Movies

Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, reaches out and touches high-school students in North Carolina. No, not that way… Turns out a Rockingham County High School English class noticed the film The Tragedy of Macbeth was produced by Hefner back in 1971. They were watching the film on an old television set, so students joked that Hefner could buy them a new TV. The teacher wrote a letter to Hefner asking for a new TV. The letter signed by the students and sent to the Playboy Mansion and the Chicago headquarters. Two weeks later, a new 32-inch TV was on the way. ...

Strange Horizons comments on utopian/dystopian ideas through the centuries: The Ten Stupidest Utopias! The Industrial Revolution gave the world a new idea of the ideal society. “Try sniffing the abominable stench behind the piles of books,” wrote Japanese Futurist Hirato Renkichi in 1921. “How many times superior is the fresh scent of gasoline!” The Ten Sexiest Dystopias! Roll down your window: see the metaphors go by. There’s Zhora the replicant, smashing through plate glass windows; there’s Jake lost in Chinatown, and Tod Hackett running through Hollywood, bloody faced, chased by a mob. “Los Angeles is probably the most mediated town in America,” writes Michael Sorkin, “nearly unviewable save through the fictive scrim of its mythologizers.” ...

So, I guess there’s a level closer to Kevin Bacon than one degree, and Colin Firth is heading right for it.

Okay, I don’t have a cat of my own to take pictures of, or even a neighborhood cat. But we did just watch Cat People --- the great 1942 Val Lewton original, not the Nastassja Kinski version from 1982. :) It’s always good when you watch a low-budget film that simply suggests horror outclass a film that has to show every detail. Of course, the original version does have a lead actor who apparently wasn’t paid to show any expression at all. ...

One fan’s imagining of Jimmy Olsen’s memoirs: “Did I turn into a giant turtle monster? I sure did. Did I drink the elastic serum? You bet. Did I marry a gorilla? And how. Do I regret any of it? NOT ON YOUR LIFE, PAL.” You know, if Jimmy Olsen was really Robert Evans, that would make a great comic book. :)

Darth Vader on Contractors: Due to the haste with which we are proceding through the latter phases of this battle-station’s construction we have been forced to employ scores of civilian contractors from across the galaxy in addition to our own Imperial Corps of Engineers. This had led to a certain clash of working cultures. For instance, this morning I critiqued a tragically sub-par piece of workmanship on a tractor-beam repulsolift inversion assembly by snapping the neck of the site supervisor and throwing his limp corpse down a disused elevator shaft. ...

“Vin Diesel does not own a television. Instead, he derives entertainment by routinely opening the Ark of the Covenant.” “Vin Diesel created South North Korea by drawing a line of chalk 10 miles away from the DMZ and daring anyone to step across.” “Vin Diesel and Casper Van Dien are actually a superhero team that only fights crime in Toledo, Ohio, between 1:33pm and 4:39pm. Only 5 people in the free world know the reason for this.” ...

…a Bono, Up and Back, the Gilligan cut… John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey on what you say when there’s little new under the sun. :)

You know, I kind of remember this, but I have no idea why I never attended it when I was in Blacksburg. Maybe I was always broke by that time? Nah, it’s only $20. :) I wonder why the site shows up as black with black text, though.

There are two weird things in this review of Sin City: Is the plural of “comic” really “comix?” Is he actually insinuating that director Robert Rodriguez put in a swastika-shaped shuriken to appeal to a hypothetical Jewish media? (Fourth paragraph.) What the heck? Personally, I’m conflicted over seeing the movie in the theater. Pro: It’s directed by Robert Rodriguez. I like his El Mariachi series. Pro: I like the look of the film. The B&W effect looks interesting. ...