Nathan Rabin on the two young leads of Adventureland:
Watching Eisenberg fall in love with Stewart is like watching the mating rituals of photogenic wild animals who care about books and interesting films.
Day: April 2, 2009
Thursday various
- Earlier today via Twitter, I wrote, “People always complain that MTV doesn’t show videos anymore, but is this really a bad thing? Were music videos really so good for music?” This was in response (sort of) to John Scalzi’s thoughts on ’80s pop music. He writes:
- Gerry Canavan asks an interesting question: “How could the Romans think in terms of centuries but we can’t think past a single business cycle?”
- I was pretty sure Fox’s new no extras on rented DVDs policy would come back to bite them, but who knew it would be so soon? Apparently, many customers who have bought DVDs of Slumdog Millionaire have received the extras-free rental version.
- Speaking of DVDs, apparently there are some problems with the subtitles for Let the Right One In, that feel-good Swedish vampire movie of last year. I have a copy on its way right now from Netflix, so I’ll have to see how it compares.
- And finally, a double-shot of disturbing. First, Justine Lai’s oil paintings of herself having sex with each US President. (Not overly pornographic, and strangely fascinating in concept, but still not remotely SFW. [via]) And second, the Peekaru, which John Scalzi describes as “a Snuggie and a chestburster from Alien all in one.”
The way to most accurately judge the quality of a pop music era, in my opinion, is not by the stuff universally acknowledged as the high points of era, but by all the other stuff that happened to be popular too, and whether it’s better or worse than the average pop song of any other era one might think of.
Although he also makes the frightening prediction of “a whole lot of N*Sync references come 2029,” when the tweens and teens who listened to that music come into their own. I shudder even to think.
My own question still stands.