Movies
Nil
by Mouth
(Sony Pictures Classics). Actor Gary Oldman's directorial
debut about a dysfunctional South London family is praised for avoiding the
moralizing mawkishness of the typical British working-class drama. "Mike Leigh
sans cuteness" (J. Hoberman, the Village Voice ). Reviewers praise
the movie's frighteningly realistic violence, especially a scene in which a
husband beats his pregnant wife, causing her to miscarry. Watching the film,
says The New Yorker 's Anthony Lane, is like "getting whacked over the
head with a shovel." (Click here for the official site.)
Blues Brothers 2000
(Universal). Would this sequel to the 1980
comedy based on Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi's Saturday Night Live
characters have made a "better concert film," as Roger Ebert of the Chicago
Sun-Times says? Maybe. Colorful performances by B.B. King, James Brown,
Aretha Franklin, and other R & B legends can't keep reviewers from
complaining that the movie feels like a retread of the original Blues Brothers
flick--a blues band traveling cross-country, chased both by police and bad
guys. Critics say the tuneless John Goodman can't measure up to the late
Belushi, whose absence "is fatal in itself" (Jack Mathews, the Los Angeles
Times ). (Clips are available here.)
Oscar
nominations, early reviews.
Critics
deem the roster free of surprises. Titanic , with its 14 nominations
(more than any movie since All About Eve ), is pegged as the likely
best-picture winner. The No. 2 contender is L.A. Confidential , which has
swept the film critics' awards. Critics failed to expect only one inclusion and
omission: The indie feel-good movie The Full Monty got a best-picture
bid, while Steven Spielberg's Amistad didn't. Among the performer
nominations, the critics' sentimental favorites are aging actors staging
comebacks--Peter Fonda ( Ulee's Gold ), Burt Reynolds ( Boogie
Nights ), Robert Duvall ( The Apostle). (MSNBC lists all the
nominees.)
Theater
Shopping and Fucking
(New York Theatre Workshop, New York City).
New York critics respond to the hit London play with either fulsome praise or
revulsion. Donald Lyons of the Wall Street Journal hails British
playwright Mark Ravenhill as "Tarantino laced with Céline and William
Burroughs." Others find the characters' nihilistic rants merely trite and their
sexcapades--a 14-year-old begs to be sodomized with knives--disgusting.
Books
Jack
Maggs: A Novel
, by Peter Carey (Knopf). Unanimous acclaim for the
Australian Booker Prize-winner's update of Charles Dickens' Great
Expectations . "An audacious and wholly successful act of writerly
reinvention" (Marc Carnegie, the Wall Street Journal ). Reviewers praise
the way Carey re-examines the oppressive aspects of Victorian England and
Victorian literature, even as he spins a crack adventure story. "If you've read
[Dickens], you get your insider's chuckle. If not, you still get a good yarn"
(Lakshmi
Gopalkrishnan,
Slate
). (Click here for an
excerpt.)
Black and Blue
, by Anna Quindlen (Random House). Anna Quindlen's
third novel--a thriller about domestic violence--is seen as yet another way to
repackage her old New York Times columns. Issue advocacy comes at the
expense of realistic characters and a coherent plot. And why is it, the critics
ask, that Quindlen's protagonist, the abused wife of a Brooklyn cop, sounds so
much like a sophisticated Manhattan journalist? Dissenters congratulate
Quindlen for having moved beyond veiled autobiography.
Music
Yield
, by Pearl Jam (Epic). The Seattle grunge band has grown up.
It has overcome its penchant for "overblown, chest-beating angst," according to
Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone , with its most mature album to date,
which features clever, self-mocking lyrics and bears the influence of '70s
supergroup Led Zeppelin. Pearl Jam detractors still can't stand singer Eddie
Vedder: They say he's unbearably self-important and limits the group's appeal
by refusing to "sell out" and make videos. General consensus: "The fabled '90s
alt-rock revolution is over" (Tom Sinclair, Entertainment Weekly ).
Art
"China:
5,000 Years" (Guggenheim, New York City). Critics marvel at this exhibit of
sculptures, ceramics, and paintings, most of them never seen before outside
China. But they knock the Guggenheim's presentation. Gripes: 1) The exhibit
aims to sum up 5,000 years in the same amount of space recently devoted to a
single Western artist, Robert Rauschenberg. 2) Afraid of alienating the Chinese
government, which lent the works, the Guggenheim includes no artists critical
of communism. 3) Curators provide too little context and explication. It is "a
triumph of institutional chutzpah ... an esthetic showcase of immense ambition
in search of a solid reason for happening" (Holland Cotter, the New York
Times ). (The Guggenheim plugs the show here.)
Updates
In the
New York Review of Books , James Fenton defends Ted
Hughes. " 'Plath lovers' will never forgive Hughes for having been Plath's
lover--a role which in their fantasies they would much better fill." A rising
consensus deems Hughes' Birthday Letters mediocre poetry: "slack and
secondhand" (Christopher Benfey,
Slate
). ... After initial
jeers, critics extend a warmer welcome to Martin
Amis' detective novel, Night Train . "The novel draws its energies
from the linguistic pyrotechnics of Nabokov and the human immensities of
Bellow," says John Lanchester in The New Yorker , where Amis is regularly
published.
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns
Feb.
4:
Theater -- The
Capeman ;
Television --Clinton-Sex-Scandal Coverage;
Television -- Dawson's Creek (The WB);
Movie -- Great
Expectations ;
Movie -- Desperate
Measures ;
Book -- Cuba
Libre , by Elmore Leonard;
Book -- The House Gun , by Nadine Gordimer.
Jan.
28:
Movie -- Wag the
Dog ;
Movie -- Gingerbread
Man ;
Movie -- Spice
World ;
Book -- Birthday
Letters , by Ted Hughes;
Book -- Night
Train , by Martin Amis;
Book -- Enduring
Love , by Ian McEwan;
Event --Super Bowl
XXXII;
Dance --"Mikhail Baryshnikov: An Evening of Music and Dance With the
White Oak Chamber Ensemble."
Jan.
21:
Movie -- Fallen ;
Movie --Sundance Film
Festival;
Movie -- Live
Flesh ;
Musical -- Ragtime ;
Book -- Pillar of
Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 , by Taylor Branch;
Book -- Shadows on
the Hudson , by Isaac Bashevis Singer;
Television -- South
Park (Comedy Central);
Art --"Arthur Dove: A Retrospective" (Whitney Museum).
Jan.
14:
Death --Sonny
Bono;
Book -- A Prayer for
the City , by Buzz Bissinger;
Book -- Cold
Mountain , by Charles Frazier;
Book -- The World
According to Peter Drucker , by Jack Beatty;
Movie -- Afterglow ;
Movie -- Arguing the
World ;
Movie -- Ma Vie en Rose .
--Franklin Foer
