Links gone wild!
Top-flight film criticism may be a worthwhile thing, but the fact is that it’s rare for a movie to have enough social impact to warrant serious, thoughtful treatment. After all, movies are entertainment first and foremost, and any critic who reads too much into the flickerings on the screen runs the risk of looking foolish. But the converse of that thought is that movies, when studied collectively rather than individually, often reveal a lot about society. This piece from The American magazine ponders Hollywood’s shift away from classic heroes toward “the whistle-blower hero, the victim hero, and the cartoon or superhero.” In fact, as the article notes, the most charismatic character in a movie these days is more likely to be the villain than the hero. Let the psychoanalysis of our culture begin.
The good news embedded in this article is that a surprise catastrophic strike by an asteroid seems unlikely these days. Apparently, 80 percent of the asteroids big enough to threaten civilization have been identified, so we’re watching them. (If you feel the need to worry, though, remember this name: Apophis. It’ll be making a nerve-wracking close pass in 2036.) The bad news is that we probably ought to worry about a gamma ray burst, which could cause mass extinctions, from a star with the disharmonious name of WR 104 binary. And then there are the dark comets, which are so hard to detect that we might not even have enough time for end-of-the-world debauchery before one hits. That’s so wrong.
Finally, this charmingly goofy country song, “Green With Envy,” is notable because the video’s animation was created by a local fellow, North Carolina illustrator/animator Grey Blackwell (with whom I worked at the News & Observer). If his style seems vaguely familiar to you, there’s a reason: Grey created that animated typing guy at the top of this page.