I'm gonna link you:
(1) With Michael Cera on board, the Arrested Development movie is finally a go (via Von at Obsidian Wings). I'm excited, though I imagine the only people who will enjoy that movie are those who watched the series, beginning to end, more than once.
While on the subject of AD: does anyone else think that it would have done much better if it had come out now (or a year ago)? The thematic material (particularly the corporate malfeasance stuff) would certainly ring well now. It would be nice (for the show!), I suppose, if Bush II were still around, lending that sort of hazy postmodern quality to our public lives. Most importantly, though, the fact that most people I know don't actually watch TV when it's aired--rather, they watch it online (hulu.com, iTunes, etc.) or on DVR--means that they could more easily re-watch episodes and, thus, know what the hell is going on. Just a thought.
(1.5) Brian (Prof. Doan? God, that's awkward) at Bubblegum Aesthetics writes about the latest episodes of Battlestar Galactica and makes the point I was kind-of trying to make about AD better than I was. He also makes other good points a little more idiomatic to Galactica:
It's in these scenes that the show encapsulates its core question: do we pay attention to the past, the present or the future-- and what happens if we fixate on one at the expense of the other? This question is further enhanced by a reworked opening-- which tied together recreated scenes from the original series and shots from the new series' third season--and by the way that simple cuts took us from the present action about the Galactica back to the events occurring eighteen months earlier on the Cylon base-ship; everything flows so easily that it's easy to lose track of where you are in time, to feel a subtle narrative and spatial vertigo.
So much to think about, and I haven't even mentioned how well the show is juggling the rhetorics of different media, skillfully interweaving cinematic detail, theatrical monologues and the tempos of televisual, serialized narrative. Battlestar Galactica is a show that demands close attention and re-viewing; indeed, it's hard to imagine it existing without DVD and Hulu, without new methods of technological delivery that encourage this kind of critical burrowing.
Intrigued? Go, read
(2) With the recession on, it's looking like liberal arts education and the humanities are, once again, becoming the province of the elite (that's me!). I wish I could say I was shocked. The funny thing about all of this is that the same people who bitch incessantly about our materialistic (in the philosophical sense), secular culture are the same people leading the charge against the humanities. Yet it is the humanities that encourages looking beyond engagement with just the corporeal world; it is the humanities that encourage deeper thought about the underlying structures of reality (blah, blah, blah).
Plus, the humanities are recession proof: there weren't any jobs in philosophy before the recession, and there still aren't any jobs in philosophy.
Intrigued? Go, read.
(3) I'm not entirely sure why I read this review, but I did. And wow. She manages to get cheap shots in at poets, feminists, and Tampax ads.
Intregued? Go, read.
(4) There's a new group metaphysics blog! Matters of Substance! Wow!
Intrigued? Go, read.
Off to class now.
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