Very brief carnival of souls

* Eve Tushnet reviews the Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink, one of my very favorite films of all time.

* Tom Spurgeon speaks to Darwyn Cooke (and Ed Brubaker) about Cooke’s upcoming adaptation of Donald Westlake/Richard Stark’s Parker novels. A lot of it reads just like a journey through Cooke and Brubaker’s book and DVD collections, which is fun in and of itself.

* At first it seemed like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the torture of Abu Zubaydah, but it turns out that’s not true, at least as far as we know and as far as she and currently available records both say. You’ll no doubt be thrilled to the bottom of your heart to learn that torture is still enthusiastically supported by Dick Cheney, until four months ago the Vice President of the United States of America.