Megan Fox

Actor Megan Fox made a surreal return to the public stage this week, telling Esquire that she believes in leprechauns and aliens. Her interviewer, Toronto writer Stephen Marche, appears to play along as she careens from crackpot theory to apocalyptic prediction: “When war breaks out in the Holy Land, like it is right now, if that is a sign of the immediate end times, then where are the other signs?” he quotes her as saying. “Is it possible that it’s the Internet or fame itself or celebrity?” Critics on Twitter derided the story as possibly the worst ever written, but Marche laughed them off. “See,” he tweeted back, “that just makes me happy.”

Ozzy Osbourne channels a Canadian farmer, M.I.A. feuds with the New York Times, and there’s a new Gadhafi in town

Among the most convincing “What will 2009 be remembered for?” ideas I’ve seen is Jason Kottke’s notion that this is the year we heard the death knell of traditional still photography. Esquire magazine broke new ground in May by capturing a high-definition cover image of Megan Fox without using a still camera at all: instead of having her cavort en maillot while a photographer activated a motor drive a couple thousand times, they shot the whole sequence with a high-definition video camera and selected the most appealing compositions from the resulting footage. When you imagine the editing process, you realize that there’s no clear qualitative distinction between taking two frames a second and taking 24. We’ve stepped forward into a world where “video” is capable of image quality as good as “still photography” was just a few years ago—allowing photographers to capture the crucial moment at leisure, after the shoot, instead of with their fingers in real time.

Scott Feschuk answers your questions

Listen to Scott Feschuk—he predicted Detroit’s win and the moment at which America would get bored of Megan Fox

Diablo was disappointed that Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried refused to do a nude scene

The Oscar-winning screenwriter dishes on Megan Fox, Steven Spielberg, writer’s block, roller coasters, teenage sex and tattoos

Reviews of ‘Jennifer’s Body’ and ‘The Informant!’ plus an interview with director Steven Soderbergh

Newsmakers of the week

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