Video Games: Art-Tested, MoMA-Approved

Citing a palpable “aesthetic experience” in classic games while eschewing others, the Museum of Modern Art announced Thursday that it has assembled a new collection of video games. The museum’s initial collection includes 14 classics like Pac-Man and Tetris, but also more recent additions to the canon like Passage and Canabalt. The museum has a “wish list” of about 40 total games, which include Pong, The Legend of Zelda, and Minecraft. The games will be exhibited starting in March 2013, but the selections aren’t necessarily what you’d expect.

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Video games are art. That’s a fact (which has some notable dissenters) that’s even been determined by the Supreme Court in a a case decided in 2011. And games have been embraced by art institutions before. In an exhibition this year, the Smithsonian American Art Museum explored The Art of Video Games. But in a blog post today, Paola Antonelli, senior curator in MoMA‘s department of design, explained that the museum’s intention is not as simple as evaluating the artistic value of certain video games. They want to look at games from a design perspective: “Our criteria, therefore, emphasize not only the visual quality and aesthetic experience of each game, but also the many other aspects—from the elegance of the code to the design of the player’s behavior—that pertain to interaction design.” 

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Because the museum is looking for specific design traits, Antonielli explained that MoMA has not acquired, and is not looking for, some games that might seem like “no-brainers to video game historian.”

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Here are some images of the games MoMA has acquired, via the museum: 

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Tetris

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flOw

Myst

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Chris Colfer Glee Interview Land of Stories 2 Details

Earlier this year, I had the great pleasure of catching a screening of Struck By Lighting; the brave, funny, inspiring and touching film Chris Colfer wrote and starred in. Now, he's revisting the character of Carson Phillips in Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal, a novel that serves as the perfection companion piece to the film.

On the small screen, Colfer recently lost his perfect companion (affectionately nicknamed Klaine by their fans) when Blaine admitted to cheating on Kurt out of fear their long distance relationship was driving them apart. But the characters, and actors, recently reunited in NYC to film scenes for Glee's Christmas episode, which is where ETonline caught up with Colfer to talk about the future of Klaine, learn how Lighting struck twice and what's next for his critically acclaimed fantasy series, The Land of Stories.

ETonline: How has your trip to New York been?

Chris Colfer: It's been a whirlwind, but amazing. We got to film at the ice skating rink in Bryant Park, which was just incredible. It was one of the best filming experiences I've ever had. For one, we were on ice skates for 11 hours, in the heart of the city, surrounded by the Empire State Building and the Chrysler building. It was gorgeous.

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ETonline: Are you a good skater?

Colfer: You know, I have only skated once before in my life so I was really, really cautious the first hour. I got progressively much, much better as the night goes on. Now, I'm ready for The Olympics.

ETonline: They say the key to skating is perfecting the fall.

Colfer: If there's one thing I know how to do, it's fall. But every time I would fall, I would try to strike a pose to make people know I was all right ... which the paparazzi always managed to catch [laughs].

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ETonline: What can you tell me about the scenes you and Darren Criss were filming?

Colfer: It's the Christmas episode and that whole scene is a long awaited conclusion to the character's troubles and their relationship. I don't want to say if they get back together or not, but as of right now, they've decided to be very good friends. They're too close and mean too much to one another to ever let anything ruin their relationship.

ETonline: Before we get the Christmas episode, Kurt will take another stab at getting into NYADA. Is he dissatisfied at Vogue or is he jealous of what Rachel gets to do?

Colfer: I think a little bit of both. There's always the question of, "What If?" He never wants to feel like he missed out on an opportunity, and while everything is going great with Vogue so far, he just wants to make sure he's pursuing all his options.

ETonline: Kurt working for Vogue.com has allowed you to work with Sarah Jessica Parker, and tonight you duet on Let's Have a Kiki. Did you ever imagine something like that?

Colfer: What if I said yes? [laughs] I am a huge fan of The Scissor Sisters and Sarah Jessica Parker, but never thought I would be celebrating my fandom of both in the same situation. I kind of lucked out on this one.

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ETonline: Your NY trip has also been in support of Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal. Is it a straight novelization of the film, or something else?

Colfer: Carson is killed by a bolt of lightning in the first scene of the movie and everything is told in flashbacks with his narration from beyond the grave. The book is the journal he kept during the last few months of his life. The book is a little bit more intimate. The best compliment I've been getting is that the book and the movie work well as a pair. What you don't get from the movie, you get from the book, and vice versa.

ETonline: A lot of writers who adapt their own works for other platforms will talk about the joys of using that opportunity to right wrongs, or add in things they wish they could have the first time. Did that happen here?

Colfer: Yes! There are going to be so many deleted scenes on the DVD – there was so much from the funeral that we cut because it actually played too sad with them in there. I mean, it's already sad, but with all this funeral stuff, you just wanted to kill yourself because it was so depressing. We wanted the movie to end on an upbeat note, but there's a line that Allison Janney's character has when she's talking about lightning. She says that after her son died, she was reading that lighting is a negative charge between the friction that the clouds carry in the sky and she'd like to think that her son was so positive, that the moment he died, he attracted the bolt right out of the sky. I thought it was so powerful and tragic and sad, so I was able to incorporate that line into the book.

ETonline: With this journal off your plate, has that opened up room for you to focus on Land of Stories 2?

Colfer: Yeah, it absolutely has. I am my own worst enemy, I guess, because whenever I'm writing one thing, I can't stop thinking about the next thing I'm going to write, so I'm very excited to be working on the sequel. Actually, I have my computer open right now and I'm tightening up chapter 10.

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ETonline: Anything you can tease about the next book?

Colfer: The sequel takes place two years after the first book, so the twins are 14, and they have not been back to the Land of Stories, or seen their grandmother, in two years and they don't know why. They desperately want to go back into the fairytale world and see their grandmother, and they can't figure out what is preventing that. Hopefully, knock on wood, [the book will come out] in late summer/early fall of 2013 – sooner rather than later. I know a lot of readers are anxious for the next chapter, which I'm excited about.

ETonline: Once that's off your plate, is there another project waiting in the wings of your imagination?

Colfer: Always! I'm always thinking about my next script is or what the next film I'm going to pursue is. The most fun for me is creating worlds and creating characters -- I just have the best time writing.

Glee airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on Fox, and to pick up Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal, click here!

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Caviar-smuggling fugitive pleads guilty to $10M fish egg scheme

A crooked caviar importer got hooked this morning for a fishy scheme dating back more than two decades.

Isidoro "Mario" Garbarino -- who spent 23 years on the run following his indictment -- pleaded guilty to smuggling more than $10 million worth of fancy fish eggs into the United States between 1984 and 1987.

Garbarino, 69, agreed to serve up to four years in the slammer and be deported back to his native Italy once he's freed.

He also promised to cough up $3 million in unpaid import duties, penalties and interest within the next six weeks.

"I will pay it promptly," he told the judge.

Shutterstock

Garbarino was originally arrested in 1987 on 85 counts involving his Bronx-based Aquamar Gourment Imports company, but he jumped bail and fled the country.

He was busted again in September after Panamaian authorities stopped him while he was changing planes in that country, and put him on a flight to Houston "against his will," defense lawyer Marc Greenwald said.

Garbarino's wide-ranging indictment had accused him of masterminding a scheme in which he duped Pan Am airlines into buying purported "Russian Beluga premium quality caviar" to serve its first-class customers.

In reality, he passed off "lesser quality Russian Sevruga or American caviar....at the higher prices applicatble to such premium quality caviar," according to the indictment, which was signed by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani.

As part of his plea bargain, the feds dropped the charges involving Pan Am, which was the world's largest airline before going bust in 1991.

Sentencing was set for Jan. 7.

bruce.golding@nypost.com

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Miami-Dade pending home sales spiked in October

Despite a dearth of homes and condos on the market in Miami-Dade County, pending sales rose 67 percent in October with 4,172 residential properties going under contract compared with 2,488 a year earlier, according to the Miami Association of Realtors.

The number of pending sales rose 18 percent in October from September.

In a statement, Martha Pomares, chairman of the board of the Miami Association of Realtors, said “The Miami real estate market is poised for another record year that would suprass the all-time sales record set in 2011. Strong demand persists despite the shortage of housing inventory, and listings are increasingly selling at a more rapid pace, driving in significant price appreciation.’’

With strong demand and little on the market, properties are selling for closer to their asking price and sellers aren’t inclined to offer discounts. For October, single-family homes in Miami-Dade sold at 95 percent of the original listing price, while condos went for 97.1 percent of original listing price on average, the Miami Realtors said. In October 2011, single family homes fetched 91 percent of listing price on average and condos got 93.6 percent of listing price.

Pending sales are a forward indicator based on the number of contracts signed over a given period.

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Dynamite at airport ‘joker’ remains in custody after court hearing

The Guatemalan man who told airport officials he had dynamite in his bag had his initial hearing in bond court Wednesday morning.

Alejandro Hurtado, 63, is accused of joking that he had explosives in his bag when a TACA airline attendant routinely asked if he was carrying any explosive material.

The state is asking for $146,000 as restitution for delays in Concourse J, the major international terminal in the Miami International Airport.

Judge Lisa Walsh set bond at $7,500, but the defendant will remain in custody due to an immigration hold placed by federal officials.

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Actors' Body Transformations For Roles

Jared Leto

After a major weight gain in the 2007 film Chapter 27, Jared Leto slimmed down drastically in 2012 for his role as a transsexual named Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club, the same movie Matthew McConaughey dropped weight for. "I waxed my entire body, including my eyebrows. I've lost a lot of weight because I'm playing a young person with AIDS," he told ETonline at the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards. "It's been challenging but really inspiring too." Leto revealed his weight loss in a Terry Richardson photo shoot.

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Baldwin's 'stalker' released from jail

Alec Baldwin's shapely accused stalker was sprung from jail just before lunch today after a Manhattan judge arraigned her on new misdemeanor criminal contempt charges.

Genevieve Sabourin, an aspiring French-Canadian actress who insists she shared a night of passion last fall with the "30 Rock" star, is now on the hook for allegedly violating her original order of protection via six Twitter postings from earlier this month.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Lynn Kotler sprang Sabourin over the objections of prosecutors, who asked for $5,000 bail.

"From Nov. 8 to Nov. 23, the defendant sent six messages to the wife of the complaining witness," prosecutor Lauren Manso told the judge. "She does not respect the orders of the court and this makes her a flight risk."

Genevieve Sabourin leaving court yesterday after being taken into custody.

But defense lawyer Rick Pasacreta told the judge that Sabourin has travelled here for all of her previous court appearances at great personal expense -- and was never directly ordered not to contact the wife, Hilaria. Then the lawyer accused prosecutors of being far more starstruck than his client.

"Sometimes when people have a brush with celebrity they get starstruck," he told the judge, feinting that he meant his client, then delivering the legal punchline: "And I'm referring to the people's bail app in this matter."

The new charge alleges that, as first reported in The Post, Sabourin has been continuing to tweet about Baldwin throughout the past month, and that some of her manic missives directed her Twitter followers to the accounts of Baldwin and his new yoga-instructor wife, Hilaria, in apparent violation of the protection issued at her first arrest in April.

Sabourin, 40, was first arrested nine months ago after her earliest series of emails and text messages to the actor, in which prosecutors say she told him she loved him, wanted to have his baby and needed cash.

The Upper West Side's 20th Precinct became the precinct of origin in the case, arresting her back then after she turned up at an event Baldwin was appearing at in Lincoln Center.

Sabourin spent last night back at the 20th Precinct for processing. Nearly hysterical in her insistence to cops that she was innocent, she was treated briefly there for an asthma attack before being brought to Manhattan Criminal Court for today's arraignment.

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Gift ideas for the techie on your list

The holidays are coming fast, and if you’re like me, you’ve probably gotten very little of your gift shopping done.

Here are suggestions for a variety of gifts for the techie and the not-so-techie people on your list.

Some of these items can be found in stores and some are only available online, but you should be able to order them in time for Christmas or Hanukkah.

IOMEGA EZ MEDIA & BACKUP CENTER

What is it? A hard drive that lives on your home network so you can share files, store all your photos and music and back up your home computers. Works on Macintosh, Windows and Linux computers.

The EZ Media & Backup Center is available in 1-, 2- and 3-terabyte capacities. It is simple to set up. It lives next to your home router and plugs into the network via Ethernet.

Major features include a built-in iTunes server so your music is available to all connected computers, Time Machine support for easy Macintosh backups and Iomega’s Personal Cloud to access your data from any Internet connection.

It can also stream your video files to your TV if you’ve got a compatible streaming box or an Internet-connected TV.

Software for backing up Windows PCs is also included.

Who’s it for? Any family that wants central storage for their digital lives. This is a great home for your digital photo, music or video library.

What does it cost? One terabyte for $169.99, two terabytes for $209.99, three terabytes for $279.99.

Where can you get it? Online at www.iomega.com, Amazon, Best Buy, Apple store, Fry’s.

NETATMO URBAN WEATHER STATION

What is it? A wireless indoor/outdoor weather station that displays through an application on your Apple or Android mobile device.

There are two parts, one that lives in your house and one you place outside.

The indoor component plugs into the wall and monitors the temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, carbon dioxide level and even the sound level in decibels.

The outdoor module is battery-powered and measures temperature and humidity.

Once you connect the Netatmo to your home Wi-Fi network, you can download the free app and see your weather stats from anywhere.

Setup was easy enough, and you can set the app to notify you when carbon dioxide rises to levels that you should be warned about — which is great.

Who’s it for? Weather geeks and people who like to know what the temperature is without having to fire up a browser.

What does it cost? $179

Where can you get it? www.netatmo.com

3M LED ADVANCED LIGHT

What is it? 3M’s first foray into the home light bulb market is with the LED Advanced Light, which uses light-emitting diodes (LED) to produce 800 lumens (the light of a 60-watt bulb).

The Advanced Light has a life span of 25 years and costs just $1.63 per year if it’s turned on for three hours per day.

The bulb lights instantly and is dimmable.

It’s a little intimidating to start buying light bulbs that might outlive me, but my wallet approves.

Who’s it for? Anyone who wants to save money or wants a bulb that might not have to be changed until 2035.

What does it cost? $25

Where can you get it? Select Wal-Mart stores. For more information, go to www.3mlighting.com/LED.

STEM IZON 2.0 WI-FI VIDEO MONITOR

What is it? A small, wireless video camera that you can monitor remotely with an iOS device.

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Miami police: crime down after year-long Operation Resilience

Violent criminals are not the only threat to neighborhoods, Miami police say. Prostitutes, drug users, and even motorists who disobey the rules of the road can jeopardize the safety of residents.

That’s why Miami police cast a broad net with Operation Resilience, a citywide crackdown that launched in December 2011 and concluded in November with more than 1,000 arrests made for crimes ranging from suspected murder and drug trafficking to prostitution and robbery.

Maj. David Magnusson, commander of tactical operations for Miami police, said the broad sweep has helped reduce violent crime in the city’s north, south and central districts.

“Homicides are lower at the same point now than they were last year,’’ he said, “and [the numbers of] people shot are lower than they were at the same time last year.’’

Tapping officers from a number of divisions within Miami’s police department — including gang units, narcotics investigators, robbery detectives and traffic cops — Operation Resilience flooded the city’s streets with police during crackdowns, Magnusson said.

Police conducted 12 separate sweeps over the year with each operation taking place over two, non-consecutive days, he said.

During those sweeps, police made 380 felony arrests, including 83 for drug possession, 93 for drug trafficking, 156 for drug purchasing, 10 for gun possession, and 19 for battery.

While the operation’s primary mission was to reduce drug-related violent crime, cops also targeted “quality of life’’ crimes, such as public intoxication, indecent exposure, gambling, prostitution and traffic infractions.

Magnusson said residents frequently complained of drivers speeding or running stop signs in their neighborhoods, and vagrants pushing carts on public streets in the middle of the night.

“We have found, and there is scientific proof, if you let these things go on unchecked, it just gives that atmosphere that anything goes,’’ Magnusson said, “and after a while anything does go.’’

Police reported making 259 “quality of life’’ arrests and 110 traffic arrests during the course of the operation. They also issued 4,832 traffic citations.

While traffic infractions are not considered serious crimes, Magnusson said they act as a deterrent in crime-ridden neighborhoods.

“People aren’t going to be up to their tricks when cars are being stopped by police,’’ he said.

Magnusson said Miami police are aware of the criticism that such sweeps provide only a respite from crime, and that the criminals return once the operations are completed. He estimated that each sweep was followed by a period of seven to 10 days of relative quiet in the affected neighborhoods.

“We have to find new ways to deal with these issues,’’ he said, “but at the end of the day it’s putting the officers out there.’’

Now that Operation Resilience is complete, Magnusson said, Miami police will launch Operation Throw In the Towel, which will target drug traffickers who work out of homes and businesses.

Police plan to use forfeiture, liens and fines to pressure those drug dealers or their landlords to “throw in the towel,’’ Magnusson said.

“We’re going after the sellers,’’ he said, “and after the structures they sell from.’’

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Jennifer Carpenter Dexter Interview Ex Girlfriends

I've been a fan of Jennifer Carpenter's ever since her mind-blowing and back-bending performance in 2005's The Exorcism of Emily Rose. And while she's never disappointed as Debra Morgan on Showtime's Dexter, the last nine weeks have seen the 32-year-old deliver her most profound, affecting and stunning work to date.

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Although, Carpenter performance isn't the only thing to be reinvigorated by Debra learning her brother's secret as this is the most sublime season of Dexter since The Trinity Killer was offed in season four.

But starting today, fans can see a totally different side to the actress as her new romantic dramedy, Ex-Girlfriends, has been released on iTunes. Focusing on three people (Graham, played by Alexander Poe, Laura, played by Kristen Connolly and Kate, played by Carpenter), Girlfriends finds an exciting new way to investigate the age-old question of whether you can truly be friends with an ex.

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ETonline caught up with Carpenter when she was in NYC to talk about this brave new film, her tour-de-force season of Dexter and discovered that when all is said and done, she'd like Debra Morgan to die.

Ex-Girlfriends is now available on iTunes, while Dexter airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on Showtime.

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