solaris

 This Metafilter thread on comedian David Cross, who has a new album out on Sub Pop, caused me to coin a totally new concept: grunge comedy.

 I thought maybe the design craze was winding down, but then Donald Norman, Henry Petroski, and Michael Graves showed up on NPR.

 The original Solaris is on TCM tonight, which is swell because now I don't have to buy the DVD. I enjoyed the remake, but Jonathan Rosenbaum trashed it. The Times review has the best sentence I've read so far: Retooled into a sleek pop fable that doesn't bother to connect all its dots, the movie aspires to fuse the mystical intellectual gamesmanship of "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the love-beyond-the-grave romantic schmaltz of "Titanic," without losing its cool. It's a tricky balancing act that doesn't quite come off.