Adjacent Weekend

This week: a Korean anti-capitalist drama from a 72-year-old master, a Swiss audio engineer's $240,000 preamp, the radical grain of Brazilian Super 8, and a lamp whose color comes from restaurant seashells. Also in the mix: a lopsided alien world, orangutans and fire in Borneo, and the long shadow of Elizabeth Holmes.

Possible Love: Is this Korean anti-capitalist drama the film of the year?

Lee Chang-dong, 72, has returned, and Dazed makes the case that his is the one film worth seeing in a cinema before the year is out. The piece pairs an interview with an argument for why this drama of money and intimacy lands so hard. Read it before you go, then compare it with the Film Stage review for a second opinion.

Dazed · 10 min

Grain, Rebellion and the Radical Uses of Super 8 in Brazil

It opens with a scandal at a 1977 short film festival in Salvador, then traces a history of what happens when a cheap, amateur format lands in the hands of artists with something to provoke. A slow-burning piece of film history for anyone who likes their cinema scrappy and political. Home-movie stock looks different afterward.

Senses of Cinema · 20 min

This Preamp Costs More Than a Fancy Sports Car

Goldmund's $240,000 Mimesis Statement is one part of a $1.5 million audio setup, and WIRED treats it with equal parts awe and skepticism. It's a window into a world where Swiss engineering obsession is the entire point, and where the question of what "better" sound even means gets interesting. Good for the curious skeptic.

WIRED · 8 min

“The color in each Snegl lamp comes from the shell itself.” — Leibal

Snegl

Seashells collected from restaurants are cleaned, ground, and compounded into the material of these lamps, so the palette comes from dinner leftovers rather than dye. The sourcing is the story. Linger over the images and the making process.

Leibal · 5 min

Elizabeth Holmes film enthralls — but her legacy haunts science

Nature turns to You Can See Everything, the film that brings blood-testing start-ups back into the spotlight, and asks what the Theranos saga did to the culture of scientific ambition. The essay covers hype, trust, and the pressure on researchers to promise the moon. Worth reading even if you thought you were done with this story.

Nature · 7 min

Scorched sanctuaries: The race to save Borneo's orangutans from fires

Under a smog-dimmed sun in West Kalimantan, rescuers and firefighters work the front line of a crisis that concerns land as much as apes. Mongabay's reporting goes into the canopy and the sanctuaries, with on-the-ground detail that makes a conservation story feel immediate.

Mongabay · 12 min

JWST Reveals a Lopsided Alien World with Blistering Evening Winds

Exoplanets are usually pictured as tidy spheres in front of a spotlight star, and this piece takes that picture apart. Webb's data describes a planet with an uneven face and fierce winds on its evening side, explained with the clarity Universe Today does best. A good dose of cosmic perspective for a Saturday.

Universe Today · 6 min

We're addicted to social media. How do we get sober?

Doctors, scientists, and "anonymous" programs are all experimenting with ways to pry people loose from their phones, and Scientific American surveys what's actually being tried. It's an unhurried look at a habit most of us recognize in ourselves. Read it, then maybe put the phone in another room.

Scientific American · 15 min