Ok, well, I guess Mad Men is better, but I think that’s about it for list of shows I definitely can say is better than Superjail!

Superjail! is the new cartoon series on Cartoon Network’s [adult swim] programming block about a secret underground jail which kidnaps the most dangerous inmates from real jails around the world for a super-advanced incarceration. And, David Wain is the warden of the titular mega-jail.

• Pilot episode w/ commentary.
• The series premiere episode (different from the pilot) — may not be accessible from outside the U.S.
• Wikipedia article on Superjail!

Marie Antoinette is a wholly new kind of film: an autobiographical picture masquerading as a period drama. The aspects of the queen’s life that make it on the screen are the ones Sofia Coppola experienced herself (growing up in a celebrity family, having to carry the family’s aspirations on her shoulders, awkwardness caused by father’s extra-marital affairs, difficult marriage, her own extra-marital affairs, etc.) and the ones that are so significant she cannot possibly ignore without breaking the pretense of a historical picture (e.g. the storming of the Versailles).

In other words, the movie is about what Coppola felt about Marie Antoinette, not what the queen of France actually was. It is so true to the vision of the director to the point where historical accuracy, which the reigning period picture dogma dictates must come first in making of such movies, is respected only when it is not in conflict with the director’s vision.

Moreover, it is refreshing in that the film presents a revisionist and reactionary interpretation of history, but there is absolutely no political motivation or context to it. Breaking away from the notion that a serious movie is supposed to inform, inspire, or convince the audience, it is a total cinematic transgression.

While Marie Antoinette is not Coppola’s best work (Lost in Translation was a much better movie), it is her most daring and has the set the bar much, much higher for other daring directors.

Patton Oswalt stares at you for five minutes – one of three possible menus on Wholphin #1

High points

• Tatli Hayat with 5 different subtitles
• Spike Jonze’s Al Gore documentary
• Death of the Hen

Pretentious, but still okay

• The three DVD menus: the staring Patton Oswalt (evolves into an ultra-pretentious short film, if you leave it playing), the Hovercraft, and the backward-singing Dutch dude.

Too fucking pretentious

• Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody? – John C. Reilly is being completely wasted on this pretentious piece of shit.
• The Big Empty – Selma Blair is being completely wasted on this pretentious piece of shit.

Just awful

• The Delicious
• The Writer

Didn’t bother to watch

• House in the Middle
• Soldier’s Pay (excerpt)
• Malek Khorshid

While watching the DVD, I got the impression that none of the materials on the DVD was created originally for Wholphin. Hopefully, the next issue, with original submissions, will be much better.

• Honda UK’s new commercial, available for viewing here (low-res Flash), here, (medium-res progressive Quicktime) and here (high-res Flash, w/o the slight sepia tint).
  According to adland, this is the first of two spots for Honda by W+K London. The cost for the two spots is estimated to be over £3 million (or $6 million Canadian). The director Ivan Zacharias is most famous for the Levi’s “French Dictionary” spot featuring Gael Garcia Bernal.
  This has got to be one of the most cinematic commercials ever made.
• The new Gap ad by Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola’s ex-husband. Available here (low-res Flash, final cut) and here (medium-res progressive Quicktime, director’s cut).
• Trailer from Sofia Coppola’s new movie, Marie-Antoinette. Available here (medium-res Windows Media stream) and here (medium-res progressive Quicktime)
  The New Order song as background music works strangely well. God, I love Sofia Coppola.

The latest issue (issue #49) features interviews with Sufjan Stevens, Amy Sedaris, and Takashi Murakami among others.

In the magazine’s interview with Sufjan Stevens, it is revealed that he is named Sufjan because his parents were in a cult, and the leader of the said cult liked to give Muslim names to his followers’ newborns.

Go back a dozen pages, Amy Sedaris learns from her interviewer that the name of the after school special where a nerd played by Helen Hunt does angel dust for the first time, jumps out the window, and cuts her wrists with shattered glass is Desperate Lives.

Skip forward eight pages, the interviewer asks Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse whether “he was worried that someone was going to be mad that [he] took it to the landfill instead of the scrap yard” after Brock told the interviewer that he dumped his junk car in a landfill, only to correct himself by saying he actually to took it to a junkyard one sentence later. That’s a typical issue of Tokion.

The best interview by Tokion (that I’ve read), I have to say is, the one with Mike Mills, the up-and-coming director whom I salivated over (in a very creepy way) on this very blog.

Mills talks at length about how much he hates art-school-y people (no one fucking gives a shit about whether Helvetica is in or not, he remarks) before proceeding to single out Sonic Youth as the most art-school-y people he has ever met, although he is pretty sure they never went to college. (Note: His comment is made all the more asinine by the fact that he is a graduate of the ultra-prestigious Cooper Union. Incidentally, the school is the venue for Tokion’s annual Creativity Now conference, possibly the most pretentious art-themed event in existence. Last year’s coference featured Kim Gordon as a panelist.)

He also rips on Tibor Kalman, the ex-editor of Colors and Mills’ ex-boss and label Beastie Boys’ now-defunct Grand Royal magazine, for which he was a graphics editor, as essentially juvenile and uninteresting. (Note #2: Grand Royal’s editor was Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola’s ex-husband, who Sofia apparently found juvenile, uninteresting, and uncultured.)

The best part of the interview, after the Sonic Youth bit, of course, is where Mills complains about how no one can get a movie made unless there’s some famous actor willing to be in it. The interviewer points out that Mills only got funding for his movie, Thumbsucker, because of Keanu Reeves agreed to do it, and for the rest of interview, he becomes angry and resentful.

In stark contrast to interview by Tokion, Mills is quite well-behaved in practically all other interviews he has done over the last couple months — perhaps he was coking out when Tokion interviewed him?

Interviewing hip people, making them angry and/or confused, publishing the embarassing episode for all to see: that’s what makes Tokion so great.