Plenty of Nothing

Missing Issue

Last night we went to see September Issue—I know, hard to believe I’d be interested in it if you had even a small glimpse of my seriously non-styled wardrobe.

Once upon a time I was very fashion conscious and made all my own clothing, everything from dress shirts to tailored winter coats. Most of that slipped away when I was in graduate school: I was too poor to afford good fabric, too busy with words, and too surrounded by people who were overtly anti-fashion. (One week’s shocking rumor was that one of the professors was so profligate as to have a subscription to Vogue.)

Even so I’d buy the fashion magazines, most often in the fall. Needless to say I’m kicking myself for recently discarding my little hoard of September Vogues after watching Wintour and Coddington exercise their powers. This bit got a fair number of giggles from the late afternoon crowd.

If I'd held on to my copy of September 2007, I could be selling it on eBay for about 50 bucks. Instead my copy has joined legions of its fellows and has been shredded and recycled.

Heather

Hans Delbruck, Scientist and Saint

Mai Mai Miracle

Just back from the Ottawa Animation Festival, and a viewing of Mai Mai Miracle, an extremely sweet story of death, drunkenness and revenge among third grade students in rural Japan.

Budget

Film Shoot at Sunnyside Bookshop

Okay, This Has Just Got To Stop

One of the fears I had about JJ Abrams taking over Star Trek was that it would just become a slaughterhouse, like Lost, Season Two.  And guess what?

That's Vulcan on the top, and Romulus below.  Blown to shit.

If this were Star Trek as we've come to understand it I'd expect the next film to be about undoing this.  But more likely we'll get some Hugo-like character saying, "They're all pretty much dead."

The new Star Trek film, though fun and exciting and all Industrial Light and Magic, does not respect Gene Roddenberry's vision, is not optimistic, is not a break from the Bush years as all the papers seem to believe, and is not that different from those crappy Star Wars prequels.  There's mayhem.  Some of the characters survive.  There's no moral.  It has nothing to say about what it means to be human.  Or Vulcan for that matter.

It's Lost, with references to Star Trek: Nemesis and Enterprise, Season Three.

Douglas

(Oh, spoilers.)

[Later: Apparently I am the only person on the planet who dislikes this movie.]

Explore the Solar System?

We've got wide screen TV!

The Awesome Awesomeness of Awesomeness (Now On Film)

They're filming Scott Pilgrim in Toronto right now as we speak, and apart from the sheer awesomeness of it all (screenplay adapted from Bryan Lee O'Malley's manga of unremitting awesome awesomeness; stellar casting including Michael Cera in the lead role, Shaun of the Dead production team, and, fingers crossed, songs by Plumtree), the most awesome aspect of the whole thing is that the city of Toronto is about to appear in a movie in the role of Toronto.

Boss, You Drink Too Much

And them cigarettes are gonna kill you.

Juno As Cartoon Character

Juno is not just a Roman mother-goddess, she's also one of the great great-with-child characters of the movies, with good taste in music too.  "Nu-huh, 1977!"  So it's no surprise she has inspired a well-rounded body of fan art.  The lovely graphic above is by Jeremy Canceko of Cup-O-Robots.  The estimable Illustrated Movie Review gives us this portrait:

And Conner and Rae at Worship City posed for this self-portrait, based on the promotional still:

Though Ellen Page does wear other shirts in the film, it's that orange and white top from the publicity shots that people associate with Juno.  It's like Velma's orange turtleneck, or Tintin's plus fours. Strong cartoon characters tend to stick to one costume, so if Juno were thinking of becoming a Saturday morning cartoon character she's really halfway there already.  I'd watch it.  Douglas