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If there’s a big animated film coming out, a studio somewhere will be rushing to release a cheap imitation. But who makes them? Are they proud of their work? And how did they become an internet hit? It is hard to describe what happens 24 minutes into Ratatoing, an animated children’s movie from 2007. Four unnerving rats – one with a handlebar moustache, another in pearls – begin to jump up and down and grunt in a restaurant, in order to alarm the human clientele. “La, la, la, la, la,” they sort of sing while sort of dancing. They then do the can-can and shout “HA, HA, HA!” before making ghostly noises. Ratatoing is not, it is safe to say, a good movie. It is barely even an acceptable movie. It was created in just four months by Brazilian animation studio Vídeo Brinquedo, to be released in the same month as Ratatouille , the restaurant-and-rat-themed film that went on to win Pixar the Oscar for best animated feature. “I don’t have regrets but I’m not proud of it,” says Ale McHaddo, on...

Journal tells of ‘an unusual Snow white brightness’ as explorer’s ship made its way through icy islands James Cook is already within the Antarctic Circle on 28 January 1774, in “a gentle breeze of Wind, attended by a thick Fogg and snow and then Showers of Snow and Sleet. Continued our course to the South till 11 o’Clock PM, when falling in with Some Ice Islands, and the fog being very thick we hauled the wind to the Eastward.” Within an hour, say the Journals of Captain Cook, edited for the Hakluyt Society by JC Beaglehole, HMS Resolution is heading south again. At 4am on 30 January he perceives “the Clowds to the south near the horizon to be of an unusual Snow white brightness which denounced our approach to field ice, soon after it was seen from the Mast-head and at eight o’Clock we were close to the edge of it which extended East and West in a streight line far beyond our sight”. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MxzCzm

US president smooths over Trump-era complaints to deepen Japan security alliance as new secretary of state rejects Beijing’s South China Sea claims Joe Biden has vowed to strengthen the US’s alliance with Japan to counter growing Chinese military activity in the volatile Asia-Pacific region, including a commitment to defend the Senkakus, a group of islands in the East China sea administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing. The US president and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga agreed during a phone call that their countries’ security alliance was “the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific”. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3psOIot

Man also alleges hearing Egyptian security officials discuss tampering with Italian student’s mobile phone A man who claims to have witnessed the arrest of Giulio Regeni has told the Guardian how he heard and saw the Cambridge PhD student inside a police station in Cairo before he was found dead by a roadside. The witness, who is regarded as credible by investigators in Rome, said the security officials alleged to have detained the Italian behaved as if they were above the law. “Those people that took Giulio were different,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of [Egypt’s] National Security Agency.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3a9fPOZ

BMA head says more sophisticated approach is needed to protect some of most deprived and at-risk people Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage The failure to take a more sophisticated approach to the Covid vaccination programme is leaving some of the most deprived and at-risk individuals, including ethnic minorities, unprotected, the head of the British Medical Association has warned. The UK government is aiming to offer everyone in the top four priority groups as set out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) – everyone over the age of 70, care home residents, health and social care workers and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals – a first dose by 15 February. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3a7Jecl

‘I really hope he thinks this is something cool,’ said Tobey King, who made the doll and plans to donate the proceeds to charity Bernie Sanders went from becoming a hit meme to a nearly $20,000 crochet doll in less than a week. After an inauguration day image of the Vermont senator went viral , showing him sitting on a folding chair, socially distanced from other guests, hunched against the cold wearing chunky knitted mittens, Tobey King in Texas got to crocheting. She turned the sensational meme that trended for days into a crochet doll. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3apxMcr

Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, looks at the surge of infections in the Brazilian state of Amazonas that has left many hospitals without the most basic supplies and has prompted yet more protests against Bolsonaro Rachel Humphreys talks to the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips , about the Covid crisis in Brazil. A surge in infections linked to a new and seemingly more contagious variant has overwhelmed hospitals in Amazonas state, leaving many without the most basic supplies. Circumstances were so bleak that oxygen tankers were rushed over the border from Venezuela , the economically collapsed nation next door, with its leader, Nicolás Maduro, decrying what he called “Jair Bolsonaro’s public health disaster”. Tom tells Rachel about the way the public have reacted to Bolsonaro and his government’s handling of this latest wave of infections. Inoculation began last Sunday, weeks after other Latin American countries such as Chile and Mexico ...