Death
Frank
Sinatra (1915-1998). On his death, Ol' Blue Eyes is pronounced "one of the
great talents of the century" (the Washington Post ). Obits extol his
unparalleled phrasing and effortless style and glance over his unexceptional
pitch and range. They attribute his enduring popularity to his complex persona,
which coupled upper-class urbanity with working-class gruffness and machismo
with tenderness. All but a few whitewash his Mafia ties, brawling, silly
grudges, boozing, racism, womanizing, and the fact that "he not infrequently
resembled a thug" (Frank Rich, the New York Times ).
Television
Seinfeld
Finale Roundup. Most critics say the sitcom's
grand finale fails to live up to its hype, and a few even pronounce it "a major
comedic disaster" (Marvin Kitman, Newsday ). The episode, in which Jerry,
Elaine, George, and Kramer are jailed for failing to stop a car theft, is
judged as lacking the show's long-standing hallmarks: multiple subplots, tight
writing, and humor about everyday situations. Others are pleased that the show
stayed unsentimental to the last and didn't compromise itself with a sappy,
feel-good ending. Still others rejoice that the narcissistic characters finally
got their comeuppance.
Movies
Bulworth
(20 th Century Fox). Critics find Warren
Beatty's chutzpah and charm irresistible and praise his political comedy
despite its hokey plot. Beatty plays a depressed U.S. senator, who orders his
own murder and then begins rapping about the virtues of socialism and
miscegenation. "Beatty deserves credit for having the audacity to shove a
personal political agenda down the throats of an audience," says
Newsday 's Jack Mathews. Several African-American critics charge that
Beatty adopts racist stereotypes of black ghettos. Conservatives, meanwhile,
accuse him of turning out "agitprop for a politics whose few remaining
adherents know nothing of America except Beverly Hills" (John Podhoretz, the
Weekly Standard ). (Click for a trailer or
to read
David Edelstein's review in
Slate
.)
The
Horse Whisperer
(Touchstone Pictures). Robert Redford wins praise for
bucking Hollywood formula and directing a movie "so chaste and so conservative,
it's practically Republican" (Rita Kempley, the Washington Post ).
Redford plays a cowboy who rehabilitates an injured horse and falls in love
with its married owner (Kirstin Scott Thomas). Reviewers rhapsodize over the
scenic vistas of Montana and laud the film--adapted from a best-selling New
Agey novel--for dispensing with the book's spiritual pap. Detractors say the
film, at two and a half hours, is too long and that Scott Thomas and Redford
lack chemistry as a couple. (Here is the official
site.)
Books
The
Everlasting Story of Nory
, by Nicholson Baker (Random House). After two
books about sex, novelist Nicholson Baker writes about the inner life of a
9-year-old girl. Critics love the child's comic riffs but lament that the
narrator's voice often sounds more like a middle-age man's than a 9-year-old
girl's. Others say the novel rambles: "As with a bright child brought down to
entertain the guests, you begin to wonder when it will be bath time" (Richard
Eder, the Los Angeles Times ). They also note the new novel's fortuitous
publication date: The rumor that Monica Lewinsky bought Baker's 1992 phone-sex
novel Vox for President Clinton has upped that book's sales 200
percent.
Cities of the Plain
, by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf). The third
installment in McCarthy's trilogy about cowboys in the mid-20 th
century seals his canonization. Although critics find Cities of the
Plain less inventive than All the Pretty Horses and The
Crossing , they still celebrate McCarthy's Faulkneresque use of flowing,
punctuationless sentences and arcane language. Others praise his cowboys for
being macho yet vulnerable. "McCarthy comes on like a bracing slap of Aqua
Velva," says the New York Times Book Review 's Sara Mosle. Dissenters say
he glorifies violence, writes one-dimensional villains, and doesn't understand
women.
Identity
, by Milan Kundera, translated by Linda Asher (Harper
Flamingo). The Czech expat's second novel written in French causes some
reviewers to proclaim his decline. No longer "a Nobel Prize waiting to happen"
(Jeff Giles, Newsweek ), Kundera is said to overindulge in his
philosophical musings, which no longer seem fresh. The book's plot (about a
man's anonymous love letters to his girlfriend) is said to be trite, and the
ending is called a cop out. But the New York Times ' Christopher
Lehmann-Haupt describes the book as classic Kundera--skeptical of modernity,
unpredictable, and reminiscent of his masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness
of Being .
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns
May
13:
Movie -- Deep
Impact ;
Movie -- Character ;
Music -- Into the
Sun , by Sean Lennon;
Book -- Titan: The
Life and Times of John D. Rockefeller , by Ron Chernow;
Book -- The Time of
Our Time , by Norman Mailer;
Book -- A Widow for One Year , by John Irving.
May
6:
Movie -- He Got
Game ;
Movie -- Les
Misérables ;
Movie --Summer Movie
Roundup;
Television --Newsmagazine Roundup;
Book -- Easy Riders,
Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved
Hollywood , by Peter Biskind;
Book -- The
Communist Manifesto , by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels;
Theater -- The Judas Kiss .
April
29:
Movie -- Two Girls
and a Guy ;
Movie -- Sliding
Doors ;
Book -- Damascus
Gate , by Robert Stone;
Book -- Other
Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria
Woodhull , by Barbara Goldsmith (Knopf); Notorious Victoria: The Life of
Victoria Woodhull , Uncensored , by Mary Gabriel (Algonquin).
Television -- Merlin (NBC);
Art --"Alexander
Calder: 1898-1976";
Opera --Kirov Opera.
April
22:
Movie -- Wild Man
Blues ;
Movie -- Object
of
My
Affection ;
Movie -- Chinese
Box ;
Television -- Seinfeld (NBC);
Book -- Bitch: In
Praise of Difficult Women , by Elizabeth Wurtzel;
Book -- Closed
Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles Inside the Supreme
Court , by Edward Lazarus;
Art --"Shadows of a Hand: The Drawings of Victor Hugo."
--Franklin Foer
