Word: thingness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...France Flight 380 lasted 35 seconds. "39 seconds," corrected Laurent Bonnard, a French historian, as we chatted in a lounge area later. Either way, all the planiacs on board Air France's inaugural A380 Airbus flight from New York City to Paris agreed the takeoff was a thing of beauty. Imagine an apartment building with wings that steps into the sky with the quiet grace of a ballet dancer. The lack of engine noise - it's 50% quieter than a 747-400 on takeoff - was downright eerie. The A380 is so big it's difficult to sense its speed...
...strangest thing about these animals isn't their names, though; it's the fact that many of them weren't flat to the ground, like modern crocs, but stood upright and walked on their legs, like modern mammals. "We have an idea of what a crocodile should be and what a mammal should be," says Sereno, "but you have to break down these categories to see what was going on in Africa back then." BoarCroc, for example, was 20 ft. long and had three rows of fangs, like a boar from hell, which made it what Sereno calls a "dinosaur...
...Twilight not just in America. The shadow has fallen over the entire globe. "It didn't really get out of hand until Italy," Weitz says - he filmed scenes in the Tuscan hill town of Montepulciano. "The streets were filled with fans. The nice thing was that they weren't interested in hampering the filming at all. When you asked the crowd of 1,000 people to be quiet, they were absolutely silent. But then when you finished a take, there would be a round of applause, which doesn't happen on a film...
...grosses will also be massive. The first film earned $192.7 million in North America and almost exactly the same abroad. The worldwide five-day total for New Moon (which opened two days earlier abroad) is already at $258.8 million; expect a final worldwide gross to near $700 million. The thing's a phenomenon, and all the analysis of its popularity can't explain or diminish it. Sometimes the best strategy for canny film people is to step out of the way and let a hurricane sweep by. Nobody knows anything, except the customers. And you could bet your shirt...
...only thing, they continued, that can "cleanse the campus" is "glorious, vigorous Long Johnson action...