Culture

Oh, yay, the Weinsteins are investing money in Asian film… “Titles slated for the fund include… a remake of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950’s epic The Seven Samurai.” What the hell?

Not greatly to my surprise, Rowling’s got plans for more Harry Potter stuff (original). There are some spoilers in the article, but the gist is that she intends to write an encyclopedia containing backstories for some characters, plus details on what happens after Deathly Hallows.

Daniel Keys Moran has put The Armageddon Blues up for download, right over here. It’s not his best novel, but it’s worth reading. And it’s a good sign, because it fulfills the promise that there’s more coming. So big thanks to him. The judge in the Rodgers/Moran court case has apparently asked both parties to stop flaming each other online. At least, he asked DKM to take his blog down and there’s nothing left of all the posts Alan Rodgers made about how evil DKM was over on his blog. Thanks thusly go out to the judge, too.

From his new blog: In any event, AI War is the only thing I’ll be working on this summer, and once it’s clean, I’m going to roll into the concluding sequel – it’s been years since I’ve written SF, but I am going to publish AI War and its sequel, Crystal Wind, before the people who care about it succumb to Alzheimers. But, yeah. He was gonna turn in AI War to Bantam in 1995. And he was gonna animate The Long Run in 1998 – “the pilot will happen.” (original) Plans, I suppose, sometimes fall through. ...

A while ago, I wrote about Stephen Soderberg’s desire to see movies hit theaters, DVD, and cable on the same day. I was wrong about him not making Ocean’s 13, but I was right about it being a trend. $30-$50 is pretty ambitious pricing even for a first run movie, but (and I’m sure this is how the price point was set) it’s cheaper than taking a family of four to the movies, if you figure in popcorn and drinks.

EMI’s going to sell all their music online without DRM (original). It’ll be available through iTunes first; it’ll also cost 30 cents more for a track without DRM, but the quality will be twice as high. If you want to keep the old price, you’ll still be able to get DRM’d tracks for a buck. Albums will be DRM-free at the same old price. You’ll be able to convert your DRM’d tracks to non-DRM tracks for 30 cents per track. ...

Some geeks build things. A few geeks build things really well. Once upon a time, there was a geek named Tom, an MIT graduate, who worked for Polaroid. He decided he wanted to build a rock and roll band. So he built Boston, and say what you will, but it’s my opinion that he built the best stadium rock band ever. Boston had the biggest selling debut album and held that record for over ten years, which is not trivial. That doesn’t mean it was great music, but stadium rock isn’t great music. They knew what they were doing. ...

Disney’s still really in fine form. Not perfect, but in fine form. You get these wistful references to the glory days, which are kind what happens when people don’t recognize that their enjoyment of Carousel of Progress is due to nostalgia rather than due to any quality of the ride experience. It’s pretty bogus. The best work ever done at Walt Disney World was during the late 80s and 90s, when Disney-MGM and Animal Kingdom opened. The worst park, from a sheer quality perspective, is Epcot. On the other hand, it’s the worst park at WDW, which means I enjoy the heck out of it every time. ...

So here’s what I’d like, please: I’d like an recording of Sondheim’s Assassins as sung by a quality a cappella group. See if we can’t make this happen, okay? Thanks.

Robert Altman died yesterday night (original). He was one of the very best. On his last film, A Prairie Home Compansion, Paul Thomas Anderson stood in as the backup director just in case — so this doesn’t come as a huge surprise. But it is hugely sad.