A Black President Before a Black ‘Bachelor’?
ABC's matchmaking show features all-white contenders. Why that won't change for a while.
By Joshua Alston | Newsweek
Feb 5, 2010
As potential trophy husbands go, Jake Pavelka is mighty shiny. A charming pilot with flawless teeth and a chivalrous demeanor, the only thing missing in his life is the right woman to enjoy the bounty of his pectorals. He's the leading man in this season of The Bachelor, a show I'm watching for the first time and am absorbed in. But as I watch the remaining women vie for Jake's hand in marriage, I can't help but think: Why are all of these people white? In fact, in the 14-season history of the show, all of the bachelors have been white, along with a staggering majority of the women available to him.
My first inclination was to call the show's executive producer and ask. But then I thought better of it. Why waste time with a crafted, politically correct explanation when I already know the answer? People still overwhelmingly date and marry within their own race. White people are the majority in this country and, therefore, the best audience to target from a ratings standpoint, and there's risk in alienating viewers who may have less enlightened views on interracial couples. Could they cast a black man? Sure. Would it be smart to? Probably not.
The Bachelor is one of many pop-culture artifacts that highlight the uncomfortable gap between the way we'd like to think of racial integration and the way it actually is. Just as people of different races don't often date each other or worship together, we also don't read many of the same books, or like many of the same movies, or adore many of the same celebrities. Certainly not as much as we'd like to believe.
Periodically, controversies arise when people are forced to confront this dissonance. Vanity Fair just released its Hollywood issue, and gracing its cover are nine rising starlets, all of them wispy, white women. The blogosphere erupted: why no women of color? Two possible explanations: One is that, according to Quantcast, 85 percent of Vanity Fair's online readership is white. The other reason is that the actress most often floated as a potential addition to the cover is Gabourey Sidibe of Precious.
What's been so refreshing about Sidibe's reaction to her newfound fame is that she seems totally aware that, as a big black woman, her breakthrough role isn't going to lead to her being cast opposite Ryan Reynolds in a romantic comedy. In Hollywood, to be overweight and black is to be a character actor, probably doomed to a résumé full of credits like "DMV Worker" and "Concerned Passenger." Is this fair? Certainly not. But what's the value in attacking a symptom? Vanity Fair, like The Bachelor, didn't create the disparity, they just committed it to film. That's not to say we shouldn't strive for progress whenever possible. J. J. Abrams, to his credit, cast Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the male and female leads for his new NBC thriller Undercovers, a bold choice considering both are black, neither are household names, and the characters (married spies) don't necessarily call for black actors. But it's an experiment to say the least.
People of different races talk over each other's heads all the time: Monty Python and Tyler Perry, Erykah Badu and Diana Krall, John Updike and Zora Neale Hurston. Sometimes our pop-culture universes overlap; other times we're just nodding and smiling politely. The ever-brave 30 Rock made a gag about it, when Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) responded to a friend accusing her of stereotyping: "You know me, I never make assumptions about race. Remember I asked that black guy if he had seen Sideways?"
The truth is, it's disturbing how divided we still are in some respects, so we convince ourselves these divisions don't exist, then bristle when we're reminded otherwise. It's a goal for America to reach a point at which people of different races are integrated in every facet of life; we'll date each other, worship together, and judge movies based not on the color of their characters' skin but on the content of their characters' characters. In the meantime, we'll just have to grin and bear it when reminded that we're not quite there yet. Is it ridiculous that there's a black president before a black Bachelor? Sure, but I wanted the former a lot more anyway.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Interview with former Bachelorette contestant
This interview was posted on FORT after a rather extensive and very insightful conversation about storyboarding. This show is all rather fake, friends.
http://www.freedrive.com/file/700512,bachelorbrad.mp3
My mind has been blown.
P.S. Off for a date with my niece. I'll get back to you later tonight :)
http://www.freedrive.com/file/700512,bachelorbrad.mp3
My mind has been blown.
P.S. Off for a date with my niece. I'll get back to you later tonight :)
Sunday, February 14, 2010
We'll always have Paris: Pain, loss, remorse make it romantic at the movies
We'll always have Paris: Pain, loss, remorse make it romantic at the movies
By Jay Stone, Vancouver Sun, February 9 2010
Romance, n.: an exaggeration, a picturesque falsehood. (Concise Oxford Dictionary)
Okay, it's meaning No. 5, but the one you're probably thinking of — "a love story" — is only No. 4. Romance is a staple at the movies, right up there with picturesque falsehood, but at its best it's not all skipping through the roses to a medley of 1960s hits. Indeed, its essence is something author Anita Brookner called "sadness and impossibility."
Brookner is a fine one to cite, I know: she's the author of drawing room dramas whose heroines are often abandoned to pathetic loneliness. But she has a point about romance. In the best love stories, sadness and impossibility are at centre stage.
You see only hints of that in romantic comedy. In romantic comedy, the two people who are made for each other meet, do wonderful being-in-love things (shopping, running hand-in-hand through the park, making gauzy love while fireworks explode in the sky or trains run erotically into tunnels), have an argument, typically over something inconsequential, realize their error, and drive quickly to an airport to reunite. In the better rom-coms, they don't have to drive all the way there: in Breakfast at Tiffany's, for instance, Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard are going to the airport together in a cab (she's bound for a flight to South America) when they stop, get out, and kiss in the rain. I almost forgot kissing in the rain. That usually happens just after skipping through the park.
This pattern has become so embedded that romantic comedy has strained at the edges trying to find barriers for its heroes to overcome: people started travelling through time or being fictional. Even in movies that were pure love stories, rather than rom-coms, the barrier problem persisted as inconsequential arguments gave way to things like actual death (Truly Madly Deeply, say, or Ghost), although even that couldn't stand in the way of picturesque falsehood. But oh, what a lovely lie.
The key is that it's picturesque. F. Scott Fitzgerald — admittedly another imperfect source when it comes to love stories — differentiated between a sentimental person, who thinks things will last, and a romantic, who hopes against hope that they won't. That definition evokes the bittersweet feeling of Casablanca, perhaps the most romantic of all movies: they're in love, but he gives her up for the noble cause of something greater (in this case, the Second World War.) Rick, the character played by Humphrey Bogart, is occasionally accused of being a sentimentalist, and indeed, under his cynical exterior we see a man who has been broken — broken by love, it turns out — and who needs only a call to arms to reignite his greater passion. He's a romantic, a man waiting for salvation.
Casablanca has a happy-sad ending that has never really been equalled in movies, although they have tried: the great love story is differentiated from the romantic comedy mostly by the conclusion. If the couple gets together, it was a comedy. If they don't, it was romance.
This was something Fitzgerald knew, even though he was a mostly failed screenwriter. He went to Hollywood several times, but nothing much happened until 1937, when he returned for a couple of years and worked on several movies that didn't amount to much (A Yank At Oxford, Madame Curie). He met gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, and she lived with him for the rest of his sad and picturesque life. If you're interested in the romanticized version, watch the film Beloved Infidel with Gregory Peck as Fitzgerald and Deborah Kerr as Graham.
The real Fitzgerald finished one screenplay. It was for a movie called Three Comrades, a sad romance about three soldiers in love with a woman dying of tuberculosis. Dying of tuberculosis is one of the most romantic things that can happen (Camille, et al), because it puts deathless love into sharper relief.
Around the same time, Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his daughter saying, "What I am doing here is the last tired effort of a man who once did something finer and better." The aching feeling of doom in that self-evaluation is as sad as anything faced by Jay Gatsby. It’s the cry of the romantic hoping it doesn’t last.
Here are five movies that express the bittersweet allure of romance:
Casablanca: The ideal love story: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman had an affair and they're still in love, but they have to give it up for a greater cause. The tone is wartime cynicism and tired nobility, the dialogue is timeless, and there's Dooley Wilson singing As Time Goes By. Play it, Sam. Again.
Moonstruck: The most operatic of romantic comedies is the story of a woman (Cher) who gives up a reasonable man when she falls in love with an unreasonable one (Nicolas Cage). The moon hangs low over everyone's passions ("Cosmo's moon," they call it) and while boy finally gets girl, they're all aware that love is the worst thing that can happen to anyone. The worst and the best.
Titanic: Big story, big problems: the poor boy falls in love with the rich girl on the RMC Hubris, the ship that wouldn't sink. We know the voyage is doomed, but we're hooked on the romance: Will Leonardo DiCaprio win the heart of Kate Winslet? Will they survive the sinking? Better still, will only their memories make it? This is a big-budget paean to the sweet brevity of true love.
The English Patient: More tragedy, this time told in flashback, as a dying Ralph Fiennes remembers his affair with Kristin Scott Thomas, the married woman whom had to leave behind, injured, in a desert cave, as he went for help. There are several other love stories and tragedies to negotiate, and some viewers were impatient with the film's twists, but its lushness and its grand passions are intoxicating.
Romeo and Juliet: Even more romantic than Titanic, to which it bears a passing resemblance, the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version of Shakespeare's play — the one with Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting — is the quintessential star-crossed tragedy. Even without moving the action to the streets (as in West Side Story), Zeffirelli turns teenage longing into an aching tale of ill-fated passion.
By Jay Stone, Vancouver Sun, February 9 2010
Romance, n.: an exaggeration, a picturesque falsehood. (Concise Oxford Dictionary)
Okay, it's meaning No. 5, but the one you're probably thinking of — "a love story" — is only No. 4. Romance is a staple at the movies, right up there with picturesque falsehood, but at its best it's not all skipping through the roses to a medley of 1960s hits. Indeed, its essence is something author Anita Brookner called "sadness and impossibility."
Brookner is a fine one to cite, I know: she's the author of drawing room dramas whose heroines are often abandoned to pathetic loneliness. But she has a point about romance. In the best love stories, sadness and impossibility are at centre stage.
You see only hints of that in romantic comedy. In romantic comedy, the two people who are made for each other meet, do wonderful being-in-love things (shopping, running hand-in-hand through the park, making gauzy love while fireworks explode in the sky or trains run erotically into tunnels), have an argument, typically over something inconsequential, realize their error, and drive quickly to an airport to reunite. In the better rom-coms, they don't have to drive all the way there: in Breakfast at Tiffany's, for instance, Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard are going to the airport together in a cab (she's bound for a flight to South America) when they stop, get out, and kiss in the rain. I almost forgot kissing in the rain. That usually happens just after skipping through the park.
This pattern has become so embedded that romantic comedy has strained at the edges trying to find barriers for its heroes to overcome: people started travelling through time or being fictional. Even in movies that were pure love stories, rather than rom-coms, the barrier problem persisted as inconsequential arguments gave way to things like actual death (Truly Madly Deeply, say, or Ghost), although even that couldn't stand in the way of picturesque falsehood. But oh, what a lovely lie.
The key is that it's picturesque. F. Scott Fitzgerald — admittedly another imperfect source when it comes to love stories — differentiated between a sentimental person, who thinks things will last, and a romantic, who hopes against hope that they won't. That definition evokes the bittersweet feeling of Casablanca, perhaps the most romantic of all movies: they're in love, but he gives her up for the noble cause of something greater (in this case, the Second World War.) Rick, the character played by Humphrey Bogart, is occasionally accused of being a sentimentalist, and indeed, under his cynical exterior we see a man who has been broken — broken by love, it turns out — and who needs only a call to arms to reignite his greater passion. He's a romantic, a man waiting for salvation.
Casablanca has a happy-sad ending that has never really been equalled in movies, although they have tried: the great love story is differentiated from the romantic comedy mostly by the conclusion. If the couple gets together, it was a comedy. If they don't, it was romance.
This was something Fitzgerald knew, even though he was a mostly failed screenwriter. He went to Hollywood several times, but nothing much happened until 1937, when he returned for a couple of years and worked on several movies that didn't amount to much (A Yank At Oxford, Madame Curie). He met gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, and she lived with him for the rest of his sad and picturesque life. If you're interested in the romanticized version, watch the film Beloved Infidel with Gregory Peck as Fitzgerald and Deborah Kerr as Graham.
The real Fitzgerald finished one screenplay. It was for a movie called Three Comrades, a sad romance about three soldiers in love with a woman dying of tuberculosis. Dying of tuberculosis is one of the most romantic things that can happen (Camille, et al), because it puts deathless love into sharper relief.
Around the same time, Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his daughter saying, "What I am doing here is the last tired effort of a man who once did something finer and better." The aching feeling of doom in that self-evaluation is as sad as anything faced by Jay Gatsby. It’s the cry of the romantic hoping it doesn’t last.
Here are five movies that express the bittersweet allure of romance:
Casablanca: The ideal love story: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman had an affair and they're still in love, but they have to give it up for a greater cause. The tone is wartime cynicism and tired nobility, the dialogue is timeless, and there's Dooley Wilson singing As Time Goes By. Play it, Sam. Again.
Moonstruck: The most operatic of romantic comedies is the story of a woman (Cher) who gives up a reasonable man when she falls in love with an unreasonable one (Nicolas Cage). The moon hangs low over everyone's passions ("Cosmo's moon," they call it) and while boy finally gets girl, they're all aware that love is the worst thing that can happen to anyone. The worst and the best.
Titanic: Big story, big problems: the poor boy falls in love with the rich girl on the RMC Hubris, the ship that wouldn't sink. We know the voyage is doomed, but we're hooked on the romance: Will Leonardo DiCaprio win the heart of Kate Winslet? Will they survive the sinking? Better still, will only their memories make it? This is a big-budget paean to the sweet brevity of true love.
The English Patient: More tragedy, this time told in flashback, as a dying Ralph Fiennes remembers his affair with Kristin Scott Thomas, the married woman whom had to leave behind, injured, in a desert cave, as he went for help. There are several other love stories and tragedies to negotiate, and some viewers were impatient with the film's twists, but its lushness and its grand passions are intoxicating.
Romeo and Juliet: Even more romantic than Titanic, to which it bears a passing resemblance, the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version of Shakespeare's play — the one with Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting — is the quintessential star-crossed tragedy. Even without moving the action to the streets (as in West Side Story), Zeffirelli turns teenage longing into an aching tale of ill-fated passion.
Happy Valentine's Day -- Everyday
Three Essentials of Couple Etiquette
Yet, even in loving relationships, problems occur when we let it all hang out: We leave the gas tank empty, hog the hot water or break wind in bed. When analysing the responses from a 600-couple survey the Emily Post Institute conducted in 2004, researchers found the key to resolving all that. Couples "who communicated well ... had it made," says Post of the results. "You have to think 'what will be good for us, not just for me.' "
Where Do You Start?
Actions: They do speak louder than words, especially if they come across as inconsiderate. "Ripping through TV channels so fast no one can see them or not cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen are things we could do differently if we stopped to think how they affect others," Post says.
But consideration goes both ways, he adds. A reader once asked if it's rude of her husband to come home and watch TV for an hour before talking to her. "It is, but you also need to give him space to switch gears," he told her. "Instead of being angry, communicate what you want after he relaxes."
Words: Please, thank you and excuse me. "It's so simple, but the kind of words you use could really ease problems, or make things worse," says Post.
Appearance: "How you look is not just about you," says Post, "it reflects on your partner and how you feel about them."
The Top 10 Laws of Couple Etiquette
1. No Smack Talk
"Demeaning attitudes are the biggest problem in relationship etiquette by far," says Post. "You could call it rudeness, but it's being treated like you're not the most important person they're with. People will forgive not holding open the door or not eating with the right fork. But put yourself on a pedestal and treat your partner like their opinion doesn't count? It's the kind of thing they remember for a long time. But most of all, don't be a nag. One thing that any couple needs to do is look at each others' foibles and not expect to change that person 180 degrees. Not everything is a deal breaker."
2. Learn to Compromise
"Compromise is not always a 50-50 thing. Each time an issue comes up, take it individually. Typically, successful couples resolve this type of issue by deferring to the partner to whom the issue matters more."
3. Avoid Blame Game
"Don't hold your choices over someone else's head, if it doesn't work out," says Post. "Don't start pointing fingers, because it's not worth it. Instead, if a glitch arises, solve the problem and move on."
4. Make a Date Night
"I cringe when I hear couples say they don't have time for each other," Post says in his book. "Children should never be used as an excuse for not dealing with each other. A successful couple works just as hard on their own relationship as they do in raising their children."
5. Deal with In-Laws
"You must get along with your in-laws, so make an effort, converse with them and recognize that you have to find something in them that's good and worthwhile," says Post, who recommends negotiating in-law visits beforehand and banning open-ended stays.
6. Talk About It
"Don't let work become something mysterious that you do away from home. Talk to your partner about the good and the bad, your hopes and disappointments, so they have a sense of what's going on in your life outside of the house."
7. Have Fun Holidays
"Take time to slow down and focus on each other. Seize this opportunity to reconnect with the person you want to be with for the rest of your life."
8. Don't Flirt
"Understand what your limits are and never say anything that you'd be embarrassed to have your Significant Other hear," advises Post.
9. It's the Little Things
"Be aware of the value of little gestures," he says.
"Make them a coffee in the morning, write a love note and put it in their briefcase, keep their favourite toothpaste on hand ... it's amazing how this will impact on people."
10. Appreciate Their Efforts
"Instead of thinking about all the things that you do around the house, take a moment to think of what your Significant Other does."
Yet, even in loving relationships, problems occur when we let it all hang out: We leave the gas tank empty, hog the hot water or break wind in bed. When analysing the responses from a 600-couple survey the Emily Post Institute conducted in 2004, researchers found the key to resolving all that. Couples "who communicated well ... had it made," says Post of the results. "You have to think 'what will be good for us, not just for me.' "
Where Do You Start?
Actions: They do speak louder than words, especially if they come across as inconsiderate. "Ripping through TV channels so fast no one can see them or not cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen are things we could do differently if we stopped to think how they affect others," Post says.
But consideration goes both ways, he adds. A reader once asked if it's rude of her husband to come home and watch TV for an hour before talking to her. "It is, but you also need to give him space to switch gears," he told her. "Instead of being angry, communicate what you want after he relaxes."
Words: Please, thank you and excuse me. "It's so simple, but the kind of words you use could really ease problems, or make things worse," says Post.
Appearance: "How you look is not just about you," says Post, "it reflects on your partner and how you feel about them."
The Top 10 Laws of Couple Etiquette
1. No Smack Talk
"Demeaning attitudes are the biggest problem in relationship etiquette by far," says Post. "You could call it rudeness, but it's being treated like you're not the most important person they're with. People will forgive not holding open the door or not eating with the right fork. But put yourself on a pedestal and treat your partner like their opinion doesn't count? It's the kind of thing they remember for a long time. But most of all, don't be a nag. One thing that any couple needs to do is look at each others' foibles and not expect to change that person 180 degrees. Not everything is a deal breaker."
2. Learn to Compromise
"Compromise is not always a 50-50 thing. Each time an issue comes up, take it individually. Typically, successful couples resolve this type of issue by deferring to the partner to whom the issue matters more."
3. Avoid Blame Game
"Don't hold your choices over someone else's head, if it doesn't work out," says Post. "Don't start pointing fingers, because it's not worth it. Instead, if a glitch arises, solve the problem and move on."
4. Make a Date Night
"I cringe when I hear couples say they don't have time for each other," Post says in his book. "Children should never be used as an excuse for not dealing with each other. A successful couple works just as hard on their own relationship as they do in raising their children."
5. Deal with In-Laws
"You must get along with your in-laws, so make an effort, converse with them and recognize that you have to find something in them that's good and worthwhile," says Post, who recommends negotiating in-law visits beforehand and banning open-ended stays.
6. Talk About It
"Don't let work become something mysterious that you do away from home. Talk to your partner about the good and the bad, your hopes and disappointments, so they have a sense of what's going on in your life outside of the house."
7. Have Fun Holidays
"Take time to slow down and focus on each other. Seize this opportunity to reconnect with the person you want to be with for the rest of your life."
8. Don't Flirt
"Understand what your limits are and never say anything that you'd be embarrassed to have your Significant Other hear," advises Post.
9. It's the Little Things
"Be aware of the value of little gestures," he says.
"Make them a coffee in the morning, write a love note and put it in their briefcase, keep their favourite toothpaste on hand ... it's amazing how this will impact on people."
10. Appreciate Their Efforts
"Instead of thinking about all the things that you do around the house, take a moment to think of what your Significant Other does."
Friday, February 5, 2010
Tessa and Andy's season
Hey, pals,
I came upon this page that hosts all the clips of Tessa and Andy during Andy's Bachelor 10 season. Tessa was his F1, and there were great hopes for another Trista and Ryan. Since the romance is kinda non-existent this season, here's a season, other than Jill and Reid clips, to help bide the time.
An interesting side note: The editor of the current season is different than Andy's season. From my standpoint, this show was much better back when it seemed more real.
Enjoy:
http://www.veoh.com/collection/tessahorst/watch/v632806z6QpjtZY#watch%3Dv619187E3F6dsJ7
I came upon this page that hosts all the clips of Tessa and Andy during Andy's Bachelor 10 season. Tessa was his F1, and there were great hopes for another Trista and Ryan. Since the romance is kinda non-existent this season, here's a season, other than Jill and Reid clips, to help bide the time.
An interesting side note: The editor of the current season is different than Andy's season. From my standpoint, this show was much better back when it seemed more real.
Enjoy:
http://www.veoh.com/collection/tessahorst/watch/v632806z6QpjtZY#watch%3Dv619187E3F6dsJ7
Monday, February 1, 2010
Bright Star
Joining the rank of BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, Jane Campion’s Bright Star shines boldly among period pieces. Like the period from whence it came, a time when days were spent languishing in novels and letter writing and sewing, this film creates a generous space in which to dream of love’s tenderness as experienced through John Keats and Fanny Brawne’s love. Not only do the actors’ performances (Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, and Paul Schneider are excellent) impress, but the cinematography and directing is just as heart stopping as Fanny’s loss of John (Keats dies young of tuberculosis.) Caught in a field of purple heather or hanging onto the elegance of Keats' poetry inspired by Fanny, the viewer falls in love right along with the couple. It’s impossible not to be taken by such beauty and art. Finally, the movie’s romance—those stolen kisses and burning glances, his head on her bosom, them face to face on a small bed—carry more heart than anything Mike Fleiss could conjure. It reminds us of a time when love, even at its most unlikely, most damned, most impossible, was still so simple and genuine. They both long for each other and we hear it in their most intimate letters and verse. We see it when they align perfectly, head to head, hand to hand, against the wall that separates their bedrooms. It’s quite possibly the most romantic film I’ve seen this year.
We need some of that.
Here’s a preview:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7IwhVQa8Uk&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Here’s the score which is just so lovely:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVTW8-dceOY&feature=related
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Thankyou Marianna
Really appreciate this Marianna. So enjoy your musings. It's so strange that on three occasions,
only when reading your thread has this happened. No problem with any other threads.
I am technically challenged, basically know how to point and click!!
Maybe someone else, with more expertise, can explain this.
Thanks again
S
only when reading your thread has this happened. No problem with any other threads.
I am technically challenged, basically know how to point and click!!
Maybe someone else, with more expertise, can explain this.
Thanks again
S
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Computer problem with BB
For the third time whilst reading Marianna's thread my computer has crashed.
Not being technically savvy, is it possible that someone can "hack" a thread and cause this to happen?
Love reading your musings Marianna but hesitate to do so now. Can you post on this site?
Susan
Not being technically savvy, is it possible that someone can "hack" a thread and cause this to happen?
Love reading your musings Marianna but hesitate to do so now. Can you post on this site?
Susan
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Interview with Reid
If you didn't see this on the MB, here is a really nice interview with Reid.
http://www.943thepoint.com/pages/4889010.php
http://www.943thepoint.com/pages/4889010.php
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Jake's home
Several BB posters have commented on the mysterious rose featured in this ET clip with Jake. In addition to that detail, I wanted to share this video as another side of Jake. I must admit, he's really growing on me. He just seems like he's a simple, nice guy. He might not have much to say, but he cares so much about the things he loves. I hope that, if not on the Bachelor, he finds a woman who will love him for that wonderful quality.
http://www.etonline.com/news/2010/01/82425/index.html
http://www.etonline.com/news/2010/01/82425/index.html
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Away We Go
To date, of all the couples I've watched, including reality, fictional, and reality-TV, this couple--Burt and Verona--are my favorite. Their love is what Leen-in-love looks like. In Away We Go, we journey with these self-professed "eff-ups" as they try to pave a "straight-and-narrow" prior to the birth of their baby. When Burt's family decides to move to Belgium, the mid-30s couple decide to travel the country in search of a place to call home. Most locations bring the couple closer to a relative or friend many of whom cause the 'eff-ups" to realize who really is eff'd up. With hilarious supporting cast that put the "whack" in "whacko," the couple--and the audience--experience a range of lifestyles, climates, and parenting styles that provoke meaningful dialogue about family and love. Much of this thoughful discussion stems from the screenwriting done by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. Eggers, a memoirist, short-storyist, and editor, ranks among my top 10 favorite writers with his witty banter and invaluable perspective. These screenwriters crafted a couple who not only deeply care about each other but about the world that inevitably affects the other. And even when Verona continuously refuses to marry Burt the audience believes wholeheartedly that these souls will never--can never--part if true love ever did exist. They are completely adorable and mismatched and bohemian and unconventional, but they are also entirely grounded and loving and true. Often times that is the way of life, that the very people who think themselves the "eff-ups" following this very winding, wandering road, often are the very people who have it all together in life and love.
I just loved it. I hope you will too :)
I just loved it. I hope you will too :)
Julie & Julia
Immediately after watching this movie, I decided I wanted to be a chef. I wanted to cook phenomenal food that no palate in the world had ever experienced. But I was too tired and the next morning I was back to reality.
Julie & Julia provides a look into the things--better, the people--who inspire us; in aspiring toward those idols, we often reach the greatest heights of ourselves. Meryl Streep and Amy Adams play charming women with a zest for the spice in life. They both embody the resilience that transport us through life's challenges. They craft mouth-watering delicacies that make you want to eat through the TV. Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child so closely approximates the larger-than-life woman that you almost believe the great chef is once again on your TV screen in all her buttery friendliness. Julie and Julia is one of those films in which one helping might just not be quite enough :)
Julie & Julia provides a look into the things--better, the people--who inspire us; in aspiring toward those idols, we often reach the greatest heights of ourselves. Meryl Streep and Amy Adams play charming women with a zest for the spice in life. They both embody the resilience that transport us through life's challenges. They craft mouth-watering delicacies that make you want to eat through the TV. Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child so closely approximates the larger-than-life woman that you almost believe the great chef is once again on your TV screen in all her buttery friendliness. Julie and Julia is one of those films in which one helping might just not be quite enough :)
(500) Days of Summer
Nothing holds my attention better than a good story; (500) Days of Summer is a good story. It's a story in which each of us, at some point when trying to be a lover, has been the protagonist. As the movie opens, the voice-over narrator perfectly summarizes the movie: this is the story of boy meets girl. It is not a love story...well sort of. By my estimation, it is a love story, just a lop-sided one. It's the classic mismatch of desires contradicted by the inevitable, irresistable allure of attraction. You don't hear what he or she is saying; you don't absorb the actions they are taking or not taking; you're just playing out the fiction in your head: of course, he/she loves me as I do him/her. Tom falls for Kate under this very illusion. We jump through time with him when the film opens with the breakup then cuts back to the love's first sight and subsequent flight. We then follow their chronology of relating that ends sadly and with questions. Ultimately, it is the story of the way we grow--earnestly, eagerly, or painfully--with any attempt to love another; how we often grow the most when on the other end of unrequited love; how love's loss pushes us into ourselves.
Aside from its message, (500) Days of Summer is refreshing. If not for its time-jumping chronology nor its witty dialogue than just plain see it for the story about the guy not getting the girl but getting something better.
Good suggestion, Jim and Nadya!
Aside from its message, (500) Days of Summer is refreshing. If not for its time-jumping chronology nor its witty dialogue than just plain see it for the story about the guy not getting the girl but getting something better.
Good suggestion, Jim and Nadya!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
It's Complicated
I took my Mom with my friend and her Mom to see the latest Nancy Meyers homage to women over 50. Complicated, perhaps. Compelling, somewhat. Comical, definitely. I must admit that my favorite part was watching My Mom and my friends Mom giggle and slap their knees in unison. Warmed my heart actually.
Meryl Streep, in my opinion the most gifted actress of all time (or my time), never fails to disappoint. Alec Baldwin, stealing scenes once again, is very funny. Steve Martin is sweetness personified and is hilarious in the weed smoking scene. The supporting cast from the trio of BFF's, to the children and most prominently the oldest daughter's fiance played by John Krasinski, are all solid. The weak link here was Alec Baldwin's trophy wife, Lake Bell but I suspect this was on purpose.
Here's a review from Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/29190864/review/31461042/its_complicated
Remmi gives this film two thumbs up but it doesn't take much more than an adequate film with coke and popcorn to keep this film buff happy :)
Meryl Streep, in my opinion the most gifted actress of all time (or my time), never fails to disappoint. Alec Baldwin, stealing scenes once again, is very funny. Steve Martin is sweetness personified and is hilarious in the weed smoking scene. The supporting cast from the trio of BFF's, to the children and most prominently the oldest daughter's fiance played by John Krasinski, are all solid. The weak link here was Alec Baldwin's trophy wife, Lake Bell but I suspect this was on purpose.
Here's a review from Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/29190864/review/31461042/its_complicated
Remmi gives this film two thumbs up but it doesn't take much more than an adequate film with coke and popcorn to keep this film buff happy :)
Thursday, December 24, 2009
HO HO HO
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of my RP pals. I hope 2010 is filled with peace, happiness, love and good health for you all.
Remmi xo
Remmi xo
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Surprising mention from the Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/the-10-most-irritating-people-of-2009/article1403090/
From today's Globe and Mail on line. I must say I'm a little surprised....
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Bachelorettes for Jake
Happy Holidays to all. I just took a look at the bachelorettes for Jake. All I can say is this group may prove interesting. Too may Barbie dolls. That being said I have picked on looks and occupation alone my top 4. I will wait to see personalities to see if things change. In no particular order they are as follows.
1. Elizabeth from NE
2. Gia (she seems like someone who cause some turmoil)
3. Rozlyn
4. Sheila
I am sure that by the time the show airs someone at FORT will have the F1. I am looking forward to a well scripted season. That being said feel free to weigh in with your opinions. Let the games begin.
1. Elizabeth from NE
2. Gia (she seems like someone who cause some turmoil)
3. Rozlyn
4. Sheila
I am sure that by the time the show airs someone at FORT will have the F1. I am looking forward to a well scripted season. That being said feel free to weigh in with your opinions. Let the games begin.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Golden Globes
http://www.goldenglobes.org/nominations/
The nominations were announced today. Looks like I have a few movies to see before awards season! I like to see all of the best movie contenders prior to the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
I saw "Brothers" on the weekend. Heart wrenching but well acted. I recommend it and suggest you bring a secret stash of tissues if you decide to see it.
The nominations were announced today. Looks like I have a few movies to see before awards season! I like to see all of the best movie contenders prior to the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
I saw "Brothers" on the weekend. Heart wrenching but well acted. I recommend it and suggest you bring a secret stash of tissues if you decide to see it.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
ABC's description of Jake's season and my take on it
Description:
In this season's premiere, "Episode 1401," Jake returns to the Malibu mansion where he first met Jillian.
M says:
Great. A house full of memories of his intense love for Jillian. Was there not another among the surfeit of Malibu Mansions that Fleiss could have rented?
Tonight his life will start to change forever Whaaat? "His life will start to change forever"?? Sounds like a painfully slow and boring process...
Description: as 25 gorgeous bachelorettes have traveled across the U.S. to meet him
M: I wonder how many are from Texas...
Description: and they will do anything to become his wife and share a life with him.
M: And some of them will even do anything just to be on tv.
D: The party takes off quickly as the women swoon when Jake makes the rounds and greets each bachelorette.
M: Nothing like swooning women to make a party take off quickly...
D: One charming woman confesses her fear of flying,
M: She should be more afraid of what Fleiss is going to do with her editing...
D: and an alluring teacher causes a stir when she dons a revealing flight attendant's uniform and steals Jake away from an unsuspecting single mom.
M: Alluring and revealing: One. Unsuspecting single mom: Zero.
D: After an athletic hottie grabs Jake...
M: Wonder where she grab him...
D: to play touch football, it's blondes vs. brunettes in the first sexy, barefoot-in-eveningwear football scrimmage in "Bachelor" history!
M: As opposed to all those other less sexy barefoot-in-eveningwear scrimmages in Bachelor history?
D: The competition intensifies when Chris Harrison introduces the "first impression" rose, and announces a twist: the ladies not only must impress Jake, but also last's season's happy couple - Jillian and Ed.
M: Why? Are they all going to move together to a polygamous commune??
D: The former Bachelorette and her fiance join Jake to help him with his tough decision,
M: That's because Jake can't decide between the women -- he's desperately in love with them all.
D: and they will also share a special announcement with him.
M: Wonder what that will be? That they don't wear underwear?
D: Finally, Jake must eliminate ten of the 25 women the first night, leaving 15 to compete for his affections, and in the end, his heart.
M: That's right. Don't compete for his heart until the end. Keep your options open and just go for his affections for now. (Do they actually pay someone to write this drivel?)
D: Romantic and adventurous dates will reach new heights this season,
M: New heights? Compared to the drama and scandal of the past two seasons? What can top Jason's dumping Melissa for Molly, or Ed's departure and return? How about Wes' supposed girlfriend and Ed's real ones? New heights? Jake? Naah...
D: Secrets are revealed, emotions run deep and one bachelorette crosses a line that should never be crossed, with devastating results.
M: Other lines that should never be crossed: stripping down to bare buttocks and diving in a pool, crying and blowing your snot into a kleenex and then immediately offering your mouth up for a kiss, being on the show while sexting other women.
D: Will Jake finally find the special woman who is right for him or will this nice guy's dream of love end in heartbreak?
M: Didn't it already once? How many more weeping over balcony scenes can viewers take?
Oh, I can't wait for this season....
In this season's premiere, "Episode 1401," Jake returns to the Malibu mansion where he first met Jillian.
M says:
Great. A house full of memories of his intense love for Jillian. Was there not another among the surfeit of Malibu Mansions that Fleiss could have rented?
Tonight his life will start to change forever Whaaat? "His life will start to change forever"?? Sounds like a painfully slow and boring process...
Description: as 25 gorgeous bachelorettes have traveled across the U.S. to meet him
M: I wonder how many are from Texas...
Description: and they will do anything to become his wife and share a life with him.
M: And some of them will even do anything just to be on tv.
D: The party takes off quickly as the women swoon when Jake makes the rounds and greets each bachelorette.
M: Nothing like swooning women to make a party take off quickly...
D: One charming woman confesses her fear of flying,
M: She should be more afraid of what Fleiss is going to do with her editing...
D: and an alluring teacher causes a stir when she dons a revealing flight attendant's uniform and steals Jake away from an unsuspecting single mom.
M: Alluring and revealing: One. Unsuspecting single mom: Zero.
D: After an athletic hottie grabs Jake...
M: Wonder where she grab him...
D: to play touch football, it's blondes vs. brunettes in the first sexy, barefoot-in-eveningwear football scrimmage in "Bachelor" history!
M: As opposed to all those other less sexy barefoot-in-eveningwear scrimmages in Bachelor history?
D: The competition intensifies when Chris Harrison introduces the "first impression" rose, and announces a twist: the ladies not only must impress Jake, but also last's season's happy couple - Jillian and Ed.
M: Why? Are they all going to move together to a polygamous commune??
D: The former Bachelorette and her fiance join Jake to help him with his tough decision,
M: That's because Jake can't decide between the women -- he's desperately in love with them all.
D: and they will also share a special announcement with him.
M: Wonder what that will be? That they don't wear underwear?
D: Finally, Jake must eliminate ten of the 25 women the first night, leaving 15 to compete for his affections, and in the end, his heart.
M: That's right. Don't compete for his heart until the end. Keep your options open and just go for his affections for now. (Do they actually pay someone to write this drivel?)
D: Romantic and adventurous dates will reach new heights this season,
M: New heights? Compared to the drama and scandal of the past two seasons? What can top Jason's dumping Melissa for Molly, or Ed's departure and return? How about Wes' supposed girlfriend and Ed's real ones? New heights? Jake? Naah...
D: Secrets are revealed, emotions run deep and one bachelorette crosses a line that should never be crossed, with devastating results.
M: Other lines that should never be crossed: stripping down to bare buttocks and diving in a pool, crying and blowing your snot into a kleenex and then immediately offering your mouth up for a kiss, being on the show while sexting other women.
D: Will Jake finally find the special woman who is right for him or will this nice guy's dream of love end in heartbreak?
M: Didn't it already once? How many more weeping over balcony scenes can viewers take?
Oh, I can't wait for this season....
Monday, December 7, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Best movies of the decade
Best of the Decade
by Richard Brody, New Yorker magazine
It’s been an unusual decade; I spent much of it hunched over spiral notebooks and laptop computers in libraries and cafés and at kitchen tables here and in France while writing a book (remind me to mention the bathroom, in a house in Normandy, that I rigged out as a nocturnal study), and didn’t maintain my usual diet of cinephilic delights. Which is why, though few who issue their best-of-decade lists can claim to have seen all releases, many have likely seen more than I have this time around, so I’ll put an asterisk to the adjective above and note: the twenty-six best movies I’ve seen (and will resist the temptation to issue a separate list of the best films I haven’t seen). The top ten are in order; the remaining sixteen are grouped according to incidental connections.
1. “Eloge de l’amour” (“In Praise of Love”) (2001, Jean-Luc Godard): Lives up to the promise of its title: one of the most unusual, tremulous, and understated of love stories, as well as the story of love itself; a depiction of history in the present tense, as well as a virtual thesis on the filming of history; a work of art, as well as the story of the work at the origin of art; Godard’s third first film, thus something of a rebirth of cinema.
2. “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007, Wes Anderson): As ever with the films of Wes Anderson—the best new American director of the last twenty years—love and death, comedy and tragedy, comfort and adventure, understanding and opacity, style and substance fuse in a modernism of personal and reflexive cinema and a classicism of grand and subtle literary emotion.
3. “The World” (2005, Jia Zhangke): The best new non-American director of the last twenty years, here revealing, at great risk, China’s, and his own, painfully ambiguous place in the world.
4. “A Talking Picture” (2003, Manoel de Oliveira): The great September 11th movie, from a spry ninety-five-year-old who sees not only the century’s long view but seemingly encompasses Homer’s.
5. “Regular Lovers” (2005, Philippe Garrel): Or, Nixon in China: The events of 1968, depicted by one of its cinematic heroes as an intimate epic—and, with a self-deprecating fury, as a lovely but unsustainable burst of youthful lyricism.
6. “Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 P.M.” (2001, Claude Lanzmann): This discussion with Yehuda Lerner, who took part in the uprising against the extermination camp’s guards, is as profound a dialogue on the morality of violence as the cinema has seen.
7. “Fengming: A Chinese Memoir” (2009, Wang Bing): From one of the decade’s two best new directors, as well as its best new nonfiction filmmaker. If I had seen Wang’s “West of the Tracks” in its entirety, I’d have put it here instead; I saw only about a third of its nine hours, but this feature, converging recent Chinese history with the sufferings endured, at the hands of the regime, by one free-thinking couple, does quite as well.
8. “Knocked Up” (2008, Judd Apatow): Suddenly, all contemporary comedy seemed old-fashioned. From Lubitsch through the Farrelly brothers, the funniest guys in the room were behind the camera; Judd Apatow discovered, or rediscovered, the trick of the great silent clowns—to put funny people on screen—and to make it personal. (If Eddie Murphy had, say, directed “Norbit” in addition to starring in it, it would likely find a place on this list too.)
9. “Moolaadé” (2005, Ousmane Sembene): Women, resistance, and centuries of oppressive tradition, seen with the fiercely clarifying wisdom of age. The subject is genital mutilation; the phalanx of respected women eager to do the dirty work is truly frightening.
10. “The Other Half” (2007, Ying Liang): The other of the decade’s two best new filmmakers, the one who does dramas, bringing a laser-like analytical eye to the crossroads of private life and oppressive authority. His anger builds to an apocalyptic outpouring with few parallels in the history of cinema.
After the jump, sixteen more.
“Saraband” (2003, Ingmar Bergman): Emotions of shattering power; family, memory, death, and the black sun of a creative force that not only won’t die but consumes anyone it can attract.
“Woman on the Beach” (2006, Hong Sang-soo): A filmmaker dramatizes, with a scathing and comic self-deprecation, the egocentric romantic turbulence on which his art is nourished.
“Colossal Youth” (2006, Pedro Costa): Modernization and bureaucracy confront poverty without pity. Loamy popular tradition and timeless legends have their pathologies too, and Costa unearths the ironies and contradictions of progress and its simulacra through his careful, loving work with the residents of one poor Lisbon neighborhood in ferment.
“Le Monde Vivant” (“The Living World”) (2003, Eugène Green): Green, an American in Paris whose work seems like the dream of a virtual love child of Robert Bresson and Elaine May, dresses a faux-medieval legend in baroque language, classic romanticism, modern clothing, and prophetic virtue.
“L’Enfant (“The Child”)” (2005, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne) The ostensible street realism of the Belgian brothers’ story of betrayal and crime doesn’t merely rise to a Bressonian pitch of redemption—it poses Bressonian questions throughout and offers sharply modern, secular answers.
“Wake Up, Mate, Don’t You Sleep” (2002, Miklós Jancsó): At age eighty, the most controlled choreographer of the nineteen-sixties and seventies cuts loose with a contemporary historical fantasy that includes himself and his screenwriter, Hitler and Stalin, and a moment with Beethoven’s universalist dream that is one of the most touching scenes of the decade.
“Cassandra’s Dream” (2008, Woody Allen): Few aging directors so cogently and relentlessly depict the grimly destructive machinery of life, and every time the word “family” is uttered, the screws tighten just a little more.
“Gran Torino” (2008, Clint Eastwood): Few actors have taken themselves out with such a rueful bang.
“Frownland” (2008, Ronald Bronstein): A punk-like ferocious rage contained in a chamber-music-like precision; film stock run rugged like cold stone, light turned cruel; humiliation and degradation portrayed with tenderness and, ultimately, surprisingly, hope. Dore Mann’s agonized performance is one for the ages.
“Hamilton” (2005, Matthew Porterfield): Beside “Eloge de l’amour,” this is the movie I’ve watched the most times this decade. The twenty-six-year-old director has a preternaturally precise and poetic camera eye as well as tenderness for and understanding of the complexities of everyday lives.
“Funny Ha Ha” (2003, Andrew Bujalski): Mumblecore is real (neither more nor less so than, say, Italian Neo-Realism or the French New Wave—the fact that the term raises questions doesn’t mean that those questions have no reasonable answers) and Bujalski started it. He raises personal cinema to a new height, by way of an aesthetic that blends control and improvisation in delicate, tenuous balance. A remarkably analytical sensibility.
“Hannah Takes the Stairs” (2007, Joe Swanberg): Love and money among the young and bright; Bujalski co-stars as the one artist in a production-office bullpen who is on the verge of a breakout, which doesn’t make things go easier with Hannah (Greta Gerwig, in a performance of astounding inventiveness), who may even be smarter and wiser but is still seeking her place in the world. No less than Bujalski’s own film, a picture of a generation.
“Sex Is Comedy” (2002, Catherine Breillat): The most frightening, disturbing, and seemingly plausible view of the emotional cost of artistic realism in an age of erotic freedom.
“La Captive” (2000, Chantal Akerman): One of the heights of modernist melodrama; it’s as if, thanks to Proust, Akerman, a master of the tableau, discovered a third dimension. The joy of discovery is palpable, shot by shot, and she had young actors, notably Sylvie Testud and Stanislas Merhar, who seem to be savoring it equally.
“Where is My Romeo?” (2008, Abbas Kiarostami): I haven’t seen “Shirin,” and if this short film is any indication, it would be here; but this short film, constructed on what is said to be the same principle, deserves it, too.
“14th Arrondissement” (2006, Alexander Payne) (in “Paris, Je t’aime”): “Sideways” is terrific, but Payne’s short film offers both emotional poignancy and profound cinematic smarts in an amazingly clever and original sketch.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2009/11/best-films-of-the-decade.html#ixzz0YUfVw2Ui
by Richard Brody, New Yorker magazine
It’s been an unusual decade; I spent much of it hunched over spiral notebooks and laptop computers in libraries and cafés and at kitchen tables here and in France while writing a book (remind me to mention the bathroom, in a house in Normandy, that I rigged out as a nocturnal study), and didn’t maintain my usual diet of cinephilic delights. Which is why, though few who issue their best-of-decade lists can claim to have seen all releases, many have likely seen more than I have this time around, so I’ll put an asterisk to the adjective above and note: the twenty-six best movies I’ve seen (and will resist the temptation to issue a separate list of the best films I haven’t seen). The top ten are in order; the remaining sixteen are grouped according to incidental connections.
1. “Eloge de l’amour” (“In Praise of Love”) (2001, Jean-Luc Godard): Lives up to the promise of its title: one of the most unusual, tremulous, and understated of love stories, as well as the story of love itself; a depiction of history in the present tense, as well as a virtual thesis on the filming of history; a work of art, as well as the story of the work at the origin of art; Godard’s third first film, thus something of a rebirth of cinema.
2. “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007, Wes Anderson): As ever with the films of Wes Anderson—the best new American director of the last twenty years—love and death, comedy and tragedy, comfort and adventure, understanding and opacity, style and substance fuse in a modernism of personal and reflexive cinema and a classicism of grand and subtle literary emotion.
3. “The World” (2005, Jia Zhangke): The best new non-American director of the last twenty years, here revealing, at great risk, China’s, and his own, painfully ambiguous place in the world.
4. “A Talking Picture” (2003, Manoel de Oliveira): The great September 11th movie, from a spry ninety-five-year-old who sees not only the century’s long view but seemingly encompasses Homer’s.
5. “Regular Lovers” (2005, Philippe Garrel): Or, Nixon in China: The events of 1968, depicted by one of its cinematic heroes as an intimate epic—and, with a self-deprecating fury, as a lovely but unsustainable burst of youthful lyricism.
6. “Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 P.M.” (2001, Claude Lanzmann): This discussion with Yehuda Lerner, who took part in the uprising against the extermination camp’s guards, is as profound a dialogue on the morality of violence as the cinema has seen.
7. “Fengming: A Chinese Memoir” (2009, Wang Bing): From one of the decade’s two best new directors, as well as its best new nonfiction filmmaker. If I had seen Wang’s “West of the Tracks” in its entirety, I’d have put it here instead; I saw only about a third of its nine hours, but this feature, converging recent Chinese history with the sufferings endured, at the hands of the regime, by one free-thinking couple, does quite as well.
8. “Knocked Up” (2008, Judd Apatow): Suddenly, all contemporary comedy seemed old-fashioned. From Lubitsch through the Farrelly brothers, the funniest guys in the room were behind the camera; Judd Apatow discovered, or rediscovered, the trick of the great silent clowns—to put funny people on screen—and to make it personal. (If Eddie Murphy had, say, directed “Norbit” in addition to starring in it, it would likely find a place on this list too.)
9. “Moolaadé” (2005, Ousmane Sembene): Women, resistance, and centuries of oppressive tradition, seen with the fiercely clarifying wisdom of age. The subject is genital mutilation; the phalanx of respected women eager to do the dirty work is truly frightening.
10. “The Other Half” (2007, Ying Liang): The other of the decade’s two best new filmmakers, the one who does dramas, bringing a laser-like analytical eye to the crossroads of private life and oppressive authority. His anger builds to an apocalyptic outpouring with few parallels in the history of cinema.
After the jump, sixteen more.
“Saraband” (2003, Ingmar Bergman): Emotions of shattering power; family, memory, death, and the black sun of a creative force that not only won’t die but consumes anyone it can attract.
“Woman on the Beach” (2006, Hong Sang-soo): A filmmaker dramatizes, with a scathing and comic self-deprecation, the egocentric romantic turbulence on which his art is nourished.
“Colossal Youth” (2006, Pedro Costa): Modernization and bureaucracy confront poverty without pity. Loamy popular tradition and timeless legends have their pathologies too, and Costa unearths the ironies and contradictions of progress and its simulacra through his careful, loving work with the residents of one poor Lisbon neighborhood in ferment.
“Le Monde Vivant” (“The Living World”) (2003, Eugène Green): Green, an American in Paris whose work seems like the dream of a virtual love child of Robert Bresson and Elaine May, dresses a faux-medieval legend in baroque language, classic romanticism, modern clothing, and prophetic virtue.
“L’Enfant (“The Child”)” (2005, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne) The ostensible street realism of the Belgian brothers’ story of betrayal and crime doesn’t merely rise to a Bressonian pitch of redemption—it poses Bressonian questions throughout and offers sharply modern, secular answers.
“Wake Up, Mate, Don’t You Sleep” (2002, Miklós Jancsó): At age eighty, the most controlled choreographer of the nineteen-sixties and seventies cuts loose with a contemporary historical fantasy that includes himself and his screenwriter, Hitler and Stalin, and a moment with Beethoven’s universalist dream that is one of the most touching scenes of the decade.
“Cassandra’s Dream” (2008, Woody Allen): Few aging directors so cogently and relentlessly depict the grimly destructive machinery of life, and every time the word “family” is uttered, the screws tighten just a little more.
“Gran Torino” (2008, Clint Eastwood): Few actors have taken themselves out with such a rueful bang.
“Frownland” (2008, Ronald Bronstein): A punk-like ferocious rage contained in a chamber-music-like precision; film stock run rugged like cold stone, light turned cruel; humiliation and degradation portrayed with tenderness and, ultimately, surprisingly, hope. Dore Mann’s agonized performance is one for the ages.
“Hamilton” (2005, Matthew Porterfield): Beside “Eloge de l’amour,” this is the movie I’ve watched the most times this decade. The twenty-six-year-old director has a preternaturally precise and poetic camera eye as well as tenderness for and understanding of the complexities of everyday lives.
“Funny Ha Ha” (2003, Andrew Bujalski): Mumblecore is real (neither more nor less so than, say, Italian Neo-Realism or the French New Wave—the fact that the term raises questions doesn’t mean that those questions have no reasonable answers) and Bujalski started it. He raises personal cinema to a new height, by way of an aesthetic that blends control and improvisation in delicate, tenuous balance. A remarkably analytical sensibility.
“Hannah Takes the Stairs” (2007, Joe Swanberg): Love and money among the young and bright; Bujalski co-stars as the one artist in a production-office bullpen who is on the verge of a breakout, which doesn’t make things go easier with Hannah (Greta Gerwig, in a performance of astounding inventiveness), who may even be smarter and wiser but is still seeking her place in the world. No less than Bujalski’s own film, a picture of a generation.
“Sex Is Comedy” (2002, Catherine Breillat): The most frightening, disturbing, and seemingly plausible view of the emotional cost of artistic realism in an age of erotic freedom.
“La Captive” (2000, Chantal Akerman): One of the heights of modernist melodrama; it’s as if, thanks to Proust, Akerman, a master of the tableau, discovered a third dimension. The joy of discovery is palpable, shot by shot, and she had young actors, notably Sylvie Testud and Stanislas Merhar, who seem to be savoring it equally.
“Where is My Romeo?” (2008, Abbas Kiarostami): I haven’t seen “Shirin,” and if this short film is any indication, it would be here; but this short film, constructed on what is said to be the same principle, deserves it, too.
“14th Arrondissement” (2006, Alexander Payne) (in “Paris, Je t’aime”): “Sideways” is terrific, but Payne’s short film offers both emotional poignancy and profound cinematic smarts in an amazingly clever and original sketch.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2009/11/best-films-of-the-decade.html#ixzz0YUfVw2Ui
Monday, November 30, 2009
Guess what the top word of 2009 is.
It’s official: Twitter is top word of 2009
by Steven E.F. Brown
San Francisco Business Times
Twitter squeezed out Obama, H1N1 and stimulus to be crowned “Top Word of 2009” by the Global Language Monitor.
The Austin, Texas-based GLM, which tracks language trends around the world, declared Twitter the No. 1 word on Sunday. “King of Pop” was named the top phrase of the year.
Rounding out the top 10 on the GLM’s list were vampire, 2.0, deficit, hadron, healthcare and transparency.
Obama scored again in the list of top phrases with the No. 2 “Obama-mania.” Other top phrases were “climate change,” “swine flu,” “too large to fail” and “cloud computing.”
GLM also listed top names for the year, with Barack Obama in the top spot, followed by Michael Jackson and then by “Mobama,” a nickname for First Lady Michelle Obama.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was No. 6 on the list of top names, edging out Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai.
by Steven E.F. Brown
San Francisco Business Times
Twitter squeezed out Obama, H1N1 and stimulus to be crowned “Top Word of 2009” by the Global Language Monitor.
The Austin, Texas-based GLM, which tracks language trends around the world, declared Twitter the No. 1 word on Sunday. “King of Pop” was named the top phrase of the year.
Rounding out the top 10 on the GLM’s list were vampire, 2.0, deficit, hadron, healthcare and transparency.
Obama scored again in the list of top phrases with the No. 2 “Obama-mania.” Other top phrases were “climate change,” “swine flu,” “too large to fail” and “cloud computing.”
GLM also listed top names for the year, with Barack Obama in the top spot, followed by Michael Jackson and then by “Mobama,” a nickname for First Lady Michelle Obama.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was No. 6 on the list of top names, edging out Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving!
Be certain that while I feast on stuffing ( I. LOVE. IT.), gratitude will stand at my shoulder reminding me to remember
the love I've been given
the friends who hold onto me
the words to speak for justice
the laughs that lighten hearts
the connections made through a TV show, a bad TV show at that
the gift of a new day, a new perspective, a new way
I'll remember that hunger doesn't pull at my stomach
that a bed waits for my head
that education is the only thing that lets me read again of Bella and Edward's love
that belief made me strong enough to shatter gender stereotypes
that children need their parents. always.
that love is an action, not a word
Today may only familiar faces surround you reminding you of grace and gift and gratitude. Oh, and football :)
Thanks for being a part of my world,
Leen
the love I've been given
the friends who hold onto me
the words to speak for justice
the laughs that lighten hearts
the connections made through a TV show, a bad TV show at that
the gift of a new day, a new perspective, a new way
I'll remember that hunger doesn't pull at my stomach
that a bed waits for my head
that education is the only thing that lets me read again of Bella and Edward's love
that belief made me strong enough to shatter gender stereotypes
that children need their parents. always.
that love is an action, not a word
Today may only familiar faces surround you reminding you of grace and gift and gratitude. Oh, and football :)
Thanks for being a part of my world,
Leen
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Critics Slam New Moon
Critics Slam New Moon
US magazine, November 19, 2009
New Moon pales in comparison to Twilight, according to the critics.
Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert says "the characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud."
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe remarks: "Sorry, girls: The thrill is gone." He says that "where the first film’s director, Catherine Hardwicke, plugged into [author Stephenie] Meyer’s vision of supernatural teenage lust with abandon, Chris Weitz is stuck with a sequel that’s a morning-after mope-fest."
Burr also says that the film favors werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) than vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson).
"When he's onscreen, Pattinson’s Edward is all emo posturing under a trembling bouffant - the actor suddenly seems to be embarrassed to be here," says Burr. "Lautner's performance, by contrast, has the warmth of an actual human."
But Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times says Lautner and Kristen Stewart (who plays Bella) have no heat: "The connection between these two is so self-evidently non-romantic that it turns out not to be much of a diversion."
USA Today's Claudia Puig agrees, saying the the Bella-Edward romance is a bore and that "the pace picks up" once Jacob and his pals turn into werewolves. She gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars.
Variety writes that ladies hoping to gaze at Pattinson the big screen " may be disappointed by Pattinson's reduced presence" in the sequel, "as his Edward appears predominantly in mumbling visions until a cliffhanger that brazenly sets up the next episode."
Despite some harsh reviews, the film is still expected to earn more than $85 million during its first weekend (it has run up the biggest advance sales of any film in history). It opens in 4,024 locations, beginning with 3,500 performances at 12:01 a.m. Friday.
US magazine, November 19, 2009
New Moon pales in comparison to Twilight, according to the critics.
Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert says "the characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud."
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe remarks: "Sorry, girls: The thrill is gone." He says that "where the first film’s director, Catherine Hardwicke, plugged into [author Stephenie] Meyer’s vision of supernatural teenage lust with abandon, Chris Weitz is stuck with a sequel that’s a morning-after mope-fest."
Burr also says that the film favors werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) than vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson).
"When he's onscreen, Pattinson’s Edward is all emo posturing under a trembling bouffant - the actor suddenly seems to be embarrassed to be here," says Burr. "Lautner's performance, by contrast, has the warmth of an actual human."
But Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times says Lautner and Kristen Stewart (who plays Bella) have no heat: "The connection between these two is so self-evidently non-romantic that it turns out not to be much of a diversion."
USA Today's Claudia Puig agrees, saying the the Bella-Edward romance is a bore and that "the pace picks up" once Jacob and his pals turn into werewolves. She gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars.
Variety writes that ladies hoping to gaze at Pattinson the big screen " may be disappointed by Pattinson's reduced presence" in the sequel, "as his Edward appears predominantly in mumbling visions until a cliffhanger that brazenly sets up the next episode."
Despite some harsh reviews, the film is still expected to earn more than $85 million during its first weekend (it has run up the biggest advance sales of any film in history). It opens in 4,024 locations, beginning with 3,500 performances at 12:01 a.m. Friday.
Romance and abstinence attract teen girls to Twilight
Romance and abstinence attract teen girls to Twilight series
By Laura Stone , Canwest News Service
Vampires aside, it's really just a simple love story.
The reason teenage girls have fallen hard for the Twilight book and film series has to do with its portrayal of a traditional, romantic relationship, new research from the University of Missouri shows.
In the series, vampire Edward Cullen doesn't want to harm or bite his teen love interest Bella Swan, which means they can't have sex.
"With teens, we actually found that they appreciated the messages of abstinence," said Melissa Click, an assistant professor of communication who surveyed 4,000 Twilight fans, aged 11 to 70.
Click and her co-authors' research primarily addresses the reasons behind the teenage-madness for Twilight, a four-book series with two films so far.
The newest movie, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, opens Friday, and has already busted Cineplex Theatres' records by selling $1.5 million in advance tickets across Canada. The first film, Twilight, grossed more than $190 million in North American revenues.
The Missouri research found that many teen girls — who make up the core of Twilight's audience, along with a few moms — are drawn to the story about love beyond the physical.
"The media environment is saturated with teens in sexual relationships," said Click, who plans to publish the findings next spring in a collaborative book Bitten by Twilight: Youth culture, media and the vampire franchise.
"(Twilight) does provide something different for girls. I've had girls say to me, 'I'm going to wait for my Edward.' And they think that's really cool."
Her colleague, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, called the series a "backlash to the 'hooking-up' culture."
Edward represents an anomaly in the minds of many teenage girls. He's romantic, protective, and most important, cares deeply for who Bella is, and not just what she looks like.
And for 18-year-old Twilight fan France-Renee Miron, that's a good thing.
"Most boys now around our age, all they want is to get you in bed. They don't care about the romance part," said Miron, who is from Green Valley, Ont.
"In the book and in the film, (Edward) doesn't want to have sex. It's really different."
Miron's friend, Valerie Lefebvre, 18, said she found solace in the book's messages about abstinence.
"By reading the book we find out we're not the only ones who could have a good relationship without being sexually active," said Lefebvre.
Click said that many girls interviewed felt a sense of relief that Bella and Edward couldn't yet have sex.
"They liked that it was the man putting the brakes on sexual activity. For them it probably highlighted the development of the relationship — the romantic relationship — between the two, instead of the sexual relationship," said Click.
The study is comprised of online surveys and in-person focus groups. Researchers found 70 teens for the focus groups at a fan convention held in Dallas last summer. About one-third of those surveyed were teens.
Despite an increasingly sexualized youth culture, the desire for romance among teenage girls has remained, said Mike Farrell, a partner at Toronto youth research firm Youthography.
"There are some fundamental things that haven't changed that much. And one of those, especially with girls, is the focus on a search for meaningful love that is hopeful, passionate, real," he said.
According to Youthography research, only a quarter of young teenage girls were interested in sex, while more than half said they thought about marriage and having children.
In a 2008 Canada-wide study, Youthography surveyed around 500 teen girls ages 14 to 18 about 50 different "values" affecting them, from current events to sex. They've been tracking values for research for the past nine years as part of Youthography's quarterly study called, Ping.
But there can be a danger to Twilight's traditional romance story too, say experts.
University of Victoria political science professor Janni Aragon said that the books, while she enjoys them, enforce "good old gender stereotypes," such as Bella being clumsy and Edward acting condescending and all-knowing.
There's also the message that Edward doesn't trust himself around Bella.
"Woven within these pages is also that boys get to a certain point in which you can't tell them 'no,' or they can't control themselves. And I'm not sure an 11-, 12-, 13-year-old, maybe even a 15- to 18-year-old, understands that."
Xania Khan, editor-in-chief of Toronto's Vervegirl teen magazine, said that the hysteria surrounding Twilight may blind teens to real-world relationships.
"Some girls have a hard time distinguishing fact and fiction," said Khan. "They might look for something that's not real."
That won't be a problem for Miron and Lefebvre's friend, Embrun, Ont.'s Marjolaine Bourdeau, also 18. While she said she's a fan of the books, Bourdeau won't be waiting on a perfect vampire boyfriend anytime soon.
"I know that's not possible," she said. "Girls who haven't been in a real relationship. They don't know what relationships are like."
By Laura Stone , Canwest News Service
Vampires aside, it's really just a simple love story.
The reason teenage girls have fallen hard for the Twilight book and film series has to do with its portrayal of a traditional, romantic relationship, new research from the University of Missouri shows.
In the series, vampire Edward Cullen doesn't want to harm or bite his teen love interest Bella Swan, which means they can't have sex.
"With teens, we actually found that they appreciated the messages of abstinence," said Melissa Click, an assistant professor of communication who surveyed 4,000 Twilight fans, aged 11 to 70.
Click and her co-authors' research primarily addresses the reasons behind the teenage-madness for Twilight, a four-book series with two films so far.
The newest movie, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, opens Friday, and has already busted Cineplex Theatres' records by selling $1.5 million in advance tickets across Canada. The first film, Twilight, grossed more than $190 million in North American revenues.
The Missouri research found that many teen girls — who make up the core of Twilight's audience, along with a few moms — are drawn to the story about love beyond the physical.
"The media environment is saturated with teens in sexual relationships," said Click, who plans to publish the findings next spring in a collaborative book Bitten by Twilight: Youth culture, media and the vampire franchise.
"(Twilight) does provide something different for girls. I've had girls say to me, 'I'm going to wait for my Edward.' And they think that's really cool."
Her colleague, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, called the series a "backlash to the 'hooking-up' culture."
Edward represents an anomaly in the minds of many teenage girls. He's romantic, protective, and most important, cares deeply for who Bella is, and not just what she looks like.
And for 18-year-old Twilight fan France-Renee Miron, that's a good thing.
"Most boys now around our age, all they want is to get you in bed. They don't care about the romance part," said Miron, who is from Green Valley, Ont.
"In the book and in the film, (Edward) doesn't want to have sex. It's really different."
Miron's friend, Valerie Lefebvre, 18, said she found solace in the book's messages about abstinence.
"By reading the book we find out we're not the only ones who could have a good relationship without being sexually active," said Lefebvre.
Click said that many girls interviewed felt a sense of relief that Bella and Edward couldn't yet have sex.
"They liked that it was the man putting the brakes on sexual activity. For them it probably highlighted the development of the relationship — the romantic relationship — between the two, instead of the sexual relationship," said Click.
The study is comprised of online surveys and in-person focus groups. Researchers found 70 teens for the focus groups at a fan convention held in Dallas last summer. About one-third of those surveyed were teens.
Despite an increasingly sexualized youth culture, the desire for romance among teenage girls has remained, said Mike Farrell, a partner at Toronto youth research firm Youthography.
"There are some fundamental things that haven't changed that much. And one of those, especially with girls, is the focus on a search for meaningful love that is hopeful, passionate, real," he said.
According to Youthography research, only a quarter of young teenage girls were interested in sex, while more than half said they thought about marriage and having children.
In a 2008 Canada-wide study, Youthography surveyed around 500 teen girls ages 14 to 18 about 50 different "values" affecting them, from current events to sex. They've been tracking values for research for the past nine years as part of Youthography's quarterly study called, Ping.
But there can be a danger to Twilight's traditional romance story too, say experts.
University of Victoria political science professor Janni Aragon said that the books, while she enjoys them, enforce "good old gender stereotypes," such as Bella being clumsy and Edward acting condescending and all-knowing.
There's also the message that Edward doesn't trust himself around Bella.
"Woven within these pages is also that boys get to a certain point in which you can't tell them 'no,' or they can't control themselves. And I'm not sure an 11-, 12-, 13-year-old, maybe even a 15- to 18-year-old, understands that."
Xania Khan, editor-in-chief of Toronto's Vervegirl teen magazine, said that the hysteria surrounding Twilight may blind teens to real-world relationships.
"Some girls have a hard time distinguishing fact and fiction," said Khan. "They might look for something that's not real."
That won't be a problem for Miron and Lefebvre's friend, Embrun, Ont.'s Marjolaine Bourdeau, also 18. While she said she's a fan of the books, Bourdeau won't be waiting on a perfect vampire boyfriend anytime soon.
"I know that's not possible," she said. "Girls who haven't been in a real relationship. They don't know what relationships are like."
The Tudors
Anyone else watch this show? I highly recommend it if you aren't. It's a co-production with the CBC in Canada and Showtime in the US. Last night was the Season 3 finale which I have not watched yet but can't wait to. If you appreciate costume and set design elements, they rival some of the best made for television productions I have ever seen. It is highly provocative sexually, extremely controversial religiously and for the most part, historically accurate.
Remmi gives it two thumbs way up!
Remmi gives it two thumbs way up!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Happiness Paradox: Why Are Americans So Cheery?
Happiness Paradox: Why Are Americans So Cheery?
By NANCY GIBBS Time magazine, Monday, Nov. 23, 2009
Happiness is a sappy word and a flimsy concept — more fleeting than contentment, several octaves lower than joy. But happiness is what pollsters test and economists track, however clumsily, so we're stuck with it as the medium for measuring our mood. Not surprisingly, that mood has bounced around over the years, with the general sense of well-being hitting its lowest points in 1973, 1982, 1992 and 2001, all recession years. So why is it that at least some aspects of the Great Recession of 2009 appear to have made people feel better?
In January 2008, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index was launched. It was designed to work like a Dow Jones average of attitude. At least 1,000 people are surveyed daily, 350 days a year. (You can see how happy people are broken down by congressional district; Utah turns out to be the merriest state, West Virginia the glummest.)
When the markets tanked last fall, happiness did too, and anyone who has lost his or her job, house or health care is probably still in a world of pain. But here's the funny thing: by this past summer, overall well-being was higher than it was in the summer of 2008, before the Apocalypse.
In fact, the latest report finds America's cheeriness at an all-time high. An August report from the Pepsi Optimism Project (POP) positively fizzed: Americans are more optimistic now than a year ago about their well-being (88% vs. 84%); health, finances, relationships and odds of finding love (70% vs. 61%).
Don't trust soda-company polls? Consumer Reports confirms that we don't plan to spend much money this Christmas, but the vast majority of us — 87% — expect this holiday season will be as happy as or even happier than last year's. Meanwhile, the Secret Society of Happy People (which "encourages the expression of happiness and discourages parade-raining") reports traffic to its not-so-secret website has increased since the downturn.
Everyone — or at least everyone who claims to be happy — has some reason for finding the upside to the downturn. Mine has to do with the end of Expectation Inflation, a phenomenon that can be as corrosive to our spirits as price inflation is to our savings. Expectations are a mash-up of hope and conceit, what you've earned and what you imagine luck might hand you as a bonus for just showing up. So what did it mean that over the past generation our expectations grew so big so fast that we had effectively supersized the American Dream?
Some parts of raised expectations are plainly good. We expect to live well into our 80s because medicine keeps getting better. Many more high school students expect to go to college. In 1973, 47% of recent high school graduates attended college; last year 69% of new graduates enrolled. We expect our gadgets to get smaller and smarter, cooler and cheaper, because technology evolves exponentially, and at light speed.
But the Great Recession has also exposed our magical thinking about what constitutes a middle-class lifestyle. Flash back a generation to the house with the white picket fence. It had a black-and-white TV with an antenna, a car in the garage, a chicken in every pot and two kinds of lettuce (light green and dark green). Now the average house is more than 50% bigger, the car is twice as powerful (and there's often more than one), the TV is flat and gets 900 channels, and we expect the grocery store to have strawberries year-round and about 50 flavors of mustard. Small wonder we started charging our life-insurance premiums on our credit cards; we only expected to pay when we died.
So while optimism is the all-American anesthetic, at some point Expectation Inflation was bound to take its toll. I'm struck by how many people tell pollsters that the voluntary downshifting and downsizing of the past year have come as a kind of relief. Maybe we've lowered our standards. But we already knew that money can buy only comfort, not contentment; happiness correlates much more closely with our causes and connections than with our net worth. Americans may have less money — charitable giving in current dollars dropped for the first time in 20 years in 2008 — but about a million more people volunteered their time to a cause. Which makes me wonder: Is it a coincidence that eight of the 10 happiest states in the country also rank in the top 10 for volunteering?
Whatever you make of the psychology of happiness, we know something of its physics. It rises as it ricochets off other people, returning to us stronger by virtue of being released. It gets bigger when we don't care if it gets smaller; we stopped buying all the stuff we didn't need that was supposed to make us happier, and we seem to be happier for it. And who would have expected that?
By NANCY GIBBS Time magazine, Monday, Nov. 23, 2009
Happiness is a sappy word and a flimsy concept — more fleeting than contentment, several octaves lower than joy. But happiness is what pollsters test and economists track, however clumsily, so we're stuck with it as the medium for measuring our mood. Not surprisingly, that mood has bounced around over the years, with the general sense of well-being hitting its lowest points in 1973, 1982, 1992 and 2001, all recession years. So why is it that at least some aspects of the Great Recession of 2009 appear to have made people feel better?
In January 2008, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index was launched. It was designed to work like a Dow Jones average of attitude. At least 1,000 people are surveyed daily, 350 days a year. (You can see how happy people are broken down by congressional district; Utah turns out to be the merriest state, West Virginia the glummest.)
When the markets tanked last fall, happiness did too, and anyone who has lost his or her job, house or health care is probably still in a world of pain. But here's the funny thing: by this past summer, overall well-being was higher than it was in the summer of 2008, before the Apocalypse.
In fact, the latest report finds America's cheeriness at an all-time high. An August report from the Pepsi Optimism Project (POP) positively fizzed: Americans are more optimistic now than a year ago about their well-being (88% vs. 84%); health, finances, relationships and odds of finding love (70% vs. 61%).
Don't trust soda-company polls? Consumer Reports confirms that we don't plan to spend much money this Christmas, but the vast majority of us — 87% — expect this holiday season will be as happy as or even happier than last year's. Meanwhile, the Secret Society of Happy People (which "encourages the expression of happiness and discourages parade-raining") reports traffic to its not-so-secret website has increased since the downturn.
Everyone — or at least everyone who claims to be happy — has some reason for finding the upside to the downturn. Mine has to do with the end of Expectation Inflation, a phenomenon that can be as corrosive to our spirits as price inflation is to our savings. Expectations are a mash-up of hope and conceit, what you've earned and what you imagine luck might hand you as a bonus for just showing up. So what did it mean that over the past generation our expectations grew so big so fast that we had effectively supersized the American Dream?
Some parts of raised expectations are plainly good. We expect to live well into our 80s because medicine keeps getting better. Many more high school students expect to go to college. In 1973, 47% of recent high school graduates attended college; last year 69% of new graduates enrolled. We expect our gadgets to get smaller and smarter, cooler and cheaper, because technology evolves exponentially, and at light speed.
But the Great Recession has also exposed our magical thinking about what constitutes a middle-class lifestyle. Flash back a generation to the house with the white picket fence. It had a black-and-white TV with an antenna, a car in the garage, a chicken in every pot and two kinds of lettuce (light green and dark green). Now the average house is more than 50% bigger, the car is twice as powerful (and there's often more than one), the TV is flat and gets 900 channels, and we expect the grocery store to have strawberries year-round and about 50 flavors of mustard. Small wonder we started charging our life-insurance premiums on our credit cards; we only expected to pay when we died.
So while optimism is the all-American anesthetic, at some point Expectation Inflation was bound to take its toll. I'm struck by how many people tell pollsters that the voluntary downshifting and downsizing of the past year have come as a kind of relief. Maybe we've lowered our standards. But we already knew that money can buy only comfort, not contentment; happiness correlates much more closely with our causes and connections than with our net worth. Americans may have less money — charitable giving in current dollars dropped for the first time in 20 years in 2008 — but about a million more people volunteered their time to a cause. Which makes me wonder: Is it a coincidence that eight of the 10 happiest states in the country also rank in the top 10 for volunteering?
Whatever you make of the psychology of happiness, we know something of its physics. It rises as it ricochets off other people, returning to us stronger by virtue of being released. It gets bigger when we don't care if it gets smaller; we stopped buying all the stuff we didn't need that was supposed to make us happier, and we seem to be happier for it. And who would have expected that?
Why We Shouldn't Give Christmas Gifts
Why We Shouldn't Give Christmas Gifts
By Andrea Sachs Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009
Starting to think about holiday gifts? Stop! Joel Waldfogel, author of Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays (Princeton), is convinced that giving Christmas and Hanukkah presents is bad economic policy. And as the chair of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, he's no economic novice.
TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs, who is still hoping to get a few gifts this season (hint, hint), spoke with Waldfogel about his new book.
What's your objection to Christmas and holiday spending?
My objection is that the holiday spending doesn't result in very much satisfaction. Normally if I spend $50 on myself, I'll only buy something if it's worth at least $50 to me. But if you buy something for me, and you spend $50, since you don't know what I like, and you don't know what I have, you may buy something I wouldn't pay anything for. And so you could turn the real resources required to make things into something of no value to me. And that would destroy value.
How much is actually spent?
In the U.S., about $65 billion a year is spent on holiday gifts. There's been this giant [holiday season] bump in retail sales in the U.S. going as far back as statistics are available, back to the 1920s and '30s. In fact, as a share of the size of the economy, the spending has gotten smaller over time. Our fathers' and grandfathers' Christmases were a bigger deal than ours.
That's interesting, because it's often thought we've reached the pinnacle of commercialization.
Yes. Every generation thinks that it invented sex and thinks that it invented the vulgar commercialization of Christmas. But actually, our holiday spending has moderated relative to the size of the economy in the last two generations.
Isn't that degree of spending good for the economy, especially in a recession?
Well, yes and no. Let me talk about that in a couple of different ways. First of all, the economy consists of buyers and sellers. You think about why we spend in the first place. We spend in order to produce satisfaction for buyers. We don't spend in order to help sellers. It's fine if we do help sellers, but we're trying to produce satisfaction. If the spending we engage in doesn't produce any satisfaction, then it's hardly a measure of well-being. I'm not against the spending. But whatever amount of spending we do, we should get as much satisfaction out of it as we possibly can.
Have you thought about why do we do it? Why is there this huge splurge at the end of the year?
Well, it's a bit of a puzzle. We don't do it with cash. Giving cash is very socially awkward. The exceptions are for parents to children, grandparents to grandchildren, aunts and uncles to nieces and nephews. It's O.K. for cash to flow from those of higher social status to those of lower social status, but [otherwise] it's just considered a tacky thing to do. Which makes the growth of gift certificates remarkable, because they're not tacky at all. I mean, recipients rate them as their most desired gift. In some sense, it's a way for givers to give a gift that has the flexibility of cash, without the tackiness of cash.
Do you have kids?
I do.
What if you don't give them holiday gifts?
Well, I do give them holiday gifts, because they are people whose preferences I know a lot about. The problem arises in the situations where we have to give a gift, but we have no idea what the recipient wants. I'm not against giving gifts in the situations where we have a good idea what people want.
What about the person who says, "My in-laws would go insane if I didn't get them gifts"?
Yes, that's the problem. So what do you do? There are a few possible answers. One answer is gift certificates or gift cards. Another solution that we see increasingly and that I advocate is giving gifts to charity. If you look at data, as people get richer, they give a higher fraction of their income to charity. So if you think that luxuries in that sense are things people would like to do, if only they had more money, then holiday giving — giving someone the ability to give to charity — is a way to allow them to experience a luxury.
Do you expect to have an influence, or is this a totally uphill fight?
I hope to have a small influence. I think people are ready. I'm not the only person who sees some madness in our behavior. And so I think people are looking for opportunities to do good for the world. I think people enjoy giving; there's something joyful about giving. And I'm not against that. I'm happy to see the same amount of spending, but if we could just eliminate the really sloppy stuff, and maybe shunt some of [the gift-giving] to good causes, that seems consistent with people's religious goals, and it might even be good for the world.
By Andrea Sachs Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009
Starting to think about holiday gifts? Stop! Joel Waldfogel, author of Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays (Princeton), is convinced that giving Christmas and Hanukkah presents is bad economic policy. And as the chair of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, he's no economic novice.
TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs, who is still hoping to get a few gifts this season (hint, hint), spoke with Waldfogel about his new book.
What's your objection to Christmas and holiday spending?
My objection is that the holiday spending doesn't result in very much satisfaction. Normally if I spend $50 on myself, I'll only buy something if it's worth at least $50 to me. But if you buy something for me, and you spend $50, since you don't know what I like, and you don't know what I have, you may buy something I wouldn't pay anything for. And so you could turn the real resources required to make things into something of no value to me. And that would destroy value.
How much is actually spent?
In the U.S., about $65 billion a year is spent on holiday gifts. There's been this giant [holiday season] bump in retail sales in the U.S. going as far back as statistics are available, back to the 1920s and '30s. In fact, as a share of the size of the economy, the spending has gotten smaller over time. Our fathers' and grandfathers' Christmases were a bigger deal than ours.
That's interesting, because it's often thought we've reached the pinnacle of commercialization.
Yes. Every generation thinks that it invented sex and thinks that it invented the vulgar commercialization of Christmas. But actually, our holiday spending has moderated relative to the size of the economy in the last two generations.
Isn't that degree of spending good for the economy, especially in a recession?
Well, yes and no. Let me talk about that in a couple of different ways. First of all, the economy consists of buyers and sellers. You think about why we spend in the first place. We spend in order to produce satisfaction for buyers. We don't spend in order to help sellers. It's fine if we do help sellers, but we're trying to produce satisfaction. If the spending we engage in doesn't produce any satisfaction, then it's hardly a measure of well-being. I'm not against the spending. But whatever amount of spending we do, we should get as much satisfaction out of it as we possibly can.
Have you thought about why do we do it? Why is there this huge splurge at the end of the year?
Well, it's a bit of a puzzle. We don't do it with cash. Giving cash is very socially awkward. The exceptions are for parents to children, grandparents to grandchildren, aunts and uncles to nieces and nephews. It's O.K. for cash to flow from those of higher social status to those of lower social status, but [otherwise] it's just considered a tacky thing to do. Which makes the growth of gift certificates remarkable, because they're not tacky at all. I mean, recipients rate them as their most desired gift. In some sense, it's a way for givers to give a gift that has the flexibility of cash, without the tackiness of cash.
Do you have kids?
I do.
What if you don't give them holiday gifts?
Well, I do give them holiday gifts, because they are people whose preferences I know a lot about. The problem arises in the situations where we have to give a gift, but we have no idea what the recipient wants. I'm not against giving gifts in the situations where we have a good idea what people want.
What about the person who says, "My in-laws would go insane if I didn't get them gifts"?
Yes, that's the problem. So what do you do? There are a few possible answers. One answer is gift certificates or gift cards. Another solution that we see increasingly and that I advocate is giving gifts to charity. If you look at data, as people get richer, they give a higher fraction of their income to charity. So if you think that luxuries in that sense are things people would like to do, if only they had more money, then holiday giving — giving someone the ability to give to charity — is a way to allow them to experience a luxury.
Do you expect to have an influence, or is this a totally uphill fight?
I hope to have a small influence. I think people are ready. I'm not the only person who sees some madness in our behavior. And so I think people are looking for opportunities to do good for the world. I think people enjoy giving; there's something joyful about giving. And I'm not against that. I'm happy to see the same amount of spending, but if we could just eliminate the really sloppy stuff, and maybe shunt some of [the gift-giving] to good causes, that seems consistent with people's religious goals, and it might even be good for the world.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
He's Just Not That Into You
Do you, both ladies and gentleman, agree with the tenets of this blockbuster book and movie?
I assume that most of us have great familiarity with it. For those who don't, basically the book addresses men's behavior in relationship from the 3-day wait rule after a date to the proposal. Most of the scenarios focus on what the guy doesn't do, like doesn't call, doesn't ask you to marry him if you live with him. The final conclusion made by the male author is that guys will take as much as you give them without too much investment until they decide to commit. When a guy commits, you'll see him do all the work from consistent communication through mature behavior.
I have plenty to add to this discussion but want to know your viewpoints. Though I have several friends happily married, I still have single friends juggling the dating scene. Obviously this book has become my bible during our consults; this phrase, my hate-to-break-it-to-you mantra. That is, until one day at work when a male colleague debated with me that many guys don't fit into its categorizations.
And here I thought I finally had it down :)
I assume that most of us have great familiarity with it. For those who don't, basically the book addresses men's behavior in relationship from the 3-day wait rule after a date to the proposal. Most of the scenarios focus on what the guy doesn't do, like doesn't call, doesn't ask you to marry him if you live with him. The final conclusion made by the male author is that guys will take as much as you give them without too much investment until they decide to commit. When a guy commits, you'll see him do all the work from consistent communication through mature behavior.
I have plenty to add to this discussion but want to know your viewpoints. Though I have several friends happily married, I still have single friends juggling the dating scene. Obviously this book has become my bible during our consults; this phrase, my hate-to-break-it-to-you mantra. That is, until one day at work when a male colleague debated with me that many guys don't fit into its categorizations.
And here I thought I finally had it down :)
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