Graffiti artists aren’t particularly known for their bookishness. After all, when you spend your nights out on the street as a graphic art vigilante, you’re missing important time that could be spent snuggled up in bed with a book. So after we saw this spectacular Isaac Asimov portrait, we decided to go hunting for graffiti with a distinct literary bent — and in fact, the world abounds with bookish street art, from portraits of favorite authors to stenciled and scribbled quotes to representations of beloved characters. Click through to see twenty five of our favorite finds, from the reverent to the blatantly mocking, and let us know which author’s likeness you’d most like to stencil onto the walls of your city in the comments — or get out there and contribute to our collection.

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Earlier this week, we discovered a set of lovely golden Lord of the Rings-inspired nails over at io9, and we have to admit that we’ve been daydreaming about our perfect literary dream manicures ever since. After all, we’ve already gushed over (and failed at trying to replicate) these awesome Twin Peaks nails, so it’s only fair we give a little love to the literary side of fingernail-based super-fandom. Because if you’re serious about being a literary nerd, why not extend your love of books to the very tools that let you turn the pages and proclaim your great taste in reading material to the world all at once? Click through to get inspired by a few of our favorite works of literary nail art, and let us know which books you’re dying to have at your fingertips in the comments!

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Back in September, James Franco scored his first The Paris Review byline with a piece that introduced the magazine’s highbrow readership to River, his Gus Van Sant-blessed cut of My Own Private Idaho. In the months since, he has reviewed Restless (an indie love story directed by Van Sant) and written a piece juxtaposing The Descendants with Breaking Dawn. Today, Franco’s latest piece arrived online, and this time he’s using the two movies that he saw over the holidays — The Artist and Puss in Boots — to look at how recent advances in CG technology will impact his own career.

“The Artist is a film about an actor who can’t use his voice in film — and Puss in Boots is an animated film that uses only famous performers’ voices (Antonio Banderas, Selma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis, Billy Bob Thorton, Amy Sedaris),” Franco writes. “Animation has been a part of film history almost since its inception, and animation with sound started at almost the same time as live-action talkies, Snow White being one of the first feature-length animated sound films in 1937. But it wasn’t until Aladdin (1992) and then Toy Story (1995) that recognizable actors started voicing animated characters with regularity. The personalities of the performers is now a huge part of the animation process, and as computer-generated technology advances, the images will only begin to look more lifelike. Pretty soon — in fact it’s already happening, just look at Tintin — it won’t just be the voices that actors provide for CG animators; it will be all the aspects of a performance.”

We’re curious: What do you think will happen to every actor who’s not Andy Serkis as technology continues to advance?

We recently discovered something we didn’t know about the Steig Larsson books — that he modeled his introverted computer hacker protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, on childhood favorite Pippi Longstocking. When delivering his Millenium series to his publisher, Larsson wrote, “My point of departure was what Pippi Longstocking would be like as an adult. Would she be called a sociopath because she looked upon society in a different way and has no social competence?” Well maybe, but we have to agree with Slate‘s analysis that cheery, delightfully odd Pippi Longstocking is not a believable younger version of the tough-as-nails Lisbeth Salander. Nevertheless, the idea got us to thinking about other literary legacies, and whether any of our favorite young characters might have grown up into other, older literary figures that we know and love. Click through to check out the pairs that we came up with, and let us know who you think would grow up to be who in the comments.

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This week, we were treated to a great article on the creation of the Dothraki language, as it is spoken in the HBO adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. Inspired by this new insight into the culture of Khal Drogo, we decided to take the opportunity to look into some other interesting fictional languages, from complete universes with many dialects to what amounts to English augmented by very creative slang. Before you rise up in righteous fury, this is only a guide to languages either solely or originally conceived of in books, so nerd-favorites Na’vi and Klingon are excluded — but you’ve already heard too much about them anyway. Click through to read our brief guide to fictional languages in literature, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorites in the comments. Read More »

1. It’s official: Shooting on Skyfall, the 23rd installment of the James Bond franchise, begins on Monday. Joining Daniel Craig for the Sam Mendes-helmed project (which it should be noted, will not connect with Craig’s previous two Bond films, plot-wise): Academy Award winner Javier Bardem, who was previously cast as the villain — although it’s not confirmed yet whether or not he’s playing Blofeld. [via Deadline]

2. “I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened if I were a man. What other people think of me is none of my business but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt my feelings… My mood changes about it depending on the day. In general, you don’t want anyone to say anything bad about you.” – Lana Del Rey discusses her detractors

3. Wu-Tang’s RZA — who scored both Kill Bill films for Quentin Tarantino — is the latest actor to join the cast of his anti-slavery spaghetti Western, Django Unchained. At this point, the star-studded ensemble already includes Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, Don Johnson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anthony LaPaglia, Misty Upham, Gerald McRaney, and M.C. Gainey. [via Variety]

4. The Peter Jackson-directed second Tintin film will not be based on Prisoners Of The Sun, as was previously rumored. Instead, that book may be the plot of Tintin 3, leaving the storyline for the sequel still up for discussion. [via Slashfilm]

5. The world premiere of Edward Albee’s new play Laying an Egg — which was set to makes its Off-Broadway debut in February — has been indefinitely postponed. Explains artistic director James Houghton: “All good things are well worth the wait, and most certainly a new play from one of our most treasured playwrights is no exception.” [via Guardian]

Bonus Buzz: Zach Galifianakis Stand Up From 1999

Today marks the release of Jeffrey Eugenides’s third novel, The Marriage Plot, a modern take on Victorian matchmaking novels and the women who love them. We adored the book, and all its protagonist’s Jane Austen talk, coupled with her own love triangle, got us to thinking about pulling an Emma and trying a little literary matchmaking of our own. We’ve already taken a stab at guessing which literary characters would be best friends in real life, but of course, when love is involved, the stakes are a little higher. Click through to check out the literary characters we think would totally fall for each other if they met in real life, and let us know your own ideas for star-crossed lovers in the comments.

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Comic book characters tend to embody the most petrifying of fashion nightmares, from wearing underwear as outerwear to donning full-body, technicolor spandex suits in broad daylight. Since life within the panels of a comic book tends to be only slightly less sartorially inspiring than being stuck in an ’80s workout video, we think residents of Gotham and Radiant City deserve an extra-hard pat on the back when they bust out runway-worthy looks. Browse our look book of the graphic world’s trendiest style icons after the jump.

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If you live on the East Coast, you may be in for some weather-related drama this weekend. Hurricane Irene is scheduled to whip through New York late tonight, so your faithful Flavorwire staffers are huddled up with our canned goods and bottled water, and of course, several piles of movies and books to keep us occupied. Since we specialize in culture and not weather-preparedness, we can’t give you any hurricane-proofing tips, but we can share a few lessons we’ve learned from the many natural disasters that have been immortalized in film, literature and mythology. Click through to see what the calamities of fiction can teach us, and get ready for the storm.

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Cartoonist Dan Hipp, who describes himself as someone who makes ‘nerdy pop-culture art’, has re-imagined several epic sci-fi films as Tintin covers – even changing the names to seem more Tintin-esque. Though the art definitely doesn’t evoke the same feel as the original Tintin, we love projects as dorky as this as a rule, and come on, who could possibly resist Snowy in Princess Leia braids? Click through to see a few images from Hipp’s Tintin series, and make sure to check out more of his work at his website.

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