MetaFilter posts tagged with VanityFair

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Lutoslawski — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:24:56 -0800

Vanity Fair explores the rise of cuteness and why we love it so very much.

Because Metafilter will Never Be Rid of Her

Weebot — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:07:42 -0800

Vanity Fair recently published "It Came From Wasilla", Todd Purdum's lengthy profile piece about Sarah Palin, her involvement with and the inside workings of the McCain campaign, and her political future. While a lot of the stuff in Purdam's article have been reported elsewhere, they haven't been reported with this much detail or with this context. Purdam documents Palin's meteoric rise in Alaska, her relationship with her fellow Alaska politicians, as well as her icy relationship with the McCain staff.

Midair collision at 37,000 feet

flug — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:45:09 -0800

The sky is a really big place, right? So how did a Boeing 737 and a Legacy 600 private jet manage to collide head-on at 37,000 feet over the Amazon jungle in Brazil? William Langewiesche's detailed analysis of the 2006 crash--which killed all 154 aboard the 737--provides some answers. It seems the sky just isn't as big as it used to be: "Until recently, head-on airplanes mistakenly assigned the same altitude and route by Air Traffic Control would almost certainly have passed some distance apart, due to the navigation slop inherent in their systems. But this is no longer true." The navigation systems of the two aircraft are so precise that when they met--at a closing speed of about a thousand miles per hour--the Legacy 600 was only 2 feet below and 30 feet to the left of the 737.

Another look at the incident from Salon's Patrick Smith
Another analysis of an aircraft disaster by William Langewiesche, the 1999 crash of EgyptAir 990 (previously on MeFi)

Dubya, Drawn and Quartered.

gman — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:06:24 -0800

George Bush's failings and follies inspired some of Vanity Fair’s illustrators' best work.

A Mother's Love

digaman — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:38:27 -0800

With that meeting, Mr. Allo took his first step into an intricate trap. The deeply strange tale of one very determined woman's quest to overturn her son's conviction for murder.

"...the posterboy for Generation Halliburton."

Asparagirl — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:44:42 -0800

"I asked [Bono] why, in his opinion, [Tony] Stark couldn’t be content with charitable work à la Bill Gates, shaping the world with his billions. "You have to understand these guys," was Bono's one-line reply. "Bill's software. Stark's all hardware." Vanity Fair profiles a year in the life of Tony Stark, and asks what the literal and figurative ascent of the inventor/playboy/superhero means for 21st Century geopolitics. Is Iron Man "the embodiment of an outdated American fantasy -- a self-made, unilateral, technological solution to hopelessly complex problems"? Or is he merely the improbable but logical outgrowth of one young man's vast wealth, careless hedonism, prodigious intellect, and strained familial and mentor relationships? Christine Everhart examines the political implications and personal motives of Stark's quest to beat swords into plowshares -- while profiting from the retrofits. Not really from Vanity Fair, no.

Caricatures from the late 19th Century and early 20th

Kattullus — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:15:34 -0800

900 caricatures of noted Victorian and Edwardian personages from British society magazine Vanity Fair which ran from 1868 to 1914. Among those pictured are Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Disraeli, Herman Melville, Alfred Dreyfus, Teddy Roosevelt, Gustave Eiffel and Charles Boycott (from whose name comes the word). A couple are mildly not safe for work, a few quite racist, as was the prevalent attitude of the time, and at least one is both.

VF: How the Web Was Won

spiderwire — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:02:34 -0800

Vanity Fair has a typically excellent article out -- "How the Web Was Won," an oral history of the Web. Even if you're familiar with ARPANet, Metcalfe's Law, Pearl Harbor Day, the VC rush, whatever -- the story told by the often-animated people at the center of the whirlwind is an enlightening and entertaining experience. And for those of you don't know the history of the Internet, learn it! This is part of your heritage now. I just like this quote because it sums up my experience with all hackers-as-CEOs:

Jeff Bezos: When we started out, we were packing on our hands and knees on these cement floors. One of the software engineers that I was packing next to was saying, You know, this is really killing my knees and my back. And I said to this person, I just had a great idea. We should get kneepads. And he looked at me like I was from Mars. And he said, Jeff, we should get packing tables. We got packing tables the next day, and it doubled our productivity.

"Chicks with Shticks?" Really?*

miss lynnster — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:47:28 -0800

Who says women aren't funny? *(Any one of these women could've probably come up with a waaaay better headline than that. Just sayin'.)

And Introducing Seth Rogen as Cary Grant in North by Northwest!

dhammond — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:34:41 -0800

Hitchcock Classics as illustrated in the 2008 Hollywood Portfolio from Vanity Fair.

Keys to the Kingdom

kirkaracha — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:01:31 -0800

Keys to the Kingdom. Vanity Fair profiles George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and previews Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [minor spoiler on page 5]; Q&A with Spielberg and Lucas.

Rather than update the franchise to match current styles, Lucas and Spielberg decided to stay true to the prior films' look, tone, and pace. During pre-production, Spielberg watched the first three Indiana Jones movies at an Amblin screening room with Janusz Kaminski, who has shot the director's last 10 films. He replaces Douglas Slocombe, who shot the first three Indy movies (and is now retired at age 94), as the man mainly responsible for the film’s look. "I needed to show them to Janusz," Spielberg says, "because I didn't want Janusz to modernize and bring us into the 21st century. I still wanted the film to have a lighting style not dissimilar to the work Doug Slocombe had achieved, which meant that both Janusz and I had to swallow our pride. Janusz had to approximate another cinematographer's look, and I had to approximate this younger director's look that I thought I had moved away from after almost two decades."

Mad About the Boys

empath — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:49:37 -0800

Mad About the Boys "Until he fled the country in January, accused of embezzling more than $300 million, Lou Pearlman was famous as the impresario behind the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync. Turns out his investors weren't the only victims, colleagues reveal: Pearlman's passion for boy bands was also a passion for boys."

Can Do But Why Bother?

amyms — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:48:03 -0800

Lazy-Ass Nation. "Somewhere along the way, we fell in love with the dream of the effort-free existence."

Simpson Family Values

chunking express — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:12:06 -0800

Vanity Fair has an interesting write up on the history of the Simpsons. There are quotes from all sorts of people, including: Art Spiegelman, Jay Kogen, Rupert Murdoch, Conan O'Brien, etc.

Though ask yourself, was Dorothy Parker ever really funny?

nuclear_soup — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:51:00 -0800

Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.

Blaming Bush

digaman — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:27:31 -0800

Now they tell us. Neocon hindsight is 20/20. War architect Richard Perle on invading Iraq, 2002: "We have no time to lose, and I think the president understands that and it's probably taken too long already, but I don't think it'll be much longer... Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder.... Now, it isn't going to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either." Four years later: "If I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies'... Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."

"The truth, however, is all on tape."

kirkaracha — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 09:51:33 -0800

"The real story is actually better than the one we told." A Vanity Fair recounting of NORAD's response to the September 11 attacks, based on "30 hours of never-before-released tapes from the control room," isn't quite the same as what the Pentagon told the 9/11 Commission. Commission staffers "thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission."

The Porter-Blair debate.

Neiltupper — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 22:08:06 -0800

Henry Porter is the British Editor of Vanity Fair. In the current issue he attacks what he describes as "[Tony] Blair's campaign against rights contained in the Rule of Law". The article follows a series of columns for The Observer and an extraordinary exchange of email between the two men, and has resonance in probably all countries in the Western world.

reality check

threehundredandsixty — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:25:41 -0800

A candid exchange on Fox New about yesterday's inauguration's pomp and splendor between Judy Bachrach from Vanity Fair and Brigitte Quinn from Fox. (apologies for the link, it was the only one I could find)

The Path to Florida

kirkaracha — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 19:37:36 -0800

The Path to Florida A long Vanity Fair article (part one and part two, both PDFs) about the experiences and reactions of US Supreme Court clerks during the 2000 election and Bush v. Gore [PDFs hosted at SCOTUSblog; via Intel Dump]

Voyageman — Thu, 09 May 2002 09:32:02 -0800

Chelsea Clinton = The New J.F.K. Jr. ?? in Vanity Fair, courtesy Page Six of the NY Post. You are no JFK. [NB LLoyd Bentsen where are you when we need you.]