Perhaps it’s because NaNoWriMo is nigh, but I found this piece in Wired about exploring and expanding the notions of “must read” works interesting. (I’m currently trying to fold in a bit more reading each day).
What with Marvel movies on the mind of late, just in case you didn’t see this make the rounds this past week, Chris Evans, aka the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Captain America, does some amazing stuff off-camera. What kind of stuff? How about giving back to his childhood theater? And then there’s the whole personal anecdote about dealing with anxiety and depression. Good casting, Marvel. Good casting.
Francis Ford Coppola has joined his colleague Martin Scorsese in dismissing superhero films in general and Marvel in particular, calling them “despicable.” Rosy Cordero covers it in Entertainment Weekly and David Crow has a nice contextual take over at Den of Geek. Sigh. Much like Bugs Bunny, superhero films might not be considered “high art,” but they’re not going away anytime soon. Besides which, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar already covered this: he’s not wrong, but he’s not…
Just last month I was musing about how, even in the face of “nerddom’s” ascension in all aspects of pop culture, people still feel the need to belittle or otherwise distance themselves and their work from science fiction as if the genre itself was wildly radioactive. Now, in the face of a more meditative and gritty look at the origins of Joker –with more than a few homages to Martin Scorsese’s films– Scorsese himself felt…
Here’s a video that was posted on October 4th and has been making the rounds. I’ve seen Jim Meskimen before (he’s phenomenal) and I’ve seen “deep fakes” before, but this is quite the combo. We live in interesting (and potentially scary) time.
I saw Ad Astra this past weekend, which is doing its part to make sci-fi hard like vibranium not squishy like flubber Scientist James O’Donoghue decided to make an animation to demonstrate how “warp speeds” worked in Star Trek, its various incarnations known for loving science… while certainly not being beholden to rigidly adhering to known norms because writers. In any case, even though vast distances can be crossed in three days or three weeks…
I stumbled across this longer article from BBC Scotland going into the impact of the Vikings last year, well after Leif Erikson Day and thought, “Why not use it for later?” And so I scheduled it for far in the future, much as my Norwegian ancestors put up blog posts and salt cod for later use.
While I don’t currently work in the non-profit realm, I spent many years working at theaters that were, almost invariably, non-profits. The anthropology of theaters is worth another post (or really, a book), but suffice it to say that pretty much all the theaters I’ve ever worked at started based on the zeal and passion of a handful of people. They were artistic start-ups, if you will. Time and again, I saw theaters that hit…
Trying to make a living –or just some nontrivial income– from your creative endeavors seems like a monumental task. At least it feels so for me. Luckily, for me, I enjoy some of the minutiae of process and procedures and figuring out devilish details I can repeat so all that small stuff is not stuff I sweat over. Then I constantly get reminded about how much I don’t know. Also I don’t have enough time.…
I mentioned on Tuesday that my office is geeky enough to spontaneously start talking about constructed languages. As an inveterate geek who can pass as a “muggle,” I’m well acquainted with the concept of downplaying any connections to nerd/geek culture. My reluctance to unfurl my own weird flag has waned greatly over the past 15 years or so, but I understand that reticence. Sarah Ditum, writing in the Guardian, details how authors have historically, and…