Film

If you think TV smells now, just wait:

Television viewers are surrounded by sight and sound, but U.S. researchers want to add smell to the small-screen experience.

One big reason the Civil War sesquicentennial is getting so much enthusiastic attention is the monumental PBS series 20 years ago in which Ken Burns, aided principally by Shelby Foote, managed to "take a knotty and complex history of violence, racial conflict, and disunion and turn it into a compelling drama of national unity." (George Will gushed that the series was a"masterpiece of national memory. Our Iliad has found its Homer.")

We're almost in the era of "culture on demand" -- everything available all the time. Bill Wyman at Slate:

The remake of "Arthur" sucks:

The original Arthur isn't a perfectly constructed comedy; it lurches a bit in the romantic scenes, and shifts tone too often—but when it's funny, it's really funny.

[. . .]

Thoughts on the death of Elizabeth Taylor:

I like movie Westerns, and I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers, so I've been looking forward to seeing their version of "True Grit." If this reviewer is right, I won't be disappointed.

First we had people doing duets with dead singers, like Natalie singing with Nat and Hank Jr. singing with Hank Sr. Now comes George Lucas to really push the idea of getting all we can out of the talented dearly departed:

I've wondered about this myself:

I'm wondering whether the word "ADULT" is becoming a completely new word, which no longer means what it once meant.

In fact, I would be willing to bet that in a lot of communities (whether real life or online), the word "ADULT" alone is a red flag.

Today's lesson in interpersonal relationships. Good hoax:

Casey Affleck wants to come clean.

There's a new edition of Robert Heinlin's "The Puppet Masters" out (via Instapundit), and I may have to pick it up. This isn't the 1951 version of only 60,000 words. It's the 1990 version in which Heinlein was able to return the 36,000 words cut by the original publisher.