The romantic comedy "No Reservations" starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart is so inept that I wasn't even planning to write about it (mostly I plan to write about everything I see or read, and I never end up writing most of it) but a few reviews I've read so far have made me wonder whether, in fact, the critics and I were watching the same movie.
Robert Wilonsky, from the Voice, loved it ("the thing's so charming and frothy and delightful and sentimental and beautifully shot and well-acted and sincere that it takes a good couple of hours before you start craving real nourishment", he says), Matt Zoeller Seitz finds in it "emotional details" that are " surprising, honest and life-size" while Dana Stevens likes Abigail Breslin and thinks that she acted the pants off Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Me? I almost got my hopes up during the credits when I saw that in addition to Zeta-Jones and Eckhart, it has Patricia Clarkson and Brian F. O’Byrne. But the movie sucked. Big-time. Zeta Jones character is a chef, who loves her work, and therefore, in Hollywood, cut off from her emotional life; she's, in other words, frigid. All she needs now is a child and a man. The child she gets when her sister gets bumped off, and the man -- well, the man walks in to her kitchen and listens to arias. I don't mean to be hard on the plot -- good romantic comedies are like delicious ice-cream: they slide past the throat smoothly and leave you feeling all nice and good. "No Reservations", on the other hand, is tepid, meandering along, as if on auto-pilot. The movie is indeed, as Seitz points out, "factory-sealed" but in the worst possible way. It seems to have been written an directed by an autistic machine.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Thoughts on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (**Spoilers abound**)
Two things struck me as I finished the Deathly Hallows:
(1) That, after all that furore, I (and probably a good many other adults) had forgotten that the Harry Potter books are children's books (and I mean that in the most non-pejorative way possible). That Harry's story is a coming-of-age tale, a boy's trial by fire into adulthood; in other words, a bildungsroman. To her great credit, and as Deathly Hallows shows clearly, Rowling kept her head, refused to be a carried away by all the frenzy and wrote a conventional happy ending, an ending that is clearly going to disappoint many (present company included) but which is still true in spirit to the spirit of the series.
(2) And what perhaps distinguishes Harry Potter from other children's books (and here I may be mistaken since my knowledge of children's literature is admittedly sketchy) is that while, like other young protagonists, Harry is always in mortal danger, unlike them, he also grapples constantly with the idea of death and mortality. Rowling's very skillful incorporation of death as a theme into the books is, I think, its best aspect, and responsible for creating the series' most memorable scenes.
Let's take these points in that order.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is a fitting conventional (and again, in a completely non-pejorative sense) climax to a very enjoyable tale. A tale, that perhaps, because of its success, we all had started reading into much more than we should have. Will Harry die or won't he? Is Snape good or bad? All of these questions are answered -- Harry lives, Voldemort dies, and Snape turns out to be a good guy after all (which, for the record, I always wanted him to be), and the final battle against Voldmort takes place at Hogwarts, and all the characters, including, improbably, the pompous Percy Weasley, are reunited -- but these answers were preordained from the start. Why we all went into such a frenzy about them, why we thought they would resolve any differently, is a mystery, now that the saga is finally over.
Perhaps the turning point, the point in the story where Rowling could have taken it any way she wanted, occurs somewhere in the middle of the book. When the news that the Ministry of Magic has been taken over by Death Eaters reaches them, Harry, Ron and Hermione are forced to flee. Over the course of the next 150 pages or so, they tramp from one place to another, bickering, fighting, eating, arguing about where the horcruxes can be, trying to dispose of the one they have. There is a hint of a homage being paid to "The Lord of the Rings" here, since the the friends take turns hanging the horcrux-locket around their necks and it affects their disposition, particularly Ron's. After a furious dispute with Harry and Hermione -- the evil horcrux clearly has a hand in this -- Ron leaves them and Harry and Hermione are alone, and truly afraid. Ron has gone, there is very little possibility of his coming back; even if he wants to, he will not be able to find them.
This is where I experienced my first quickening of the senses. Rowling had already hinted that she was going to have to kill off a couple of major characters. With Ron gone, and the chances of their meeting again looking bleak, I thought it would be Ron. And perhaps, Ron's loss (and even death) would bring Harry and Hermione closer, with them probably even ending up together, since Ginny is pretty much out of the picture. (I thought Harry and Hermione would end up together from the first book, when Ron seemed more like a comic foil to Hermione's Miss know-it-all . Then when Ginny got this crush on Harry in Chamber of Secrets, I knew she was going to have a bigger role to play. I have to say I shouted out aloud when Harry kisses her in Half-Blood Prince. Perhaps I watch too many romantic potboilers.)
Whatever my thoughts at this juncture, Rowling punctured them abruptly. In an unconvincing deus ex machina, Ron returns, saving Harry, getting rid of the horcrux-locket (perhaps the one scene, where Ron's true insecurities come forth) and in the process, also revealing to the three friends that Dumbledore's gifts had a purpose. And Harry admits to Ron that he's missed him and that he thinks of Hermione as his sister (I have to admit I cringed at this). The friends are together again, and at that point I knew that the ending would be conventional -- that it would be Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, with Voldemort dead and all being well (The last words of the books are indeed: "All was well."). What is the point of this interlude? I think Rowling wanted to spend some time (and wanted us to spend some time) with her three main protagonists, perhaps trying to illuminate their friendship, wanting, perhaps, to give us some time with them before the war against Voldemort consumed every theme in the book.
Which brings me to my only quibble with the book. Much has been written about Rowling's descriptions, about her ability to conjure up magical fantasias but I think Stephen King got it right in this review of Goblet of Fire. J. K. Rowling's greatest asset, the best feature of the Harry Potter books is, finally, plot. All the Harry Potter books are at heart, old-fashioned mystery stories, their skeletons similar to those polished whodunits that Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers wrote. In the beginning of the books, something happens, something very confusing. Harry and his friends investigate, and that something turns out to have been something else, which in turn, was caused by someone else. And so on and on and on. Perhaps because there is so much else in the Harry Potter books -- let's not forget that everyone here is a wizard or a witch -- this aspect of the books tends to be overlooked, sometimes even not noticed. The first four books were explicit whodunits, with the Prisioner of Azkaban having the most elegant ending, and Goblet of Fire the most spectacular one.
But Rowling has something else going for her -- her long-term attention to details. Clearly she has thought about the plot long and hard. Which is why sometimes throwaway details from earlier books turn out to be significant plot developments. This was particularly evident in Half-Blood Prince, where Rowling gradually revealed facets of Lord Voldemort -- I, for one, was delighted when Tom Riddle's diary from Chamber of Secrets -- a book whose plot always seemed out-of-sync with the rest of the books -- turned out to be a horcrux. Tom Riddle, who appeared out of the blue in the second book, became a much more grounded character in Half-Blood Prince and his transformation into Lord Voldemort was the most fascinating part of the sixth book.
I am of the opinion that this attention to details is overdone in the final installment. Far too much depends on recalling minute parts of the sixth book: the location of the final horcrux (although this part is hardly important in the scheme of things; and even its destruction happens off the pages), the revelations of Harry's ancestry, the importance of Godric's Hollow, the machinations about the ownership of Dumbledore's wand. But perhaps the weakest point of the seventh book are its battle scenes. I've always found the wizarding duels way too unconvincing with everyone going around shouting "Expelliramus" or "Crucio" or "Accio". The final Battle of Hogwarts that concludes the series is meant to be epic -- think of Tolkien's Helm's Deep or the Siege of Gondor -- but the descriptions are painfully inadequate: everyone seems to be running around throwing spells, or duelling, although why the wizards should duel mano a mano is beyond me.
But these are quibbles, drops in bucket as big as the ocean (David Edelstein's line). Like all the previous Harry Potter books, "The Deathly Hallows" is tremendously enjoyable. Dumbledore and Snape become more human, and Harry has a touching scene with the wraiths of the people he loves the most, as he is going to his death. In Goblet of Fire, the death of Cedric Diggory was a stunner. A few more people have died since then and while Harry Potter has ended conventionally, with a happy ending, the theme of mortality has always cast its long shadow over the books themselves. This, perhaps, has been Rowling's greatest success: she has written a wonderfully enjoyable series of books about death, magic and friendship.
ASIDE: Incidentally, what's up with Michiko Kakutani's review? The review appeared three days before the book released; Kakutani apparently procured it from a bookshop, read it overnight and contributed a review at 700 words a minute, recyling most of the lines from her reviews of the previous Harry Potter books (understandable, but still ... someone ought to take the judgemental Ms Kakutani to task for that, no?). Don't believe me? Read this. And then read this and this -- what do you think?
(1) That, after all that furore, I (and probably a good many other adults) had forgotten that the Harry Potter books are children's books (and I mean that in the most non-pejorative way possible). That Harry's story is a coming-of-age tale, a boy's trial by fire into adulthood; in other words, a bildungsroman. To her great credit, and as Deathly Hallows shows clearly, Rowling kept her head, refused to be a carried away by all the frenzy and wrote a conventional happy ending, an ending that is clearly going to disappoint many (present company included) but which is still true in spirit to the spirit of the series.
(2) And what perhaps distinguishes Harry Potter from other children's books (and here I may be mistaken since my knowledge of children's literature is admittedly sketchy) is that while, like other young protagonists, Harry is always in mortal danger, unlike them, he also grapples constantly with the idea of death and mortality. Rowling's very skillful incorporation of death as a theme into the books is, I think, its best aspect, and responsible for creating the series' most memorable scenes.
Let's take these points in that order.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is a fitting conventional (and again, in a completely non-pejorative sense) climax to a very enjoyable tale. A tale, that perhaps, because of its success, we all had started reading into much more than we should have. Will Harry die or won't he? Is Snape good or bad? All of these questions are answered -- Harry lives, Voldemort dies, and Snape turns out to be a good guy after all (which, for the record, I always wanted him to be), and the final battle against Voldmort takes place at Hogwarts, and all the characters, including, improbably, the pompous Percy Weasley, are reunited -- but these answers were preordained from the start. Why we all went into such a frenzy about them, why we thought they would resolve any differently, is a mystery, now that the saga is finally over.
Perhaps the turning point, the point in the story where Rowling could have taken it any way she wanted, occurs somewhere in the middle of the book. When the news that the Ministry of Magic has been taken over by Death Eaters reaches them, Harry, Ron and Hermione are forced to flee. Over the course of the next 150 pages or so, they tramp from one place to another, bickering, fighting, eating, arguing about where the horcruxes can be, trying to dispose of the one they have. There is a hint of a homage being paid to "The Lord of the Rings" here, since the the friends take turns hanging the horcrux-locket around their necks and it affects their disposition, particularly Ron's. After a furious dispute with Harry and Hermione -- the evil horcrux clearly has a hand in this -- Ron leaves them and Harry and Hermione are alone, and truly afraid. Ron has gone, there is very little possibility of his coming back; even if he wants to, he will not be able to find them.
This is where I experienced my first quickening of the senses. Rowling had already hinted that she was going to have to kill off a couple of major characters. With Ron gone, and the chances of their meeting again looking bleak, I thought it would be Ron. And perhaps, Ron's loss (and even death) would bring Harry and Hermione closer, with them probably even ending up together, since Ginny is pretty much out of the picture. (I thought Harry and Hermione would end up together from the first book, when Ron seemed more like a comic foil to Hermione's Miss know-it-all . Then when Ginny got this crush on Harry in Chamber of Secrets, I knew she was going to have a bigger role to play. I have to say I shouted out aloud when Harry kisses her in Half-Blood Prince. Perhaps I watch too many romantic potboilers.)
Whatever my thoughts at this juncture, Rowling punctured them abruptly. In an unconvincing deus ex machina, Ron returns, saving Harry, getting rid of the horcrux-locket (perhaps the one scene, where Ron's true insecurities come forth) and in the process, also revealing to the three friends that Dumbledore's gifts had a purpose. And Harry admits to Ron that he's missed him and that he thinks of Hermione as his sister (I have to admit I cringed at this). The friends are together again, and at that point I knew that the ending would be conventional -- that it would be Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, with Voldemort dead and all being well (The last words of the books are indeed: "All was well."). What is the point of this interlude? I think Rowling wanted to spend some time (and wanted us to spend some time) with her three main protagonists, perhaps trying to illuminate their friendship, wanting, perhaps, to give us some time with them before the war against Voldemort consumed every theme in the book.
Which brings me to my only quibble with the book. Much has been written about Rowling's descriptions, about her ability to conjure up magical fantasias but I think Stephen King got it right in this review of Goblet of Fire. J. K. Rowling's greatest asset, the best feature of the Harry Potter books is, finally, plot. All the Harry Potter books are at heart, old-fashioned mystery stories, their skeletons similar to those polished whodunits that Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers wrote. In the beginning of the books, something happens, something very confusing. Harry and his friends investigate, and that something turns out to have been something else, which in turn, was caused by someone else. And so on and on and on. Perhaps because there is so much else in the Harry Potter books -- let's not forget that everyone here is a wizard or a witch -- this aspect of the books tends to be overlooked, sometimes even not noticed. The first four books were explicit whodunits, with the Prisioner of Azkaban having the most elegant ending, and Goblet of Fire the most spectacular one.
But Rowling has something else going for her -- her long-term attention to details. Clearly she has thought about the plot long and hard. Which is why sometimes throwaway details from earlier books turn out to be significant plot developments. This was particularly evident in Half-Blood Prince, where Rowling gradually revealed facets of Lord Voldemort -- I, for one, was delighted when Tom Riddle's diary from Chamber of Secrets -- a book whose plot always seemed out-of-sync with the rest of the books -- turned out to be a horcrux. Tom Riddle, who appeared out of the blue in the second book, became a much more grounded character in Half-Blood Prince and his transformation into Lord Voldemort was the most fascinating part of the sixth book.
I am of the opinion that this attention to details is overdone in the final installment. Far too much depends on recalling minute parts of the sixth book: the location of the final horcrux (although this part is hardly important in the scheme of things; and even its destruction happens off the pages), the revelations of Harry's ancestry, the importance of Godric's Hollow, the machinations about the ownership of Dumbledore's wand. But perhaps the weakest point of the seventh book are its battle scenes. I've always found the wizarding duels way too unconvincing with everyone going around shouting "Expelliramus" or "Crucio" or "Accio". The final Battle of Hogwarts that concludes the series is meant to be epic -- think of Tolkien's Helm's Deep or the Siege of Gondor -- but the descriptions are painfully inadequate: everyone seems to be running around throwing spells, or duelling, although why the wizards should duel mano a mano is beyond me.
But these are quibbles, drops in bucket as big as the ocean (David Edelstein's line). Like all the previous Harry Potter books, "The Deathly Hallows" is tremendously enjoyable. Dumbledore and Snape become more human, and Harry has a touching scene with the wraiths of the people he loves the most, as he is going to his death. In Goblet of Fire, the death of Cedric Diggory was a stunner. A few more people have died since then and while Harry Potter has ended conventionally, with a happy ending, the theme of mortality has always cast its long shadow over the books themselves. This, perhaps, has been Rowling's greatest success: she has written a wonderfully enjoyable series of books about death, magic and friendship.
ASIDE: Incidentally, what's up with Michiko Kakutani's review? The review appeared three days before the book released; Kakutani apparently procured it from a bookshop, read it overnight and contributed a review at 700 words a minute, recyling most of the lines from her reviews of the previous Harry Potter books (understandable, but still ... someone ought to take the judgemental Ms Kakutani to task for that, no?). Don't believe me? Read this. And then read this and this -- what do you think?
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Sad news
I just learnt that the great philosopher Richard Rorty died on Friday (see here and here). Rorty is, as some of you may well know, famous (or infamous, depending on which side of the divide you fall on) as an anti-foundationalist or a pragmatist (again, depending on what kind of pragmatist you are). See here.
Strangely enough, I spend yesterday afternoon reading a couple of Rorty's essays in "Philosophy and Social Hope" at the B&N near Lincoln Center. I also spent some time debating whether I should buy Rorty's most famous work "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (I didn't but that was because I could find it cheaper online).
As my sort of RIP, I"ll link to this autobiographical Rorty essay (from "Philosophy and Social Hope") called "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids" (available here) where Rorty recounts his intellectual odyssey: from being a foundationalist analytic philosopher to his rediscovery of John Dewey's pragmatism and his eventual rejection of Platonism. The essay won't help anyone understand the intricacies of pragmatism (see here for that) but it definitely brings Rorty into focus. Read it.
Strangely enough, I spend yesterday afternoon reading a couple of Rorty's essays in "Philosophy and Social Hope" at the B&N near Lincoln Center. I also spent some time debating whether I should buy Rorty's most famous work "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (I didn't but that was because I could find it cheaper online).
As my sort of RIP, I"ll link to this autobiographical Rorty essay (from "Philosophy and Social Hope") called "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids" (available here) where Rorty recounts his intellectual odyssey: from being a foundationalist analytic philosopher to his rediscovery of John Dewey's pragmatism and his eventual rejection of Platonism. The essay won't help anyone understand the intricacies of pragmatism (see here for that) but it definitely brings Rorty into focus. Read it.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Email of the day
Some kid mails Richard Chappel, after using one of his papers for a college homework assignmentl:
I made the mistake of copying your "Rousseau and Freedom," paper from your blog [link]. I am sorry. My university is going to charge me with cheating. Can you please do me a big favor and temporarily take down "Rousseau and Freedom,"??? I will owe you forever. Please let me know if you can help! Thank you!Fun, eh?
Thanks,
[Name redacted]
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
David Thomson on Lars Von Trier
This kicker of a sentence from David Thomson's magisterial A Biographical Dictionary of Film, on the maverick gadfly Lars Von Trier is perfect:
Von Trier is like a seven-year old serial killer whose bombs and weapons have all gone into his eye.(!!)
Monday, May 21, 2007
A little crisis about "crisis"
There is nothing new for me in Somini Sengupta's latest piece in the New York Times really; every Indian is intimately -- in every sense of that lovely word -- acquainted with the details of the abyssmal power situation in India.
I have a smaller etymological quibble. Are we correct when we use the term "crisis" to describe India's power situation? Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't "crisis" describe a situation that was all right once but is now in dire straits? Or in other words, for something to be a crisis, doesn't there have to be a sort of a golden past, when everything worked, and which has now degenerated rapidly (or slowly) into the current situation? For instance, to quote an analogous scenario, when one talks of the California Power Crisis -- and I lack an economic understanding of it -- doesn't that mean that there was a time when things were all right in sunny California? And then, whatever the cause, things weren't all right and went from bad to worse to catastrophic (in the mild sense of the word)?
Because if that sense of the word is right, then India just has a problem (magnitude notwithstanding) -- and has always had it. Power cuts and load-shedding were as common before economic liberalization as they are now; it's just that it's more visible now -- the most vivid things for me in Sengupta's piece were her descriptions of high-rise malls with smoke billowing out of them even as they are surrounded by a dark neighborhood.
UPDATE: There does seem to be a way of applying the c-word to India's situation. Here's how Websters defines "crisis":
I have a smaller etymological quibble. Are we correct when we use the term "crisis" to describe India's power situation? Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't "crisis" describe a situation that was all right once but is now in dire straits? Or in other words, for something to be a crisis, doesn't there have to be a sort of a golden past, when everything worked, and which has now degenerated rapidly (or slowly) into the current situation? For instance, to quote an analogous scenario, when one talks of the California Power Crisis -- and I lack an economic understanding of it -- doesn't that mean that there was a time when things were all right in sunny California? And then, whatever the cause, things weren't all right and went from bad to worse to catastrophic (in the mild sense of the word)?
Because if that sense of the word is right, then India just has a problem (magnitude notwithstanding) -- and has always had it. Power cuts and load-shedding were as common before economic liberalization as they are now; it's just that it's more visible now -- the most vivid things for me in Sengupta's piece were her descriptions of high-rise malls with smoke billowing out of them even as they are surrounded by a dark neighborhood.
UPDATE: There does seem to be a way of applying the c-word to India's situation. Here's how Websters defines "crisis":
1 a: the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever b: a paroxysmal attack of pain, distress, or disordered function c: an emotionally significant event or radical change of status in a person's life crisis>So even if the word here doesn't exactly connote a golden past, it could theoretically, at least, connote a golden future. As the dictionary says, it could mean that "decisive change" (for the better, one hopes) is impending -- which could then mean that India's present situation is a crisis.
2: the decisive moment (as in a literary plot)
3 a: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially : one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome crisis> b: a situation that has reached a critical phase crisis>
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
An Amputee Sprinter?
I have read nothing quite so surreal as this. (Idle wonderings of an idle mind: Is this maybe a topic for cyborg-discourse specialists like Katherine Hayles and Paul Edwards?)
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Barbara, here I come
I've long been an admirer of Barbara Stanwyck -- despite the fact that I've only watched two of her films. But what films! I consider Preston Sturges' "The Lady Eve" to be one of the best movies I've ever seen, a comedy that transcends comedy -- and despite the great Henry Fonda around, it is Stanwyck's film all the way. ("I need him like the axe needs the turkey", "Lady Eve", played by Stanwyck, remarks at one point). The other film, of course, is the Billy Wilder noir "Double Indemnity", famous for getting into trouble for Stanwyck's expression: as her lover played by Fred MacMurray strangles her husband, Stanwyck's femme fatale, glimpsed in the rearview mirror, watches with an expression that is almost sexually ecstatic. (Oh, and I've seen her in a couple of weepies -- but I can't recall their names -- on TCM).
Still, it's Stanwyck's birth centenary this year and BAM is celebrating by screening several of her movies. (Perhaps because it is so well-known, "The Lady Eve" is not on the list). Of course I want to go but MoMA is screening a festival of Indian movies right this week -- so I was torn between what to do. Anthony Lane's profile of Stanwyck in the latest New Yorker settles it for me: I'm going to the Stanwyck retrospective for sure.
Still, it's Stanwyck's birth centenary this year and BAM is celebrating by screening several of her movies. (Perhaps because it is so well-known, "The Lady Eve" is not on the list). Of course I want to go but MoMA is screening a festival of Indian movies right this week -- so I was torn between what to do. Anthony Lane's profile of Stanwyck in the latest New Yorker settles it for me: I'm going to the Stanwyck retrospective for sure.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The strange ways of destiny
So the other day -- exactly a week ago, to be precise -- I went out with some friends who were visiting, to the Indian restaurant Yuva. Three of us ordered cocktails whose names were rather fun -- mine, I believe, was called Yuvapolitan. My friend's fiancee ordered one -- and here I forget its name again -- and this was basically jaljeera mixed with vodka. She let us taste it -- it was heavenly! I mean it. It tasted like the paani (of paani-puri) spiced with vodka. Aaaah.
Just today, [via Amardeep] I read about Somini Sengupta's latest for the Times: a piece on chaat, as found on the streets of Delhi. The piece is pretty good but what struck me was this paragraph:
Just today, [via Amardeep] I read about Somini Sengupta's latest for the Times: a piece on chaat, as found on the streets of Delhi. The piece is pretty good but what struck me was this paragraph:
A trendy restaurant chain called Punjabi by Nature offers an inventive cocktail built around the pani puri: Two potato-filled shells are served with a shot of vodka infused with green chili and lime, along with a glass of draft beer as chaser.Awesome. Now that's what I call inventive food.
Monday, April 16, 2007
A kick in the balls
Jon Chait is probably the funniest political journalist writing today. If you want an example, read his column on Ari Fleischer's (the former Bush administration spokesman) WSJ column on the tax code. I'll only quote his kicker of an ending here (see the two photographs for illustration):
I'll give Fleischer the benefit of the doubt here and assume that this isn't an outright lie, but rather he couldn't read the table correctly. Let me explain it this way, Ari: Suppose that a few years ago, 37 percent of your scalp was covered with hair. Today, only 31 percent is. Would you say that your hair has increased or decreased over that time?
Have they seen the trailer?
So I learn from the New York Times that the movie Jindabyne is based on Raymond Carver's short story "So much water so close to home". This story, which was also filmed by Robert Altman in Short Cuts is about a man who goes on a fishing trip with his buddies, and keeps fishing even after discovering a girl's dead body -- and then reports it to the authorities. His wife, predictably, can't understand how he could have done that.
Have the film-makers seen the trailer for the movie? Well, I've seen it thrice (there's a bombardment going on at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas) and I mistook it for a thriller -- a kind of Wolf Creek really -- with peculiar Australian accents (just listen to Gabriel Bryne!) to boot. Which only goes to prove what I've thought all along: small independent features need to market themselves better and directors need to supervise the making of a trailer rather than leaving it to clueless associates who don't have much information about the movie.
Have the film-makers seen the trailer for the movie? Well, I've seen it thrice (there's a bombardment going on at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas) and I mistook it for a thriller -- a kind of Wolf Creek really -- with peculiar Australian accents (just listen to Gabriel Bryne!) to boot. Which only goes to prove what I've thought all along: small independent features need to market themselves better and directors need to supervise the making of a trailer rather than leaving it to clueless associates who don't have much information about the movie.
Paragraph of the day
Geoffrey Nunberg begins his blog-post on apologies and their functions with this priceless paragraph:
When I was an undergraduate at Columbia, a bunch of my friends and I spent a lot of long afternoons and evenings at the movie theaters along West 42d Street, where for less than a buck you could see a double or triple feature of gangster movies, war movies or westerns. That was well before the area was sanitized and Disneyfied, and the theaters were--well, "seedy" doesn't really do them justice. The seats and carpeting were shabby and permanently saturated with a mixture of fluids, processed and unprocessed. The balconies were sharply raked, the rows so close together as to make even the economy section of a United Airlines flight seem positively spacious. And the clientele was a mix of movie buffs, lonely guys, and down-and-outers who considered 99 cents a stone bargain for a warm place to sleep off a bender. So it was that a friend and I found ourselves in the balcony of a theater one rainy evening watching an Anthony Mann western when we heard a middle-class male voice behind us saying in a loud, indignant tone: "Sorry? You piss on my date and you're SORRY?"Just so we are clear: the post is actually on what apologies do -- or are supposed to do -- and the discussion covers both J. L. Austin and Erving Goffmann. Goffmann's take (from Nunberg's post):
Interesting.The most enlightening discussion of this that I know of comes (not surprisingly) from Erving Goffman, in his books Interaction Ritual and particularly Relations in Public. (Goffman's account has since been built on by others, but his story will do for here.) Apologies, Goffman said, are remediation rituals that
represent a splitting of the self into a blameworthy part and a part that stands back and sympathizes with them, and by implication, is worthy of being brought back into the fold.As a ritual, Goffman insists, the apology is independent of the substantive penalties that may be attached to an offense:
After an offense has occurred, the job of the offender is to show... that whatever happened before, he now has a right relationship--a pious attitude--to the rule in question, and this is a matter of indicating a relationship, not compensating a loss.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
This is an essay worth reading...
I haven't seen Michael Tomasky this angry since his debate with Peter Beinart in Slate (discussing Beinart's book "The Good Fight") and that was nothing compared to this profile of Rudy Giuliani that appears in the recent American Prospect.
Still, this is a strikingly good read. Tomasky's distaste for Giuliani is so palpable that as a result, the piece flows. Vividly. I haven't read a polemic this brilliant since Christopher Hitchens' rant against Michael Moore on the eve of the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 -- and that was nowhere near as smooth and effective as Tomasky's piece is.
Check it out.
The best line?
Still, this is a strikingly good read. Tomasky's distaste for Giuliani is so palpable that as a result, the piece flows. Vividly. I haven't read a polemic this brilliant since Christopher Hitchens' rant against Michael Moore on the eve of the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 -- and that was nowhere near as smooth and effective as Tomasky's piece is.
Check it out.
The best line?
Bill Clinton may have embarrassed his family, but Rudy Giuliani humiliated his. That previous summer to which Donna referred, when she thought she and her husband were reconciling? He was dashing out to the Hamptons to spend weekends at Judy's condo! This was not mere irresponsibility, the kind of "mistake" we "learn from," as he has taken to saying on the stump. This was sadism. And he didn't act this way only toward his wife and kids, which might render this a private matter. No -- this was how the man dealt with enemies private and public.
Conservatives may think they're supporting the September 11 Rudy. But I covered the man for 15 years, and I can guarantee them they'll be getting the May 10 Rudy as part of the bargain. If they actually nominate him, they will eventually learn this the hard way, just like poor Donna did.
CORRECTION: In the Beinart-Tomasky dialog I linked to above, it's Beinart who seems angry, while Tomasky is merely icy. Still it was the fractious tone of the dialog I remembered.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Headline-construction is an art
As an example, check out this one from the NYT, about the financial services company (student loans) Sallie Mae, which is in talks for a merger:
Sallie Mae Said to Talk to Suitors
Thursday, April 12, 2007
After "After the Wedding" (Spoilers)
The interesting thing about failed movies (or even bad movies -- although bad movies aren't fun to watch) is that they tell you more about movies and about how movies work than successful ones do.
According to Heidegger, most of our experience as embodied human beings, embedded in various socio-cultural contexts is "ready-to hand": meaning that one acts in and through the world without really reflecting on it. An example would be me typing this blog-post on my keyboard: when I type, the keyboard doesn't really exist for me except as an extension of my hand, just as the pen doesn't really exist for me when I write long-hand. But if the keyboard was bad or if the one of the keys, the letter "e", say, stopped working (or the pen ran out of ink), I become aware of the keyboard as an object, with its own properties. What was before, for me, just an extension of my fingers, is now an object in its own right, something to be reflected on and fixed. A breakdown has occured and my keyboard has gone from being a ready-to-hand tool to being a present-at-hand object.
Susanne Bier's beautifully shot and acted After the Wedding has a similar effect. The movie doesn't work -- in fact, it falls flat -- but it brings out more about why movies work than anything I've seen. The film begins in Mumbai where we meet Jacob (pronounced Ya-ko-b), who works for a non-profit organization, caring for destitute children. Jacob is asked to come to Dennmark by a shadowy millionaire, Jorgen. Jacob has to meet Jorgen, talk and -- this is almost assured -- if everything goes right, he gets a nice tidy donation for his charity. Neat? Fishy? Yes, but not in the way you'd expect.
In Dennmark, Jorgen invites Jacob to his daughter's wedding; by this time Jacob's one day in Dennmark has already turned into three and Jorgen seems to be delaying. And at the wedding which gives the film its title, Jacob meets Jorgen's wife, who turns out to be the woman who left him twenty years ago. Is this a coincidence? Jorgen says so. The audience is suspicious. But then, Jorgen's twenty-year old daughter Anna lets slip out -- in her wedding toast, no less -- that she was actually fathered by another man, whom she doesn't know (Are Danes prone to casually revealing these things at weddings?) . No prizes for guessing what Jacob thinks.
A man has found a daughter he fathered after twenty years. What does he do? How does he react? At this point, I was ready for the film to turn into a not unpleasurable weepie or a Festen-style drama, with accusations flying back and forth. But After the Wedding is not that kind of movie. In the very next scene, Jacob confronts Jorgen's wife, his former lover: Either you tell our daughter about me or I will. And in the scene after that, she does exactly that. How will the daughter react? Will she bond with her father? Well, we find that out too -- in the very next scene. And so on it goes. After the Wedding, deals with in scenes, the themes and issues, that other, more weepy movies might devote their entire running times to.
So where's the movie going? It turns out -- again, none of this is revelatory -- that the rich, efficient, almost God-like tycoon, Jorgen, is dying and that this is indeed his way of playing God: making sure that his wife and his kids have something to keep, something to live for, somone who can take care of them, after he is dead. That they do and he dies. And that's the movie.
The last two lines would probably qualify as the understatements of the year. The revelations of Jorgen's death, his family's reaction to it, Jacob's decision to leave his orphanage and be with his family, a family that moreover has given him meaning in his life (not to mention, more funds for his orphanage) are all etched out in searching little scenes; scenes, it is true, that come out of a monstrously contrived plot but which seem -- I can't find any word for it -- authentic. The cinema verite style (what Manohla Dargis has called dogme-lite) and it's artful closeups -- a throbbing lip here, a tearful eye there, a hand lying limp, a face taut with pain, a forehead creased with worry -- manage to be both true and emotional, capturing the emotional pulse of a scene with unerring accuracy, and yet at the same time, seamless, never straining for effect. One scene in particular (out of many) stood out for me: a scene where Anna, the daughter, confronts her foster-father, Jorgen, when she learns of his impending death. No textual description could do justice to its poignancy -- and the brilliance of the actors.
And yet, I was dry-eyed throughout the movie. Not one tear. Not a drop. More importantly, I couldn't wait for the movie, with its over-the-top plot, to end. My impatience mounted as scene after emotional scene (all beautifully shot and acted) went past. When the movie ended, I heaved a sigh of relief. After the Wedding, as good as I could see it was, had been an excruciating experience to sit through.
Why? I'll tackle that in the next post (since this one has gone on long enough).
According to Heidegger, most of our experience as embodied human beings, embedded in various socio-cultural contexts is "ready-to hand": meaning that one acts in and through the world without really reflecting on it. An example would be me typing this blog-post on my keyboard: when I type, the keyboard doesn't really exist for me except as an extension of my hand, just as the pen doesn't really exist for me when I write long-hand. But if the keyboard was bad or if the one of the keys, the letter "e", say, stopped working (or the pen ran out of ink), I become aware of the keyboard as an object, with its own properties. What was before, for me, just an extension of my fingers, is now an object in its own right, something to be reflected on and fixed. A breakdown has occured and my keyboard has gone from being a ready-to-hand tool to being a present-at-hand object.
Susanne Bier's beautifully shot and acted After the Wedding has a similar effect. The movie doesn't work -- in fact, it falls flat -- but it brings out more about why movies work than anything I've seen. The film begins in Mumbai where we meet Jacob (pronounced Ya-ko-b), who works for a non-profit organization, caring for destitute children. Jacob is asked to come to Dennmark by a shadowy millionaire, Jorgen. Jacob has to meet Jorgen, talk and -- this is almost assured -- if everything goes right, he gets a nice tidy donation for his charity. Neat? Fishy? Yes, but not in the way you'd expect.
In Dennmark, Jorgen invites Jacob to his daughter's wedding; by this time Jacob's one day in Dennmark has already turned into three and Jorgen seems to be delaying. And at the wedding which gives the film its title, Jacob meets Jorgen's wife, who turns out to be the woman who left him twenty years ago. Is this a coincidence? Jorgen says so. The audience is suspicious. But then, Jorgen's twenty-year old daughter Anna lets slip out -- in her wedding toast, no less -- that she was actually fathered by another man, whom she doesn't know (Are Danes prone to casually revealing these things at weddings?) . No prizes for guessing what Jacob thinks.
A man has found a daughter he fathered after twenty years. What does he do? How does he react? At this point, I was ready for the film to turn into a not unpleasurable weepie or a Festen-style drama, with accusations flying back and forth. But After the Wedding is not that kind of movie. In the very next scene, Jacob confronts Jorgen's wife, his former lover: Either you tell our daughter about me or I will. And in the scene after that, she does exactly that. How will the daughter react? Will she bond with her father? Well, we find that out too -- in the very next scene. And so on it goes. After the Wedding, deals with in scenes, the themes and issues, that other, more weepy movies might devote their entire running times to.
So where's the movie going? It turns out -- again, none of this is revelatory -- that the rich, efficient, almost God-like tycoon, Jorgen, is dying and that this is indeed his way of playing God: making sure that his wife and his kids have something to keep, something to live for, somone who can take care of them, after he is dead. That they do and he dies. And that's the movie.
The last two lines would probably qualify as the understatements of the year. The revelations of Jorgen's death, his family's reaction to it, Jacob's decision to leave his orphanage and be with his family, a family that moreover has given him meaning in his life (not to mention, more funds for his orphanage) are all etched out in searching little scenes; scenes, it is true, that come out of a monstrously contrived plot but which seem -- I can't find any word for it -- authentic. The cinema verite style (what Manohla Dargis has called dogme-lite) and it's artful closeups -- a throbbing lip here, a tearful eye there, a hand lying limp, a face taut with pain, a forehead creased with worry -- manage to be both true and emotional, capturing the emotional pulse of a scene with unerring accuracy, and yet at the same time, seamless, never straining for effect. One scene in particular (out of many) stood out for me: a scene where Anna, the daughter, confronts her foster-father, Jorgen, when she learns of his impending death. No textual description could do justice to its poignancy -- and the brilliance of the actors.
And yet, I was dry-eyed throughout the movie. Not one tear. Not a drop. More importantly, I couldn't wait for the movie, with its over-the-top plot, to end. My impatience mounted as scene after emotional scene (all beautifully shot and acted) went past. When the movie ended, I heaved a sigh of relief. After the Wedding, as good as I could see it was, had been an excruciating experience to sit through.
Why? I'll tackle that in the next post (since this one has gone on long enough).
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The things that turn people on ...
This gem, from a New York Times piece on sexual desire:
“Listening to Noam Chomsky,” said a psychologist in her 50s, “always turns me on.”
Sunday, April 08, 2007
I thought the British sailors looked cute! ...
...but what do I know?Here is the New York Times, calling the suits shapeless and badly cut:
Yet, even as we allow that the British servicemen were innocent of fashion, and put on the clothes as a matter of course to replace the pajamas they had most recently been kept in, there is something disturbing about their appearance. It is doubtful that the Iranian government went to the trouble of outfitting 14 men in suits and shirts, however unflattering, if they didn’t mean to make some kind of a political statement. Having never been to that part of the Middle East, I am in no position to comment on a double-standard that permits people to wear one kind of fashion in their homes and another in public. But it seems to me that the plain if not poor cut of the suits was meant as a rebuke to flashy Western tastes. An English banker, in his bespoke suit, might react in horror, but couldn’t that be the point?Hmmmm. I'm not sure what the argument is here, but is this a case of reading too much? To most eyes -- or at least to third-world eyes like mine -- the suits were elegant and the Iranian regime was just trying to show off, what Ahmadinejad might call his magnanimity. If the sharp sartorial Western eyes found them inelegant and frumpy, that was purely unintentional.
UPDATE: Re-reading the post in the light of the comment below, it strikes me that my prose isn't quite clear about what I am talking about. (Or in other words, I f***ed up). My point is: in dressing up the British sailors in suits, was the Iranian government's way of (elegantly) showing the middle finger to the West, the point being approximately, "look how we treat our prisioners, we even give them suits to wear; have you taken a good look at yours". At the same time, it was a way of gaining the good will of the rest of the Islamic world -- a kind of "look at us, we don't give a damn for the West".
If the suits seemed dowdy and badly cut, that wasn't a part of the plan, nor was it the intention. The suits were the point, not their cut or size. When I mentioned my third-world eyes I meant that they looked like perfectly adequate suits to me -- as I would assume, they would seem, to most people from the Islamic/developing world, at whom the gesture was aimed -- although I am perfectly prepared to accept that the suits were frumpy.
So maybe the Iranians miscalculated, after all?
Monday, March 19, 2007
I have company
It's a relief to know that there are people who've seen the utterly gorgeous gorgeous Spring Awakening more than I have (twice, and want more).
Monday, March 05, 2007
Surprising factoid of the week:
Reihan Salam, reviewing, the new Netflix, "Watch Now" mentions this about himself:
I will note here that my Netflix habits are unconventional. During my early days as a Netflix subscriber, I spent anywhere from 1 to 3 hours a night watching DVDs on fast forward with the subtitles on. Because I read fairly quickly, I was able to follow twists and turns at high speed, thus increasing my cultural literacy in record time.Wha...?? I truly can't find any words...
Monday, February 26, 2007
Elections in Russia
A Russian presidential candidate, not blessed by czar Vladmir Putin, is fighting off smears and allegations, aided by his loyal wife:
A month later he was back visiting Moscow and called a sparsely attended news conference to denounce an intensifying campaign against him. He denied having falsified his diploma and went on to explain, among other things, his interest in “gypsy hypnosis.” Marina Donskaya interrupted him, having lost patience with the pressure. “He’s not gay!” she shouted, referring to slurs that had been appearing in the Arkhangelsk press. “He impregnated me.”
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