"There's something very shabby about a noble grave... Political power and the power of wealth result in splendid graves. Really impressive graves, you know. Such creatures never had any imagination while they lived, and quite naturally their graves don't leave any room for imagination either. But noble people live only on the imaginations of themselves and others, and so they leave graves like this one which inevitably stir one's imagination. And this I find even more wretched. Such people, you see, are obliged even after they are dead to continue begging people to use their power of imagination." - Yukio Mishima via Kashiwagi in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. On this, the anniversary of Mishima's transformation into a headless god, a collection of video links. [more inside]
posted by eccnineten on Nov 25, 2008 - 11 comments

Gender differences in literary taste - The Guardian (inter alia) has been reporting two English professors' studies of reading habits and feelings about books by gender. Others (newest to oldest): most revelatory books by reader gender (for men), (for women), author gender by reader gender. The methodology may not be unassailable but the findings are interesting and plausible. [viaduct vianochicken]
Sidenote: I did a little research following a comment on MR and reached a non-obvious conclusion: women hate Akira Kurosawa (check out those charts; for comparison). Theories welcome.
posted by grobstein on Apr 10, 2006 - 36 comments

Unproduced Screenplays "The Writers Guild of America registers approximately 30,000 screenplays every year, most of which never make it anywhere near the silver screen. Some of these are by "big name" writers like James Cameron and The Wachowski Brothers." Presented here for your reading pleasure are: "Edward Ford" by Lem Dobbs, "One Saliva Bubble" by David Lynch & Mark Frost, "Red, White, Black, and Blue" by Andrew Kevin Walker, "Carnivore" by The Wachowski Brothers, "Alien 3" by David Twohy, "A Crowded Room" by James Cameron, and "I Am Legend" by Mark Protosevic.
posted by miss lynnster on Jan 2, 2005 - 27 comments

Roger Ebert on Steve Martin. "He published a novel last year that was touching and true, and he is an expert on modern art, and he is capable of hosting the Academy Awards and starring in a David Mamet movie and writing for the New Yorker and, no doubt, brooding a lot."
posted by adrober on Nov 11, 2001 - 24 comments

The Flitcraft Parable (Warning: RealMedia) This nicely crafted nugget is taken from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. While some literary reputations from the 1920s and '30s are falling (e.g., Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis), Hammett's rep is still rising.

My question: Which so-called genre authors writing today have the greatest chance of still being read in the 22nd century?
posted by bilco on Sep 3, 2001 - 37 comments

You've seen the movie, you've read the book. Now, watch Dead Man Walking, the Opera. (more inside...)
posted by Avogadro on Oct 15, 2000 - 1 comment