Today at Flavorpill when we were supposed to be busy working… we were dazzled by the fact that Mark Twain used the term “googling” in Huck Finn; we checked out some sexy pole dancing robots; we wondered how Jack Kerouac would feel about writing in Word; we considered buying one of these rad music t-shirts; we fell in love with these smoking mittens (even though we don’t smoke); we felt sad for this man who wrote a “Mario Kart Love Song”; we were wowed by the vigilante approach of Miami’s Take Back the Land; and finally, we were bowled over by new work from the incredibly talented street artist Blu in Berlin.
A term has been officially coined by Brad Berens of iMedia that we’re all too familiar with: “TiVo guilt.”
For those of you who don’t have 8 unwatched episodes of Fringe currently hanging over your head (damn you Joshua Jackson!), it’s that weird feeling of responsibility you get when you record a show and then never getting around to watching it.
It’s kind of like animal hoarding, but less socially frowned upon because we all do it.
What we’re wondering is:
The record industry seems to still be hungover from last week’s album buzz — that, or they’ve all taken an early vacation. There aren’t many exciting albums coming out today, since it seems like Britney’s Circus has been out forever and the two albums getting the most praise feature decades-old material.
For your convenience, we’ve read reviews from all over and oversimplified the critics’ reactions to this week’s top four releases:
Britney Spears, Circus: Self-aware; vocals still lacking.
Neil Young, Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968: Artist as genius young lyricist.
Akon, Freedom: Hopeless romantic makes sappy R&B.
Various Artists, The Best of Chess Records: Skip movie; love the originals.
We were amazed at how intent music critics seemed to be on analyzing the lyrics in Circus — this is Britney we’re talking about, not Aimee Mann. Regardless, we guess she should count it as an accomplishment of how far she’s come that we finally care about what she’s trying to tell us. If the critics are right, the Neil Young and Chess Records releases are quite worth it — some of the best reviews we read can be found after the jump.
This year’s Film Independent’s Spirit Award nominations have been announced, and while we’re a little shocked that Rachel Getting Married scored five nods (including a really ludicrous one for Best First Screenplay), we’re more excited to see some of our favorite smaller indie flicks from the past year made the cut.
Namely Frozen River, Chop Shop, Take Out, The Signal, and In Search of a Midnight Kiss — all fantastic and with the exception of Frozen River (which comes out in early 2009), currently available to rent on DVD.
“Many outsiders see the art world as elitist… and it is, except it is also oddly down-to-earth and embracing of oddballs who don’t fit in well anywhere else.” - Sarah Thornton, author of Seven Days in the Art World, an account of seven defining experiences in today’s art scene (from The Biennale in Venice to The Studio Visit at Murakami’s Japanese workspace). [Paper Magazine's Dec/Jan issue - not online yet]
Due to the keen eye of the editors at Cinema Blend, the blogosphere has been buzzing about The Falcon’s Tale, the newest addition to Martin Scorsese’s giant list of upcoming projects. The movie, which Scorsese would direct and was originally a story which appeared in this August’s Playboy, is a tale about a criminal offered his freedom in exchange for doing undercover investigations at a high-security mental institution.
We did a round-up of all the movies Scorsese is planning to direct in the somewhat-near future, and found at least eight possible films whose production status is at least one step beyond existing in Marty’s mind. To put this in some perspective, IMDB currently lists Steven Spielberg’s “in development” number at seven, Clint Eastwood’s at two, and PT Anderson’s at one.
Is “attaching” to projects just a great new way to stay relevant within the quick turnaround of the film-nerd blogosphere news cycle? Or is it just that Scorsese got really excited after he finally clinched that best director Oscar? After the jump, we look into all these projects whether or not we’ll see them in theaters anytime soon (spoiler: probably not).
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Once again Entertainment Weekly’s TV know-it-all Michael Ausiello has dropped a vague-but-totally-juicy blind item into our laps that’s just begging to be solved. (OK, we’re the ones begging — not knowing the answer is driving us nuts.) His latest scoop centers on the star of a popular TV series who has been fired by producers due to “budget cuts and creative redirection” — only the actor doesn’t know it yet.
Ausiello says: “If, or when, the axe does fall, the regular’s on-screen alter ego isn’t likely to be killed off. Although death has cast a shadow over many a plot, this personality’s demise would probably be deemed too morbid, even for this show.” Read the entire item.
A show where death is a regular occurrence but a main character getting the axe would be too morbid… Grey’s Anatomy? House? Are we barking up the wrong tree by going the medical drama route?
Leave your guesses in the comments.
A few weeks ago, James Salter spoke at one of Paul Holdengraber’s always-brilliant Live from the NYPL events. We’d bought the ticket the day the event was announced, lovingly looked at that Friday on our calendar as it came closer and closer, and reveled in the fact that we would finally be in a room with this man.
And then, incidentally, we got a migraine and couldn’t go. We were devastated. He is our hero.
When we were younger, we wished we could read different books than we actually wanted to. Publicly, we read Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine, trashy teen novels that we loved for their beyond-the-grave high-schoolers and their symbiotic nerds. Privately, we read Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes (once a year, whether we needed it or not), or Louisa May Alcott, or, when we were really feeling it, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. We loved Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 and Frank Herbert’s The White Plague. Nineteen-eighty-four and The English Patient.
When Stephen King compares your debut novel to the Harry Potter series in Entertainment Weekly, it’s almost like getting a free pass. Not like Lauren Groff, the talented young writer behind The Monsters of Templeton, needed one. Her juicy first novel — which is both a critical darling and a New York Times bestseller — explores a family’s dark secrets in a small town that’s plagued by a monster.
If you live in New York, head to McNally Jackson Bookstore for cocktails and a discussion with Groff tomorrow night courtesy of the Marie Claire Book Club. After the jump, read on to discover this young writer’s rather surprising favorite read.
Hint: It’s an oldie but a goodie that was published in 1667.
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