The Harvard Exit hosted one of those first come/first serve free screenings of the new Dan Clowes/Terry Zwigoff film Art School Confidential Monday night. The theater had a special row of seats reserved for the beleaguered hard-working employees of the local funny book factory that published both the screenplay and the original comic book series from which the film derives its material... or so the poor schlubs were led to believe. PSYCHE! Turns out all the reserved seats were somehow snagged before Fanta publisher/founder/mogul Gary Groth arrived with his posse. The Harvard Exit staff asked if everyone in the reserved row was with the Fantagraphics crew, and that's when we noticed, sitting at the end of the aisle, a certain local Christian Fundamentalist/Right Wing propagandist/movie hater... the infamous Michael Medved! more ›

Sundance is a whole other world---a world in which all anyone talks about is movies; a world where you can easily make the acquaintance of a writer for the Cleveland Free Press, a biotech researcher/filmmaker from San Francisco, or an L.A.-based events planner; a world that has as many Blackberries as ski boots. We've found ourselves falling into the festival's "mountain chic" style. We've taken to wearing bright orange vinyl knee-high boots (urban galoshes, if you will), into which we refuse to tuck our jeans---that scourge on fashion be damned! Additionally, we're willingly wearing a knit cap in the winter for the first time in over fifteen years. Why the hell not? Everybody else is. more ›

According to news stories via The Globe and Mail and The LA Times (registration required), an accused lawyer by the name of Jules Zalon representing Robert Crumb filed a lawsuit in a Seattle court December 21 against Amazon.com seeking compensation for an older case of copyright infringement whereby the online shopping behemoth allegedly made an unauthorized use of Crumb's keep on truckin' character on its website in 2003. more ›