Potential alternate titles for Shame:
The Man With The Great Apartment Who Couldn’t Stop Getting Laid
Sex Problems of the 1%
Michael Fassbender? Gun To Your Head? Yeah, You Would
It looks like the Mission Impossible people finally decided to do a straight up Bond homage, complete with white suited villain and lady assassin who only accepts payment in diamonds, which are forever, I’m given to understand.
Merits: tall building!; the Kremlin blowing up, for once; action scenes that make spatial sense and are safe for epileptics; the Simon Pegg - Jeremy Renner comedy team; Lea Seydoux in the Emanuelle Beart role of “French actress who wants a vacation home”; Tom Cruise as “body in motion”.
Demerits: Tom Cruise as No Fun James Bond, 00Zzz; Paula Poundstone or whoever as Agent Cleavage Delivery Device; scenes with talking.
Overall, the best one since the first one, while still not being great. I’d like to see Tom Cruise and Brad Bird remake of Ratatouille in live action.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one puzzled when The Social Network was announced as David Fincher’s next directorial effort. Has there been any project that has faced as much sight-unseen mockery as ‘the facebook movie”? Probably not since the pre-release snickering about Boogie Nights, back when it was “the porn movie starring Marky Mark.”
Well, things obviously worked out better than anyone expected, but TSN is mostly getting discussed as a Sorkin joint. Sorkin’s as mannered a dialogue writer as David Mamet and there’s no mistaking his voice from the first scene, but what’s astounding is the extent that this movie of people talking is definitely Un Film De David Fincher. There’s a solid-B Intro to Film paper to be found in comparing TSN and Fight Club alone. Emotionally stunted beta male protagonist? Who channels aggression into a new mode of expression? That taps into the frustrations and thwarted desires of denizens of late-industrial capitalism? And ends up upending established institutions and social structures?
Check, check, check, check.
And also: a partner embodying the protagonist’s wish-fulfillment concept of masculinity? With the role filled with a meta-textually fitting casting choice of a real world sex symbol? Checkity check.
There’s more to untangle, of course, including the charges of misogyny that were leveled—misguidedly—at both films, as well as the issue of Fight Club’s ostensibly anti-capitalist message vs. a story turning on stock dilution maneuvers, but I’ll leave that to the undergraduate who actually wants that B (probably a B-, really).
NYE.
For consideration in the ‘poster of the decade’ lists.
Lukewarm reviews notwithstanding, Franz Ferdinand’s last album has a lot of good stuff on it. At the very least, it’s less boring than fucking Animal Collective. Better a bunch of Scottish goofball ironists than another set of infantilized hipsters calling themselves cutesy names. Stupid kids with their loud hair and long music. I AM CROTCHETY.
From a Slate and Magnum’s photo gallery on people living among ruins.
I can’t get over the shoes.
PS. Those photo galleries are routinely fantastic.
No? Huh.
According to the iTunes robots, I’ve listened to this more than anything else. Available on Electrelane’s 2007 album “No Shouts No Calls” as well at the “Now That’s What Depressive Eastern European Immigrants Call Music!” compilation.
