January 13

This piece on the CNN website, "Audiences experience Avatar blues," could word-for-word be an Onion parody article. How do you tell the difference these days?

James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora...Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality...Within the fan community, suggestions for battling feelings of depression after seeing the movie include things like playing "Avatar" video games or downloading the movie soundtrack, in addition to encouraging members to relate to other people outside the virtual realm and to seek out positive and constructive activities.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

Jay Stringer at the crimefic blog Do Some Damage has a thoughtful consideration of crime comics:

http://dosomedamage.blogspot.com/2010/01/four-colour-crime.html

I referred to the new DVD of Alexander Alexeieff's animation back on December 31. Here, thanks to the wonderful blog A Journey Round My Skull, is a sample of Alexeieff's book illustration work:

http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2010/01/labbe-de-labbaye.html

Matt Wolf in the New York Times offers thoughts on a "changing of the guard" in British theater:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/arts/13iht-LON13.html

Among notables born on this date are actors Robert Stack, Orlando Bloom, and Ian Hendry, novelists Edmund White, Jay McInerney, and A.B. Guthrie, short story writer Lorrie Moore, fantasist Clark Ashton Smith, children's authors Horatio Alger Jr. and Michael Bond (creator of Paddington Bear), Danish playwright Kaj Munk (Ordet), Greek poet Kostis Palamas, and Russian composer Vassili Kalinnikov.

I really like Stack; it's too bad that no one but Douglas Sirk took him seriously. It's worth noting that in the Phil Karlson-directed The Scarface Mob, the pilot for The Untouchables, the script allows Stack to make lawman Eliot Ness multi-dimensional: human, humorous, and emotional. That would not continue to be true in the series; although it is an excellent series for what it does, it reduces Ness to his humorless, mob-busting functionality (he no longer has a wife, as he did in the pilot), and it defined Stack in a way that he was playing with (Unsolved Mysteries) or playing against (Airplane!) for the rest of his career.