- Today is Harry Houdini’s birthday. In honor of that, here’s a look at his Scene and Prop List. [via]
- I don’t know… ordering the removal of a mural depicting your state’s labor history from the lobby of your state’s Department of Labor seems like kind of a dick move. [via]
- As, frankly, do these new farm “protection” bills discussed by Mark Bittman — although, there, there’s some dangerous precedent being set:
The Florida bill would require anyone wishing to photograph a farm to first secure written permission from the owner. And what if they don’t? First-degree felony. The implicit goal here is to deter and criminalize damning undercover exposés….The bill would also make it illegal for an agenda-less passerby to snap a picture of a farm from the side of the road, but my best guess is that those “crimes†might not be prosecuted quite so diligently.
- The Phantom Menace in 3-D? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me…oh, god, what is this? Like the at least the sixth or seventh time? Shame very obviously on me, George Lucas, but I will not be going to see this. [via]
- And finally, an interview with Terry Jones. He discusses, among other things, Monty Python‘s less than certain start:
I mean, even right up until the middle of the second series John Cleese’s mum was still sending him job adverts for supermarket managers cut out from her local newspaper.
movies
Wednesday various
- Twenty-or-so questions with comedian Mike Birbiglia. On what makes someone a real New Yorker: “The willingness to live within ten inches of someone else at all times.”
- So much for that new Dune movie.
- Sperm whales may have names. [via]
- Would you pay $50 a month to rent original artwork?
- And finally, Warren Ellis asks artists to re-imagine the Fantastic Four. Chip Zdarsky’s contribution, the third at that main link, would likely substitute Dr. Doom for Dr. Heiter, but a lot of the reinterpretations are equally interesting.
Oh, the things that I’ve zined
I spent most of the day, except for some much needed time in the beautiful weather outside, working on layout for next month’s issue of Kaleidotrope. At least, I’m still hoping it’s next month’s issue, and I’m pretty confident in that hope, but still, I’m pushing things a little late for an April publication. I’ve still got three print issues to do this year, before I move the zine online. I’m expecting to keep it as a quarterly, at least for the first year, to see how that works out, with something like 25-30 stories a year. I think I’ll miss the thought that goes into layout of a physical, printed zine but not the layout itself, miss the construction but not the tedious building, kerning, cutting-and-pasting.
I also managed to watch this week’s episode of Community and the first episode of the third season of the UK Being Human. And 9 — which, as I noted on Twitter, is a richly imagined, detailed post-apocalypse, but it’s a bit too bleak for a children’s movie, and the story is a little blah for adults. I’d have to say I agree with everything the AV Club’s Tasha Robinson says here. It was beautiful to look at it, but overall a disappointment.
Though at least this means I can finally send it back to Netflix. It’s ridiculous that I’ve had this out since December.
The living daylights
I go back to work tomorrow. Wasn’t I just at work yesterday?
At least it will still be sunny when I leave the office tomorrow evening. Which I suppose almost makes up for the stupid, outdated idiocy that is Daylight Savings Time. I mean, extra daylight in the evening is great, sure. If there’s one thing I don’t like about winter, beyond the cold and the need to shovel large quantities of snow — with which, honestly, I can deal — it’s that little bit less of sunlight, which, along with the cold, makes the night, on some instinctual level, seem so much shorter. I think I would go mad living in a part of the world where it’s always dark, or always light, for some part of the year. Or on that planet from Pitch Black. Seriously, if I had to live on that planet from Pitch Black, and neither the ravenous alien creatures nor Vin Diesel murdered me where I stand, well then, I think I’d just go a little stir crazy.
That’s just how I see it.
I think I need to go to sleep now. Tomorrow, I go back to work.
Oh, and I’ve posted a few more photos from my stay in Cambridge, if you’re at all interested. Unfortunately, I saw very little of Boston proper, and it was too dark and rainy for any decent photos — but the river view was very pretty Friday evening.
Monster mash
Not much of a Saturday, all things being equal, just the kind that seems to vanish out from under you. Beyond stopping by the library and the post office, I’m not sure that I did much of anything today.
This evening, I did watch Monsters, which manages to do a whole lot with almost nothing…and yet ultimately not feel like a whole lot in the end. It’s sort of a cross between Cloverfield, with that movie’s oft-unseen alien nasties but minus its shaky-cam aesthetic and interchangeable characters, and District 9, with that movie’s impressive yet low-budget special effects but minus the political commentary, or actually much of any script. The two leads work well together, with the unforced chemistry (perhaps of two people looking for chemistry), and the movie does a remarkable amount of world-building and raising of tension with very few appearances of the titular alien monsters. The Mexican locations are both exotic and familiar, suggesting a very real and lived-in world, with the creature effects, impressive as they might be, relegated mostly to the background.
Which would be fine if the movie were as interesting as it was amiably exotic. In many ways, it’s effective because it isn’t a traditional, scary creature-feature. It’s less effective because it doesn’t ever seem to figure out what else it wants to be instead.