Since we appear to be delving back into my cherished childhood memories this week, I think it only appropriate to bring the following story to your attention. It caught mine — attention, that is; or throat, maybe — when it appeared in my DefinitelyNotGoogleReader™ a few days ago: Encyclopedia Brown is getting the big-screen treatment. …Warner Bros. is in final negotiations to pick up the movie rights to the iconic children’s book series for an adaptation to be produced by Roy Lee... Read more
My first brush with the legend of Scheherazade was a beautifully-illustrated, age-appropriate adaptation I found on the bookshelves of my childhood home. I was hooked, and instantly. There was something so exotic, so intoxicating about the stories and their settings — and the episodic (even unconnected) nature of the narrative — that my young love makes perfect sense to me now, in hindsight. But even my youthful fascination could not adequately prepare me for Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical interpretation — a composition which... Read more
The Story: Young David Freeman vanishes late one evening in 1978. He reappears eight years later at the exact location of his initial disappearance, seemingly unharmed. Only he hasn’t aged a single day. Meanwhile, NASA discovers a mysterious UFO tangled in high-tension power lines. Coincidence? The Stars: Joey Cramer, Paul Reubens, Howard Hesseman Release Date: 1986 Rating: PG Our Take: Another FMN assignment; another potentially-perilous journey through the nostalgic days of my youth. This time, I dove fearlessly — or is that recklessly? —... Read more
Earlier this month, long-time Disney animator Nik Ranieri (whose nearly quarter-century career was highlighted by his work on Lumiere and Kuzco) officially parted ways with The Walt Disney Company, joining the prestigious, ever-growing crowd of “High-Profile, Hand-Drawin’ Animators No Longer Employed by Disney.” On his Facebook page, Ranieri describes the last few years as “the most difficult of my career,” but his parting gift — a hand-drawn test for Wreck-It Ralph’s Ralph — is offered with Ranieri’s insistence that there’s still life and magic in the medium. And it’s a perfectly... Read more
These two posts — featuring Flannery O’Connor and A.A. Milne reading their own material — are a few of my favorite things. So is this post, wherein Jeremy Irons performs T.S. Eliot’s bewildering masterpiece, “The Waste Land.” So you can just imagine how this recording makes me feel: Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining... Read more
View image | gettyimages.com Over the past year or so, I’ve become quite a cricket fan. I’m firmly ensconced in amateur territory, of course — a fact that will probably never change — but I’m having a blast all the same. It’s a crazy, crazy game. (Also, yes. I was watching it before I got hooked on Downton. How dare you insinuate otherwise?) As a long-time (nearly life-time) baseball fan, though, the similarities between “my game” and the British pastime... Read more
I stumbled across this guy a few hours ago. My mind is still blown. My name is Karim Nafatni. See the world through my eyes… I’m offering only a few mesmerizing samples because I’m never quite sure how much of someone’s work one can share before moving from “Check This Stunning Stuff Out” to “Look At My Awesome Post” territory. And while the second might do wonders for blog metrics (or maybe just my ego), it would dangerously obscure the... Read more
For those not yet familiar with OK Go, they’re an alternative rock band who exploded onto my radar a number of years ago as a result of their absurdly complex, gleefully imaginative music videos. “This Too Shall Pass,” for example, is a masterpiece of Goldbergian, single-take extravagance that must be seen to be believed — and even then, only barely. “White Knuckles” is only slightly less insane, and a good bit more bizarre. And who could forget their viral smash-hit, the... Read more
This short, Poynton Regenerated, recounts the counterintuitive adventures of Poynton, “a town within the civil parish of Poynton-with-Worth, and the unitary authority area of Cheshire East, England.” Frustrated by ever-growing gridlock, city planners embraced something radical in an attempt to revitalize their downtown center: They removed their traffic lights: …Engineers completely reconfigured the intersection at the center of town, replacing a traffic light with two “roundels” that cars must negotiate without the guidance of traffic signs. Pavements of varying colors and textures... Read more
View image | gettyimages.com I can still vividly remember the first time I heard Kottke play. It was during those early college days, as my roommate and I were just starting to feel each other out. Discovering how much we had in common (and also, not); what we liked and disliked (musically, ideologically, liturgically, snack-food-wise, etc.); negotiating how to best mesh our schedules and habits and tendencies. He was an extreme morning person, for example. And I was/am not. (I’d... Read more
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