I’m gonna be slightly fair to Fleming on this one, since keeping Spain out of the war would have probably been fairly important. If Franco had joined in on the Axis side then that would have given the Nazis significant help in reinforcing France, thus making the Allied invasion of Normandy a lot more difficult, and it …

Like I said with the Dahl stuff, I’m not a huge fan of Bowdlerization — it always seems like a cynical half-measure to me, and even beyond that a lot of the Dahl stuff seemed to go from “reasonable edits” to “changing the work for questionable reasons”.

TBF I can’t imagine that the overlap on the Venn diagram of “people interested in the work of challenging and exciting new authors of color” and “people actually reading an Ian Fleming James Bond novel in the Year Of Our Lord 2023" is that big. 

I’ll quibble a little here; the Fleming books will likely be around as long as Bond movies are around, and there’s no serious sign that Bond movies are going anywhere just yet. They are, however, going to increasingly become mere footnotes to the movies even more than they already are.

Pretty much. It doesn’t help that, let’s be honest, people were seriously over-inflating just how valuable these books were as a tool for moral guidance and instruction. Like, just a few years ago, you had people — including a lot of people who are the loudest in denouncing Rowling these days — genuinely acting like…

I believe you’re thinking of Robert Downey Jr.

“Already people, let’s drill scenario #24781 again - Marissa Tomei comes at Robert De Niro with a wiffle-ball stick.”

Pete Docter offers some patronizing words about Lightyear, Pixar’s latest flop

White guy here. Worked in plenty of spaces which were female-dominated, all of which were more or less very pleasant to work in from my personal experience. So while I’m sure that, given the breadth and range of humanity, there are likely to be some female-dominated spaces that are also utterly toxic, they’re fairly…

I fully intend to start referring to bad TV like this from now on, in the glorious tradition of English basically swiping good words from other languages and taking all the credit for them.

I’m afraid ‘sorry’ just doesn’t cut it with this Pope. 

Honestly, this one’s a little raw for me; my mother had a brain aneurysm a mere two months ago.

I’m not one of those knee-jerk “ORWELLIAN!!!!” types, but I’m not a fan of editing dead authors when they don’t have a say, and some of these changes do smack of petty and cynical bowdlerism. Especially since, for all his personal faults, one of the main appeals of Roald Dahl is the way his stories are often a bit…

Sadly, given the earlier news this isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s still heartbreaking to learn. Poor guy. 

Since I’m the “Nero Wolfe” guy, just to clarify — the list itself is fine (as slideshows go), my ire is more directed at Hollywood in general for not doing more with him.

Wait wait wait wait wait.

Hi, Hollywood, big fan, love all your nepo-babies and such. Where the fuck is Nero Wolfe?!

And who is also apparently literally descended from French aristocracy.

Isn’t the quote “Help. Police. Murder.”?