This week (which has left me completely unproductive here because I stupidly thought it would be a good idea to accept a big freelance copyediting assignment while also teaching a ten-week class for the first time, not to mention holding down my normal full-time job—I’ll try to post more this coming week!): an idiosyncratic pianist and a masterpiece of children’s literature.
- The AV Club‘s interview with actors John Cho and Kal Penn is hilarious and very endearing. As adolescent and crude as the Harold & Kumar movies can be (VERY), they’re also oddly sweet and surprisingly sharp, and the chemistry and intelligence of these two is a big reason why.
- D. T. Max’s New Yorker article on concert pianist Hélène Grimaud does a great job of describing how eccentric her interpretations can be. Moreover, it’s a great example of how much fun a profile can be when the subject either isn’t aware—or simply doesn’t care—how bizarre the things she’s saying sound.
- Norman Juster’s celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of his novel The Phantom Tollbooth reminds me just how much I loved that playful, brilliant fantasia on language as a kid. (Michael Chabon’s introduction to the new edition, published a few months ago in The New York Review of Books, is also well worth reading.)
- This montage of film shots in which the camera looks straight down at the characters—often called a God’s eye perspective—is polished and portentous and weirdly poignant. The editor neglected to provide annotations on what clip is from which movie, but the YouTube commenters have that covered. (Via Vulture.)
Much Review About Nothing 