(1) YA’S OWN STORY ARC. Slate’s “The Decade in Young Adult Fiction” is not specifically about sff, but a lot of the books they talk about (Twilight, The Hunger Games, etc.) are genre.
As a book publishing phenomenon, young adult literature entered the decade like a lion. At the beginning of the 2010s, a generation that had grown up obsessed with Harry Potter and other middle-grade fantasy series decided it wasn’t that interested in adult literary fiction, with its often lackadaisical plotting and downbeat endings. YA stood ready to supply them with plenty of action, cliffhangers, supernatural beings, mustache-twirling bad guys, and true love. But now, at decade’s end, YA seems to be eating itself alive….
…The impulse that led to these and other worthy enterprises, however, is vulnerable to being twisted to less salutary ends on platforms that foster cliques, vendettas, and self-righteous posturing. In the past two years, online networks of YA authors and readers—mostly female adults—have been convulsed with assorted scandals and controversies that have left many outside observers with the impression that “YA Twitter” is hopelessly “toxic.” Bloggers and Twitter pundits pilloried 2017’s The Black Witch, a debut young-adult fantasy novel by Laurie Forest, for its purported “racism.” That criticism proved unconvincing—even to teen readers, who made the book a success and reviewed it enthusiastically on Amazon—but few of those weighing in on the controversy bothered to point out instead how listlessly predictable The Black Witch is, with the usual high-born heroine confronting an unjust world while embroiled in the usual bad boy/good boy love triangle. It didn’t quite seem worthy of the energy adult readers devoted to fighting over it….
(2) ADD TO YOUR CINEMA TBR STACK. Leonard Maltin weighs in about a flock of books out this month: “New and Notable Film Books – December 2019”. Here are two of his comments:
THE SHOW WON’T GO ON: THE MOST SHOCKING, BIZARRE, AND HISTORIC DEATHS OF PERFORMERS ONSTAGE by Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns (Chicago Review Press)
Abraham and Kearns surely aren’t the only show-biz aficionados who have harbored a keen interest in the stories of entertainers who actually died in front of an audience… but they’re the only ones who have had the gumption to research every urban legend surrounding this topic and separate fact from fiction.
RICK BAKER: METAMORPHOSIS by J.W. Rinzler; foreword by John Landis, preface by Peter Jackson, introduction by Rick Baker. (Cameron & Co.)
This massive two-volume tribute to seven-time Academy Award winner Rick Baker is a definitive study of his life and career in the world of makeup. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced in a slipcase edition, its quality and thoroughness justify its hefty price. Every page offers wonders and delights, including young Rick’s first correspondence with his hero, makeup genius Dick Smith, and his earliest experiments.
(3) EARLY RETURNS. NPR’s Glen Weldon finds that “‘The Rise Of Skywalker’ Makes For An Exciting, Exhaustive, Effortful Ending”.
The thing about the act of plate-spinning is: It’s not about the plates. Not really.
…If we happen to notice one plate starting to wobble, after all, the first thing we do is look away from it, to see if the plate-spinner sees it, too.
We want them to succeed. The whole cheesy novelty act is predicated on this. The sheer skill it takes to keep the plates from falling — the eye, the timing, the light touch — that’s what we’re drawn to, really. The work of the thing.
J.J. Abrams is spinning a great many plates in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the final chapter in the third and final trilogy of what we are now apparently supposed to call “The Skywalker Saga.” He’s not simply called upon to end the trilogy he began in 2015 with The Force Awakens, but the whole space-operatic, science-fiction-with-generous-helpings-of-fantasy, embrace-your-destiny, Joseph-Campbell, daddy-issues megillah. He has to land a Corellian light freighter that has been loaded down with everything that got kicked off in 1977…
He nails that 42-year-old recipe dutifully — effortfully, it must be said — but the flavoring’s off. The story doesn’t require him to toss in as many ingredients from earlier films in the saga as he does here, but he dumps them all (callbacks, references, echoes, events, characters) into the mix anyway. The result leaves you feeling not so much bloated — the film moves too quickly and is too much fun for that — but certainly overstuffed….
(4) TWO-MINUTE WARNING. And the Baby Yoda backlash follows right behind as Rolling Stone demands: “It’s Almost 2020, Why Hasn’t the Baby Yoda Meme Died?”.
The Mandalorian, as a whole, is an interesting litmus test of just how successful a giant entertainment conglomerate can be when it comes to wringing a piece of previously existing IP for all its worth. One might measure success in Disney+ views/subscriptions or award nominations — but, in 2019, maybe the measure is whether or not you can proffer up a bit of fan service and hope the Internet latches onto it, turns it into a meme and does all your best viral marketing for you, free of charge.
(5) ECONOMICS IN SPACE. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Nobel-prize winning economist, science fiction fan and 2009 Worldcon guest Paul Krugman unpacked the macroeconomic themes of The Expanse in his New York Times column on Wednesday. In specific, he highlights how the story of the Martian economy is a parable about the need for public spending during downturns:
The emergence of high unemployment on Mars after demobilization and the end of terraforming makes it seem as if the real problem wasn’t technology, it was secular stagnation — a situation in which private spending is consistently too weak to employ the economy’s resources, except during unsustainable asset or debt bubbles.
(6) WE CAME, WE SAW, WE KICKED ITS ASS. Close to the occasion of Ghostbusters’ 35th anniversary, YouTuber and video essayist Ryan Hollinger has published a video analyzing the film’s full legacy and its effect on mainstream belief in the paranormal — “The Real Meaning of GHOSTBUSTERS… Apparently.”
(7) A BORROWER AND A LENDER BE. “Here Are The Most Popular NYC Library Books Of 2019, By Borough” presented by The Gothamist.
Number 1 Titles By Genre
(Manhattan, Staten Island & The Bronx, from the New York Public Library)
- Classics: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Comics and Graphic Novels: Saga by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
- Fantasy: Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
- Horror: The Shining by Stephen King
- Mystery and Detective: The Chef by James Patterson
- Romance: Every Breath by Nicholas Sparks
- Science Fiction: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born December 18, 1913 — Alfred Bester. He’s best remembered perhaps for The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award. I remember experiencing it as an audiobook — a very spooky affair! The Stars My Destination is equally impressive with Foyle both likeable and unlikable at the same time. Psychoshop which Zelazny finished is in my library but has escaped reading so far. I’ve run across references to Golem100 but I’ve never seen a copy anywhere. Has anyone read It? (Died 1987.)
- Born December 18, 1939 — Michael Moorcock, 81. Summing up the career of Moorcock isn’t possible so I won’t. His Elric of Melniboné series is just plain awesome and I’m quite fond of the Dorian Hawkmoon series of novels as well. Particular books that I’d like to note as enjoyable for me include The Metatemporal Detective collection and Mother London.
- Born December 18, 1941 — Jack C. Haldeman II. He’d get Birthday Honors if only for On the Planet of Zombie Vampires, book five of the adventures of Bill the Galactic Hero, co-written with Harry Harrison. He’d also get these honors for chairing Disclave 10 through Disclave 17, and a Worldcon as well, Discon II. He was a prolific short story writer, penning at least seventy-five such tales, but alas none of these, nor his novels, are available in digital form. (Died 2002.)
- Born December 18, 1946 — Steven Spielberg, 73. Are we counting Jaws as genre? I believe we are per an earlier discussion here. If so, that’s his first such followed immediately by Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Between 1981 and 1984, he put out Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Twilight Zone: The Movie and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Ok, so the quality of the last film wasn’t great… He’d repeat that feat between ‘89 and ‘93 when he put out Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Hook (YEA!) which I both love, followed by Jurassic Park which I don’t. The Lost World: Jurassic Park followed, starting a string of so-so to piss poor films, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, War of the Worlds and one decided stinker, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The BFG is simply wonderful.
- Born December 18, 1953 — Jeff Kober, 66. Actor who’s been in myriad genre series and films including V, The Twilight Zone, Alien Nation, the Poltergeist series,the X-Files series, Tank Girl as one of the kangaroos naturally, Supernatural, Voyager, Star Enterprise, Kindred: The Embraced and The Walking Dead.
- Born December 18, 1954 — J.M. Dillard, 65. Yes I know this is a pen name but I’m interested only in her Trek output tonight. She’s written at least fifteen tie-ins starting with Star Trek: Mindshadow in the mid-Eighties And her last seemingly being Star Trek: The Next Generation: Resistance in the late Oughts. She also wrote one of the many, many non-fiction works that came out on Trek, Star Trek: ‘Where No One Has Gone Before’: A History in Pictures, which was actually largely written by Roddenberry’s assistant on a work-for-hire contract as a another book that didn’t get published, a woman named Susan Sackett. Memory Alpha has the story here.
- Born December 18, 1954 — Ray Liotta, 65. We could just stop at him being Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, don’t you think that’s an exemplary genre cred? Well I will.
- Born December 18, 1968 — Casper Van Dien, 51. Yes, Johnny Rico in that Starship Troopers. Not learning his lesson, he’d go on to film Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and the animated Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars. Do not go read the descriptions of these films! He’d also star as Tarzan in Tarzan and the Lost City, show up as Brom Van Brunt In Sleepy Hollow, be Captain Abraham Van Helsing In Dracula 3000, James K. Polk in, oh really Casper, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter sequels, Rumpelstiltskin In Avengers Grimm and Saber Raine In Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine. That’s a lot of really bad films.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Lio meets an Alien in a snowman.
(10) UNRAVELING THE GRINCH’S DNA. CrimeReads investigates “How Dr. Seuss Gave Us One of the Most Complex, Socially Important Heist Stories Ever”. You need to go waaaay back….
…Geisel, though, had a long history of mixed feelings about Christmas. According to biographer Charles D. Cohen, as a student at Dartmouth College in the 1920s and a writer and cartoonist for the campus humor magazine the Jack-O-Lantern, Geisel lampooned the whole affair, specifically citing the greed and materialism he saw in the season in an essay called “Santy Claus be Hanged,” which was mostly about how Christmas mornings are ruined because no one receives the items they truly want. He bemoaned, “Sister wanted silk unmentionables and she gets burlap unpronouncibles. Brother wanted a case of scotch and he gets a case of goldfish.” A few years later, in 1930, he published a humorous essay suggesting that parents should combine Santa Claus, his reindeer, the Bogeyman, the Sand-Man, and the Stork into one home-invasive figure—simplifying the number of flying and/or magical creatures that kids would have to count on entering their homes. And then he drew many cartoons representing classic Christmas hallmarks in weird or comically unpleasant versions.
(11) WHO BLABBED? The Royal Aeronautical Society spills the beans about “The secret history of Santa interceptions”.
For the past 70 plus years, nations around the world have attempted to intercept a mysterious hypersonic, high-flying intruder from the North Pole and learn its aeronautical secrets. Our Lapland aerospace Correspondent CHRIS TINGLE reports on the secret effort to counter these annual airspace intrusions.
(12) OLD TECH. Some Filers will have read Dava Sobel’s Longitude; the BBC describes a spinoff, “The invention that inspired a New York tradition”.
When the final hours of 2019 arrive, a million celebrants will crowd Times Square in New York. Elsewhere, an estimated billion more will tune in to watch the annual spectacle celebrated across the globe.
…But few will acknowledge the man who really deserves their praise, a deeply religious British Royal Navy officer named Robert Wauchope.
…Wauchope’s goal was to make shipping safer. In the early 19th Century, having the exact time was crucial knowledge for mariners. It was only by keeping a ship’s clock precisely calibrated that sailors could calculate their longitude and accurately travel across oceans.
His ball, first demonstrated in Portsmouth, England, in 1829, was a crude broadcast system, a way to relay time to anyone who could see the signal. Typically, at 12:55, a creaky piece of machinery would raise a large painted orb halfway to the top of a pole or flagstaff; at 12:58, it would proceed to the top; and precisely at 13:00, a worker would release it to drop down the pole.
“It is a clear signal,” said Andrew Jacob, a curator who operates the time ball at the Sydney Observatory in Australia. “It’s easy to see the sudden movement as it begins to drop.”
Before the time ball’s invention, a ship’s master would typically come ashore and physically visit an observatory to check his watch against an official clock. Then he would quite literally bring time back to the ship. Wauchope’s invention let sailors calibrate their shipboard timepiece, called a chronometer, without leaving their boat.
“We’re so used to time being here and available, and that wasn’t always the case,” said Emily Akkermans, who has the enviable title, Curator of Time, at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. The museum and historic site houses the world’s oldest operating time ball, which since 1833 has dropped daily, barring blustery weather, war or mechanical breakdown.
(13) CHEOPS AHOY. The space-pharoahing probe is on the way: “Europe’s Cheops telescope launches to study far-off worlds”.
The European Cheops space telescope has launched to study planets outside our Solar System.
The observatory will follow up the discoveries of previous missions, endeavouring to reveal fresh insights on the nature of distant worlds: What are they made of? How did they form? And how have they changed through time?
The telescope was taken into orbit on a Russian Soyuz rocket that set off from French Guiana at 08:54 GMT.
The ride to 700km lasted 145 minutes.
Cheops (short for CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite) is a joint endeavour of 11 member states of the European Space Agency (Esa), with Switzerland in the lead.
…What’s significant about this mission?
Some 4,500 planets have been discovered since the late 1990s using a variety of techniques. But there is a feeling now that the science has to move beyond just detection; beyond just counting planets. We need to profile the objects in a more sophisticated way. Do they have atmospheres and how thick are they? What kind of clouds? Do they possess oceans on their surface? Do they have rings and moons? Cheops ought to be able to address such questions just from looking for these tiny dips in light during a transit.
(14) GENTLEMEN, DON’T BE SEATED. BBC reports “Social media awash with scorn for ‘sloping toilet'”.
A toilet designed to slope downwards slightly, making it uncomfortable to sit on for more than a few minutes, has been pooh-poohed on social media.
The toilet design has an upper surface that slopes downwards at a 13-degree angle.
…The BBC spoke to Mr Gill about the toilet, which has been branded “StandardToilet”.
“It came from my personal experience where I stopped off at the motorway to go to the loo and realised there’s a huge queue,” he explained.
“I wondered what people were doing in there, some were coming out with their mobile phones.”
(15) MAKE UP YOUR OWN FACTS. Discover “The Incalculable Joy of Fermi Questions” at Math With Bad Drawings. Numerous examples in the post.
… Since Fermi questions are so fun and useful, why aren’t they more widely taught? Why isn’t every middle school student doing one of these per week all year long?
I suspect a prosaic reason: they’re hard to grade fairly. Math education is accustomed to cut-and-dry answers. Fermi work is more like an essay, where there are many plausible answers, and reasoning trumps conclusions.
All the more reason to embrace them, I say!
(16) TRACING ANIMATION HISTORY. Alan Baumler recommends Daisy Yan Du’s Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation, 1940s–1970s (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019) in “Princess Iron Fan and the origins of Asian animation”.
… One of the reasons the film is so famous is that Tezuka Osamu the “God of Manga”saw it in Japan as a kid and was profoundly influenced by it. In discussing his version of the Sun Wukong story he said
However, what really opened my eyes , impressed me deeply, and sparked my desire to create today was Princess Iron Fan, the first Chinese animated feature film., which premiered in Japan in 1942. (pg. 58)
… Du gives the background on inspiration for the film (Disney’s Snow White) , but most interestingly, for me at least, deals with how it ended up being shown in Japan and becoming, in some respects, the origin story of Asian animated film. It was the direct inspiration for Momotar?’s Sea Eagles (p.52), Japan’s first almost feature length animated film.
She also deals with what to make of Iron Fan, which was a big issue for the film at the time. It was made by the Wan brothers and a team of 250 artists starting on April 25, 1940. The film opened on Nov 19, 1941, in Shanghai. As you can see below, it was still running on Dec 8, 1941, when Japanese troops marched into the International Settlement and French Concession….
(17) BAD RAP. Who even thinks of stuff like this? “Thanos vs J Robert Oppenheimer” — Epic Rap Battles of History does.
[Thanks to Nina Shepardson, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, Alan Baumler, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, JJ, N., John King Tarpinian, Darrah Chavey, John A Arkansawyer, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]
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First!
)17): Gosh wow!
@8: All of Bester’s post-Holiday work is less impressive, but Golem^100 was particularly so to me-then; it grew out of an interesting short story that didn’t have the whatever to support a novel. The Deceivers was minor; The Computer Connection (Extro in the UK, politically-incorrect in the original magazine publication) at least had some of the old flash. Bester in person was like his fiction, only more so; hearing him read “The Pi Man” was my high point of MAC1.
@13: consider yourself groaned at.
BOLO: The BBC reports How bots are stealing artwork from artists on Twitter
Adding to the controversy: maybe computer screens don’t interfere — <a href=https://www.bbc.com/news/health-50807011″>What’s the best colour lighting for sleep?
Clickity
8) I’ve read Golem 100 and I think it fails the Sidney Glutz Test — “If this book were by Sidney Glutz, would it be bought?”
But then, I’ve even read They’d Rather Be Right.
8) My favorite Moorcock might be the Corum books; but really, I’m happy with any of those 60s/70s-era Eternal Champion stories.
If anyone’s interested, he actually did an interview on a recent episode of the Appendix N Podcast (a podcast dedicated to exploring the fiction Gary Gygax included as Appendix N (Inspiration Reading) in the original Dungeon Master’s Guide; Moorcock is the youngest & only surviving author on the list).
(8) There Is No Darkness, the book Jack C. Haldeman II wrote with his brother is available as an eBook.
3) Watched the new Star Wars yesterday. Will have forgotten most of it in a few weeks. Yet another derivative work without bringing anything new to the table, but still well made and some really nice moments. Best was that Kylo Ren wasn’t purely annoying and instead had turned into an interesting character. 3+/5.
14) If I ran the afterlife, inventing something like that would land a person in Purgatory until the last proton decayed.
In current reading, speaking of YA, in case anyone’s wondering —
I finished Crown of Feathers by Nicki Pau Preto yesterday. It’s a debut novel and YA, and sort-of-kind-of teenagers with dragons (phoenixes are basically feathery dragons in this universe, complete with riders and flames used in battle).
I actually found it kind of charming, and definitely enjoyable. It does over-explain and it does have too much exposition, and the prose is nothing special, and the gender-politics message is a little heavy-handed, but I liked the characters and there was plenty to keep me interested. There is one budding romance and one interrupted budding romance that I suspect will be reignited (pardon the pun) in book 2, and both were IMHO nicely done — and nobody even got as far as kissing yet. And there were two major reveals near the end that I did not see coming at all.
So if anyone’s looking for a non-eye-rolling YA fantasy, you might give it a try!
And a coupla days before that I finished Rosewater. Loved the worldbuilding, loved the MC, was not thrilled about all the jumping back and forth in time or the feeling that the MC wasn’t really affecting the course of the story — I mean, sure, he did stuff, but the world seems to be moving on with or without him. I’d be interested in hearing other folks’ impressions!
Now a coupla hours into Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan. So far it’s mostly epistolary, and I am wishing for more action, but it’s early days yet. Also sad that Kate Reading isn’t narrating this one, but the two narrators are very good, so I’m not despondent.
Count me as another one underwhelmed by Golem 100 – actually, after The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, my favourite Beater novel is the very early, non-genre The Rat Race.
3&4 I’m awfully tired of people telling me what I can and cannot like.
And as for 17 – I’m with Oppie.
8) I think of all of Moorcock’s work (I read an awful lot of it at one time) my favourite was the Dancers At The End Of Time.
12) I’m fascinated with how we measure and disseminate time, and loved Longitude. I hadn’t realized that the New Year’s ball drop had a purpose and history beyond celebration. Cool!
Thanks for the title credit
(8) A big day for birthdays!
(17) Watched this one last night – thought Oppie won…
11: Not a bad article but could have been improved if they’d got the author’s Uncle Chuck instead.
(17) The Joker vs. Pennywise ERB to made the Scroll a while back.
Other genre ERB’s from this year were Vlad the Impaler vs Dracula and Freddy Krueger vs Wolverine. Their channel is naturally littered with genre references/subject matter.
Regards,
Dann
“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it’s in my basement… let me go upstairs and check.” – M. C. Escher
oops…click
Failed my 5-minutes-to-edit roll; last paragraph should read What’s the best colour lighting for sleep?
@Patrick Morris Miller: I’m of two minds about the sloping commode — especially given the number of people who lose themselves in their phones for much longer than the one-minute recommended break between sets at the local Y. It would be interesting to see whether subtler reminders of the time (with a snoozalarm-style button for people who are actually having digestive troubles) would work.
@rochrist: I don’t think @3 is telling you what you can like; it’s telling why you might not like something massively hyped and anticipated.
Btw Mike, maybe start a spoiler post for new Star Wars movie before discussion takes over all scrolls?
Yes, Golem¹⁰⁰ and The Computer Connection caused me to give up on reading any more of Bester’s output, despite how much I loved TDM and TSMD. But it’s been a long time since I read either of the former two, so I can’t offer any specific complaints. More “meh” than “bleagh”, IIRC, but with at least hints of the latter.
As for Moorcock, I’ve generally found him enjoyable, but not compelling.
The toilet thing sounds like it could be a nightmare for folks with limited mobility. But I guess that doesn’t matter as long as we punish those evil millennials and technophiles, right? :rolleyes:
Xtifr says Yes, Golem¹?? and The Computer Connection caused me to give up on reading any more of Bester’s output, despite how much I loved TDM and TSMD. But it’s been a long time since I read either of the former two, so I can’t offer any specific complaints. More “meh” than “bleagh”, IIRC, but with at least hints of the latter.
I tend not to remember novels that I didn’t like unless they were really bad and neither of those falls into category apparently. However The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man are so brilliant that I can overlook that the later novels aren’t that great. There’s a BBC audio production of the latter work that’s quite impressive — I’d say it was done maybe twenty years ago.
@Hampus
Its reviews are slightly better than those of the “Cats” movie.
P J Evans says of the new SW film that Its reviews are slightly better than those of the “Cats” movie.
Oh that’s not true. Cats, in the words of another film, Stink, Stank, Stunk at a depth of sheer awfulness that will hard for any other film to to approach. It seems to have deeply offended every reviewer on the planet in ways I’d not imagined possible.
Not every reviewer; the BBC’s gave it 2 stars, with a more-in-sorrow tone. OTOH, he really liked the musical, and felt the movie was expensive without living up to its predecessor; I wonder how many reviewers were getting their first exposure to the concept.
The review
The summaries of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are awesome.
“Cats is terrible, but it’s also kind of great.”
“It’s hard to know how to react to Cats, other than gape in slack-jawed amazement that the dare has continued for so long.”
“Cats shouldn’t happen to a dog.”
“Are all the cast being held hostage?”
“I would rather eat glass than watch Cats again, but if someone were to put out a warts-and-all behind-the-scenes documentary on its making, I would watch the hell out of it.”
“Woof.”
Poor actors. But on the upside, I’m absolutely gonna buy this and invite my friends for a sing-a-long.
(8) I did read Golem¹?? when it came out, and was sorely disappointed, especially since I enjoyed the early-1970s story “The Four-Hour Fugue” from which it was so crudely spawned. I’ve since read that Bester originally had wanted Jack Gaughan (who did the synesthesia artwork embedded within the Stars My Destination text) to collaborate on a full-color Golem that had little in the way of conventional text but would have been too expensive to produce.
Twitter reviews of “Cats”:
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/cats-movie-reviews-taylor-swift-judi-dench-14919005.php
Similar to those at Rotten Tomatoes.
OTOH, I would just about watch the whole Cats movie just to hear Jennifer Hudson sing — and I say that as someone who has never even watched the Broadway version.
@gottacook: I’ve generally been unthrilled by graphic adaptations of prose, but the work on tDM (which I hadn’t known was Gaughan) was effective; a written-for-Gaughan’s-graphics story could have been very impressive.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched Cats, the musical, entirely through–though I was in a room where a tv broadcast of a live performance was on background and caught bits of it. But I have to confess that the trailers for the new version have me positively intrigued and I plan to see it in the theater.
I just saw the new Star Wars movie yesterday evening and found it to be … very much a Star Wars movie. I don’t think the following is at all spoilery, but I’ll rot13 it anyway.
Znlor vg’f whfg gur cerfrag cbyvgvpny pyvzngr, ohg gur wblbhf pryroengbel pbapyhfvba unq zr guvaxvat: fb jung unccraf arkg? Ubj qb lbh gnxr n pbzcyrgryl qrinfgngrq vagrefgryyne pvivyvmngvba naq erohvyq abg bayl gur rpbabzl naq vasenfgehpgher, ohg n sbez bs tbireanapr gung jvyy abg rvgure cebqhpr be or ihyarenoyr gb gur arkg Fgne Qvpgngbe jub pbzrf nybat? Ubj qb lbh qb gung jvgu n onaq bs yrnqref jub unir fcrag gurve ragver yvirf nf cneg bs n frzv-nanepuvp naq lrg uvrenepuvpny zvyvgnel sbepr? Jurer qb lbh trg lbhe zbqryf sebz? Lbhe abezf?
Naq gung’f ncneg sebz gur tynevat dhrfgvba bs ubj gur rpbabzvpf, qrzbtencuvpf, naq ybtvfgvpf bs gur Svany Beqre npghnyyl jbexrq va gur svefg cynpr.
@Heather —
Yeah, I’m sticking my fingers in my ears and yelling “LALALALALALA!” until I have a chance to see it, so I appreciate any and all rots until then!
Frankly, I have come to the conclusion that the Star Wars universe vf na njshy cynpr, juvpu jnf njshy sbe nyy ohg n gval zvabevgl qhevat gur Byq Erchoyvp be ng yrnfg gur cneg gurerbs gung jr fnj ba fperra, gura tbg rira zber njshy haqre gur Rzcver, qvq abg znexrqyl vzcebir qhevat gur Arj Erchoyvp, nf frra va Gur Sbepr Njnxraf naq Gur Znaqnybevna, naq gura tbg jbefr ntnva jura gur Svefg/Svany Beqre gbbx bhg gur Arj Erchoyvp. Fbzrubj V fvapreryl qbhog gung guvatf jvyy vzcebir sbe tbbq abj, pbffvqrevat gung guvf vf n havirefr juvpu unf abg unq n shapgvbavat qrzbpenpl va zber guna svsgl lrnef. Naq vaqrrq V fhfcrpg gung va gra be svsgrra lrnef, jr jvyy frr n arj trarengvba bs oenir eroryf yrq ol gur fheivibef bs gur byq evfr hc gb qrsrng n arj nhgbpengvp flfgrz. Va fubeg, gur Fgne Jnef havirefr vf creznaragyl fperjrq. Juvpu vf n cvgl, orpnhfr vg vf vaunovgrq ol fbzr jbaqreshy crbcyr, juvpu vf jul jr xrrc jngpuvat gurfr zbivrf.
@Chip: Let’s just say that I’m sure I’m not the only person here for whom the sloping commode would be a problem even if we didn’t have our phones, magazines, or anything in the bathroom with us.
(14) I’m no great fan of things designed intentionally to be uncomfortable when used for the intended purpose. And since I normally carry my phone in my back pocket, I typically remove it from my pocket for its safety when I’m in a public toilet, and am sticking it back in there when I emerge from the stall. What I usually haven’t been doing while in the stall, is using my phone.
The vfx of Cats:
https://entertainment.theonion.com/cg-supervisor-for-cats-thought-he-actually-did-an-oka-1840537047
@Vicki, @Lis: that’s why I suggested that a did-you-really-intend-to-be-this-long signal might work.