The Salt-Box

Fleshbot is reporting a new film version of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist:

In case you were wondering: yes, “Oliver Twinks” is the homo porno version of Charles Dickens’ classic novel, just in case that sad looking waif asking “Please, sir, I want some more” on the promo notice didn’t tip you off already. The movie is the latest release from PZP Productions, the twinks-gone-wild studio who also bought you “BeTwinked”, “Desperate Houseboys” and “The DaVinci Load” . . .

They’ve also got “plot” details and a link to the trailer. (I’d assume this is NSFW.)

(See also: A month ago I wrote about the upcoming Zemeckis/Carrey version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Frankly, Oliver Twink sounds more appealing.)

Update:  Via Ed, word of a non-pornographic, (presumably) non-animated Old Curiosity Shop.

These three things are all related to Victorian literature and culture, and are very, very strange.

• “Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver.” When it’s installed at a gallery, museum patrons or internet users can make a dead frog jerk its legs. (Via BoingBoing.)
• A flash-based video game in which anime women in Victorian dress smack each other.
• “Charles Dickens and Cleavage by Super Amanda.” From the description: “can a chick in a black corset be taken as seriously as some of those tweedy university fuddy duddys we usually listen to”? (Via an anonymous colleague.)

• (Update 7/26:) A nanochip based on Charles Babbage’s difference engine. (Via Engadget.)

Finally, this has nothing to do with Victorian literature, but: I forgot to post a link to last week’s post at Bookslut.

This is probably what Hopkins meant when he wrote “no worst, there is none.”

From the BBC:

Bad:

Actor Jim Carrey is to play Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future

Worse:

a Walt Disney remake of A Christmas Carol

Worse:

The film will be directed by Oscar-winner Robert Zemeckis

Worse:

Zemeckis . . . will be using a style of computer graphics known as “performance capture”.
This technology was used in his festive tale The Polar Express three years ago

Note that they don’t say “used successfully.”

Bah, humbug!

Good to see some things never change.  This from Dickens’s short sketch, “The Election for the Beadle.”  The captain and the overseer lead opposing factions in the local parish; the overseer represents the vested interests, the captain instinctively opposes them:

Then the captain . . . boldly expressed his total want of confidence in the existing authorities, and moved for ‘a copy of the recipe by which the paupers’  soup was prepared, together with any documents relating thereto. ‘  This the overseer steadily resisted; he fortified himself by precedent, appealed to the established usage, and declined to produce the papers, on the ground of the injury that would be done to the public service, if documents of a strictly private nature, passing between the master of the workhouse and the cook, were to be thus dragged to light on the motion of any individual member of the vestry.