An oldie but a goodie: Salman Rushdie interviews Terry Gilliam at the 2002 Telluride Film Festival.

SR: [...] When I was writing Midnight’s Children, I used to work two days a week at an ad agency and five days a week writing my book, and I thought of it, kind of, as industrial sponsorship.

Just in case you missed it—I did—here’s a New Yorker profile of James Cameron from this past October.

A short by (Pixar animator) Rodrigo Blaas.

Remembering a bygone friendship with Thomas Pynchon.

An elegaic essay by Richard Rodriguez:

In the growling gray light (San Francisco still has foghorns), I collect the San Francisco Chronicle from the wet steps. I am so lonely I must subscribe to three papers—the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle. I remark their thinness as I climb the stairs. The three together equal what I remember.

The new Black List is out. For those who don’t know, it’s described thusly:

THE BLACK LIST was compiled from the suggestions of over 300 film executives, each of whom contributed the names of up to ten of their favorite scripts that were written in, or are somehow uniquely associated with, 2009 and will not be released in theaters during this calendar year.

Right or wrong, the Norwegian Sky Spiral appears to have brought renewed scrutiny to the Department of Defense’s disturbing, ionosphere-boiling HAARP Project. The accompanying gallery of pictures.

Soviet Russia had one too. It’s since been abandoned. Here’s some pictures of that.

With regards to the Norwegian Sky Spiral: NASA guy Tony Phillips—who runs spaceweather.com—postulates that it was a rocket engine from a secret Russian missile test spinning out of control. (via Wired)

Phillips put together a video explanation. A very convenient video explanation. . .

Here’s a video of the actual event that was uploaded by a Norwegian newspaper.