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Fiction Fix: "Pinecone" by Michael Cera (plus bonus non-fiction by Matthew Derby!)

By Kristen O'Toole on

The Fiction Fix is your weekly dose of short story. If that’s not your drug of choice, too bad: consider it medicine. Every week, we’ll scour the literary magazines you don’t have time to read, online and in print, and let you know where to find one story worth reading.

This week, we’re recommending Michael Cera’s Pinecone in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #30. Yes, that Michael Cera. Although we love pointing you toward mostly-unknown writers in literary magazines that are not available on Amazon or in your local Barnes & Noble, we are endorsing this story because maybe you decided a long time ago you were over McSweeney’s, or maybe you roll your eyes when a movie star gets literary. If so, get over yourself. … Read More

Web

10 Pop Culture Nerds Who Can Chop Wood

By Caroline Stanley on

We were rather shocked by an angry post on Missbehave Mag’s blog entitled “R.I.P. Nerds,” because we’ve always assumed that their target demo were the sort of gals who like boys who (look) like Wes Anderson. Boy were we wrong:

“Guess what? Being a geek is no longer cool. It’s fucking geeky. Geek chic? Dead. In this recession we need no longer pine over the Michael Cera’s or the Jason Schwartzman’s of the world.”

Um, ouch. Aren’t we in the midst of the Unofficial Geek Renaissance now that Obama is prez? While our gut instinct is to speculate about how a Paulie Bleeker lookalike must’ve broken poor Editor-in-Chief’s Lesley Arfin’s heart, we don’t know her, so that’s weird. Instead, we’ve decided that the more proactive way to deal with our dissent is to create a list of cultural nerds who kick butt. Find it (and add your nominees in the comments) after the jump. … Read More

Web

Big Yankees, Dead Opera, Multiple Arrests, and Other Cultural Headlines [Morning Links]

By Caroline Stanley on

Books: Will A-Rod’s roid scandal encourage Joe Torre’s book sales?
Dance/Opera: Salvaging NYC’s opera scene
Design: Chip Kidd dubs Tony Stark design’s super hero.
Film: Michael Cera Bale’s out on the set of Youth In Revolt.
Music: Chris Brown surrenders to the fuzz.
Television: The… Read More

Theatre

Harold Pinter Dies, George Clooney Throws Pies, and Other Cultural News

By Caroline Stanley on

Harold Pinter takes his final pause: The famed British playwright died yesterday at 78 after suffering from cancer. As the Guardian reports, when Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature back in 2005, the committee claimed he was “generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century.” On the 40th anniversary of our favorite of Pinter’s works, The Homecoming, New Yorker critic John Lahr once wrote: “The Homecoming changed my life. Before the play, I thought words were just vessels of meaning; after it, I saw them as weapons of defense. Before, I thought theatre was about the spoken; after, I understood the eloquence of the unspoken. The position of a chair, the length of a pause, the choice of a gesture, I realized, could convey volumes.” [Guardian] … Read More

Film

Narnia, Kindles, Michael Cera and 2008 Indie Film Goodness

By Caroline Stanley on

Narnia gets dumped: Fans of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia will be sad to learn that those are the only two installments of the children’s series that Disney plans to bring to the big screen. According to the Hollywood Reporter, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was meant to hit theatres in May 2010, has been put on hold due to “budgetary and logistical reasons.” As the first two films cost around $400 million to make (talking animals cost a pretty penny), we think this is a smart move for Mickey, but word on the street is that FOX is interested in scooping up his sloppy seconds. [THR] … Read More

Film

Sundance ’09 Films We’re Already Falling For

By Caroline Stanley on

Prop 8 boycotters be damned, the slate for this year’s Sundance Film Festival has been announced, and as always it reads like an overwhelming buffet of tasty cinematic treasures along with a few movies that we would never, ever want to see. The ones that we’re the most excited about? The films that star the actors who we love most, naturally.

(Admittedly this is a flawed way of doing things, as last year it meant that we completely missed out on Momma’s Man and Man on Wire, but our screening powers are only as good as our unhealthy crush on Michael Cera.)

After the jump, the five flicks that we’ll be vying for good seats at come January; leave your own picks in the comments. … Read More

Television

Seth Rogen Should Not Make Pornos for TV Too

By Caroline Stanley on

So he’s not spending all of his time in the gym: Variety reports that Seth Rogen is behind a new porno-based comedy for Showtime with his good buddy Evan Goldberg (other new Showtime series with A-list talent include Nurse Jackie which stars Edie Falco and United States of Tara from Diablo Cody).

Overexposed Rogen is one of the last members of Judd Apatow’s “Back Pack” that we’d like to see playing a guy running a pornography shop (maybe because he looks too much like a guy running a pornography shop), so we hope this isn’t one of those projects that he plans to write and star in. Knowing that these incestuous funny guys like to keep things in the family, after the jump you’ll find our casting suggestions for him — let us know if you agree with our ranking. … Read More