Link Banana

The Onion’s A.V. Club has a good interview with the inimitable John Cleese of Monty Python fame.

AVC: You turned down the role that eventually went to Bruce Willis in The Bonfire Of The Vanities.

JC: Oh my God, yes, you’re absolutely right. I did.

NR: Beyond common sense and good judgment, what was the thinking behind that?

JC: I liked Brian De Palma’s thrillers. I thought they were fantastic. But I’d never seen any sign of comedy in them. You might love those Bourne movies, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to run off and do a comedy with their director. So I thought that was a bit risky. So I did turn that down. How’d you know that?

AVC: There’s a website called notstarring.com where they list roles actors have passed on.

PS: That website: very cool stuff.

PPS: The second half drags a little. If you only read one page of this, be sure it’s the first.

As today is probably the most important television day of the year in the United States, it’s worth considering the future of high definition media, about which The Economist’s Tech.view column has a number of interesting things to say. On of the most interesting to me:

The human eye can discern over 500 pixels per inch horizontally and vertically (say, 26,000 by 14,500 pixels on a 60-inch screen). To achieve true immersive reality—the “killer app” that consumer electronics makers see on the horizon—requires displays a dozen times sharper than today’s HDTV sets.

The Japanese have made a start. The Ultra-HDTV technology that NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting network, is currently investigating has 16 times more pixels (7,680 by 4,320) than an HDTV set. And that’s just the beginning. The betting is that both Blu-ray and HD DVD will go the way of the VHS tape, as ever sharper images begin to grab our attention.

I knew it would end this year, but I didn’t really expect it this soon.

Informal talks between representatives of Hollywood’s striking writers and production companies have eliminated the major roadblocks to a new contract, which could lead to a tentative agreement as early as next week, according to people who were briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

You’ll probably either find this unbelievably dumb or unbelievably awesome. Michel Gondry, director of Be Kind Rewind and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, remade the Be Kind Rewind preview as other movies are remade in Be Kind Rewind.

(via Vulture)

Gelf Magazine has a very fun list of the most egregiously unrepresentative movie blurbs of 2007. My favorite is this blurb: “Extraordinary. Across the Universe captured my heart. I fell in love with this movie. It convinces you that love is all you need. Fantastic… gorgeous… delirious… oh-wow!”

Actual line (emphasis added): “Another extraordinary scene follows Joe to a United States Army induction center… [skip 10 paragraphs backward] Somewhere around its midpoint, ‘Across the Universe’ captured my heart, and I realized that falling in love with a movie is like falling in love with another person. Imperfections, however glaring, become endearing quirks once you’ve tumbled. … [skip 15 paragraphs forward] during the time it lasts, the intoxicating passion of Jude and Lucy, both innocents by today’s standards, convinces, for a moment, that love is all you need. … [skip 14 paragraphs backward] a fantastic array of puppets, masks and synergistic effects… [skip seven paragraphs forward] A visceral peak arrives with ‘Strawberry Fields Forever.’ In this gorgeous production number… [skip three paragraphs forward] Bono appears as the acid guru, Dr. Robert, a Ken Kesey-Neal Cassady fusion who sings ‘I Am the Walrus’ at an acid-drenched party and conducts Jude, Lucy and a roiling band of Merry Pranksters on a delirious bus journey through a rainbow-colored countryside. … [skip one paragraph ahead] its oh-wow aesthetic …”

(via kottke)

Through a partnership with LG, movies should be streaming straight to subscribers TVs’ sometime this year. Of course they’ll have to buy a device with the capability, which means this isn’t quite so nice as it first sounds. From Engadget:

Slated to launch sometime in Q2, the networked player would purportedly allow owners to stream in movies for viewing on their television, and it’s being reported that the feature would be “included in all of its various price plans… at no extra charge.” Pricing deets on the LG device have yet to be disclosed, but we’re told that the firm could “embed the receiver into its $799 dual-DVD player [likely the BH200].”