The New Yorker: How Far Did PBS Go to Avoid Offending a Sponsor?
Woof. When one has to beg for public dollars, pushing a shiv into your largest donors comes hard.
Youtube: Europa Report Trailer (2013).
Anyone else had their sci-fi memory tweaked? This looks awfully like a riff on a couple of chapters of 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke. You remember … where the Chinese ship Tsien lands on Europa, ultimately destroyed by a light-sensitive life form as the crew tries to pump water into their tanks for use as fuel? The riveting solo survivor monologue of Dr. Chang? Chapters 7-11.
National Review: Theater Night — Vigilantes 1, Vulgarians 0.
NY Times: My Medical Choice.
Angelina Jolie undergoes a voluntary double mastectomy. Gutsy lady.
TNDP.org: U.S. House Republican Majority Votes to Axe 40-Hour Work Week.
A den of vipers and thieves. I’ve got some tar … anyone got a supply of feathers and a railroad tie?
LA Times: Ray Harryhausen videos—Poetry in stop-motion in five highlights.
RIP, oh driver of youthful imaginations.
ArtDaily: Documentary reveals story of WWII unit that duped Hitler’s army - with rubber tanks.
“It’s the highest kind of creativity in the art of war.”
Telegraph.UK: Dame Helen Mirren’s outburst at noisy drummers.
Mashable: Ask Hugh Jackman ‘Wolverine’ Questions for May 2 Twitter Chat.
“Golden Globe winner Hugh Jackman will use Twitter on Thursday to answer fans’ burning questions about The Wolverine movie — in which he will play the disgruntled hero with degenerative abilities …” Linked for one reason - that lovely misspelling. Google it to see how far it’s spread already.
SF Reporter: It’s Official! Author George RR Martin Purchases Cocteau Theater.
“This is the theater where I became addicted to putting Parmesan cheese on my popcorn.” It was famed for that little (enormous) delicacy.
SF New Mexican: George R.R. Martin reportedly plans to revive Jean Cocteau theatre.
Great news! It was a tatty but nice venue for seeing films. Hopefully they’ll suss the parking situation.
New Mexico, Film & Entertainment.
Depp, Cooper coming to NM shortly. Seems Hollywood hasn’t given up on our film incentives yet.
Kotaku: These Real Totoro Catbuses Will Delight You.
Don’t miss the three-wheel DIY at the very bottom.
NY Times: Jonathan Winters, Comedian, Dies at 87.
“More influential than successful, Mr. Winters circled the comic heavens tracing his own strange orbit, an object of wonder and admiration to his peers.” What a wonderful assessment. Oh, you’ll be sorely missed, Mr Winters. RIP. Perhaps not his finest comedic performance, but one of my all-time favorites.
SciAm: Getting to Know Your Inner Charlatan.
“Everybody’s got a little larceny operating in them, surely you know that?” You remember who said it, right? Bing Crosby.
NY Times: Aereo Has TV Networks Circling the Wagons.
“As cable and then the Internet introduced new competitors, station owners began to rely on a second revenue source, the so-called retransmission fees that come from the cable and satellite operators that pick up their signals and repackage them for subscribers. Now that they’ve had a taste of these fees, the stations aren’t willing — or able, they say — to go back to the old model of advertising alone.” Didn’t need it in the past, but now … they’ll fight to keep it.
ArtDaily: National Portrait Gallery unveils its new portrait of Dame Maggie Smith.
Curious perspective on the floor.
NY Times: Annette Funicello, Beloved Mouseketeer, Dies at 70.
“I can’t stand it! This is terrible! How depressing. ... ANNETTE FUNICELLO HAS GROWN UP!” Grown up, and left us. RIP, Annette.
BBC: Queen honoured with Bafta award for film and TV support.
“The most memorable Bond girl yet.” It was the bloomers blowing in the slipstream that won over critics.
NY Times: Roger Ebert, Film Critic, Dies.
Later: For me, Roger Ebert’s great talent was communicating his character through text, no matter the service or medium. You always felt you knew the man. It’s a skill that is too often overlooked; some do it naturally, some work to achieve it, some never can accomplish it. Ebert was a natural; years of practice in print gave him a huge advantage once he turned to the internet. He had a ‘blog voice’ long before blogs. And this is an appropriate time, I think, to point to his Salon piece on death.
Even later, related to my aside: The Atlantic, Ebert on Writing.
Finally: He left with a smile. Exit, stage left.
Youtube: Mad Men—Don Draper Says “What?”
Strangely compelling. May not be up for long, it’s been pulled once already (apparently).
Chicago Sun-Times: Roger Ebert’s Journal.
Sadly, Roger Ebert is suffering from another cancer. Yet he’s expanding his online presence at the same time. Bravo.
Social Text: Periscope—Downton Abbey and the Fantasy of Structured Idleness.
“Like Lord Grantham, creative classers yoked themselves to capital’s promises—to the fortunes amassed in America’s age of expansion—in an effort to preserve a way of life, to preserve a sense of nobility, principle and righteousness. But whereas Grantham, the fictional aristocrat has ‘no choice’ but to surrender to the purported security capital guarantees, in order to ensure that the estate remains in tact, and ‘his people’ both upstairs and down are taken care of, the ‘disenfranchised’ creative classes of the contemporary moment have been left unmoored by the proliferation of neoliberal choice, that very notion of freedom as choice constitutive of the creative lifestyle they counterpose against the dehumanizing vagaries of industrial and service sector labor: the work one would never choose for one’s self.” Via wood s lot.
Washington Times: Jane Nebel Henson, wife of late Muppets creator Jim Henson, dies at 79.
Rest in peace, Good lady. I hope the Muppets do an Irish wake. If you dig on Google Images, you can see Jane with many of the early Muppets.
Not One-Off Britishisms: “Pulling.”
A new one on me.
