– 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.