manly links

---manly ads

---Colin Firth in The King's Speech trailer

---Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From

---the Louise Brooks bob

---The Walking Dead behind the scenes

---Alice Marwick's dissertation entitled "Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Self-Branding in Web 2.0":

"Micro-celebrity is an emerging online practice that involves creating a persona, sharing personal information about oneself with others, performing intimate connections to create the illusion of friendship or closeness, acknowledging an audience and viewing them as fans, and using strategic reveal of information to increase or maintain this audience. In other words, the micro-celebrity practitioner thinks of him or herself as having a fan base, and works strategically to entertain and increase this audience. Regardless of how many people are actually watching the micro-celebrity, he or she positions him or herself as something to be watched. Contemporary American popular culture ascribes immensely high status to celebrities, but the fragmentation of mass culture has created ever-increasing concentric circles of tabloid fixtures, reality stars, and subcultural heroes who are familiar to far fewer people than pop star Madonna or actor Brad Pitt. Combined with the popularity of social media, the twin processes of celebrification and fragmentation have transformed celebrity into set of practices, self-presentation techniques and subjectivities that spread across social graphs as they are learned from other individuals (Marwick and boyd 2011). Social media‘s accessibility has transformed celebrity from something a person is to something a person does, and exists on a continuum rather than as a singular quality."

---anatomy of a scene from Enter the Void

---every Paris Review interview with literary icons, such as William Faulkner:

INTERVIEWER

Do you mean the writer should be completely ruthless?

FAULKNER

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.

---Mark Romanek discusses Never Let Me Go

---Kafka and the terrorist tweet

---manly menstruation

---the future of the book?


"Movie passes two-hour mark, unfinished, not over yet. Whimper, moan, grimace. Wriggle, writhe, squirm. Seethe, growl, rage. Eat own fist, pray for death, love the rushing sense of imminent darkness. Scream, topple forward, have to be carried out of cinema. Reach life crisis, form resolution, ask editor for paid year's leave to go travelling. Editor stands up, shakes head, silently mouths the word: "No". Nod, turn, return to work. Personal growth, spiritual journeys, emotional enrichment? Not as easy as 1-2-3."


---Jay Rosen's advice for new journalists

---Matt Zoller Seitz interviews Oliver Stone:

Well, I was just about to ask you if you think we are, in fact, the modern version of empire. And if so, are we in decline?

Of course we are. It's evident, self-evident. Self-evident because we can't keep this up. The dollar is at the stretching point. I mean, it's an interesting con game that we have with the world, because they're still buying the U.S. treasuries and they believe in the dollar. They will for awhile, because something will happen eventually. Because we're completely borrowing, on borrowed time. We don't have any ability to control our own spending and our own deficits. So where do we go from here? Do we have an education system that can create a good base? We are a hardworking people. We have much manufacturing, contrary to what the myth is. We do a lot of things. We have a great economy. But if we have 47 percent of our corporate profits going to finance companies, something is definitely wrong.

So I don't know that it can be reversed. If there was a Roosevelt, you could argue yeah, you have a Depression. You could reverse course.

What role does the media play in all of this?

Blinding. They don't help. The problem with media is they're trying to make money. And I don't blame them. They're trying to make a profit. But they simply think about today.

It's the tyranny of now. Any long-term point of view is very difficult to get across."

---Robert considers one of my favorite directors--Alfonso Cuaron

---dark pattern evil web designs

---Anthony Kaufman's "Five Fiscally Minded Films About Our Road to Economic Ruin"

---GZA, RZA, and Bill Murray in Coffee & Cigarettes

---Lorrie Moore appreciates The Wire

---lastly, Julianne Moore clearly needs to get a grip

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