Happy New Year!

Super Christmas

By Curt Swan.

Hope in Edmonton

An injured white German shepherd called Esperanza nurses her five pups plus an opportunistic cat.

PSB xmas

Neil and Chris wish their fans a Merry Christmas with an exclusive track, the ballad "Night Song" (from the children's play My Dad's a Birdman, for which they wrote the songs too).

The Pet Shop Boys Christmas card, featuring their cosmic profiles, arrived along with the announcement of the first run of performances of "The Most Incredible Thing," the ballet/modern dance piece for which they composed the music. They talk about that and Chris' non-loyalty to Lady Gaga here.

Tron Legacy

Tron's sequel, brought to you 28 years after the original, hasn't improved much on the plot, but the visuals are dazzling enough to be worth the price of admission. The 3D adds a nice, sleek touch, and every crash is an explosion of plastic, light and ink splotches. The rest remain the same: people get sucked up into a video game where they have to fight the little people who live inside the digital world.

The soundtrack by Daft Punk is mildly disappointing in the lack of inventiveness we came to expect from the French robot duo. The idea seemed great: who better to craft the music for an electronic world than the guys making "the sound of the future"? But instead of pulsating electronic landscapes, we get average semi-orchestral pieces, which for the most part work for the screen, but leaves us pining for a proper Daft Punk album.

My new favorite image

Batman goes to Paris. Cover of Batman: Europa # 3, by Diego Latorre.

Still speaking of Batman and company, jewelry maker nOir released a jewelry collection inspired by DC Comics superheroines. Now you can get your own amazon gold bracelet or carry Gotham City in a ring. (?)

Only in Brazil (and in the Vatican)

While the Pope gets hunky guys to strip for him in the Vatican, Lula is called "the Santa Claus of the gays" by activists. He reaches the end of his administration with record approval ratings.

The hungry dog bank

Thor trailer

And speaking of Hulk, the Thor trailer came out. And it's looking like more of the same, despite Natalie Portman's presence. I hope Ken Branagh doesn't disappoint like Ang Lee did.

Green puppy

A green puppy was born close to São Paulo. The lab pup was exposed to biliverdin, a green substance in the placenta that dyed the little guy green. His owner named him Hulk.

Gisele and The Green Team

Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen became a cartoon! The animated web series is sort of a mix between Jem and Captain Planet of the fashion world. When not walking the runway, Gisele and her girlfriends moonlight as eco-superheroines stopping logging in British Columbia and illicit arsenic dumping in Papua New Guinea. The animation is rudimetary and Gisele does not do her own voice, but the show's got a catchy theme song -- and her hair is animated separately.

My new favorite image

In Spain, a health campaign for World AIDS Day featured the image of a condom in the place of the Catholic host. The title of the campaign? "Behold the condom, which taketh away AIDS from this world."

Oscar Niemeyer and the architecture of samba

For his 103rd birthday, legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer decided to... write a samba! The "last Stalinist" has done samba-related projects before, like the Sambadrome.

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky's latest may not have the punch of The Wrestler or Requiem For A Dream, but it has its own beauty and grace that will leave you breathless at every turn. With his schizophrenic camera, Aronofsky fills the screen with foreboding and sexual angst. Natalie Portman is everything one could wish for in the role and she looks amazing in a tutu. Her performance is fragile when it needs to be and visceral when paranoia starts to become reality for Nina, a ballerina under a lot of stress and with bad skin issues. The rest of the cast is also phenomenal, specially Barbara Hershey looking like Mickey Rourke.

Priscilla

Priscilla The Musical approaches the end of its run at the Princess of Wales Theatre. As soon as the production wraps up their trial-run in Toronto, the pink bus moves on to its Broadway debut in March 2011. From the original Australian cast, the only actor that remains in the North American cast is Tony Sheldon, in the role of Bernadette.

Despite some favorite parts from the movie being excised (no Abba poop or aboriginals in drag), the musical stays close enough to the film's story arc. But the focus here isn't exactly the plot; the show is really about the soundtrack, which gets some reinforcements from Madonna, Donna Summer and Cyndi Lauper. The songs from the movie are almost all there, with some regrettable omissions (Charlene's I've Never Been To Me and Patti Page's I Don't Care If The Sun Don't Shine, for instance). But boy, do we get a lot of I Will Survive...

Whenever an iconic or cult film becomes diluted in musical theatre, it's hard to continue taking it seriously. When the movie came out, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of The Desert meant a lot more than just another gay movie -- it was one of the pioneers that dealt with deep and complicated gay issues in a lighthearted way, quickly placing itself in the universal gay subconscious. The musical isn't nearly as powerful, but taken for what it is, it's fun for the whole family. The audience was mostly middle-aged ladies, some young straight couples, a few kids and even some gays.

My new favorite image

Very cool cartoons by Alex Noriega, a Spanish artist living in Mozambique. Find more pearls of wisdom at Stuff No-One Told Me.