Washington Post: Massa flirts with the right, but Beck isn’t tickled.
‘Explained verity’ was one of Edward R. Murrow’s philosophies. Doubt B will risk it again. Blech.
WSJ: TV Host Silvano Vinceti Probes History’s Coldest Cases.
“For many months, Mr. Vinceti and a team of scientists have been exhuming remains they believe are Caravaggio’s in hopes of performing a belated autopsy. After digging up dozens of bodies, Mr. Vinceti has narrowed the field to a handful of long-buried corpses.” Lovely.
LA Times: Disney restyles ‘Rapunzel’ to appeal to boys.
”In our film, the infamous bandit Flynn Rider meets his match in the girl with the 70 feet of magical golden hair.” I hear the marketing folks, “Why, from the get-go, should we eliminate half our potential audience?”
Lightly Buzzed: George Clooney Shows How He Gets Through Oscar Night.
”The answer is not ‘patience.’”
idsgn: Animated shorts at the Academy Awards.
“Full views and previews of the shorts, here.”
Independent.UK: Congratulations on your Oscar (but don’t expect the money to flood in).
“Yet for all their extravagant frocks and jewellery, many of the stars who will toddle up that red carpet tomorrow afternoon have a guilty secret: they are missing out on their traditional share of the industry’s spoils. A-list actors, who in years gone by could expect to bank anything from $20-$30m [£13.3-£20m] a film, are still waiting for salaries to return to anything like pre-slump levels. Fewer studio movies are being made, and a troubled independent film sector is so far unable to pick up the slack.” From double digit millions to single digit millions? Tough.
CNN: Bill Mauldin stamp honors grunts’ hero.
“… the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that’s going to happen this month: Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamp.” Abso-f’ing-lutely. If you don’t know Willie and Joe, you know nothing about WWII.
COLOURlovers: Technicolor Fashion: Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Pick your Holly Golightly palette.
Mashable: Hulu Users Tag Leno’s Return as “Vomit Inducing” (and Much Worse).
”Despite strong ratings this week, Leno is still facing a backlash from those of us with a penchant for Conan’s style and resentment for how the situation was handled.” My italics. Hmmm. Strong ratings, but facing a “backlash”? Perhaps the greatest disconnect involves internet/social media mavens mistaking theoretical influence for actual influence.
Variety: ‘Gilligan’s Island’ headed to the bigscreen.
The writer for ‘Wild Hogs’ is penning it. I foresee a cross between “Wild Hogs” and “Lost”, with no rudder to steer between the two.
Discover Magazine: The Mother of all Rube Goldberg Machines!
Just wow.
LA Times: Roger Ebert takes to Twitter to give tea party followers a thumb’s down.
I keep running into Roger Ebert everywhere. His rapid rise in the press makes me expect we’re ripe for inevitable sensational come-down revelations. Perhaps he shaved cats in his teens. It’s the old paradigm for the media - the over-buildup, then — shock! — sensational letdown(s), mass of advertising dollars made on reporting minutiae. Question is, will we all remain faithful when it turns out he’s human?
NPR: Software Mimics Person’s Voice.
“Film critic Roger Ebert had his larynx removed through surgery, but a company called CereProc in Edinburgh, Scotland, has created a beta version of his voice.”
Mashable: Twitter’s Impending Ad Platform
“As Twitter’s been implying all along, the idea here is to be as non-invasive as possible. As opposed to inserting ads into your stream, Twitter is only going to place ads in search. On the other hand, if third-party apps like TweetDeck or Seesmic jump on board (and WSJ says a revenue share will incentivize them to do so), the searches you run and setup inside the program would conceivably include ads.”
New Scientist: Killer whale: the clue’s in the name.
The trainers have to know they’re working with highly dangerous animals. Just a quick peruse of Youtube, you find trainers knocked silly [vid implies this may be the same trainer who was killed], nearly drowned. Some people rock climb without ropes, some people skydive. I’d like to say this is the same, but there’s the whales themselves to consider. Keeping them locked up in a small pen is cruelty, in my book.
Lightly Buzzed: James Cameron Discusses Na’vi Boobs.
So now you know. As if you weren’t already going to Hell with your shoes on backwards for enjoying the film.
WSJ: In ‘Mind Movies,’ the Word Picture Continues to Appeal to Eager Ears.
“What amazes me is that audio drama just won’t go away. [snip] It’s so primal in us.” Oftentimes the fantasy landscapes of the mind, fed by audio alone, are so much more rewarding than audiovisuals.
Sydney Morning Herald.AU: Cate Blanchett’s Speech To The Australian Performing Arts Market.
“This insistence on the importance of experience itself is a feature of these witnessing books and these witnessing lives, an insistence that history is not a concept or a force, but the brief, limited, unimportant lives of ordinary men and women involved in the business of just getting from one day to the next, just this, repeated a million times over.”
LA Times: NBC commentators don’t know when to shut up.
“Even with the more restrained commentary, an air of participation inevitably creeps in — the commentator’s admiration and enthusiasm or, occasionally, anger and bewilderment become part of the experience, which then becomes more about entertainment than athleticism. [snip] But if that’s what you’re going for, then why not liberate Morgan Freeman from the Visa ads (which are, by the way, really terrific this year) and have him in the booth? Freeman can inject a sense of drama just by saying the athlete’s name.” Timely. I realized I’ve been getting cranky in the evenings, just from being blathered to death watching the Olympics. Last night, I started muting the sound, and had a much more pleasant time.
LA Times: ‘Avenue Q’ puppet too busty for Colorado Springs.
“Lucy, one of the puppet stars of the risque Broadway show ‘Avenue Q,’ won’t get the same exposure in the conservative bastion of Colorado Springs, Colo., where her ample — if also pink and fuzzy — endowment has proved too much for a billboard company.” Colorado Springs, as I’ve mentioned before, has become a bizarre place.
Youtube on animation.
History of Animation, Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Dude, you completely overlooked Terrytoons.
sehsucht.DE: Skoda Superb glass harp.
LA Times: Tim Burton based his weird White Queen on cooking star Nigella Lawson.
“She’s really beautiful and she does all this cooking, but then there’s this glint in her eye and when you see it you go, ‘Oh, whoa, she’s like really ... nuts.’ I mean in a good way. Well, maybe. I don’t know.” Excellent.
The Hollywood Reporter: PBS reinventing Sherlock Holmes.
“‘Sherlock’ will present a fast-paced 21st century spin on the classic detective stories set in modern-day London and stars Benedict Cumberbatch (’Atonement,’) Holmes and Martin Freeman (’The Office UK,’ ‘Hot Fuzz’ as Dr. Watson.” If anyone other than BBC and PBS were doing it, I’d despair. As it is, I’ll be curious.
