It looks like New Line and Peter Jackson have finally made nice, because they just announced (along with MGM) the simultaneous production of two films based on The Hobbit and other ancillary Tolkein material. (The director is still unannounced.) Make it in 3D!

I saw Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn last night – based on Dieter Dengler’s (played by Christian Bale) escape from a Laotian prison camp – and thought it was a pretty good war prison break film. Jeremy Davies plays Eugene DeBruin, a Charlie Manson-like co-POW who threatens to interfere with the plan. While reading about the movie online afterward, I learned that his character was based on a real person who stayed behind to help a sick fellow prisoner, and was never heard from again. His brother runs Rescue Dawn: The Truth, a website that criticizes DeBruin’s portrayal. It made me feel a little guilty about enjoying the film.

It turns out that Amazon was the recent auction winner of J.K. Rowling’s The Tale of Beedle the Bard , paying around $4 million for one of seven copies. They’ve been posting summaries and images of the rare book on amazon.com. (via agblog)

PBS’s NOW has an excellent interview with Zephyr Teachout -- who was the director of online organizing for Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign – about the Ron Paul phenomenon.

There is some part of the Ron Paul story that is a little bit of expression of anger at how limited our political debate has become. The feedback for a lot of media, I think, is unfortunately very small because we spend a lot of time—or political reporters spend a lot of time—around political staff. And they have their own set of language, metrics, fundraising, and what’s serious and what’s not serious, and what’s okay and what’s not okay, and what’s crazy, and what’s not crazy.

(via techpres)

The opening minutes (in French) of Dante 01, Marc Caro’s first film since The City of Lost Children , a long-time favorite of mine. (I saw it in the theater four or five times!) Jean-Pierre Jeunet, his co-director on that latter film, went on to direct Alien: Resurrection before getting to Amélie and A Very Long Engagement -- let’s hope Caro doesn’t stumble out of the gate with this Alien -like science-fiction feature. (via aicn)

I would play Cowbell Hero.

A leaked list of the names that will be in today’s Mitchell Report on steroid use in Major League Baseball. If this is true, Red Sox fans won’t be happy to see Jason Varitek there. Johnny Damon, Trot Nixon, Nomar Garciaparra, and Roger Clemens, less so. (via kottke)

Update: The post is down. I’ll put up the official one when it comes out.
Update 2: It appears the above list had some inaccuracies. Still waiting for an official one…
Update 3: Here’s the report itself. Since I don’t want to go through all 400 pages, I’m still waiting for a list, because hey, I love lists.
Update 4: Forget it, I’m not going to post a list – the report is subtler than that. I searched the PDF, though, and Varitek, Nixon, Damon, and Garciaparra aren’t in it. Clemens and Mo Vaughn are. Here are the report’s conclusions.

10questions.com let the Internet-at-large pick 10 video questions to put to the 2008 presidential candidates, covering topics such as election reform, net neutrality, medical marijuana, and corporate personhood. These are great questions, but so far only Edwards and Huckabee have responded, with Ron Paul coming soon.

Le Pétomane, the Fartiste.

Cyborg insect art. (thx, flea)

The trailer for Speed Racer, the Wachowskis’s directorial follow-up to The Matrix trilogy. As kottke says, the courses are reminiscent of Mario Kart on GameCube, but the style also reminds me of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.

Pitchfork just published their “The Year in Photos” list, a collection of photographs of musicians and performances from 2007 – and there are some damn good pics.

Barack Obama meets Bollywood. He just clinched the Indian-American vote. (via techpres)

A collection of Sesame Street animations from 1979 set to “Geometry of Circles,” a series of vocal/instrumental pieces composed by Philip Glass. (via bb)

When shopping for Christmas ornaments, have you ever asked yourself: “What if the fetus you were going to abort would grow up to be a soldier bringing democracy to a godless dictatorship?” I have too, and now there’s an answer. (thx, jds)

Oddest rumor in awhile: Did Morgan Spurlock find Osama bin Laden while making his next documentary? (via aicn)

Jim Emerson slams Southland Tales:

Part of me questions whether it’s even worth writing about, mainly because it offers so little of cinematic interest. It’s fussy and inert, like Part 4 of a PowerPoint slide-show based on some elaborately drawn storyboards that explain in excruciating detail the minutiae of the mythology behind “Hudson Hawk.”

Harsh, and it gets worse from there. Will I drag myself to see this mess?

The Key to Riserva: a short film directed by Martin Scorsese and shot in the style of Alfred Hitchcock – and also a wine advertisement. Wine aside, Scorsese does an excellent job capturing the visual tension of classic Hitchcock. (via aicn)

Just published (and purchased by me): Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest by Greg Carlisle. From the book description:

Elegant Complexity is the first critical work to provide detailed and thorough commentary on each of the 192 sections of David Foster Wallace’s masterful Infinite Jest… Carlisle explains the novel’s complex plot threads (and discrepancies) with expert insight and clear commentary. The book is 99% spoiler-free for first-time readers of Infinite Jest.

I’ve seen some sections of this, and I get the feeling that this will become the authoritative critical book on Infinite Jest. Disclosure: I am online acquaintances with both the author and editor of this book.