15 March 2005
NOVEL: HOW I BECAME STUPID (2004).
 A young man living in Paris decides to abandon his life as a tortured intellectual to pursue the simpler, stupider joys of materialistic achievement. O, the French. You gotta love a country so steeped in literary theory. Here, author Martin Page succeeds in creating a sit-com for smarty pants types, which isn't a bad thing--picture Seinfeld replaced by a younger (but equally dumbfounded) Flaubert, and you've got your hero. I couldn't help but root for the guy as he goes about grappling with the meaningless of the work-shop-sleep existence, even when things get pretensiously absurd (he discovers a suicide support group). The twin myths of increased productivity and shopping bliss are inherently absurd, after all, so you might as well poke fun at it.
For the most part, the writing is nothing spectacular, and each episodic chapter basically begins with an establishing shot and ends with a punchline and applause. And our hero's journey ends with a completely silly deus-ex-machina cum cute-meet one-two combo--mildly disappointing. But it's got plenty heart, and is both mature enough to avoid throwing a nihilistic tantrum denouncing modernity and balanced enough to ignore any self-aware, po-mo winking, however tempting such a tone may have been. A fun, witty read. I still wish I didn't have to go to work, though.
There's a Chinese proverb that goes something along these lines: a fish never knows when it's pissing. The same applies to intellectuals.
STORIES: LOST IN THE CITY (1992).
 This collection of shorts tracks the lives of black Americans living in Washington, D. C. across generations. It's so fascinating to see a younger Edward P. Jones at work here, writing with only slightly less restraint than his gorgeously understated novel, The Known World. Themes deal with fragmenting communities, broken mothers, the eruption of violence without ceremony, and the sudden death of innocence. Although the title story, set in the '80's and revolving around an affluent woman who gives in to a cocaine binge instead of visiting her dying mother, feels a little dated and heavy-handed (the golden coke spoon, for instance), the rest of the collection strides along with Jones' signature unsentimental assuredness.
He portrays the city as many things all at once: glowing in the afternoon light, frozen solid during winter, lively with activity, crumbling under gentrification. Each snapshot feels real and familiar and, for those reasons, are simply heartbreaking to witness. Technically speaking, I think Jones' greatest skill is managing to blend both literary and folksy language into a nimble hybrid that only serves to deepen his prose without turning into ironic camp. His patiently crafted work results in a graceful read, and for the most part lacking any sort of contrived epiphanies.
"Dancing with me don't end that way," were the first words she had ever spoken to him. "Try me and see."
14 March 2005
UPDATE.
Sorry about the lack of posts lately. I've been busy as hell transitioning from Entertainment.com to Gifts.com, another company within the InterActiveCorp family. Why? Because it's IAC's first startup (they didn't acquire this one), and because Nicki works there as a DBA, which will make morning commutes super fun. Also, it's located across the street from the Wiltern Theater in the heart of Koreatown, which means good food everywhere. I no longer work to help people save, but instead to help them spend, spend, spend! Yay!
PHOTO DIARY.
I went to New York City a few days ago on InterActiveCorp business. I thought my meeting was at this swank, historical building, which houses Barry Diller's Central Park facing office...
...but it turned out that I was meeting at the more pedestrian overflow office space down the street.
During the few hours of free time I had, I walked in the cold to see the new-ish Time Warner building at Columbus Circle.
I also managed to see the last of The Gates at Central Park. There were only a few hundred left.
Say what you want about artist Cristo, but I thought The Gates were beautiful. Could've been because I was walking around in a snowy New York in the early morning, but still.
It's just that they have this imperial majesty to them, but seem festive at the same time.
13 March 2005
MOVIE: CODE 46 (2003).
A man falls in love with a non-approved woman, thereby violating Code 46's directive to maintain gene pool integrity in this near-future society's heavily cloned populace. What a strange and beautiful film this is. Shot in a mesmerizing guerilla-art style in Shanghai, it plays like a dreamy sequence of profound and fleeting impressions. The world outside urban centers has been reduced to a searing desert landscape. Stark architecure, enclosed plazas of steel and glass and white tile, fill each shot. The characters all speak in a confusing patois of English, French, Spanish, and Chinese as if they grew up knowing no other language. It all adds up to one of the most natural, convincing pieces of sci-fi I've ever seen. No elaborate tech swagger here.
Tim Robbins and Samanatha Morton (the creepily pretty actor who played the main Precept from Minority Report) do a great job of carrying the movie's relatively flat, picaresque plot all the way to its bittersweet ending. Confident, risky filmmaking by director Michael Winterbottom. Next must-rent: his 2002 24-hour Party People.
How did you know my palabra?
MOVIE: BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON (2004).
Bridget is back, this time wreaking havoc on her hard-won stable relationship through her own insecurities. But all is well in British rom-com land, for we have a huggable series of spills, gorgeous outfits, and even a final chase scene (in the rain! Why is it always in the rain?), all set to an absolutely faboo soundtrack of popular ditties.
It's absolute garbage, and the only reason I sat through it was because I was stuck on a plane. Otherwise, I'd normally rather smoke a dried cat turd stogie after a meal of maggot pie. This "movie" reaches astonishing lows when Bridget, having been wrongly jailed in Thailand for possessing drugs slipped into her suitcase, twiches and simpers with her Thai cellmates, all of whom sit captivated by this visiting European seer and her banal wisdom about love and makeup. The Thailand sequence climaxes with a supremely patronizing scene in which Bridget, fulfilling her White Man's Burden, teaches those poor ignorant ethnics the proper lyrics to Madonna's Like a Virgin. Pass the cigar cutter, please?
I'm currently involved with two men at the same time. One of them is named Ben, and the other is named Jerry.
MOVIE: AFTER THE SUNSET (2004).
A master thief couple's retirement from The Life is interrupted by a tempting opportunity to lift a precious diamond from a visiting exhibit aboard a cruise ship. There's a few reasons to let oneself enjoy this paper-thin slice of cheese: 1) it's inherently fun to watch Pierce Brosnan go through his genius criminal schtick; 2) we have a complicated heist caper here, and we do love capers O so much; 3) Woody Harrelson gets kicked around a lot, which is nice because he sucks; and 4) Selma Hayek in a bikini, Selma Hayek rising dripping from the Caribbean after a swim, and Selma Hayek reclining on a fluffy duvet in her lingerie. Oh, and the fantabulous Don Cheadle, this time playing a smooth but amusingly moronic local thug.
Many things bug about this flick, naturally. The sassy island cop-ette with the outrageous ethno-caribbeo accent, the Cheeseburger-in-Paradise depiction of tropical living, &cetera, &cetera. I didn't really notice because my brain switched off as soon as the sea-plane's pontoons hit the crystal blue waters.
You're cheating on me, aren't you. Not with a woman, but with a diamond.
MOVIE: THE JACKET (2005).
An injured soldier suffering from Gulf War syndrome confined to a mysterious mental hospital after being wrongly punished for a murder finds he can travel into the future during bouts of abuse by his doctor, who straps him into a strait jacket and leaves him in a morgue drawer for hours at a time. The storyteller in me didn't like this film at all--its preposterous premise, and its characters' unbelievable lack of shock at the concept of time travel, just made no damn sense. But the filmmaker in me kinda loved it. Associate producer Steven Soderbergh's artful touch is all over this movie, bringing a refreshing economy of camerawork and setting. Adrian Brody, too, spins gold out of absolute turds of dialogue as he naturalistically, and confidently, mutters his lines.
And yes, the romantic in me liked the love story driving this film's improbable plot. Especially the part about the soldier visiting his love-to-be (played with grit-toothed shrillness by Keira Knightly) while she's still a child to warn her in advance of her future trailer-trash fate. Appropriate and touching, since love always exists in orbiting valences of possibility.
But oh well. This one's only for the Soderbergh fanatic, like me. Hell, I even went out to see Solaris, so what's that say?
I've got to get back in that jacket.
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