Andrew O’Hehir’s recent column for Salon that asks what’s behind the Wall-E cult got us thinking. In many ways the character of Wall-E — a brave outsider with an unshakable belief system and an uncanny obsession with sacrifice — isn’t so unlike another of our country’s current obsessions, Barack Obama.
Think about it. As the last functioning robot on earth, Wall-E is our planet’s only hope. There are many who would say the same thing about Obama.
Ok, so maybe you think we’re making a crazy leap, but admit, it’s a fun one. After the jump we’ve started a list of current film character equivalents for a few boldfaced politicos. Chime in with your own in the comments.
What do we find creepier than CNN “beaming” holographic guests into the studio to make their election coverage more interesting? The idea of having an avatar deliver up our evening news.
As we write, smarty-pants grad students at the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University have put down their video gaming consoles and Star Wars action figures to design a futuristic Web site — News At Seven — that automatically generates virtual newscasts “pulled from wire stories, images, videos and blogs all linked by a common news topic.”
The project is being funded by a National Science Foundation grant.
Proving the old saying that necessity is the baby mama of invention, LAXART teams up with the Orange County Museum of Contemporary Art Biennial to bring contemporary art to public attention, Angeleno style.
For the next few weeks, two billboards, one in West Hollywood and the other in Culver City, feature new work by Biennial artists Raymond Pettibon and Karl Haendel. Part of the exhibition’s extensive off-site programming, these nods to the dominance of car culture are either a great idea or represent total capitulation to L.A.-ziness. Guess if you really like them, you can always pull over for a longer look.
- Shana Nys Dambrot
Matthieson, Gordon-Reed win NBAs: National Book Awards were announced last night, and the honorees are Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Matthiessen. Gordon-Reed won in the nonfiction category for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, a biography of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves (including Sally, his rumored scandalous lover). Matthiesson is a second-time NBA winner (in 1979 he won for The Snow Leopard), bringing in the fiction prize for Shadow Country, based on the life of a 19th-century farmer-cum-serial killer.
There was controversy over whether it should be elligible to compete as it’s a one-volume compilation of three novels that Matthiessen previously published. [NYT]
Today at Flavorpill, when we were supposed to be busy working, we contemplated fire and brimstone complete with nudity, sex, violence, and cursing; worried about the MTA’s planned cuts; considered using this tool to shorten emails from mom; got busy at work on our best spider drawings ever; marked our calendars for Playing for Change; got really angry at these auto execs; and ultimately realized that nothing else we could write today would be able to top these kids’s letters to God.
Known for his effortless, elegant aesthetic, Turkish-born director Ferzan Ozpetek is one of the most successful filmmakers in Italy today; he’s a super gay who loves ’50s melodramas of the sophisticated ilk, multiculturalism in movies, and death — all obvious when you view any of his humanistic films.
Lucky for New Yorkers, the Museum of Modern Art is showing seven of his works, including his most recent, Un giorno perfetto, starting on December 4th as part of their Filmmaker in Focus series.
To prep you for your trip to Oz, he’s offering Flavorwire readers a simple primer; after the jump, four flicks that would be on the syllabus if Ozpetek was teaching Italian Cinema 101.
Bonus points if you can name a movie that he missed that should have made the cut.
Google is now hosting millions of photos from LIFE Magazine in an online archive that goes back to 1860. Yes history buff, that’s the year that the Civil War started. Aside from being an amazing educational resource, it’s also a fun spot for browsing and searching for cool but completely random stuff — like flipping through old magazines at a flea market without the sneeze factor.
After the jump, we let Flavorpill staffers loose in the archive and asked them to send us the first photo that they stumbled across in the vault. Leave us a link to your own finds in the comments area.
Nicholas Sparks appeared twice on the 1 this past week — you can do better than that. Are we the only ones that think that Sparks is the Thomas Kincaid of books? Please put it down now and pick up Natalya’s recommendation from last week, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.
Things started looking up with Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein, which we noticed The Strand recommends, when we browsed the fiction tables on Monday before Natasha Wimmer and Edith Grossman talked to us about translation. Roberto Bolano’s 2666 is now out in English so head on over to your favorite bookstore and pick it up.
We saw a little mystery with The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith and an enormous volume of Charles Burns’s comic series Black Hole (which we recently recommended to Barack Obama).
John Berednt’s Southern gem Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was being read avidly by commuter on the platform at 42nd Street.
And finally, a woman was proudly reading Real Sex For Real Women by Dr. Laura Berman, which is about how “to combine the reality of everyday life with fantastic sex.” On another note, according to Amazon, one percent of people who buy this book also buy Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. We know, we promised but that’s just too good.
Keep up the reading ladies and gentlemen. If you’re in need of something new, head on over to Housing Works Bookstore and Cafe and support a good cause. We saw some good ones lining the stacks and donation bins last night at their annual Fall Book & Gin Mingle.
With Beyoncé’s latest two-disc album, I Am … Sasha Fierce, she publicly outs “Sasha,” the flashy on-stage alter ego who the rather boring star has name dropped in a decade’s worth of interviews.
“I want to be an icon. That’s why this is a double-album. One side has songs that are more mainstream and another has my more traditional R&B songs for my fans who’ve been there the whole time. Some of it sounds like Barbra Streisand, Karen Carpenter and the Beatles around the 1970s,” she explained to Billboard.
Sounds sensible — give fans both sides of the coin. But what happens when critics dig the material put forth by your other half more? It sounds like the plot of a new Charlie Kaufman flick.
After the jump, what they’re saying about Sasha, and why we think Beyoncé should watch her booty.
SeaVees, a California-based footwear line founded by an ex-Stride Rite designer (you remember, those Velcro shoes you wore as a kid), has won a place in hipster hearts with simple models that look a lot like Vans but reference iconic dates in California history.
Now they’re going after the design crowd with an exclusive collaboration with the color fiends over at Pantone that celebrates the release of their first Matching System back in September 1963, a major moment in design history.
The series production has been restricted to 1,963 pairs, but of course.
If you want to pre-purchase a pair you can use the login “pantone” and the password “seavees0963” before November 24th. The shoes won’t be available in select stores until this spring.
But if you’re finding yourself underwhelmed by the collaboration — or rather, suddenly feeling inspired to paint your bathroom — tell us about it in the comments.
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