Archives for March 30, 2005

“The inevitable is not wicked. If you can improve on it all right, but it is not necessary to damn the stem because you are the flower.”

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., letter to Harold Laski (1921)

Oh–did I mention the temperature in Chicago today reached 72?

Quorum of strawberries, fresh or frozen

Lone banana, sliced

Goodly dollop raspberry sorbet

Liberal spoonful orange juice concentrate

Generous shmear plain yogurt

Decent smattering ice cubes

Blend and be nourished.

Don’t worry, I know you know how to make a smoothie. But this one has been working magic for me this young spring, so I felt like sharing.

I know I’m way, way too busy when I stop filling the ice trays in my freezer. I belatedly noticed this afternoon that I must have reached that point some time in the past couple of days. Not to worry, though. My head remains above water (just), and I see that OGIC has been keeping you fed and groomed in my unavoidable absence. Isn’t she the best?

As for me, I still expect to depart this vortex of overwork some time over the coming weekend and return to the blogosphere on Monday, perhaps not rested but definitely ready.

Later.

– In Slate, Stephen Metcalf argues that Ian McEwan’s Saturday, which I hope to find the time to read one day in 2007, isn’t about what other critics think it’s about. This being 2005, I can’t tell you whether he’s right. For what it’s worth, however, his is the first review of the book I’ve felt like reading all the way through and, even so, one of the few that didn’t tell me more than I wanted to know about the novel’s plot.

– Christopher Orr tries to watch Closer with a straight face, an experiment that fails but amuses. (Link via The American Scene, whose Ross Douthat will “rush out to buy a ticket” for any movie panned by David Denby.)

– Don’t rush out for this one, Ross. Said Denby likes the awful Upside of Anger and thinks Mike Binder “may be one of the few male directors around who take an active interest in what women are feeling.” Sure, if you mean the beautiful, lecherous women with inexplicably low standards who populate Mike Binder’s ludicrous fantasies.

– Detractors of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? (I think that covers everyone except Meghan O’Rourke.) B. R. Myers was already sick up to here of Jonathan Safran Foer when all of you were cuckoo for him. So there.

I was amused to discover, a few months after the fact, that none other than National Geographic interviewed Wes Anderson in December about The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. It’s a brief but entertaining softball toss, with Anderson fielding questions like “Did any Lord of the Flies stuff go on? Was there a conch shell?”

It’s been a couple of months now since I caught up with The Life Aquatic. After The Royal Tenenbaums I had just about given up on Anderson. I missed Bottle Rocket but enjoyed Rushmore, in no small part thanks to Bill Murray’s presence. But in Tenenbaums I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being subjected to some overachieving ninth-grade geek’s school project: a lovingly and ingeniously detailed diorama, a thing to behold, but airless and unpeopled. Filled with stars, sure–but unpeopled. It made me want to pat him on the head and go home to read a simple book. When I got a load of the trailer for The Life Aquatic, it just screamed more of the same–a diorama with a Hollywood budget, heaven help us. The Tenenbaums’ townhouse taken to the nth degree. I was not hopeful.

To my surprise, however, The Life Aquatic was a pleasure. Even Owen Wilson…especially Owen Wilson? Could be. For whatever reason, I was able to take this movie seriously and even respond to it emotionally, despite the basic premise being even more precious and imaginatively labored than that of Tenenbaums. The closest I’ve come to figuring out the difference between it and its predecessor is this: animals. They’re ubiquitous in The Life Aquatic: real cats and dogs and invented fish, lounging in the background, trotting alongside the characters, populating the aqua. Animals don’t do irony, and for me their near-constant presence cut against that overweening irony Anderson is so prone to. Anderson loves deadpan, but these beasties out-deadpan the characters by a mile, with no disingenuousness about it. Maybe his next career move should be to drop those Wilson boys altogether and make some nature specials–I daresay National Geographic would get on board.