Death of an Actor

Interesting thoughts on actor Robin Williams' suicide; he was smart, he was witty, he was mega-successful, much more of a force to reckon with in the world of art than actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was merely a thinking man's actor and od'd himself to death some months ago. Williams was also a comedian; so why did this epitome of joy, success and influence commit suicide?

Andrew Solomon dissects Williams' suicide well:

A part that stands out:

When the mass media report suicide stories, they almost always provide a “reason,” which seems to bring logic to the illogic of self-termination. Such rationalization is particularly common when it comes to the suicides of celebrities, because the idea that someone could be miserable despite great worldly success seems so unreasonable. Why would a person with so much of what the rest of us want choose to end his life? Since there are always things going awry in every life at every moment, the explanation industry usually tells us that the person had a disastrous marriage, or was a hopeless addict, or had just experienced a major career disaster, or was under the influence of a cult. But Robin Williams does not seem to have had any of these problems. Yes, he fought addiction, but he had been largely sober for quite a while. He was on his third marriage, but it appeared to be a happy one, and he seems to have been close to his children. His newest TV series was cancelled a few months ago, but his reputation as one of the great performers of our time remained untarnished. So he would have had little “reason” to commit suicide—as, indeed, most people who kill themselves have little “reason” other than depression (unipolar or bipolar), which is at the base of most suicide.

The story ends on a poignant note:

A great hope gets crushed every time someone reminds us that happiness can be neither assumed nor earned; that we are all prisoners of our own flawed brains; that the ultimate aloneness in each of us is, finally, inviolable.

The myth of America is now girlhood

Movie critic Manhola Dargis gives Catching Fire, a place in the film and cultural history of America:

“Catching Fire” isn’t a great work of art but it’s a competent, at times exciting movie and it does something that better, more artistically notable movies often fail to do: It speaks to its moment in time. “The mythic America,” the literary critic Leslie Fiedler memorably wrote, “is boyhood.” One of the things that “The Hunger Games,” on the page and on the screen, suggests is that the myth is changing. Boys (and men) are still boys, of course, including in movies, but the very existence of Katniss — who fights her own battles, and kisses and leaves the boys, only sometimes to save them — suggests cultural consumers are ready for change, even if most cultural producers remain foolishly stuck in the past. It’s unlikely Katniss will lead the real revolution the movies need, but a woman can dream.

America adrift

Two films, A Sandra Bullock-George Clooney starrer and a Robert Redford acted (Redford is put off by the word "star" in connection with actors), Gravity and All is Lost, respectively, are about men and women who are adrift, one in space and the other at sea.

The films seems to reflect, as Maureen Dowd says in her profile on Robert Redford, the national mood, which is that of a nation unmoored.

I am a fan of Hollywood, and an ardent critic of its Indian counterpart, Bollywood. Hollywood has its high and low moments and defects; but from time to time one can hark back on films coming out of this entertainment goliath and claim that in some ways some films manage to mirror the American soul (if there is such a national soul). 

I rarely see a Bollywood movie that deals with the Indian soul in the sense that it catches the national mood in a particular state of anger, melancholia, elation or depression. What Bollywood does is take on an event by the neck, convert it into a crude story, and fling it at the audience with song and dance sequences.

How else does one account for the birth of a movie like Raanjhanaa, which glorifies male obsession for a female object of love? In these times when stalking, brutalizing and raping of women in India are disturbing the national conscience, a movie celebrates a cause of that disturbance.

And, the surprising part is that Raanjhanaa is a big hit in India.

Anyhow, India has been adrift for a long time. Care to make a movie reflecting this, Bollywood?

The Allen wrench

The new Woody Allen movie is slated for release shortly.

Blue Jasmine, is, as is a typical Allen movies, primarily the story of a woman, trapped inside, what Allen calls the "Greek cycle.".

He sees the Greek cycle--a life cycle in which both fate and free will determine a life's path from an acme to its nadir--in the fall of a super-rich housewife as earnestly as the Greeks saw in the kings and gods'. 

In Allen's own words, Blue Jasmine is the story of 

[A] very high Upper East Side liver” who “had a precipitous drop and had to downsize radically. [...] She went from someone with charge accounts every place and a limitless amount of money, virtually, to someone who had to shop in bargain places and even get a job.

A lovely piece on Woody Allen's reputation as the "woman's man," is here.

Man of steel is part Moses part immigrant

The great thing about comic books is that they not only appeal to children, but when franchised out into the adult world for mass-entertainment, they also speak to adults.

And when adults look at them, they see things that children don't.

In her review of the Zack Snyder-directed Man of Steel, the latest version of the adventures of Superman, movie critic Manohla Dargis sees the flick as a multilayered story. In the manner of William Empson's classic, The Seven Types of Ambiguity, Dargis unearths the myth of a technology- apocalypse, Moses-in-Superman, and Superman as industrial laborer/immigrant saga, among a host of other "ambiguities."

Krypton is facing destruction because it's technologically too advanced. The architecture of the city is sleek and steely reminding us of the sleek and steely structures designed by Zaha Hadid in some of the biggest metropolises of the world. Michael Shannon, the guy who built an underground shelter to protect his family against an impending storm in Take Shelter, plays the destructive villain who would destroy Krypton and earth with all his ill-gotten tech smarts. 

Superman is sent off into the earth in a Moses-type basket. He has Jewish origins as is revealed by his original name. The Moses reference is reinforced when Superman is shown as a burning body on the rooftop of a factory that is set on fire. He escapes unscathed. 

The trailer above shows him as an immigrant, the old-fashioned outsider who comes to these shores and labors away in the old-fashioned industrial-worker role. Zor-El broadcasts to the earthlings, "he looks like you, but he is not one of you." (Now that sounds a bit like Superman is Edward Snowden!)

Hail to the theory of the big bang

A very interesting take on the phenomenal popularity of Chuck Lorre's The Big Bang Theory.

The show, described as the adventures of four Pasadena-based scientists' "quest to navigate the world from a book-smart, yet socially addled perspective with the help of a street-smart, waitress/actress neighbor," has acquired a bit of a cultish status, not just among nerds and geeks, but among the culturally hip as well (meaning, those who swear by Girls and Mad Men).

Some of the show's "virtues", as listed here, are:

1. Sheldon Cooper, played by Jim Parsons, with his "dervishy nerdiness."

2. A prime time TV show where five of the seven main characters hold Ph.D.'s and one is a mere Masters from M.I.T., and the jokes are about derivatives, bosons, Schroedinger's cat and Madame Curie.

3. The accuracy of the nerd oeuvre: The obsession with superheroes, Star Trek, and Star Wars.

4. Finally the masterminds of The Big Bang Theory dares to:

Produce a TV program that plays not a whit to the aspirations of its audience. You might laugh at the characters, pity them or love them, but you don’t want to be them (especially because you might already be them). There are a good amount of pre- and postcoital scenes, but they’re not especially sexy. These are not especially pretty people. [You might have] a problem with Howard (Simon Helberg), the gnomish, dickie-sporting mama’s boy [...] Even Penny (Kaley Cuoco), the bombshell across the hall, often appears rumpled or with a bottle of cheap wine hanging from her like an extra limb.

Robbing the Paris Hiltons: New form of commodity fetishizm

What's common to the following movies?

1. Baz Luhrmann's, The Great Gatsby (2013)

2. Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers (2013)

3. Sophia Coppola's Bling Ring (2013)

4. Michael Bay's Pain & Gain (2013)

It's commodity fetishizm, says, film critic A.O. Scott, and many will agree with him:

Sex isn't hot anymore, lust for goods is:

The real objects of lust in contemporary cinema are not bodies but, well, objects — in particular the luxury brands that form the lingua franca of popular culture from hip-hop to reality television to the pages of Vogue.

It's just that in almost all of these movies, the commodities aren't bought, but stolen. Therein lies the thrill of the new era's commodity fetishizm: to suffer a sense of entitlement, where another's luxury goods is yours by birth right, so why not appropriate them by force?

Jodie fosters complexity

I have been a big fan of Jodie Foster and knew her to be a thinking woman's Hollywood actress. Somehow, the words brainy, thoughtful and educated come to mind when I see Foster on screen.

Yesterday's Golden Globe award ceremony confirmed that impression: Foster received the Cecile B. Demille award for lifetime achievement in cinema. A very young recipient of a very hoary award, but it was the graceful and un-Hollywood speech with which Foster received her award that stirs the mind.

True to her metier, Foster gave a thoughtful speech in which the actress, director and producer, addressed her personal sexuality and privacy with finesse.

The LA Times described Jodie Foster's acceptance speech as  "obliquely playful, complex and emotional."

Superwoman on the horizon

I absolutely love this video-celebration of what movie critic A.O. Scott calls "Hollywood's Year of Heroine Worship."

Marilyn Monroe

A new biography of Marilyn Monroe is on the block: Lois Banner's The Passion and the Paradox.

A review of the book has three striking observations about Monroe:

1. There are multiple rumors of who Marilyn really was. I like this one best--she was both a dumb blonde and a bookworm who read Dostoyevsky.

2. Monroe justified promiscuity with the conviction that sex was "an act that brought friends closer together."

3. Marilyn had recurring visions of striding over a supine row of church congregants who peered up her skirt.