Poor Mojo's Newswire

AVC: That’s also the episode where Shirley and Chang hooked up. How much of that arc did you know going into that episode? DH: None. Halloween was where it all began. I don’t know how to access the character of Shirley. I don’t know who she is. All I know about her is how big her purse is and that she talks like Miss Piggy and Gary Coleman in alternation. I know these circumstantial facts about her: She’s got kids. Her husband left her. She’s a Baptist. She’s allergic to blibbedy-blah. Meanwhile, you’ve got Britta next to that, which is a fucking phenomenal study in the work you can do developing a character. I’ve dated women like Britta. I have politics like Britta. I’m awkward like Britta. I pronounce the word “bagel” like Britta. There’s just a million tools that are brought to bear in creating a character that to me is a unique move in a sitcom. I feel that way on one level or another about almost all the other characters, and my white guilt kept saying to me, “Is she sticking out because she’s a black woman?” And that all the more made me say, “I’ve gotta get in there. I don’t want to perpetuate this cycle.” So my impulse was to start doing to her what I was doing to Britta in the first season in response to people saying, “We don’t like that character. We’re not responding to that character.” My response was to start pulverizing that character, putting pressure on her, saying, “You’re not supposed to like her. It’s all part of the show. Have you ever not been liked?” And slowly but surely, this Britta character went from being perceived as a mistake to being perceived as an achievement and numerous people’s favorite character, including mine, frankly. I want to always make sure that all of these characters can all be worlds and universes in and of themselves. And I just felt obstacles there with Shirley, and I felt like I just wanted to make her human. So I had her make out with Chang in the bathroom.

Attorney General Eric Holder demanded yesterday that David Simon make another season of The Wire. Holder was on a panel with Wire cast members Jim True-Frost, Wendell Pierce, and Sonja Sohn as part of a campaign to draw attention to "drug endangered children," and they showed clips from the show to illustrate how kids connected to drug trafficking are abused and exploited. "Having looked at those clips again, I'm reminded how great that series was," Holder said. "I want to speak directly to [Ed] Burns and [David] Simon: Do another season of The Wire. That’s actually at a minimum," he joked. "If you don't do a season, do a movie. We've done HBO movies, this is a series that deserves a movie. I want another season or I want a movie. I have a lot of power, Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon."

He says there is a reason for this: "Many theater managers have made a practice of leaving the 3D lenses on the projectors when playing a 2D film." The result is explained by an anonymous projectionist: "For 3D showings a special lens is installed in front of a Sony digital projector that rapidly alternates the two polarized images needed for the 3D effect to work. When you're running a 2D film, that polarization device has to be taken out of the image path. If they're not doing that, it's crazy, because you've got a big polarizer that absorbs 50 percent of the light.'' Fifty percent! It can be worse than that. I quote: "Chapin Cutler, a cofounder of the high-end specialty projection company Boston Light & Sound, estimates that a film projected through a Sony with the 3D lens in place and other adjustments not made can be as much as 85 percent darker than a properly projected film." Your best bet is apparently to (1) find a theater that doesn't use digital at all, (2) doesn't use Sony projectors, or (3) still projects light through celluloid the traditional way.