- We live in a country where pizza is a vegetable. I’m just saying. [via]
- Harry Potter director developing all-new Doctor Who movie. Not at all a sure thing, but still, when do we stop remaking things? Maybe when the last remake is still on-going?
- Genevieve Valentine on Immortals, which she describes as “a batch of snickerdoodles with thumbtacks inside.”
The labyrinth and Minotaur are well turned out, and their showdown takes place in a temple mausoleum, where an archway of stairs frames a goddess’s head that’s inset with candles to make it glow from within. It’s the sort of thing where you think, “Man, that’s good looking! I wish this stupid scene would stop so we could just look at it.”
- I really don’t know what to think about actress suing IMDB for revealing her age. They both seem to have a perfectly valid point.
- Massive plagiarism might help your book sales [via]
- Billy Crystal will be hosting the Oscars this year, giving me another reason not to watch. Which is not a dig at Crystal, necessarily, who I generally like…you know, back when he made movies people watched. But it’s such a safe, boring choice. The Academy really missed a golden opportunity to let the Muppets host the Oscars
- Tilt-shift Van Gogh
- Polite Dissent on Forgotten Drugs of the Silver-Age:
The more I think about it, for all intents and purposes, Jor-El was a mad scientist. He espoused scientific theories well outside the accepted norm and performed numerous unauthorized scientific experiments of questionable ethics.
- Mysterious D.C. rampage leaves smashed cars in its wake. Seriously, it looks like the Hulk went through there. [via]
- And finally, the Center for Fiction interviews Margaret Atwood:
I think it’s a human need to name – to tell this from that. On the most basic level, we need to distinguish – as crows do – the dangerous creature from the harmless one, and – as all animals do – the delicious and healthful food object from the rotting, poisonous one. In literary criticism it’s very helpful to know that the Harlequin Romance you sneak into when you think no one is looking is not the same, and is not intended to be the same, as Moby Dick. But stories and fictions have always interbred and hybridized and sent tendrils out into strange spaces.
news
Monday various
- A Collection of Rejected Titles for Classic Books [via]
- 12 Futuristic Finalists: Zombie Safe House Competition. Because the zombie apocalypse is coming, whether you’re ready for it or not. [via]
- Bulgarian environmentalists ask that Expendables 2 producers please not explode their bats
- Tasha Robinson of the AV Club asks Scott Tobias of same “why didn’t you like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World?” There’s some interesting food for thought, not just on Scott Pilgrim (which I happen to love, at least in its movie form) but on movies in general — particularly what Tobias calls “assemblages of awesome stuff…that are not, in fact, awesome.”
- And finally, abandoned Alan Moore comic would have destroyed the DC Universe. Yeah, hard to believe they didn’t go ahead with “an arc that would paint many of the company’s characters in the worst light possible and then kill them off.”
Thursday various
- I could be reading this wrong, but I think the New York Times compared Joe Frazier to Hitler.
- And Ethel Merman to Kim Kardashian.
- When is honey not honey? Apparently when it’s most of the honey sold in stores in the U.S.. [via]
- So presumably you’ve heard of If Day, right? It was “a simulated Nazi invasion of the Canadian city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and surrounding areas on February 19, 1942.” Yeah, I’d never heard about it before either. [via]
- And finally, Cormac McCarthy’s Yelp page. Hysterical:
He pulled another cold french fry from the greasestained Happy Meal box. He ate it slowly. The sun rising behind him over the limestone bluffs. The barren valley and the road winding through it still in morning’s blue shadow. He wiped his hand on his jacket and checked the breech of the big Weatherby. Bullet as long as man’s finger sitting there. He lay down on the blanket, the rifle’s barrel resting on the saddlebag, and glassed downcountry with the telescopic sight. The dusty road was empty. He waited. [via]<.blockquote>
Tuesday various
- I put no stock whatsoever in the Tarot (beyond what the individual being “read” reads into it), but Alexander Chee’s article on it is surprisingly interesting:
Fortunetelling is easy to ridicule, frequently misunderstood, and, for some people, extremely powerful. Unfortunately, what’s very tough to predict is what reading futures will do to the person with the cards. [via]
- Terry Gilliam on the making of Brazil. [via]
- Jack The Cat Found After Two Months In JFK Airport. There’s no way the film rights to this haven’t already been bought. [via]
- 13 Punctuation Marks That You Never Knew Existed. Unless, of course, you did. Or unless, like me, you think some of these are maybe more accurately referred to as typesetting marks. But, hey, a list!
- And finally, Google lately seems bound and determined to make their products more difficult to use, don’t they?
Wednesday various
- A Manufactured ‘Crisis’: Congress Can Let The Post Office Save Itself Without Mass Layoffs Or Service Reductions
- Undocumented Pregnant Women Forced To Give Birth While Shackled In Front Of Police
- Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit
- Stony Brook University Student Is Being Deported Despite Being In America Since She Was 20 Months Old
- And finally, White House Starts a Mini-War in Africa. Hopey-changey.