The Washington Post has an article on parkour that features some interesting background on David Belle, one of the stars of Banlieue 13, which I consider to be one of the more influential action movies of recent years.

Rent it if only to watch the chase scene involving Belle's character that opens the film. The man moves like a drop of mercury (here's the YouTube version, but it doesn't do the scene justice).

When B-13 screened at TIFF '05, the audience was told afterwards, No CGI, and no wires. And they roared!

From Clark Hoyt's column about the hiring of conservative William Kristol as an NYT op-ed columnist:

On Fox News Sunday on June 25, 2006, Kristol said, “I think the attorney general has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution” of The New York Times for publishing an article that revealed a classified government program to sift the international banking transactions of thousands of Americans in a search for terrorists.

Publication of the article was controversial — my predecessor as public editor first supported it and then changed his mind — but Kristol’s leap to prosecution smacked of intimidation and disregard for both the First Amendment and the role of a free press in monitoring a government that has a long history of throwing the cloak of national security and classification over its activities. This is not a person I would have rewarded with a regular spot in front of arguably the most elite audience in the nation.

Has it even (dare we say it?) "jumped the shark"? Or is Gawker like Saturday Night Live, in a trough period, but set to rebound?