My cousin Holly and her friend Allie are visiting this weekend—a spur-of-the-moment trip before Holly starts her new job next week (yay!)—so I’ll have cool stuff to write about later. Tonight, for example, the girls and I went to go see Chicago, which I’d never seen onstage before, and we had a great time. In the meantime, links of the week!
- Apparently actor Topher Grace decided to learn more about film editing by cutting all three Star Wars prequels down into a single 85-minute movie. It could only be shown once at a private event (for the obvious legal reasons), but it sounds fascinating and remarkably non-awful, considering the source material.
- I try to avoid becoming fond of actors as people—you’re mostly falling for PR and your own projections, which is stupid—but this New York Times profile of Jennifer Westfeldt and Jon Hamm makes them sound so interesting and cool and sweet together that I’m sort of breaking my own rule.
- Vulture is doing a series determining the greatest TV drama of the past twenty-five years with March Madness–style brackets, and in the first round, The X-Files triumphed over The West Wing, which made very happy, partly because I think West Wing is overrated but mostly because David Lipsky, in making his case, beautifully captures so much of what I loved about The X-Files. Now I need to go reminisce with some old episodes!
- You probably have to be the sort of person who studied feminist literary theory in college (ahem) to really get into this, but I found this essay about the depiction—and celebration—of different forms of masculinity in The Hunger Games to be touching and thoughtful.
- I’m a little bit surprised that penguins can ride on passenger airplanes like people, but apparently, when they’ve been invited to attend a Discovery Channel premiere, allowances are made. It’s awfully cute. (Via Jezebel.)
Much Review About Nothing 
There seems to be quite a lot of these “Hunger Game” analysis articles being written. I love them! The trilogy really lends itself to this kind of in-depth thought. The article you linked to, about the different styles of masculinity demonstrated by Gale and Peeta, was very interesting. (Like the author of the article, I’m a Peeta fan.) While those are the two primary male characters in the series, I think other male characters are equally as complex, especially when it comes to what it means to be a man. Finnick, for instance, is a complicated male character. The warped values of the Capital have forced him to play the part of a shallow playboy. But in a better world he would have lived his life as a committed and loving husband. What I find fascinating about the series is the way the characters struggle to stay true to themselves in a society that tries to force them into being something else. (That is a struggle we all face, although to a much lesser extent than in “The Hunger Games”). Peeta recognizes and verbalizes this struggle early on, saying “I want to die as myself. … I don’t want them to change me in there.” And that’s why I find the end of the series so satisfying: both Katness and Peeta have stayed true to their true selves. Their “happy ending” doesn’t come out of nowhere; it is well earned and well deserved. They have survived the damage inflicted on them by accepting help and love from each other.
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