Batman is easily my favorite superhero, and there is a new Batman movie is coming out this summer. So, obviously, I was excited to see the trailer:
Looks pretty good. I’ve never been a huge fan of Bane as a villain (I would rather see Two-Face get a full movie to himself) ,but the potential for social commentary with this one looks huge.
Then, I saw this mash up on Facebook that Brad Hansen (a friend of mine from college who’s now out in LA) made (his youtube is here and imdb here):
Love it. Especially impressed by the quality of syncing the words to the various animals. Plus, the Zazu shot is hilarious.
Interesting to see how they’re made. Makes the laces make a lot more sense, though it does seem to dismiss the idea of pigskins. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, footballs were never actually made of pigskin, but early on where covered with pig’s bladders, and even further back, were actually just inflated pig bladders, though never actually pig skin.
It is worth noting that he says they make all the NFL game balls there, but not that they make all Wilson footballs there, or even all NFL branded Wilson footballs. I actually just recently bought a Wilson football, which says “NFL” in gold embossing on the side, which also says “Made in China” in much smaller print on the bottom.
On one hand, it’s easy to get all nationalistic about work being shipped overseas (there’s more than a couple youtube comments rejoicing in the fact that something is still made in the USA). On the other hand, I know that at least I personally can’t even imagine working the same job, repeating the same 5 second action cycle over and over and over and over… for 40+ years.
And, for that matter, watching it, I can’t help but think, “I bet I could come up with an algorithm to fit more cuts on the same piece of leather, and get more sections out of a single hide”, or, “I bet a machine could make that part way more consistent”. Which, I’m guessing is why my Wilson football was made in China.