Even where none of the parts of a good whole are bad, or a bad whole good, it often happens that the value of a complex whole cannot be measured by adding together the value of its parts; the whole is often better or worse than the sum of the value of its parts. In all aesthetic pleasures, for example, it is important that the object admired should really be beautiful: in the admiration of what is ugly there is something ridiculous, or even sometimes repulsive, although, apart from the object there may be no difference in the value of the emotion per se.

Continue reading »

Scott Pilgrim, written by Bryan Lee O’Malley, is pretty much Awesome Incarnate.

Scott Pilgrim was recently optioned by Universal, and will star Michael Cera,⁽¹⁾ who, upon re-reading book 1, should be damn-near perfect as Scott.

The film version of Scott Pilgrim Versus the World will hit theatres in 2010, but right now they’re shooting around my neighbourhood⁽²⁾ (which is what prompted me to reread the comics).⁽³⁾

I’m very excited to see how this film will turn out. In the meantime, a breakdown of the five books published thusfar: Continue reading »

Footnotes:

1. How does this kid not have his own website yet? [↩]
2. They began March 30th, according to ScottPilgrim.com. [↩]
3. It was kind of weird to see snow machines all over the place with large puffy blankets of white over at Casa Loma and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Had they come a months earlier they could’ve had the real stuff. [↩]

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Quirk Classics 978-1-59474-344-4, 319 pp. (incl. Reader’s Discussion guide), 2009

Jane Austen’s works have recently come out of copyright, allowing anyone to republish the texts. Some have been a little more innovative. There’s a new film, Pride and Predator, expected to come out in 2010, and, of course, the mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Austen’s original classic interspersed with martial arts and zombie mayhem by Seth Grahame-Smith.

While I’ve read some Jane Austen before, I hadn’t read Pride and Prejudice.⁽¹⁾ I corrected this, then proceeded to read one of the silliest books I’ve ever read. Continue reading »

Footnotes:

1. Or seen the film(s?), for that matter. [↩]