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The Colbert Report points out that Fox News is obsessed with calling the current global crisis World War III. What’s disturbing is how they are saying it almost gleefully.
(0) #7/18/2006
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Last night, we in Las Vegas were blessed with an awesome lightning storm. The photo below comes from a Daily Mail article (via Drudge) which mentioned yesterday’s storm. (The photo was taken from about a mile west of my apartment.)
(0) #7/18/2006
Comic-Con 2006
This weekend I will be attending Comic-Con 2006 in San Diego. There, with some fellow bloggers, I will be participating in (closed-door) round table discussions with three people involved with Snakes on a Plane : Jules Sylvester (a snake handler), David Ellis (the director), and Samuel Jackson (bad-ass motherfucker). I guess they liked my review of the novelization. (Oh, and being friends with Brian doesn’t hurt.)
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Christ Cunningham’s latest music video: “Sheena is a Parasite.” Perhaps his most conventional video yet, perhaps not.
(0) #7/14/2006
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Forget Kittinger: Frenchman Michel Fournier is preparing a space dive that would best Kittinger’s 100,000 foot record by another 30,000 feet – that’s 25 miles up in space. (thx, flea)
(0) #7/14/2006
Israel-Lebanon Crisis
I would be remiss not to offer this up to debate. The current Israel-Lebanon crisis: what are your thoughts on this? Is Israel’s violent response justified by Hezbollah’s actions? Are they nipping a problem in the bud before it gets more out-of-hand? Are they overreacting out of fear and fustration? Are they playing into the hands of Iran? How does this affect the Bush administration’s policies?
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Amazon is listing an “Untitled Thomas Pynchon” book with a hefty 992 pages and an early December publication date. The rumor picks up steam. (thx, ss)
(0) #7/13/2006
Muse: Black Holes & Revelations
My musical guilty pleasure of the year so far: Muse’s latest and fourth album Black Holes & Revelations. Why guilty? Because there’s almost something shameless about the way they simultaneously rip-off Jeff Buckley, Depeche Mode, and, yes, U2. I had never heard of Muse before this album (which ignorance my officemate found surprising), so that makes me blissfully unaware of any checkered past.
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If you’re one to think that medical malpractice suits are getting out of control, consider this.
(0) #7/11/2006
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Street installations by artist Mark Jenkins. A good mixture of surrealism and creepiness. (via bb)
(0) #7/11/2006
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South Africa, who is hosting the World Cup in 2010, just announced their official logo today. Take a look at it, along with all the other logos going back to England’s in 1966.
(0) #7/7/2006
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Polish alternative designs for Hollywood movie posters. Here’s, e.g., Weekend at Bernie ‘s:
(via kottke)
(0) #7/5/2006
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Jim Emerson, web editor of rogerebert.com and blogger, has put up an Opening Shots Quiz on his blog. The idea is this: name the film based on a still image of its opening shot. If you do really well at it, try the other quiz, which is much harder.
(0) #7/3/2006
You can’t win if you don’t vote
There will be an Arizona initiative in the ballot this November that would turn the election process into a lottery: those who vote would be automatically entered to win $1 million. I think I’d prefer turning election day into a state or national holiday, but on the other hand, I can’t quite think of any reason that the lottery is a bad idea. (via pw)
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And speaking of The Big Lebowski , here’s a testament to its repetitive use of repetition. (via bb)
(0) #6/29/2006
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City Pages , a Minneapolis alternative weekly, writes about the history of pitchforkmedia.com and describes the “Pitchfork effect,” which is what happens when a small band is lauded by the site and suddenly becomes huge. For comparison, see the Slashdot effect. (via ss)
(0) #6/29/2006
“Up, Simba,” the comic strip
A guy named Mike Russell has adapted a small part of David Foster Wallace’s essay “Up, Simba” as a comic strip The original essay is about Wallace spending a week on John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” bus tour in 2000. It’d be cool to see more of this kind of adaptation from Russell, even if Wallace’s verbiage and syntax loses a dimension in this medium. (thx, bill s.)
“Stolen ‘Flowers’?”
The Boston Globe reports on a screenwriter who’s filing a seemingly strong claim that Broken Flowers was ripped off one of his own scripts by Jim Jarmusch and/or the studios that financed it. I haven’t seen the film in question, but it’s true that Jarmusch is the last person I’d think of to be involved in a copyright infringement suit on the receiving end. (thx, jbg)
The Movie You’ve Seen the Most
Slate asked a collection of filmmakers and critics to name the movie they’ve seen the most. E.g., Spike Lee’s is West Side Story , and Neil Labute’s is Barry Lyndon. (Excluding movies like It ‘s a Wonderful Life.) Here’s my own breakdown:
