Pop Culture Round Up: July 31 - August 20, 2010

The Music-Copyright Enforcers - NYTimes.com

PBS is what CBC could be: marginal and obscure - The Globe and Mail

CBC News - Film - Scarlett O'Hara's gowns need mending

Salvador Dalí's home town to be recreated in China | Art and design | The Guardian

Cultural Studies - Crafting Fictional Personas With the Language of Facebook - NYTimes.com

It’s not TV. It’s George F. Walker : This Magazine

The Tyee – Eat, Pray, Botox

CBC News - Arts - Kerouac's On the Road being shot in Gatineau

More Brahms, Please. And Pass the Popcorn. | Philadelphia Inquirer

Berliner Philharmoniker: Live in more than 60 cinemas all over Europe

Hollywood questions ‘The Twitter Effect’ - Films, Arts & Entertainment - The Independent

BBC News - E.T. v Avatar v Titanic

The Other Guys (2010)

Despite the fact that David Edelstein really seems to think it's a comic masterpiece just waiting for me to give it a second chance, I do not feel that way about Step Brothers, and it made me wary of signing up for another Adam McKay-Will Ferrell match up. Then again, Tommy Corn does ballet! That's got to be worth seeing, right?

We open in one movie about a pair of high octane cop movie parodies (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) who cause wanton property damage and refuse to do their paperwork, for which they are in turn revered and despised by their fellow detectives. They leave the picture, suddenly, and other movie starts. This one's about a mismatched pair of detectives, one of whom is just fine at his desk, thankyouverymuch (Ferrell) and one of whom would be a hotshot homicide detective if it weren't for that tunnel incident (Mark Wahlberg). Either of these movies would be great, I'm sure (well, I'm not sure I want to see Jackson in particular stretched featured length), but they are interrupted by a third movie.

I have no idea where I was going with this. Never abandon your drafts for six weeks, friends.

Let's move on to the real issue. I would really like Ferrell to stop doing the following: delivering observations while yelling. You know what I mean. Picture him writhing in the parking lot after an explosion (think back to the ads) and yelling about how he doesn't understand how people in movies can walk away from explosions. That's not realistic because THEY'RE REALLY LOUD AND HOT AND DANGEROUS! THIS REALLY HURTS! Please stop yelling, Mr. Ferrell! This has ceased to be funny!

While we're at it, I would really like movies to stop doing the following: thinking that by virtue of putting obscene/inappropriate language in the mouth of an older lady, it is automatically funny. The crux of the joke wasn't even that the lady was old (that was a mere part of it). Rather, it was that she was one of the player's mothers and that she was wildly uncomfortable passing along the filthy messages. Audience reaction: crickets. Eventually one guy laughed to break the silence, but trust me when I tell you that this sequence worked for no one.

Tommy Corn is pretty hilarious, though. I think he might get his own joke now. B-