* Todd Van Der Werff tackles the Lost season finale. He notes something I picked up on as well–resonance with Battlestar Galactica.
* My pal TJ Dietsch weighs in as well, and there’s a pretty lively discussion going on in the comments of my review/recap.
* Here’s a trailer for The Road. They appear to have changed the implied nature of the apocalypse quite a bit, which I’m not super-thrilled about. On the other hand, the cast is nuts, and I’m pretty sure I heard The Gut-Wrenching Scream.
* The latest entry in Scott Tobias’s New Cult Canon series for the A.V. Club is a doozy: The Big Lebowski. It’s weird: I feel like I’ve internalized so much of that movie that Tobias’s quote-heavy take on it doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know. But perhaps you’ll get more out of it than I did.
* Finally, I am not a political blogger (thank your lucky stars, believe me and anyone who was around for the comics blogosphere’s early years), but I have been blogging a bit about political issues that touch on the pop-cultural areas that are my usual province. I blog about torture because it’s horrifying, just like I blog occasionally about real-world serial killers or atrocities or animal cruelty or even fun stuff like giant squids and sea monsters and paranormal stuff and suchlike because they’re horror-related, or like I blog occasionally about drug policy because of recreational drugs’ connection to making and enjoying art. (And while we’re on that subject, the new White House Drug Czar says the “war on drugs” is being abandoned as a term and a rubric, which is just wonderful.) But just like I’ve never become a true-crime blog despite the activity of any number of gruesome murderers, and just like I’ve never become an animal-rights blog despite the daily avalanche of pitiless cruelty on both individual and industry levels, and just like I’ve never become a cryptozoology blog despite the rumored presence of any number of weird critters out there, I don’t think it’s in the best interest of anyone to turn every carnival of souls into a collection of links to the latest news about America’s devolution into a torture state under the Bush Administration and the degree to which this will or will not be reversed under the Obama Administration. I already subject The Missus to nightly minutes-long obscenity-laden diatribes on the topic, for one thing, and her pain is your gain; meanwhile it’s impossible for me to separate the issue from my years of cheerleading for the people responsible and my current and overwhelming and perhaps preening self-disgust over that, so I fully trust neither my motives nor my judgment. I also generally don’t feel like talking about it with strangers or stranger-esque people. But most of all, there are any number of vastly better informed sources out there doing actual reporting on this vital matter, rather than simply stealing Glenn Greenwald’s links and calling it a day like I’ve been doing. So if you notice a decrease in posts and links about the less sensational aspects of this soul-destroying story, that’s why. I expect I’ll continue to note the worst parts, though, because that’s me all over.
The trailer for THE ROAD fills me with the wrong kind of dread.
Funny, but for a character who only spoke in flashback, his wife seems awfully…present.
Gah… they’re turning the book into The Day After Tomorrow 2? McCarthy seemed to want to use the apocalypse theme solely to build a desolate, survivalist setting for the story without commenting on the “how” or “why” of it.
Doesn’t that Esquire article say that none of that what-may-have-caused-it stuff will be in the movie? Or did I read it wrong. I’m too lazy to go look.
My buddy Jason Adams at My New Plaid Pants argues that they probably had to cut the trailer that way just to get people to want to come see the movie. I’ll buy it.