{"id":3537,"date":"2009-08-22T18:30:01","date_gmt":"2009-08-22T22:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3537"},"modified":"2009-08-21T15:50:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T19:50:00","slug":"saturday-various-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3537","title":{"rendered":"Saturday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I have to say, even on a simple design and aesthetic level, I pretty much hate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/booksblog\/2009\/aug\/19\/harm-bad-book-cover\">this new <i>Twilight<\/i>-inspired cover<\/a> for <i>Wuthering Heights<\/i>. And that&#8217;s even before you throw in all the kind of sad cross-marketing with Stephanie Meyer&#8217;s books &#8212; which, as near as I understand these things, are pretty bad:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>Quite what Emily Bront\u00c3\u00ab would make of it all is anyone&#8217;s guess, although she would probably be quite gratified to actually have her name on the latest editions of Wuthering Heights \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like her sisters, in her early career she adopted a male-sounding name, Ellis Bell, to overcome the prejudice against women writers. There&#8217;s a fair chance, though, that she might be spinning in her grave at the thought that her work is best marketed with the intimation that it is a pale imitation of Stephenie Meyer. And that&#8217;s not a course of action which is to be encouraged, given the latest publishing fad for mashing up classic texts, re-inventing them as gory horror stories, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment\/news\/la-et-austen17-2009aug17,0,5843230.story\">flogging them to the Twilight generation<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">I must add, however, that I have no great fondness for <i>Wuthering Heights<\/i>, which I quit reading about halfway through. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookslut.com\/blog\/archives\/2009_08.php#014983\">Like Jessa Crispin<\/a>, I worry about young girls swooning over Heathcliff just about as much as over Edward. These are not exactly healthy relationships, ladies.<\/li>\n<li>I liked <i>Eat Pray Love<\/i> both more and less than I expected to. It&#8217;s often wildly self-indulgent, whiny, and desperate in its new-agey-ness, but those are all complaints the book levels against itself throughout, and it&#8217;s often incredibly engaging, so&#8230; But honestly, I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m up for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookslut.com\/blog\/archives\/2009_08.php#014984\">a sequel<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I can&#8217;t say I agree with all of Quentin Tarrantino&#8217;s picks <a href=\"http:\/\/kottke.org\/09\/08\/quentin-tarantinos-top-20-movies\">for top 20 films (since 1992)<\/a> &#8212; I think Unbreakable is underrated, and arguably Shyamalan&#8217;s best movie, but masterpiece of our time? Not hardly &#8212; but he thinks intelligently and not at all pretentiously about movies. Here&#8217;s a man just madly in love with the medium, warts and all. (Also a man, if I&#8217;m not mistaken, physically morphing into Charles Nelson Reilly.) [<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanvan.blogspot.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Every time I read an interview <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/eli-roth,31811\/?utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_campaign=feeds&#038;utm_source=type_interview\">with director Eli Roth<\/a>, I feel like I&#8217;m getting one step closer to breaking down and finally watching <i>Hostel<\/i>. The movies he makes don&#8217;t really appeal to me, at least on the immediate and visceral level, but he speaks passionately and intelligently about them and the genre.<\/li>\n<li>And finally, via <a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanvan.blogspot.com\/\">Gerry Canavan<\/a> comes this (I wish) surprising statistic: 62% of Republicans say <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2009\/08\/poll-republicans-think-government-should-stay-out-of-medicare.php\">the government should stay out of Medicare<\/a>. Which really does &#8220;[illustrate] the profound levels of ignorance that currently interfere with the debate over health care&#8230;&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have to say, even on a simple design and aesthetic level, I pretty much hate this new Twilight-inspired cover for Wuthering Heights. And that&#8217;s even before you throw in all the kind of sad cross-marketing with Stephanie Meyer&#8217;s books &#8212; which, as near as I understand these things, are pretty bad: Quite what Emily &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3537\">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":[16,5,14,6],"class_list":["post-3537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books","tag-health","tag-movies","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537"}],"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=3537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}