Movies
Seven Years in Tibet
(TriStar Pictures). A general dismissal of
this docudrama by Swiss director Jean-Jacques Annaud ( The Name of the
Rose ) about the Dalai Lama's friendship with an Austrian mountaineer,
played by Brad Pitt. A "preachy history lesson," says Leah Rozen of
People . Other pans dwell on the film's sentimentalization of Tibet and
its skirting of its protagonist's Nazism. Pitt's performance and his efforts at
an Austrian accent are deemed "painful at moments" (Kenneth Turan, the Los
Angeles Times ). Only the "beautifully filmed" (Jay Carr, the Boston
Globe ) mountain vistas are said to make the movie worth watching. (For more
on the veracity of Annaud's take, see Jared Hohlt's "Life and Art" in
Slate. Click here
for the official site.)
Boogie Nights
(New Line Cinema). Raves for 26-year-old director
Paul Thomas Anderson's morality tale about the rise and fall of the '70s porn
industry. A damning "indictment of the excesses" of the era, says
Newsday 's Jack Mathews. Praise goes to the film's period costumes; the
humorous script; and performances by Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, and Mark
Wahlberg (formerly known as Marky Mark). Critics are especially pleased that,
for a sex film, it "stints on sex" (Richard Corliss, Time ). Dissenting,
New York 's David Denby wishes it had more insights into the porn
industry: It "doesn't really satisfy our curiosity about this ... fascinating
but wan way of life." (See Sarah Kerr's review in Slate
and the Boogie Nights site.)
Fashion
Versace, Spring/Summer '98 Collections (Milan, Italy). The fashion
house's first new collection since the murder of its founder, Gianni Versace,
is praised for remaining true to his high-camp vision of style. "It was as if
he had created these clothes himself," says the Daily News ' Orla Healy.
Credit goes to sister Donatella, who took over Versace. It was amazing "she
could produce anything at all ... with so much pressure and so much pain" (Amy
Spindler, the New York Times ). Widespread doubts about the house's
financial future are said to have been assuaged.
Product
Internet Explorer 4.0 (Microsoft Corp.). Most critics say Microsoft's
browser upgrade gives it the upper hand in its war with Netscape, "whose
position ... resembles [that of] the Confederate army after Gettysburg"
(Hiawatha Bray, the Boston Globe ). Renovations include a new e-mail
system and modifications to Windows 95 that make the operating system more like
a Web site. Other critics predict Microsoft's new bells and whistles will make
no difference to the average user, who will consider the competing browsers
"more alike than different" (Bruce Schwartz, USA Today ). Still others
accuse Microsoft of predatory business practices, including ripping off the
programming language Java from its competitor Sun. (Microsoft lets you download its
browser. So does Netscape.)
Award
Nobel
Prize for Literature , Dario Fo. Critics applaud the selection of the
absurdist Italian playwright, even while calling him the "most obscure Nobel
winner" in years (David Streitfeld, the Washington Post ). Fo's work,
especially Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970), is celebrated for
combining trenchant left-wing satire with slapstick humor "reminiscent of
vintage Marx Brothers" (Rick Lyman, the New York Times ). Conservative
critics echo the Vatican, which condemned the choice of the anti-clericalist
and ex-Communist as an act that "has surpassed all imagination." In the Wall
Street Journal , Stephen Schwartz deems Fo's plays "unwatchable for anybody
but those wanting to hear ... a recitation of the ... clichés of the left."
Book
How
the Mind Works
, by Steven Pinker (Norton). In a 660-page tome, the MIT
psycholinguist popularizes a controversial theory of evolutionary psychology:
that the brain is like a computer program that has been shaped by natural
selection. Critics find the book entertaining, praising digressions on
gambling, laughing, and love, as well as Pinker's pop-culture references.
"[W]itty popular science that you enjoy ... for the writing as well as for the
science," says Mark Ridley in the New York Times Book Review . But some
also use the occasion to take evolutionary psychology to task: "[I]t wants to
explain too much, too easily" (Jim Holt, the Wall Street Journal ).
Updates
Pile-ons:
In a New Republic appreciation of his late friend J. Anthony Lukas, Alan
Brinkley says Big Trouble is "a story told with such wit, energy, and
grace that it becomes a riotous, sprawling historical entertainment."
... David Foster Wallace bashes Updike's Toward the
End of Time in the New York Observer : "[S]o mind-bendingly clunky
and self-indulgent that it's hard to believe the author let it be published in
this kind of shape." ... Raves mount for Don DeLillo's Underworld. Writing in the New York Review of Books , Luc
Sante defends DeLillo against the perennial charge that his novels are
schematic: "Large thematic strokes may define his architecture, but within lies
continual surprise at the fluidity and resilience of the human condition."
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns
Oct.
8:
Movie -- U-Turn ;
Movie -- Washington
Square ;
Movie -- Soul
Food ;
Architecture --Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, Spain);
Book -- Toward the
End of Time , by John Updike;
Death --Roy Lichtenstein.
Oct.
1:
Movie -- The
Edge ;
Movie -- The
Peacemaker ;
Book -- Big Trouble:
A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of
America , by J. Anthony Lukas;
Book -- Timequake , by Kurt Vonnegut;
Music -- Time Out of
Mind , by Bob Dylan, and Bridges to Babylon , by the Rolling
Stones;
Television -- ER : "Ambush" (NBC);
Art --"Sensations: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection"
(Royal Academy of Art, London).
Sept.
24:
Book -- The
Royals , by Kitty Kelley;
Book -- Underworld , by Don DeLillo;
Book -- Great
Apes , by Will Self;
Art --"Robert
Rauschenberg: A Retrospective" (Guggenheim Museums and Ace Gallery, New
York);
Movie -- A Thousand
Acres ;
Movie -- The Ice
Storm ;
Television -- Veronica's Closet (NBC).
Sept.
17:
Movie -- L.A.
Confidential ;
Movie -- In &
Out ;
Television -- Nothing Sacred (ABC);
Television -- Brooklyn South (CBS);
Television -- Michael Hayes (CBS);
Music -- Candle in
the Wind 1997 , by Elton John;
Museum --Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the
Holocaust.
--Compiled by Franklin Foer and the editors of Slate .
