally Cronenbergian, bursting with ghastly biological horrors, as in “Star of Hairs” or “Tropical Flesh Mandala”), and suggesting Sir Alfred, too. In some respects it’s a twist on “Rebecca,” but funnier. Notice, too, the ways Hitchcock chooses to belatedly reveal what’s going on, almost as if you were suddenly catching a glimpse of a ghost out of the corner of your eye. And the final pull-back at the seashore is masterful. This is quite a movie:

My wife lies down in a chair

And peels a pear

I know she’s there

I’m making coffee for two

Just me and you

But I come back in with coffee for three

Coffee for three?

December 14, 2012

“There is no god!!!”

View image “There is no god!!!”

Thanks for all the terrific, thoughtful suggestions for my hypothetical Atheist Film Festival (below) — “Freddie Got Fingered” (either “proof” of the absence of god, or a devastating comment on the divine sense of humor), “Contact,” “Wise Blood,” all of Buñuel, “Grizzly Man,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”… Don’t stop now!

View image [Reverse zoom.] Whimpering: “I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”

I think a slam-bang opening for such a festival would be one of my favorite underrated films of the 1980s, Anthony Perkins’ 1986 “Psycho III,” which begins with a black screen and a hair-raising scream of anguish: “There is no god!!!” What’s more, we soon learn that it is the cry of a devastated novice, and that (even better) she’s played by Diana Scarwid! (That’s Christina Crawford to you “Mommie Dearest” fans — and something tells me Perkins was one, too.)

View image [Reverse zoom, cont.] Stronger: “Give me a sign. Help me.”

View image [Static shot.] Silence.

Before we know it (in the third shot — or the fourth, if you include the blackness between the Universal logo and the statue of the Virgin), we’ve smudged the line between “Psycho” (1960) and “Vertigo” (1958), looking up into a California mission belltower. A few vertiginous shots and a maniacal sniveling nun (and a few nice ones) later, and the movie is off to a rip-roaring psycho-vertiginous start.

View image Psych– er, Vertigo?

The nuns approach Maureen (the hysterical novitiate) and attempt to coax her down from the archway where she is poised to throw herself, Kim Novak-like, from the tower. “There is no god!” Maureen cries again — not in rage but in despair, as if she’s just discovered a shattering, horribly disappointing truth.

The crazy nun raves: “You wretched girl! How dare you!”

The eldest nun tries to snap her out of it: “Please Maureen, you mustn’t. You have an obligation to Him!”

“I have nothing,” Maureen says dejectedly. “I am nothing!”

View image Another blonde, another belltower…

And then all hell breaks loose.

That’s just the first four minutes, before the titles. And it’s not giving too much away to say that Maureen becomes Norman Bates’ very first girlfriend. They’re a match made in… wherever.

View image Inverted crosses, anyone?

“Psycho III” is a joy, a sequel that understands the original from the inside out. It’s a celebration, a satire, a revisitation, and a deeply felt, detail-perfect homage to Hitchcock’s bleak masterpiece. (I’d say “Psycho” is not so much an atheistic work as a nihilistic one. The specificity of the opening sequence perversely indicates the randomness of the particular story the movie chooses to tell. And Simon Oakland’s psychobabble wrap-up at the end mocks not only psychology but any and all belief systems.)

View image Nun: “You have an obligation to Him!”

Novice: “I have nothing. I am nothing!”

I’ve always thought of “Psycho” as a family black-comedy — a horror sitcom. And, from the perspective of 1986, Perkins reminds us of how funny “Psycho” (and Norman) is. “Psycho III” strikes the perfect balance between horror, tragedy, and camp.

The screenplay is by Charles Edward Pogue, who is also credited with co-writing David Cronenberg’s horror / comedy / romantic version of “The Fly” (“Be afraid — be very afraid”) the same year — and the clever, underrated remake of “D.O.A.” in 1988. And the rest of the crew is top-of-the-line, including such Clint Eastwood vets as D.P. Bruce Surtees (“Dirty Harry,” “Night Moves,” “Risky Business,” “Pale Rider”) and the late production designer Henry Bumstead (“Topaz,” “Mystic River,” “Flags of Our Fathers,” “Letters From Iwo Jima”). The score is by Carter Burwell (“Miller’s Crossing,” “Barton Fink”) and the producer is Hilton A. Green — second unit / assistant director on “Psycho” and “Marnie.”

If you want to discover Maureen’s fate — and see just how wittily and poignantly “Psycho III” pays attention to the details of its source — check after the jump.

Meanwhile: Any more candidates for the Atheist Film Festival? (I’ve tried to refine what I mean by an “atheist film” — as opposed to an anti-god or anti-Christian film — in a comment here.)

December 14, 2012

Journey to the Center of the Dump:Wall-E, color & close-ups

Color can be used sparingly — even in family-friendly animation.

I don’t hear NPR’s movie critic Bob Mondello all that often anymore (’cause I’m not in my car as much as I used to be), but I’ve never heard him more excited than when he reviewed “Journey to the Center of the Earth” last week. Not the new Brendan Fraser 3D one, but the 1959 version with James Mason, Pat Boone, Arlene Dahl and Diane Baker.

Although Mondello’s greatest enthusiasm by far is for the 1959 film, his best lines describe the 2008 production: “It’s considerably more “real”-looking — in a differently fakey way…. It’ll just show you what Hollywood used to do, and do well, done well.” Well put. As I was saying about movie blood, what we accept as “realistic” isn’t necessarily realistic at all. It’s as much a convention of the times we live in as anything else. Much of the groundbreaking CGI of today isn’t much better than it was ten years ago, and a lot of the old CGI — which seemed so convincing at the time — now looks… well, better than the rubber octopus in “Ed Wood,” but dated nevertheless. Even some of the great special effects movies like “Jurassic Park” (1993) don’t look much more sophisticated than “King Kong” (1933) these days.

Meanwhile “Wall-E” (and “Finding Nemo”) writer-director Andrew Stanton sounds like a really savvy filmmaker. He told Terry Gross on Fresh Air about a lot of the brainstorming that went into “Wall-E,” and I had another one of those NPR “driveway moments” during this part of the interview:

December 14, 2012

If Jackass is in 3-D, will only jackasses watch 3-D?

As “Jackass 3-D” splats into theaters, Frank Paiva and I, over at MSN Movies, debate such urgent questions as: “Are we done with the 3-D yet?”; “What does 3-D add to or subtract from the cinematic experience?”; “Is the technology itself any good?”; and, “What’s the best use for it? Science-fiction spectaculars? Art films? Porn? Amusement park rides?”

Here’s part of my take:

I think 3-D is simply another incarnation of the much-hyped “Angle” feature on DVDs. You know — it’s still there on your remote. It was the feature that was supposed to allow You, the User, to select alternate angles within a scene (assuming the filmmakers had provided the footage). Your invocation of Megan Fox’s cleavage and Jake Gyllenhaal’s chest hairs is right on the money. The most commercially viable use for 3-D (and for “Angle” and for the Internet) is porn.

December 14, 2012

Inception of Inception: The Scrooge McDuck comic

Is this where it all began? Did Disney really implant this idea in Christopher Nolan’s subconscious, the way it implants things in everybody’s? Read the full comic here, or download as a .pdf. Don’t stop reading in the middle or you’ll get stuck in limbo.

(via I Watch Stuff)

December 14, 2012

Argo: A Hollywood ending

The story of Ben Affleck’s “Argo” concerns the real-life rescue of six fugitive American embassy employees from Ayatollah “Salman Rushdie Fatwa” Khomeini’s Iran in 1980. The Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor, hid them in his home until they were smuggled out of the country 79 days after the takeover of the embassy by Iranian militants. But the movie is more substantially interested in the nature of movies themselves, and how stories get turned into them. Since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, “Argo” has been praised as “a crackerjack thriller” (the kind of argot movie reviewers use) and criticized for downplaying the Canadians’ considerable efforts and not being, you know, “historically accurate. I’m sore-y, we know it’s Based On A True Story and all, but that’s not really what this movie is aboot.

December 14, 2012

What is your favorite Scorsese Picture?

Martin Scorsese and a big gold pizza. (DGA photo)

In honor of Martin Scorsese’s victory at the Director’s Guild over the weekend, here’s another poll using a different software application. This one’s more compact: Just use the drop-down box and enjoy. When you view the results, you have to click your browser’s “back” button to return here. This isn’t an easy choice for me (probably between “New York, New York” and “King of Comedy”)…

What is your favorite Martin Scorsese Picture?

Mean Streets

Italianamerican

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Taxi Driver

New York, New York

The Last Waltz

Raging Bull

The King of Comedy

After Hours

The Color of Money

The Last Temptation of Christ

GoodFellas

Cape Fear

The Age of Innocence

Casino

Kundun

Bringing Out the Dead

Gangs of New York

The Aviator

The Departed

View Results

Free poll from Free Website Polls

December 14, 2012

More film polls: Top 150 of Decade, Top 160 of 2009…

Ow, my brain hurts. So, let’s just get these out of the way, shall we? In the annual Village Voice/LA Weekly Film Poll, announced just before Christmas, 94 critics (including me) came up with 160 nominations for best films of 2009 — and voted in a bunch of other categories, too, including Best Film of the Decade (“Mulholland Dr.”). [My decade favorites are here.]

Meanwhile, Film Comment polled another big batch o’ crix (a lot of the same ones, in fact) and came up with a somewhat different 20 Best of 2009 list — and 150 Best Films of the Decade (topped by… “Mulholland Dr.”). Just for fun, let us compare the two groups’ Top Dozen for both year and decade:

December 14, 2012

A couple interesting items about composer Carter Burwell

(Photo by Dean Parker)

“Carter Burwell’s score, drawing from themes from American folk music of the era, is one of his greatest.”

— Glenn Kenny, review of “True Grit” on MSN Movies

1.

I had missed the news, quietly announced in late December, that Carter Burwell’s score for the Coens’ “True Grit” (which includes Mahleresque orchestrations based on the traditional hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arm”) and Clint Mansell’s Tchaikovsky-influenced music for “Black Swan” (of course he’s going to interpolate “Swan Lake” into the score — that’s the challenge!) would not be eligible for consideration in the Oscars’ Best Original Score category. But the category is for score, not Best Original Tune. The presence of a hymn melody or passages from a famous ballet are key to what these compositions set out to accomplish, and how they are integrated into their respective movies. Those things shouldn’t be held against them.

Orchestral composers have worked with folk music and other melodic sources for centuries. Mahler used “Frehre Jacques” in his first symphony and other traditional Jewish and folk tunes are found throughout his works. (For that matter, the melody — and even part of the arrangement — for TV’s “Star Trek” theme is right there in Mahler’s Seventh!) And Tchaikovsky — jeeez, the 1812 Overture is just the French and Russian national anthems. But the composer fragmented them, wove them together and otherwise re-composed them into one of his most famous pieces.

(Besides, we’ve known for months that Hans Zimmer’s score for “Inception” — which is nominated — is built on a slowed-down, sampled and otherwise manipulated recording of Edith Piaf singing “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.” That’s using an existing tune in a movie score, too, isn’t it? Seems to me that all of the above are legitimate compositional techniques.)

December 14, 2012

TIFF: The war over there

View image Christian Bale in Werner Herzog’s “Rescue Dawn.”

For the first half of Werner Herzog’s “Rescue Dawn,” the fictionalized movie based on his documentary 1997 “Little Dieter Needs to Fly,” I wasn’t sure if Herzog had tamed the commercial feature or if it had tamed him. By the end, I felt it was the most harrowingly realistic and unsentimentalized P.O.W. film I’d ever seen.

The story is “inspired by” Dieter Dengler, an American Navy pilot (born in Germany) whose plane crashed in 1965 in Laos, where there wasn’t supposed to be any bombing and before there was a “War in Vietnam.” U.S. “military advisors” were there, supporting the South Vietnamese, but as far as most Americans were concerned, “war” hadn’t broken out. Dengler survived the crash, was captured by Laotians, and held in what he and his fellow captives believed to be a Viet Cong camp. By the time Dengler arrived, some of the handful of Americans and Vietnamese interred there had been detained for more than two years already.

December 14, 2012

In movies begin responsibilities

I saw six movies this past weekend and it was exhilarating. That’s a lot for me to suck up these days (though it didn’t used to be), unless I’m neck-deep in a film festival. I used to think nothing of a double-bill a day, but this was such a rich and rewarding movie-weekend that it reminded me of the great intensified cinematic forages of my 20s and 30s, when I seemed to encounter, and ravenously gobble down, fresh new masterpieces (heralded or unheralded) for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It also got me thinking about how unimaginably different the experience of finding movies to watch is now from what it was then.

Here’s the breakdown: None of the movies I saw were available in my local theaters. I saw all of them at home, on the same 55″ screen — three on Comcast On Demand (two of those in HD widescreen, one in SD widescreen) and three on DVDs (all at 1.33:1) from my own library (in other words, not rentals, Netflix or otherwise). The movies themselves were made between 1947 and 2009, three were originally shot on 35mm film, one on Super 16mm, and the other on HD video. Four of them were in color, two in black and white. Three were serial-killer/corrupt cop thrillers, two comedy-dramas, and one an adaptation of a serious play about religion. None of them was American-made, but three were in English (though sometimes it was hard to tell), two in Japanese and one in Danish. Two were sanctified classics, one a lesser effort by one of cinema’s greatest directors, and the other three recent works by established but not particularly well-known British filmmakers. All but one were new to me — and that one I hadn’t seen I booked it in 16mm, as a Seattle premiere, in a university film series 30 years ago.

OK, here’s what I saw, in order:

December 14, 2012

Hannibal Lecter, critic eLectercuted at Super Bowl

View image “Electrifyingly terrorific!”

From MediaPost:

Famed film producer Harvey Weinstein, now co-chair of The Weinstein Company, formerly the co-founder of Miramax Films, was worried about the copy in a commercial for his forthcoming film “Hannibal Rising.” The spot featured a voiceover saying, “The most terrifying thriller of the new year.”

Weinstein changed his mind late on Saturday night and called Les Moonves, chief executive of CBS. Weinstein thought it better to change the word to “electrifying,” so as not to scare the kids on Sunday Bowl Sunday. […]

The comment “the most terrifying movie of the new year” was from Maxim magazine’s film reviewer, Pete Hammond. But Moonves and Weinstein said they “worked” with the critic to change it to “electrifying.”

Worked with the critic? You mean that they changed his mind concerning what he said? This is shocking — critics can “change” their quotes for some movie commercials, or in the case of Sony Pictures Entertainment some years ago, studios can completely make a quote up — as well as the critic….

December 14, 2012

Mad Men: How to direct an action sequence

A few images from last week’s “Mad Men” (or, as I often think of it, “The Peggy Olson Show Featuring Don Draper”) to illustrate why composition and framing (aspects of what you might call cinematic architecture) make a world of difference in how a scene works… or doesn’t. This episode, “The Rejected,” was directed by John Slattery (who, as Roger Sterling, perfectly accents the new office design) and photographed as usual by Christopher Manley (overseen, of course, by series creator Matthew Weiner). Captions appear beneath the frame grabs below:

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is falling apart, and the first shot shows him tethered to a phone cord, chain smoking, backed into a corner, with the ceiling closing in on him (as ceilings often do on “Mad Men”). The sight of Don compulsively puffing, lighting one smoke with the butt of another (he’s on the phone with the notorious Lee Garner [Darren Pettie] from Lucky Strike, Sterling Cooper Draper Price’s most financially important, and asshole-ish, client) is just the opposite of the way you would expect the well-groomed star of a TV series would be introduced — especially in 1965. It turns out the subject of the call has to do with both cigarettes and television: the new FCC regulations for advertising cigarettes on TV. There’s a delayed punchline a few shots later, when Don explains to Lee that certain camera angles are also prohibited — like low angles or wide lenses, “anything that makes the smoker appear super-human.” Yeah, we’ve seen that at work.

December 14, 2012

LOST: Schrödinger’s Cat

So, OK, like I was over at The House Next Door because it’s like one of my favorite blogs, right? And I was making an observation that, in the last episode of “LOST”– it was called “The Man From Tallahassee” — when Ben tells Locke the story about a big box on the island where you could imagine anything you want inside, that it was really like a reference to Schrödinger’s Cat in quantum physics, eh? It’s like quantum indeterminacy, ’cause anything could be in the box but you don’t know until you open it, right? OK then, so until you can see what’s in the box, all the possibilities exist at once. Whatever’s in there is in a superposition because it’s there and not there at the same time. And, like, so is everybody watching “LOST” because we don’t know what’s in the big box; we just know what’s in the little boxes, like the hatch and the Virgin Mary statues and stuff. And the box factory. So, then I thought I should put in a link to something about Schrödinger’s Cat and I Googled it and I found this awesome video that’s, like, the best thing I’ve ever seen on the Internet! Especially when a dog like enters the equations. The guy is Gary Burgess (but not like the guy who played Radar on “M*A*S*H” because he was Gary Burghoff, OK) and I think he’s like Canadian, like if Doug and Bob McKenzie were quantum physi-cizists — oh, Jeez! — or something like that. So, the topic is Schrödinger’s Cat and this is the video, so click on it and that’s all, so g’day. And hose off, eh?

Plus, Ben is like Henry Gale, too, so he’s in two states at the same time, eh?

December 14, 2012

Former President Jar Jar

What would pundits and stand-up comedians do without their “Star Wars” analogies? Maureen Dowd liked to refer to the former vice president as “Darth Cheney.” She recently asked George Lucas if that comparison was a mischaracterization:

Lucas explained politely as I listened contritely. Anakin Skywalker is a promising young man who is turned to the dark side by an older politician and becomes Darth Vader. “George Bush is Darth Vader,” he said. “Cheney is the emperor.”

Amy Davidson, at the New Yorker’s News Desk, is having none of it (“Close Read: Dark Forces”):

December 14, 2012

Sherman Torgan: In Memory

The New Beverly Cinema. Where else would “The Tenant” receive top billing over “Rosemary’s Baby”? (Photo by Dennis Cozzalio)

Sherman Torgan, 63, the owner and operator of my old neighborhood repertory movie house, the New Beverly Cinema, died of a heart attack while bike riding in Santa Monica. The New Beverly, on Beverly Blvd. between Formosa and Detroit, was the source of many happy movie memories for me, especially during the late 1980s and early 1990s when I lived nearby, at Oakwood and Sierra Bonita.

According to the New Beverly’s own site, the place was a vaudeville theater and then the original location of Slapsie Maxie’s nightclub, where Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made their West Coast debut. For nine years it was an adult movie theater (The Eros), until Torgan took it over and turned it into a movie-lover’s rep house in 1978.

Torgan’s son Michael posted a message on the theater’s site today that reads, in part:

Due to the sudden and completely unexpected passing of my dear beloved father Sherman, the New Beverly’s programming will be cancelled until further notice.

Sherman was my father and my best friend, and his passing has left me and my family completely devastated. He was the main force behind the New Beverly from May 5, 1978 until the present. I simply do not know when I will be able to fill his shoes. My pain and sorrow are truly too much to bear right now. He was still so young and full of life, and was doing what he loved so much, riding his bike on the Santa Monica bike path, when he died. My mom and I are in utter shock.

For background and updates, please visit Dennis Cozzalio’s Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.

December 14, 2012

Opening Shots: ‘Primer’

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Shane Carruth’s ingenious “Primer” (2004) offers a textbook example, if you will, of a “What are we looking at?” opening shot. Linear and rectangular or trapezoidal patterns of light dot the dark screen. Then the irregular, vaguely chevron-shaped object at the top of the frame flickers, illuminates, and… we see we’re inside a residential garage, near the ceiling, looking at the door, which begins to lift to the accompaniment of odd, but still somewhat familiar, electronic and metallic/mechanical sounds. Even once we know what it is, something about it feels like science fiction — as though this door were opening up to a new dimension or something. The next shot orients us: a more conventional exterior establishing shot, showing the grinding, squealing door from the outside and four young men walking into the space. This is the (twisted, inside-out) story of these garage-based tech entrepreneurs, and they won’t understand what they’re seeing, either, when they accidentally invent and/or discover something incredible in that unassuming structure. Or, maybe, they already have… — JE

December 14, 2012