Month: October 2010

Thursday various

  • Just what is a documentary these days?

    So the salient question might not be, “What is a documentary?” — an abstract, theoretical approach to a form that is grounded in the concrete facts of life. Instead it might make sense to ask what (or whom) a given documentary is for? Is it a goad to awareness, an incitement to action, a spur to further thought? A window? A mirror? The more you think about it, the less obvious the truth appears to be.

  • I think somewhere, in the back of my brain, I knew that Eric Stoltz had originally been cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future — had, in fact, filmed for several weeks — but it’s still weird and kind of amazing to see the footage.
  • The Wire Monopoly? Sometimes parody edges up right up against the things we wish were real. [via]
  • Children’s picture books are apparently a dying art, thanks to parents starting kids on chapter books earlier and earlier:

    Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher. [via]

  • And finally, The Doctor is now immortal. Or always was. Or whatever. I’m still a Doctor Who neophyte compared to some, but even I know “continuity” is a very slippery slope in that universe.

Wednesday various