1. Apple has set a new company record by selling one million units of its new iPhone 4S in just 24 hours. Evidently, it really doesn’t matter that it’s not called the iPhone 5. [via Gizmodo]
2. Real Steel — the robot boxing movie that stars Hugh Jackman — dominated the weekend box office despite earning less than kind reviews, taking in $27.3 million in ticket sales. Meanwhile, George Clooney’s political film The Ides of March came in second place with $10.4 million. [via ArtsBeat]
3. Do you care if David Foster Wallace made up part of his his famous cruise piece for Harper’s? Perhaps more importantly, what do you make of Jonathan Franzen spilling the beans on his friend? [via Vulture]
4. “Consumers value the simplicity Netflix has always offered and we respect that. There is a difference between moving quickly — which Netflix has done very well for years—and moving too fast, which is what we did in this case.” – Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings now says that there will be no Qwikster
5. Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is accusing Beyoncé and her baby bump of plagiarizing some dance sequences in the new video for “Countdown.” As Jezebel points out, this isn’t the first time that the pop star is facing these kind of accusations.
Bonus Buzz: Harvard Is No Longer the World’s Best School
Those lucky kids at Harvard University asked for and received Amy Poehler (an alum of Boston College) as one of the speakers at their Senior Class Day. Among the life advice the Parks and Rec star dished out — after telling the crowd, “just because you’re wicked smaaaht doesn’t mean you’re better than me” — was this pearl of wisdom: “Listen, say yes, live in the moment, make sure you play with people who have your back, make big choices early and often, and don’t start a scene where two people are talking about jumping out of a plane — start the scene having already jumped.” If you’re looking for a little late morning pick-me-up, click through to watch the full speech now.
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You’ve heard the buzz: three novels by age 25, raised in the warm embrace of old-school New York media, toast of the Harvard crowd, handsome, mannered, well-traveled. What you may not know is that Nick McDonell, author of campus novel-cum-spy thriller An Expensive Education, has the work ethic to back up his admittedly blessed existence. After stints reporting from Iraq, Sudan, and Mongolia for the likes of TIME and Harper’s, McDonell is back in New York planning his next adventure and witnessing the film adaptation of an old one (Twelve, the book he wrote at age 17, is being directed by Joel Schumacher and stars a rapper, a Gossip Guy, and Pretty Woman‘s niece). Our interview after the jump. Read More »
