* I feel like every moment of my marathon run through all four seasons of Mad Men was leading me to this: A five-hour interview with series creator Matthew Weiner. This is heaven, absolute heaven. Everyone who created a work of art I enjoyed as much as Mad Men should be interviewed about the entirety of their life and career for five hours. And Sopranos fans will absolutely want to watch this as well, as he talks about his involvement in that show at length, and makes an argument for its greatness. (And reveals that he is the Peggy to David Chase’s Don.) My favorite thing about it is Weiner’s good humor and streak of genuine humility/self-deprecation. He’s not needlessly hard on himself — obviously he’s quite good at his job, it’d be stupid to deny that — and nor is he an egomaniac. If you know any talented successful creative people that you personally are friendly with, he sounds like those people. What a treat!
* Great googly moogly: Vince Clarke and Martin Gore are reuniting! This makes me happy in my heart. When I watched that BBC documentary Synth Britannia a while back, I was struck by how a dude like Clarke who made such warm music ankled the rest of Depeche Mode in such a cold way. These were his friends from school, and he ditched them because advances in technology had allowed him to do everything he needed to do (except sing) by himself, so his friends were now superfluous. So glad to see two of my favorite synthpop songwriters working together again, even if it’s for a minimal techno album.
* Five new B.P.R.D. miniseries next year! Way to take advantage of the apocalyptic 2012 zeitgeist.
* I’m bummed to see the very good Panelists group blog shutting down. I’d actually been wondering about this, seeing as how co-founders Craig Fischer and Charles Hatfield have columns going at The Comics Journal. But hey, there’s your silver lining, innit?
* Interesting: The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008. Curious to see what this looks like.
* Fantagraphics: minicomics publisher!
* “With Great Power Comes No Responsibility.” Tattoo it on your forehead, America!
* Wizard’s Gareb Shamus is blogging and tweeting and quietly shutting down his digital magazine.
* Amazingly, Jason Adams of My New Plaid Pants interviews Michael Fassbender and never once asks to see his penis! He doesn’t even hint around at it! Jason, I’d like you to know that whenever I think of him now, I mentally refer to him as Fassy, without fail.
* Happy 71st birthday to Cardinal Fang Terry Gilliam, one of the very best people.
* And congratulations to Anders Nilsen for his book Big Questions‘ deserving presence on the New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year list. As you can see from the review-link sidebar on my blog, I’m its biggest fan, although I have yet read the collected edition. But then I have yet to read a ton of promising comics that have come out this year. I’m hoping to reorganize my life to make that possible again. It’s so important to me to have my hands in these things. It makes me feel better as a person and happier in life. Do you know what I mean?
Tags: Carnival of souls, comics, links, movies, music, real life, TV
I was going to say that the interview could’ve in real life ended with me lunging at Fassy’s penis and I just left that part out of my write-up, but then I realized there was no way I would’ve left that out of my write-up, even if a normal person would be embarrassed by such behavior. I woulda been proud of my invasive gumption! Alas I kept a respectful distance, and made sure I was staring at his crotch only when he wasn’t looking. Or mostly, at least.
Am I an idiot? I click on that first link and I see parts 4 and 7 of that interview. Where’s the rest?
Basque, it’s weird–about half the time I click on it that’s all I see, and the other half of the time all 7 videos come up (although it won’t actually let me watch any of them as embedded videos on that page–I have to click through each one to watch them on YouTube). Try reloading the page if you’re only seeing parts 4 and 7. That usually does the trick for me.
Basque and Sean, try here:
http://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/matthew-weiner