Hey! Awl-fave Erykah Badu turns 40 tomorrow! Happy birthday to her. She put out a new video a couple weeks ago, too, in case you haven't seen it. It sort of looks like what Terry Gilliam's storyboarding for the ministry of information scene in Brazil might have. (That style of animation is big in videos lately.) At the end of it, just as you'd expect, Erykah boards an ankh-shaped rocket and blasts off into outer space. Which is what everybody should do on their 40th birthday.

Name tag
Polaroid camera
Polaroid pictures
Kate Moss
Pack of Trojans
CD cover for Above the Law's 1996 album, Time Will Reveal
African tribal mask
New York University diploma
Fur coat
Irises
Swimming pool
Clouds
Balloons
Pistol
Eagle-headed drummer sitting in lotus position
Rolls Royce convertible
Kerry Washington
Blood
Socket wrench
Neon signs
Los Angeles Times
Aquarium
Whale shark
Thresher shark
Nurse shark
Courtroom
Judge
Eagle-headed convict
Monkey playing bass guitar
Jean-Michael Basquiat's "Pecho/Oreja"
High-heeled shoes
Acrobats
Tigers jumping through hoops of fire
Elephants
Hippopotamus-headed waiters serving champagne
Karl Lagerfeld
BMW sports car
Smoke
Affleck duck
Billboard
Circus tent
Fireworks
Sunglasses
Hypodermic syringe
Solanine glycoalkaloid
Great white shark with human arm and leg dangling from jaws
Knife with Karl Lagerfeld handle
Cadaver diagram
H&M
Hippopotamus-headed chauffeur
Ocean
Common
Sunglasses on pedestals
Janelle Monae
Denim vest READ MORE

Crap. Anthony Lane's review of Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus makes me sad. Because it is not a glowing rave, and I was really looking forward to this movie and wanted it to be good. I still want to see it. But this criticism, like so much of Lane's writing, is very astute: "I have no idea... whether C.G.I. was the best or the worst thing that could have happened to Terry Gilliam. His gifts of invention were already so fecund, and so prolix, that this newfound ability to construct anything that drifts into his mind's eye-as opposed to the ramshackle, hand-drawn delight of his earlier animation-spells both enchantment and chaos. He can follow any train of thought, so he does, and it's no surprise when the trains run out of steam."

Thanks, no doubt, to our campaigning earlier this week, now we get the word: Variety has announced that Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus has found a stateside distributor. It is Sony Pictures Classics.

Here is the UK trailer for Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which, insanely, still does not have a US distributor. How can that be? We are expecting a purchase at the Toronto Film Festival next month-or you will have to go to Europe in October to see it. There are very many reasons that we are getting on the bandwagon for a US release. READ MORE