Twenty years of Last Action Hero, reality TV hoaxer, whistleblower heroics and more

• The film Last Action Hero opened twenty years ago today. I saw the movie in theaters and loved it as a child. Having been a fan of Terminator 2 (which came out a few years earlier) Last Action Hero elaborated on the boyhood fantasy of having your own personal Ah-nuld, just like John Connor and his robot pal. Over the years I developed an all new appreciation for the film as an original and endearing work of metafiction. To mark the anniversary Calcum Marsh at Esquire posted this piece about why the movie is "better than you remember":

And even better is the film's conception of movie morality, which it twists into a biting satirical treatise: Rather than suggest, once the fictional characters break free into the real world, that reality has rules and consequences that the film world doesn't, Last Action Hero does just the opposite, serving up hard truths about the uncaring streets of modern-day New York. "In this world," observes a villain named Benedict (Charles Dance), "bad guys can win" — a point he summarily proves by shooting a local mechanic in cold blood, loudly announcing the murder and looking disappointed when he hears no screams or sirens. Last Action Hero suggests that while the movies may seem like heedless spectacles, it's the moral chaos of our own world that's really dire. That's quite a thesis for a comedy made for kids.

• This fascinating LA Weekly article details one man's "reality TV racket":

What the host didn't know is that K.T. was actually 31-year-old Ken Tarr, a budding mastermind of the reality TV hoax. Over the past five months, working out of his modest Los Angeles apartment, Tarr had talked his way onto eight different shows taped in five different cities — each time cloaked in a different persona. He'd become a dissonant saboteur in the machinery of sleaze that sprawls across our televisions.

• Writing for CNN, Douglas Rushkoff declares NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a "hero":

We all know the feeling of surrendering to the embedded biases of our devices. We let our cell phones ping us every time there's an incoming message and check our e-mail even when we'd best pay attention to what's going on around us in the real world. We text while driving. Likewise, without conscious restraint, government agencies can't help but let the growing power of big data draw them into ever more invasive forms of surveillance on a population whose members simply must include those who intend harm on the rest. This is just how everything runs when it's left on "default" settings.

• Lastly, Space.com has posted this fantastic infographic looking at 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The spaceships of 2001 were designed by Frederick I. Ordway III, chief science adviser; Harry Lange, illustrator and concept artist (who later would design spaceship interiors for "Star Wars") and Tony Masters, production designer on "Lawrence of Arabia," "Dune" and other films. Real-life spacecraft contractors including IBM, Honeywell, RCA and General Electric were consulted for their predictions of the technology of 35 years in the future.