Isegoria

In her new book, Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher says that Dad ran off with Liz Taylor, Cary Grant lectured me about drugs, George Lucas ruined my life:

I am truly a product of Hollywood in-breeding. When two celebrities mate, someone like me is the result.

I was born on October 21, 1956 in Burbank, California. My father, Eddie Fisher, was a famous singer. My mother, Debbie Reynolds, was a movie star. Her best-known role was in Singin’ In The Rain.

In the Fifties, my parents were known as ‘America’s sweethearts’. Their pictures graced the covers of all the newspapers. They were the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston of their day.

When I was born, my mother was given an anaesthetic because they didn’t have epidurals in those days. Consequently, she was unconscious.

Now, my mother is a beautiful woman – she’s beautiful today in her 70s, so at 24 she looked like a Christmas morning. All the doctors were buzzing round her pretty head, saying: ‘Oh, look at Debbie Reynolds asleep – how pretty.’

And my father, upon seeing me start to arrive, fainted. So all the nurses ran over saying: ‘Oh look, there’s Eddie Fisher, the crooner, on the ground. Let’s go look at him.’

So when I arrived I was virtually unattended. And I have been trying to make up for that fact ever since.

It all sounds so very, very Hollywood.

Donald Pittenger reviews a new book on the controversial J.C. Leyendecker(1874-1951), creator of the Arrow Collar/Arrow Shirt man and “more Saturday Evening Post covers than Norman Rockwell”:

Both the book and Leyendecker are controversial. Leyendecker was almost surely (evidence is circumstantial, but strong) a closet homosexual who lived with Charles Beach, the main model for the Arrow advertisements (that’s him in the book cover illustration, above). In this autobiographical book, his fellow New Rochelle resident Norman Rockwell devotes Chapter 9 to Leyendecker’s odd living arrangement that included his brother, illustrator F.X. Leyendecker who died of dissipation in 1924, and never-married sister Mary who left the mansion shortly after F.X.’s death. Eventually Beach gained control of most household affairs, turning an already shy Joe Leyendecker into a recluse.

Jason Zengerle calls Malcolm Gladwell a Geek Pop Star, but after the amazing success of The Tipping Point and Blink, Gladwell has decided to get serious — something that often spells the end of a good run:

Where he once focused on cool-hunting and T-shirts in his New Yorker articles, now it’s IQ tests and pension systems. “There is a kind of underlying social vision in a lot of his pieces,” says Henry Finder, his editor at the magazine. “The basic vision says how we fare in life isn’t just determined by ourselves and our character, it’s determined by a lot of other things that are beyond our control.” Gladwell has expanded that social vision into a book that he describes as “more political” and “a little angrier” than his previous efforts. “The interesting part of this now is trying to figure out what you do with the idea,” he says, explaining the new approach he took with Outliers, “as opposed to before, where the interesting part was just explaining the idea.” Bruce Headlam, a childhood friend of Gladwell’s who’s now an editor at the New York Times, calls Outliers “the book that’s closest to Malcolm’s heart.”

“When I wrote Tipping Point, my expectation was it would be read by my mom and that was it,” Gladwell says. “I had no notion I was creating a kind of public document. Now I realize I have a bit of a podium, so it seems silly to put the podium to waste.”

I feel like I’m about to watch a “very special episode” of my favorite sitcom.

Guillermo del Toro, who directed Hellboy II — which just came out on DVD (and Blu-ray) — is currently involved in a bunch of fantasy movie projects: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Slaughterhouse-Five, At the Mountains of Madness — and The Hobbit:

Del Toro, who always carries a notebook so he can make character notes, sketch creatures and develop shot ideas, says he won’t travel with his Hobbit notebook for fear of exposing his secret vision for the film to the world.

“With something as big as The Hobbit, if I were to lose that notebook, there would be legal hell to pay,” he said. “So, I have a safe place for that one, and it stays there.”
[...]
After getting his kids off to school every morning in Los Angeles, del Toro sits down to write Hobbit for two hours. Afterward, he’ll deal with whatever project is on the agenda — whether he’s serving as a producer, writer and/or director for the film in development.

“Not every movie needs my attention at the same time every day,” del Toro said. “So, I deal with the film in front of me — one at a time. The secret is to compartmentalize. As long as you’re only working 12 hours a day, it’s OK.”
[...]
Someday, del Toro will be sitting down to record commentaries for the two Hobbit movies he’s writing and directing for producer and Oscar winner Peter Jackson. He said he’s in close communication with the original Lord of the Rings director daily, whether it’s by phone, via video conference or after a 14-hour flight to New Zealand.

There’s still plenty of Tolkien lore to hammer into shape for the screen.

“We envision The Hobbit as one film told in two chapters,” del Toro said. “We’re not looking at where we’ll separate the story yet because you have to look at the novel as one story.”

Del Toro must be closing in on wrapping the Hobbit script, though — he said he sees preproduction beginning in January.

Jay Dixit submits that the true genius of lolcats lies in their tragedy

In one classic example, one cat is crying, and another is hugging it and saying, “Don’t crai. We’ll get cheezburger someday.” It’s sweet and poignant and wistful all at the same time. Life can be hard, it says, and we don’t always get what we want, but even as we long for things we may never have, we draw succor from the reassurances of those we love. Sure, it’s ridiculous that what the cat is yearning for is a cheeseburger. But the cheeseburger is not really a cheeseburger — it’s a symbol.

Here’s another: A brown and black calico looks out the window of his apartment only to notice a beautiful white female on the balcony across the way. His heart quickens, in the scenario I imagine, then he swallows hard and quickly looks away, unable to muster the courage to speak to her. The caption: “Evry dayz, 3 o’clockz … Mebe one day I sez meow to her.” Who among us hasn’t felt that longing and regret? Who among us hasn’t passed an attractive stranger in the supermarket or on the street, only to kick ourselves afterward for letting the opportunity slip between our fingers?

If anything, this reminds me of the grief that made Peanuts good.

Madhulika Sikka defends Daniel Craig and the character he plays, a Bond with a broken heart:

Here’s the truth — I’ve been a Bond fan since I was a child. Look, I grew up in England, and James Bond movies were a must-see event in my family. He’s a character who made Britain feel good about itself at a time when the empire was definitely a distant memory. (And it seems he still does. Quantum‘s opening day smashed box-office records in Britain two weeks ago, even beating out previous record holder — another British icon — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.) The movie Bond I grew up with was all about cool gizmos and gadgets, exotic ports of call, a bit of wit and the occasional double entendre. What’s not to love? Moneypenny and I were in agreement on that.

But I found Ian Fleming’s Bond when I re-read Casino Royale, the book that launched the franchise more than 50 years ago. The Bond in these pages actually has feelings — feelings of doubt, fear, love and loss. So, I am here to tell you to forget about those cartoonish renditions you know from the movies. You need to go back to the source.

Gentlemen, Craig’s Bond works because he went back to the source. I’ll be the first to admit I thought the choice of Craig as Bond was ill-advised — why was this actor with the steely blue eyes who looks more like a Russian gangster taking the role that rightfully belonged to Clive Owen? But I was so wrong.

When he exploded on the screen in Casino Royale, he had done his homework. This Bond is a man that women can love because he loved a woman — Vesper Lynd — a woman who died. If you are looking for motivation, here it is. In the chapter that describes Lynd’s death, Bond is clearly a broken man.

Now maybe it was the heartbreak that turned him into the carefree sex machine, the cavalier Bond that most men would like to be and the Bond that we know so well from the movies, a man who went through as many women as he went through ports of call. But Daniel Craig’s Bond is not that Bond — yet.

Although I enjoyed his Tip of the Hat and Wag of the Finger to Marvel Comics, it gets really good before that, when Colbert Wags His Finger at Jane Austen Baseball — because, you see, the word “baseball” appeared in her Northanger Abbey 40 years before the game was played in America.

(This was only recently discovered. The intersection of Austen scholars and sports historians is empty.)

A transcript:

Austen wasn’t writing about American baseball. It was a Jane Austen version, where the ball is not hurled about rudely, but introduced to the bat through proper channels at a society function.

And one does not steal bases like a commoner. One sends word ahead to the next base by messenger, requesting permission to approach at the base’s leisure.

Of course, what the bat cannot reveal is that though he loves the ball desperately, he has sworn an oath of loyalty to the glove to whom the ball was promised. So the bat must pretend he hates the ball, swatting at it, though he wishes nothing more than to profess his undying affection, but he can’t, he mustn’t, he shan’t! And so, the bat must retreat to the gardens of his estate and pine.

George R.R. Martin calls it Huge, Huge News:

HBO has given the production order.

They will be filming the pilot episode of A GAME OF THRONES.

It’s just the pilot so far. They’ll need to see that before they decide whether to proceed with a full season’s episodes. So let’s all hope the pilot will kick serious ass.

It should. David Benioff and Dan Weiss did a terrific job with the script. And yes, all of you can relax, it’s very faithful. Dan and David will be the executive producers for the pilot and (we hope) the eventual series.

More details when I have ‘em. The news is very fresh. HBO just issued their own press release, which should be up on their website soon, if it’s not there already.

Winter is coming to HBO. Hot damn.

I wasn’t sure what to think when I saw this — `Jumanji' director Johnston does `Captain America':

Joe Johnston, whose credits include “Jurassic Park III” and “Jumanji,” has been signed to direct the comic-book adaptation “The First Avenger: Captain America,” Marvel Studios announced Monday.

The movie is scheduled for release May 6, 2011, the same weekend that Marvel scored a blockbuster this year with “Iron Man,” starring Robert Downey Jr. “Iron Man 2″ comes out May 7, 2010.

This made me feel better though:

Johnston is directing “The Wolf Man,” an update of the horror classic starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins that comes out in 2009. His other credits include “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “The Rocketeer” and “October Sky.”

Ken Hite and Andy Hopp have combined H.P. Lovecraft and Maurice Sendak to produce Where the Deep Ones Are.

When I read Frankenstein years ago, I immediately realized how little resemblance it bore to the version of the story I’d osmotically absorbed through the culture.

In particular, I was shocked to realize that Doctor Frankenstein does not assemble the monster from dead body parts — or, if he does, it’s left terribly, terribly vague:

One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance, that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.

The monster also bears little resemblance to the iconic movie version:

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

Note too that the good doctor does not scream, “It’s alive! Alive!”