LATEST ADDITIONS

There’s no shortage of weather resistant/waterproof outdoor speakers to choose from but Monitor Audio offers a twist on the theme with its CWT all-weather in-wall/ceiling speaker series.

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Q Digital high-definition broadcasting started back in 1998, but since then, only video has received a facelift, not audio. Why hasn’t DTV audio evolved to at least Dolby Digital Plus status? —David Musoke / via e-mail

Phoenix was one of the best films of 2015 (the U.S. release date): taut, nerve-racking, gorgeous in a lurid way. It has a Vertigo vibe, leaning heavily on Hitchcock’s German Expressionist influences, but marked with Angst of a more sociopolitical nature, as if the likes of F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang had shot films just after WWII instead of the two decades before. It begins with a woman, an Auschwitz survivor (played by Nina Hoss), entering a hospital for facial surgery to repair the damage done by brutal guards. She wants to look the way she did before, so her husband can recognize her. After the operation, she finds him waiting tables at a nightclub called Phoenix.

Crowdfunding is one of the 21st Century’s great innovations (it actually started late in the 20th Century…we know), providing a way for anyone to take a shot at funding their Next Big Thing product.