Weird Holiday News Week Volume One: Tweets from prison

If you're at work (or school) right now, you're probably remarking on how you seem to be the lone asshole who decided to show up, how everyone pretty much treats Thanksgiving and Christmas as week-long holidays and just straight-up ditch out on work and other responsibilities for like 7-9 straight days (right when things are nearing the end of the year). Hollywood's like that as well. Right now, all the little leak-mongers and rumor spreaders are busy worrying about making the perfect cranberry torte to serve to Aunt Gertie and not providing delicious news nuggets for us to digest. Thus, I dub today (and likely tomorrow): Weird Holiday News Week! I now give you the first of three stories that really don't fit our usual vibe (for the record, our usual vibe is no-holds-barred funk-nasty and if it were accompanied by a soundtrack, it would feature a duet between Bono and Freddie Mercury over the top of a track by Morris Day and the Time with a rap interlude featuring Jay-Z and Warren G).

The first bit was sent to me by my dearest friend and fellow movie lunatic Andrew Merczak from Hollywood Elsewhere, which drew its info from the LA Times. It talks about how Roger Avary, who won an Oscar for the Pulp Fiction screenplay and is good friends with total bad-ass Neil Gaiman, is writing tweets from jail. See, Avary had a tragic lapse in judgment involving alcohol and cars and killed a friend of his. That part is very, very sad...but the part where he is using his twitter account (@avary) to document his time spent in jail is just bizarre as all hell. He's tweeting about everything from grim thoughts to jokes to...Jesus, I don't know what. It brings up an interesting discussion over whether or not we consider this to be acceptable behavior, but I personally find it fascinating. Inmates are frequently allowed to send emails and letters, so why not twitter? The thought of someone, anyone, documenting an experience we're (hopefully) not likely to have via a tool that only permits 140 characters at a time makes my mind go all gooey. It kind of makes me feel like I could use my twitter feed to do more than make jokes...I mean, I probably won't do anything but that, but it's nice to know I could.

Tweet-hype is Reit on

I have to admit something that makes me a leper among the leper colony that is comic book nerd-dom. I have never read any "Scott Pilgrim" stuff. I know, I know, I'm a lame-O. Still, I am excitedly anticipating the Edgar Wright-directed adaptation of the comic...the synopsis of which is easily gleaned from the poster below.

Yeah, so basically it's like a video game where Scott must fight his gal's ex-boyfriends. That sounds great, right? And Michael Cera is in the lead, seems pretty much tailor made for him. Then comes word via Jason Reitman's twitter feed, and I love me some Jason Reitman (you direct Thank You For Smoking and Juno and you get my love), that the sample that Wright showed his buddy (Reitman) was squeal-inducingly awesome. To say it exactly as he did:

"@edgarwright showed me 30min of Scott Pilgrim. While sworn to secrecy (so much, surprised blood wasn’t demanded) I will say this: It is a game changer for Edgar and the genre. It moves the speed of light and carries more unadulterated joy than Ive seen in recent cinema. It does what everyone our age has been dreaming about: achieves the first all encompassing film of the joystick generation. I’m in awe of the sheer control in the filmmaking. It feels like a Matrix for love and how willing we are to fight for it. If I had a movie coming out next year, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near it. Hats off my friend. Can’t get it out of my head."

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, that is some natural hype. This isn't some fan boy spouting off at the mouth, this is a seasoned, intelligent director who is clearly speaking from the heart. Good God I am hyped for this one now.