Summer's Last Hurrah
Mario here:
It's the last weekend of the summer which in Denver is celebrated with the Taste of Colorado. It's the most attended of the city's festivals with a head count close to a half million. Taste lacks the nutty cultural juxtapositions of
Cinco de Mayo (the second most highly attended) and the
Peoples Fair (a weekend nexus for loonies of every political and religious stripe). What brings folks to Taste is of course food...and giant inflatable pigs:
The vendor booths at Taste offered swag such as rolls of Mentos, Ghirardelli espresso chocolate, and the ever popular bags of kitty litter:
And from Publishers Lunch, we have this:
New Take on Wizard
Also mining the past are Todd McFarlane and Josh Olson, who are working on a "revisionist take" on the Wizard of Oz books for Warner Bros. (which has controlled the rights) and Village Roadshow Pictures. Variety notes: "McFarlane has a vision of Oz that is a dark, edgy and muscular PG-13, without a singing Munchkin in sight. That was clear with a toy line he launched several years ago that featured a buxom Dorothy and Toto reimagined as an oversized snarling warthog. Olson has something a little tamer, and PG, in mind."
McFarlane's theme is that of many in Hollywood these days: "My pitch was 'How do we get people who went to Lord of the Rings to embrace this?' I want to create (an interpretation) that has a 2007 wow factor. You’ve still got Dorothy trapped in an odd place, but she’s much closer to the Ripley from ‘Alien’ than a helpless singing girl."Sort of: