stuff
Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland? If so, he would be the second confirmed cast member, after Mia Wasikowska was chosen to play Alive. I hope this is not just a rumour. (AICN, Digital Spy) [imdb]
Josh Lucas (Stealth, A Beautiful Mind) has been cast in the lead role of a new Showtime pilot, Possible Side Effects. Lucas will play Max Hunt, who presides over a family-run pharmaceutical business. He and Nancy "Accidental Drug Kingpin" Botwin should hook up. (THR)
Speaking of Weeds, an interview with actor Demian Bichir who plays Esteban Reyes. Contains spoilers for the show.
Battlestar Galactica 4.5 spoilers. According to Kirstin at E! Online, Three/D'Anna will be left on the wrecked Earth. I wonder if Three went voluntarily (because she refused to leave Earth?), if she's waiting for someone (One/Four/Five?) to pick her up, or if it's more like a mutiny scenario (a difference of opinion between Three and the Two/Six/Eights?). But so long as Three is the only person who knows who the Final Cylon is, and I can't think how Roslin or Leoben would let her be stranded when she is the only one with that information.
According to TV Guide, Gretchen Mol (3:10 to Yuma) has replaced Rachelle Lefevre in the role of Annie Norris in the US remake of Life on Mars. [imdb]
Andrew Dignan has adapted his awesome essay "The Wire and the Art of the Credits Sequence" into a series of video essays.
Desmond Harrington (Rescue Me, Ghost Ship) will join the cast of Dexter as Joey Quinn (a recurring role?), a Northeastern transplant with a New York accent who comes from narcotics, according to E! Online. This might be the new "unexpected" romantic interest for Deb we've heard about before. TheFutonCritic also has a report of the Dexter panel at Comic-Con.
Article in the Orlando Sentinel about Alexander Skarsgard, who plays Sgt. Brad "Iceman" Colbert in Generation Kill and Eric Northman in the upcoming HBO series True Blood.
lizbee was talking about "authentic Australian" cookbooks yesterday; and Abebooks.com just sent me a newsletter about cookbooks, so I guess the universe is trying to tell me something. Then again, maybe not. Anyway, for my contribution, because I'm too lazy to get up and actually cook, check out the book with the awesome name: “Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations." (via Cultural Matters)
Geoff Manaugh's fascinating post about the "Shanghai tunnels" of Tacoma, Washington, through which kidnapped citizens were supposedly transported to be sold into slavery in China:
'Subterranean space here clearly exists within an interesting overlap of projections: fantasies of race, exoticism, and simply subconscious fear of the underworld. White Europeans had expanded west all the way to the Pacific Ocean - only to find themselves standing in a swamp, on earthquake-prone ground, with a "mysterious" race of Chinese dock workers tunneling toward them through the earth, looking for victims... It's like a geography purpose-built for H.P. Lovecraft, or something straight out of the work of Jeff VanderMeer: down in the foundations of your city is a mysterious network of rooms, excavated by another race, through which unidentified strangers move at night, threatening to abduct you. It's urban historical anthropology by way of Jean Cocteau - or Sigmund Freud.'