The re-up

I just saw this headline on ESPN.com: Staying Put: Bonds to re-up with Giants for $16 million. I had never heard the term "re-up" before watching The Wire, but according to The American Heritage Dictionary, it can in fact mean "to sign a renewed contract for employment or service." It's still kind of funny to refer to Bonds as doing a re-up.

Better Slate RSS feeds

Finally, Slate has upgraded their RSS feeds so that there are separate feeds for each department. I've wanted for a long time to have a feed for the Today's Papers feature, so this is great.

Thompson and Bordwell Blog

I just found the blog of Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell (via GreenCine Daily), authors of Film Art: An Introduction. I picked up the book since it was the text for a film class I started to take; I couldn't handle the weekly 3-hour film screenings in the middle of the day and dropped it. But, I still read most of the book and learned a ton from it. The blog is beautifully written, the kind of stuff that makes me want to drop everything and watch movies all day. These two entries on Soderbergh's latest film are a good sample of Bordwell's style. Check it out.

Again on The Wire

Slate has a great lengthy interview with David Simon. We were re-watching some of the first season last week, and it's just stunning how many connections there are with small moments in the fourth season. I think this post is right that The Wire is best when watched in chunks, as it will essentially be "a 66-hour movie" (as Simon puts it) when it is finished.

UPDATE (12/05): Here's another interesting Q&A.