Weekly Round up week ending May 16 | Misadventures with Andi

I am so glad that you guys like these! I love the comments keep them coming! Topics I have purposely avoided over the last couple of weeks: H1N1 virus (or whatever you want to call it); President Sarkozy’s popularity rating. What I will ignore this week: French 3 strikes law for internet piracy.

Now on to my view of the interesting stories over the past week!

Nicholas and Carla and thinking about purchasing the old apartment of Yves Saint Laurent which has been on the market since his death last June. Carla was a former YSL model and was still in contact with the designer when he died. The bizarre thing is that this apartment is in the same building as Mick Jagger, who had an affair with Carla while married to Jerry Hall, who very mysteriously backed out of her publishing deal on the tell-all book that she spent the last two years writing this week! Seems fishy to me and I suspect she was paid more not to publish it by the Sarzokys.

This week was the opening of the Cannes Film Festival. I really love this festival, while I was living in France I could see a lot more of the coverage than I can from here. All the talk shows had live casts and of course there were a lot of interviews, etc. The French get very philosophical about movies, so it is interesting to observe. There are some interesting events happening this year. The first ever 3D animation to be at Cannes, let alone open the festival was Disney-Pixar’s Up, that is an accomplishment for the genre.

And I know I mentioned Johnny Hallayday last weekend, but apparently he has finally made a film that he is actually good in. Vengeance, an English-speaking film made in Hong Kong by director Johnny To, is the story of a father who comes to Hong Kong to avenge his daughter, whose family was murdered. Officially, he’s a French chef. Twenty years ago, he was a killer. My kind of action film, so I am looking forward to seeing that in the future.

And speaking of films and future, Monday night I saw Star Trek in IMAX and loved it! So well done. There was one or two weak points in the movie, but overall, I really loved it. I had not read any review prior to seeing it, so there was one huge surprise for me, I won’t mention it in case there are others who don’t know what I am talking about. Really great cast that pulled out a lot of the characteristics of the original crew. Planning to see it again and hope they think about doing more.

There was a little controversy (warning, offensive language on the post) about the IMAX screen showings when comedian Aziz Ansari complained about being ripped off by the IMAX label because the screens at a lot of the new IMAX screens are not the same as the super mega IMAX theaters, yet IMAX is not making a differentiation between the two and still charges the same premium for both. And IMAX is sticking to their guns. Whereas, I don’t think it is as much a big deal as Aziz is making out of it, IMAX is not handling it well either, not in the day and age of blogs and Twitter, someone needs to get a PR person over there stat!

In social media news, the first tweet from space took place this week when astronaut Mike Massimino tweeted after reaching orbit. NASA has been on Twitter awhile, but this was the official first tweet from space. Pretty fascinating.

The U.S. Army is getting into as well! At the 2009 Worldwide Public Affairs Symposium held by the Army they talked about how social networking is the driving force behind major changes in modern communications. According to Army Secretary Pete Geren, “Strategic communication is vital to military success,” he said. “We must recognize that the means of communication change, literally by the minute, and you can never become complacent.”

Having said that they have to be extremely cognizant of security issues at all times. The Army is now on: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, iReport, NowPublic, and delicious! What is really cool is that individual bases, companies or units also have pages or sites. I can imagine how cool it would have been to be able to Tweet or message with my Dad while he was off doing “Army stuff” while I was growing up. It is a great way for Army wives and children to connect with their soldier husband and fathers.

And because I got a complaint about not having a cute animal story last week, I have provide this photo. I have an affinity for bears, so I thought this photo was adorable! Taken at the Cincinnati Zoo, one I fondly remember. I have never lived in Cincinnati, but while we were stationed at Fort Know, Kentucky, we used to drive there to go to Cincinnati Reds baseball games and we went to the zoo a couple of times, from what I remember it was a great city. My college boyfriend’s mother was from there and I will always remember the first time she made chili, we sat down at the table and she served the bowl of chili over spaghetti noodles! Cause that’s how they do it in Cincy!