NUMBER 61

With regards to the Norwegian Sky Spiral: NASA guy Tony Phillips—who runs spaceweather.com—postulates that it was a rocket engine from a secret Russian missile test spinning out of control. (via Wired)

Phillips put together a video explanation. A very convenient video explanation. . .

Here’s a video of the actual event that was uploaded by a Norwegian newspaper.

You’ll recognize the following six films: 9, District 9, Napoleon Dynamite, The Evil Dead, Bottle Rocket and Boogie Nights.

You may not know, however, that they were all originally filmed as shorts by amateur filmmakers—all of whom began their professional careers by turning the short films in question into features.

Check out the roundup—with embedded YouTube videos—on Mental_Floss.

Anybody who is familiar with NFL Films knows the only thing greater than the gripping narrativization is the gratuitous slow-mo footage

In that spirit, here’s Detroit’s Matthew Stafford digging his team into a hole against Cleveland, injuring his shoulder, eluding team trainers to get back on the field and, finally, throwing the game-clinching touchdown at the last second. It’s better than the movies.

Cargo rockets, auto-driving cars, color-coded freeway lanes, never walking anywhere: Magic Highway USA (or, the future of American infrastructure as imagined by Disney in 1958).

Speaking of stop-motion animation: here’s a seriously cool video created in the spirit of Maurice Gee’s Going West.

Can’t help but marvel at this bizarre new trend of movie trailers for books. See also: Death Troopers and Inherent Vice.

Via Book Bench

You may have heard about how members of Wes Anderson’s team allegedly took exception to his ’sociopathic’ directorial style during the extremely tedious production of The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Making Of has a short featurette on how the workflow actually worked.

It’s all pretty brilliant, but I still think It’s amazing that they got anything done this way.

The Auteurs—a site that I can only describe as a sort of streamable, pay-per-view Criterion Collection—recently added three films by Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel: L’Âge d’or, Death in the Garden and Un Chien Andalou.

They’re all free to watch. For now.

You should check them out (but only if you like your movies old, French and unsettling).

I imagine you might hear about it at the Academy Awards in March—it’s on the shortlist of Oscar contenders for Best Animated Short Film—but you should check out Eddie White and Ari Gibson’s The Cat Piano immediately.