So instead of my usual Saturday Things Viewed post, some links relating to movies, books and comics.
The Chinese authorities were apparently unhappy with the end of the movie Minions letting Gru get off scott-free — so in the Chinese version, he reforms.
Sarasota County schools are so wary of donated books containing something Ron DeFascist might not like, they’ve declared there will be no donations.
Unsurprisingly, right-wing authoritarian preacher Franklin Graham thinks libraries refusing LBGTQ material is a good thing. He’d probably love these QAnon conservative book-banners.
John Wayne’s The Conqueror is a bad film (Wayne plays Genghis Khan, need I say more?). It also led to many of the cast getting cancer.
Fifty years after the 1973 Oscar awards, when Sacheen Littlefeather spoke out against Native American stereotyping in Hollywood, the Academy has apologized for how they treated her.
The DCEU has never been close to an MCU style powerhouse. Now that Warners has been bought out by Discovery, it’s going to get worse.
A conservative church did an unauthorized version of Hamilton and rewrote it to include an anti-gay statement at the end. Isn’t that charming?
“People keep writing things into scripts that they could never do practically.” When this happens, not much thought is given to how those visuals will be created. Another source summed up the approach bluntly: “People are not giving a lot of thought to, Is this film filmable? They’re like, Someone else will figure that out. That’s not my problem.” — a look at how Hollywood is burning out its visual effects people.
“All the goodwill in the world just evaporates when everything gets changed and they decide they’re replacing that character with a different actor or changing the entire environment – they’re now in a pizza restaurant instead of a cornfield. It can be that extreme at the very last minute.” — or why Marvel/Disney is one of the big offenders.
Supposedly the diary of a teenage drug addict, Go Ask Alice was very well known when I was a teen (I don’t know about now). Slate looks at Beatrice Sparks, the writer who made the whole thing up.
Sparks also stoked 20th century Satanic panics with Jay’s Journal, a based-on-not-much-truth story about a teenage Satanist. Which reminds me of Fred Clark’s assertion that fake Satanists are routine — their audience’s hunger to believe is what’s interesting.
Why Stan Lee took Spider-Man #100 as an opportunity to declare himself sole creator of Spider-Man (he 
wasn’t).
How the $25,000 Marvel promises creators when their characters appear in an MCU movie gets whittled down.
An artist got some media attention by taping a banana to a wall. Now she’s being sued for copyright infringement.
Rachel Swirsky’s new novel tackles the pros and cons of universal basic income.
The time Marvel Comics changed a series’ title to avoid pissing off Hell’s Angels.
#SFWApro. Cover by John Romita, all rights to images remain with current holders.
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