I'm perhaps fonder of both Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice than the average critic since I happen to like both John Rhys Meyers and over-the-top-ness, but I'm at a total loss as to how Gurinder Chadha went from making Western-weighted meetings of India and the UK or US to something that looks as bad, and as stupid, as this:
It's not really that funny to joke that a non-bombshell single girl must be a lesbian. The Mrs. Bennet-influenced incompetent schemer in Bride & Prejudice is a lot more subtle and interesting than this murderous woman who doesn't appear to even like her daughter very much. I desperately hope there's more to Sendhil Ramamurthy's character than simply that devastating smile and a handsome suit, and that he's more than the vehicle for smooches for our browbeaten heroine. This movie just looks unpleasant to watch, and I'm actively annoyed at her for having made it.
Listen to Me
Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are both just incredible, impeccable actors, and to see them sparring with each other, vulnerable and funny, makes The King's Speech look tremendously promising:
Royalty's such an anachronism for Americans, we don't understand it or understand why it might be important to understand it. With the modern presidency, men choose it, or choose to contest for it, at least. And it's a prize that makes sense. For eight years, at most, you're the most powerful person in the country, and though it's exhausting, controversial, and rough on your family, when you retire, you do so to inevitable riches, prestige, protection and a lifetime of privilege. With royalty in England, what you have to offer them most is the sum total of your person, and you have to do it forever. The Queen did a tremendous job of portraying what happens when that offer fails, or isn't made, or recognized.
This looks to be a far more intimate, and warmer, portrait of a person at an earlier stage in his personhood. It makes me wish Helena Bonham Carter would spend a lot more time doing period pieces, and a lot less time working with her partner, unless Tim Burton decides to find another role as suited to her as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. She looks quite fine here as a woman who is allured into the slightly odd-for-her-time, rather than as someone who is bringing the entire circus with her.
Royalty's such an anachronism for Americans, we don't understand it or understand why it might be important to understand it. With the modern presidency, men choose it, or choose to contest for it, at least. And it's a prize that makes sense. For eight years, at most, you're the most powerful person in the country, and though it's exhausting, controversial, and rough on your family, when you retire, you do so to inevitable riches, prestige, protection and a lifetime of privilege. With royalty in England, what you have to offer them most is the sum total of your person, and you have to do it forever. The Queen did a tremendous job of portraying what happens when that offer fails, or isn't made, or recognized.
This looks to be a far more intimate, and warmer, portrait of a person at an earlier stage in his personhood. It makes me wish Helena Bonham Carter would spend a lot more time doing period pieces, and a lot less time working with her partner, unless Tim Burton decides to find another role as suited to her as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. She looks quite fine here as a woman who is allured into the slightly odd-for-her-time, rather than as someone who is bringing the entire circus with her.
Striking Out for Unknown Country
I don't quite have enough to put all my thoughts in order here, but I'm interested in the near-simultaneous news that Paul McCartney's teaming up with HP to post a large archive of material online, Ed Burns is making a low-budget movie for television, and Kristen Bell is insisting that she'd bankroll a Veronica Mars movie out of her own pocket.
There are obvious and substantial advantages to work with large companies that specialize in the production and release of films and music. Those companies have facilities, staff, specialized marketers, market researchers, and capacity to offset disasters and absorb losses. But film and music aren't capable of only making money for artists or companies that specialize in distributing art. It makes sense to me that other kinds of companies might want in on media markets, that television companies who are willing to drop $20 million on a 70-minute pilot for a television series might decide to go ahead and compete and just start making movies. I have the sense that the market for all kinds of media could get much more diffuse, exciting and competitive, but I'm not quite sure I can see exactly how it'll happen. If I did, of course, I'd be investing, rather than typing.
There are obvious and substantial advantages to work with large companies that specialize in the production and release of films and music. Those companies have facilities, staff, specialized marketers, market researchers, and capacity to offset disasters and absorb losses. But film and music aren't capable of only making money for artists or companies that specialize in distributing art. It makes sense to me that other kinds of companies might want in on media markets, that television companies who are willing to drop $20 million on a 70-minute pilot for a television series might decide to go ahead and compete and just start making movies. I have the sense that the market for all kinds of media could get much more diffuse, exciting and competitive, but I'm not quite sure I can see exactly how it'll happen. If I did, of course, I'd be investing, rather than typing.
Pink Get's 'Em Every Time
For all her tough-girl posturing and business sense (even if her MBA appears have to been with a concentration in haters and Sun Trust withdrawals), I really love that it's pretty clear that Nicki Minaj's debut album, Pink Friday, is going to be sort adorably romantic. First, there was the community-theater kabuki of "Your Love." Now we've got the leak for "Right Through Me":
It's got all the spiky little defensive touches lyrically, but it's a song about being truly seen, hardly a unique or tough sensibility. Fortunately, it appears she'll at least continue to do things like repurpose the 80's and out-perform Will.i.am, so I can forgive her for being a hip-hop Elle Woods in album material as well as in presentation:
It's got all the spiky little defensive touches lyrically, but it's a song about being truly seen, hardly a unique or tough sensibility. Fortunately, it appears she'll at least continue to do things like repurpose the 80's and out-perform Will.i.am, so I can forgive her for being a hip-hop Elle Woods in album material as well as in presentation:
Bulldog
I rather like that we're in the midst of a mini-J. Edgar Hoover revival, starting with the stellar Public Enemies and now moving on to the Hoover-must've-been-gay biopic rumored to be starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the man himself and Joaquin Phoenix as his lover, theoretically Clyde Tolson. I somewhat dislike the will-he-or-wasn't-he school of speculation about prominent figures' sexual orientation given that definitive answers, owing both to lack of evidence and to changing understandings of sexuality, are unobtainable. I'm a bit concerned, given that Dustin Lance Black is writing the screenplay, that this is going to be a simultaneous attempt to claim Hoover and reject him. That said, does anyone have a biography of Hoover they'd like to recommend? I'd like to dig a bit deeper.
And given that Roy Cohn, a comparatively minor figure but a more accessible one, already has his definitive artistic treatment thanks to Tony Kushner, it seems entirely appropriate that Hoover should get some high-end portrayal as well. There hasn't been a Hoover biopic since 1987, and that was a television movie, and I don't know that 1977's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover had any great impact. I don't know if that's simply a matter of the man's complexity, or the pervasiveness of his influence that there hasn't been a more lasting portrayal in film. Or maybe it's just that Hoover musing on Bosch in the prologue to Underworld is all the definitive portrayal that we need.
And given that Roy Cohn, a comparatively minor figure but a more accessible one, already has his definitive artistic treatment thanks to Tony Kushner, it seems entirely appropriate that Hoover should get some high-end portrayal as well. There hasn't been a Hoover biopic since 1987, and that was a television movie, and I don't know that 1977's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover had any great impact. I don't know if that's simply a matter of the man's complexity, or the pervasiveness of his influence that there hasn't been a more lasting portrayal in film. Or maybe it's just that Hoover musing on Bosch in the prologue to Underworld is all the definitive portrayal that we need.
Weird Little Girls
I have absolutely no idea what the plot of an Emily the Strange movie might be, or whether it's a good idea to make a movie of the baby-goth merchandise franchise at all. But given that such a project is going forward, I'm delighted that Chloe Moretz is playing the title role. She's building up quite the little portfolio: preteen sidekick to a hipster, pint-sized killer, vampire neighbor girl, and now, independent, broody loner. As herself, Moretz seems sweet and adorable, and she's taken a number of conventional roles, but I'm really quite happy she's keeping her hand in so many striking and unusual parts.
So many young actresses in Hollywood get on the darling career track so early. Emma Roberts has essentially gone from Nancy Drew and Hotel for Dogs to ingenue status. It's so boring, and predictable, and she doesn't have anything bizarre enough in there to prove that she can do something else. I have high hopes that Abigail Breslin, just a year older than Moretz, ends up making choices that are more similar to Moretz's than Roberts'. Her cute little girls have always come across as a bit cracked.
It's not simply that we need more movies about weird children. It's that if we have a movie culture that respects odd, independent little girls rather than treating them as curiosities or their personalities as things to be grown out of, we might also gain for ourselves a movie culture that allows for unusual, independent women who live through storylines other than those that concern love, marriage, and childbearing. What we sow now, we reap later. We can't expect movies to dramatically change themselves in an instant, but neither can we accept the inevitability of the miserable fare served to us now. Moretz can be one of our champions, if we're willing to back her, and fiercely.
So many young actresses in Hollywood get on the darling career track so early. Emma Roberts has essentially gone from Nancy Drew and Hotel for Dogs to ingenue status. It's so boring, and predictable, and she doesn't have anything bizarre enough in there to prove that she can do something else. I have high hopes that Abigail Breslin, just a year older than Moretz, ends up making choices that are more similar to Moretz's than Roberts'. Her cute little girls have always come across as a bit cracked.
It's not simply that we need more movies about weird children. It's that if we have a movie culture that respects odd, independent little girls rather than treating them as curiosities or their personalities as things to be grown out of, we might also gain for ourselves a movie culture that allows for unusual, independent women who live through storylines other than those that concern love, marriage, and childbearing. What we sow now, we reap later. We can't expect movies to dramatically change themselves in an instant, but neither can we accept the inevitability of the miserable fare served to us now. Moretz can be one of our champions, if we're willing to back her, and fiercely.
Spark and Fire
It really would be terrific if the folks remaking Spider-Man, if they must cast a grown man as a teenager, could snag Emma Stone as Mary Jane. I thought Kirsten Dunst was quite good for the extremely sweet interpretation of Mary Jane the most recent trilogy selected, but everything felt a bit sad and heavy between her and Peter, so much of the time. It got to be a bit ponderous, angsty going.
I wouldn't mind an interpretation with a bit more...prickle to it. Especially if Peter Parker's going to be a bit torn between Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane will have to be a bit of a scrapper. Stone would be perfect for that. She was confused and Machiavellian all at once in The House Bunny, appropriately alluring in Super-Bad. And she's extremely funny and elastic; she's a Mary Jane who could make it as an actress and who would demand that her soap opera character be rewritten to be a better person, and go back to school as a psych major. There's joy in superheroism, as well as heavy responsibility. Emma Stone would be marvelous at bringing the fun in the character, and in Super-Man, as well.
I wouldn't mind an interpretation with a bit more...prickle to it. Especially if Peter Parker's going to be a bit torn between Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane will have to be a bit of a scrapper. Stone would be perfect for that. She was confused and Machiavellian all at once in The House Bunny, appropriately alluring in Super-Bad. And she's extremely funny and elastic; she's a Mary Jane who could make it as an actress and who would demand that her soap opera character be rewritten to be a better person, and go back to school as a psych major. There's joy in superheroism, as well as heavy responsibility. Emma Stone would be marvelous at bringing the fun in the character, and in Super-Man, as well.
Not a Game
While I'm certainly extremely fond of Ender's Game, and think a movie adaptation of it could be a significant contribution to the filmography of the internet, I am somewhat concerned about the project in Gavin Hood's hands. Tsotsi and Wolverine make for a significantly mixed track record. I thought Wolverine was particularly egregious as a failure because the source material is so rich. The movie was overwrought, emotionally unsubtle. The romance in particular was exceptionally cloying. The minor characters introduced in it were throwaways, given no real spark or energy like they were in the X-Men trilogy, with the exceptions of Deadpool and Gambit, who were speedily and wastefully dispatched. And it was often quite an ugly picture.
Any of those missteps would doom Ender's Game. Almost the entire movie takes place in institutional space, but that doesn't mean it can look unspecific or boring. The light-tracking system, the scoreboard, and of course the Battle Room are critically important details. The Game has to feel astonishingly emotionally attuned. If the movie fails with any of the significant minor characters, and there are many, the plot may fall into a shambles. I wouldn't necessarily want to bet on whether Ender's Game or Wolverine are better-loved, but they're both projects that mean an enormous amount to lots of people. We live in an age when bad adaptations can be erased or supplanted, but given how difficult it's been to get an Ender's Game movie off the ground at all, I'd so prefer for the first time to be a charm.
Any of those missteps would doom Ender's Game. Almost the entire movie takes place in institutional space, but that doesn't mean it can look unspecific or boring. The light-tracking system, the scoreboard, and of course the Battle Room are critically important details. The Game has to feel astonishingly emotionally attuned. If the movie fails with any of the significant minor characters, and there are many, the plot may fall into a shambles. I wouldn't necessarily want to bet on whether Ender's Game or Wolverine are better-loved, but they're both projects that mean an enormous amount to lots of people. We live in an age when bad adaptations can be erased or supplanted, but given how difficult it's been to get an Ender's Game movie off the ground at all, I'd so prefer for the first time to be a charm.
Loosening Up
I'd completely how funny Ang Lee's adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is. A great deal of credit's due to Emma Thompson, who wrote the often-uproarious screenplay. One of my favorite moments, certainly, is the moment when Edward tells Elinor, of Elinor's younger sister, "She's heading an expedition to China shortly. I'm to go as her servant. But only on the understanding that I am to be very badly treated." Jane Austen never stinted to be funny, and Thompson does a lovely imitation and extension of Austen's sense of humor.
But it's unfortunate that Lee's vanished into a particular kind of dourness for so much of his career. I say that not to cast aspersions on Brokeback Mountain, which is a gem, and politically important. But he has such a gift for funniness. Eat Drink Man Woman is beautifully shot, and deeply felt. But a lot of its emotional wellsprings are tapped when laughter shatters a deep cleft in hardness. There's a lot of sadness in an old maid turning up loud gospel on annoying karaoke-singing neighbors, whipping out the red lipstick, and marching out to snag her a gym teacher, but there's a lot of laughter and joy in her awakening, too. Similarly, an annoying widow's ridiculous expectations may be hilarious, but they conceal deep hopes, too. I do hope he has the good sense not to have completely abandoned that wonderful sensibility.
But it's unfortunate that Lee's vanished into a particular kind of dourness for so much of his career. I say that not to cast aspersions on Brokeback Mountain, which is a gem, and politically important. But he has such a gift for funniness. Eat Drink Man Woman is beautifully shot, and deeply felt. But a lot of its emotional wellsprings are tapped when laughter shatters a deep cleft in hardness. There's a lot of sadness in an old maid turning up loud gospel on annoying karaoke-singing neighbors, whipping out the red lipstick, and marching out to snag her a gym teacher, but there's a lot of laughter and joy in her awakening, too. Similarly, an annoying widow's ridiculous expectations may be hilarious, but they conceal deep hopes, too. I do hope he has the good sense not to have completely abandoned that wonderful sensibility.
Yesterday, At The Atlantic
I wrote about why Hollywood keeps working with Roman Polanski: privilege keeps famous actors and actresses from seeing him and his past conduct as a threat.
Scooby-Doo
Y'all know how completely in the tank I am for Bones, but I was relieved by the quality of the season premiere. It's a risky move, breaking up a gang, but I think it's wise. Seven months is enough time for Brennan to get a new haircut and beat up some guerillas, for Angela to get happily knocked up, for Booth to meet a lady who may be blonde, journalistic, and eager to wander into war zones but can't possibly be long for this series, for Cam's job to be endangered, for Sweets to adopt a deeply ridiculous hat for which he should be severely punished. But it's not enough time for the team's chemistry to dissipate, just for it to alter.
The thing that really caught me, though, once I got beyond my relief that the show has not become instantly horrible despite the disruption, was the clear reference to the team as the Scooby Gang. It's not as if Bones is the first show to ever do that; Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the most prominent and best show to claim the mantle. I just think it's fascinating that such a silly show yielded such an effective and durable archetype. I never thought Scooby-Doo was particularly good, and certainly the live-action adaptation was more humiliating than revivifying of the franchise. The reappropriations are more about reinterpretation than homage, or even particularly direct reference. Certainly nobody on Bones is Shaggy. Or the damn dog.
And Ye Shall Receive
I asked back in June whatever had happened to Nelly. Turns out, he's making songs that could use better sound mixing so the lyrics are actually individually discernible!
And that include references to better Usher songs and videos. Has it really been long enough since "Burn" came out, and was it every popular enough, for the song to be a cultural touchstone? I actually don't hate this, but I think the video is genuinely terrible, and a huge trigger for my huge irrational fear of eye damage. Nobody uses burning cars rotating over the ocean as a metaphor for their emotional states. I'm not a big fan of totalizing statements, and even I feel comfortable saying that.
And that include references to better Usher songs and videos. Has it really been long enough since "Burn" came out, and was it every popular enough, for the song to be a cultural touchstone? I actually don't hate this, but I think the video is genuinely terrible, and a huge trigger for my huge irrational fear of eye damage. Nobody uses burning cars rotating over the ocean as a metaphor for their emotional states. I'm not a big fan of totalizing statements, and even I feel comfortable saying that.
Crowned
Well, it's about time that a Pixar movie got a female writer and director, and perhaps even more importantly, a feisty female heroine, in this case, a princess who would rather be an archer. I have no objections to original storytelling for the Disney Princess franchise. But I do wonder if it might make sense to start adapting a second generation of classic princess stories.
The Grimms' fairy tales and legends of similar pedigree and provenance were all very well for the first and second Golden Ages of Disney. But one of the great fortunes girls of my generation and after have is that authors like Tamora Pierce and Patricia C. Wrede gave us heroines worth a hundred Mulans. Alanna of Trebond is a magician, a warrior, and a total babe (as well as a metaphorical advocate for reconciliation between the West and Islam). Cimorene works for dragons, defeats deeply obnoxious wizards, and makes one hell of a queen and an eventual if temporary single mother. I can see political troubles lurking for each series, but between the two of them, they'd provide eight terrific movies for young women. I'd love to see Emma Stone as Alanna, for example, but I think they'd work equally well with terrific animation. Somebody at Pixar should get on that, if they could stand to humble themselves and adapt someone else's material.
The Grimms' fairy tales and legends of similar pedigree and provenance were all very well for the first and second Golden Ages of Disney. But one of the great fortunes girls of my generation and after have is that authors like Tamora Pierce and Patricia C. Wrede gave us heroines worth a hundred Mulans. Alanna of Trebond is a magician, a warrior, and a total babe (as well as a metaphorical advocate for reconciliation between the West and Islam). Cimorene works for dragons, defeats deeply obnoxious wizards, and makes one hell of a queen and an eventual if temporary single mother. I can see political troubles lurking for each series, but between the two of them, they'd provide eight terrific movies for young women. I'd love to see Emma Stone as Alanna, for example, but I think they'd work equally well with terrific animation. Somebody at Pixar should get on that, if they could stand to humble themselves and adapt someone else's material.
Friday, At The Atlantic
I wrote about the challenges of building fictional worlds based in religion and in science.
Perdido Street Station Book Club, Part III: Chaos
Part I is here, Part II is here. Usual rules apply. Spoilers below the jump, but only through the end of Part III of the novel.
For all the things that happen to all the characters in all the neighborhoods of Perdido Street Station, it's very much a think book. And in this section, Mieville spends a great deal of time either directly explaining to us (and he still does far too much of this) or showing us the extent to which chaos and randomness rule New Crobuzon. These forces defy law and politics, transform both biological matter and machinery, rearrange georgraphy, and are a source of transformation.
There's one interesting early exception to that rule, governed, I assume, by Mieville's politics. In Lin's explanation of her decision to leave New Crobuzon's conventional khepri society (which at least one of my friends likened, to a certain extent, to a lesbian sexual awakening from which she's saved by finding Isaac, this or any world's Least Likeliest Right Man), Mieville says her motivations are informed at least in part by a growing awakening of a class dynamic in which vulgar khepri middle class oppress the khepri poor:
But really, this section is about Isaac discovering a way to harness the imperative of chaos. It's not simply political stresses that force mobs to form and governments to fall, or individuals to head out into cities. Crisis is a necessary precondition for development, for flight, for continued forward motion. Isaac is interested in it because it presents a solution to his garuda client's problem. As he puts it: "I can turn you into a walking, flying dynamo. The more you fly, the more crisis energy you manifest, the more you can fly. Tired wings are a problem you won't face no more."
But crisis, chaos and randomness are more powerful than I think Isaac himself knows. They cannot be disproved by ordinary, orderly, mathematical means:
For all the things that happen to all the characters in all the neighborhoods of Perdido Street Station, it's very much a think book. And in this section, Mieville spends a great deal of time either directly explaining to us (and he still does far too much of this) or showing us the extent to which chaos and randomness rule New Crobuzon. These forces defy law and politics, transform both biological matter and machinery, rearrange georgraphy, and are a source of transformation.
There's one interesting early exception to that rule, governed, I assume, by Mieville's politics. In Lin's explanation of her decision to leave New Crobuzon's conventional khepri society (which at least one of my friends likened, to a certain extent, to a lesbian sexual awakening from which she's saved by finding Isaac, this or any world's Least Likeliest Right Man), Mieville says her motivations are informed at least in part by a growing awakening of a class dynamic in which vulgar khepri middle class oppress the khepri poor:
With time, Lin's hatred of her broodma slowly cooled, becoming first contempt, then pity. Her disgust at the squalor of Creekside was joined with some kind of understanding. Then, her five-year love-affair with Kinken drew to an end. It started when she stood in the Plaza of Statues, and realized that they were mawkish and badly executed, embodying a culture that was blind to itself. She began to see Kinken as implicated in the subjugation of Creekside and the never-mentioned Kinken poor, saw a 'community' at best callous and uncaring, at worst deliberately keeping Creekside down to maintain its superiority.It makes sense to me that for Mieville, this is the level at which order can be sustained. Individual citizens can't necessarily bring about transformation, but they can escape to other dynamics. Small groups and subcultures can enforce order as long as the sphere that they choose to exercise their authority in is relatively small, be it a neighborhood, an apartment building, or as we'll see later in the book, a large and confined glass dome. But it's pretty hard to order a society, especially one large enough to assert the darker desires and character that linger within some of its elements. Mayor Rudgutter may be able to scare individuals, but even when he's describing New Crobuzon's character, he has to acknowledge its elusiveness:
This was not a city ruled by witches; this was not a chthonic burrow; the seasons' changes did not bring an onslaught of superstitious repression; New Crobuzon did not process its citizenry through zombie factories; its Parliament was not like Maru'ahm's, a casino where laws were stakes in games of roulette. And this was not, emphasized Rudgutter, Shankell, where people fought like animals for sport. Except, of course, at Cadnebar's.And it's not just societal forces that ooze out of the city's control. There's this brief passage about something called "Torque," a magical force that apparently causes storms serious enough to reconfigure the city's geography (another detail, like the Cymek Library, that I'm finding myself much more interested in than this particular story. I secretly suspect it's actually the Doom of Valyria. Nerd rimshot.).
But really, this section is about Isaac discovering a way to harness the imperative of chaos. It's not simply political stresses that force mobs to form and governments to fall, or individuals to head out into cities. Crisis is a necessary precondition for development, for flight, for continued forward motion. Isaac is interested in it because it presents a solution to his garuda client's problem. As he puts it: "I can turn you into a walking, flying dynamo. The more you fly, the more crisis energy you manifest, the more you can fly. Tired wings are a problem you won't face no more."
But crisis, chaos and randomness are more powerful than I think Isaac himself knows. They cannot be disproved by ordinary, orderly, mathematical means:
He set out in a systematic attempt to prove himself wrong. He constructed scenario after mathematical scenario with which he tried to rubbish his tentatively scrawled sets of equations. His attempts at destruction failed. His equations held firm. It took Isaac two days before he began to believe that he had solved a fundamental problem of crisis theory.And Mieville's very careful to establish the breadth of crisis and chaos. It's a virus that transforms a simple sweeping machine, a New Crobuzian Roomba, into something more:
In what had been an insignificant corner of its valved mind, the original virus, the original combination of rogue data and meaningless reference that had affected the construct's ability to sweep floors, still revolved. It was the same, but transformed. No longer a destructive end, it had become a means, a generator, a motive power....One moment it was a calculating machine. The next, it thought.And it's a moment between life and death, form and void, when it must either change or die, that the strange grub Isaac's been feeding hallucinogens to transforms itself:
It self-organized. Its mutating form bubbled and welled up into strange dimensional rifts, oozing like oily sludge over the brim of the world into other planes and back again. It folded in on itself, shaping itself out of the protean sludge of its own base matter. It was unstable. It was alive, and then there was a time between forms when it was neither alive nor dead, but saturated with power. And then it was alive again. But different.And boy do we get a propulsive crisis by the end of the section. But I think I'm more interested in the larger implications of chaos and crisis for the plot and characterization. If crisis is what gives form and energy to events and individuals in New Crobuzon, would Isaac and Lin be important and interesting? If chaos, randomness and eruption are such major forces in the life of the city, is it possible to strive for order and betterment? Or is the city and the societies that exist within it essentially cancerous, growing out wildly and unpredictably, wherever there's a vector? What kind of resolution is possible? I'm sure Isaac and Lin will behave rationally going forward, but it's still not clear to me, even this far in, how their decision calculuses work, and what rational will mean for them. Much less what vasty terrors will be thrown up in their twisty paths.
I Bless The Rains Down In Africa
Dude, between the key role it played in this most recent arc of Questionable Content and its appearance on Community, is this an all-time high moment for an "Africa" resurgence or what?
Great, GREAT song.
Voices for the Faithful
So, I was browsing through YouTube the other night, clicking, as one will, on random things that pop up as recommendations. And if No Greater Love actually is, as advertised, the Christian Movie Event of the Year, all I can say is that Christians deserve better written, better acted, better-produced, and more deeply-felt movies than this:
I enjoyed Saved, but I understand how people would have found it facile and disrespectful when it comes to matters of religion. And there is a big market, really, I should say, big markets of moviegoers in America who would like to see movies that take their faith traditions seriously, and don't treat religion as an anachronism, relic, or idiotic barrier to a good time. But the way to show respect for that audience, and for their values, is not to serve them junk. And what kind of serious faith-oriented movie suggests that a guy has a conversion just to get the girl, anyway? What else in his life needs healing? Why is he where he is today? Ask some serious questions, pose them in serious ways, and raise some serious budget for them to prove that Mel Gibson isn't the only one who can do it. Sincere faith deserves a sincere and quality approach to filmmaking.
I enjoyed Saved, but I understand how people would have found it facile and disrespectful when it comes to matters of religion. And there is a big market, really, I should say, big markets of moviegoers in America who would like to see movies that take their faith traditions seriously, and don't treat religion as an anachronism, relic, or idiotic barrier to a good time. But the way to show respect for that audience, and for their values, is not to serve them junk. And what kind of serious faith-oriented movie suggests that a guy has a conversion just to get the girl, anyway? What else in his life needs healing? Why is he where he is today? Ask some serious questions, pose them in serious ways, and raise some serious budget for them to prove that Mel Gibson isn't the only one who can do it. Sincere faith deserves a sincere and quality approach to filmmaking.
A Reminder
Folks, Winona Ryder is 38. I say this not to say "She's so old," or "I'm so old," but as a reminder that she's still quite young, and is very attractive. So why the hell are her current crop of movies making her look either kinda awkward, or old? In the trailer for The Dilemma, they've got her hair looking kind of limp and her clothes sort of dorky (especially in comparison to Jennifer Connelly) until she starts boffing Channing Tatum in botanical gardens (I do think that having shinier-looking hair would likely be one of the results of boffing Channing Tatum):
And in Star Trek, she was quite good as Spock's mother in a very limited role, but given that Zach Quinto is 33, it was always sort of ludicrous casting, even given the aging makeup. Now, long-time readers will know I'm a Tina Fey fan who sometimes grieves at the choices that fine woman has made with her character choices. But she looks lovely, and unexhausted, and is two years older than Ryder, and has a five-year-old to boot. Ryder should get herself hence for some career counseling. Maybe she could do a guest stint on 30 Rock as an up-and-coming comedy writer who makes Liz realize it's time to stop treating herself as if she's ridiculous?
And in Star Trek, she was quite good as Spock's mother in a very limited role, but given that Zach Quinto is 33, it was always sort of ludicrous casting, even given the aging makeup. Now, long-time readers will know I'm a Tina Fey fan who sometimes grieves at the choices that fine woman has made with her character choices. But she looks lovely, and unexhausted, and is two years older than Ryder, and has a five-year-old to boot. Ryder should get herself hence for some career counseling. Maybe she could do a guest stint on 30 Rock as an up-and-coming comedy writer who makes Liz realize it's time to stop treating herself as if she's ridiculous?
Why Do I Have a Feeling...
That B.R. Myers, who writes a scathing (and for all I know, I've been reading genre fiction lately, deserved) review of Freedom in this month's Atlantic has never seen The Wire. Take this paragraph, on language:
Granted, nonentities are people too, and a good storyteller can interest us in just about anybody, as Madame Bovary demonstrates. But although the narrator of Freedom tells us on the first page, “There had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds,” one need read only that the local school “sucked” and that Patty was “very into” her teenage son, who in turn was “fucking” the girl next door, to know that whatever is wrong with these people does not matter. The language a writer uses to create a world is that world, and Franzen’s strenuously contemporary and therefore juvenile language is a world in which nothing important can happen. Madame Bovary’s marriagesucked, Heathcliff was into Catherine: these words fail the context not just because they are of our own time. There is no import in things that “suck,” no drama in someone’s being “into” someone else. As for the F word, Anthony Burgess once criticized the notion that to use it in matter-of-fact prose is to hark back to “a golden age of Anglo-Saxon candour”; the word was taboo from the start, because it stands for brutal or at best impersonal sex. “A man can fuck a whore but, unless his wife is a whore, he cannot fuck his wife … There is no love in it.” A writer like Franzen, who describes two lovers as “fucking,” trivializes their relationship accordingly. The result is boredom.This is the criticism of a someone who has had the sincere misfortune of not having enough inspired cursing in his life. I jest, kind of. I think it's relatively problematic to dismiss common-place language across the board, given that what may spring from educated ennui may be the poetic vernacular of folks from another class. You don't have to be Anthony Burgess to be eloquent. And I think more importantly, sure, our contemporary slang does sometimes demonstrate a shallowness and inability to judge emotional scale. But if we're experiencing that as a nation, isn't it kind of...important?
Casting Shadows
When I was a kid, I was extremely skittish about scary things (mostly as a result of a seriously violent graphic novel version of Frankenstein that gave me a month-long series of nightmares that still are still recurring), and as a result, I basically missed out on Stephen King. I'm getting braver, and have been working on upping my tolerance since I graduated from college, but I still need to outsource my opinions on the Kingverse to other, less fraidy-cat people. Like BabylonSista, who breaks down the risk and rewards inherent in the coming multi-media adaptation of The Dark Tower:
With such an intricately woven narrative, this project may have been in better hands with its previous custodian, J.J. Abrams. With Lostproducers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the project could have been created with the same mix of wild abandon and fetish for meticulous detail as their island series. Howard and Goldsman, both Academy Award winners, are no lightweights--Ron Howard directed both A Beautiful Mind and the fantasy classic Willow. Goldsman wrote the adapted screenplay for A Beautiful Mind, so he can be good...but I don't know that I can get over the script for Batman and Robin. Sure, he didn't have anything to do with the nipply batsuit, but he wrote the awful words spoken from said costume. And Deep Blue Sea...yeah.
Here are the positives: both Howard and Goldsman have had success with their with fantasy and science fiction projects, strong elements of the Dark Tower plot structure. Howard's films Splash and Cocoondemonstrate his attention to detail, imperative in creating a true representation of the novels. And the very fact that a film/TV combination has never been done before is encouraging--network TV constraints not withstanding, this arrangement gives the story the room it needs to unfold. I do wonder if the novels and stories closely connected to the DT canon will be explored as well, though just the material from the seven novels is more than enough.I do like the idea, particularly in our mega-series prone popular culture today, of big bridge adaptations that combine television, movies, and web series. The closest anyone really gets these days is having different directors for different movies in a series, and going long. But, for example, to suggest that the first, slimmed, and most limited in perspective an emotion entry in the Harry Potter series can unfold in essentially the same form as something like Deathly Hallows has always struck me as a mistake. A world where the adaptation of that series began with a movie and commenced over a tense six-year series with a pre-set plan and artistic vision and a pre-determined end point makes more sense, and would avoid sacrificing key scenes and allow for additions of details that J.K. Rowling's revealed in extra-canonical material and speeches. A movie's just a three-hour television special, and can always be rebroadcast to reintroduce a series, after all. Not everything deserves that sort of treatment, of course. But there are works for which it's good business and good art, to give audiences more than movies. We'll have to see how this one goes, to see if the combination has a future.
Buried Treasure
I've been thinking a great deal about the work authors do in service of their readers, recently, so I was interested to read this short essay in Uncanny Valley about engineering fun for readers in fiction along a model of gaming. I agree, to a certain extent, that writers are under obligation to their readers if they expect to find an audience, in particular, a substantial one, for their fiction. But I think they need to take an even more expansive view of reward than this piece expects.
I worry about the development of a prevalent model of fiction that's based on requiring the reader to hunt for small details about plot and character in order to reap rewards, though. I hardly think the Lost model is going to become predominant, either in television because it's expensive to produce or in fiction in general because the ending wasn't ultimately satisfying and completist for a significant majority of critics and the audience. But I do think it's going to continue to exert an influence, if only because networks and publishers like the idea of capturing a small but fiercely committed audience if they can't be Harry Potter and capture absolutely everybody.
But I do think that informational rewards, whether they elicit laughter or make a plot point click into place, aren't the only kinds of rewards. China Mieville may have a bit too much description for my taste, but that's in part because I think he drowns the reader in adjectives rather than providing a coherent landscape about half the time—when he stays concrete, his geography is often quite fascinating. I love reading Hilary Mantel because she pushes my understanding of what I can do in a short sentence, Michael Chabon for the way he makes the metaphysics of love physical realities, A.S. Byatt for showing off what she can do across forms and getting away with it because she's so ludicrously talented. And I don't know that I like those things simply because I'm a writer. The pleasure of words, and of art, is considerable. I'd be equally worried if we tipped over into a world full of miserable writers who are good at dropping drug-like plot pleasures, libraries full of Stephenie Meyers.
I worry about the development of a prevalent model of fiction that's based on requiring the reader to hunt for small details about plot and character in order to reap rewards, though. I hardly think the Lost model is going to become predominant, either in television because it's expensive to produce or in fiction in general because the ending wasn't ultimately satisfying and completist for a significant majority of critics and the audience. But I do think it's going to continue to exert an influence, if only because networks and publishers like the idea of capturing a small but fiercely committed audience if they can't be Harry Potter and capture absolutely everybody.
But I do think that informational rewards, whether they elicit laughter or make a plot point click into place, aren't the only kinds of rewards. China Mieville may have a bit too much description for my taste, but that's in part because I think he drowns the reader in adjectives rather than providing a coherent landscape about half the time—when he stays concrete, his geography is often quite fascinating. I love reading Hilary Mantel because she pushes my understanding of what I can do in a short sentence, Michael Chabon for the way he makes the metaphysics of love physical realities, A.S. Byatt for showing off what she can do across forms and getting away with it because she's so ludicrously talented. And I don't know that I like those things simply because I'm a writer. The pleasure of words, and of art, is considerable. I'd be equally worried if we tipped over into a world full of miserable writers who are good at dropping drug-like plot pleasures, libraries full of Stephenie Meyers.
The Roar of the Crowd
I wish many good things for John Cena, but as far as his mainstream film career goes, I was thinking more buddy comedies, less overly-serious-family-and-local-sports dramas with Patricia Clarkson and Danny Glover:
More broadly, I think this movie reflects an unfortunate trend in sports movies, where every final contest has to be a matter of life and death, or at least major societal change. For a while it was segregation that had to be felled, with Secretariat, it's going to be sexism, and Legendary appears to be another entry in the cult of self-esteem. I think it's fine to make movies about individual achievement and the beauty and psychology of a game, in fact, I think more sports movies should have that kind of tight-bore focus—a movie about Sandy Koufax doesn't have to be about all Jews in America, and the struggle between Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson doesn't have to be about black men in baseball or New York's struggle to revive itself because there's enough psychological richness in the men and their achievements themselves. But I don't think those individual stories of growth and accomplishment need to be elevated to the status of legend to be interesting. These feats are more compelling if men make them happen, not gods. But winning a damn wrestling match doesn't actually make a scrawny kid a deity, either.
More broadly, I think this movie reflects an unfortunate trend in sports movies, where every final contest has to be a matter of life and death, or at least major societal change. For a while it was segregation that had to be felled, with Secretariat, it's going to be sexism, and Legendary appears to be another entry in the cult of self-esteem. I think it's fine to make movies about individual achievement and the beauty and psychology of a game, in fact, I think more sports movies should have that kind of tight-bore focus—a movie about Sandy Koufax doesn't have to be about all Jews in America, and the struggle between Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson doesn't have to be about black men in baseball or New York's struggle to revive itself because there's enough psychological richness in the men and their achievements themselves. But I don't think those individual stories of growth and accomplishment need to be elevated to the status of legend to be interesting. These feats are more compelling if men make them happen, not gods. But winning a damn wrestling match doesn't actually make a scrawny kid a deity, either.
Tough Choices
Perhaps because I've been finding myself feeling more like an actual grownup than I usually do, I've been more highly aware than usual of shows and movies that do a good job of showing adults making difficult choices. Y'all know I'm quite fond of Covert Affairs, but I thought the show did an especially nice job in the finale when one character was given the opportunity to make a maneuver that would have landed her her husband's job. Both of them surprised me: she told her husband about the opportunity, and instead of lambasting her, he told her she should taken it. She responded by deciding not to take the chance. The writers and actors pulled off an impressive feat in making the moment a threshold act, the thing that will save their marriage, or doom it, but a moment that is sweet no matter the outcome.
That moment of sacrifice reminded me of one of the better bits of Mona Lisa Smile (which is such a great missed opportunity, given the terrific young cast, and which, full disclosure, I did some on-set work for), when Julia Stiles' character turns down admission to Yale Law School in order to be a housewife. It's an uncomfortable moment, and I think it's intended to be. Even though another character has been through the dissolution of a disastrous early marriage, she's decided she wants to be a housewife. We're simultaneously meant to think she's wrong, and headed for something very bad, and to question our own assumptions about the right decisions for women.
It feels a bit odd for me that both of these examples are decisions where women step away from ambition in favor of family. I do have a hard time coming up with a situation where a man does a similar thing to his own career in favor of his family. Maybe they feel powerful because the balance of those choices still seems to land more heavily on women than men, and it's a reflection of a continuing fear. But whatever the outcomes, disappointing or reinvigorating, I think it's useful to see the simple difficulty of those decisions.
That moment of sacrifice reminded me of one of the better bits of Mona Lisa Smile (which is such a great missed opportunity, given the terrific young cast, and which, full disclosure, I did some on-set work for), when Julia Stiles' character turns down admission to Yale Law School in order to be a housewife. It's an uncomfortable moment, and I think it's intended to be. Even though another character has been through the dissolution of a disastrous early marriage, she's decided she wants to be a housewife. We're simultaneously meant to think she's wrong, and headed for something very bad, and to question our own assumptions about the right decisions for women.
It feels a bit odd for me that both of these examples are decisions where women step away from ambition in favor of family. I do have a hard time coming up with a situation where a man does a similar thing to his own career in favor of his family. Maybe they feel powerful because the balance of those choices still seems to land more heavily on women than men, and it's a reflection of a continuing fear. But whatever the outcomes, disappointing or reinvigorating, I think it's useful to see the simple difficulty of those decisions.
I Know I've Been Cranky Today
But can I say how in love I am with Joshua Wolf Shenk's series on John Lennon and Paul McCartney on Slate? I tweeted it out last week, but I really think it's a must-read, and I desperately hope that Shenk's turning this into a book, be it on creative partnerships in general or John and Paul in particular.
The series is excellent both because it's a tremendous portrait of Lennon and McCartney as men and collaborators for intense Beatles fans and folks who know the band because everyone does. But it also feels, to someone like me, who has VHS tapes of the Beatles Anthology, who snapped a pair of headphones in half when I got my first Beatles tapes so my best friend and I could listen at the same time, who made a meticulously hand-drawn "Make Love Not War" sign with a sketch of John's face in Sgt. Pepper mode that my mother wouldn't let me carry when I dressed as a hippie for Halloween, entirely fresh. The Beatles, and other great artists, are fascinating and complicated enough that it seems you can always learn more about them, and what brought their art out. I drifted away from the Beatles in college, sacrificing time with music I was tremendously familiar with for exploration of a whole new world of sound, but I feel pulled back to them every so often, like gravity, like tides.
Who doesn't want a promise this perfect?
It's not every group where I feel the obsessive need to know how they got it right. But Shenk unlocked a long-dormant hunger with this series. I really hope there's more to come.
The series is excellent both because it's a tremendous portrait of Lennon and McCartney as men and collaborators for intense Beatles fans and folks who know the band because everyone does. But it also feels, to someone like me, who has VHS tapes of the Beatles Anthology, who snapped a pair of headphones in half when I got my first Beatles tapes so my best friend and I could listen at the same time, who made a meticulously hand-drawn "Make Love Not War" sign with a sketch of John's face in Sgt. Pepper mode that my mother wouldn't let me carry when I dressed as a hippie for Halloween, entirely fresh. The Beatles, and other great artists, are fascinating and complicated enough that it seems you can always learn more about them, and what brought their art out. I drifted away from the Beatles in college, sacrificing time with music I was tremendously familiar with for exploration of a whole new world of sound, but I feel pulled back to them every so often, like gravity, like tides.
Who doesn't want a promise this perfect?
It's not every group where I feel the obsessive need to know how they got it right. But Shenk unlocked a long-dormant hunger with this series. I really hope there's more to come.
Tell Me, Dear Readers...
Is it only because I've never seen The Notebook that it's unfathomable to me that Ryan Gosling is a romantic hero? Any guy who did this to me on the bus, and then had the following conversation with me, would make me think he was a seriously screwed up person with boundary issues:
This just feels very hipstery and self-conscious to me, down to Gosling's accent and the deliberately offensive joke Williams tells at the end, it's the scruffier, up-front nastier flip side to (500) Days of Summer.
I know it's only a single scene, but as meet-cutes go, it's not exceptional cute, or even really appealing, and I can't tell if the uncomfortableness of it is intentional or not. I always hesitate to declare, for example, anything so totalizing and idiotic as "a woman would never have written this." But I know that I, as a woman, would have conceptualized this differently: Gosling could have sat across the aisle from her and the moved over into the seat once they started talking, for example. Watching this, I feel like Williams' character is physically and socially boxed in, stuck with Gosling even if he ends up kind of charming by the end. Physical discomfort and inappropriate boundaries have their place in movies, but they should be there intentionally, not as an accident of something the writer and director (in this case, both guys) think is charming.
This just feels very hipstery and self-conscious to me, down to Gosling's accent and the deliberately offensive joke Williams tells at the end, it's the scruffier, up-front nastier flip side to (500) Days of Summer.
I know it's only a single scene, but as meet-cutes go, it's not exceptional cute, or even really appealing, and I can't tell if the uncomfortableness of it is intentional or not. I always hesitate to declare, for example, anything so totalizing and idiotic as "a woman would never have written this." But I know that I, as a woman, would have conceptualized this differently: Gosling could have sat across the aisle from her and the moved over into the seat once they started talking, for example. Watching this, I feel like Williams' character is physically and socially boxed in, stuck with Gosling even if he ends up kind of charming by the end. Physical discomfort and inappropriate boundaries have their place in movies, but they should be there intentionally, not as an accident of something the writer and director (in this case, both guys) think is charming.
A Shonda for the Goyim
I sometimes think both living in Washington and covering both federal agencies and Congress has given me a much lower tolerance for movies about real and fictional Washington figures. There are exceptions, of course, Breach is a tremendous, tremendously smart movie about bureaucracy, sacrifice in the name of career, and sociopathy, and I love it for all of those things. But Casino Jack? This looks kind of awful:
The backslapping corruption of it really doesn't capture the extent to which Abramoff was the logical end point of an era and a set of practices; having a single Wise Native Person around doesn't particularly capture the extent to which Abramoff bilked the tribes he and his associates represented (nor does it make for a reasoned discussion of the debate over gambling on tribal lands); and the movie doesn't look like, at least, it gets into the noxious foreign governments Abramoff represented. Even if he'd never committed crimes, even if a lot of his dreams weren't built on foundations of air, the guy wouldn't have been a gee-whiz paragon. It's a lot more honorable to be working at a (reportedly terrific) kosher pizza place than to represent governments who commit genocide or who provide gross and abusive harbors from labor laws. The tone of this feels unpleasant to me, and I don't think I'll watch it.
The backslapping corruption of it really doesn't capture the extent to which Abramoff was the logical end point of an era and a set of practices; having a single Wise Native Person around doesn't particularly capture the extent to which Abramoff bilked the tribes he and his associates represented (nor does it make for a reasoned discussion of the debate over gambling on tribal lands); and the movie doesn't look like, at least, it gets into the noxious foreign governments Abramoff represented. Even if he'd never committed crimes, even if a lot of his dreams weren't built on foundations of air, the guy wouldn't have been a gee-whiz paragon. It's a lot more honorable to be working at a (reportedly terrific) kosher pizza place than to represent governments who commit genocide or who provide gross and abusive harbors from labor laws. The tone of this feels unpleasant to me, and I don't think I'll watch it.
Yesterday, At The Atlantic
I wrote about why Jennifer Love Hewitt should stay far the hell away from nerd-girl projects.
Oh, Idris Elba
Legacy? Your new movie? The one where you play a crazed Black Ops vet? It looks really, really bad. There's the fact that you're doing a better-looking impression of Crazy Jeffrey Wright in the disastrous 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, at least what I saw of it before walking out of the theater. There's the fact that no serious presidential candidate would let his crazy brother, particularly not a crazy brother who had served in the military, molder in an apartment somewhere: do you know what the opposition research on that would look like? Good lord. And finally, this movie looks singularly humorless without looking exciting. You're good when you're funny, or at least kind of poignant. It would be unfortunate if your turn as Stringer Bell, in which you were both, turned out to be the high point of your career. You're way, way too young for that.
Up In Flames
Of course, it's ridiculously grandiose for Kanye West to shoot a 40-minute narrative music video based on his new album. On the other hand, I kind of think it makes sense at this point in his career. "Heartless," the Hype Williams-directed video is probably the one that's stuck in my consciousness most:
But his videos have always been full of strong, striking images rather than intense narrative coherence, whether it's American-Psycho-goes-African in "Love Lockdown":
or the Japan in turmoil of "Stronger":
or the somewhat-facile dancing chain gang of "Jesus Walks":
Makes sense that he'd want to make something with a genuine story to it. It might have been better to practice within the smaller constraint of a five-minute music video first, and this story of a phoenix come to earth may well be a colossal mess, but I bet it'll look good. Hopefully it'll be more than just attractive flickers for 40 minutes.
From Ian to J.J.
I imagine most people who are excited about Kyle Chandler's casting in J.J. Abrams' new project with Steven Spielberg are excited because they love Friday Night Lights. Me? I'm excited that he's getting back in to science fiction.
I think I've alluded a couple of times to my love for Ian Abrams' Early Edition, but it really was a tremendously formative show for me, the first television program I watched with any kind of regularity. The premise was outrageously stupid: what entity decides that the best way to prevent tragedies from happening is to deliver the Chicago Sun-Times a day early to a depressed divorced stockbroker who must decide on his own whether or not to prevent the day's worst headlines from taking place? And did I forget to mention that a tabby cat and a magic pocket knife are involved? Really, it's kind of embarrassing to think about now.
But Chandler was just ridiculously charming in the role, a real grownup without any super powers who suffers real consequences for his obsession. His personal life suffers (the redheaded reporter who got away certainly influence my repeated home dye jobs in college, if not my choice of careers), he fails sometimes, he's alienated, he doesn't have any superpowers. I also like that he ends up running a bar instead of being a stockbroker. The show was a fairly subtle bit of sci-fi, but I think that's a good thing, at least for this project. Chandler had to do a lot of excusing his odd circumstances in a normal world, and I think that experience will serve him well, especially if Abrams and Spielberg choose to situate something unusual in a familiar universe rather than creating an entirely new one.
The show's a real throwback. It's probably the last television show that will have home newspaper delivery as a prominent plot point, unless it's a period piece. The series had a wacky-friend dynamic that I think Joss Whedon kind of obliterated for good television by bringing out the depth behind the wackiness on his shows, and it also had a welcome attention to both racial and ability-based diversity. I don't know that anything like it will be made again, and I'm not sure that anything like it should be made again. But I do feel rather warmly towards it.
I think I've alluded a couple of times to my love for Ian Abrams' Early Edition, but it really was a tremendously formative show for me, the first television program I watched with any kind of regularity. The premise was outrageously stupid: what entity decides that the best way to prevent tragedies from happening is to deliver the Chicago Sun-Times a day early to a depressed divorced stockbroker who must decide on his own whether or not to prevent the day's worst headlines from taking place? And did I forget to mention that a tabby cat and a magic pocket knife are involved? Really, it's kind of embarrassing to think about now.
But Chandler was just ridiculously charming in the role, a real grownup without any super powers who suffers real consequences for his obsession. His personal life suffers (the redheaded reporter who got away certainly influence my repeated home dye jobs in college, if not my choice of careers), he fails sometimes, he's alienated, he doesn't have any superpowers. I also like that he ends up running a bar instead of being a stockbroker. The show was a fairly subtle bit of sci-fi, but I think that's a good thing, at least for this project. Chandler had to do a lot of excusing his odd circumstances in a normal world, and I think that experience will serve him well, especially if Abrams and Spielberg choose to situate something unusual in a familiar universe rather than creating an entirely new one.
The show's a real throwback. It's probably the last television show that will have home newspaper delivery as a prominent plot point, unless it's a period piece. The series had a wacky-friend dynamic that I think Joss Whedon kind of obliterated for good television by bringing out the depth behind the wackiness on his shows, and it also had a welcome attention to both racial and ability-based diversity. I don't know that anything like it will be made again, and I'm not sure that anything like it should be made again. But I do feel rather warmly towards it.
Last Week, At The Atlantic
I wrote about why, while sexual tension may be tiresome on television and in movies, it actually makes sense in proportion to other motivations.
Perdido Street Station Book Club Part II: The Streets of New Crobuzon
For those of you just joining us, the first entry and discussion in this series appear here. Max Gladstone, who had a provocative comment about craft and the knowledge authors provide their readers, has continued that thought here. The rules are the same: spoilers below the jump, but please don't try to spoil beyond Part II for those who haven't gotten that far yet. I finished the book this weekend because I got curious and anxious and raced through it, but I'll be abiding by those same rules in my writing.
In college, I majored in something slightly ridiculous called the Special Program in the Humanities. I mention this because I think it explains a great deal of the way I approach art and criticism. Essentially, it meant majoring in great books, but in practice, it meant mashing up philosophy, art, literature, history, and religion. I took classes on the philosophy of architecture (Karsten Harries, if you're out there somewhere, you were a huge influence), the art, literature, film and music of the Spanish Civil War, Christian mysticism, medieval Spain, the aesthetics of resistance, writing classes. I wrote my senior thesis on the aesthetics of the Devil in Athanasius's Life of St. Anthony and Milton's Paradise Lost with particular attention to the political strategies of both men in the Arian heresy and the English Civil War and Restoration. All of which is to say I am in love with art that brews a powerful liquor of religion, politics, art, anger and joy.
And so in some ways, this section felt written especially for me. In its narration of New Crobuzon's religions and a few particular subcultures, Part II is both an artistic statement and an argument for why we should care about why the city survives, much less thrives.
For me, much of that argument comes in the form of Mieville's rather charming explication of New Crobuzon's religions. It's fascinating, as Chris pointed out in a comment on the first post, that Mieville is a Trotskyite and a historical materialist, but that his main character, Isaac, the man who believes that "flight was a secular, profane thing: simply a passage from one part of New Crobuzon to another. He was cheered by this. He was a scientist, not a mystic," that flight "was not an escape to a better place" (that language could easily be metaphysical or literal) is beguiled by the idea of at least one religion:
Palgolak was a god of knowledge. He was depicted either as a fat, squat human reading in a bath, or a svelte vodyanoi doing the same, or mystically, both at once. His congregation were human and vodyanoi in roughly equal proportions. He was an amiable, pleasant deity, a sage whose existence was entirely devoted to the collection, categorization, and dissemination of information. Isaac worshipped no gods...Even he, though, had a soft spot for Palgolak. He rather hoped the fat bastard did exist, in some form or other. Isaac liked the idea of an inter-aspectual entity so enamored with knowledge that it just roamed from realm to realm in a bath, murmuring with interest at everything it came across.I also think the fundamental mysticism of the city, however unmystical both Isaac and Mieville are, is fascinating. The very first sentence of this section, "New Crobuzon was a city unconvinced by gravity," suggests simultaneously its irrationality and its potential. Mieville tells us that "the architect had been incarcerated, quite mad, seven years after Perdido Street was completed. He was a heretic, it was said, intent on building his own god." But is he mad for believing there's something otherworldly about his creation? Or are the city authorities?
These glimpses are only part of what we get in this chapter: the world's expanding socially, too. Most importantly for me, at least, we get to meet Derkhan Blueday, a radical journalist and art critic who is friends with both Isaac and his khepri artist lover Lin. I don't actually think that Mieville's description of a bohemian artist community and radical movement are particularly insightful or creative, or that his decision to situate his characters among them is a novel choice. If you're going to give your readers educated outcasts as your main characters, or educated outcasts to hang out with and rebel via, artists and journalists are relatively logical choices in any large urban society setting. And it's not that exceptional to have them do something sort of ironically, like go to a carnival and visit a freakshow (these folks are protohipsters, just enhanced with magic).
But the reason Derkhan works for me and appeals to me is that I think she's an effective surrogate for Mieville's artistic project, and in a way, a more articulate speaker for the things he's attempting than the book itself always is. This passage, in which Derkhan and Isaac discover that the garuda they thought they were going to find in the freakshow is actually a man magically and scientifically crafted into an eagle, feathers inserted under his skin and rotting wings inextricably fused to his back through a process called Remaking, which is a major element of the novel, stood out to me in particular:
"I'm an art critic, Isaac," Derkhan said eventually. "Remaking's art, you know. Sick art. The imagination it takes. I've seen Remade crawling under the weight of huge spiral iron shells they retreat into at night. Snail-women. I've seen them with big squid tentacles where their arms were, standing in river mud, plunging their suckers underwater to pull out fish. And as for the ones made for the gladiatorial shows...! Not that they admit what that's what they're for. Remaking's creativity gone bad. Gone rotten. Gone rancid. I remember you once asked me if it was hard to balance writing about art and writing for RR." She turned to look at him as they paced through the fair. "It's the same thing, Isaac. Art's something you choose to make...it's a bringing together of...everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person. Even with Remaking a germ of that survives. That's why the same people who despise the Remade are in awe of Jack Half-a-Prayer, whether or not he exists. I don't want to live in a city where Remaking is the highest art."
I think what I struggle with in Perdido Street Station so far is the question of whether or not I want the city to live in its current form, or even in a slightly improved one. Mieville does so much to establish its inherent filth and cruelty that it's hard to wonder if perhaps the city should just be scorched clean, if Isaac and Lin and Derkhan should just go chase after the Cymek Library and leave everything else to burn. Part of what I think is fascinating about Mieville's radicals is that the source of New Crobuzon's immense sins, be they ghettoization of minorities, horrific crime rates, Remaking, political repression, is that we have very little idea of the source of those ills or the political alternatives to them. Politics are names and jumbles. Remaking is used for punishment, and for crime, but it couldn't be carried out without the people who invented it in the first place. Are there simply institutions or individuals that are rotting, or like the fake garuda's wings, is the spread of putrefaction and death to the rest of the body inevitable? Is justice possible? Should the city live? Mieville leaves me entirely uncertain.
I've accepted that this book is just part of a larger project, and that I'm not going to come to know New Crobuzon as well as I got to know the whole of Westeros in George R.R. Martin's novels. But I do wonder if, stylistically, Mieville could have given us more by giving us less. If he stepped back from the emphatic but not informative torrent of description that characterizes so much of the book and given us leaner first-person narratives from a greater number of perspectives, we might have moved around more of the city more quickly and to greater effect. And I might have known less about how Mieville wants me to feel about the city, and more about how I do feel about it.
Braids
I am not sure this is such a great move for Clint Eastwood:
Or for Matt Damon either, but one has more of his career left ahead of him than the other. But more importantly, I really wish this trend in unrelated-narratives-that-make-a-single-point movies would come to an end. They're like reading a series of short stories in context, and I've never really liked short fiction all that much. And they sacrifice everything to whatever the point is, and it's usually not exceptionally compelling.
Or for Matt Damon either, but one has more of his career left ahead of him than the other. But more importantly, I really wish this trend in unrelated-narratives-that-make-a-single-point movies would come to an end. They're like reading a series of short stories in context, and I've never really liked short fiction all that much. And they sacrifice everything to whatever the point is, and it's usually not exceptionally compelling.
Jihads and Miniskirts
I think the idea of a True Lies spin-off, or remake, or whatever, is silly, an attempt to coopt the fad for married couples who beat people up and do espionage together, and is unfeasible, given the age and prior commitments of the participants (though a Red-style reunion of Curtis and Schwarzenegger would be fairly badass). That said, I think it's worth appreciating how simultaneously hilarious and messed-up True Lies is.
First, the two main characters' marriage is fascinating. Sure it's incredibly wrong that Schwarzenegger's character sets up Jamie Lee Curtis' to pose as a hooker, no matter how sexy the result is:
On the other hand, he's acutely aware of what he's doing to her, so distraught when he upsets her that he almost walks in front of a large moving vehicle and has to be rescued by Tim Arnold. He's shy, and kind of overwhelmed by his wife's sexy side. Aside from the creeptastic one-off manipulation and the fact that he's insanely overworked, Schwarzenegger seems like an eminently decent husband.
Then, there's the actual plot of the movie, which involves a hilariously inept scheme by a bunch of jihadists to cause a great deal of trouble. The flick's a remake of a 1991 French comedy, so I can only assume James Cameron or someone else involved assumed that on the 1994 release, decided that the Crimson Jihad would feel timely in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The villains are a farce, especially a jihadi babe in revealing turquoise, that reveal precisely no understanding of the threat America would eventually face from actual and effective Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. It's not that kind of movie, of course, but it's still a bit odd to watch, that moment when they could be a joke in a sunny, sexy family action-comedy. I wonder who the Taskers would go after this time.
First, the two main characters' marriage is fascinating. Sure it's incredibly wrong that Schwarzenegger's character sets up Jamie Lee Curtis' to pose as a hooker, no matter how sexy the result is:
On the other hand, he's acutely aware of what he's doing to her, so distraught when he upsets her that he almost walks in front of a large moving vehicle and has to be rescued by Tim Arnold. He's shy, and kind of overwhelmed by his wife's sexy side. Aside from the creeptastic one-off manipulation and the fact that he's insanely overworked, Schwarzenegger seems like an eminently decent husband.
Then, there's the actual plot of the movie, which involves a hilariously inept scheme by a bunch of jihadists to cause a great deal of trouble. The flick's a remake of a 1991 French comedy, so I can only assume James Cameron or someone else involved assumed that on the 1994 release, decided that the Crimson Jihad would feel timely in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The villains are a farce, especially a jihadi babe in revealing turquoise, that reveal precisely no understanding of the threat America would eventually face from actual and effective Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. It's not that kind of movie, of course, but it's still a bit odd to watch, that moment when they could be a joke in a sunny, sexy family action-comedy. I wonder who the Taskers would go after this time.
Sunk
Can we grapple briefly with how insane Battleship is, on every level? Basically, people decided to make a toy movie, but unlike with Transformers, the toys weren't already aliens, so they threw in some aliens, and a bunch of hot people with no particularly discernible acting skills including Rihanna and Brooklyn Decker, and hot people with discernible acting skills like Alexander Skarsgard and Taylor Kitsch (when am I getting my Rogue and Gambit movie, people who are greenlighting Every Damn Superhero Thing In Existence) and now Liam Neeson's signed on to this nonsense? And Tom Arnold was already? I swear to God, Emma Thompson could sign on to this thing and I would not be surprised. It's like everyone in Hollywood decided "Hey, could be fun!" and the folks making the damn thing thought "Well, we have a big boat." And Peter Berg made Hancock, which I actually really liked, which only makes me more confused about this whole situation. I think the solution is probably surrender and a bourbon, but at the moment, my headache over all of this is considerable.
It's A Trap
I think it says a lot about the extent to which our popular culture is defined by fandom that ESPN can cut this commercial about the Ole Miss campaign to sign up Admiral Ackbar as its mascot and slyly make the humorless cheerleaders and preppies who oppose the change as the villains:
Fandoms have their own methods of normalization and regulation, of course. But as a wedge into the culture of athletic worship, as a kind of alchemy to transmogrify sports culture into something that more people can participate and have a stake in, this rates as relatively novel, and if this video is evidence, actually pretty successful even if the formal effort failed. The fact that this campaign got as far as it did is evidence, too, that no institution is as monolithic as it seems. Rebellions, nerds, and creative thinkers are en masse everywhere. Fandom just gives us a common language.
Fandoms have their own methods of normalization and regulation, of course. But as a wedge into the culture of athletic worship, as a kind of alchemy to transmogrify sports culture into something that more people can participate and have a stake in, this rates as relatively novel, and if this video is evidence, actually pretty successful even if the formal effort failed. The fact that this campaign got as far as it did is evidence, too, that no institution is as monolithic as it seems. Rebellions, nerds, and creative thinkers are en masse everywhere. Fandom just gives us a common language.
Lost and Found
I really feel annoyed by how bad I think Country Strong is going to be:
It's not that Gwyneth Paltrow can't sing, she totally can (though I'm much less certain about Leighton Meester's actual abilities). I think it's more that this story is annoying. We're supposed to feel sorry for Paltrow's character because she had this incredible hunger to be famous and loved once and threw it away on alcohol? I do think alcoholism and recovery can be compelling, but we need more of a core reason to care, other than she was hot and making her manager husband rich and now she's dysfunctional. Maybe corporatized country doesn't get this (and this feels like a story of very modern country, Loretta Lynn would never stand for this kind of empty bellyaching). But I don't know that that's inherently true. Toby Keith throws out better narratives than this every time he makes a music video (even if his features are disastrous)—I certainly think there's a fun sexual liberated preacher's daughter movie to be made out of "God Love Her," for example. But there has to be some rationale other than getting Gwyn's character back on stage. Otherwise she's just Lindsay Lohan with an ineffective twang.
It's not that Gwyneth Paltrow can't sing, she totally can (though I'm much less certain about Leighton Meester's actual abilities). I think it's more that this story is annoying. We're supposed to feel sorry for Paltrow's character because she had this incredible hunger to be famous and loved once and threw it away on alcohol? I do think alcoholism and recovery can be compelling, but we need more of a core reason to care, other than she was hot and making her manager husband rich and now she's dysfunctional. Maybe corporatized country doesn't get this (and this feels like a story of very modern country, Loretta Lynn would never stand for this kind of empty bellyaching). But I don't know that that's inherently true. Toby Keith throws out better narratives than this every time he makes a music video (even if his features are disastrous)—I certainly think there's a fun sexual liberated preacher's daughter movie to be made out of "God Love Her," for example. But there has to be some rationale other than getting Gwyn's character back on stage. Otherwise she's just Lindsay Lohan with an ineffective twang.
Yesterday, At The Atlantic
A million years ago, I promised you guys I'd check out Da Vinci's Inquest. Now, I have. More to come, obviously.
Drip, Drip, Drip
I feel like I've been posting fragments, or versions of "Lookin' For Ya" for almost as long as I've been blogging here. And now we've got another one! There are very few songs I'd be interested in following as much as I've followed this one, but I think that's probably mostly an effect of the fact that it hasn't been officially released as a single because of the legal problems around OutKast rights. I also think it's because we usually get definitive singles releases. They both feel like the statement of what the artist is satisfied with, and because they're what we hear the most, they get established in our brains as the official version. This song as been through neither the validation process nor the repetition process, so wisps of it hold all the versions together when I hear it, and keep grabbing at me when I think about it, even if it hasn't settled on me as an established and coherent idea yet.
Hey, More Fast Zombies!
This time, getting sliced and diced by Paul Bettany in yet another one of his inexplicably dumb and ugly-looking action roles, accompanied by Maggie Q, Stephen Moyer, and other worthies:
The only thing that I think is kind of promising about this is that with his Mysterious Man With A Hat role here Karl Urban seems to be spending some time expanding the part of his skill set that involves playing folks who are either ambiguous or outright bad guys. He's the villain in Red, too. A guy that absurdly dreamy (him as scruffy Bones at the beginning of Star Trek is delightful) could skate on it forever, but it's probably better for him to scrupulously avoid developing too much of a track record, lest he become the Gerard Butler of the Month or something.
I'm not sure yet whether I'm super-interested in getting drawn into the Are They Fast Zombies? Or Ugly Vamps? debate, though I think this is an interesting explication of the subject. But certainly, some hybrid appears like it's going to be with us for a while. I don't think I care about terminology, as long as they wipe the Cullen clan off the cultural map.
From Crackle:
The only thing that I think is kind of promising about this is that with his Mysterious Man With A Hat role here Karl Urban seems to be spending some time expanding the part of his skill set that involves playing folks who are either ambiguous or outright bad guys. He's the villain in Red, too. A guy that absurdly dreamy (him as scruffy Bones at the beginning of Star Trek is delightful) could skate on it forever, but it's probably better for him to scrupulously avoid developing too much of a track record, lest he become the Gerard Butler of the Month or something.
I'm not sure yet whether I'm super-interested in getting drawn into the Are They Fast Zombies? Or Ugly Vamps? debate, though I think this is an interesting explication of the subject. But certainly, some hybrid appears like it's going to be with us for a while. I don't think I care about terminology, as long as they wipe the Cullen clan off the cultural map.
Among The Stars
So, apparently folks are going after Natalie Portman for a role about a woman on her own in space. I can see that, but isn't there a more obvious candidate with an amazing extant audition tape?
This is no slam on Portman, who I like, even if I think she's made some truly disastrous choices and turned in some inexplicable performances (in the cosmic scale, I'm not sure which is worse: foisting the manic pixie dream girl on us, or Padme). I would just like to see Hendricks make it to the big screen in something where she isn't killed off early on for the purposes of getting Katherine Heigel and Josh Duhamel together. They're not worth it. And Hendricks can pick up and carry anything she wants.
This is no slam on Portman, who I like, even if I think she's made some truly disastrous choices and turned in some inexplicable performances (in the cosmic scale, I'm not sure which is worse: foisting the manic pixie dream girl on us, or Padme). I would just like to see Hendricks make it to the big screen in something where she isn't killed off early on for the purposes of getting Katherine Heigel and Josh Duhamel together. They're not worth it. And Hendricks can pick up and carry anything she wants.
Yesterday, At The Atlantic
I wrote about why Noomi Rapace may actually be the winner in the American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Girls With Wings
Girls Gone Avian seems to be a theme this fall. First, we got the trailer for The Black Swan, which I think accurately communicates how completely and utterly horrifying it would be to start growing wings:
Next up? The decidedly less impressive-looking Passion Play, because there's nothing creepy about Mickey Rourke going to see Megan Fox at a peep show and falling in love with her, right?
I do think it's fascinating that in both of these movies, wings stand for something other than flight, or freedom. In the case of The Black Swan, they're a manifestation—or if they aren't actually real, though it sure looks like they are—of madness. In Passion Play, I'm guessing on limited information that they stand for purity. There's something odd, and more than a little regressive, about this vestigality. What's happened to soaring?
Next up? The decidedly less impressive-looking Passion Play, because there's nothing creepy about Mickey Rourke going to see Megan Fox at a peep show and falling in love with her, right?
I do think it's fascinating that in both of these movies, wings stand for something other than flight, or freedom. In the case of The Black Swan, they're a manifestation—or if they aren't actually real, though it sure looks like they are—of madness. In Passion Play, I'm guessing on limited information that they stand for purity. There's something odd, and more than a little regressive, about this vestigality. What's happened to soaring?
Into the Mountains
I don't actually believe, given the personnel problems with The Hobbit, and Peter Jackson's other commitments, that the movie's really going to be made any time soon. But that said, if it does happen, Martin Freeman would be a dandy Bilbo Baggins. I didn't adore the movie adaptation of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, both because I think it's a hard book to adapt—too much colliding at once, and without the time to unfold that Doctor Who has—and in part because my favorite book in the series is actually So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish. But Freeman has a nice, relaxed air to him, and a round face that lends itself to a sense of wonder. In Love, Actually he made the act of asking a woman out to coffee seem like an adventure (which, of course, it is). The question for me is whether he's got the drive and curiosity to show the desire for a quest, or to want something enough to trick someone to get it. I'd certainly like to see him get a chance to try.
It's All In Where You Stand
It probably should make me respect him less, but knowing that Cee-Lo Green wrote this kind of makes me see the song in a different light, as part of his general celebration of freakiness:
Especially since he apparently gives royalty checks from it to his grandmother.
Especially since he apparently gives royalty checks from it to his grandmother.
Yesterday, At The Atlantic
I reflect on the fact that The 40-Year-Old Virgin is five years old and I am ancient.
Wholesome
I did warn you guys today was going to be girly. But as the last party of my nostalgic self-indulgence this weekend, I watched The Babysitters Club movie for the first time since it came out in theaters fifteen years ago. It's got this weird flash of temporary nineties starletism: Larisa Oleynik and Rachel Leigh Cook are two of the main characters, on the cusp of their brief breakouts as sex symbols and comediennes. Pretty much everyone else in the movie never even got that far. But really the most striking thing about the movie is how insanely wholesome it is.
Movies these days seem aimed at very young children or at girls who are solidly in their teenage years. The Babysitters Club is aimed squarely in between those periods. There's one chaste kiss, and a scene where two of the girls are refused admission to a teen club in New York because they're not sixteen. The girls are young enough to call their fathers "Daddy" and to find a closed amusement park scary, but they're also grown-up enough to run a pretty good business, and to navigate early conflicts with adults on mutually agreed-upon terms. It's a world where family, both biological and chosen, matters, where girls are unspoiled enough to expect that guys will behave decently, and the boys are nervous too. But the characters are old enough to understand that not everything will always be all right—fathers can abandon their daughters, irresponsibility carries a price. There's no pressure to sleep with anyone, in fact, no implication that such a thing is even possible. It's a space that more girls, and more people period, should be allowed to occupy for a longer time. There's no shame in taking a little time to grow up.
Movies these days seem aimed at very young children or at girls who are solidly in their teenage years. The Babysitters Club is aimed squarely in between those periods. There's one chaste kiss, and a scene where two of the girls are refused admission to a teen club in New York because they're not sixteen. The girls are young enough to call their fathers "Daddy" and to find a closed amusement park scary, but they're also grown-up enough to run a pretty good business, and to navigate early conflicts with adults on mutually agreed-upon terms. It's a world where family, both biological and chosen, matters, where girls are unspoiled enough to expect that guys will behave decently, and the boys are nervous too. But the characters are old enough to understand that not everything will always be all right—fathers can abandon their daughters, irresponsibility carries a price. There's no pressure to sleep with anyone, in fact, no implication that such a thing is even possible. It's a space that more girls, and more people period, should be allowed to occupy for a longer time. There's no shame in taking a little time to grow up.
A Little Respect
Stephen Holden, in his review of Heartbreaker, a French movie with Dirty Dancing as a touchstone and plot point, complains that "the disconnect between Juliette’s [the main character, who likes Dirty Dancing] aristocratic airs and her prosaic tastes taints your fantasy that she is something special." To which I say, the hell with all that.
Dirty Dancing has many virtues. It has good class politics. It is pro-choice. It features a number of fine performances. But perhaps most importantly, in contrast to the vast majority, it's not a movie about reconstructing the heroine's damaged self-esteem. Frances actually has a relatively iron-clad sense of right and wrong, and of her own sexuality and worth. She arranges Penny's abortion, insists her father help out when the operation goes wrong, seduces Johnny, learns to dance and doesn't mind looking goofy while she's doing it. At the end of the movie, Johnny's the one whose changed, declaring Frances "taught me that there are people willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them; somebody who's taught me about the kind of person I wanna be." When he tells her father, "no one puts Baby in a corner," it isn't a line meant to make Frances feel good about herself, though it certainly has that secondary effect: it's actually a corrective to her father's misconceptions.
I actually don't think liking a romance that's grounded in those principles is prosaic. And I actually don't think that having some prosaic tastes makes someone unspecial. Everyone likes the Beatles, at least to some extent, but that doesn't make you unspecial for liking them. Women are allowed to forge a compromise between being manic pixie dream girls and entirely conventional romcom heroines. You can like Patrick Swayze and the Shins without falling over into one vale or another.
Dirty Dancing has many virtues. It has good class politics. It is pro-choice. It features a number of fine performances. But perhaps most importantly, in contrast to the vast majority, it's not a movie about reconstructing the heroine's damaged self-esteem. Frances actually has a relatively iron-clad sense of right and wrong, and of her own sexuality and worth. She arranges Penny's abortion, insists her father help out when the operation goes wrong, seduces Johnny, learns to dance and doesn't mind looking goofy while she's doing it. At the end of the movie, Johnny's the one whose changed, declaring Frances "taught me that there are people willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them; somebody who's taught me about the kind of person I wanna be." When he tells her father, "no one puts Baby in a corner," it isn't a line meant to make Frances feel good about herself, though it certainly has that secondary effect: it's actually a corrective to her father's misconceptions.
I actually don't think liking a romance that's grounded in those principles is prosaic. And I actually don't think that having some prosaic tastes makes someone unspecial. Everyone likes the Beatles, at least to some extent, but that doesn't make you unspecial for liking them. Women are allowed to forge a compromise between being manic pixie dream girls and entirely conventional romcom heroines. You can like Patrick Swayze and the Shins without falling over into one vale or another.
A Splash of Pink
So, I watched Legally Blonde 2 again over the weekend. It's not a good movie. The jokes are sillier, the sorority set-up is less counterintuitive and smartly funny, Paulette is a one-off rather than an actual character who deserves fulfillment and who is a means for Elle to think about other people. But it does have the virtue of being a movie about a woman whose fiancee compromises for her career. And it's actually a surprisingly accurate portrait of Washington, DC in spite of all the nonsense.
For all the pink hyper-adorability of the Reese Witherspoon vehicle, the movie actually has a major plot point a fairly obscure but real legislative procedure. The idea that you win votes on a discharge petition through makeovers and finding fellow dog people is ludicrous, of course, but the fact that the filmmakers actually found a real procedure instead of making up some additional nonsense makes me think more highly of them.
And while I realize it's absurdly stereotypical to say this, I think the movie does kind of get the dowdiness of Washington right. It's not that folks are ugly or unkempt, as of course they must be in the movie to activate the required makeover subplot. We've got The Hill's list of 50 Most Beautiful People after all! But the sequence early in the movie when Elle, in a pink Jackie O suit and pillbox hot, marches up the steps of a Congressional office building, parting a sea of black and navy suits like a chic little Moses, is a perfect illustration of the self-imposed restrictions official Washington so often places on itself.
Most movies about Washington avoid those lighter truths in favor of more serious ones, arguing that politicians are corrupt, or dishonest, or that conspiracy is inevitable. But truths of style and presentation and self-censorship matter, even if in a different way or to a different depth than truths about process. Deny who you are, or who you really want to be, and you often end up making bad decisions, or trapping yourself.
For all the pink hyper-adorability of the Reese Witherspoon vehicle, the movie actually has a major plot point a fairly obscure but real legislative procedure. The idea that you win votes on a discharge petition through makeovers and finding fellow dog people is ludicrous, of course, but the fact that the filmmakers actually found a real procedure instead of making up some additional nonsense makes me think more highly of them.
And while I realize it's absurdly stereotypical to say this, I think the movie does kind of get the dowdiness of Washington right. It's not that folks are ugly or unkempt, as of course they must be in the movie to activate the required makeover subplot. We've got The Hill's list of 50 Most Beautiful People after all! But the sequence early in the movie when Elle, in a pink Jackie O suit and pillbox hot, marches up the steps of a Congressional office building, parting a sea of black and navy suits like a chic little Moses, is a perfect illustration of the self-imposed restrictions official Washington so often places on itself.
Most movies about Washington avoid those lighter truths in favor of more serious ones, arguing that politicians are corrupt, or dishonest, or that conspiracy is inevitable. But truths of style and presentation and self-censorship matter, even if in a different way or to a different depth than truths about process. Deny who you are, or who you really want to be, and you often end up making bad decisions, or trapping yourself.
This One's For the Girls
Some weekends, a lady needs a little TLC: large doses of science fiction novels, a mani-pedi, movies of my childhood purchased at the Blockbuster down the street that's going out of business. So if today is a little girlier than usual, that's why, and fellas, bear with me (if you're gay, this post has treats for you too, if not, I promise my analysis is just as good when applied to Reese Witherspoon rom-coms as it is to science-fiction epics).
Amber recently had a post pointing me to Flick Filosopher, which I hadn't read previously but am now, and in particular to this set of posts, intelligent eye-candy for girls who like to look. In popular culture, there's so often something off, or exaggerated, about women who look upon men with purely sexual or aesthetic desire. They're cougars—predatory older ladies acting out roles that are fine for men to play, because it's what guys do, because young girls are luscious—sex fiends; or sexually starved women like Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, devouring with their eyes because they're unpracticed, unsure, or afraid to act. Playgirl's much more for gay men than it is for women, and there is no equivalent of Maxim aimed at a heterosexual female audience, which may be a good thing given how dumb both the staging of the pictorials and the words are. Even mainstream women's magazines tend to fetishize other women's bodies as a means of comparison, rather than giving us male bodies arranged as a means of pleasure.
But men are lovely, delightful, varied. And as female viewers, we don't always have to love them for their minds, or the quality of their performances, although those things always help.
Amber recently had a post pointing me to Flick Filosopher, which I hadn't read previously but am now, and in particular to this set of posts, intelligent eye-candy for girls who like to look. In popular culture, there's so often something off, or exaggerated, about women who look upon men with purely sexual or aesthetic desire. They're cougars—predatory older ladies acting out roles that are fine for men to play, because it's what guys do, because young girls are luscious—sex fiends; or sexually starved women like Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, devouring with their eyes because they're unpracticed, unsure, or afraid to act. Playgirl's much more for gay men than it is for women, and there is no equivalent of Maxim aimed at a heterosexual female audience, which may be a good thing given how dumb both the staging of the pictorials and the words are. Even mainstream women's magazines tend to fetishize other women's bodies as a means of comparison, rather than giving us male bodies arranged as a means of pleasure.
But men are lovely, delightful, varied. And as female viewers, we don't always have to love them for their minds, or the quality of their performances, although those things always help.
Perdido Street Station Book Club Part I: Of Garudas and Universe-Building
Image by me, of a real Garuda from an Angkor temple.
Discussion-setter for the first five chapters and first-part interstitials is below the jump, with spoilers galore. If you don't want spoilers, don't read below the jump or comments. But folks who have read the whole book before, please try not to spoil beyond Part I for me, or for any of the other newbies. Vague encouragement and hinting is fine. Spoilers of the magnitude of say, Jon Snow's true parentage, are not. Cool? Alright, folks, let's do this thing.
Let me start out by saying how much I'm enjoying this book and how pleased I am that we chose it. I confess some initial ambivalence in the beginning interstitial. Mr. Mieville sure enjoys his description, but at the beginning, I felt lost, rather than oriented by it. Passages like this one: "They surround me. They are growing. They are taller and fatter and noisier, their roofs are slate, their walls are strong brick," are entirely impressionistic. I admit to almost putting down the book during that introductory passage and coming back to it later just because I was annoyed, lost in the polluted fog of Mieville's linguistic and narrative choices. At least when we sail up the Thames in Sweeney Todd into London's corrupt heart we know who is talking to us. To be totally fair, it becomes clear quickly that the speaker is Yagharek, the garuda stripped violently of his wings, and his speech is shaped by the things he read that shaped his understanding of the possibilities and limitations of our speech—and what he speaks about is shaped by some as-yet-unexplained terrible trauma and punishment.
But I am not a lady to be dissuaded by a couple of pages that make me grumpy, and I will say that I'm glad that I forged ahead. To go from the docks to the basket that flies through the sky to Lin's apartment, taking us through the market and into her life with Isaac and their lives apart is a nice way to guide us through a neighborhood and its commerce. And the book, sending Isaac and Lin out into their separate New Crobuzons, does sketch in parts of the city fairly deftly and precisely. We know that not only does New Crobuzon have a major university, but that that its academic politics look rather like our own—publish or perish apparently stretches across time and dimensions. We know that the Khepri live in a ghetto with a sacred space that's closely connected to their artistic traditions. And we know that trains criss-cross to form the heart of the city.
What I don't know yet, and the thing that's both irritating and got me interested, is what the rules of this universe are. I've written in more detail for The Atlantic on the balance I tend to prefer authors strike in setting up their universes and presenting it to readers, so I won't recap here at great length. But I like to know how a universe works—whether magic, science, or the divine or all three are actively at work in the world where the characters are operating; what basic values are important (guest right, protecting women, respect for the clergy, etc.). I don't particularly need to know who is right and who is wrong or who is good or who is bad, though it's not dispositive if the author does make it clear—I do enjoy figuring out sides for myself.
And I don't feel I've got that in Perdido Street Station. I feel I know the following things about New Crobuzon: the city has a university; that university employes and supports the research of scientists, though what science means is not entirely clear to me yet—it's entirely possible that Isaac is part necromancer; the city includes populations of multiple species, and exists in a world with multiple sentiences, and the species have a certain amount of contact, both professional and personal, but they are not fully integrated; a significant form of official punishment is to graft part of a human body to machine or animal parts, or to perform significant and unnecessary surgery, like removing someone's mouth, but such alterations may happen unofficially; that technology has advanced enough to have machines run by boilers, but that it's not clear if electricity or sophisticated computers exist; the city has a substantial criminal class; among the things at least certain parts of society values is art, but that artists live on the margins of society and polite behavior much as they do in our own; that there is a significant train system; a significant part of the commerce economy takes place in markets rather than in institutions like supermarkets; that New Crobuzon is near both desert and a significant body of water. It's a lot of information, but I'm still searching for the frame that orients it, the corner pieces of the puzzle that tells me the desert is here, the ocean is here, and sifts the neighborhoods and powers of the city around Perdido Street Station.
I think my worry is that I want to get lost in some of the fragments we get, and to spend more time in them than the original story. Like this one:
And Yagharek told Isaac, to Isaac's growing amazement, of the Cymek library. The great librarian clan who strapped the thousands of volumes into their trunks and carried them between them as they flew, following the food and the water in the perpetual, punishing Cymek summer. The enormous tent village that sprung up where they landed, and the garuda bands that congregated on the vast, sprawling centre of learning whenever it was in their reach.Fascinating.
Not that everything else going around us isn't. How do you regrow the wings that have been sawed off of someone? How do you sculpt the whole world in one being? And what I have to figure out for myself: what does any of it matter?
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