(no subject)
Elf was not as funny as I'd hoped, but still pretty funny, and sweet, and made me wish desperately to be in New York for Christmas.
2003-11-09
arts, style, travel
Frank Rich's best column in some time is about Jessica Lynch and changing media treatments of her story, including tonight's TV movie Saving Jessica Lynch:
The debate over Shakespeare's Falstaff, soon to be played at Lincoln Center by Kevin Kline.
A good summary of why there are bad DVD editions of good movies. Also, some examples and counterexamples. I'm sad to hear Yi Yi turned out badly.
Elizabeth Wurtzel doesn't like the movie version of Prozac Nation, her first memoir.
New York City tourism: More families, fewer foreigners. Also Miffy the cartoon bunny.
The movie begins with the inevitable disclaimer that "some characters, scenes and events in whole or in part have been created for dramatic purposes." Even so, given the facts as we know them to date, it is startling in its relative accuracy--more than earlier reportage by The Washington Post (which attributed its initial Rambo version to "U.S. officials") and The New York Times (whose reporter Jayson Blair fictionalized some of the paper's Lynch coverage).
The debate over Shakespeare's Falstaff, soon to be played at Lincoln Center by Kevin Kline.
One scholar, speaking for many, has riposted that Mr. Bloom has abstracted Falstaff from the web of relationships in the plays, inflated him to monstrous parade-float dimensions, "like the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man in `Ghostbusters,' " striding through the skyscrapers.(Why do you think the scholar is unnamed? Is there a Scholar Protection Program for people who mock Harold Bloom?)
A good summary of why there are bad DVD editions of good movies. Also, some examples and counterexamples. I'm sad to hear Yi Yi turned out badly.
Elizabeth Wurtzel doesn't like the movie version of Prozac Nation, her first memoir.
New York City tourism: More families, fewer foreigners. Also Miffy the cartoon bunny.
(no subject)
I have to say, I liked Saving Jessica Lynch. I don't know how accurate it was, and cinematically it was no Three Kings, but it was stunning to see a two-hour TV movie spend most of its airtime on an Iraqi family. Lynch herself spent most of the movie in a hospital bed, of course, and we also saw the American rescue planners, but mostly it was about the lawyer who gave them vital information, and his wife (whose distrust of the Americans was plain and reasonable) and cute young daughter.
Here's a Times op-ed piece which explains that the movie I just enjoyed, and CBS's miniseries The Reagans, "were irresponsible projects from the start," because TV audiences believe everything they're shown. On the other hand, a Reagan biographer says the complainers who got The Reagans shunted to Showtime were overreacting: "The idea that anything so trivial as a made-for-TV mockumentary might harm his reputation is ludicrous."
Adam Cohen on World War I poet Wilfred Owen and the importance of seeing war clearly. And Craig R. Whitney on seeing today's war through the fog of Vietnam.
Here's a Times op-ed piece which explains that the movie I just enjoyed, and CBS's miniseries The Reagans, "were irresponsible projects from the start," because TV audiences believe everything they're shown. On the other hand, a Reagan biographer says the complainers who got The Reagans shunted to Showtime were overreacting: "The idea that anything so trivial as a made-for-TV mockumentary might harm his reputation is ludicrous."
Adam Cohen on World War I poet Wilfred Owen and the importance of seeing war clearly. And Craig R. Whitney on seeing today's war through the fog of Vietnam.
more times tidbits
"Cornell University physicists reported last week that they had used a laser beam to pluck the strings of an invisibly tiny silicon guitar just 10 millionths of a meter long." The best part, which you can't make out on the web, is that the electron microscope display identifies the guitar as a Flying V.
High art, low art, City Opera and Ground Zero.
"The new album is aptly titled, as the timing is good for R.E.M.--with young listeners apparently downloading the music they want and saving their money for video games or other diversions, veteran acts are topping the charts, because they appeal to older audiences that still buy CD's." I feel roughly this sad when I hear Talking Heads on a classic rock station.
Kelefa Sanneh's Playlist calls Dolorean the legacy of Elliott Smith.
Democracy in Russia is threatened by public apathy, bred by decades of fake civics and centuries of czars. And in America, voting machines remain susceptible to internal and external hacking.
High art, low art, City Opera and Ground Zero.
"The new album is aptly titled, as the timing is good for R.E.M.--with young listeners apparently downloading the music they want and saving their money for video games or other diversions, veteran acts are topping the charts, because they appeal to older audiences that still buy CD's." I feel roughly this sad when I hear Talking Heads on a classic rock station.
Kelefa Sanneh's Playlist calls Dolorean the legacy of Elliott Smith.
Democracy in Russia is threatened by public apathy, bred by decades of fake civics and centuries of czars. And in America, voting machines remain susceptible to internal and external hacking.