various

Thursday various

  • If it was up to me, Christopher Walken would read everything, not just Lady Gaga lyrics. [via]

  • Is there a good Roger Ebert and a bad Roger Ebert? Roger Ebert examines the question.

    I think I fall somewhere in between Ebert and Schneider on this, though I’m much less analytic about film than the latter. I do think Ebert sometimes lets emotion sway him too far in a movie’s favor (Congo comes to mind, for example.) But I almost understand why he likes something I think is awful, and I can’t disagree with his assertion that “film itself is primarily an emotional, not a cerebral, medium.”

  • Dave Kehr on Blu-Ray and DVD:

    For Blu-ray to look its best it requires picture and sound images of the finest, most pristine quality. That’s not difficult to come by in a contemporary release like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (the best-selling Blu-ray of 2009), but is somewhat more problematic for a film made in Germany in 1926. Blu-ray exaggerates the faults in older material: the dust specks and scratches caused by decades of wear and tear, the softness of detail or harshness of contrast caused by duplication from sources several generations removed from the film that actually passed through the camera.

    He also shares this interesting statistic: “Turner Classic Movies online says that of the 162,984 films listed in its database (based on the authoritative AFI Catalog), only 5,980 (3.67 percent) are available on home video.”

    We will probably never achieve the utopian vision of having every film ever made available at the click of a mouse, but we are certain to move a little bit further in that direction in the decade ahead — with the cooperation of the studios or without them. (Copyrights will soon be expiring on the first wave of talkies.) In the meantime let us praise diversity. As confusing as the format wars may be, they keep hope alive.

  • Philip K. Dick on dreams and/or the universe’s practical jokes.

  • And finally, a famous Twilight Zone episode reimagined for a modern age. [via]

Wednesday various

  • I don’t know…when the bank seizes the wrong house, changes the locks, tacks a foreclosure notice to the door, and leaves 75 pounds of fish to rot for a week, do you really think the homeowner’s suit has no merit? If nothing else, he should press charges for breaking and entering. [via]
  • I’m just a little late to this, but: the Guardian considers the worst books of the last decade:

    To remember only achievement and worth is to ignore the vast majority of our cultural experience. It helps create that strange cultural telescoping that makes us think that the past was always better; that odd warping of collective memory that enables us to recall even the 1970s fondly.

    There’s some truth to this, I think. Of course, I do like at least a couple of the books he mentions as worst of the decade. (Oracle Night does approach self-parody, but it’s the last time I truly enjoyed Auster, and I found it a genuinely haunting book. His Man in the Dark, ostensibly about the past decade, was much, much worse.) [via]

  • Jonathan Lethem: “Ian McEwan has a great line where he says, ‘Book touring is like being an employee of your former self.'”

  • NPR looks at The Big Bang Theory and the male gaze:

    But the changes in this particular show make for a great example of the fact that you don’t just avoid empty, cliched versions of women (or men, and I am looking at you, Sex And The City) because they’re offensive or infuriating or anything like that. The best creative reason to avoid them is that they make your show bad. Making Penny real has opened up all kinds of comedic possibilities that haven’t transformed it into life-changing art, but have made it into a very good half-hour sitcom… [via]

    I started watching the show over my holiday break for the first time, and I’ve very quickly caught up. (I watched this week’s episode last night.) I liked the first season (and even the pilot) considerably more than Linda Holmes did, but she’s not at all wrong about Penny. What makes the show work is that these are very real, well developed characters, and it suffered when she alone wasn’t.

  • And finally, for the couple of Doctor Who fans in the audience, John Seavey offers a reconsideration of the Fifth Doctor.

Tuesday various

Monday various

  • Ursula K. Le Guin On Rules of Writing, or, Riffing on Rechy:

    As for “Write what you know,” I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them. I got my knowledge of them, as I got whatever knowledge I have of the hearts and minds of human beings, through imagination working on observation. Like any other novelist. All this rule needs is a good definition of “know.” [via]

  • At this rate, NBC’s Day One is going to end up as nothing but a blipvert.
  • 42 Essential 3rd Act Twists [via]
  • I really like this vintage ad search engine. [via]
  • And finally, Batgirl Is Now Prince. Also: Marvel Comics as Simpsons characters [via]

Tuesday various

  • Scientists develop ‘golden fleece’ lozenge to fight off all cold and flu bugs [via]:

    The pill, which would cost 20 pence a day and would be taken once before breakfast, could be sold over the counter in as little as two years.

  • “Most expensive” foods like this often seem like a cheat to me — of course it’s expensive if it’s served in a solid gold dish! — but this one seems like it might actually earn its hefty price tag, if only because the most expensive ingredients are also edible. That said, there’s not a chance I’m paying $750 for a single cupcake. [via]
  • Arachne Jericho on embracing the inconsistencies in the Sherlock Holmes universe and why a gay Holmes/Watson relationship really isn’t such a stretch.
  • I once tried getting a book endorsement from Desmond Tutu. When his assistant turned me down, I didn’t turn around and fake one. This is one of several reasons why I am not an African dictator. (Nelson Mandela Foundation accuses Congo president over fake foreword) [via]
  • And finally, a fascinating story about a Wired writer who tried to disappear. I was particularly amused by the idea that his trackers created real Twitter accounts to look like automated spambots to draw away suspicion. Seems like the inverse of how these things usually work. [via]