I’m sorry to see that Hugo hasn’t earned back its production costs yet: it’s a very good movie that deserves a tremendous audience. But I also want it to succeed not just because it deserves to, but because it strikes me as a promising reinterpretation of an entry in a promising genre.

I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the book on which the movie was based, over the break, and two things about it struck me. First, the interpolation of words and pictures — it’s not a straight graphic novel, there aren’t speech bubbles — is a great way to enrich and flesh out a narrative that might be more viable as a short story than as a full novel. In a way, it fills in the interpretive space between prose writer and reader. The illustrations show us what Hugo looks like rather than letting us imagine it for ourselves, providing us with bone structure, with a visual guide through the train station and the streets of Paris. By putting Selznick’s illustrations next to photographs of old movie productions, the book gives them an authority, a sense of authenticity.

Second, I’d like to see more movies that have the kind of relationship to their source material that Hugo has to The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Part of Watchmen‘s airlessness came from the fact that it’s a shot-by-shot remake of the graphic novel. But Hugo takes the shots from the illustrations that work and fill in those that don’t, or that don’t exist at all, adding new whimsy and a sense of scale and grandeur. It’s a good template without being a suffocating one.

Topless Robot hasan awesome post on video game characters whose genders started out ambiguous and were eventually revealed to be female. I have mixed feelings about this as a tactic generally: obviously it would be nice to assume that consumers in any media see a character’s specific traits in the foreground and their gender in the background (unless, of course their sex or gender performance is the most important thing about them). But if this is a way to force those traits to the foreground and deliberately sideline gender for a minute, or to set up a situation where gender expectations are subverted, then it seems like a worthwhile tactic at least some of the time. Eowyn’s gender reveal to the Witch King remains a gold standard in gender-subverting awesome, and if we can get joy and surprise along with the monster-conquering, so much the better.

Mark Ruffalo, Occupy activist, fracking opponent, and now, the Incredible Hulk, wants us to know that The Avengers are America. He tells the Wall Street Journal: “You have all these disparate egos, superheroes in this and that, and they refuse to give up some of their positions in order to make a more perfect union and to join the team. That’s really what the whole movie is about: subjugating your own best interest momentarily to further that of the whole.” I think to a certain extent that’s true. And I think this is a way in which superhero teams function more like American politics should: they evolve over time. People leave old teams and join new ones as their ideas and personalities shift, and while making the transition can signal a shift from good to evil, it can also be the result in a shift in tactics or priorities. Old teams die if they don’t make sense any more.

Political parties aren’t a bad thing: it’s good to have an infrastructure to spot, train, and support talented candidates, and to act as a pooled research staff for politicians. But I do think it’s unfortunate that the barriers to entry are so high that it’s almost impossible for viable alternatives to the Democratic and Republican party to emerge. And it’s even worse that there’s so little tolerance for intellectual evolution that when someone switches a party, it’s huge news. Politics are an arc. People are not Democrats or Republicans in the cradle and they shouldn’t have to be, and perhaps those shouldn’t be the only choices.

This New York Times Magazine profile of Stephen Colbert has the problem many of these profiles of him or Jon Stewart do, which is that it’s impossible to find someone to criticize them, which is unfortunate. But what it does do well, I think, is to put some of Colbert’s key stunts into perspective, in a way that makes it very clear why I like him so much:

In August, during the run-up to the Ames straw poll, some Iowans were baffled to turn on their TVs and see a commercial that featured shots of ruddy-cheeked farm families, an astronaut on the moon and an ear of hot buttered corn. It urged viewers to cast write-in votes for Rick Perry by spelling his name with an “a” — “for America.” A voice-over at the end announced that the commercial had been paid for by an organization called Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which is the name of Colbert’s super PAC, an entity that, like any other super PAC, is entitled to raise and spend unlimited amounts of soft money in support of candidates as long as it doesn’t “coordinate” with them, whatever that means. Of such super-PAC efforts, Colbert said, “This is 100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical.”…“Aren’t lawyers allowed to have fun?” Potter asked me a few weeks ago, adding that he knew what he was signing up for by appearing on the show. He also said he thought that Colbert was serving a useful function. “I’m very careful not to ascribe motive to him — he can speak for himself,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. He can find the laws ironic or funny or absurd. But he’s illustrating how the system works by using it. By starting a super PAC, creating a (c)4, filing with the F.E.C., he can bring the audience inside the system. He can show them how it works and then leave them to conclude whether this is how it ought to work.”

Easily the most awkward moment in Colbert’s career, and also in many ways a defining one, was his appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006…Never cracking a smile or breaking out of character, he went on to praise Bush for believing “the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday” and to point out that the administration wasn’t sinking but soaring. “If anything,” he said, “they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.” Nor did he leave out the correspondents themselves. “Over the last five years you people were so good,” he said. “Over tax cuts, W.M.D. intelligence, the effect of global warming: we Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try and find out.”…Many in the audience, the president in particular, seemed not to know what to make of this guy. Whose side was he on, and was he joking or not? Yet a video of the performance went viral within hours, and Stephen Colbert became something like a household name. Writing in The Times, Frank Rich said Colbert’s routine that night was the “moment when the American news business went on suicide watch.”

Longtime readers will know that I’m less fond of Jon Stewart. And I wonder if the reason I like Colbert more is a matter of emphasis. Stewart, I think, is a reformer, he’s optimistic about the capacity of the system, and that translates into his tactics. That’s the reason his march on Washington didn’t really resonate with me: it was too close to the things he was mocking to actually feel like a condemnation of the cults of personality he was lampooning. Colbert, by contrast, intervenes in ways that can be uncomfortably aggressive, and that are starting to force the system to step in and shut him down as they did when he tried to buy the naming rights to the South Carolina Republican primary. I’m interested in that kind of pranksterism, or, as the piece puts it about Colbert’s improv teacher Del Close, “more nearly a philosophy or a way of life than just a way of getting laughs.”

Derek Thompson has an intriguing post up about why ticket prices aren’t variable. It’s an interesting question, but I think he’s ignoring the full extent of what it means that movie theater ticket prices are set by theaters rather than by studios and distributors.

It’s useful to look at how book and music pricing’s shaken out in recent years. It used to be that publishers set a price for books that retailers would pay, and the retailers would then determine what price they wanted to charge consumers based on that cost. In the e-publishing era, they’ve moved to something called the “agency model,” where publishers set prices for their titles and retailers like Amazon get 30 percent of that price. It’s a system where retailers have less power than they had previously, and even under both models, the publishers had significant control over basic pricing.

That system means that the publisher’s and retailers’ incentives are fairly closely tied together. Which isn’t entirely the case for the studios and the theater owners, the former of whom want to monetize a mix of movies across multiple platforms, the latter of whom want to get a steady number of people in proximity to candy counters and popcorn machines. You see a lot of friction between the parties, as with the scrapped plan to release Tower Heist both in theaters and via premium-priced Video on Demand, or with 3D pricing, which some filmmakers have said is too expensive and drive moviegoers away from theaters. The New York Times had a good piece this summer about the incentives that have driven studios and theaters apart on pricing:

Even some of the best-compensated players are beginning to wonder whether exhibitors and studios are pushing their luck with consumers….Historically, the big theater chains like Regal, AMC Entertainment, Cinemark Theatres and Carmike or their predecessors have been reluctant to raise ticket prices because their profit margins were higher on the sale of popcorn and other concessions than from tickets. Thus, they had an interest in raising the number of attendees, rather than maximizing film revenue that would be shared with studios. (The studios and exhibitors typically split the proceeds from each ticket sale, although the exhibitors alone set the price to consumers.)…More recently, though, theater chains turned to price increases, and especially to premium prices for 3-D and big-screen formats like Imax, for added cash that sometimes has been used to pay large dividends to shareholders or to pay down debt.

Cinemark Holdings, though generally more restrained than some of its peers when it comes to pricing, raised its quarterly dividend 17 percent, to 21 cents a share from 18 cents, an amount that nearly equaled its earnings in the first quarter. Meanwhile, Carmike, which operates many small-town theaters with relatively low ticket prices, has paid down a substantial $100 million in debt in just over three years.

Negotiating how variable ticket pricing would work would require fiendishly difficult movie-by-movie negotiations. Discounting a small independent movie might be in the interests of an individual filmmaker willing to accept small profits to get a movie in front of audiences, but it could also create the perception within a studio that one film was being used to undercut the performance of others. If the theaters started slashing prices on individual movies, one studio might feel it’s being targeted compared to other studios who are getting the revenue from regular ticket pricing. There’s no question that variable pricing would be in the interests of consumers. But the interests are complex and murky enough that it’s not clear that it would be in the interests of the studios or the theater owners — or of streaming providers. It’s worth remembering that the prices for movies you watch through Netflix or Amazon don’t vary either.

As you’re reading this, I’m in the air to LA, so no links roundup, but the bridge is yours. And to make up for it, a song that has things that I like: Bun B, Ari Gold references, and direction by Danny Ocean, who I’m amused by. Vegas really never will die, will it?

Because I’m shotgunning Sons of Anarchy and Downton Abbey right now, I needed an emotional palate-cleanser/mood-lifter. So I watched the entire first season of Portlandia plus a couple of screeners for Season 2 yesterday. And I have to say I was struck by how much the show, despite obvious differences like not having a main character or a profound devotion to public service, reminds me of Parks and Recreation*.

Portlandia‘s still in the place that Parks and Recreation was early in its run when it was building the framework of concepts the show would eventually rest on, like the Women and Women First Bookstore, the angry bicyclist, or the mayor’s office. A lot of what’s fun about Parks and Recreation is seeing how familiar characters react to strange circumstances, like a cult, or a visiting Venezuelan delegation, and similarly, I think what works about Portlandia is seeing how the fictional city incorporates everything from high-concept homeless people to a chicken farm that doubles as a cult. Both shows have their audience surrogates, whether its stenographer Ethel Beavers on Parks and Recreation or the older woman at the library during the hide and seek game in Portlandia, who function as escape valves for the shows’ ridiculousness, but also as a wistful reminder that even though we’re outsiders too, maybe we could pull off living in these worlds we like so much. We can have a Pawnee or Portland of the mind if we want it enough.

I also really appreciate the way both shows use politicians. In Parks and Recreation, Councilman Hauser is a permanent straight man, while Councilman Dexhart is the kind of person who would be “high on nitrous and cocaine during the cave sex…which, by the way, I heard he was.” They define the poles of Pawnee, from solid citizen to oblivious sex maniac, situating our main characters solidly in between. And because in Pawnee, government is the closest thing to religion, Mayor Walter Gunderson doesn’t appear on-screen, though his presence is felt, particularly by Leslie, a true believer. Similarly, Kyle McLachlan’s kindly, infuriating Portlandia mayor epitomizes his city. His big scandal is a crime of taste: playing bass in a reggae band. He’s fascinated by what technology can do but totally unsophisticated about it. And he sees past the point of everything to the details: Portland’s baseball team will never get off the ground, unlike Leslie’s baseball diamond, up and running in a single day, but Batty Batterson will be an all-time great mascot:

*To be fair, I do tend to think everything would be a little better with a dash of Pawnee. AV Club critic Zack Handlen has suggested that I just want Leslie Knope to visit every show. To which I say, well, not The Wire because I think Baltimore would just make Leslie too sad and we wouldn’t get to see Ron Swanson dancing in a tiny hat and veil to make up for it.

Meghan Daum’s essay in the Believer on internet commenting is, I think, a fairly even-handed example of the species. She acknowledges that our discourse has always had its share of venemousness, that she isn’t actually required to read these comments. But I think she’s a bit too quick to dismiss comment moderation and community building:

But there is a world of difference between the traditional notion of public participation in a newspaper or magazine and the cacophonous, sometimes libelous free-for-all that passes for it today. Whereas the old-fashioned letter to the editor involved crafting a letter, figuring out where to send it, springing for a stamp, and knowing that its publication-worthiness would be determined by an actual editor who might even call and suggest some actual edits, today’s readers are invited to “join the conversation” as if the work of professional reporters and columnists carries no more authority than small-talk at a cocktail party. And although some sites are making efforts to weed out the trolls by disabling anonymous posting, filtering comments through Facebook, or letting readers essentially monitor themselves by flagging or promoting comments at their own discretion, most are so desperate to catch eyeballs wherever and however possible that they’re loathe to turn down any form of free content.

Obviously it’s not easy to moderate comments and to foster a community where a health conversation can actually happen. It’s something that takes a lot of your writers’ time if, like me or Ta-Nehisi, you read and moderate comments yourself. And if you don’t want to do that, you have to hire a community manager or managers. But I certainly think there are examples out there of successful efforts. And I think it’s probably worth interrogating the idea that moderation kills traffic or commenting communities: I think it’s much more likely that people don’t moderate because they don’t make the effort. I’m unpersuaded that the people who occasionally show up here to decry liberals or inform me about the evils of Muslims are carrying more traffic with them than they drive away. It’s a much more fruitful pursuit to figure out how we can create civilized spaces than to lament some sort of collective loss of civility. I think we should be open to a whole gradient of walled gardens, from moderated comments sections, to places like Metafilter where you have to pay to join the conversation as a demonstration of seriousness.

The most interesting question Daum raises, I think, is whether commenting and the internet have changed the way we write. She says she never would have published an essay she wrote in the mid-nineties about sex and HIV if she had to publish it in the environment writers face today. But Emily Gould did write a long essay about her own self-absorption in the New York Times Magazine when she knew she’d likely get dismantled in the comments section. And if web publishing existed in the same form then that it does now, Daum might not have had to cut down her essay to the point of unrecognizability to get it published by a respectable outlet. The way she describes it makes it sound like a perfect fit for The Awl. But even if you lose some ability to be personally revelatory, the huge benefit of blogging in particular is the ability to try out ideas, to play with different parts of arguments, and to test-drive different pieces of evidence, and to refine your ideas into a final product. We might be able to be less personally vulnerable on the internet, but I think it’s probably worth it in exchange for being able to do intellectual growth in public and with the benefit of feedback and allies.

Those of us who have fallen for Benedict Cumberbatch, whether via the good graces of Sherlock or through some other exposure will be pleased to learn that in a bit of surprise casting, he’s to play the villain in the new Star Trek movie. I’ll be curious to see what that means for the tone of the conflict between Kirk and whatever baddie Cumberbatch ends up playing. Eric Bana’s Nero was a man moved to planetary destruction, to play a role in galactic affairs, by personal grief. Cumberbatch’s certainly capable of working in that key — he proved that in a few key, touching scenes in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in the most brilliant alteration to John Le Carre’s original work. But he’s also wonderful playing cold or strange. Unlike most maniacs who populate action films, Cumberbatch has practice playing people with fully realized alternate worldviews. And that’s really the key, isn’t it? If you can’t sell the idea that you’re really convinced that nuclear war is the best way to bring about world peace or that the death of your wife and your planet gives you the right to kill as many worlds as you want, there’s not going to be any dramatic tension. Those alternate perspectives are nigh-impossible to make compelling to an audience. But I think Cumberbatch will have fun chewing some scenery and whacked-out motivations, and we’ll have a delightful time watching him.