p. I’ve always loved animated films, and I’m a huge “Jacques Tati(The genius of Jacques Tati)”:http://www.frenchculture.org/cinema/festival/tati/ fan, so I couldn’t resist a film which was advertised as being heavily influenced by Tati. “Belleville Rendez-Vous(Guardian review of the film)”:http://film.guardian.co.uk/NewsStory/CriticReview/Guardian_review/0,4267,1030893,00.html is a superb and original piece of work. Unlike many modern animations, it is hand drawn, and has a luminous, elongated style. The skyscrapers in Belleville (a not very heavily disguised New York) seem to go on forever, and the ships docking in the harbour appear to be all keel.

p. The plot concerns Madame Sousa’s search for her grandson, Champion, who has been abducted by square-shouldered French Mafia types while competing in the Tour de France. Madame Sousa—a tiny woman with one hugely built-up shoe—has been acting as his trainer and mechanic, and has a neat way of trueing up his bent wheels using only a spanner, a tuning fork, and a small metal model of the Eiffel Tower. She pursues his captors across the Atlantic with Champion’s dog Bruno, and ends up staying with the ‘Belleville Triplets’—a 1930s cabaret act, who have fallen on hard times. Such hard times that they live on frogs and tadpoles which they catch in the marshes.

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p. Sometimes you really have to wonder what goes on in inventors’ minds. Take “this idea”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3103616.stm for example—what exactly was the design process here? Let’s take a look at the possible reasoning:

Problem - Sometimes it’s difficult to concentrate on your mobile phone conversation properly. Between the sirens, people shouting, and that cyclist you’ve just run over with your car hitting your window repeatedly with his broken wheel—well, it just isn’t conducive to a serious conversation, is it?

Potential solutions - You could always go and find a quiet, empty room and use your mobile, or even a landline. But wouldn’t that defeat the usefulness of having a mobile phone in the first place, if you have to go somewhere special to use it?

Design solution - Produce a pod-like helmet which is held above the water by three adjustable floats. You wear the helmet while immersed in a swimming pool kept at body temperature, and thus create an environment like an isolation tank, in which you are able to fully attend to your conversation. Now that is so much more convenient than finding a quiet room.

p. It’s always possible that I might read this again in a few years time when everyone owns a floating pod mobile phone, and feel like a right charlie, but somehow I think that’s unlikely.

[via “BoingBoing”:http://boingboing.net ]