Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

We have a particularly robust list of things to cover this week in the world of links, so without further ado, let's dive into what I was reading and pondering this week.

In Entertainment...

Ronan Farrow

Vanity Fair: Actress Mia Farrow, during an intimate interview with Vanity Fair, recently stated that her son Ronan could in fact be Frank Sinatra's child.  This has set off the gossip world (well, the high class gossip world that doesn't worry about the Kardashians or the Giudices), and both Sinatra's widow and Woody Allen (the man considered to be Ronan's father, as he was married to Farrow at the time) have scoffed at the idea.  Personally, I think if anyone alive is going to know the paternity, it's going to be Mia (considering she's the only "guaranteed" biological parent).  It does make a lot of sense-Ronan Farrow, who is drop dead gorgeous and the funniest person on Twitter, does bare a striking resemblance to the late crooner (more striking than Woody).

Also in Vanity Fair: Since we're on the subject of my social media boyfriend, Ronan Farrow is rumored to be getting his own MSNBC show, which I would watch religiously.  Farrow is a Rhodes Scholar (like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow) and used to work for Hillary Clinton in the State Department.  This news got me a lot more excited than Alec Baldwin's recent show on the channel.

CBS News: For those of us obsessed with the concept of finding lost films, this story is incredibly heartening.  One of the earliest films of Mary Pickford's career was discovered more than a century after it was made.  As Leonard Maltin says in the film, this is the first film that the Oscar-winning Pickford made where she received screen billing under that name (her real name was Gladys Marie Smith).  While this wasn't on my lost films list from a while back, it's still a great discovery, and makes me hopeful that we'll someday find others, including the ten on that list.

CNN: This is a long article, but a really cool one.  The thing that first drew me into it, of course, was Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer's name in the title, but it's fascinating to see some of the advances that we're making in musical production and in creating musical instruments.  I desperately want to learn to play the Swarmatron (which was the instrument behind some of the most mesmerizing pieces in our OVP winner of 2010, The Social Network)

New York Times: In the saddest artistic news of the week, we have learned that the New York City Opera has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  For those of us that love New York and opera in general, this is extremely disheartening.  This file was likely due to both the decline in popularity of opera and being overshadowed by the more famous New York Metropolitan Opera.

Film Experience: For those of you who have been obsessing about the Oscars online long enough to remember when Awards Daily was Oscarwatch and when Entertainment Weekly had its message boards on a separate site, you likely considered the return of Supporting Actress Smackdowns to be the best news you've heard all year.  Nathaniel, Brian, and the crew tackled the eclectic bunch of women that made up 1980's Supporting Actress race this past week, and even if you haven't seen any of the films, you'll still enjoy reading about the lineup.  Fun factoid: I was a part of the Smackdown six years ago when they tackled 1990.  You can read what I had to say here and here.

In Politics...

Lt. Governor John Walsh (D-MT)

National Journal: You may have noticed this week a large lack of discussion about the government shutdown, and there's a couple of reasons for me not discussing it.  Principally, the story seems to be progressing so quickly (and I write all of my articles the night before) that I didn't want to put together a long piece and then have it become totally irrelevant when I could have watched the next Richard Linklater Before film instead.  But this great observation by Patrick Reis so beautifully said my thoughts about the politics behind the shutdown that I felt I didn't need to write anything.

My biggest pet peeve about politics (no qualifiers-this is absolutely, positively, no-holds-barred the biggest) is when people ignorantly say "it's both side's fault" or "there's no difference between the two parties," and I'm so glad that Reis brought this up, because the government shutdown is a perfect example of why this simply isn't true-either you believe that the Republicans have shutdown the government to stop the ACA or you believe that the Democrats are causing this by not allowing any concessions on the ACA.  It's one or the other.

Politico: One of the more popular articles on TMROJ over the past week has been last Friday's rant about Sen. Ted Cruz.  So I of course wanted to share this article about Cruz and his icy relationship with his fellow senators.  Like I said before, Cruz is not someone that is in this for a long congressional career-he has his eyes on the bigger prize of the White House, and though having the help of the powers-that-be surely assists in that road, having the most appealing populist message for your base matters the most.

Montana Standard: The Democrats landed their final big recruit of the 2014 Senate cycle with Lt. Gov. John Walsh of Montana deciding to run for the United States Senate.  Walsh starts out as the underdog against Rep. Steve Daines (who hasn't announced yet, but is surely going to run for the GOP), but the Democrats have had a lot of luck lately in Big Sky Country so Walsh cannot be counted out; the Republicans haven't won a Senate or governors race here since 2000.

Texas Tribune: The Dems also officially landed one of the most exciting candidates of the cycle, even if she's a major underdog for the win.  State Sen. Wendy Davis, who became a hero for progressives across the country with her filibuster regarding women's reproductive rights, has officially announced that she is running to be the next Governor of Texas.

And Just One More...

Huffington Post: The Huffington Post put together a fun little bit about the increasing number of people who fancy themselves explorers, as well as tips on how to succeed as an explorer.  Since I'm a huge supporter of adventurers, I figured I'd throw it into the round-up in hopes that one of you finds an "extinct" animal species or discovers a cure for cancer in a rainforest somewhere.