Affairs at the Jupiter Hotel » guardian http://affair-jupiterhotel.com Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:35:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 en hourly 1 Disney Charmed Anew By Cinderella http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/disney-charmed-anew-by-cinderella/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/disney-charmed-anew-by-cinderella/#comments Sun, 23 May 2010 23:35:42 +0000 Nilay Patel http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/disney-charmed-anew-by-cinderella/ The entertainment behemoth has paid a seven-figure sum for a screenplay based on the classic fairy tale, reports say First, Alice fell down the rabbit hole. Now it seems Cinderella shall go to the ball. In the wake of Tim Burton’s hugely successful 3D version of Alice in Wonderland, Disney has paid a seven-figure sum for [...]]]>

Disney charmed anew by Cinderella

The entertainment behemoth has paid a seven-figure sum for a screenplay based on the classic fairy tale, reports say

First, Alice fell down the rabbit hole. Now it seems Cinderella shall go to the ball. In the wake of Tim Burton’s hugely successful 3D version of Alice in Wonderland, Disney has paid a seven-figure sum for the rights to a new screenplay based on the classic tale of a serving girl who wows a prince with the help of her fairy godmother.

The Devil Wears Prada’s Aline Brosh McKenna has penned the new version, which is intended to be shot as a live action movie. Disney, fresh from its success with Burton’s film, which has taken a staggering $980m worldwide, also made the hitherto most famous screen version of Cinderella, the 1950 animated tale.

According to the Deadline blog, executives are not revealing whether the new project will be shot in 3D, nor whether it will update the original story, or stick closely to it. In recent years, Hollywood has borrowed elements of the folk tale for movies such as Ever After, starring Drew Barrymore, and A Cinderella Story, featuring Hilary Duff.

As well as Cinderella, Hollywood is currently scrambling to bring a new version of The Wizard of Oz to the big screen. Several studios and a number of independent companies have movies in the pipeline: Disney’s proposed take is titled Oz the Great and Powerful, and could see Sam Mendes directing Robert Downey Jr as the wizard.

Ben Child

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]]> http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/disney-charmed-anew-by-cinderella/feed/ 0 The Kleggs And The Cleggs Go Head To Head http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/the-kleggs-and-the-cleggs-go-head-to-head/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/the-kleggs-and-the-cleggs-go-head-to-head/#comments Thu, 06 May 2010 12:17:04 +0000 Thomas Ricker http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/the-kleggs-and-the-cleggs-go-head-to-head/ Spot the difference between the 2000AD aliens and the Lib Dem leader . . . Do the Kleggs from 2000AD have anything in common with the Cleggs and their followers? The Kleggs 1 Alien mercenaries in the comic 2000AD 2 Green, scaly skin 3 Only accept payment in meat 4 Outlawed from Mega-City One 5 Like to eat their foes 6 Citizens [...]]]> The Kleggs and the Cleggs go head to head

Spot the difference between the 2000AD aliens and the Lib Dem leader . . .

Do the Kleggs from 2000AD have anything in common with the Cleggs and their followers?

The Kleggs

1 Alien mercenaries in the comic 2000AD

2 Green, scaly skin

3 Only accept payment in meat

4 Outlawed from Mega-City One

5 Like to eat their foes

6 Citizens commanded by Judge Dredd to kill all Kleggs on sight

7 Klegg ruling class have had an education

8 Briefly had an alliance with Sino-Cit

9 Monolingual: talks in grunts

10 Their battle cry is “Klegg-Hai”

The Cleggs

1 Misty-eyed optimists in the election 2010AD

2 Orange, smooth skin

3 Accept payment only in carbon credits

4 Outlawed from the electoral system

5 Like to offer their foes an amnesty

6 Citizens commanded by Judge Dave to kill all Cleggs on sight

7 Clegg ruling class have had a private education

8 Briefly had an alliance with Gordo-Lab

9 Multilingual: reportedly speaks five languages

10 Their battle cry is “Let’s give it a jolly good go”

John Crace

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]]> http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/the-kleggs-and-the-cleggs-go-head-to-head/feed/ 0 ‘Turning Our Faces Against Machines’ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/turning-our-faces-against-machines-2/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/turning-our-faces-against-machines-2/#comments Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:05:27 +0000 Donald Melanson http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/turning-our-faces-against-machines-2/ At John Lobb, one of Britain’s last remaining bespoke shoemakers, little has changed since 1849. Perri Lewis reports Perri Lewis Lindsay Poulton Read the whole article at The Guardian ]]> 'Turning our faces against machines'

At John Lobb, one of Britain’s last remaining bespoke shoemakers, little has changed since 1849. Perri Lewis reports

Perri Lewis
Lindsay Poulton





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]]> http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/turning-our-faces-against-machines-2/feed/ 0 Italian Tv Chef Axed After Recommending Cat Stew http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/italian-tv-chef-axed-after-recommending-cat-stew/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/italian-tv-chef-axed-after-recommending-cat-stew/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:45:21 +0000 Nilay Patel http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/italian-tv-chef-axed-after-recommending-cat-stew/ Complaints pour in after 77-year-old Giuseppe Bigazzi expresses a fondness for feline flesh live on air Among other things, Giuseppe “Beppe” Bigazzi is known for his prize-winning cookbook La cucina semplice dei sapori d’Italia (”The simple cuisine of the flavours of Italy”). But as of this week, the flavour with which the TV gastronome is likely [...]]]> Italian TV chef axed after recommending cat stew

Complaints pour in after 77-year-old Giuseppe Bigazzi expresses a fondness for feline flesh live on air

Among other things, Giuseppe “Beppe” Bigazzi is known for his prize-winning cookbook La cucina semplice dei sapori d’Italia (”The simple cuisine of the flavours of Italy”). But as of this week, the flavour with which the TV gastronome is likely to be most closely associated is that of stewed cat.

Bigazzi is familiar to millions of viewers of the publicly-owned RAI network as the white-haired co-presenter of a popular pre-lunchtime programme, La prova del cuoco (”The proof of the cook”). But today he was experiencing his first day without television commitments in 10 years after being axed for expressing his enthusiasm for the flesh of felines.

His remarks came after mentioning how, in the desperate conditions of post-war Italy, some people had taken to boiling stray mogs.

As his fellow-presenter, Elisa Isoardi, looked on aghast, the 77-year-old Bigazzi told viewers that, far from being a last resort in times of near-famine, gatto in umido was “one of the great dishes of the Valdarno [in Tuscany]“.

The secret, he disclosed, was to leave the cat in a fast-running stream for three days. “What comes out is a delicacy”, he enthused. “Many a time I’ve eaten its white meat.”

Isoardi, herself a cat owner, tried to interrupt, but to no avail. Cat in a thick sauce was “better than chicken, rabbit or pigeon”, he said.

During a commercial break, the producers unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the celebrity gourmet that he should apologise when the programme resumed. Soon afterwards, RAI’s switchboard was jammed with calls from appalled viewers.

Bigazzi was today quoted by the newspaper Corriere della Sera as saying he had been referring to events in the past, adding: “You can’t judge things from 70 years ago”.

But that was not enough for Italy’s National Animal Protection Board, whose president, Carla Rocchi, announced she had instructed its lawyers to begin proceedings against Bigazzi for inciting cruelty to animals.

A junior minister in Silvio Berlusconi’s government, Francesca Martini, said what had happened was “of the utmost gravity”.

Not everyone agreed, however. The blogosphere was today buzzing with comments, some in Bigazzi’s favour. One maintained that it was “truly astonishing” that Bigazzi had been dropped by RAI “for having recollected a recipe from his native region, albeit one not acceptable to most people”.

John Hooper

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]]> http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/italian-tv-chef-axed-after-recommending-cat-stew/feed/ 0 Weekend Readers’ Pictures: Freedom http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/weekend-readers-pictures-freedom/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/weekend-readers-pictures-freedom/#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:01:17 +0000 Nilay Patel http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/weekend-readers-pictures-freedom/ Your best photographs on this week’s theme, from an escaping horse to a rescued chicken Read the whole article at The Guardian ]]> Your best photographs on this week’s theme, from an escaping horse to a rescued chicken


Weekend readers' pictures: Freedom


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]]> http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/weekend-readers-pictures-freedom/feed/ 0 Short Story By Jeanette Winterson http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/short-story-by-jeanette-winterson/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/short-story-by-jeanette-winterson/#comments Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:20:07 +0000 Nilay Patel In December world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to try to reach a global deal to tackle climate change. To support the launch of the 10:10 campaign to reduce carbon emissions, the Review asked some of our greatest artists, authors and poets to produce new work in response to the crisis I am your inner polar [...]]]> Short story by Jeanette Winterson

In December world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to try to reach a global deal to tackle climate change. To support the launch of the 10:10 campaign to reduce carbon emissions, the Review asked some of our greatest artists, authors and poets to produce new work in response to the crisis

I am your inner polar bear. Find me before it’s too late.

There’s a photograph of me rafting an iceberg, the melted sea all around, the sea that should have been solid.

I was thinking about the end of Frankenstein – do you remember? The monster has fled to the icy wastes because he can find no home; the thing that he is has no place, and when something has no place, first it does a lot of damage and then it dies. The monster curses Frankenstein for creating him without a world where he can live – then as the waters break around the ice-bound ship, the monster leaps from Frankenstein’s cabin and is borne away on an ice-raft into the unending night.

I am thinking about the end of the world – not because I am religious, but because I am a polar bear, and the world will end for me faster than it will for you, and you’ll put some of me in zoos and special chill nature reserves, but what you will really be excited about is oil and trade and who controls the North West Passage.

And I will be a monster because only monsters have no home.

When you take my world away from me I’m going to come and live with you. All your civilised and all your science will be on the outside, along with all your trade and aid. Inside, there will be me. Your inner polar bear – the wild free place white pristine – sun dropped red behind my head head back jaw open swallowing pounds and pounds of fresh killed life raw clean cold. The dive of me the weight of me.

I will be everything you have lost. I will be everything you neglected. I will be everything you forgot. I will be the wild place sold for money.

You see, when I lived far away, you knew I was there, and I kept something for you, even though you had never seen a polar bear or an ice floe. Even though you are not adapted to my conditions. I kept your wild, cold, raw. And the lion keeps something for you, and the mangrove swamp and the coral and the spider and the wren.

You think I am a stupid polar bear? Go up into space and look back at this diamond cut planet, polar capped, white whirled. It is one planet, one place, and there is nothing else like it anywhere in the solar system. When you see it whole, you remember that it’s not polar bears over there, and snakes over here; it’s one place, one strange special place. It comes as a whole or not at all.

You will live longer than us – my kind, not just my polar bear kind but all of us who need a home and you so envious that you want all the homes, leaving nothing you can’t sell or rent. Enclosure of the whole world.

Sixty-five million years ago the dinosaurs disappeared and something like a man began. There must have been some dinosaur dust left behind – how else to explain the Homo sapiens you have become, greedy for everything, nothing in the whole world safe if you are here. All I can comfort myself with, as the ice melts under me, is that you are as stupid as they were. What’s the difference between a dinosaur and a human being? A dinosaur destroys everything – but doesn’t call it progress.

Climb on my back and I’ll carry you to the top of the snow-silent mountains and let you look out over the rim of the earth. Look, beyond us are the stars, and if I reach with my paws I can use the stars as footholds. Higher now, through the witnesses, which I think the stars are, the roof of our life bright with silver eyes. What do they see? This blue planet, and near her, the white moon that holds us in her gravitational pull so that we spin at the speed of life. Not too fast, not too slow, the speed of life.

As I climb through the stars, stretching myself into a constellation, the Great Polar Bear, I wonder how many millions of years it will be before a wiser species than Homo sapiens inhabits the earth? And I wonder if I will ever come home?

When the earth re-evolves herself, after the plagues, the bombs, the wipe-outs, the lights-out, will there be polar bears? And lions? And wrens?

When earth begins again I would like to slide down a chute of stars into an icy untamed sea and swim through the cold to the ice floe where there will be others like me, not monsters, homed. A place to be.

But until then I would rather climb away, not wait for the last piece of ice to melt, but climb into the airless cold of outer space where I too can be a witness to what happens next.

Once upon a time there was a polar bear. He had nowhere to live so he came to live in your head. You started to think polar bear thoughts about icyness and wilderness. You went shopping and looked at fish. At night you dreamed your skin was fur. When you got in the bath you dropped through nameless waters deeper than regret. You left the cold tap running. You flooded the house. You dived into winter with no clothes on. You sought loneliness. You wanted to see the sun rise after a night that lasted as long as all the things you have done wrong. You wanted to see the sun come up and no one to be near you. You wanted to look out over the rim of the world. But you live in the city and the rest is gone.

And all the longings and all the loss can’t bring back the dead. The most beautiful place on earth was everywhere – a raft in the wilderness of space, precarious, unlikely, our polar bear home.

Jeanette Winterson

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]]> http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/short-story-by-jeanette-winterson/feed/ 0 Lebowski’S Dude May Return For Coen Brothers’ True Grit Remake http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/lebowskis-dude-may-return-for-coen-brothers-true-grit-remake/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/lebowskis-dude-may-return-for-coen-brothers-true-grit-remake/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:17:19 +0000 Donald Melanson The film-makers are reportedly in talks with Jeff Bridges to reprise his famous character, in a new version of the John Wayne western Although it more or less sank without trace at the time of its 1997 release, The Big Lebowski has arguably become the Coen brothers’ most popular film, inspiring legions of devoted fans to [...]]]>

The film-makers are reportedly in talks with Jeff Bridges to reprise his famous character, in a new version of the John Wayne western

Although it more or less sank without trace at the time of its 1997 release, The Big Lebowski has arguably become the Coen brothers’ most popular film, inspiring legions of devoted fans to imitate the shambolic charm of Jeff Bridges’s stoner sleuth the Dude. Now this unlikely dream team may be reunited for a fresh mission – a remake of the John Wayne western, True Grit.

According to Variety, Bridges is in talks to star in the project. The Coens will reportedly look to the original novel by Charles Portis, rather than the 1969 film that won Wayne an Oscar. The story follows US Marshal Rooster Cogburn as he tracks an outlaw killer on behalf of his victim’s 14-year-old daughter. The novel depicts the action from the girl’s point of view rather than the lawman’s, which would seem to have more potential for Coen-esque humour than a conventionally heroic approach.

The Coens’ latest film, A Serious Man, premieres tomorrow at Toronto film festival and is set in 1960s Minnesota against a Jewish academic backdrop similar to the circumstances in which the brothers grew up. They had previously announced an adaptation of the Michael Chabon novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, as their next film. The brothers are known for juggling several projects at various stages of development.

Bridges is currently on impressive form, with central roles in the acclaimed absurdist war movie The Men Who Stare at Goats and the forthcoming sequel Tron Legacy. The Dude remains the role for which he is best known, however. He has appeared at Big Lebowski-themed festivals and published a book of his own photographs from the production of the film.

Ben Walters

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Lebowski's Dude may return for Coen brothers' True Grit remake


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]]> http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/lebowskis-dude-may-return-for-coen-brothers-true-grit-remake/feed/ 0 Sharon Olds: “Q” http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/sharon-olds-q/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/sharon-olds-q/#comments Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:19:22 +0000 Vladislav Savov Q belonged to Q.&A., to questions, and to foursomes, and fractions, it belonged to the Queen, to Quakers, to quintets– within its compound in the dictionary dwelt the quill pig, and quince beetle, and quetzal, and quail. Quailing was part of Q’s quiddity–the Q quaked and [...]]]> Sharon Olds: Q belonged to Q.&A., to questions, and to foursomes, and fractions, it belonged to the Queen, to Quakers, to quintets– within its compound in the dictionary dwelt the quill pig, and quince beetle, and quetzal, and quail. Quailing was part of Q’s quiddity–the Q quaked and quivered, it . . .


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]]> http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/sharon-olds-q/feed/ 0 Al Kennedy On What Becomes http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/al-kennedy-on-what-becomes/ http://affair-jupiterhotel.com/al-kennedy-on-what-becomes/#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:43:23 +0000 Laura June AL Kennedy’s new collection of short stories What Becomes provides a wide-ranging set of answers to the question which ends, “of the broken-hearted?” Its stories tell of marriage breakdowns, one-night stands, redundancy, bereavement and other modern varieties of heartbreak. Life in this writer’s world is not, as she explains “a delicious cocktail of puppies and [...]]]> AL Kennedy on What Becomes

AL Kennedy’s new collection of short stories What Becomes provides a wide-ranging set of answers to the question which ends, “of the broken-hearted?” Its stories tell of marriage breakdowns, one-night stands, redundancy, bereavement and other modern varieties of heartbreak. Life in this writer’s world is not, as she explains “a delicious cocktail of puppies and flowers”.

In our interview, she explains how these new stories were written in something of a damburst, after she broke her rhythm of producing a collection between each novel and had ideas building up for some years. She explains that, for the most part, she doesn’t think of short stories as a dramatically distinct kind of writing to the novel, and is happy to report that her publisher, mercifully, doesn’t treat them any differently.

Kennedy, whose blogposts on the writing life are immensely popular with our readers, also talks about the dangers that this existence holds, in particular of falling into “your own little Matrix” of imaginary relationships.

Claire Armitstead
Pascal Wyse





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