Odds and Ends

-Recommended reading for comics fans: a discussion between Douglas Wolk and Timothy Callahan about "bad readers" and "bad creators" in comics, with regards to the new issue of Marvel's New Avengers. Wolk is basically the best comic book critic around — accessible, witty, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the medium — and Callahan, who I wasn't familiar with before, is clearly no slouch either. This may be total gibberish to anyone whose not interested in super-hero comics and its criticism, but to those who are (like myself) it's quite exciting stuff indeed. I just bought Wolk's brand-new book, Reading Comics as well — that's gonna be the centerpiece of my beach reading on my vacation this summer. Can't wait.

-One addendum to last week's IFC News Podcast (you can always subscribe on iTunes too, y'know). Alison Willmore and I discussed some trailers: the idea was with Cloverfield getting all this hooplah, it'd be a good time to look at some other trailers and see how well they sell their respective films. Upon going back and listening to the podcast, I think it's one of our very best in terms of entertainment value, but I'm a little upset about one thing: we spent 25 minutes talking about trailers but didn't list a single one we actually liked when in fact there were several we really enjoyed while doing the research for that podcast. My personal favorite was for a film I wasn't familiar with before, but now very much want to see (and isn't that the purpose of a trailer), a law thriller called Michael Clayton. You can watch the trailer here.

-This brings me back.