Laura Miller at Salon argues that NaNoWriMo is a colossal waste of resources, plus advocates for readers as the source of hope for our future:

Frankly, there are already more than enough novels out there — more than those of us who still read novels could ever get around to poking our noses into, even when it’s our job to do so…Furthermore, I know that there are still undiscovered or unpublished authors out there whose work I will love if I ever manage to find it. But I’m confident those novels would still get written even if NaNoWriMo should vanish from the earth. Yet while there’s no shortage of good novels out there, there is a shortage of readers for these books. Even authors who achieve what probably seems like Nirvana to the average NaNoWriMo participant — publication by a major house — will, for the most part, soon learn this dispiriting truth: Hardly anyone will read their books and next to no one will buy them.

Devin Faraci and I have sparred online on numerous occasions, but I’ve always found my in-person interactions with him to be agreeable and engaging. This evening, he was in town to help out with Drafthouse Films’ first movie, Four Lions. Luckily, I had a chance to catch up with Devin in his hotel room and chat extensively with him about a variety of topics, including his new website and the future of online film journalism.

There were a number of issues on which we both agreed:

• The current market cannot sustain the glut of current online film websites. Eventually, only a few will emerge as the most prominent and worthy of attention.
• Writers should try to avoid writing for free for someone else, whenever possible. There are a variety of reasons for this, some of which Devin discusses.
• As geek culture has gone mainstream, the place of online film websites has gotten extremely murky.
• Film websites will need to do more than just rehash news from other film websites in order to stay relevant and interesting.

Here’s the audio of our chat:

Mark Arms, the founder/curator of the Longreads hash tag and twitter account, which has just launched its own full-blown website:

Here’s a problem that we, People of the Internet, should solve: The web is not yet organized in a way that recognizes that there is more than one type of text-based web content. There’s quick, snackable stuff, formulated for 5-minute scanning between checking your email and getting some real work done. But then there’s the long, in-depth content better suited for the couch, the commute, or the airplane. Most sites jumble these two types of stories together. When I click a headline at NYTimes.com, I can never tell whether I’m going to get a 200-word blog post or a 10,000-word epic. At work, I want the former; at home, the latter. But my browser doesn’t care. Graydon, you would never ask me to read the Vanity Fair cover story standing at the newsstand. Yet that’s precisely what VanityFair.com and others do. Now that I have the ability to “read later,” I will. It’s time for publishers to start recognizing this need for “time and place”-specific content. I humbly offer up “Longreads” as the tag by which we, The Internet, will understand when content is meant not just for scanning but for reading, savoring and digesting.

Instapaper (in conjunction with my Kindle/iPad) and Longreads have literally changed the way I consume online material, and if you love long reads but haven’t been able to find a pleasing format for them, I’d recommend both services. I can’t tell you how good it feels to be regularly consuming 10,000-word features on a regular basis. It makes me think that the internet might not be making me so stupid after all….

From Jezebel comes the heartwarming story of how actor Justin Long headed off an internet flame war with one of the sweetest internet comments left for a movie critic by an actor, possibly ever. Short version: Michelle Orange wrote a review of Going the Distance for Movieline and had some not nice things to say about Justin Long’s looks, saying:

How a milky, affectless mook with half-formed features and a first day of kindergarten haircut might punch several classes above his weight is a mystery…we are increasingly asked to accept on screen. 

Long read the review and quoted it word for word on national television. Orange was mortified and wrote a response to the events. Long commented on the latter piece, saying:

Michelle, I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d get to be in one movie, let alone several over the course of the last ten years – never had any delusions of grandeur. I always wanted to be a theatre actor like my mom, always assuming the movie roles were relegated to the good looking people…Then I started idolizing guys like Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Sam Rockwell, Woody Allen, and Philip Seymour Hoffman – I found myself relating (I hope you’re not wincing at my use of that word now) to them and formulating some wild fantasy of one day pursuing a career in movie acting – if guys that looked like that could do it, I thought, maybe this milky mook could role the dice. So while there’s no defense for my performance in the movie (everyone is obviously entitled to their opinion), I have to say, I’m surprised by the amount of stock you seem to invest in my looks. I absolutely agree with you too, I’d be hard-pressed to hold a candle to even a fraction of Drew’s beauty – in my humble opinion, she’s the most beautiful girl in the world…Maybe you’re frustrated because it so rarely works the other way – I don’t remember the last time I was asked to accept a female romantic lead who was “punching above her weight class” – though it does happen (I just don’t want to name names at the risk of offending – I leave that to the experts)…Regardless, I really meant what I said about your writing – I love film too and I love reading about it – so keep up the good work and I’ll try to pick better projects…Take care and hopefully one day our paths will cross so I can compliment you in person. Until then, best wishes and be proud and confident in your role as a film critic – you’re a damn good one.
-Justin Long

ps I swear to god it’s me and I swear (as emphatically) that I’m not being sarcastic.

You win this battle, Justin. And the battle of life too.

[Side note: I don’t understand writers’ occasional withering fixation on people’s God-given looks. I was reading GQ’s profile of Robert Gibbs’ this weekend which described him as follows: “His 39-year-old face is more like a shield, with an immense forehead and tiny eyes that scarcely radiate. The smile, affable and empty, could be that of a small-town gas-station attendant or a hired assassin.” I wonder how the writer would enjoy being described in similar fashion.]

[NOTE: This article is highly speculative, for entertainment purposes only, and not meant to be taken seriously by anyone]

This year, a major movie studio released a big-budget film starring mostly-unknown actors into theaters everywhere. Based on an already-existing property, the film was visually dazzling and went onto gross over $100 million, but was absolutely obliterated by film critics. One of its biggest problems? A male lead who couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. Of course, I’m describing The Last Airbender, but I fear I may soon also be describing Disney’s upcoming Tron Legacy.

Last night on Twitter I put out the call for responses from people who’d attended Tron Night, a special marketing event in theaters all across the country meant to give people a sneak peak at the film. Jason Seaver linked me to Brian Orndorf’s review of the evening. While Orndorf was mostly dazzled by the proceedings, he did have some choice words to say about the film’s lead actor, Garrett Hedlund:

It’s true that Garrett Hedlund is an enormously limited actor (he’s yet to give a worthwhile performance in anything he’s appeared in), and the footage here reinforces his lack of skill, but the scale of the production is mesmerizing, glazed with a deliriously fitting electro score from Daft Punk.

This jives with other reports I’ve also heard about Hedlund being an absolutely terrible actor. It also jives with my irrationally judgmental take on his acting that I am able to arrive at based on a) his 20-seconds of “acting” in the teaser trailer for Tron Legacy, and b) a brief clip from Tron that was released after Tron Night.

I mean just look at these:

 
In the teaser (screencapped at the head of this post), at the moment he gets tossed the keys, Hedlund has this amateurish puppy dog look of disappointment in his eyes that recalls the skill and tone of my 7th grade performance as Lazar Wolf in our middle school production of Fiddler on the Roof. Likewise, in the Tron footage with Quora, Hedlund looks as though he’s channeling Keanu Reeves from his worst moments in The Matrix…while on speed.

Like Sam Worthington before him, Hedlund was plucked from obscurity and asked to carry a major motion picture costing in excess of $200 million. But whereas Worthington at least has the rugged screen presence to carry him through each major production he manages to get involved with, Hedlund barely registers, and when he does, it’s as the teenage version of Donnie from The Big Lebowski, a child who’s literally wandered into the middle of a movie and wants to know what’s happening, only with none of the kindness sympathy that Buscemi evokes.

Can a movie succeed with a lead that’s completely wooden and unconvincing? I think Disney will do good business, but it’ll be more for the stunning visuals than for a decent story or compelling lead performance. And like any insubstantial meal, Tron Legacy will leave film reviewers like myself feeling temporarily sated but totally empty inside.

Dave Chappelle’s For What It’s Worth is available for FREE in its entirety on Google Video. I re-watched it the other night and still found it incisive and hilarious. While it doesn’t possess the bombast of Dave’s first big special, Killing Them Softly, Chappelle is wizened and more trenchant in his cultural criticisms. It takes awhile to get going and the pop cultural references are woefully outdated, but the latter half is sheer comedic brilliance. Check it out.

Steve Safran has a marvelous takedown of all the hand-wringing over Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity:

Within minutes of the conclusion of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, the articles were flying. Most simply reported on the event. Others decided the way to go was to focus on the numbers in attendance, the audience being too liberal, or how the rally “won’t really change anything at all.” In any case, we get some excellent examples of the usual ways critics go about their jobs. After a rally that criticized the media for creating fear and artifice, some journalists apparently decided to help Jon Stewart prove his point. So there are lots of attempts at trying to pigeonhole the show. And if there’s one thing some journalists can’t stand, it’s ambiguity.