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Morning Shots: 'Firefly' Never Forgets, And Cookie Monster Turns Up Everywhere

You may know that there's a Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D. show in the works for ABC, but there was some very big news over the weekend about who might take the lead in it. If you've seen The Avengers, you know that this is kind of a surprising development — if you haven't seen it, be cautious about reading about this news quite yet. [Deadline]

Emily Nussbaum has a lovely appreciation of Parks And Recreation in The New Yorker, and it's not paywalled. Hooray! [The New Yorker]

Who's probably right that she's often been offered roles that are less than her talents call for? Cicely Tyson, that's who. [The Los Angeles Times]

If you haven't read about the project in which people read Moby-Dick out loud — people including Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, and Stephen Fry — you should really catch up. I must admit, I would not want to be the person in charge of reading out loud the chapter on whale skulls. [The Guardian]

If you know Firefly people, nothing in this story about Firefly people will surprise you. [The Guardian]

And one more from The Guardian, because it's apparently a very UK kind of day: an essay about the limitations of stop-motion animation from someone who prefers CGI. [The Guardian]

It's far from ironclad information, but apparently someone told someone that maybe Prince and Lady Gaga are going to be on the soundtrack for the upcoming The Great Gatsby from Baz Luhrmann. Do not take that to the bank or anything. That is not bank-ready intelligence. [Indiewire]

If you buy e-books from Amazon, you likely already know that an e-mail has gone out to some of their customers to announce that there may be a credit coming as a result of the settlement of pricing complaints by major publishers. [Galleycat]

Memphis, which you may know as a Broadway musical if you are into watching the Tony Awards, may be getting a film adaptation. [The New York Times]

There's a new trailer for Quentin Tarantino's highly anticipated and star-packed Django Unchained. [The Root]

And finally: This crater on Mercury looks like Cookie Monster. [Daily Mirror]

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.

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