Kow-Tow to Low Brow

I started How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - Toby Young's addition to the memoir bandwagon of our reality-TV, become-the-Idol generation - on the T amid sleet and slush. He once developed The Modern Review as commentary by smart writers on dumb culture... basically, blogging on paper for $5.75 a month.

For fun, assume I'm both smart and a writer (and we all know what "assume" means; that joke died when Caesar did). As the world turns, what makes the days of our lives bold and beautiful?

Obama-flavored ice cream

Okay, maybe "flavored" isn't accurate parlance; he's more of an inspiration,

to the American people, yes, but also to Ben and Jerry's. The puzzlement of this ice

cream lies within its product description: "Amber waves of buttery ice cream with roasted non-partisan pecans".

What Obama-supporter will buy a tub of purple mountains majesty because it's non-partisan?

(Did the pecans harvested have a say in their political affiliation?) If we need Yes Pecan! ice cream in our freezer, it's because we're riding the Hussein train all the way. It is fascinating how much you can merchandise Obama-rama. I dare say Clinton (Bill or Hill) couldn't

have made a killing on ice cream. It would have been funny to slap Bush the First's mugshot on bags of frozen broccoli, though. Bush supporters, all ten of them left, won't hanker to buy Yes Pecan! Cheney looks too miserly for ice cream -- how about a three-decker sauerkraut-and-toadstool sandwich? But, you know, it's high time the Democrats were recognized. Sarah Palin's been in the biz for years. B&J already sells Moose Tracks.

As a divided culture, though, we can bond over several things with Yes Pecan! The thought that even if George W. (our first president, I mean) received his own flavor, how would his false teeth handle it? And, despite our differences, we all moan and groan together over terrible puns. Other potential ice creams included Obamana Split and Barackademia Nut, which is delicious just to say. Imagine you go through a messy break-up, furniture tossed out of windows, restraining orders filed, and you unearth your carton of B&J's with your pals to get you through the night. Never would you feel so inspired. Go to the store, buy yourself another, let those amber waves of grain wash over your tongue. The check-out lady says, "here's your change," but you clutch your half-gallon and think, No. I've already got some.

Bad Will Hunting

Matt Damon has called James Bond "an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people." Imperialist, because he flies around the world and charms everyone he meets, overtaking villains and wooing women with his wiles? Sociopath, because he gets his rocks off from ultra-violence? I hope poor Mr. Damon didn't have to sit through Kill Bill; he might have had nightmares about the brides hiding in his closet with machetes. He beds women? You don't say; well, I guess that makes him... a heterosexual. Apparently an alcoholic, too. I sure hope he doesn't drive during all of this swilling and killing. What message would that send to kids with learner's permits?

James Bond hasn't been the same since PC culture came into stride. We still want the eye candy, the shiny gadgets, the winner-take-charge attitude, but somehow we feel guilty for it, as if it's wrong and yet so right to enjoy James Bond. When the economy's down and wars abroad are raging and people are still fighting for their civil rights, I say, lighten up Matt Damon! As for your claim that "they could never make a Bond film like any of the Bourne films," um, they did. It was called Quantum of Solace. Bond films, like it or not, gave the culture what it wanted and allowed more high-thrills espionage tales like Jason Bourne to come to the screen. And they're based on Robert Ludlum novels -- you're in no position to be a snob.

You Ain't Never Caught a Rabbit

"There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't."

John Updike passed away today, at 76. After devoting a year of my undergraduate life partially to Rabbit, Run, I feel I should give him a few lines on my blog. Neither my advisor nor the female Faulkner scholar on my honors committee could stomach his writing. As the latter said, "His prose is glorious, but his ideas about women..." Recently he spoke about the bliss of misogyny in an interview with New York. 

His quote above captures what was so elusive and stirring about this man. Even when he was older and wiser than most highly regarded American authors, a demigod towering over the masses who just couldn't write such beautiful sentences as he did, you got the feeling he still wrote like a young man. He grew and saw America grow with him; his character Rabbit sank to lower depths but also found more meaning in spirituality as the years went on. Yet Updike never uncovered the answer to his place in the universe or gave in and went feminist on us. He stayed the course, writing with the vigor of a youngster out to impress, but with the knowledge that greatness may be ephemeral it sure doesn't come laced in politically correct ribbon. 

"All men are boys time is trying to outsmart," he wrote in Rabbit Redux. Let's hope he earns in rest what he sought in running.

Mickey and The Mouse

Review: The Wrestler + Slumdog Millionaire

You'll have to deal with my yin-yang, apples-oranges, Harold-Maude comparison, first because I'm lazy, second because they're the two strongest films I've seen this year. Neither was as visceral as The Dark Knight; nor have I felt their lingering presence as long as Revolutionary Road. I contend, though, The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire are more fully realized than their competitors (caveat: I'm seeing Milk tomorrow; all might change).

What do I mean by fully realized? They don't try to say more than they accomplish. The Wrestler is absolutely about one man: Mickey Rourke. The plot, in a way, is subtext to watching Rourke's Gloria Swanson career move. In his comeback, he's even more grotesque, a hulk of flesh and sinew lacking the brain behind the brawn. Rourke isn't an intellectual actor like Sean Penn. I'd swear at times, beneath the steroid-pumped biceps, the stringy surfer 'do, the sagging cheekbones, the deep-but-gentle mumble, he's not playing himself or anybody else. He's responding on instinct, letting the bloodshed and agony and self-loathing and determination and humor come as they are, whether he's hurling men about the ring or potato salad into a deli customer's hands. Marisa Tomei likewise feels real, and kudos to her for not shying away from the stripping. I didn't buy zonked-out semigoth Evan Rachel Wood, but Rourke seems to; one tear rolls down his cheek when he spends a day with her, and you gotta feel he didn't plan that or squirt eyedrops. He just gives it, whatever it is, no judgments, no fear.

Slumdog Millionaire, on the other hand, treats its actors like pawns in a larger chess game. This isn't a movie about subtlety, but why should it be? It's about the monopolizing charms of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and our fixation on Cinderella-story dreams come true. And in this little-engine-that-could of a movie, life imitates art. It's a fairy tale with the darkness of Grimm, in the slums of India, but the lavish sensationalism and reckless plotting and characterization of Bollywood. A lot of gimmicks stirred up could separate like unshaken salad dressing, leaving your hands oily, but Danny Boyle deserves credit for a wondrous melting-pot of fantasy. Praise, too, for not turning this into a morality tale. It pulses with the rhythm of pure cinema, in which a frame here, a point-of-view shot there, coalesce into a collective whole. Will it last? I have no answer. But somewhere, it is written.

And the humiliation and shame go to...

Studios/actors/directors campaign tirelessly for Oscars, to the point that maybe they resemble the best campaign rather than the best work. Angry with the system? Take refuge in a much more fair set of awards, where nobody pushes their films, and the work, um, speaks for itself.



My predictions for the 2008 RAZZIES:

WORST PICTURE
Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
The Happening
The Hottie and the Nottie
In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
The Love Guru

Alright, politics enter a bit. See, five of these movies aspired to nothing. M. Night Shymalan enticed about seven viewers with his first R-rated movie! The good news is, the children were spared... who wanted to sneak into this yuck-fest? M. Night, this isn't really for The Happening, it's compensation for your insistence on shoving your poor acting and twist endings into every film you made after Signs. And to think, I defended you for the precarious beauty of Unbreakable.

WORST ACTOR
Larry the Cable Guy (Witless Protection)
Eddie Murphy (Meet Dave)
Mike Myers (The Love Guru)
Al Pacino (88 Minutes and Righteous Kill)
Mark Wahlberg (The Happening and Max Payne)

Wahlberg was the fifth slot; he doesn't deserve a nom. Al Pacino, you only get one statue for both films, but understand that we have about 15 more on the way, for all the times in the past 10 years you've hammed it up unbearably. If not for Angels in America, I'd think you equated acting with grandstanding.

WORST ACTRESS
Jessica Alba (The Eye and The Love Guru)
The Cast of The Women
Cameron Diaz (What Happens in Vegas)
Paris Hilton (The Hottie and the Nottie)
Kate Hudson (Fools' Gold)

A living, breathing (well, maybe not) manual for surefire Razzie success.

WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Uwe Boll (Uwe Boll's Postal)
Pierce Brosnan (Mamma Mia!)
Ben Kingsley (too many...)
Burt Reynolds (ditto...)
Verne Troyer (Uwe Boll's Postal and The Love Guru)

Man, people's hatin' on The Love Guru. Brosnan deserves it for disrespecting the human voice, and ears... but the music director should share for giving him extra songs that weren't in the musical.

WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Carmen Electra (Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans)
Paris Hilton (Repo: The Genetic Opera)
Kim Kardashian (Disaster Movie)
Jenny McCarthy (Witless Protection)
Leelee Sobieski (88 Minutes and In The Name of the King)

Look! She pulled a Kate Winslet!

WORST PREQUEL/REMAKE/SEQUEL
The Day The Earth Blowed Up Real Good
Disaster Movie and Meet The Spartans
Indiana 4
Speed Racer
Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Holocaust? Shoo-in for an Oscar. Casting Keanu Reeves? Shoo-in for a Razzie.

Who is this Uwe Boll fellow? He's this winner for the Worst Career Achievement award of 2008. If I investigate, my votes may have to change.

Un-wise words about writing...

Don't do it. See, writing takes a very long time. Some parts go more quickly, like the dialogue, or when I'm off-and-running with a specific image, but in general I wrote very few pages for my fiction class compared to the amount I devoted.

I'm working toward a first chapter. But when I reach that pinnacle, there will need to be a second. I get so distracted. Stephen King is helpful there: "It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl."

Hopefully the pages of dirt will form together into something that, if not shiny, at least looks a little more polished. But that's a broad semester-long goal. Good news: I have a title and an opening. It begins thus: "My first death threat comes after six days of unpacking." Seems to me all good stories involve the death of something: dreams, mysteries, people. I hope writing one won't lead to the death of my sanity.

A first sentence takes work, you know. I wanted to immediately establish my first-person narcissist narrator. Suggest there will be further threats. Show that, due to a recent move, everything has changed. Use present tense for immediacy. Place this story within the realm of mystery/thriller without dark, stormy cliches. Be terse (I tend toward meandering sentences). And toss a Biblical allusion in there for kicks (more on that in the second sentence). I wonder if Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer put this much thought into every line. Maybe they are wise and they just write, without TV breaks or soporific contemplation or blogging.

More advice: Know your characters' names. Halfway through, Evan mutated into Chris, and Ariel went through this whole Rachel-Mary phase. No wonder why they have few friends.

Three-6-Mafia, 1. Alfred Hitchcock, 0.

There weren't many surprises when the Oscars were announced, except for The Reader from left field, Kate Winslet's Best Actress switcheroo, and the fact that Revolutionary Road, The Dark Knight, In Bruges, Doubt, Happy-Go-Lucky, The Wrestler, et al. all craved a Best Picture nod, while what does Oscar recognize? Kung Fu Panda.

But after the year dies down, we'll argue about how it should have been Sean Penn, or how Kate Winslet deserved it more for Revolutionary Road, or if Brangelina were nommed because they are paparazzi moguls. And then we'll find some distance. Outside of the competition, there are these things called films, and we tend to forget about them in our quest to award them. Frost/Nixon could be a great movie on its own - I haven't seen it - but give it a nod and suddenly, everyone rails on it for being too stage bound (obvious fodder for adapted plays), or conveying little beyond its lead performance, or for being recognized solely because Oscar loves Opie.

I propose that we award movies five or ten years hence. Watch their immersion in our culture, note their durability. We still won't call them timeless, but there's something to be said for perspective. "As many performances as Meryl Streep has given recently," we might say, "none were as witty, pointed, surprising, vigorous, or peculiarly sympathetic as her turn in The Devil Wears Prada."

Here's my experiment: Let's flash back to 1996, and I'll use the nominated films for ease. Does anybody still watch The English Patient? What is Secrets & Lies? As earnest as Shine and Jerry Maguire were, the most lasting film of that year, for its offbeat ensemble, comedy amid tragedy, and wood chipper cameo, was Fargo. Hold the ceremony today, and I bet we'd hear another stammering, I-haven't-seen-sunlight-for-weeks speech from Mr. and Mr. Coen. The next year, James Cameron was king of the world. But after all the hype, maybe we can concede that the revised film noir of L.A. Confidential was a superior film. From that year, The Full Monty has definitely lasted (and it's about time comedies got some Oscar buzz), and Good Will Hunting still retains its fresh-off-the-bus authenticity. Would As Good as it Gets even be nommed today? It's the epitome of "Oscar-baiting film"... poor misanthrope Jack, who learns to love and accept. Yes, who knew Helen Hunt could act, but does she really deserve a statue for one good moment in a career that's tapered off?

I dub these revisionary Oscars the Kanes, in honor of that little 1941 movie that lost (in a now inconceivable vote) to How Green was My Valley. Even The Maltese Falcon was bested by this time-forgotten drama. Green may deserve gold, but as the sands of time have fallen, Orson Welles' film has had a greater impact on how we invent cinema, play tricks with light and sound, tell stories, not to mention the development of the surprise ending and, following that, the movie spoiler. Another example from 1964: My Fair Lady is a faithful adaptation of a musical adapted from George Bernard Shaw, but its most lasting contribution was upheaval over Julie Andrews being spurned; Dr. Strangelove, on the other hand, has come to define the black comedy. Even Mary Poppins is a more satisfying, continually inventive musical, and it also gave us years of poking fun at Dick Van Dyke's, um, dialect. And how on earth did these films even get nods?: Doctor Dolittle (1967), Hello, Dolly! (1969), Love Story (1970), and Ghost and The Godfather Part III (1990).

So with much ado, I present the Kanes to movies that last, for permanence is, I believe, one of the keys to art. 

1998: Even back then, Saving Private Ryan's loss was a shock.

1999: American Beauty and The Sixth Sense tie, the first for casting the suburban malaise myth as a comedy, the latter for a haunting psychological thriller that exemplifies quality genre direction. (Though M. Night may have lost voters for his recent output.)

2000: Memento for turning the screenplay inside-out.

2001: Sorry, Ron Howard, I'm going The Lord of the Rings here. Yes, the editing was ridiculous, but the first installment was the most fun, and few epics had accomplished such scope of vision since the 1960s, when everything was epic.

2002: Chicago didn't really revive the movie musical as much as Moulin Rouge! did. Adaptation had a devilishly ingenious third act. Y Tu Mama Tambien was raw, imperfect, overly ambitious in its symbolism, but a hilarious-deflating road film that refused to shy away from the pain of fading youth.

2003: Lost in Translation. The rise of the indie and Sofia Coppola's near-redemption for the evils of nepotism (see above: The Godfather Part III).

2004: Million Dollar Baby vs. Sideways. I think it's fair to say Clint Eastwood appeals to popular and critical audiences alike, and I'll give him the edge. Next year, though, I may choose the effervescent Sideways. Some years, more than one great movie makes it out (1994: how to choose between Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption? Oh, right, pick Forrest Gump). And this is why I stress perspective. 

2005 on are too soon to call, though I will wager that Brokeback Mountain, Capote, A History of Violence, and even Match Point will outlast the improbable Crash. Both No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood will likely top future lists for the decade, but how to choose between their equal despairing wails against the death of fate and the soullessness of capitalism?

Sometimes I agree, for the Academy often awards good films. But with the tears and campaigning and politics, we tend to forget it's about The Movies, how they entertain us, how they reinvent genres, how they express what mere words cannot. Plus some moments become iconic: would anybody currently give the 1987 Oscar to Cher (Moonstruck) over psychotic Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? Or 1939 to Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips over Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights? Dare we bring up the losses of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. (1950) or Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)? They are what last beyond the scope of this year's seven-hour, humorless (I'm conjecturing) extravaganza of not-so-pithy acceptance speeches and interminable montages. Honorary Kanes round the table.

What Betty Crocker Fails To Cover

Hungarian Goulash

Ingredients:
Patience
Half-cocked ignorance

1. Heat oil in Dutch oven. Unwrap beef chuck, already cubed, with haste. Ravage styrofoam container and mangle plastic in effort to remove beef from its biodegradable prison.
2. Fling half of quality meat, mercifully on sale last Saturday, into crevice between oven and counter. Remove cubes of meat from valley of disease and decay with broomstick. Note blue chemicals that seem to dwell in the nooks and crannies of your kitchen.
3. Think: What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? (also query Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, formerly celebrated today in Virginia). Wasn't his message to accept all people, no matter how tarnished or trodden upon?
4. Differentiate between cows and people. Chuck the chuck. Let the loss simmer for 1 hour, 30 minutes.
5. Boil rotini. Puzzle over why 9-10 minutes spawns firm noodles, and 10-11 minutes tender, and what results at 10 minutes even.
6. Savor half-recipe of goulash over rotini. Feel pride of cooking tinged with inward despair that there will be seconds but not thirds or fourths.

"I'd say it's perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances"

Woke up early on a Brookline morning: sunshine, wind gusts at bay. Jaunted over to Shaw's/Star for the week's grocery shopping. Bee-lined for self-checkout. Reconsidered my decision when I came to a tin of four chocolate chip muffins and rosemary-olive oil focaccia.*

[Note 1: Wish I could apply footnotes to my blog. Nonetheless, spell check does not recognize "focaccia". Suggests "flaccid" as a replacement.]

These were no ordinary muffins/focaccia; I pulled them from the sale rack in the back, which in a caste society equates with the population of untouchables. Nonetheless, I touched, I placed into cart, I tried to purchase. Does the four-digit PLU code work? Does the machine recognize the reduced-value of the sticker price? Does the man governing self-checkout have a clue what his own employee number is?

Various Star employees pass by, none of whom help me.* Ten minutes pass by as well. It's too early on a Saturday to be impatient, so my time diddles into nothingness as I wait it out. I will have my muffins and focaccia.*

[Note 2: I go to self-checkout for the sake of velocity; I'm not going to spend all my time waiting in line while other customers can't find their credit cards. Ten minutes of stilled self-checkout, though, convinces me to stop buying sale items.]
[Note 3: No red flag this go-around. Maybe spell check assumes that if you use a word incorrectly four times, by that point you must have a reason. Dangerous for the consonant challenged.]

At last he concocts a brilliant scheme: to type in the price himself. In the dormancy of our past ten minutes (days?), he must have forgotten I have two bakery items. This is the story of how I received free chocolate chip muffins from the grocery store.

An ethical dilemma arises: I notice this right away and think, "that's his fault for not charging me."* But he's clearly new and inexperienced; what about his uppers, who should take care of their downers in a moment of mini-crisis? For my free muffins cost the store $2.40. It's futile to imagine this solely on a small scale when, in cohoots with the Butterfly Effect, my response belongs to a generation of The Entitled.

[Note 4: Like when your math teacher didn't notice you wrote 31.7 instead of 3.17 and gives you points you didn't deserve, which in fairness won't be revoked. But in fairness to whom? The other students who wrote down 3.17? The grand scheme of the world in which math answers are either right or wrong but never accidentally okayed by Higher Authorities in an unresolved loophole?]

See, here's the real crux of it: I felt entitled to accept free muffins as an act of cosmic generosity for the wrongs I had endured by losing ten minutes of my sunny, non-windy Saturday morning. I certainly was not about to multiply my grievances by handing over further minutes to be squandered as the second price was computed. But then... Walked home in the non-wind and sun. Felt a twinge of hesitancy too fickle to call "guilt." Pondered, I don't know, my place in the world and whether or not my actions* had a greater effect beyond this silly little morning.

[Note 5: But really inaction.]

In a perfect world, the store produces muffins, and I pay $2.40 for them. Of course, edging out my inadequately-formed-guilt comes the fact that they were sequestered to the sale rack. Meaning that they were unpurchased muffins rescued by yours truly, and it's possible nobody would have taken them at all, and they would have assumed their destiny as dumpster fodder. But if there's less trash in the world - because of all this, I'm convinced, has vast implications beyond the miniscule nature of four muffins - dumpsters will be less full, perhaps fewer will be needed, garbagemen will be laid off, and once again I've hindered the economy with my shoplifting.

After all, lifting unpurchased muffins (or any substance) from a shop is shoplifting. Good intentions really become a game of manipulation: I Am Entitled To These Muffins Thanks Be To Allah, And I Would Have Paid For Them If The Store Hadn't Sleighted Me In The First Place, And This Is Only Fair To Me As A Valued Customer. To assauge myself, I offered our visitor Mark a muffin this morning. Maybe if I only eat three of them, and thus gain less satisfaction, I will have deprived Star of $1.80. Maybe my charitable action redeems my previous inaction, and brings the muffins in question to people, not dumpsters, that hunger for them. Maybe it's time now for you to offer some input into this quandry. It's only fair.

Nine Lives to Live

The wind ripples through my overcoat as I run to the T this evening. In my hypothermic delirium, I hear a guy shout, "I hate cats!" Without censoring myself, as if through free association, I immediately countered with, "Who in the world hates cats?" No, I didn't say that out loud, my lips wouldn't brave the wind; but my internal outburst startled me in its fervent hypocrisy. Why would I feel outraged at this Cambridge-dwelling feline-filcher when I myself have professed my animosity toward cats?

In my defense: They aren't lovable like dogs. They don't want to love and be loved; it's a one-way street of pampering for cats, and we their human servants must do the parallel parking. They don't laze and sprawl, they preen and posture. Artifice shrouded in theatricality compared to the earthbound allure of those who bark.

Once upon a time I couldn't be in the same room as a cat without rubbing my eyes raw. Back when you're ten, bloodshot eyes don't suggest inebriation but instead copulous swims without goggles. Time passes -- and suddenly the allergies don't seem as offputting. Still, keep your Kleenex on hand. And not because their adorableness reduces me to puddles of tears.

I even hold photographic evidence of how my feelings have tempered. Meet Gypsy, Heather's cat: a bit of a creeper, but a sprawler, too, and a nuzzler. She rubs her body against your leg to get to know you -- just like a woman.


I will never own a cat, or find much love for cats. But it's time we put aside our differences and strive to be amicable. There will be ground rules. No cuddling, no sleeping next to me, no purring for my affections. All contact must be hasty and meaningless. (And I will not call, so don't ask for my number.)

Blowing in the wind

Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

How many roads must a man walk down before he turns into Brad Pitt? Former Best Picture winner Benjamin Button must now learn to hang its face in shame, for Slumdog the underdog seems unstoppable. But don't give up hope, Mr. Button; I'm here to assess just how well you fit the shoes of 2008's Oscar-winning epic. And, really, the shoes of a certain 1994 epic, too.

Titular man with kick-ass moniker: He even comes equipped with a hefty dose of computer imaging. Disappointingly, he never gets to say "I'm Benjamin, Benjamin Button."
Childhood home in the Deep South: His mama isn't spouting aphorisms about chocolate this go-around, but he does grow up in a rambling old house full of guests. Sadly, none achieve the fame of Elvis.
What a storyteller: Some people just narrate from park benches; Benjamin had the wherewithall to keep a journal.
Meets the love of his life before 10: Just like peas and carrots, except here the peas look really old and the carrots very young.
Graduates from leg braces: And eventually, Brad Pitt graduates from five-foot-tall stand-ins.
First sexual experience in a brothel: In 1994, it was a sorority house, but who's counting?
Inspires legends to pursue their dreams: Brad Pitt only inspires fictional people, such as Tilda Swinton's English-channel swimmer. He lets her take care of the athletics rather than running his own way.
First man on deck: Where hurricanes once wiped out shrimp boats, here U-boats are the casualties. (Ships, especially when they sink, are extra points toward winning an Oscar.)
Questionable literary pedigree: Yes, it's F. Scott Fitzgerald. But a 167-minute film based on a 20-page story?
Reuniting with the whitest girl on the planet: Robin Wright Penn, no chance against Cate Blanchett. Tracy Morgan confirmed this at the Golden Globes in his tribute to post-racial America.
A Symbol of Destiny that bookends the film: Keep your feather. Button's got a giant clock that ticks backward.
The scourge of God: Just as AIDS takes out Jenny before her time, here Hurricane Katrina looms. The present-day moments, in which the story is read aloud, detract from the inventiveness of the film and Brad Pitt's de-aging. Part of the joy of a film like Button is suspending yourself in the storytelling and the milieu of the South, surrounded by kooky vignettes and characters reminiscent of Tim Burton. But the outer story almost redeems itself with...
An inspirational final shot that suggests our weight on earth continues beyond our lifetime. After Crash, The Departed, and No Country for Old Men, might we return to our feel-good Oscar movie? Even Titanic achieved this final shot, hard work considering the ship still sank.

An apostrophe to Food, O Glorious Food

I'm about to break out my new George Foreman grill, and I started thinking how wonderful Christmas was. Not just because relatives gave me nice things like George Foreman grills; I'm saluting the food. See, you journey home for three weeks, and you don't have to cook meals (though I did make one dinner) or go grocery shopping. What's better is that my mom can cook up some culinary nirvana.

In August, I bemoaned that she only makes meatloaf in the winter; "you don't make that in the summer." But the week before we U-Hauled up to Boston, there was meatloaf waiting for me on the kitchen table. Yes, it's Only Child Syndrome with its most positive side effects. This isn't your grandmother's meatloaf, kids, unless your grandma knew how it was done; mostly turkey and oats mixed in, with stewed tomatoes dribbling down in lieu of gravy.

My metabolism doesn't think I eat enough, even though I try to stuff in heaps of food. Being home over break, I could drink four Cokes a day, scarf down leftovers for mid-afternoon snack (we'll call it tea), and finish it off with fried ice cream, which now comes in cartons of honey-cinnamon goodness. Now that I'm back in Boston, the debit card intimidates me. I have a food budget per week, and the ice cream doesn't always make the cut. The only leftovers we had was Chinese food from Saturday, but I already devoured my dish, amusingly called strange flavored chicken. Tasted like indulgence to moi.

Cooking for one -- not always so simple. The George Foreman grill and the microwave, plugged into the same surge protector, just had a battle that both lost. After resetting the power twice, it occurred to me that the grill is like a tractor trailer on the highway: don't compete, just clear the way.

Of course, even the most elaborate family meals can go awry. For Christmas this year, we went to my cousin's house as usual, opened presents as usual, and then grabbed our plates for a feast to make carnivores proud. We dined on beef tenderloin, Korean-style thin-sliced beef, turkey (because Christmas is really second Thanksgiving), and salted country ham. Our sides were scalloped potatoes, the epitome of health food; rolls, with butter provided for extra nutrition; and, the real kicker, our only vegetable of collard greens with ham chunks on top. Jesus would have been proud. We consumed all the animals in the inn. Speaking of carnivorous habits, I think my hamburger is fully cooked (and I go medium well; none of that "rare" stuff). Good eats, all!

The Road You Didn't Take, Where Would It Have Led?

Review: Revolutionary Road

Can't stay, can't leave. Revolutionary Road is almost gruesome to watch as the marriage of Frank and April Wheeler unravels, but I chose to stay rather than leave. From what I've read, audiences have been divided: either they are blown away by the craft put into the film, or they are put off. Revolutionary Road is blisteringly unconventional in that we don't follow a couple from idealization to disintegration. We see April with her fading dreams of being extraordinary, and Frank as he brusquely shatters them.

And so Sam Mendes achieves a stunning sleight of character identification. We should hate Frank (and this all happens in the first ten minutes, so not really a spoiler). He trades his wanderlust for the anonymity of the corporate world; he resigns his wife to taking out the garbage; even a girl on the side is no more than "swell." So we gravitate toward April as she proposes an act of spiritual rejuvenation: they will leave the trap of suburbia and move to Paris, where she will escape her housewife duties and earn the family's living.

Though Mendes distances us from the Wheelers, they begin to grow on us as they reconstruct their existence. We forgive Frank, for he loves April so greatly that he will gladly sacrifice almost everything so that she may be fulfilled. And when pressures mount and the future grows dimmer, April seems so vivid, so eager for transformation, that we realize flesh and blood have emerged from the cocoon of their surroundings, and the sleek direction of the film.

So yes, the film begins as sterile, because this is not a story of disillusionment, but of the next step: how to combat it when it thoroughly encases you. It's also not aiming for realism. April's dreams are grandiose and her yearning so great that her story becomes more of a fable. As good as Leonardo DiCaprio is, and he's grown impressive in his ability to emotionally carry a scene, Kate Winslet floored me. April in her hands isn't noble or entirely sympathetic, and I think her emotional progression would be unfathomable if any other actress attempted it. Winslet rips off mask after mask, with searing hurt and bewilderment mixed with resoluteness, as April refuses to succumb to lifelessness. Nor will Winslet.



I think Mendes blames suburbia too easily. While the stifling setting and rigid gender roles of the late 1950s are an apt time for this story, the problems are largely internal. Frank will compromise while April craves anything but. DiCaprio still resembles a man-child, with a Peter Pan streak that makes it hard to believe his willingness to blend in. I wish he'd had a chance to portray the uninhibited Frank, and why April found him the most interesting person she's met. But the film is refreshingly bleak and unsentimental. The fact that Mendes keeps the Wheelers on Revolutionary Road from becoming symbols or icons is alone extraordinary.

Public Enemy (Or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Internet)

Lombardo warned us in class to know what's out there on the Internet about us. Then today I read an e-mail from Kate about our honors theses prominent in searches for our names; naturally distant acquaintances (fallen Facebook friends?), stalkers, and blackmailers will head straight for my fifty pages on suburban malaise and misogyny. But curiosity killed the boy allergic to cats: I decided to Google myself and see what all the fuss is about.

First up, an article from the DoG Street Journal previewing True West, in which I had a small part junior year. The author, in my Hemingway class that semester, must not have thought I'd mind if she fabricated a quote from me. With grand elocution, I said our director "experimented with lots of things." That's the pull quote that pays the rent.

Next comes a DSJ article I actually wrote, a review of the Superman musical. With the word "kitsch" in the title, I may redeem my previous vocabulary ineptitude.

Later down the page, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling elected to copy-paste my Herald Progress clip about an event for healthy children onto his own website. An Ashland rabble-rouser cites another article on the defunct Ashland Theatre as "excellent" in his blog. I'm practically a Mechanicsville celebrity.

Add to this the expected: cast lists, orchestra rosters, Redivider staff, Circle K newsletters (with an article I wrote about the nourishing power of Ukrop's cake), and I start to feel accomplished.

The word was spread past reason. I also Yahoo!ed my name as I rolled in self-adulation (Chinese proverb say: when you can't roll in money, find next best thing). At the bottom of the first page is a link to a Yahoo! group I have never joined. One message logs an unending set of names, of which mine seems to be one, unbeknownst to moi. After my name, in Terrifyingly Important Capital Letters, I see the last four digits of my credit card! Right there, under a Yahoo! search, completely public. I'll backtrack; these numbers were from my former credit card, and have changed by now. Maybe that's why Suntrust issued me a new card.

But how spooky is that? When elected officials or town leaders mention me, that's both appreciated and in response to articles I wrote for public consumption. And I'm really non-sketchy about my Internet habits. The people who steal credit card numbers do more harm than even they realize: if I have to suffer through any more of those commercials with a linebacker voiced by Shirley Temple railing about identity theft, I may have to unleash some public destruction. In which case, feel free to write about me; it's all about boundaries, people.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Review: Doubt

Be wary not to misjudge Sister Aloysius. She will come after you with the jaws of a snapping turtle, for starters. Many regard her, though, as uncompassionate and backward-thinking, when in fact her quest to upset the patriarchal hierarchy of the Catholic Church was remarkable for 1964. Though she is a hornet of strong wills, she is no demon: she will gladly be damned to Hell as the price for protecting the innocent. She is obstinate but selfless.

It's easy to misread the film at first. John Patrick Shanley, the writer and director who won a Pulitzer for its stage incarnation, clouds his story in archetypes. Blustery winds thrash the nuns with hurricanes of autumn leaves when trouble is afoot. And the two nuns act as if they were thrown out of Oz: good witch Sister James (Amy Adams) finds joy in everyone, while wicked witch Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) will not let her suspicions rest.

This is why Philip Seymour Hoffman is so admirable in his role as Father Flynn. The priest lightens his sermons with humor, jokes with the boys in the school, and wishes for a secular song in the Christmas pageant. Hoffman fades into the easygoing nature of Flynn so effortlessly that he doesn't even look like he's acting. It's no leap to convince ourselves, because Hoffman is such a genuine actor, that Flynn is innocent. Aloysius decides early on, on minor bits of evidence, that Flynn has molested an altar boy.



At first I worried about Streep and Adams, so yin and yang that they verged on caricature. Adams proves she has some vigor later on, when she confesses her love for "Frosty the Snowman." And Shanley, I think intentionally, wants us to misjudge Streep initially, as if to see when the bait-and-switch happens, when our allegiances switch from Flynn to Aloysius (if they do).

No matter if Streep's accent is thicker than her habit; she summons an indomitable spirit and relentlessness that, as the film progresses, becomes more and more courageous. She's not just fighting against this priest, or even for the sake of young boys corrupted by the church: she herself feels hindered by the misogyny instilled in the rules and foundations. What she comes to realize, maybe too late, is that her own internal fortress of strict rules must come down before she and the church may both grow.

It's not a film about whether or not Flynn did or did not molest the boy. Shanley's objective, to emphasize how confining moral certainty can be, is clear. The tempestuous weather, tilted camera angles, and Streep's constantly wavering eyes are cartoonish, but Stanley has a gift for natural dialogue and debate, with occasional moments of shock. Hoffman and Streep both have their finest moments when he indirectly confesses a mortal sin (but is it that?) and she stifles back tears when thinking of sins in her past. Viola Davis stunned me as the boy's mother; her presence isn't about outacting anybody but about resilience and enduring what happens rather than probing and waging more destruction. Though her inaction is disturbing, it raises important questions: Is such a sin unforgivable? Will acting outside the rules harm more than help the child? Shanley's film does not invite easy answers and, despite distracting elements, is simple in its complexity: only through Doubt can we change.

When a Child is Born

Happy New Year, everybody! I wish I could celebrate it in Boston, but all in good time. There's this weird vibe that comes with being at home: I love having this big house of space, but then I also miss being around people. Which is a healthy viewpoint; but now that I'm home from an apartment where I actually have my own space, and not a dorm room, there's not a real big transition. The best part of home life: when your parents decide you need all sorts of new clothes/snow boots/grapefruit spoons.

College let me become more extroverted, and sometimes I wish (in that crazy city up north) there were more people around. Maybe we should rent out our walk-in closet; fifty bucks a week, no questions asked. But I do cherish my personal space. It must be that only-child syndrome. You see, people often ask me what it was like as if I'd been afflicted. No, I didn't find it detrimental to my social development or mental well-being, and though I had ample opportunities to connive my parents and become corrupted without a sibling tattling on me, I didn't take advantage.

Here's what you learn as the One and Only Child: You do expect to be Colossally Important; there's no lineage that you're born into, where you must grapple all your days to achieve your place in the ranks. You're allowed to pretty much eat whatever food you want; I refuse to eat shrimp, so my mom doesn't serve it when I'm at home. You can usually seize the remote, as long as there's no football game on TV. When you leave for college, your room has no value to your parents -- no jacuzzi or exercise equipment went in -- so it remains a shrine to the Wonders of You.

On the flip side, I didn't really learn how to argue, how to compete, how to manipulate, how to set something on fire and blame it on the younger brother. It seems only children have it rough if they want to be lawyers, or arsonists.

And back to my point, though I love people, I need my personal space. This reminds me: I was in a restroom, thankfully very clean, a few weeks ago at a Wendy's. It had one of those setups that bemuses me, where there's a urinal and a toilet in a single-person restroom with a lock on the door. If my tone is querulous, it's because you don't logically need both, unless you're trying to direct the, uh, flow of things. But this Wendy's restroom had a divider nailed between the urinal and a toilet otherwise out in the open, free of stall doors. Maybe because I'm an only child and like to keep my single-person restroom experience to myself, but do they expect people to share the room because of their sad little divider? Am I the only one who finds that strange? Are there ladies' rooms out there with no stall doors, just a vast room of pots waiting for you to park yourself?