Being on holiday is great. I slept in today, then passed on a shower in favour of baked beans on toast and reading the news online. Here is a round up of what caught my attention over breakfast:
1. Why are people considering Caroline Kennedy as a serious contender for Hilary Clinton's Senate seat? Kennedy has never financially supported a Democrat candidate (despite being worth an estimate $100 million) and she doesn't vote. In fact, she doesn't seem to have shown any real interest in politics until this opportunity came along. Crazy. Read more here.
Warner Brothers has announced that there will not be a theatrical release of The Dark Knight in PRC. In a statement on Tuesday, the studio noted:
“Based on a number of pre-release conditions that are being attached to ‘The Dark Knight’ as well as cultural sensitivities to some elements of the film, we have opted to forego a theatrical release of the film in China.”
Fortunately for me, Hong Kong, where some of the objectionable content was filmed, enjoyed a theatrical release of TDK back in July and the DVD release arrived in time for Christmas. (Much to my delight, a two-disc special edition box set - Joker cover of course - made it into my Christmas stocking.)
Given the prevalence of piracy, I'm staggered that PRC continues to have such strict censorship restrictions (it still allows only 20 foreign films to be released each year). That said, the absence of an official release is unlikely to have prevented many people in PRC from seeing the film. I'm sure a number of Christmas stocking in PRC contained bootleg copies of TDK this year.
The Big Picture is an amazing blog: the pictures are spectacular and the subject matter is interesting and thought provoking.
The latest post, titled The Hajj and Eid al-Adha, is a serries of pictures capturing moments from the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha, or "Feast of Sacrifice", which marks the end of the Hajj - the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
Dreamworks has launched their Best Supporting Actor campaign for Kirk Lazarus. I like the idea behind this campaign, even though I hope Heath gets the award.
Dreamworks also edited together two “television advertisements”, which you can see on /Film.
I'm a big fan of teasing. It's part of the national psyche in New Zealand. In fact, I wouldn't know how to interact with many of my friends if teasing was out of question. I think today's NYTimes magazine feature In Defense of Teasing is spot on.
There is nothing quite as morbidly fascinating as a slice of drama from someone else's life. I came across a link today on Super Punch to an Apple Support forum thread. The subject of the thread is a request from a woman who is testing the credibility of her husband's explanation of why his iPhone history shows he sent a raunchy picture of himself to another woman. I couldn't stop reading the thread. It had it all - drama, intrigue, humour, sadness. It's the web support page answer to Wife Swap. I hope things work out for Susan042764.
