Miscellaneous: Today’s Entertainment Weekly Gripe

I wish the magazine would announce that it’s decided to suck full time. It would save me twenty minutes a week. The latest issue features a wonderful article by Karen Valby about life in Utopia, Texas, a town largely isolated from popular culture. (Sadly, it’s not available online). But it also includes a review of the script for the upcoming movie version of Dallas – or should I say a script, because the draft considered is months old and has already been rewritten multiple times. In other words, it’s completely meaningless. As is most of EW lately.

Miscellaneous: Links

Much as I hate to pimp movie trailers, the one for Little Children, directed by Todd Field (In the Bedroom) from a novel by Tom Perrotta (Election), demands to be seen. Jeffrey Wells is right to call it the best preview of the year. It’s like a movie in itself.

I’m a big fan of Culture Pulp, the website of cartoonist/movie critic Mike Russell. In the latest installment, he sits down with two-fifths of the Broken Lizard troupe to talk Beerfest. Here’s the illustrated version, while the full Q&A is a must for Adam Sandler fans, Patrick Swayze partisans, and the intersection of the two. It’s got me ready to track down Stone Cold, starring erstwhile Seahawk Brian Bosworth.

There’s an interesting conversation over at Contemporary Nomad contrasting literary and young adult fiction. Coincidentally, today’s New York Times features an article on YA author Gary Paulsen. He wrote my kid brother’s favorite book, 1987’s Hatchet. Paulsen stopped writing for adults a decade ago because:

“It’s artistically fruitless ... Adults are locked into car payments and divorces and work. They haven’t got time to think fresh. Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I’ve got left, I intend to write artistic books – for kids – because they’re still open to new ideas.”