links for 2009-08-04

"Miraculously, perhaps unsurprisingly nearly all of the westerns nestle together, and the war films by theatre, and the costume dramas, and the sci-fi films set in the future and the sword and sandal and biblical epics and the gangster films and the noirs. Films about a period begin to interact with those made then. You can begin to see how historical periods that previously seemed discrete and unconnected occurred in parallel on the same planet, how clever Once Upon a Time in China or Shanghai Noon were in identifying that westerns would have been happening at the same time as some samurai epics and bringing those two mythic genres together". Very interesting, if gob-smackingly complicated and nerdy, way of classifying films.

Fantastic set of images, but no "Bela Lugosi's Dead"?

"In last week's post about Best Bets I commented that search software is 'certainly not good enough without a lot of work. A lot of expensive work. If your supplier says ‘the search is really good, you don’t need to worry about it' then you definitely need to worry about it". The beginnings of what looks to be an excellent series from one of the masters of the art.

I'm not sure I understand what half of these do but this is an impressive list of resources.

"I will leave you with this thought. Top sports star with 1 million followers starts tweeting about all his Nike gear - what’s that worth to Nike?". More importantly, what is it worth to Twitter at the moment?

"I’d have been happy to consume adverts – just not ones that stop me getting to the bit of the show I want. I’d even have been willing to pay something for a valuable extra, such as a commentary from a previous Tour sprinting star. Not to mention the benefit of being able to go straight to high quality content without having to play lucky dip to see which YouTube clip has a decent quality picture. And push at me a plug for 'Order your highlights DVD now from Amazon' and there’s a fair chance I’d have spent even more money."