The team behind the film adaptations of the Hunger Games trilogy have chosen their next project, and it’s not another hip YA series. Instead they’re going back to the classics and adapting, what else?, The Odyssey.
A Hunger Games Odyssey
Crowdsourcing Translation
Three thousand Russians volunteered to proofread “forty-six thousand eight hundred pages” of Leo Tolstoy’s writings over the course of fourteen days. Soon their efforts will be available online for all to see. Meanwhile, Buzzfeed is catching some heat for enlisting the services of unpaid Duolingo students in order to translate site content for Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese readers.
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Digital Death
“In its clumsy, ad hoc way, Facebook has brought death back into the public sphere in a way death hasn’t been for more than 100 years.” To celebrate Facebook’s 10th birthday, The Missouri Review has unlocked its Alexander Landfair essay on how we deal with death on Facebook. For another look at Facebook, read our essay on how the timeline changes the way we tell stories.
WWII-era NYC… In Living Color
These color photographs of WWII-era New York City may rival those color photographs of pre-revolutionary Russia.
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Goodbye Gone Girl
David Fincher had Gillian Flynn rewrite the ending of Gone Girl for his film. Flynn herself relished the changes. “There was something thrilling about taking this piece of work that I’d spent about two years painstakingly putting together with all its 8 million Lego pieces and take a hammer to it and bash it apart and reassemble it into a movie,” she said. What would Amy think?
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Frank O’Hara: 21st Century Poet?
In a piece for The Atlantic, Micah Mattix responds to the 50th Anniversary Edition of Lunch Poems with a reflection on the social media-esque quality of Frank O’Hara‘s poetry. “O’Hara’s Lunch Poems—like Facebook posts or tweets—shares, saves, and re-creates the poet’s experience of the world. He addresses others in order to combat a sense of loneliness, sharing his gossipy, sometimes snarky take of modern life, his unfiltered enthusiasm, and his boredom in a direct, conversational tone. In short, Lunch Poems, while 50 years old, is a very 21st-century book.”
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Taylor Branch and the NCAA
The New York Times gives Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch a well-deserved profile. I’ve mentioned before that his take down of the NCAA’s corruption is astounding, but now’s a good time to mention that his e-book, The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA, is even better. Branch also appeared on Wednesday night’s “Colbert Report” to discuss the book.
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Last words
Japanese director Satoshi Kon died last Tuesday at the age of 46. His last words, a rambling text that his family uploaded to the Internet following his death, have just been translated to English: “Everyone, thank you for all the truly great memories. I loved the world I lived in.”