Arts & Letters

The Story of George by James Grimmelmann : An interesting Median Strip piece concerning the design and construction of the famous Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Its a great read. Disney is notorius for pissing off its employees (or, rather, ex-employees) once their job is done. There is a legion of graphic artists whose grievances against Disney are great; this is perhaps why you see so many wierd hidden offences in their animated movies (such as this new one, pointed out by xmark). There is also rumoured to be a painting in the Magic Kingdom bearing a cartoon Hitler amidst a large ensemble of Disney characters. In relation to the post below, grenville pointed out that Mirimax (owned by Disney) is buying up riights to Hong Kong films, changing the stories, dubbing, editing, bastardising and then suing anyone who releases the original art. There is an online petition, but I doubt it would do any good…

alan moore: magician is a site with various odds and ends written by Moore. I found most of it to be interesting. It includes some loose plans for a comic-book Grimoire, an article explaining why he became a magician, and some interesting correspondance with Dave Sim (creator of the long running independant Cerebus comic that I wrote about a while back).

Completely unrelated: Steven Den Best comments on the timely release of the new Ridley Scott directed, Josh Hartnett vehicle, Black Hawk Down.

Radio Diaries is a collection of National Public Radio programs that were designed to give a voice to people not typically represented in the public forum. Particularly interesting are the prison stories (2001’s main theme), though the audio journals of teenagers, workers, and the elderly are good as well.

This past year, five inmates, four correctional officers and a judge were given tape recorders. For six months, the diarists kept audio journals and recorded the sounds and scenes of everyday life behind bars: shakedowns, new inmate arrivals, roll call, monthly family visits, meals at the chow hall, and quiet moments late at night inside a cell. The series is an intimate and surprising audio portrait of prison life.

The series aired in on NPR’s All Things Considered in January 2001.

The Day They Let Bernard Leave by John Robinson (.pdf file) : A cryptic and ambiguous short story in which a man named Bernard has a very strange day. Everyone is staring at him; even, sometimes, being nice to him. Strange. Anyway, its a good read if you don’t mind the ambiguity of it all. Is Bernard as lucky as everyone thinks? I’m not so sure. Anyway, Robinson is an interesting fellow, known to many as “Widgett”. He runs a website called, NeedCoffee.com which is quite an interesting mix (not unlike Kaedrin, but more interesting and older:). He also has a production company called One Tusk and recently pubished a book of poetry called Love Letters Unsent to People Unmet. Check it out. Another story by Robinson: Necrogarchy, another interesting offering…

Sorry for the lack of updating lately. Things got a bit busy during the holiday season, plus I can’t seem to run into much in the way of interesting stuff lately, so you’ll have to bear with me. I did get my Best of 2000 movies list up (yes, thats 2000, its a year late, I know). Lets see, what else? I’ve been spending a lot of time at Everything2 lately. Its a fun place.

Dialogue on Film and Philosophy by Ulf Wilhelmsson (in rich text format) : What if, say, Quentin Tarantino met Aristotle, Herakleit, Plato, Jean-Paul Sartre, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and other famous philosophers. What would it be like if they all sat down and had a conversation on film and philosophy? Ulf Wilhelmsson attempts to expore these ideas in this interesting little essay. Much of it plays out like an informative introduction to various philosophies, as the aformentioned participants spout off about their particular areas of interest and eventually apply them to film. Obviously, this is much more entertaining if you are at least somewhat familiar with the various participants. Most of the philosophers are very well known, but I’d be suprised if many people knew all of the film scholars mentioned (Wilhelmsson thoughtfully includes explainations for the more obscure folks that show up). Theres also a bit of a lighthearted tone that lets some of the philosophers even get rowdy (at one point St Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle yell “Tabula Rasa!” in unison). Interesting reading. [via Wood S Lot]

Tolkien on Homeland Defense by Chris Mooney : An interesting article that draws parallels between Tolkien’s classic Lord of the Rings trilogy and the 9/11 tragedy. Mooney cites two passages from Fellowship of the Ring that are particularly poignant and resonate with our current situation. The first is an exchange between Frodo and the elf leader Gildor, when they meet just as Frodo and his companions embark on their journey from the Shire:

“I cannot imagine what information could be more terrifying than your hints and warnings,” exclaimed Frodo. “I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can’t a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?”

“But it is not your own Shire,” said Gildor. “Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”

“I know — and yet it has always seemed so safe and familiar.”

Sound familiar? We were all aware of the threat of terrorism, but our daily lives just seemed so safe. The second passage Mooney quotes is delivered by the character Aragorn, in which he makes the Rangers sound kind of like the FBI or the CIA. Mooney then goes on to compare LotR with the Harry Potter series of books, taking care to comment on the various religious nuts who are denouncing Harry Potter as satanic. Its a good read, check it out. [thanks Widgett]

By the by, the first reviews of Fellowship of the Ring (the movie) are in, and they all seem to be positive! Entertainment Weekly gives it an A, and Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers lists it at the very top of his list of films for 2001. Regular guy, “Rob”, was slightly less impressed (scroll down to bottom), but still gave the movie an 8/10 and said “It lived up to my expectations.” Score. I am encouraged by this…

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman : An interesting piece of short fiction written by Gaiman in 1994. To be perfectly blunt, I don’t want to ruin it, so just give it a read. Its a great idea for a story. You’ll see, just read it. I enjoyed it muchly. Its nice to have perceptions rewired every now and again…

Referred to by Terry Gilliam as the War and Peace of superhero comics, Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen (illustrated by Dave Gibbons), along with Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, paved the way for people to actually start taking comic books seriously. In fact, it even won a Hugo Award in 1988. The story takes place in the 1980s when superheroes have been outlawed and the only ones still in

operation are under direct control of the United States government. Suddenly, those heroes both still in action and retired find themselves targets by an unseen enemy, who wants to kill them one by one. Of course, there has long been talk of adapting it into a movie, though many doubt it can be done faithfully. The biggest name associated with the project was director Terry Gilliam, but with costs spiraling and no major stars attached, Gilliam never really got the project off the ground. The first draft of the screenplay was written by Sam Hamm, and many, while enjoying some of the subtle touches that Hamm provides, consider the major plot changes (specifically, the ending) to be a bit of a letdown. Recently, there appears to be somewhat of a revival in the project, with screenwriter David Hayter (X-Men) becoming interested in writing and possibly directing a Watchmen movie, but I’m not holding my breath quite yet… [Thanks to MLP for the Hamm Script]

35 years ago yesterday, the first episode of Star Trek debuted on NBC…and here we are three-and-a-half decades later with nine movies, five hundred odd hours of TV episodes and another new movie and TV series forthcoming. Enter Star Trek: Renaissance, the first virtual Star Trek series. The creators of Renaissance intend to produce professionally formatted and written teleplays for a Star Trek “virtual” TV series, complete with new characters and a new Enterprise set 25 years after the adventures of Captain Picard. And, incredibly, they want to produce a full season worth of episodes. They plan to “air” a new episode each week, not counting “re-run” weeks when they’re on hiatus. And they want it to kick ass. But is all that time and effort invested into creating Renaissance worth it? To be perfectly honest, I’m not so sure. I’ve only really liked the “Next Generation” and maybe some of the movies, but after taking a look at the first “episode” of Renaissance, I think it could be interesting… [via coming attractions]

Prologue: Calla Bryn Sturgis by Stephen King : A preview of the highly anticipated forthcoming volume of King’s Dark Tower series. An interesting entry; its plot is higly reminiscent of Kurosawa’s classic film, Seven Samurai, though I’ve yet to figure out if that’s a good thing. In his words, King is “hoping to press on to the very end and publish the remaining volumes all at the same time. That probably means three books, one of them fairly short and one of the other two quite long.” This strikes me as joyous news, but I can’t help feeling apprehension – for I’ve never known King to end his stories all that well (just look at the ending to The Waste Lands). However, if the new novels continue the successive exponential increase in quality and intelligence that the first four have established (especially in the last volume, Wizard and Glass), we’ll certainly be in for a treat. Only time and Ka will tell. Ka like a wind…