Books
The
Modern Library's 100 Best English-Language Novels Since 1900. Centennial
list-making kicks into high gear. Critics are predictably dismissive. Gripes:
1) It's a stunt to boost sales. 2) It's the handiwork of stodgy white males. 3)
It celebrates impenetrable highbrow books, such as Joyce's Ulysses ,
which critics admit to never having read. 4) It includes forgotten middlebrow
novels from the '30s and '40s at the expense of Pynchon, Morrison, Updike, "and
almost every other contemporary novelist people actually read" (Louis Menand,
The New Yorker ). 5) A deluge of similarly ridiculous lists is imminent.
(To see the full list, click here,
and to hear the dead authors gab about the list, click here. Also "Culturebox" weighs in on the subject.)
Point of Origin
, by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam). The best-selling
novelist's eighth murder mystery about a female medical examiner, in as many
years. Critics note it contains Cornwell's trademarks: vivid descriptions of
autopsies, soft-porn sex scenes, over-caffeinated one-liners, and inchoate
plots. It doesn't even live up to the minimal demands of "the beach-blanket
potboiler" genre, says the Chicago Sun-Times ' Henry Kisor. Noting the
book's dedication to Barbara Bush,
Slate
's Sarah Kerr calls
Cornwell a candidate for "today's leading conservative novelist."
Movies
Disturbing Behavior
(MGM). The latest in a wash of
Scream -bred teen horror flicks is roundly panned as a "disappointing
adolescent thriller starring no one you ever heard of" (Michael O'Sullivan, the
Washington Post ). Despite a promising premise--high-school students are
lobotomized into conformity by a guidance counselor and their parents--the film
is said to be packed with clichés (faces in windows, hands on shoulders) and
lacking either an ironic or a frightening touch. (See the official site.)
Pi
(Live Entertainment). High praise for rookie director Darren
Aronofsky's $60,000 thriller about the paranoid mind of a math genius: "a
personal, visionary ... art film par excellence" (Todd McCarthy, Daily
Variety ). Critics like its dark humor and shadow-heavy style, deeming
Aronofsky to be the "rare indie filmmaker who doesn't want to make hip romantic
sitcoms" (Richard Corliss, Time ). Not all are impressed: The New York
Times ' Stephen Holden calls the black-and-white hand-held camera style
"awfully hard to watch." (Click here to read the diary of Pi star Sean Gullette.
Here's the official
Pi site.)
The
Thief
(Stratosphere). Critics applaud this anti-Soviet political
allegory wrapped in a romantic drama, which is set in '50s Russia. A thief
disguised as a soldier seduces a single mother and becomes a father figure for
her 6-year-old son. Kudos for the film's Gogolesque characters and
Dostoyevskian nihilism; laments about the general paucity of foreign films in
America. The New Yorker 's Anthony Lane complains, "There is no
established etiquette for getting people to see them. 'Hey, we should try this
cool one about ... the lean years of postwar Stalinism.' "
Update
Raves
mount for Saving Private Ryan . The Washington Post 's Stephen
Hunter calls it "simply the greatest war movie ever made, and one of the great
American movies." A small school of dissenters also emerges: John Podhoretz
writes in the Weekly Standard , "Omaha Beach was a site of tragedy
and triumph, and it was triumph that gave meaning to the tragedy.
[Steven] Spielberg's inability to grasp these ideas ... shows his limitations
not only as an artist but as an adult." (Click here for
David Edelstein's review in
Slate
of the film.)
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns
July
22:
Movie -- The Mask of
Zorro ;
Movie -- Saving
Private Ryan ;
Movie -- There's
Something About Mary ;
Music -- Hello
Nasty , by the Beastie Boys;
Book -- Lucky
Bastard , by Charles McCarry;
Theater -- Twelfth
Night ;
Television -- Drudge (Fox).
July
15
Tina! --The Tina Brown
Years;
Art --"Unknown Terrain:
The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth";
Movie -- Small
Soldiers ;
Movie -- Lethal
Weapon 4 ;
Movie -- Buffalo
66 ;
Music -- Embrya ,
by Maxwell;
Music -- Car Wheels on a Gravel Road , by Lucinda Williams.
July
8:
Movie -- Armaggedon ;
Movie -- Henry
Fool ;
Death --Roy Rogers;
Book -- Explaining
Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil , by Ron Rosenbaum;
Book -- Someone
Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration , by Tamar
Jacoby;
Book -- Bridget
Jones's Diary , by Helen Fielding;
Performance Art -- The Return of the Chocolate Smeared Woman , Karen
Finley.
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.
--Eliza
Truitt
