Hardly. These look like remainders to me.

Truth be told, I can’t tell when this photo was taken, but if it was recently, then it’s no wonder Blockbuster is in trouble.

(via Gizmodo)

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What do you do when your latest novel shares a plotline with The Simpsons movie? Write a sequel to one of your most famous.

That’s what Stephen King told film director David Cronenberg during an on-stage interview in Toronto.

The conceit is that Danny Torrance, the child psychic who survived his father’s murderous rampage in the original, is now 40 years old and using his gifts to help dying hospital patients.

Maybe King can branch this out in to a franchise a la Tom Clancy or James Patterson. I can see it now: Stephen King’s The Shining- Rogue Spirit.

(via Filmophilia by way of io9)

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I don’t know if it’s Twilight fatigue, Palin fatigue, or the dread of knowing that on Friday, we will have to watch footage of humans stepping on each other to save a few bucks at a big-box retailer, but there just isn’t a whole lot to write about this week.

However, it does look like the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is opening on Wednesday (only a year after it was originally scheduled).

So, if you think spending time with your family is a major buzz-kill, you could always step out and see this. If they keep the barbecue scene from the book, it will be particularly uplifting.

On the other hand, it still sounds less depressing than the inevitable shopping-frenzy footage we’ll see on Friday.

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So I was grocery shopping last week, and on my way out the door, I saw the wall of DVD new releases included the recent Star Trek reboot. Turns out that if I wanted to buy it, I had several choices: the single-disc with a minimum of extra content, or I could go either with the two-disc special edition, or the three-disc Blu-Ray edition.

What I found particularly insulting about the deluxe versions was that they included what was called a ‘bonus disc’, which was a “digital version” of the movie. Of course, all versions of the movie are digital, but what they are getting at is that this extra disc is a version of the movie that you can load onto your computer or iPod and watch “anywhere in the galaxy” the copy on the packaging said.

Isn’t that nice, for an extra four bucks, you can get a version of the film that provides more freedom of ownership than the cheaper version.

But then I got to thinking, and I know I’m not the first person to propose this, but what if publishers did this with books. What if, for a couple of bucks more (or even *gasp* for no extra charge), you could get a digital version of the book to go along with the analog one you’re purchasing. The difference here is that a publisher would actually be doing you a favor and giving you a genuine bonus copy, whereas the bonus DVD is an insult, because it implies that you have no right to convert the disc into a portable file for your own personal use (and the law agrees).

Yes, I know computer publishers like O’Reilly already do this, but what about books from the publishers of Twilight, or Going Rogue?

This would be a win for readers and publishers, because, and again, I’m sure I’m not the first person to suggest this, if you give a digital copy to readers, neither the readers nor the publisher would be tied into a specific e-reader or e-book/reader vendor (ie. Amazon).

Imagine buying a compact disc that you could only listened to on equipment built and sold by Sony. While that sounds like an absurd concept, it’s exactly how the e-book market is trending. And even though Amazon is making Kindle format books available on other devices (like the iPhone) you’ll eventually have to choose to pitch your tent with either Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Until the reading community hits a tipping point and goes almost completely digital, why not give the reader a bonus. And if folks have to have the instant gratification of downloading e-books, Amazon and B&N can have that market.

Think of it as an analog back-up copy!

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Do books really need trailers? Slate has an opinion on the subject. Personally, I like them okay (especially the one for Sense & Sensibility and Sea Monsters), but I have never once had somebody reference a trailer when asking me for a book.

Can’t get enough news on the New Moon film? io9 has a roundup of the 30 Most Disturbing Twilight Products (warning some of these things may offend you, or, at the very least, be NSFW).

As for the film itself, Roger Ebert declares in his review of New Moon that “sitting through this experience is like driving a pickup in low gear though a sullen sea of Brylcreem”, which I think is my quote of the week. (via Mediaite)

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It’s not coming out until February of next year, but I bet a lot of folks will see this trailer when they go to see New Moon this weekend!

(via EW’s PopWatch)

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I’m always fascinated at how the covers for specific books change, depending on where and when a particular edition was published.

io9 has a great feature showing the evolving covers of several seminal science fiction titles, including 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and A Clockwork Orange.

This cover of A Clockwork Orange is great because it doesn’t really posit the book as a story set in a future, it focuses on images of teen rebellion that were more timely when the book was published. It’s really going more for The Wild One, than futuristic techno-fetish.

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Online ticket vendor Fandango claims that the pre-opening ticket sales for Twilight Saga New Moon have set a record as the selling the most advance tickets in the history of the company. Granted, tickets for this film have been available for around two months, it seems like the audience has spoken.

In addition to selling tickets, Fandango has gathered some excellent market research:

52% of survey respondents say they dream about vampires

51% say they will scream when they’re in the theater as the lights go down for the first time on Thursday at midnight

61% are more excited to see Taylor Lautner taking off his shirt than Robert Pattinson doing the same in New Moon

Since the last film created a new wave of readers for the series, it seems highly likely that this new film will probably do the same.

It’s just like Harry Potter-you keep thinking that anybody who is going to read the series, but there are always new converts turning up.

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Sarah Palin’s autobiography Going Rogue (Harper HC 9780061939891 $28.99) is set to be released on Tuesday, but already copies have leaked out to the press and the mudslinging has begun.

First to break the embargo was the Associated Press, who discussed how she writes about her bitterness towards John McCain’s staff and Katie Couric, among others.

Palin fired back on her Facebook page, saying that the media “are erroneously reporting the contents of the book”. Of course, the AP stands by its story, and it will be up to folks to actually read the book to figure out who is lying.

Michiko Kakutani is remarkably non-acerbic in her review over at the New York Times, causing Dennis Johnson at MobyLives to remark “Kakutani goes somewhat rogue herself, giving Palin a much friendlier treatment than she used to give dangerous folk like, say, old Johnny Updike”.

Leave it the Huffington Post to dish out some quotable dirt on the book. They quote a few Palinisms, but I think this is my favorite so far:

If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?

I’m sure we’d all be laughing if that was said by somebody like Dennis Leary. It just sounds more ominous when said by a woman who hunts animals from an airplane.

But, regardless of where you sit on the fence, this book has an audience, and I have to say, at least she can crank out (with the help of a ghost writer) a bestseller quicker than Dan Brown.

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I was not aware that cartoonist Peter Bagge was a disciple of Ayn Rand, currently the subject of two recent biographies. Since Rand typically provokes extremely polar reactions of hate or adoration, and thanks to these new biographies, she is currently a hot topic.

Reason magazine has posted Bagge’s cartoon response to what he feels is the typical knee-jerk reaction that Rand provokes in her detractors. And I have to admit, even though I am one of those detractors (I’d like to think I’m a little less knee-jerk than most), I thought it was hysterical.

Perhaps disciple is too strong of a word to describe Bagge. If the cartoon is an accurate portrayal of his feelings, his appreciation is far from deification.

But there is no ambiguity in how he feels about Rand’s detractors.

Again, I don’t like Rand, and I don’t agree with everything Bagge has to say. But I have to admit that I got a chuckle from this strip. And if somebody you don’t agree with on a philosophical level can make you laugh, maybe there’s hope for all of us after all.

(via Journalista)

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