Who, or what, is Plotto? Find out about the art of mechanized storytelling, or what a cardboard robot has to do with melodrama and Law & Order.
Plotto
It’s Hip to be Square
Maybe the Mayans were right about 2012. In a sign that the end times are surely nigh, MTV2 has decided to bring back Hollywood Squares “but with a modern twist.” The unfortunately-named Hip Hop Squares will feature Nick Cannon, Ghostface Killah, DJ Khaled, Lamarr Woodley and… Bam Margera?
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Hateship, Movieship
The trailer is out for the film adaptation of Nobel laureate Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. The film will star Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce, Hailee Steinfeld and Nick Nolte among others.
Was Milton a Bard of Smut?
An Oxford lecturer finds a “filthy, innuendo-laden… smutty… coarse, and frankly misogynistic” poem supposedly by John Milton – a far cry from the lofty Christian sentiments of Paradise Lost.
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Droit ou l’Ordre
Believe it or not, but the widely publicized murder case is not just a modern phenomenon. In 1761, Voltaire became obsessed with the case of Marc-Antoine Calas, a young man who was found dead in his home city of Toulouse. At The Paris Review Daily, a post on the Candide author’s impact on modern justice.
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Careless Drivers
Can’t keep track of who is driving which car in The Great Gatsby? Pop Chart Lab made a chart of the comings and goings of the novel’s characters via trains, cars, and feet.
Flimflam
Here’s a simple poll idea we’re amazed we hadn’t thought of before: asking famous writers to pick their favorite words. In The Guardian, Hilary Mantel, Tessa Hadley and others (including Year in Reading alum Eimear McBride) choose their picks for an exceedingly odd vocabulary list.
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Wordpocalypse
In the beginning, God died, and it was bad. Then the pun died too, and despair came over the people.
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