Kristin Thompson on DreamWorks and Disney’s inability to market the upscale animation of their partner studios. I haven’t had a chance to see Flushed Away, and probably won’t until it’s on video, but Aardman’s previous films Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit were both excellent. I was actually shocked to see in her post that Wallace and Gromit was considered a failure–I don’t follow box-office numbers closely enough, apparently. I ranked it in my top ten of last year! And the Miyazaki films, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle are among the most incredible films I’ve seen ever, not just animated films. But yeah, they’re not like the home-grown animation of Disney and DreamWorks–I happen to consider that a good thing, but apparently I’m a minority.

Henry Jenkins on the “fan-friendly” new shows of the year. He’s got some great thoughts on what makes “fan-friendly” show, and I think he’s also totally right about the networks’ increasing tendency to take continuity to an extreme by creating shows that seem to be confined to a single season or even half-season. I’m sorry, I liked Prison Break last year, but it’s totally misnamed now. Now it’s Don’t Get Caught Again. And I think The Nine is one of the better new shows this fall, but I can’t see following these people for years after the bank holdup. The worst thing is that these types of shows devalue the individual episode. There’s no reason to go back and watch one episode of 24–it’s the whole season or nothing. On the other hand, with a show like Buffy or Veronica Mars, most of the episodes work as well by themselves as they do in sequence. IMHO, that’s what the best shows achieve–a balance between episode, season, and series arcs.

If you ever get a chance to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead live, I suggest you do so. If you don’t, I suggest you at least read it. There’s also a film, which is quite good, but quite different from the play. Tom Stoppard is a genius. He also wrote one of my favorite films, Shakespeare in Love. If you liked the intertextual jokes in Shakespeare in Love, you’ll get a kick out of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

While you’re bowdlerizing Shakespeare, see and read The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Compeat Works of Wllm Shkspr. There’s a video of the play you can see if you can’t go to an actual performance, but live is better. And I caught sight of the play at Barnes & Noble the other day, and stood there and read THE ENTIRE THING. Couldn’t stop. You really need to read it as well as see it, because the footnotes are totally awesome. Funniest ever.

Companies need to get up to speed on their netspeak before printing documents with OMFG printed on them.

Dude! Snow Patrol, aka my current favorite band, is going to be in Austin in March! And in St. Louis in April, just so you know. Give a listen to the remarkably few songs I currently have uploaded…must rectify that.
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