150 years ago, a hell of a speech was printed in all of the newspapers in the United States.
A top comics blog has quietly come to an end.
A 75 year old British comic series also seems to have come to an end.
Jamie Smart used the opportunity to discuss the need for comics that can be enjoyed by children.
75 years ago in the American comics industry a merger brought the publishers of Action Comics and Detective Comics under one roof. Kinda weird to imagine if Batman had been published by a rival company.
A first person POV of Parkour looks pretty damn impressive.
The King’s English considers what it means for the meek to inherit the Earth.
Think Progress offered five reasons for liberals to happy yesterday.
Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick consider the next battlegrounds for progressives.
A reminder: Even if the Egypt situation ends well, Morsi’s ouster was a coup. It is worth noting that societies typically have a learning curve. It took a few years after the Revolutionary war ended, for the country to adopt the constitution, and the presidential system.
Scott Mendelson of Forbes wonders if too many white male directors get lucky breaks.
That a female director was chosen to helm what is to be the start of a tent-pole trilogy is almost unheard of these days. But just as important, Sam Taylor-Johnson is a female director with a relatively slim filmography. She has directed a few shorts and one feature film, the early years of John Lennon drama Nowhere Boy. You might say its odd that a filmmaker with next-to-no experience is handed the keys to a major studio franchise picture. No, wait, that’s not weird, because when you’re a white male it happens all the time.
Rupert Sanders had only a few commercials to his credit, yet he was being tasked with directing the $175 million tentpole Snow White and the Huntsmen for Universal. Marc Webb made exactly one film (500 Days of Summer), yet Sony entrusted him with their Amazing Spider-Man reboot. Joseph Kosinski had zero feature film or television credits to his name before being entrusted with Disney’s $175 million would-be franchise starter Tron: Legacy. The would-be newbies are always white males, almost never filmmakers of color or female directors. White/male filmmakers need only make one somewhat well-received film, or maybe even just have a few commercials under their belt, to be thrust to the top of the ‘wish-list’ of every major studio tent-pole. Experienced directors who are either African-American (F. Gary Gray, Clark Johnson, Antoine Fuqua), female (Patty Jenkins, Lynne Ramsay, Debra Granik), or both (Kasi Lemmons) rarely if ever end up on the ‘wish-list’ for big-scale projects.
There may be some selection bias here, with Mendelson looking at the small group of directors chosen for tentpole films, rather than the pool of directors hungry for the opportunity, ignoring the other guys who spent several years after a successful movie looking for a new project.
What Would Spidey Do? 