<SPAN class=350300619-12101999><SPAN class=350300619-12101999>Spike's Peak</SPAN></SPAN>
Movies
Being John Malkovich
(USA Films). Uninhibited raves
for the feature-film debut of music video and TV commercial director Spike
Jonze. The surrealist fantasy follows John Cusack and Cameron Diaz as a husband
and wife who discover how to enter John Malkovich's brain though a miniature
door in an office building. The critics trip over themselves with praise:
"deliciously one-of-a-kind" (David Ansen, Newsweek ) ... "brilliantly
inventive" (Desson Howe, the Washington Post ) ... "clever and
outrageous" (Kenneth Turan, the Los Angeles Times ) ... "either Being
John Malkovich gets nominated for best picture, or the members of the
Academy need portals into their brains" (Roger Ebert, the Chicago
Sun-Times ). (The film's official site includes an excellent selection of strange,
candid shots Jonze took of the stars during filming.)
Princess Mononoke
(Miramax Films). Japan's
second-highest box office draw of all time (beaten only by Titanic ) is
this animated feature directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the country's undisputed
master of anime. The complicated plot deals with conflict between man and
nature in an imagined 14 th -century forest. Critics are quick to note
that despite being distributed by an arm of the Disney empire, the film is
about as different from The Little Mermaid as you can get, and it "makes
Hollywood's homiletic, follow-your-dream fables look even more solipsistic"
(David Edelstein,
Slate
). Most impressive is the "exotically
beautiful" artwork (Janet Maslin, the New York Times ); the director is
reported to have personally retouched some 80,000 of the film's 1.4 million
cells. (Click here to watch the trailer; click to read the rest of Edelstein's
review in
Slate
.)
Music of the Heart
(Miramax Films). Horror director
Wes Craven ( Scream , A
Nightmare on Elm Street ) branches
out and tackles the true story of Roberta Guaspari, an East Harlem violin
teacher. The critics are evenly divided. Some declare the film "a sugary paean
to the violin as a tool for improved self-esteem" (Stephen Hunter, the
Washington
Post ), while others are touched: "thoroughly
appealing ... Ms. Guaspari's story has been given a blunt, no-nonsense tone
that works" (Janet Maslin, the New York Times ). (Click here to bone up on
A Nightmare on Elm Street .)
Books
Lo's Diary
, by Pia Pera (Foxrock). This retelling of
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita from the point of view of the young girl has
taken quite a beating. First it got dumped by its original publisher, Farrar
Straus & Giroux. Then Nabokov's estate sued for copyright infringement
(they settled). Now reviewers are assaulting it in print. Michiko Kakutani
neatly sums up most critics' thoughts in the New York Times : "The
problem with Lo's Diary isn't that it's derivative. The problem is that
Ms. Pera seems to have no understanding whatsoever of what Nabokov was up to in
Lolita , and so cannot begin to re-imagine his story in any meaningful
way." In this version, Lolita is a knowing seductress who tortures her pet
hamster and feels no sadness at her mother's death. Critics slam her voice as
"false and ungainly" (Jonathan Levi, the Los Angeles Times ) and complain
that her diary is tainted by ideas and language that sound awkwardly mature.
Among a scattering of positive reviews, Publishers Weekly calls the book
"a compelling novel in its own right." (Click here to read the first chapter.)
Thumbsucker
, by Walter Kirn (Broadway Books). Mainly
negative takes on book reviewer Kirn's coming-of-age novel about a troubled
14-year-old boy who tries to replace his thumb-sucking habit with various other
crutches, including smoking, drinking, and Ritalin. Richard Eder writes in the
New York Times Book Review that though "Kirn is a frequently sparkling
tour guide" through the teen-ager's life, "[w]e get no sense ... that any of
this is real; not even comically real." Defenders call it a "largely episodic
collection of great moments that aren't all causally linked in that comforting
way we're used to" (Yahlin Chang, Newsweek ). Tom Wolfe, who attacked the
book in the literary magazine Biblio on the basis of its title--without
having read a word of the manuscript--draws a stinging retort from Kirn in the
latest issue of Tin House , in which he writes a lovely parody of a
negative review for his own book: "I consider it my duty as the author of this
offensive work, to carry even further Wolfe's condemnation in hopes of
neutralizing, from the start, a potentially harmful literary contagion." (Click
here to read the first chapter.)
