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May 28, 2007
Monday Links
Spent last night watching movies with friends until late into the night, so I'm getting a slow start this morning. Worth mentioning: we caught Adrienne Shelly's Waitress at the local art house. Like Film Snob, I enjoyed the film's primary framing device, Jenna's (Keri Russell) habit of inventing new pies to reflect her current mood (I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie), and while Film Snob is probably right to point to some narrative gaps, Waitress, which I found to be far less self-consciously quirky than last year's Little Miss Sunshine, generally hit the right marks for me. More than anything, I enjoyed the camaraderie among the three waitresses (Russell, Shelly, and Cheryl Hines). It's a nice antidote to the blockbusters that tend to dominate the summer schedule.
I also wanted to mention, at least in passing, the fan uprising to save the CBS series Jericho, one of my favorite new shows in 2006. Virginia Heffernan is reporting on a campaign to send thousands of pounds of peanuts to CBS headquarters to protest the series' cancellation (the use of "nuts" refers to a specific line from the show during a confrontation with a neighboring town). So far over 14,000 pounds have been received, according to Nancy Baym, who has also written extensively on the fight to save Jericho. Baym also discusses the anti-fan backlash when the fight to save Jericho got Slashdotted. I may return to this topic in the next few days in my next column for Flow, which will come out in just over a week.
Baym also has a post about the very cool project, Pop Songs 07, in which Matthew Perpetua is posting mini-reviews of every R.E.M. song. Growing up near Athens, GA, in the 1980s, I "discovered" R.E.M. relatively early, so this project not only taps into my mini-music geek but also into my memories of listening to the band. As Baym points out, the reviews have inspired some interesting conversations about those kinds of memories, about politics, and even the songs themselves.
Comments may be working soon. I was able to leave a comment by signing into TypeKey, so if you feel so inclined, you should be able to comment that way. But we should have comments working correctly soon.
Posted by chuck at May 28, 2007 12:15 PM
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