something on "Remember How I Love You: Love Letters from an Extraordinary Marriage" by Jerry Orbach, Ken Bloom, and Elaine Orbach

Most people probably know Jerry Orbach as the actor who played NYPD Detective Lennie Briscoe for 12 seasons on the long-running NBC crime drama "Law & Order." Orbach got into the habit of writing (by hand!) a poem to his wife every day. She saved them all and has had them published in this short volume. Looped in among the playful poems are personal anecdotes and biographic material shared by Elaine Orbach. This is a glimpse inside a genuinely affectionate marriage.

Notes:

• Sam Waterston wrote the book's foreword.
• Law & Order ran for 20 seasons.

 

something about female characters and black characters

In the 2014 film Top Five, Chris Rock is Andre, an actor attempting to transition from hammy comedies to drama. Andre played a smart-alec live-action bear in a comedy franchise; now, in a maudlin historical film, he attempts to play a Haitian slave revolting against European colonialists. In this casting, we get the message that black characters in media are often minstrel-like entertainers or suffering caricatures.

In the 1975 masterpiece One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a similar point is made (albeit indirectly) about women in media. In this film, Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, is contemptible because she appears to be neither of the things women typically are expected to be: sexual or nurturing.

Notes:
Admittedly not a perfect theory, and not a perfect pairing.
Rock also wrote and directed the film.

Loss

Philip Seymour Hoffman, 1967-2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

something about the movie "Gravity"

The film "Gravity" offers a movie-going experience. Yes, the visuals stun and inspire. But it's more than beauty that makes us submit. The story is simple but the action engrossing; and the protagonist is uncomplicated--a supple mirror in which we replace the image with ourselves. So we fret and ease along with her as the film creates the illusion of time alternately speeding up and then crawling; it does so with the sounds of breathing, of heartbeats, of blinking lights, watches, and faceless monitors that beep out the pace, switching from measured rhythms to urgent, pleading buzzes. And when we finally reach the moment when we can pause and consider all that just happened, we're left with a sense of wonder--not just of the vastness of the universe, but the resilience of the human spirit. Now, this human spirit stuff is a sort of hackneyed theme and an easy payoff for the writers but it works okay here.


Notes:

• Highly recommend seeing this in 3D.
• In an academic setting, one could argue that this movie conveys Heideggerian themes. 
• This does not say anything to spoil.

I wear the required uniform.

"Screws fall out all the time. The world is an imperfect place."

about 2012 films: I see black people

At the Oscars, Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor.

Both the films "Lincoln" and "Django Unchained" concern African American slavery in the US--an issue that in ways big and small plagues the US still. But "Lincoln" portrays and conveys black people differently--I think with a greater truth, the kind of truth only realized in art.

How so?

"Lincoln" doesn't have any main black characters. It has hardly any black people at all. Sure, it's about that President at a specific moment, and not about slaves. But what and who is Lincoln? Why do we honor him today? States' rights were at stake, but the civil war was fought over slavery, and that is Lincoln's legacy.

All during the film, black people are peripheral, somewhere on the edges, rarely seen, rarely on screen. And aside from gentle scenes of dialog at the beginning and end of the film, they are never confronted. Their captivity and freedom is debated with a little input from those most affected.

But though they are invisible, black Americans are everywhere in the themes and culture and gravity of the moments being enacted. They are the thing referred to but never spoken of; they are exchangeed but never valued. They are marginalized in the film, reflecting their existence in America, and the racially collective experience of their existence here for some time.


Notes:
* The only other film I saw is "Flight".


(Also, the President now is black.)

something about the movie "Lincoln"

"Lincoln" focuses on the President's efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment while negotiating the end of the Civil War. A superb Daniel Day-Lewis evokes a gifted but earthen man veiled in melancholy, defending the bloody and nightmarish warring to save the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation, and his push to eradicate slavery via the Constitution immediately, while the battle still rages. All of the supporting players more than hold their own--Sally Field included.

In all that's already been written about this film, only one point could still be made: this entry from The New Yorker--one of a couple excellent comments on the film found there--claims

It can’t be said too often, or too clearly, that the whole point of Lincoln is that he—and the Republican Party he then represented—marked the end of the policy of conciliation and compromise and cosseting that had been the general approach of Northern Presidents to the Southern slavery problem throughout the decades before. When the South seceded, Lincoln chose war—an all-out, brutal, bitter war of a kind that had never been fought until then.

According to the film, Lincoln felt the 13th Amendment was a compromise. Had they not compromised, the radical faction of the Republican Party (and their abolitionist constituents) would have enfranchised black men immediately, given them the vote, legalized interracial marriage, etc. A huge portion of the film is dedicated to Lincoln's pissing off those radicals. (But this "compromise" means little when it obliterates an entire region's economic way of life, which is probably The New Yorker writer's point.)

a thing about the movie "Flight" (with spoilers)

Flight follows William "Whip" Whitaker, a crackerjack airline pilot struggling to admit to his alcohol and drug addictions in the aftermath of a plane crash. Part of the immediate dilemma for the audience and for Whitaker is that (1) the crash resulted from hardware failures, not pilot error, and (2) no other pilot could have negotiated the crash landing with as much skill, and saved as many passengers' lives as he did, sober or otherwise.

The film is about one man's struggle for redemption, but what we see from our theater seat is a struggle for control of truth. In Whitaker's mind, his functionality, his brilliance excuses the behavior that so many rush to judge irresponsible. That is his truth. But under threat of litigation and penalty for the lives lost, the airline and Whitaker's other adversaries use the discourse of medical knowledge, appealing to that discipline's knowledge-making authority, which justifies policies that were violated, and deems Whitaker unfit. The co-pilot, who chooses not to reveal Whitaker's drunkenness on record, appeals to the Word of God; God reveals the Truth, and Whitaker must face that truth.

Finally, after a slew of verbal confrontations, Whitaker is faced with the most intimidating of rhetorical situations--a hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent Federal agency "charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States". Here, Whitaker surrenders control of the truth. He cannot speak another lie, he says. Whitaker's truth goes from belief in himself with a confident rejection of medico-juridical labels to, ultimately, the discourse of confession. He adopts the narratives spun about him by others, and finds himself now a craven denier of truth, and no longer a hero airline pilot.

Notes

• This was a fantastic movie. Every performance is spot on; Whitaker is played to perfection by Denzel Washington, and even John Goodman's over-the-top dealer works well, providing relief from the main character's ongoing struggles and tension. And Wikipedia notes, "Flight is (Robert) Zemeckis' first live-action film since 2000's Cast Away and What Lies Beneath, and his first R-rated film since Used Cars in 1980."

• Above, quoting the NTSB's Web site regarding the agency's purpose.

The New Girl sports her newness

This New York Magazine profile says a Zooey Deschanel is not an Apple product like we all thought. A Zooey Deschanel is actually a constant, expansive, and versatile market force carried out through a persona. And a Zooey Deschanel persona is a composite of associations--associations with sexuality, quirkiness (sometimes mistaken for "originality"), innocence, fun, and indie credibility with all its emphasis on authenticity and sincerity. People, especially those who fancy themselves hip and/or original, explore these conceptual areas for opportunities to escape consumer culture. But every attempt to step outside that culture just expands the Market's reach there (and beyond). A Zooey Deschanel is that reach manifest; her persona is singular in that it does not change whether on or off camera, thereby invoking a claim to authenticity and sincerity that empowers it to follow the hip and the original to new areas into which the market can flourish.


Notes:

The NYMagazine profile writer is aware and even seems vaguely complicit with the permanent marketing campaign of a Zooey Deschanel--until sticking this jab at the end using a Zooey Deschanel's own words:

Hearing the CD reminded me of how she had gotten very impassioned when I asked her if she and Gibbard bonded over music the first time they met. “I’m wary about this thing about being in the generation of social networking where people are like, ‘I am my musical taste,’” she said. “I am not just a collection of music. Or a collection of movies. I think that’s a thing that people romanticize: ‘Oh my God, she likes this band so she is a dream.’ I’ve definitely learned that you can easily get stars in your eyes. I’ll meet directors and they’ll be like, ‘I love Godard!’ And they love screwball comedies and they love all these things I love, and then it’s, like, ‘Wait a minute, that doesn’t mean they can make movies.’“ 

Just because somebody likes something doesn’t mean ... anything, really.”

Right there a Zooey Deschanel shoots down the sole reason she is appealing, and apes the very reaction that people have to her: A Zooey Deschanel is so cute because she likes Hello Kitty! A Zooey Deschanel is a composite of associations and likes that constantly advertises those likes, thereby associating a Zooey Deschanel with whatever associations the audience has with the objects being liked.

In a sense, none of this is unique to a Zooey Deschanel, but it is perhaps taken to a new level and with a new audience.

I first saw a Zooey Deschanel in an Apple product commercial, and I noticed the face design that says, "You are looking at me" (or, "I am a thing that is looked at").

Angry Chair

Having watched both the (American) Democratic and Republican conventions a little each night, I found Clint Eastwood's improvised moment with the empty chair during the Republican convention to be the most compelling and meaningful part of the whole charade. But the pundits and critics, who claim to be ready for something authentic and substantive, finally got something that was just that, and they immediately rejected it.

Eastwood said he had cried when Obama was elected (presumably because it was such a powerful moment for a nation with a long history of racism). I take him at his word, and believe he was moved like so many others that night. So what was this moment with the chair all about?

Here's what: The chair was empty, signifying an absence, and speaking silence. This prompts the audience to wonder, Where is the Barack Obama I voted for? Because I don't see him anywhere.

Eastwood begins a sort of pitiful dialog with the missing Obama. He is attempting to recreate a ghost, the faded remains of the projection of his own hopes and dreams from four years ago: "So, Mr. President, how do you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them? I mean, what do you say to people? Do you just, you know--I know people were wondering. You don't handle that. OK."

Soon the projection lashes out, judging by Eastwood's reactions: "But, I thought maybe as an excuse--what do you mean shut up?" Here, the projection has taken on a life of its own, and is no longer merely a canvas. The candidate Obama from 2008 is no longer a willing, cooperative partner in this game of imagination. The exercise dissolves, leading Eastwood to his moment of resignation: "And I think it's that time. And I think if you just step aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over."

Eastwood is hardly a champion for Romney, though: "A stellar businessman. Quote, unquote, a stellar businessman." His talking points covered, sarcastically. Finally, in a turn away from the chair to the listening audience, Eastwood delivers his real message, one of disappointment and disillusion with the whole process: "And, so, they (the candidates) are just going to come around and beg for votes every few years. It is the same old deal." And then, "We don't have to be--what I'm saying, we do not have to be metal masochists and vote for somebody that we don't really even want in office just because they seem to be nice guys or maybe not so nice guys ... "

It's a shame the whole exchange was written off as crazy talk by a misguided old man. Eastwood attempted to inject a moment of truth and sincerity into an obscene display of delusion and dishonesty, but instead he was rejected and held up as proof that the rest of the display is coherent and the system works.

Notes:

• Eastwood badly misread or misunderstood his audience, who they were, and where they were coming from. He may have been misguided in several other ways, too, arguably, but his main point stands.
• His means of communicating was a little unorthodox, so for this reason, too, he was rejected.

Something about the fim "Invincible"

This Werner Herzog-directed film tells the true-ish fable of Zishe Breitbart, a Jewish strongman who performed for Berlin audiences circa 1932 before returning to his Polish Jewish village to warn of the growing Nazi menace. The plot: after his strength is noticed by a talent agent, Breitbart journeys from a humble blacksmith's son to brief stardom as a sideshow in a successful clairvoyant's act that caters to Nazi-friendly audiences. The clairvoyant is Hanussen, an intense showman who claims mystical powers.

The film makes a motif of identity. Breitbart briefly loses himself, allowing Hanussen to "Aryan-ize" him to best appeal to the Berlin audience. After briefly reconnecting with family, Breitbart publicly rejects his fictional identity, revealing himself as Jewish. Breitbart's strength--originally imagined by Hanussen as a draw to the humiliated, identity-less German people, remains in the show as a draw for threatened Berlin Jews.

Hanussen is revealed as a con-man. Though born Jewish, he has adopted a series of identities through his life in pursuit of status and power. By trying to ingratiate himself with the rising Nazis menace, he has become the very caricature of the stereotypical Jew--sneaky, dishonest, and money hungry.

I enjoyed this. The acting is mostly terrible except for Hanussen, played by a reliably intense Tim Roth.