COLLEGE EDITION
GOOD WEEK/BAD WEEK
Michigan State
Will offer a course called Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse
Wichita State
NCAA success has revealed its mascot–a bundle of wheat–to the country at large
BOOKS
Gaga for Grey
E.L. James’ erotic Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, which began as online fan fiction before racking up hundreds of thousands of e-book downloads, has just been picked up by Vintage Books for an April paperback release. The steamy books are about an S&M-tinged relationship between a billionaire and a virginal young college student.
MOVIES
Hi-Yo Johnny!
Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer are set to take on a western classic with The Lone Ranger. Scheduled for release in May 2013, the movie won’t be a carbon copy of the famed radio and TV shows. Director Gore Verbinski has said Tonto (above left, in the film’s first still) will take a more central role, with Depp bringing his kooky Jack Sparrow charisma.
VILLAINS
Jolie the Great and Powerful
Angelina Jolie looks to follow in the footsteps of Julia Roberts and Charlize Theron–both of whom will play the Evil Queen in live-action versions of the Snow White tale–by portraying the villainess Maleficent from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. The live-action film will begin shooting this summer in London.
MUSIC
The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
THE NAME OF FIONA APPLE’S NEW ALBUM, set to hit stores in June. But that 23-word title isn’t even her longest; that prize goes to the 90-word poem that doubled as the name of 1999’s When the Pawn …
ADVENTURE
King of the Deep!
On March 6, Titanic director James Cameron broke the world record for deepest solo submarine dive. Sometime in late March, he plans to take his vehicle, the Deepsea Challenger, nearly 7 miles down to the deepest point in the ocean, the bottom of the Mariana Trench. All for science, of course.
[The following text appears within a chart. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual chart.]
SEA LEVEL
1 MILE
Deepsea Challenger (24 ft. tall, descends vertically)
3 MILES
4 MILES
5 MILES
March 6 5.1 miles
6 MILES
Late March 6.8 miles
50 YEARS OF DYLAN
In March 1962, Bob Dylan released his self-titled debut album, full of folk songs he had learned in Greenwich Village. In the summer of ’66, at the height of his fame, he temporarily vanished from the public eye after a motorcycle accident. Through July 15, the exhibition “Bob Dylan Rock Explosion” at Paris’ Cit de la Musique will feature rare photos (like this one by Daniel Kramer) from 1961 through ’66.
COMICS
Messing with Texas
On March 12, Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury began a story arc tackling the Texas bill that requires women seeking an abortion to undergo a sonogram and view images from it. (In Trudeau’s satire, they also have to meet with “a middle-aged, male state legislator” in a designated “shaming room.”) At least 40 papers across America declined to run the strips; others moved them to the op-ed pages.
ART
Building a Better Boulder
Until now, Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass has been more about the journey (a 106-mile trip across 22 cities in California) than the destination (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Set to open this summer, the artist’s installation will involve a 340-ton granite boulder placed over a 465-ft.-long trench outside the museum, providing a floating illusion to viewers who walk in the trench. It took 11 days for the rock, unearthed at a quarry in Riverside, Calif., to arrive in Beverly Hills. The project has been percolating for much longer: Heizer came up with the idea in 1968.
[The following text appears within a chart. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual chart.]
THE ROCK’S 106-MILE JOURNEY
Beverly Hills
Long Beach
La Mirada
Rowland Heights
Riverside
21.5 ft.
2 THINGS YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS WEEK
1. Louis CK’s having to tone down his act.
The comedian withdrew as host of this year’s Radio and TV Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner after Rush Limbaugh partisans took him to task for old Sarah Palin jokes.
2. Fulfilling that weird Dark Shadows completist urge of yours.
All 1,225 episodes of the late-’60s gothic soap opera will be released in a 131-DVD set in advance of this summer’s Tim Burton film.
FOR MORE POP-CULTURE COVERAGE, VISIT TIME’S ENTERTAINMENT WEBSITE, entertainment.time.com
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