what jane espenson said

This was just one of the great things on the HodgePodgeman podcast this week.
I recently said that Star Wars is fantasy and got a very mean look in response, so it was nice to hear someone with at least a shred of authority voice the same opinion. (I imagine JH will get/has gotten lots of mean looks over it too.)

James Franco! He's writing about Shia LaBoeuf!

I really kind of liked this bit:

At times I have felt the need to dissociate myself from my work and public image. In 2009, when I joined the soap opera “General Hospital” at the same time as I was working on films that would receive Oscar nominations and other critical acclaim, my decision was in part an effort to jar expectations of what a film actor does and to undermine the tacit — or not so tacit — hierarchy of entertainment.

"Famous deaths invite hyperbole. The news that Philip Seymour Hoffman was discovered dead today in an apartment bathroom, with a syringe sticking out of his arm, seems like an occasion to overreact with some exaggerated summary of his career—something like 'most talented and kaleidoscopic actor of his time.'  

Except, in this case, the compliment isn't hyperbolic at all. It's just an accurate description, as true yesterday as it is today.... 

It's not clear that there were roles Philip Seymour Hoffman could not do. He had so many lives within him—and more, undiscovered and unseen. Those are the lives, aside from his own, we've now lost."

--Derek Thompson, in The Atlantic.

[videos: I found a clip of perhaps his strongest moment from Boogie Nights, but it was way too heartbreaking to include.]