iancul

—or yet another possible title: how would Hari Seldon review The Good, The Bad And The Ugly finale.

Intriguing? Well, if you’ve never thought of applying game theory—wiki—to movies, here’s a treat:

I think that the final scene in this Clint Eastwood movie is the most outstanding example of game theory. Three men in a triangle — each with a gun, a rock at the center of the three. It is up to each man to evaluate his situation. All are excellent shots. Who do they shoot?

Clint has supposedly put a message on a rock that holds the key to everything, but do the other two trust Clint to have actually written the correct answer? As the other two evaluate the situation, they realize they can’t trust Clint to have written the answer on the rock — therefore they can’t shoot Clint who likely still has the answer. That means the other two can only shoot each other, but only one will likely hit before the other.

What they don’t know is that Clint has given one an unloaded gun… Clint can ignore this one. The one Clint has to worry about with the loaded gun will try to kill the one with the unloaded gun. Neither will fire at Clint. Clint will fire at the one with the loaded gun. As the camera passes from one face to the other the audience is meant to figure out what each would do.

The guy with the loaded gun shoots at the guy with the unloaded gun — Clint shoots the guy with the loaded gun. Game over. As with the hangings in the movie, he has dangled Duco out as bait while Clint takes the money.

The game is decided before it starts.

Clint sets up a situation where each evaluates their possible moves, but in reality, Clint has already won the game. Its a brilliant example of people making the best decisions based on the information available to them…and somebody manipulating the information available to them.

Phil Mellinger, 2002

Sounds like Asimov’s Hari Seldon has just used his psychohistory to find out if somebody’s gonna be a lucky punk :) Too bad scripts this good are so rare.

(via typographer)

Liam Walsh took the time to reproduce Brockmann’s Zurich Tonhalle Poster in scripting and tune it to Beethoven’s ouverture op.61 (go to Liam’s website to enjoy the piece).

(via September Industry)

I loved the movie when I first saw it. It was a pleasure seeing its poster few days ago. Superb unicase-stenciled typo and great design (hope I’ll have time to use the typo and Paul’s laid back silhouette for a tshirt soon :D)

Echochrome is a new game by Sony for PS3 and PSP. Using Escher-like puzzles and environments, it seems to be “infinitely” fun. Made in Japan.

(thanks Arpi for the tip)

Great moves, song and especially filming, made in one take it seems, nice contre-jour there and amazing “gliding” dance near the end.

Some more details:
“Post hip-hop troubadour RJD2 teamed with dance and media artist Bill Shannon for the ‘Work It Out’ video. Shannon, born with a degenerative hip condition, developed a way to express himself through dance (and even skateboarding) on crutches. Director Joey Garfield took to the streets of New York and captured one continuous shot of Shannon, injecting RJD2 into random roles throughout the video.” (from Spinner, via Motionographer)