Archives for June 16, 2004

I’ll be leaving for Washington later today, and I’m looking forward to the train ride. Too much time spent at my desk or in theater seats, too much concentration, too much art, not enough unscheduled drifting. I shall take no computer, no work, nothing but my eyes and ears and a drowsy, slightly worn-out disposition, all in the hopes of being freshened up by the time I reach my seat at the Kennedy Center tonight.

You’ll hear from me again on Friday. In the meantime, OGIC will tend your blog-related needs.

Later.

“Try not to regret the past too much. Most often, the past drops away from you because it’s ripe.”

Colette, letter to Germaine Patat (undated)

One of ALN‘s correspondents writes to expand on my thoughts about 1999 all-star cinema (it’s practically the seedlet of a theory now–we may need to call for reinforcements) and to defend Sexy Beast:

I remember there was a moment–probably when Marky Mark calls his wife on his satellite phone from the Iraqi bunker [in Three Kings], or maybe it was in The Limey or The Insider or Fight Club–when I felt like movies had changed, that the artists had figured out the new machines & everything would be different from then on. Turns out that’s not really the case, but it was a great year. The one on that list that keeps getting better for me is Topsy-Turvy, which has climbed into the all-time pantheon.

What is about ‘9 years and the movies? ’89 was similarly remarkable, or at least felt so at the time (Do the Right Thing, sex, lies, and videotape, Drugstore Cowboy, Heathers…), and then there’s the legendary ’39. No time to do the research on the others right now…

I did think Sexy Beast was the best movie of whatever year it came out (it was a slow year) but I think that’s 90% based on the good will generated by the opening scene–it didn’t so much lead to disappointment in the rest of the movie as an undercurrent of strangeness that, along with Kingsley, kept the rest of the movie afloat (at least the first time around–I’ve not been back yet).

Yep, Topsy-Turvy is the cream of that crop. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen it but for the one time, when it slew me. Terry, too–I was there to see. But Bridget Jones’s Diary was on cable the other day, reminding me that I always mean to rout around more thoroughly in the ouevre of Shirley Henderson (has anyone seen Wonderland?) and to watch Mark Darcy’s better half in action about a few hundred more times before I die.

Everybody and their brother has linked today to Ron Rosenbaum’s giddy preview of Philip Roth’s new novel, to be published in the fall (first seen by me at Ed’s joint). The Plot Against America is an “alternative-future novel in which Charles Lindbergh, in real life the figurehead for the isolationist and (in part) pro-fascist America First movement, runs for President in 1940, beats F.D.R. and–soon after his inauguration–makes a pact with Hitler.”

So how’s the book? Nice but ultimately meaningless, if we’re to trust Rosenbaum’s analogy:

It was the night of that Lakers-Pistons overtime game. I mention this because as soon as I got home with the Roth galley, I proceeded to read all 390 pages straight through the night, with only one interruption: watching that amazing last-quarter Lakers comeback, capped by Kobe Bryant’s stunning game-tying, buzzer-beating three-point shot. It’s not like Roth has to make a comeback or Kobe has something to prove (wait, that’s not completely true), but there’s at least a surface analogy there: Both the game and the reading experience were, in some primal way, unbearably suspenseful….

What is the “Plot Against America”? I ain’t tellin’, but it gets freaky toward the end and scary throughout: There was just no way I was going to get to sleep without finishing the book. I hope the serious-minded literati among you will forgive me for dwelling on the confluence of the Kobe Bryant shot and the Roth novel, but the Kobe shot had something of a similar quality, a jaw-dropping last-quarter gamble that pays off and leaves you astonished. A long rainbow arc. Nothing but net.

Lead time’s a bitch.

UPDATE: Rosenbaum’s piece prompts Sarah, who must have been an English teacher’s dream–or a bad English teacher’s nightmare–to reminisce about her checkered history with Roth’s work and to consider giving him a second chance. Go read her tale of precociousness!