* Here are the 2010 Oscar winners.
* Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s Stanley Kubrick retrospective is up to Lolita and Dr. Strangelove. Here’s a fine bit from the former by Katherine Follett:
In the novel, Humbert believed in his arrogance that lusting after a basically non-sexual girl was somehow the mark of a rare aesthete, as if he had an appreciation for inaccessible modern art, while adult women were the equivalent of banal, eye-pleasing landscapes. But now that Lolita has the body of an adult woman, and Humbert’s interior voice is nonexistent, we’re left with no special reason why Humbert is drawn to Lolita, other than ordinary–and totally understandable–lust.
Sue Lyon was a dime, obviously, but I still thought the film got “she’s too young” across effectively enough. Meanwhile, I enjoyed Timothy Sun’s take on Strangelove for how systematically it reminds us that American cinema’s greatest satire includes characters called Buck Turgidson, Jack T. Ripper, Merkin Muffley, and Major Kong.
* Dan Nadel on Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca’s Afrodisiac. Interesting point of comparison to Josh Cotter’s Driven by Lemons.
* Loving, loving, loving Zak Smith’s Playing D&D with Porn Stars. Here’s a killer pair of posts running down the pros and cons of the game’s Demons and Devils, and here’s a marvelous rumination on the way players flip back and forth between their in-game and real-world selves while playing. I mean, for real, I’m running out of superlatives.
* Recently on Robot 6: JMS as the third leg on the Grant Morrison/Geoff Johns footstool and Jared Stumpenhorst’s LOST 365.
* I’m starting to think it’s weird that trailers show you the entire plot of a movie. Like, this Iron Man 2 trailer leaves pretty much no surprises for the first three reels, right? But hey, War Machine.
It’s odd to see Starcyznski doing both the Earth One OGNs as well as the regular monthly.
Watching some old trailers from 50’s exploitation flicks, I was kind of surprised to see that studios have always spilled the plot points of the entire picture, sometimes even the climax, in their adverts. I thought this was a lamentable trend but it’s just business as usual when it comes to getting butts in seats.
Still, I had the same feeling watching the Iron Man 2 trailer – “Wow, so I pretty much know every story beat going in…” and none of it seems particularly surprising. The movie will probably still be a hoot, and the trailer is cut great. Just wish it looked a little fresher.
Gotta love the suitcase, though.