- Did James Cameron plagiarize a series of Russian novels for Avatar? Well, just throw it on the pile with Pocahonatas and FernGully. I mean, Cameron does sort of have a track record with this sort of thing… [via]
- Will Kiefer Sutherland still be doing 24 when he’s sixty? Well, he’d like to think so.
- Meanwhile, from someone who maybe knows when it’s time to retire, David Tennant’s foreword to the Doctor Who specials. [via]
- Happy families are all alike. Presumably because they’re built that way in the robot factory. Android Karenina.
I still haven’t read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I am sort of waiting for this trend to die out, but at least Quirk handles their own entries with some degree of humor and style. [via]
- And finally, a long post from Mark Evanier on the whole Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien situation.
I think he makes a lot of valid points, including about why Leno probably isn’t the big villain he’s being portrayed as in some circles. I still think Peter David is right, that Leno “can’t be the deposed king returning to power and court jester at the same time.” And I’m still a little saddened that NBC is pinning its hopes and future of late-night on the man who’s greatest contribution to comedy in decades has been the Dancing Itos.
But at least Evanier does a decent job of explaining how and why this all happened.
doctor who
Wednesday various
- I don’t know…when the bank seizes the wrong house, changes the locks, tacks a foreclosure notice to the door, and leaves 75 pounds of fish to rot for a week, do you really think the homeowner’s suit has no merit? If nothing else, he should press charges for breaking and entering. [via]
- I’m just a little late to this, but: the Guardian considers the worst books of the last decade:
To remember only achievement and worth is to ignore the vast majority of our cultural experience. It helps create that strange cultural telescoping that makes us think that the past was always better; that odd warping of collective memory that enables us to recall even the 1970s fondly.
There’s some truth to this, I think. Of course, I do like at least a couple of the books he mentions as worst of the decade. (Oracle Night does approach self-parody, but it’s the last time I truly enjoyed Auster, and I found it a genuinely haunting book. His Man in the Dark, ostensibly about the past decade, was much, much worse.) [via]
- Jonathan Lethem: “Ian McEwan has a great line where he says, ‘Book touring is like being an employee of your former self.'”
- NPR looks at The Big Bang Theory and the male gaze:
But the changes in this particular show make for a great example of the fact that you don’t just avoid empty, cliched versions of women (or men, and I am looking at you, Sex And The City) because they’re offensive or infuriating or anything like that. The best creative reason to avoid them is that they make your show bad. Making Penny real has opened up all kinds of comedic possibilities that haven’t transformed it into life-changing art, but have made it into a very good half-hour sitcom… [via]
I started watching the show over my holiday break for the first time, and I’ve very quickly caught up. (I watched this week’s episode last night.) I liked the first season (and even the pilot) considerably more than Linda Holmes did, but she’s not at all wrong about Penny. What makes the show work is that these are very real, well developed characters, and it suffered when she alone wasn’t.
- And finally, for the couple of Doctor Who fans in the audience, John Seavey offers a reconsideration of the Fifth Doctor.
Monday various
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Tuesday various
- Designing websites with the colorblind in mind. My father is slightly colorblind, but I’ll admit this never actually occurred to me. [via]
- Man spends 2 years building Dalek out of 480,000 matches. So he did.
- Now, you do see why referring to female students as a male professor’s “perks” might have made people upset, don’t you? You stay classy, Buckingham University.
- The Hobbit as 419 scam. [via]
- And finally, Jack Klugman and Tony Randall sing “You’re So Vain”. This may very well be the oddest thing I’ve heard all day. You probably think this link is about you, don’t you?
Thursday various
- The next Twilight movie, which doesn’t open in theaters until November 20, is already selling out. On the plus side, this means it’s less likely that anyone can force me into seeing it.
- Meanwhile, Television Without Pity wonders what if every vampire kept a diary? [via]
- Just last week, Gail Simmons was reminding Top Chef viewers that “The language and structure of the kitchen in America is still very much dominated by French terminology…”
Now I learn that Julia Child, author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, has never been translated into French. Apparently, the French see her cookbook as dated and a caricature. C’est la vie.
- In praise of the sci-fi corridor [via]
- And finally, Russell T. Davies and David Tennant’s exit interview for Doctor Who. They’ll be missed! [via]