Recent Comments
Re: “Alex Gibney's WikiLeaks doc We Steal Secrets: a movie you probably shouldn't watch on a Verizon cellphone”
Rose,
Yes, Assange is in the Ecuadorian embassy in the U.K. I made a cut-and-paste error while moving some text around, and I sincerely apologize for the facutal error, and will request that it be corrected.
Arbed,
I am in no position to dispute the facts of Sweden's case against Assange. However, I do think that Gibney's depiction of it is quite slanted (partly because of his views on Assange, but mostly to try to counteract the demonization of the two female plaintiffs). I certainly welcome debate and additional information on this point, and any other relevant matters.
Re: “Ever get the feeling you've been here before? That's not deja vu, it's Oblivion”
But an outstanding, penetrating comment!
Re: “Silver Linings Playbook: the implausibly cute side of bipolar disorder”
I think the comments people are leaving in response to Erickson's statement regarding weight gain are missing the larger point. (And with handles like "InsideBiploar" and "AboutBipolar," this isn't so surprising. Once we begin taking our disorders on as markers of identity, we are just flip-flopping the stigma, so we *become* our health problems. That is hardly conducive to talking about them honestly, because identity politics never permits any open discussion, only the defensive standing of ground based on whose got the more authentic experiences.)
A whole lot of medications for atypical psycho-chemistry cause weight gain. This is especially true in cases that require multiple medications, where there may be compounded side effects or contraindications that physicians deem acceptable under the circumstances. This is not everyone's experience, no. But it is common.
The bigger point Erickson was making about SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, I think, is that mental disorders were sort of dropped into the film as the slightly rougher edges on the main couples' broken hearts -- just plot devices that were not treated with any real gravity or consequence. Stalking becomes a rom-com "meet cute." The dance contest becomes a kind of healing breakthrough that conflates scrappy underdog triumph with actual psychological wellness. In short, bipolar disorder, mania, depression -- and mourning, actually -- are all just window dressing and spray-on gravitas for a movie that's about getting two cute, quirky kids together at the end. The movie doesn't care how it happens, and has no commitment to exploring the (very real) issues it nicks and grazes on the way there.
That anyone with bipolar disorder would look at SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK and see some sort of reflection of their own struggle...well, that's just mystifying. It's like confusing THE WIZARD OF OZ with The Weather Channel because there's a cyclone there. It's just a cheap device.
Re: “The Deer Hunter's Vietnam remains troublesome, but its maimed Middle America is more affecting than ever”
I must admit, I have never had the nerve to sit down with HEAVEN'S GATE. (When it made the revival rounds, I was away when it played in Houston.) So THE DEER HUNTER was my first brush with unadulterated Cimino. (I'd seen DESPERATE HOURS and YEAR OF THE DRAGON, fwiw.) With historical distance, it's shocking that anyone found this to be an anti-American film. It's patriotic to a fault, if only by comparison. (The Viet Cong, who are presumably fighting a war of liberation, clearly have nothing better to do that play sadistic games with their prisoners and gamble.) The "God Bless America" singalong after Nick's funeral didn't strike me as ironic; it was more an attempt to assuage their grief and convince themselves that they love their small-town life, despite all.
Oddly, I kept thinking of ARGO as I was watching this. In 1978, it's ugly and frustrating, but entirely understandable, that THE DEER HUNTER would depict the North Vietnamese as shouting, unsubtitled, bloodthirsty animals. It's not excusable, but one can see it as a panic reflex. On the other hand, Affleck and Co. had the benefit of being 35 years out from the Iranian hostage crisis, and did everything in their power to avoid any shred of historical perspective. If they'd had access to a time machine, I suspect they'd have gone and retrieved Charlie Daniels '78 to do the soundtrack. "Go To Hell, Ayatollah!"
Re: “Zero Dark Thirty: Torture's not the most troubling thing about Kathryn Bigelow's Hollywood death strike”
Thanks, Jim.
And yes, I would say, the movie is well worth seeing. It is a gripping and intelligent movie, and perhaps just as important, it is now at the center of a national debate. Not to say that a film's "importance" equals a recommendation per se. But no one would be bothering with ZD30 if there were no "there" there.
To put it another way: certain of 2012/13's Oscar films are utterly disposable. (I'm looking at you, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.) But like LINCOLN and AMOUR, ZERO DARK THIRTY will leave you with a lot to mull over even if there are aspects of it that you don't entirely like.
Re: “'What the Heck Is Art?' Video Is Giving Me Feelings, Not the Good Kind”
Sigh.
I encounter people like this every few years, both in my personal life (as a Southerner with a conservative family) and my professional life (as a college instructor), and they are so tedious. Note how they can never make an argument against modern art without trotting out market prices, as if the cost of things is the ultimate arbiter of value (or the phony attribution thereof). They reduce "art" to communication. They want art to be rational, and they insist that it can be nothing else. I always walk away feeling sorry for these people, thinking about what impoverished inner lives they must have. I mean, can you imagine having sex with a person like this? "Oh, Gunther, it is time to put the penis in the vagina in order to ejaculate and make the baby..."
Re: “Alex Gibney's WikiLeaks doc We Steal Secrets: a movie you probably shouldn't watch on a Verizon cellphone”
Okay, but I think it should be said, in Gibney's and in Ardin's defense (and in the spirit of general fairness) that WikiLeaks is going to publish a set of data that is quite slanted in its own right.