Movies
Wild Man Blues
(Fine Line Features). Documentarian Barbara Kopple
( Harlan County, U.S.A. ) follows Sunday clarinetist Woody Allen on tour
with a New Orleans jazz band. Reviewers assert Woody is "even more amusing and
neurotic in real life than in his own movies" (Leah Rozen, People ). (He
suffers an anxiety attack on a Venetian gondola and rarely leaves his hotel
rooms.) Soon-Yi Previn, now Allen's wife, comes off as a strong-willed foil to
the famously whiny filmmaker. Cynics say Allen used the film to counter bad
press and deliberately hammed up his insecurities for the camera.
The
Object of My Affection
(20 th Century Fox). Tepid reviews for
this romantic comedy by Nicholas Hytner ( The Madness of King George )
about a pregnant woman (Jennifer Aniston) who wants her gay roommate (Paul
Rudd) to help raise her child. It is "[r]iddled with cultural stereotypes,
woe-is-me neurotic mopiness, and glib therapeutic compassion" (Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly ). Aniston's performance is called lackluster.
"Actresses get attention for their hair when they don't draw you in with their
features," says
Slate
's David
Edelstein. USA Today 's Susan Wloszczyna says the film signals the
death of a genre. "Romantic comedy has been in a funk since women's lib and the
pill popped the champagne bubbles of sexual tension." (A trailer is available
here.)
Chinese Box
(Trimark Pictures). Stunning shots of Hong Kong
alleys and markets are said to overcome a flimsy plot in The Joy Luck
Club director Wayne Wang's "love letter to his native city" (Kevin Thomas,
the Los Angeles Times ). In the story, co-written by novelist Paul
Theroux, characters are metaphors for their countries: A dying British
journalist (Jeremy Irons) interviews a Hong Kong hustler and falls in love with
a Chinese ex-whore (Gong Li). Critics praise Wang for capturing "the essence of
a great metropolis in the throes of change" (Joe Morgenstern, the Wall
Street Journal ).
Television
Seinfeld : Final-Episode Roundup (NBC; May 14, 9 p.m. ET/PT). Hype
for the sitcom's upcoming finale. Cover packages in Vanity Fair ,
Newsweek , and the New York Observer laud the show for having
"reinvented the sitcom form" (Lynn Hirschberg, Vanity Fair ) by
abandoning the traditional two-plot structure and introducing more
sophisticated and subversive humor. A few critics buck the trend. The Los
Angeles Times ' Howard Rosenberg deems Seinfeld 's characters
predictable and despicable: "Lower their grammar a few notches, and you can see
this crowd with Jerry Springer." The New York Observer 's Ron Rosenbaum
mocks "the endlessly repeated mantra that the show's genius is that it's 'about
nothing.' " (Click here for Summary Judgment's synthesis of critical opinion
when Seinfeld decided to retire.)
Books
Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women
, by Elizabeth Wurtzel
(Doubleday). Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel's marketing strategy
works: Critics heap attention on the dust jacket photo of Wurtzel topless and
flipping her middle finger. The book itself--about "high-maintenance women"
such as Amy Fisher and Sylvia Plath--is said by some reviewers to consist of
inchoate fulminations on feminism and familiar rants on being single. Others
say Wurtzel's notoriety as "someone so bent on self-destruction" makes it
"redundant to bash" the book (Yahlin Chang, Newsweek ). A few find
Bitch less smug and more authentic than Prozac Nation . (Click
here to read
"Culturebox" on craziness as a career strategy.)
Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles
Inside the Supreme Court
, by Edward Lazarus (Times Books). Critics
chide Lazarus for his kiss-and-tell about his year clerking for Supreme Court
Justice Harry Blackmun for betraying confidences and "sacrificing the dignity
of the Supreme Court" (Richard Painter, the Wall Street Journal ). But
they still lap up his gossip. (Tidbits: Thurgood Marshall spent his days
watching soap operas; Justices O'Connor and Kennedy are known as intellectual
midgets.) Lazarus' claim that zealous clerks run the court is deemed
"overstated" (David Garrow, the New York Times Book Review ).
Art
"Shadows of a Hand: The Drawings of Victor Hugo" (Drawing Center, New
York City). On a wave of Hugo chic--the publication of a new biography and
Hollywood versions of The
Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les
Misérables --an exhibit reveals the 19 th century French novelist
to have been a great draftsman as well. Hugo's drawings, many of them abstract
images presaging the work of the 20 th century painters Jean Dubuffet
and Franz Kline, are "one of the most striking testimonies to the power of the
unconscious in all Western art" (Robert Hughes, Time ). (In
Slate
, Paul Berman remarks upon the Hugo renaissance.)
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns
April
15:
Movie -- My
Giant ;
Movie -- City of
Angels ;
Movie -- The Big
One ;
Television -- Brave
New World (NBC);
Book -- Flawed
Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1961-1973 , by Robert Dallek;
Book -- Nat Tate: An
American Artist, 1928-1960 , by William Boyd;
Book -- Quarantine , by Jim Crace;
Theater -- Wait Until Dark .
April
8:
Movie -- Lost in
Space ;
Movie -- The Butcher
Boy ;
Movie -- The Spanish
Prisoner ;
Music -- Left of the
Middle , by Natalie Imbruglia;
Television -- Push (ABC);
Television -- Frontline: From Jesus to Christ--The First Christians
(PBS);
Book -- An Instance
of the Fingerpost , by Iain Pears;
Book -- Cavedweller , by Dorothy Allison.
April
1:
Movie -- Grease ;
Movie -- The Newton
Boys ;
Television -- From
the Earth to the Moon (HBO);
Television -- Teletubbies (PBS);
Theater -- The Sound
of Music ;
Book -- The All-True
Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton , by Jane Smiley;
Book--
Consilience:
The Unity of Knowledge , by E.O. Wilson;
Fashion --Fall Lines.
March
25:
Event --70 th Academy Awards;
Television --Sitcom
Roundup;
Movie -- Primary
Colors ;
Movie -- Wild
Things ;
Movie -- Taste of
Cherry ;
Theater -- Cabaret ;
Opera -- Lohengrin .
--Franklin Foer
