The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that Kal Penn, star of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and the recent The Namesake, as well as appearing in Superman Returns and 24, will be a guest instructor at the University of Pennsylvania’s department of Asian Studies. His courses will include "Contemporary American Teen Films" and "Images of Asian Americans in the Media".
The actor (whose full name is Kalpen Modi) will be on campus during the spring of 2008. Harold and Kumar 2 is set to be released next year.
Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, the man who battled with Opie and Anthony and the creators of South Park, is now picking on producers Randy Weiner and Jeff Beacher over their new Off-Broadway show, Stairway to Hell, which performs every Friday Night at Snitch in New York City.
Donohue stated in his press release: "Men and women are dying everyday in Iraq to keep America free. It is sickening to note that some young Americans think freedom means the right to insult, degrade and abuse the sensibilities of Christians. The man behind this barbaric assault is Randy Weiner. In a sane society, he would be run out of town. Unfortunately, there are elements in our society that see him as a champion of liberty."
Says Weiner, "It saddens me that Mr. Donohue is trying to exploit the suffering of our American soldiers to further his own crusade."
Mr. Beacher is scared that Mr. Donohue’s statements might incite violence among his more radical followers against the Stairway To Hell cast and crew. Mr. Beacher has gone so far as to hire bodyguards for Weiner and the actors until any threat of violence that might be stirred up by Donohue’s press release dies down. "Weiner’s a genius; I can’t let anything happen to him because Donohue has called out his Storm Troopers. As with any form of art, we have the right to say what we want. It is called the first Amendment." Beacher believes this is not an issue of the bible vs. the first Amendment, this is about one man’s distorted interpretation of the bible to serve his own personal agenda.
Beacher concludes, "Donohue hates Stairway To Hell, which makes it a perfect show for my audience. Donohue says the show deserves to be in Hell, so I’m taking it to Vegas where it belongs!"
Because we’ve already bought the DVD the first time, Universal today announced the release of a two-disc set of The 40 Year-Old Virgin: 2-Disc Double For Your Pleasure edition. The new version is timed to hype director Judd Apatow’s new movie, Knocked Up, which is the funniest trailer we’ve seen lately (yes, that includes The Simpsons Movie).
The press release mentions these extras:
Deleted Scenes — More than 17 additional minutes of deleted scenes, with commentary by director Apatow and actor and co-producer Seth Rogen.
Judd’s Video Diaries — Follow the evolution of the film through theeyes of the writer and director as he shares entries from his video diary.
Poker Game Rehearsal — A rehearsal of the scene that starts the guys on their quest.
Reel Comedy Round Table
Cinemax Final Cut — "The 40-Year-Old Virgin"
Exclusive Raw Footage — The cameras didn’t stop rolling at the end of three of the movie’s funniest scenes – the poker scene, the waxingscene and Elizabeth Banks in the bathtub.
You Know How I Know You’re Gay? — David (Paul Rudd) & Cal (Seth Rogen) with commentary by director Judd Apatow and actor and co-producer Seth Rogen.
Date-A-Palooza — Additional footage of Andy’s first fumbling foraynto the fast-paced world of speed dating.
Line-O-Rama — How many different ways can an actor find to deliver a single a line? Find out when the cast otakes one simple line and gives it worlds of meaning.
My Dinner with Stormy — Actor and co-producer Seth Rogen has an intimate dinner with adult video queen Stormy Daniels.
Cast Auditions — Actors Jonah Hill, Elizabeth Banks, Romany Malco, Shelley Malil, Jane Lynch, Gerry Bednob and Jazzmun in the readings that earned them their roles.
Waxing Doc — Watch as four cameras record what went on behind the scenes when Steve Carell got his chest waxed for the first — and only — time!
"Knocked Up" Trailer — A sneak preview of Judd Apatow’s newest hilarious and irreverent comedy.
Unrated Feature Commentary by Judd Apatow and actor and co-writer SteveCarell
Sex Education Film from the 1950s
Gag Reel — Enjoy on-set moments with the cast and crew.
This marks the sixth different version (at least) of The 40 Year Old Virgin available on DVD, with unrated, R rated, theatrical, widescreen, pan-and-scan and HD-DVD releases out there as well. As all seem to feature pretty much the same cover art, buyer beware!
Over the weekend I started to read Will Self’s most recent novel, The Book of Dave. Like so much of Self’s work, this volume could quite comfortably be racked in the science fiction section of your bookstore. Set five or six centuries in a post-apocalyptic future, English culture has evolved based on its sacred text, the recovered letter from a divorced father, Dave, to his son.
It took me the better part of two hours to read the first chapter, which is only 27 pages long. In addition to creating a new religion, Self created a new language, an educated guess as to how English would mutate over the centuries. He thoughtfully provided a glossary in the back, but it still required me to extrapolate a great deal from my limited knowledge of English geography and manners.
This is my idea of fun.
Self is a writer who speculates in the most outrageous ways. In Great Apes, he created an England in which apes are the most evolved primates, and the culture is adapted accordingly. In How the Dead Lives, he imagined that, when you die, you get a dull, clerical job in the suburbs of London.
You won’t find Self’s books in the science fiction or fantasy sections of your bookstores or libraries. You also won’t find Riddley Walker, a book by Russell Hoban that’s a clear antecedent to The Book of Dave (Self wrote an introduction to a reissue of Hoban’s classic in 2002). You won’t find Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, a novel about the pharaohs that includes mental telepathy, magic and time travel.
No, these are “literary” fiction, and they get racked with other novels that, allegedly, belong to no genre, like Waiting to Exhale, Oliver Twist, or Portnoy’s Complaint.
Genre is a useful construct. Sometimes, you want to find a book about a particular subject, whether it’s true love or rocket ships or murder. Putting those books together is a service to the reader. If prose books were racked all together, in simple alphabetical order, you might find Dickens next to the Dummies guides.
That’s about as useful as putting all the graphic novels together.
It’s not as bad as it used to be. Ten years ago, you’d find Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen next to Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury in the Humor section. Booksellers now realize that just because something is called a “comic book,” it’s not necessarily funny.
The Car Connection has pictures of the Fantastic Four’s new car from their upcoming movie, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Although no one explains how they get through Manhattan’s traffic, the Fantasticar has a HEMI that allegedly will let them go at 550 miles per hour.
Chrysler Group chief stylist Trevor Creed participated in the car’s design, with Tim Flattery. According to the New York Daily News, the car can break into three sections and travel at 30,000 feet.
Which might be high enough to reach the head of a certain planet eater.
Publishers Weekly reports that the new Hachette science fiction imprint, Orbit, will publish Kevin J. Anderson’s new series, The Terra Incognita trilogy, starting in 2009.
Anderson is co-author of six Dune prequels, written with Brian Herbert. His current series, Saga of the Seven Suns, will be published by Orbit, with volume six, Metal Swarm, part of the imprints debut line this fall.
With the launch of Orbit, Hachette will probably end the Warner Aspect line. In fact, PW reported yesterday that Warner Books, bought by Hachette, will change its name to Grand Central, starting real soon.
The BBC reports (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6494985.stm) that Christopher Tolkien finished his father’s last book, Children of Hurin, and it will be published in England, the United States, Australia and New Zealand this April 17. The younger Tolkien spent 30 years on the book, which JRR Tolkien started in 1918. Alan Lee is the illustrator.
The trailer for Evan Almighty will debut on this Thursday. NBC will premiere the trailer during its "Night at the Office" event, in which airings of multiple episodes of the hit sitcom will air over the course of that evening’s prime time (8 pm – 11 pm Eastern/Pacific; 7 pm – 10 pm Central).
Steve Carell, reprising his role as the polished, preening newscaster Evan Baxter of Bruce Almighty, is the next one anointed by God to accomplish a holy mission. Director Tom Shadyac returns behind the camera for this next episode of divine intervention. This time, however, his cast grows two-by-two.
Newly elected to Congress, Evan leaves Buffalo behind and shepherds his family to suburban northern Virginia. Once there, his life gets turned upside-down when God (the divine Morgan Freeman) appears and mysteriously commands him to build an ark. But his befuddled family just can’t decide whether Evan is having an extraordinary mid-life crisis or is truly onto something of Biblical proportions…
Set for a June 22th release, Evan Almighty also stars Lauren Graham, John Goodman, John Michael Higgins, Jimmy Bennett, Wanda Sykes and Jonah Hill.
In her book No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Kniting, Anne Macdonald describes the Puritan roots of our country and how getting together to knit, quilt or sew was one of the few ways colonial women could get together to socialize. The only way they could justify the pleasure they took in each other’s company was to do some “productive” work.
In other words, our culture hates pleasure.
This might seem to be a strange thing to say when everything from beer to detergent is being sold with sexy commercials. But, see, that’s the point. Pleasure is being used to sell. It’s not being celebrated for its own sake.
Which brings us to comics and the lack of respect they get in our modern world. Comics are fun. Denny O’Neil says that comics are one of the few media that engage both halves of the brain, providing a buzz unavailable from movies or books. Even if that didn’t happen, comics are uniquely joyous. Anything can happen in the pages of a comic. Dogs can talk. Pigs can fly. The universe can be compressed into a ball, or be the staging ground for an epic battle. The battle can be between Galactus and the Avengers, or talking dogs and flying pigs.
Comics don’t have to be silly to be a pleasure. I’ve had a fine time reading Frank Miller’s Sin City, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and Will Eisner’s A Contract with God, to name just a few, disparate titles. The pleasure comes from the books ability to get me to leave my own head and get into someone else’s, to try on another life and walk around.
Which brings us back to politics.
Back in the day (and by that, I mean the 1960s and 1970s), we thought that sex and drugs and rock’n’roll could change the world. We thought that if we showed how much fun there was in the counter-culture, no one would want to go to war.
We were right.
Comics were a major part of the counter-culture. Robert Crumb, Trina Robbins, Howard Cruse, S. Clay Wilson, Skip Williamson, Spain Rodriguez and many others blew away the straight world’s idea of what comics were about. They made comics about motorcycle demons, stoner cats, fabulous furry freak brothers, girl fights and lots of other stuff that wasn’t superheroes or expanded newspaper strips. They told silly stories that ridiculed the power structure and celebrated pleasure.
The war in Vietnam ended for a lot of reasons. Public opinion turned against it, and the troops came home. Comics helped.
There’s another war on now, and yet there are remarkably few comics that offer an alternative vision. We need them. We need more fun.
It’s no coincidence that The Fates of Greek mythology are female. The sisters sit and spin, each thread the life of a mortal. One sister decides when a thread will start, another adjusts the tension and thickness, and the third cuts it at the end.
Women are frequently storytellers. Sit around a playground and listen to the moms chat, or go to a laundromat, or the communal dressing room at Loehman’s. You’ll hear epic tales of finding a bargain at the designer rack, or intrigue and scandal at the PTA. You’ll hear detailed comparisons of size and technique.
Men tell stories to each other, too, when women aren’t around. Or so I’m told.
Are men’s stories better than women’s? I doubt it. Are they different? Perhaps. Are they told differently? You bet!
In her insightful book You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen describes the different ways men and women use speech. In general (and Tannen goes into more detail than we have space about the range of individual exceptions), women use conversation to establish common ground; men use it to establish hierarchy. This would suggest that we tell our stories for different reasons.
Over the weekend I started to read Will Self’s most recent novel, The Book of Dave. Like so much of Self’s work, this volume could quite comfortably be racked in the science fiction section of your bookstore. Set five or six centuries in a post-apocalyptic future, English culture has evolved based on its sacred text, the recovered letter from a divorced father, Dave, to his son.
It’s no coincidence that The Fates of Greek mythology are female. The sisters sit and spin, each thread the life of a mortal. One sister decides when a thread will start, another adjusts the tension and thickness, and the third cuts it at the end.
