The New York Times issued a correction today on its 161-year-old article about Solomon Northup, the real-life hero of 12 Years a Slave. The writer of the article had misspelled Northup's last name.

Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery over 150 years ago, and the Times was on it. Northup, the subject of the Best Picture-crowned 12 Years a Slave, "excited so high a degree of interest" in his story that in 1853 the New York Times dedicated an entire page to his experiences

The New York Film Critics Circle expelled cantankerous freethinker Armond White this morning, as punishment for his alleged heckling of 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen. White, steadfastly rejecting any critical consensus, disputes the prevailing interpretation that he did wrong, or that it was heckling at all.

The most interesting thing to me about the film 12 Years a Slave is that both its director, Steve McQueen, and its lead, Chiwetel Ejiofor, are British sons of immigrant parents. I wonder how both men, being black but not having roots in America, think of and relate to the story of Solomon Northup, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South years after Britain had passed its Slavery Abolition Act.

"I felt like the main character [in 12 Years a Slave]. And what I'm dealing with even as a mega-popular rich celebrity, you know, 'Fuck you, who do you think you are to complain about anything?' situation that I'm in." - Kanye West

"I'm just happy things like that get made and people are employed. Otherwise they wouldn't be working. At least it brought things into consciousness. So I can't really knock it." - 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen on Django Unchained. Given his preceding comments, this counts as #shade.

Spoiler alert: 12 Years a Slave is a Hollywood movie.

After Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave made its Toronto Film Festival debut last month, Vulture's Kyle Buchanan proclaimed, in a headline accompanying a gushing review, “Your Best Picture Winner Will Be 12 Years a Slave." I read that and wondered why a writer would set expectations so high for something he loved (beyond the click-bait potential of such grand pronouncements).

A movie theater chain famous for its strict no-texting policy has declared Madonna persona non grata after she reportedly ruined the New York Film Festival premiere of Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave for several filmgoers by texting nonstop during the screening, and barking at a woman who politely asked her to stop.