{"id":3425,"date":"2009-04-30T21:29:52","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T01:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3425"},"modified":"2009-04-30T20:58:40","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T00:58:40","slug":"thursday-various-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3425","title":{"rendered":"Thursday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<ul>   <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Joe Biden does seem determined to live up to his reputation for saying dumb things &#8212; like, oh, needlessly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2009\/04\/30\/biden-swine-flu-made-me-t_n_193473.html\">fueling the panic over swine flu<\/a> &#8212; but I still find that preferable to a Vice President who is, y&#8217;know, evil incarnate. [<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.blogspot.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>I don&#8217;t think Roger Ebert liked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20090429\/REVIEWS\/904299978\/-1\/RSS\">the new <em>Wolverine<\/em> movie<\/a> very much. I&#8217;m a little disappointed by his not so subtle digs at comic books in general and their readers &#8212; &#8220;Am I being disrespectful to this material? You bet.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/xmen-origins-wolverine,27393\/?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=feeds&amp;utm_source=channel_film\">Keith Phipps<\/a> didn&#8217;t like it much either &#8212; &#8220;A couple of halfway decent action scenes do little to distract from the story\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mounting ludicrousness&#8230;or a conclusion that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only a little more satisfying than a projector breakdown.&#8221; &#8212; but he suggests the film might be a failure in spite of its comic-book origins, not necessarily because of it. That may be reading too much into Ebert&#8217;s review. Despite the occasional <a href=\"http:\/\/rogerebert.suntimes.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20090304\/ANSWERMAN\/903049991\">dust-up with the fanboy set<\/a>, Ebert has liked plenty of comic-book movies. (And <em>X-Men Origins: Wolverine<\/em> is maybe just a bad one.) Still, it&#8217;s hard not to get a little riled up by that constant refrain of &#8220;this is good&#8230;for a comic book&#8221; or &#8220;this is good&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/nielsenhayden.com\/makinglight\/archives\/011216.html\">so it can&#8217;t be science fiction<\/a>. It&#8217;s hard not to get a little tired of that.<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Speaking of science fiction, though, these <a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguinsciencefiction.org\/\">Penguin Science Fiction<\/a> covers are pretty cool. [<a href=\"http:\/\/igallo.blogspot.com\/\" title=\"Irene Gallo\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Over at TV Squad, Brad Trechak suggests a list of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvsquad.com\/2009\/04\/29\/tv-squad-ten-american-actors-who-could-play-doctor-who\/\">American actors who could play Doctor Who<\/a>. I assume he&#8217;s not serious &#8212; his choices are pretty ridiculous &#8212; but it&#8217;s an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. Not the idea of casting it, necessarily, nor Trechak&#8217;s specific casting choices, but the question of why it <em>can&#8217;t<\/em> be done. Other British television shows have been remade across the pond, some even successfully, so why <em>not<\/em> this one?\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<p>I think you&#8217;d have trouble finding a more quintessentially British show than <em>Doctor Who<\/em>. Its <em>being<\/em> a British show is so completely wrapped up in its identity that an American remake just seems unimaginable &#8212; even though there&#8217;s nothing inherently British about the chracter, or nothing that couldn&#8217;t easily be made more American with a few minor tweaks. I&#8217;m trying to think of an American equivalent that really <em>couldn&#8217;t<\/em> be remade overseas &#8212; something that&#8217;s too distinctly an American show &#8212; and I&#8217;m not sure I can. Any thoughts?<\/li>\n<li>And fianlly, a fascinating look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/04\/19\/books\/review\/Beard-t.html?scp=1&amp;sq=scrolling%20down%20the%20ages&amp;st=cse\">ancient Roman bookselling world<\/a>:<br \/>\n<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">&#8230;booksellers were the rich pimps of Roman publishing and authors, or even the books themselves, were the hard-working but humiliated prostitutes.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">I&#8217;m also amused to learn that &#8220;at some periods of Roman history, it was the fashion to copy out the text with no breaks between the words, but as a river of letters.&#8221; And we think reading on a computer screen can be tough! [<a href=\"http:\/\/community.livejournal.com\/theinferior4\/\" title=\"the inferior 4+1\">via<\/a>] <\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Biden does seem determined to live up to his reputation for saying dumb things &#8212; like, oh, needlessly fueling the panic over swine flu &#8212; but I still find that preferable to a Vice President who is, y&#8217;know, evil incarnate. [via] I don&#8217;t think Roger Ebert liked the new Wolverine movie very much. I&#8217;m &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3425\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}