neglected links & others

Since I started using Bloglines instead of Feedreader it's way easier to keep up with reading stuff, but I've not yet gotten into the habit of actually emptying my little "clippings" folder of things I mean to link to. Thus, this post, which is all I have time for at the moment. But first:

1. Remember all that time ago when I promised I'd catch up on email? Well, most of you know that probably never happened. But I'm planning to set up shop in the coffee house around the corner Friday evening, or possibly Sunday, and answer all, all, all messages, no matter how delinquent of me. So, prepare to get responses to email you'd forgotten you sent in the first place.

2. A site in honor of bookstore cats (via Sharyn November).

3. Cipolini unretires! Long live Mario the Great! At TDF Blog.

-- Hey, one benefit of this approach is that everything else is now too old to post. --

4. Howard Waldrop (and Lawrence Person) LOVE The Incredibles. Lots. The biggest problem we have in reviewing this film is there aren't any flaws. One reason Pixar's films succeed where so many live-action films fail is that they finish the script before they start making the film. In Hollywood's star-and-ego driven ecosystem, sometimes the script is the last consideration, they're frequently ruined by waaaaay too many cooks, and sometimes time constraints preclude rewrites ("We've only got Johnny Depp for six weeks, so I need that script tomorrow"). Pixar's scripts in general, and certainly this one in specific, are polished to a luminous gloss before the first scene is rendered, because it's too expensive to do it any other way. There's not a wasted scene anywhere in here (we won't say "wasted shot" because there are no shots). It's hard to see how you could make a better comic film about retired superheroes, animated or otherwise.

Later: a post on young adult novels I've read and loved recently (So Yesterday, Godless (NBA nominee) and The Game of Sunken Places).