Isegoria

Bear Grylls, of Man vs. Wild fame, has been cruising across Antarctica to promote Ethanol Ventures, but things have not gone well:

Sorry for the radio silence over the last 24 hours — but I have had a bit of an accident. We were all flying across the ice using the kite skis, which is when you use the big flexi-foil kites on long lines attached to your harness that propels you across the snow and ice. I was doing speeds of over 50 kilometres an hour when I hit a patch of blue ice, lost a ski and got catapulted into the air, crashing down very hard. There is no doubt my helmet saved my life, but I smashed my shoulder and hands and was badly winded. I knew at once I had done something bad to my shoulder and was in absolute agony, my shoulder was drooped down and a bone was sticking out at a weird angle. I am safe at our expedition basecamp now and the shoulder is all strapped up tight, but is very painful. The bottom line is I am lucky.

We spoke on the satellite phone to a surgeon in the UK, who tried to diagnose the injury. But there is no doubt that I have snapped the main ligament and will require an operation on it. Weirdly Gilo had a similar accident some years ago and snapped the same ligament and looking at his 8″ massive scar across his shoulder isn’t very inspiring. We’ve called for medical repatriation but all of that is easier said than done. The weather is an ever present issue and not many planes or pilots can fly this far and land on the ice. But the priority needs to be to get back to get some proper medical attention and surgery.

A Kuwaiti entrepreneur hopes to create the next Pokémon — or Justice League:

Two years ago, Naif Al Mutawa started up his own comic-book series, spurred by the dearth of Arabic-language children’s books in the Middle East.

Now, the 37-year-old Kuwaiti entrepreneur and his small company, backed by Islamic-compliant private investors, are lining up deals that could help him build a children’s-entertainment powerhouse in the Arab world.
[...]
Ynon Kreiz, CEO of Endemol and the former head of Fox Kids Europe, who has ushered in hit franchises like Power Rangers, thinks that Mr. Mutawa has found the right formula to make it big globally. “The subject matter and angle here give us a chance to really stand out,” Mr. Kreiz says of “The 99.”

Teshkeel and Edemol plan to write and produce a season of 30-minute cartoons based on the comic books. Animation for the show is expected to be done at digital studios in India. Endemol, the producer of the original “Big Brother,” plans to market “The 99″ through its television distribution network, which covers Asia, Europe and North America, as well as the Middle East.

“The 99″ refers to the number of attributes the Quran says are possessed by Allah. The superhero protagonists of the action-packed series strive to bring the light of knowledge to a violent world. To depict their adventures, Mr. Mutawa works with illustrators tapped from DC Comics, a division of Time Warner Inc., and Marvel Characters, a division of Marvel Entertainment Inc.

The story line is based on an historical event: the sacking of 13th-century Baghdad and the burning of that Islamic empire’s library. At the time, it was the largest repository of knowledge in the world. In the comic books, Muslim teenagers from such diverse places such as Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Hungary, work to bring wisdom and reason back to the world.

Jabbar, a Hulk-like figure from Saudi Arabia, has enormous strength, Noora, a young woman from the United Arab Emirates, has power over light. Darr, a blond American boy in a wheelchair, can relieve and inflict pain. Standing in their way is an evil multinational corporation and its leader, who wants to keep the world ignorant and violent.

“The 99″ accounts for a tiny portion of the global comics market. Teshkeel distributes one million copies a year, with just over half going to Asian markets and the rest to the Middle East. By contrast, Diamond Comics Distributors Inc., the main North American distributor, sold 67.9 million comic books in the first 10 months of 2008, according to industry tracker Comics Chronicles.

Licensing rights to the series has been sold for seven languages, including Hindi, Malaysian and French. But Mr. Mutawa says the real money in the comic books will come from marketing agreements, such as the Nestlé deal, and his budding theme-park operations.

Mr. Mutawa says his themes are about ethics, not religious dogma. No one in the comic books prays. There is no mention of scripture or the Prophet Mohammed. One heroine wears a burka, the head-to-toe covering worn by some Muslim women. Others wear sarongs, or ride skateboards. Comics are published in Arabic, English and Bahasa Indonesian.

A devout Muslim with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and an M.B.A. from Columbia University, Mr. Mutawa is versed in Islamic philosophy and American youth literature. He’s a big fan of “The Hardy Boys,” the children’s classic he discovered on his annual trips to summer camp in New Hampshire in the 1980s.

Censors in Saudi Arabia, the largest market in the Middle East, banned “The 99″ its first year off the presses for what they called “un-Islamic” content. Some Arabic-language newspapers have refused to run serialized versions of the books.

But Mr. Mutawa pressed on, tapping like-minded Muslims to finance the project. Partners from Bahrain-based Unicorn Investment Bank, an Islamic-compliant investor, put $15.9 million of their personal funds into Teshkeel last year. They took two of the company’s five board seats.

Because Unicorn’s own board of Shariah scholars, who rule on whether an investment complies with Islam, implicitly blessed the cartoon, the Saudi censorship board changed its view on the comic, according to Mr. Mutawa.

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.”