Movies
Armageddon
(Touchstone Pictures). Critics napalm the summer's
second Earth-meets-asteroid movie, "an assault on the eyes, the ears, the
brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained" (Roger
Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times ). The Washington Post 's Stephen Hunter finds it "so predictable it could have been
written by a chimp." The most irksome aspects of Disney's $140 million
spectacle: its jingoism, ear-splitting sound effects, trite one-liners, and
unlikely premise--the planet's fate rests with redneck oil drillers.
Dissenting,
Slate
's David Edelstein
says the film got him "pumped, bellowing, pogoing backward up the aisle playing
air guitar." (Clips are available at the official site.)
Henry Fool
(Sony Pictures Classics). Indie auteur Hal Hartley's
least mandarin and most likable film to date. A morality play about a garbage
man's ascent to literary fame, it is deemed "a perfect modern parable" (Janet
Maslin, the New York Times ), with devastating send-ups of celebrity and
the publishing world. Some critics complain it's pretentious--Camille Paglia
plays herself--and so "self-conscious it feels uncomfortable with its own skin"
(J. Hoberman, the Village Voice ). (Click here for the official site.)
Death
Roy
Rogers (1911-1998). A nostalgia fest for the Singing Cowboy, with
obituaries declaring him a "soothing presence" (Mike Clark and David Zimmerman,
USA Today ) and "that almost unimaginable thing, the domestic cowboy"
(the New York Times ). Critics harp on his loyalty to wife Dale and horse
Trigger and his tendency to express himself through ballads, not fisticuffs.
The sociological spin: Boomers, the little buckaroos who worshiped RR, will now
begin feeling their own mortality.
Books
Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil
, by Ron
Rosenbaum (Random House). High praise for this explication of Hitler's
explainers--profiles of the historians, journalists, and filmmakers who study
the Führer. Rosenbaum's purpose: to show how portraits of Hitler reflect
broader cultural assumptions. Critics revel in his elegant deflation of bunk
theories, finding in his work "qualities in increasingly short supply in
academic circles: old-fashioned moral rigor and plain old common sense"
(Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times ). Some regret that Rosenbaum does
not proffer his own theory clarifying the mysterious origins of Hitler's evil.
(In
Slate
, Alex Ross praises Rosenbaum's ironic style.)
Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for
Integration
, by Tamar Jacoby (The Free Press). A predictably partisan
response for a reporter's study of how guilty white liberals and black radicals
exacerbated racial polarization in New York City, Detroit, and Atlanta.
Conservatives slobber over Jacoby's conservative denunciations of affirmative
action. As a dig at the left, they compare Jacoby's reportage favorably with
Nicholas Lemann's in his liberal classic, The Promised Land . Meanwhile,
liberals carp that her tone mirrors the anger of the black radicals she
depicts.
Bridget Jones's Diary
, by Helen Fielding (Viking). All the rage
in Britain, this hilarious account of neurotic single women in London becomes
the critical rage here. Seizing on Fielding's allusions to Pride and
Prejudice , critics declare Diary an Austenlike comedy of manners
that captures the Zeitgeist . They praise the protagonist's caustic humor
for providing an antidote to her "perfectly coiffed ... American cousin Ally
McBeal" (Tamsin Todd, the Washington Post Book World ).
Others find she shares McBeal's whininess and resembles a spouse "who prattles
on incessantly, never asking a more challenging question than 'Do these pants
make me look fat?' " (Stephanie Zacharek, Newsday ). (Click here to read
Slate
's "Book Club" on Bridget Jones .)
Performance Art
The
Return of the Chocolate Smeared Woman
(The Flea, New York City).
Performance artist Karen Finley reprises her 1990 show--she spread chocolate
over her naked body--which made her the poster girl for right-wing
denunciations of the National Endowment for the Arts. Most critics find her
angry monologues about rape and Jesse Helms "obvious" and "dull" (Linda Winer,
Newsday ). Predictably, conservatives pronounce her smut unworthy of
government funding. Less predictably, conservatives admit to attending her
performance multiple times: "If new material has been added since her first
chocolate-smeared headlines, it's not really apparent" (John
Leo, U.S. News & World Report ).
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns
July
1:
Movie -- Out of
Sight ;
Movie -- Smoke
Signals :
Movie -- Dr.
Dolittle ;
Movie -- Gone With
the Wind ;
Art --"Bonnard;"
Book -- Suits Me:
The Double Life of Billy Tipton , by Dianne Wood Middlebrook;
Book -- The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto , by Mario Vargas Llosa,
translated by Edith Grossman.
June
24:
Movie -- The X
Files ;
Movie --100 Years, 100
Movies (AFI);
Movie -- Mulan ;
Art --"Charles
Ray;"
Book -- Walking With
the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement , by John Lewis, with Michael D'Orso;
Book --Ship of Gold:
In the Deep Blue Sea, by Gary Kinder;
Book -- A Beautiful Mind , by Sylvia Nasar.
June
17:
Movie -- Six Days,
Seven Nights ;
Movie-- The Opposite of
Sex ;
Movie -- High
Art ;
Theater -- Not About
Nightingales ;
Television -- The
Magic Hour ;
Book -- Gain , by Richard Powers.
June
10:
Movie -- The Truman
Show ;
Movie -- A Perfect
Murder ;
Movie -- Kurt and
Courtney ;
Television -- Sex
and the City (HBO);
Theater --The Tony
Awards;
Art --"Edward
Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-Dreamer";
Book -- Cold New
World , by William Finnegan.
--Franklin Foer
