Colossal Downpour

At Pacifist Viking, links posts are called "Blizzards." At Costanza Book Club, we'll call them Downpours. These link posts are sort of a pain in the ass; I don't know if you'll find the links interesting, but they at least remind me what I want to read later.

Manohla Dargis at the NY Times talks about blockbuster films in "Defending Goliath: Hollywood and the Art of the Blockbuster."

According to Matea Gold of the LA Times, "'Law & Order' may move to cable." It's only on TNT about 46 times a day; why not air new episodes there?

At The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert talks about the new particle collider in "Crash Course."

Zadie Smith's short story "Hanwell Senior" is also in The New Yorker.

Cherie Miner explores "The Reagan Myth."

3quarksdaily has a post on Coppola's "Marie Antoinette," the film that officially created the PV household blacklist: "Monday Musing: The New Mannerists." In the PV household, we decided we've sat through enough boring or awful movies, and now if we see two awful movies amd zero good movies by one filmmaker, we will blacklist that filmmaker. The list currently includes Sofia Coppola, Eric Rohmer, and Jim Jarmusch (though we've never even seen a Jarmusch film in its entirety). I seem to think I'm forgetting one more person, but neither Possible Flurries nor I can think of the other person. Do any of you have any blacklisted directors?

Via 3quarksdaily, the always fun Neil DeGrasse Tyson gives us "The Cosmic Perspective" in Natural History.

Via Arts & Letters Daily, in the Philadelphia Inquirer Carlin Romano does some reviews and talks about what makes Shakespeare great in "The readiness to deconstruct is all."