Links for the Day (May 8th, 2008)

1. "True Romance: 15 Years Later": A good number of the creative team behind the Tarantino-penned/Scott-directed cult item reflect on its making in Maxim. (Hattip: Clarkblog)

["Tarantino: I knew Dole hadn’t seen True Romance or Natural Born Killers. I couldn’t believe that a guy running for president of the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave, was condemning art he hadn’t even seen. You fucking asshole, you’d say anything to get elected."]

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2. House Next Door friend and colleague Alan Sepinwall tells us "What's Wrong With American Idol."

["From the second Beatles Night on - an act of double-dipping so sad and blatant in its gluttony that even Simon Cowell called it a mistake before the show was over - not only have we not had a show remotely as memorable as Beatles Night, Take One, we may not have had as many memorable performances combined, and most of those have come from alt-rocker David Cook. The contestants look unhappy, the songs and song choices are poor, and things have gotten so dull that Paula Abdul's meltdowns - last week, she either was reading her notes from dress rehearsal or developed the ability to predict the future - are among the season's few highlights."]

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3. "All About Movie Trailers": The Alliance of Women Film Journalists conducts a poll among its members about the impact and importance of movie trailers.

["Of some 10-billion videos watched on line annually, movie trailers rank #3, after news and user-created video. With such easy and instant access to them, these increasingly popular cinematic morsels are being devoured by moviegoers–and served up with serious consideration by the industry that sometimes spends sums equivalent to a third world country’s annual budget to concoct them. Timed to coincide with the Ninth Annual Golden Trailer Awards’ ceremony on May 8, AWFJ releases the results of our “All About Trailers Opinion Poll,” surveying AWJF members for their takes on the aesthetics, ethics and impact of trailers: Do we consider trailers to be an art expression or marketing ploy? Can clever trailers catapult indie films into the mainstream? Should theaters charge studios to screen trailers? Would we miss trailers if they were withdrawn?"]

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4. Checking in with Oggs Cruz of Lessons From the School of Inattention: On Ringu (1998), La Jetée (1962), Iron Man (2008), and Ploning (2008).

["As it turns out, it is that penultimate scare that stuck to the moviegoing public. Ringu's heirs approximate the same visceral quality of that scene, populating their respective films with scares and shocks that may rival Ringu in trite abundance and abhorrence but never in integrity. Only a few successfully incorporated the palpable psychological mindplay that made Ringu invaluably intriguing. The rest concentrated on devising new horror gimmickry, conceptualizing and creating variations of the effective Sadako model and churning out similar long-haired female ghosts with slow yet sure murderous intentions. With a relentless bombardment of gore, shocks, and cheap thrills, the requisite atmosphere of subtle dread so expertly displayed by Nakata in Ringu is eventually neglected."]

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5. News of the moment: "Olympic flame summits world's highest peak" (an Associated Press report); more news on the Myanmar tragedy; and "Hackers try to cause seizures on epilepsy site" (damn hackers!)

["A Chinese mountaineering team took the Olympic flame to the top of the world Thursday, a spectacular feat dreamed up to underscore China's ambitions for the Beijing games. The climbers could be heard struggling for breath in a live television broadcast as five torchbearers each shuffled a few feet before passing on the flame to the next person. A colorful Tibetan prayer flag lined the path and fluttered in the wind. The final torchbearer, a Tibetan woman named Cering Wangmo, stood silently on the peak with her torch while other team members unfurled small Chinese and Olympic flags. They then clustered together, cheering "We made it," and "Beijing welcomes you.""]

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Quote of the Day: Abraham Lincoln

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Guess who's going Blu-ray... (Hattip: Jonathan Pacheco)



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Clip of the Day: When geese attack...

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.