- 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.
various
Wednesday various
- You kind of have to love Umberto Eco’s answer to the question “What’s one thing you’re a fan of that people might not expect?” He said: “My last grandchild.”
- John Seavey pitches Evil Toy Monkey — The Series. I’d watch that.
- “It was nearly toast, but Coney Island Bialys and Bagels is on a roll again after Muslim businessmen Peerzada Shah and Zafaryab Ali recently took over the 91-year-old mainstay of the Jewish noshes.” Now if we could just figure out how the Middle East is like a bialy shop… [via]
- Ken Jennings suggest weaning ourselves from our GPSes:
But as much as I love GPS, I worry that wayfinding is yet another part of our brains that our culture has decided it’s okay to outsource to technology. A famous 2000 study on London cab drivers showed that the hippocampus, the brain’s seat of spatial knowledge, grows physically as our geographic knowledge increases. Many people believe their sense of direction is hopeless, but in reality, that just means they need more practice. In experiment after experiment, researchers have learned that repeating a few simple exercises can turn lousy spatial thinkers into good ones. Without that exercise, our skills get flabby.
- And finally, Firefly the Animated Series. Oh, if only. [via
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Tuesday various
- PETA really doesn’t know how to pick its battles, does it?
- The feminist movie of 2011? Would you believe Thor?
- Klingon language helps man deal with dyslexia [via]
- Kevin Clash has been listening to Adele recently. Uh oh. Is Elmo going to get all maudlin now?
- And finally, literary devices. I think we could all use the Great Golden Hammer of Hyperbole from time to time.
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.”
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?