NDBT

Hey everybody! I’m back from the farm. I’ll post a proper entry on it later, but I had an absolute blast. I’m catching up on my backlog of emails and news today, so I’m posting a few things which caught my eye. Enjoy!

First up, from part of a column on Pt. Reyes from Jon Carroll (I love Toby’s Feed Barn very much): ” Anyway, I went down the street to Toby’s Feed Barn, which I also love. It’s the only place I know where you can buy a 50-pound sack of Wild Bird Chow and a bale of hay and a bag of crystallized ginger and a T-shirt that says, “The Simple Life. Eat. Sleep. Bird.” Also, you can buy a latte there, served to you by a certified barista who will make a design on top of your drink. One-stop shopping at its finest. So I took my latte over to the fixin’s table and looked around for some artificial sweetener. (Diabetic thing again.) No Equal, no Splenda, no old-fashioned tumors-in-rats Sweet’N Low. I went back to the barista. “Do you have any of those, you know, artificial sweeteners?” He looked at me. He reached under the counter and brought out an unmarked cookie tin. He pushed it across the counter. I peeked inside. There they were, all yellow and blue, the packets nestled together like kittens. I felt as if I were buying pornography in a Victorian bookstore. “Why yes, sir, we do have something for the connoisseur. If you’ll just open this cookie tin …””

I don’t know who this is from, but my mom passed it along. Why California is the golden state: “It’s also called the Golden State because the sun shines all the time and coats everything in a rosy glow, except around here [the San Francisco Bay Area], not so much. And it’s also called the Golden State because for much of the year the hills of California are golden, or, to put it another way, brown.”

This: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/05/28/i-shall-not-tolerate-such-rubbish/ is awesome.

The chronicle has recently put out a fabulous interview (under pop quiz) with Tori, where the interviewer deliberately makes her out to be crazier than normal (honestly – the new album is simple: Tori creates 4 female archetypes based on greek goddesses who sing the songs on her album and write blogs. 😉 At least she writes brilliantly and you don’t get some bland pop-star thing that passes for music.)

AND!!! Very excitingly, Garbage is releasing a best of album that includes a new single and video, a second cd full of 14 remixes (by crystal method, the neptunes, etc.), a dvd of their videos (which is great because some of my copies of the european released vid.s are kind of crappy) and “almost an hour of never-before-seen footage backstage and behind-the-scenes, live performances and interviews, spanning the band’s entire career.” Yay! I hope Shirley will release her solo project soon.

In movie news, warner brothers released the first official joker photo: http://www.cinematical.com/2007/05/20/warner-bros-releases-first-photo-of-the-joker/ which I think looks great. It sounds like the dark knight will live up to batman begins.

Also – they are adapting one of the books from the dark is rising saga (which won the newbury medal apparently when it came out). I read the first one (I think it was the first) when Sarah gave it to me as a present in high school, and I’ve always meant to read the rest. Aparently the movie will be pretty different from the book, quelle surprise.

An awesome quote from Johnny Depp: “Wearing bullet bras, garters, the whole shebang [for Ed Wood] has given me newfound respect for women and profound respect for transvestites.”

7 films to watch from Cannes: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18867642/ (Sicko, the diving bell and the butterfly, no country for old men, U2 3D, A mighty heart (yay Angelina!), the 11th hour, ocean’s 13) None of those seem like The Wind that Shakes the Barley to me, but I’ll happily go watch ocean’s 13…

From Cleolinda: “Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson in Pompeii?” Please God, let this movie happen. I can actually feel the parody writing itself right now.

“Jay Roach To Direct Comedic Version of ‘Vertigo.'” I’m trying really hard not to go into Automatic Hatred Mode.

“Sam Neill Joins Ethan Hawke’s Vampire Pic ‘Daybreakers.'” Something about this headline makes me very, very sad. (I agree)

“Check out Dominic Monaghan in period grave-robbing flick, I SELL THE DEAD!!!” Well… that’s a headline you’re not going to see every day.

“Source Says ‘Indy 4’ Villain Is … Evil Russian Cate Blanchett!” After which she will hunt down Moose and Squirrel.

“Exclusive Rescue Dawn Photos.” ( http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=20593 ) The reason you care: Christian Bale. (I cannot WAIT to see this movie)

“Keanu Reeves and Jude Law Offered ‘Watchmen’ Roles, Source Says. Keanu as Dr. Manhattan is so wonderfully cracked-out that I have to go with it.”
The actual article from Cinematical: “Keanu Reeves has been offered a role in Watchmen! Sources say Reeves has been offered the role of Doctor Manhattan, AKA Dr. Jon Osterman — the “big blue superbeing” with god-like powers like superhuman strength, telekenesis, the ability to teleport, and clairvoyance. In the immortal words of Reeves himself: “Whoa!” Jude Law is expected to take on the role of Adrien Veidt, or Ozymandias — “the smartest man on the planet.” Law is a longtime Watchmen fan, and was expected to get the role, although Chris reported a couple months ago on rumors that fellow fan Tom Cruise was interested. Little Children’s Patrick Wilson is expected to play Dan Drieberg — Nite Owl, a hero similar to Batman. Watchmen is a twelve issue graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and is considered by many to be the pinnacle of the form. It is the only graphic novel to have been featured on Time Magazine’s 2005 list of the 100 best English language novels from 1923 to the present. ”

I also liked cleolinda’s take on sequels, which people tend to disparage without thought (“can’t hollywood come up with anything new?” – and how many of those complainers go see Charlie Kaufman films, I ask you) anyways, here it is: “I like the craze for sequels we’ve had the last ten years or so. They’re not cheap afterthoughts the way they used to be in the ’80s and early ’90s (for some reason, a very sad commercial for Another Stakeout always sticks in my mind regarding this subject). In addition to the series-of-standalone-movies we usually get (the Spider-Man franchise, for example), people are really looking into serial filmmaking again, particularly fantasy films due to the remarkable number of series being published now, and I love that. I love big multi-film epics (the fact that they involve swords and fantastic costumes doesn’t really hurt). I mean, I admit that the world doesn’t really need another Rush Hour, but I like that people are really looking at this or that franchise and seeing that people really love certain characters, and generally doing their best to continue telling stories about them. It doesn’t hurt that the filmmakers involved are often genuinely fans of or at least attracted to the material–even in the case of the Harry Potter movies, the directors will say, I didn’t like the way the previous one(s) were done, I want to do it this way. They’ll at least come up with a particular vision, which is so different from the half-hearted, half-assed, half-baked sequels you’d see in the ’80s, several years after the originals. You can feel any way about the two POTC sequels that you want, but I love that they took this huge chance and did this giant two-part epic; I’d rather see people fail big and go down swinging than succeed with small, safe, piddling efforts.”

And finally from cleolinda: “Also, I keep seeing headlines for lukewarm or outright negative reviews for the movie (POTC3). At one point, someone said, “Everything that was wrong with the second movie is back in the third,” at which point I kind of went, “Well, I should enjoy the hell out of this, then.” ” I’m going with that attitude till I can see it.

From popwatch: “Yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a partnership with a tiny video sharing website called YouTube. (The announcement came at the D: All Things Digital technology conference in Carlsbad, Calif., where, in another historic moment, Jobs also shared a stage with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, which strikes us as the modern equivalent of John D. Rockefeller chatting with Andrew Carnegie. Were Steve and Bill wearing silk top hats and opera capes?)”

“The release date for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (pictured) has been bumped up two days to July 11, Muggles, but there’s even more exciting news: In late 2009, you’ll find “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter” at Orlando’s Islands of Adventure. Little is known about the theme park’s plans, but presumably, we’ll be romping through the Hogwarts castle (fingers crossed for shifting stairways!), down Diagon Alley (a ride through the Gringotts vaults?) and into the Forbidden Forest (the return of Fluffy!).”

oscarwatch has a new website, due to a conflict with the AMPAS: http://oscarwatch.awardsdaily.com/ (there won’t be anything there for a while, but they curiously have Joseph Gordon-Levitt tipped for best actor for the Lookout (he was good in Brick, and I’ve heard fabulous in mysterious skin, which I have yet to see)

Queen Elizabeth honors TV’s crankiest doctor.: “LONDON, England (AP) — Hugh Laurie, who stars in the hit TV medical drama “House,” was made a member of the Order of the British Empire on Wednesday. Queen Elizabeth II presented the honor to Laurie at Buckingham Palace.The 47-year-old actor has been part of the comedy establishment in Britain for more than 20 years. He was a member of the Cambridge Footlights comedy group along with Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry.”

Holy Crap!! He’s 47?!? (yay pomona!) I would’ve guessed about 10 years older… More sunscreen Hugh!

From popwatch: “Okay, I actually like Moby-Dick in all it’s unwieldy glory, including all the nautical and cetological stuff. So I’d hate to be the editor at Orion Books who’s charged with chopping Melville’s whale of a tale into fishsticks. I couldn’t be ruthless enough to trim that or any of the other literary heavyweights (including Anna Karenina and David Copperfield) into the 40-percent-slimmer editions that Orion is releasing this month. But I did enjoy the New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/weekinreview/20mrich.html?ex=1180843200&en=424ef0d4e82d8b49&ei=5070) the other day that solicited the opinions of several well-known authors as to which books could stand to be shorter. Norman Mailer was unsentimental enough to list three of his own tree-flattening tomes on his should-be-shorter list. EW essayist Stephen King went so far as to write his own hilariously abridged versions of Gone With the Wind, pared down to just four sentences, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which he distilled down to a single tabloid headline. (I now do not need to read Tess) My favorite response, however, came from Jonathan Franzen, who noted that downsized books should have similarly diminished titles, like The Pretty Good Gatsby and Shortmarch. (I guess Franzen’s own magnum opus would become The Correction.) This article could inspire several questions/party games for us, PopWatchers. Such as: which novels do you think could be slashed? On the other hand, which do you wish were longer? (I vote to fatten up Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.) And finally, what Franzenesque titles would you give these fragmented fictions? I thought of several: Bleak Condominium, A Tale of One City, House of the Six Gables, Naked Snack, Ninety-Seven Years of Solitude, and of course, Finite Jest.”

Tags: Travel

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