The new Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz: The Great and Powerful, which stars Mila Kunis and James Franco among others, has its first official trailer. The film will release in 2013.
There’s A New Oz in Town
Inspirational Infographic
This week in book-related infographics: “Inspirational Quotes from Literature” by authors ranging from Leo Tolstoy to Ernest Hemingway to J.K. Rowling, all handily grouped by theme.
●
●
We Own the Internet
Looking to be a Content Generator for a Major Internet Website? Look no further than this piece from McSweeney’s: “We pay $15 per piece of content, whether it be a well-cited, thoroughly researched 5,000-word essay or ten captions under fair-use photos, so, y’know, more bang for your buck with the photos. Also no one reads essays, so win-win.”
●
●
“A record encapsulating all that is America”
You should check out George Saunders’s “Liner Notes” piece about “2776: A Musical Journey Through America’s Past, Present & Future,” which is set to accompany a forthcoming musical-comedy album from Patton Oswalt, Aubrey Plaza, Ira Glass, and Yo La Tengo, among others. If that hasn’t sold you, consider the fact that Saunders’s piece contains this line: “Truth be told, there were a number of regrettable omissions. Beyoncé and Jay Z’s piece ‘Bomber’ had to be left off the album. (‘Driver of this plane, this / B-52 on the way to Nagasaki / Stuff your ears with cotton and / Close those eyes / Me and my man are about to do it all over this / Here bomb’).”
●
●
Rise Up
“Our culture has focused so much attention on the most visible members of the Black Panthers that it has been easy to forget it was a nationwide organization — an entity that needed to attract ordinary people who believed in something and were also willing to work for it.” In the Times, Rembert Browne reviews two new books about the Black Power movement.
On The Rise of the Book Trailer
“These are terrific diversions, but their status next to the book is a little ambiguous. Isn’t using animation to advertise a book a little like using sculpture to promote poetry?” asks Lindesay Irvine in this article about book trailers in The Guardian. If you’re looking for a diversion, this video short based on César Aira‘s Ghosts is certainly worth watching.
●
●
Teaching in Translation
Over at Words Without Borders, Marguerite Feitlowitz writes on teaching the art of literary translation. As she puts it, “Bringing texts from one place to another, from one tongue, context, history, and human body to another, is itself a political act. We can tell the history of the world through the history of when major texts have been translated—and where, why, and by whom.” Pair with this Millions piece on literary translators at work.
Hanging Out with Alice and Margaret
●
●