What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today:
• Not just 3D but in cinemas. (Only in the UK, I imagine.) Doctor Who goes 3D for 50th birthday
• Want! LEGO iPhone cases unveiled by Belkin
• What $20,000 words of wisdom did Lehrer have? It’s not really his fault that he fabricated and plagiarized because he’s like totally superduper genius smart, and also because no one told him the rule about not making shit up. Jonah Lehrer earns $20,000 honorarium for talking about plagiarism at Knight lunch
• Oliver Twist, Werewolf Slayer. Oliver Twist, Gentleman Detective. The possibilities are endless! Oi, give us some more, you mug, or I’ll do yer: Get ready for Oliver Twist spin-offs
That Lehrer shit is messed up. I delivered a 3 hour lecture with q&a about geotechnical investigations to architects and didn’t get offered anywhere near that.
And everything I said was true. Sheesh.
It’s the punk rocker in me, I guess, but somehow I never get outraged by attempts to “desecrate” works of classic literature–Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, Van Helsing, all the recent “badass” fairy tales, etc. I think it’s good to thumb your nose at art once in a while, even great art, as Marcel Duchamp had it. Of course, all the stuff I just listed was TERRIBLE (except Luhrmann), so there’s that, but this concept isn’t inherently bad to me.
Completely unrelated to any of this, but for some reason, I’m really interested in seeing what Maryann has to say about the recent kafuffle about Orson Scott Card writing for Superman.
Concerning movies in the form of [Character from history or literature][Mythical creature] slayer, as a fan of Don Rosa, i’m still waiting for Theodore Roosevelt – dragon slayer.
I don’t care what gets done to interesting stories as long as people know the original stories are still out there. “Reinvention” of a character is a convenient flag that the film’s probably worth avoiding.
I think it is time for Vlad The Impaler — Zombie Killer
I’m pulling for “Oliver Twisted,” in which it is revealed that the adult Oliver, scarred by the events of his childhood, grows up to wreak havoc on London as Jack the Ripper. Naturally, he would have to be tracked down and caught by Sherlock Holmes in a steampunk airship with a time-traveling Batman.