Perhaps it’s best to begin this roundup of cultural tidbits from around the web with the most universal bit of news imaginable: the conceptualization of an “International Flag of Planet Earth.” Such is, perhaps obviously, the idea of a graphic designer (Oskar Pernefeldt) rather than a collective agreement of all Earth’s governments, who’d likely have a harder time falling for this lovely form of idealism than pedestrian readers of the Internet like you or me. According to the project’s website, “The rings are linked to each other, which represents how everything on our planet, directly or indirectly, are linked.” It could, as The Creators Project elaborates, be used when planting a flag on a distant planet, where ideas of nationality are pretty irrelevant, or for issues on our own planet for which nations should be more unitedly active, like global warming.
It could also be used at an international cinematic convocation like Cannes (though perhaps the festival would be better aided in fostering a sense of togetherness by not allowing something like “Flatgate” — on which Flavorwire reported before it received its “official” title — to happen). Today’s current Cannes news, outside of the apparent policing of women’s shoes, has come from the glowing reception of Pixar’s Inside Out, which depicts a young girl’s emotions after she relocates from the Midwest to San Fran when her father gets a new job. “Depicting emotions” has never been so literal: the main characters are the young girl’s emotions (Amy Poehler, unsurprisingly, plays Joy, while Lewis Black just as fittingly plays Anger). On a side note, it turns out the protagonist of Inside Out is around the age of the average reading level of most pop songs.
And of course, film life goes on outside Cannes, and today, the trailers for two films that might elicit either awe — or cringes — for very different reasons have been released. The first is a trailer for Zac Efron’s EDM movie (cue noise of awe #1 from those who, like me, are inexplicably rooting for Efron as a Serious Actor, regardless of how un-seriously he proves we should take him, and cringe #1 for anyone who might have a bit more sense in them) and the second is trailer #2 for Joe Wright’s new Peter Pan adaptation, Pan, in which Rooney Mara plays Tiger Lily (the cringes regarding this were already cued a while ago, but some awe may be extracted from the rest of the visually exquisite trailer).