Browser, 6/11: Radiohead w/lasers!; My Chat with Kim Ketola; "WALL-E"; "Where the Wild Things Are"; Outlandish Outlander; Sixpence None the Richer; E.B. White

Radiohead laser show

The new Radiohead video didn’t use any cameras. It used lasers.

And now, I challenge you to fill in the blank with something that would catch everyone by surprise. For their next video… Radiohead won’t use any cameras. They’ll use __________________.

Thanks to my good friend Henrik Lind for the link!

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Hellboy 2, WALL-E, Kung Fu Panda, Get Smart, and My Kid Could Paint That

My latest live-radio chat about new releases with Kim Ketola on “Along the Way” is now available for download.

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“And a little robot will lead them”

In the Washington Post, Michael Gerson praises WALL•E:

“Wall-E” is partly an environmental parable, but its primary point is moral. The movie argues that human beings, aided by technology, can become imprisoned by their consumption. The pursuit of the latest style leads to conformity. The pursuit of pleasure displaces the deeper enjoyments of affection and friendship. The pursuit of our rhinestone desires manages to obscure our view of the stars.

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And beyond these thoughtful paradoxes, this animated summer movie dares to raise a principle central to our humanity. People — children and others — require constant reminding that they are more than the sum of their wants. And in this task, a little robot will lead them.

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Can Spike Jonze save Where the Wild Things Are?

The movie’s troubles continue. What a shame. I have such high hopes for it, with Jonze directing and Eggers writing it.

Something has gone very wrong with “Where the Wild Things Are,” the much-anticipated Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book. The $80-million film, with a script by literary cool-guy Dave Eggers, was filmed largely in the second half of 2006 in Australia. It was originally slated for release this October but got pushed back to the fall of 2009. Last week it disappeared entirely from the Warner Bros. release schedule, a sign of continuing troubles.

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Spacemen, Vikings, and Dragons!

The remake of Outlander is bringing Jim Ca-Jesus back, and he’s starring opposite John “I’m in Every Franchise” Hurt and… Eomer! Here’s the trailer for what looks like it could be the most unintentionally funny movie of the year.

I wonder what this trailer will look like to those folks who think that Jim Caviezel really is some kind of prophet. Here he goes once again, lonely, persecuted, misunderstood… and saving the world!

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Life After “Kiss Me”

So good to see Sixpence back at it.

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Charlotte’s Web-spinner

The Writer’s Almanac on E.B. White:

Today is the birthday of the man who gave us Charlotte’s Web, E.B. (Elwin Brooks) White, born in Mount Vernon, New York (1899). He was a writer for many years for The New Yorker magazine. He later moved with his wife to a farmhouse in Maine. E.B. White wrote, “Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don’t have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.”

For all his love of the country, E.B. White is also the author of a classic about New York City, Here is New York, which people still read today.