So the Cut Xmas deccoes are down from the loft and in a pile in a corner of the office, waiting for one of us to finally crack, declare âsod it,â invoke the spirit of Noddy Holder and start spreading festive cheer around the joint like a dirty protest at all things Covid. Itâs been a hard year and the early start to Christmas is a definite sign weâre ready for it all to be over. This weekâs issue doesnât have a whiff of holly but trust us, itâs coming, and soon. Instead, enjoy film longreads on Orson Welles and Jerry Lewis, considerations on time travel and AI and how the Wotsit came to be.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
Not long ago, writer Bisha K. Ali was sofa-surfing and wondering where the next pay cheque was coming from. Now, sheâs the show runner on a hotly-anticipated Marvel series and riding high as she brings the first Muslim superhero to a wider audience. This is a great, inspirational story, and weâre really looking forward to her take on Ms. Marvel.
The Magnificent Ambersons should have been the film which truly cemented Orson Wellesâ reputation as a master of cinema. Instead, studio meddling tore it to pieces and led him into a downward spiral from which he never really recovered. Cinephilia Beyond digs into the story behind the making of the movie, and how itâs still well worth a look in whatever version you find…
Itâs a rare person that wonât cheerfully get their fingers caked in salty yellow dust at the offer of a bag of Wotsits or Cheez-its. The airy texture, the way they fizz to mush in the mouth, oh boy, there are few finer culinary experiences. The creation of the cheese curl has a fascinating history. Itâs one of those delightfully fortuitous accidents like penicillin or gravity. Only cheesier.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-cheese-curl-junk-foods-happiest-accident
When considering artificial intelligence, most writers tend to jam the gas hard towards lurid horror storiesâthe monster in the machine, considering its creators as obsolete and treating us as surplus to requirements. The fact is we donât know how AI will look at the world. We simply donât have the terms or reference points to form a relationship with a being which is building itself from the fragments we choose to feed it…
Some more on the reappearance in the SF news cycle of the great lost anthology, The Last Dangerous Visions. Author Jason Sanford looks into the way editor Harlan Ellison kept the book on a low simmer for decades and could never quite let it go.
http://www.patreon.com/posts/44148051
If youâre interested, Christoper Priestâs essay on the subject is also well worth a look. He makes a beautifully analytic case as to why the book could never be published in the form Ellison imagined…
Itâs tough to know what to make of this rediscovered portrait of Jerry Lewis by OâConnell Driscoll, first published in 1973 while the comedian was working on his unseen magnum opus, The Clown That Cried. It almost feels like fiction, a horrorshow of unbound but desperately fragile ego and monstrous ambition wrapped in a twitchy, paranoid bundle of nerves. But Driscollâs strength was in the way he slid into the background and let his subject do all the talking. From a Stacks Reader overview of his workâ
Driscollâs stories were all about access. He was a purist in the mold of Lillian Ross. He didnât offer analysis or exposition or as much as a dollop of biography. He didnât ask questions. He just wrote what he saw and heard.
This is a long read but totally, totally worth it.
http://www.thestacksreader.com/jerry-lewis-birthday-boy-the-day-the-clown-cried/
A recent interview with Michael J. Fox noted his agreement with the theory that Trump is a loosely fictionalised version of Biff Tannin, the boorish villain of the Back to The Future films. We offer further thoughts on the subject in another excellent piece from writer and pixie Laurie Penny. She looks at temporal paradox, dystopian fiction and darkest timelines in a winning piece of what we like to call speculative journalism.
http://www.wired.com/story/timelines-of-our-lives/
Fan theories on TV and film franchises often lurch wildly into implausibility or collapse at the first hint of examination. Theyâre always fun, though. Our new favourite comes courtesy of Mel Magazine, who pitch us on the notion of the Star Trek universe being more than a little influenced by three Jewish B-Boys from Brooklyn…
http://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/star-trek-beastie-boys-explanation
There are a few songs finding constant rotation on the office stereogram in 2020âtunes which seem to sum up The Situation while not explicitly being about it. Weâre thinking of Frank Turnerâs Recovery, This Year by The Mountain Goatsâand this weekâs Exit Music, Hands Of Time. Written and performed by the brilliant Margo Price, it matches a lush Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell arrangement to simple, direct song craft. The result is, to our minds, utterly beguiling. âTurn back the clock on the cruel hands of timeâ? Hell, yeah.
See you in seven, buckaroos.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 