The Electric Pitchfork

Peter Jackson interview: the Lord of the Rings director on his First World War film, They Shall Not Grow Old Jackson explains how he took Great War footage, transformed it and gave the troops a voice again.  T hanks to a mix of great enthusiasm and vast wealth, Peter Jackson owns seven planes from the First World War. Under his supervision, a team also built replicas of flying machines long lost to battlefields or scrap. The Lord of the Rings director has, among others, a Sopwith Pup and a Fokker triplane in New Zealand — a visible sign of an obsession with the conflict he has had since he was a boy, when he watched the air force epic The Blue Max and built Airfix kits at home. “I was interested in the First World War as a kid because my father was, and, as an only child, I would obviously pay a lot of attention to what Dad did,” Jackson tells me,  calling from his base down under. His family has a connection with the war, too, as his paternal grandfather joined the ...

Hurricane Florence path: Where is the storm heading? Hurricane Florence claimed its first lives on Friday as it battered the North and South Carolina coast with high winds, sea surges and a deluge of rain. More than 700,000 homes in the state have lost power. Winds of more than 100mph are lashing the coast and a rising wall of water is causing storm surges of up to 11ft. More than 1.5 million people had been ordered to flee their homes before the hurricane made landfall on Friday. Millions remain in its path and have been warned by the governor of North Carolina that they faced an “extremely dangerous situation”. The eye of the storm came ashore in North Carolina but states of emergency were also declared in South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia and the District of Columbia. What is going to happen next? Hurricane Florence’s potential impact. The yellow represents urban areas with more than 50,000 inhabitants The hurricane grew 400 miles wider on Thursday, making it la...

Formula 1 reveals 2021 Car Concepts By Andrew Benson Chief F1 writer  Formula 1 has revealed plans to improve the quality of racing with a new car design to be introduced in 2021. F1 sporting boss Ross Brawn said the main purpose was "to produce cars that are more raceable". "I'm pretty optimistic we are going to produce some great looking cars and the are going to be able to race more closely than in the past," he said. Brawn said changes to the aerodynamics would mean cars were able to follow each other much more closely than now. F1 has been working on a new car design for about a year, the 63-year-old former Mercedes and Brawn team boss said, collaborating with governing body the FIA and the teams on alleviating the problem whereby a car behind another loses a significant amount of its performance. Brawn showed three different concept designs at the Singapore Grand Prix on Friday and said the new car...

In 1988, Acid House Swept Britain. These Fliers Tell the Story. Thirty years ago, British youth culture was transformed by acid house music and the drug Ecstasy — with, surprisingly, a little help from a group of flier designers. LONDON — In early 1988, Danny Rampling, a D.J., asked George Georgiou to design a flier for his club night Shoom in a south London fitness center. “They used to clear all the equipment away and put a sound system and a D.J. in the corner,” Mr. Georgiou said. “It was extremely loud, very crowded, this awful strawberry smoke everywhere, strobe lights going off all the time.” He was given one condition for the flier: It had to feature a smiley face. Mr. Georgiou knew it well; his mother had sewn one on his jeans when he was a child. “It wasn’t a graphic symbol I was particularly fond of,” Mr. Georgiou said. “I just found it a bit silly, to be honest. I thought, how do I make it different?” Genesis was one of t...