A few weeks ago I read about a new film school that has been founded by Kurosawa Productions, the company that was founded by Akira Kurosawa to produce many of his later masterpieces. I didn’t think too much of it at first - after all the master himself has been dead now for more than half a decade - but now it turns out that many of the instructors and people running the school will come from Kurosawa’s old regular group of actors, assistant directors, technicians, and other people who helped him to create his films. Wow.

It is three days until the new much-talked-about Neil Young album, ‘Living With War’, is released online. Just like with his previous album, the whole set of songs will be available for listen at Neil’s website starting on Friday. The commercial downloads will be available next week, and the physical CDs as soon as they get them pressed.

Another matter that I have often thought about is how much energy all the electronic devices consume when on stand-by. Should I turn off the TV instead of switching it to stand-by? Should I perhaps totally unplug it? Well, it seems that although the consumption of an individual device is not that high, when you add up nationwide figures you do end up with quite staggering results.

One thing that I have often thought about is whether there are some sort of collective mood swings with people. It would seem understandable if there were, say with people in general becoming more irritated around Christmas. Now there is a software that tracks mood changes in LiveJournal blogs, as reported by New Scientist. Apparently, it has already reported about weekend drunkenness and excitement about a new Harry Potter book.

The list of films in competition at this year’s Cannes film festival includes a number of rather interesting titles. We have got Pedro Almodóvar with Volver, Sofia Coppola with Marie-Antoinette, Richard Kelly with Southland Tales, and Richard Linklater with both Fast Food Nation and A Scanner Darkly.

Winnie-The-Pooh has got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.