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“The smartphone is the most lethal weapon you can get inside a prison.”

The NYTimes, on the prevalence of smartphones in prisons (which are technically not allowed):

A counterfeiter at a Georgia state prison ticks off the remaining days of his three-year sentence on his Facebook page. He has 91 digital “friends.” Like many of his fellow inmates, he plays the online games FarmVille and Street Wars. He does it all on a Samsung smartphone, which he says he bought from a guard. And he used the same phone to help organize a short strike among inmates at several Georgia prisons last month. Technology is changing life inside prisons across the country at the same rapid-fire pace it is changing life outside. A smartphone hidden under a mattress is the modern-day file inside a cake.

NewSouth Is Removing The N-Word from Upcoming Edition of “Huckleberry Finn”

From Publisher’s Weekly, the following speaks for itself:

[F]or decades, [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation’s most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: “nigger.”

Twain himself defined a “classic” as “a book which people praise and don’t read.” Rather than see Twain’s most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the “n” word (as well as the “in” word, “Injun”) by replacing it with the word “slave.”

“This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind,” said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he’s spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”

Because it’s more important to censor classic literature to protect our children from potentially harmful content, rather than to teach them historical context. Idiocracy: It’s already here.

(via @scottmendelson)

Kevin Smith Did Not Get Paid Very Much for ‘Cop Out’

Another day, another series of tweets by Kevin Smith that are barely comprehensible in Twitter stream form. Let’s aggregate them, shall we? The following are an amalgamation of messages sent from Smith’s Twitter account on January 1st and January 2nd, 2011:

All this RedState chatter is just me getting my work done ahead of time, so I can go play hockey. Because as much as I love RedState (and it’s supplanted CLERKS II as my favorite), that HIT SOMEBODY script is what I like to think of as my thesis paper. It’s me putting everything I’ve learned to work & trying to make a film that sums up the last 20 years of my life – which far exceeded not only my expectations, but my wildest dreams as well. HIT SOMEBODY is graduation day for me, and in my head, I’m just starting the fall semester of my senior year, so to speak (or Grade 12 for you Canadians). RedState is just beginning for you but that adventure is winding down for me. You’re just now getting to see what we’ve spent three years putting together. So while some cats may wanna talk about it, I’m already onto the next conversation entirely. I’ve finally gotten my filmmaking to the pace I’ve always wanted to make ’em: finish one, start the next. The Clint Eastwood way. Y’know how much press Clint Eastwood does? Not much. Y’know why? He figured out what I’m only just know learning, nearly 20 years into my career: he’d rather make new movies than do press for movies he’s done making. Clint Eastwood has the work ethic of a hockey player, man. I admire the shit out of that: he finishes one, starts the next. He doesn’t dine out on one flick for a year or two; he makes flicks with all the frequency with which a teen girl texts. Loves ’em & leaves ’em. I’m 40 yrs old; I’ve been a professional filmmaker for nearly two decades. And after years of being told to stop fetishizing my work – “Enough with the Jay & Bob bullshit already…” – I’ve taken their advice: I’m not dwelling on the flicks I make. Now that I’ve got 20 years of experience on the job under my belt, I’m giving my movies the Little Red Corvette treatment: love ’em & leave ’em fast. #TrojansSomeOfEmUsed This is not a novel approach in the least. Spielberg doesn’t do shit tons of public speaking, let alone press. Robert Altman also swung from flick to flick like Tarzan, without doing much press, letting his massive cast take the lead. That’s all I’m doing here. And I’m not saying I’m as good as the aforementioned filmmakers; they are legends. But, again: I’ve got two decades experience under my belt, one more flick to make, and less years in front of me than there are behind me now. I’ve spent all that time making flicks the way I wanted to, not the way I was supposed to, and thus far, it’s served me well. I’ve gotta play my game – especially if this is my last season, so the speak.

Please enjoy the fuck out of RedState. I’ll be right there with you, all the way up to theatrical release. After that, my head’s in a different – Via @Terefkal “You’re no Clint Eastwood.” My point exactly. So if Clint moves from film-to-film without doing much press, then what kinda arrogant sonovabitch must I be to do so much press? Clint makes movie after movie & he’s an Academy Award winner. If I’m gonna try to better myself at my profession, I might as well choose a beyond-reach role model, right? So I’m’a try to work like Clint Eastwood from now on: make better movies, and make ’em one right after the other. And do minimal takes. And not listen to anybody. Clint Eastwood said recently that even at his age, with all the awards/box office/epic win, people still try to caution him against doing this or that, or advise him. He said the way to do the job is to not listen to anybody else & just do what he feels. I wanna be more like Clint. Might even get a monkey…

Via @sorryimlate “Clint Eastwood is the Wayne Gretzky of filmmaking” No – Clint’s the Gordie Howe of Filmmaking, playing in 5 decades.

Via @Eddy32191 “David Fincher does almost zero press for his films” See? And he’s a master. So I’ll never be Fincher good, but I can try to be. And he’s a guy who’s like “Fuck all this talking about the job, I wanna DO the job.” Maybe less I’m doing press, more I’m making flicks, the better I’d be at my job. Like Fincher. A little more I learn my lenses, a little less I learn what an asshole I am from bloggers & such.

Via @doubleplusgeoff “you’d do a lot for your credibility if you’d just come right out & say that CopOut was a ‘gettin paid’ movie” I wish I could. But I actually took an 84% pay cut to make #CopOut – because I wanted to work with BruceWillis. Lots of us did. Tracy got paid more than me, but not much. I also gave BACK half my already-way-less salary to get the film green-lit: there was a budget crunch to get to the $35million the studio wanted, so Marc Platt & I each gave up half our salaries IN ADDITION to the big dip in our quotes we’d agreed to. When all was said & done, we came in way under budget. Final cost: $32mil – $3mil less than we were allotted. Contractually, WB didn’t have to give me the money I gave up until they were in the black, but since we came in under budget, they cut me a check for the re-investment I’d made BEFORE the flick hit theaters. And even then, I still made 80% less than I did on my previous flick. I made MORE as the director of DOGMA in 1998 than I did as the director of COP OUT in 2009/2010. So please: enough with the “you musta got PAID” bullshit. I didn’t. Both my agent & my lawyer were like “Don’t do this. You can get paid more making a Kevin Smith movie.” But I knew if I wanted to make RedState, I had to make CopOut. There were things I needed to learn, and I learned them – while making a financially responsible buddy cop homage for a major studio, from a script I didn’t write. I’m sorry you didn’t like CopOut; feel free to skip RedState if you feel betrayed in some way. But to suggest I did #CopOut for the money is ludicrous – as it was the least I’ve been paid to direct a film since 1998 – 11 years prior. CopOut may not fit into your KevinSmith narrative, but I know where my story goes – and it was the keystone to everything that RedState is.

We don’t live in STAR WARS, kid. Motivations aren’t always as simple & clear as “The Empire is bad! Save the galaxy!” You may not understand why I do what I do, and that must frustrate you. But in a couple years, it’s all gonna make sense. And by the time it does, you won’t care anymore anyway. But at least I’ll have the record of this exchange; that and it’s one more question I won’t have to answer again. So thanks.

Some of my favorite trailers of 2010

Our resident trailer expert, Christopher Stipp, has already written up a great “Top 10 Trailers of 2010” post over at /Film, but I thought I should share a few of my own. Here they are in no particular order:


Inception – Somehow they manage to cram in the most important exposition into this thing while still making time f-BRRRRRRRAAAAAAHM.

TRON: Legacy – I must’ve watched this trailer one or two dozen times. Ahh, to go back to a time when this movie had the possibility of being good….

Red State – Say what you will about the controversy over Smith’s latest film, but this trailer is minimalist and masterful.

Battle: Los Angeles – I was speechless after watching this thing. Fantastic use of music and olde style photographic imagery.

True Grit – Gorgeous. And the Coen brothers really know how to use choral music in their films (see: O Brother for further examples).

The Social Network – Obviously.

The Tree of Life – I judge trailers by how well they sear a piece of music into my soul. By this standard, Tree of Life wins top honors for its use of Smetana’s Vltava.

Transformers: The Dark of the Moon – The movie has a good chance of sucking horribly, but only Michael Bay can retcon the moon landing and make it so compelling, you forget for a moment that what you’re watching is ridiculous.

Top 10 (Groups of) People I’m Glad I Started Following on Twitter in 2010

Even though I’ve tried my best to move all my Twitter content to my blog, I’m still quite active on Twitter and enjoy scanning through my feed for the latest happenings in the worlds of media, politics, journalism, and film. Here are 10 (groups) of people I’m glad I started following on Twitter in 2010 [If I follow you and you’re not on this list, it doesn’t mean your tweets aren’t awesome and that they haven’t changed my life; just that I probably didn’t START following you this year. By the way, you can always follow me on Twitter, if you wish]:

Maria Popova – If there’s one person you follow as a result of reading this list, make it this one. An incredible writer, Maria is also a master curator of interesting, artistic works from all across the internet. Must-follow!

Give Me Something to Read, Longreads, and Instapaper – Because together, these services have changed my life.

DRUNK HULK – I didn’t get on the Drunk Hulk bandwagon until 2010, but I’m certainly glad I did. Every one of this guy’s tweets always manage to give me a smile or a chuckle. My only complaint? Sometimes he sounds less like “DRUNK HULK” and more like “WITTY AND ERUDITE HULK.” False advertising.

Dustin Rowles from Pajiba and Vince Mancini from Filmdrunk – I would argue that no two people in the film blogsphere are smarter or funnier than these two guys. They also are the only two people who seem to take film and entertainment journalism with the requisite grain of salt that it requires. Many laughs have resulted from their writings, Twitter and otherwise.

Scott Mendelson from Huffington Post, Linda Holmes from NPR, Steven Zeitchik from the LATimes – Zeitchik offers a healthy dose of insight from his post at the center of the entertainment industry. Holmes is probably the most fair-minded writer on pop-culture that I’ve ever read. And I’ve really become a huge fan of Scott’s writings this past year, which are always provocative and well-said. Of course, I don’t always agree, but if I did, life would be boring…

Rachel Sklar from Mediaite – Whip smart and very witty, Sklar’s writings for Mediaite (a site for which I hope to one day write) are always a must-read for me.

Jay Rosen – No other Twitter account I’ve ever followed provides a more comprehensive look at the interesting questions going on today in the world of journalism. If I wasn’t already in a Masters program, I would totally apply to be in his program in NY (which is also being taught by the genius Clay Shirky).

Adrian Chen and Foster Kamer – Speaking of journalism, these guys hail from the Gawker media empire, and it shows: both provide insightful commentary on media and journalism, with a humorous, biting twist (Kamer has gone on to work at Esquire, which will undoubtedly yield interesting results).

Matthew Seitz from Salon and Sean M Burns – Matt Zoller Seitz has forgotten more about film than I will ever know. Also, he’s a damn good writer with an appreciation for what it takes to make a good slide show and/or video essay. Meanwhile, Sean Burns offers fantastic one-sentence reviews of films from the person I know whose movie tastes most resemble Jay Sherman from The Critic. But your Twitter account is locked, Sean, preventing others from getting a taste of your film knowledge glory. WTF, mate?

Tasha Robinson, Nathan Rabin, and Keith Phipps – I’ve been blessed to be able to interact with each of these humongously talented individuals on the /Filmcast this year (and hope to have them on again frequently in the future). There’s a reason why AV Club was singled out as the one publication that would bring about the pop-culture apocalypse…

Honorable mentions: Cole Abaius, The Playlist, Hannah, Jim Roberts, Ray Pride, AdFreak

How Do You Reconstruct a 550-Year Old Battle?

At first, I wasn’t too taken by The Economist’s detailing of how the medieval battle of Towton was reconstructed. But by the end of the piece, I was fascinated and impressed by how much work goes into these things. If you’re any sort of a science dork, as I am, trust me, it’s worth a read:

Piecing together what happened on a single day 550 years ago is exceedingly difficult. Even observers would have found it hard to discern a precise order of events in the confusion. Contemporary accounts of the battle may be politically biased or exaggerated. Mr Sutherland says that the idea of medieval soldiers slugging it out for ten hours, as the conventional view of the battle has it, defies credibility; he thinks there was a series of engagements that led to the main battle and that took place over the course of the day….

The battlefield was first swept for ferrous materials such as arrowheads. That search proved frustrating. The trouble was not too little material, but too much—bits of agricultural machinery and other things dating from after the battle. Looking for non-ferrous items—things like badges, belt buckles, buttons, pendants and coins that would have been ripped off during the fighting—proved to be much more fruitful. After identifying clusters of these personal effects, which seemed to mark the main lines of battle, researchers went back to looking for ferrous materials and started finding a concentration of arrowheads.The battlefield was first swept for ferrous materials such as arrowheads. That search proved frustrating. The trouble was not too little material, but too much—bits of agricultural machinery and other things dating from after the battle. Looking for non-ferrous items—things like badges, belt buckles, buttons, pendants and coins that would have been ripped off during the fighting—proved to be much more fruitful. After identifying clusters of these personal effects, which seemed to mark the main lines of battle, researchers went back to looking for ferrous materials and started finding a concentration of arrowheads.

Myles McNutt Reflects on Showrunners vs. Critics

Colleague and /Filmcast favorite Myles McNutt has written a reflection on Kurt Sutter’s dismissal of certain TV critics, who have been none-too-pleased with the latest season of Sons of Anarchy (which Sutter currently showruns):

[M]y greater issue is that Sutter seems intent on profiling critical responses, a profile which is bleeding down into the show’s rabid fanbase. I think it’s one thing to dismiss critics entirely: I think it is perfectly reasonable for a creator as admittedly hyper-sensitive as Sutter to stop paying attention to what critics are saying, and I would not be offended if Sutter said he didn’t give a shit what I said about his show. However, instead of fueling a general apathy towards critical responses, Sutter profiles critics as lazy, unoriginal, and reductive; he portrays male critics as linear, incapable of grasping the complexity of the series, instead of simply disagreeing with them. In the process, the real hivemind in this situation is revealed to be those who commented on Sutter’s blog post, spewing back the same rhetoric about lazy critics with very little originality – the most alarming part of Sutter’s piece is not his own comments, but instead the degree to which the dichotomy between critics and “real” fans of the show was picked up by the 50+ comments which followed.

For his part, Sutter has already responded to McNutt via Twitter, saying:

You missed the fucking point. or perhaps the point is that you lean away from the point so you can masturbate all over your blog. To be fair, I only got thru 1/3 of your blog, then I got bored & confused, so I switched to porn and masturbated all over MY blog.

Classy.

Update: The dialogue continues! Here’s a screenshot of further Twitter dialogue between McNutt and Sutter. Sutter has also listed some of his favorite TV critics and bloggers (so we know he doesn’t hate everyone):