* Tom Spurgeon interviews Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Charles Brownstein about the dismissal of the Gordon Lee case. As I read the interview I thought of a different kind of dismissal the case received–from a former coworker of mine who, when word of the first charges first broke out, sneered that the Nick Bertozzi comic involved was pornography, that Lee deserved what he got, and that the CBLDF should never have taken the case. Not to put to fine a point on it, but suck on it, schmuck.
* Film scholar and Tolkien-film expert Kristin Thompson weighs the enthusiasm for his new Hobbit gig expressed by director Guillermo Del Toro in this MTV interview and elsewhere against the skepticism expressed by Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir. If O’Hehir’s piece stuck with its initial focus on Del Toro’s previously voiced distasted for heroic fantasy, or a critique of his existing films, I’d be right there with him, but instead it veers off into things that really have nothing to do with the potential quality of his Hobbit film, like the fact that lawsuits had been filed and Peter Jackson is successful.
* David Bowie’s legendary live set from a 1972 gig in Santa Monica is being officially released!
* Sea monsters in Manhattan! It’s an inflatable art piece by Joshua Allen Harris. (Via And Now the Screaming Starts.)
If we all switch to canvas tote bags, we’ll be putting artists out of work, dontcha know!