Hoo-ray!

I got my latest back issue of Spy today and it is a doozy.  It is their July, 1989, Summer Fun Issue.  Emily Lloyd is the cover star and I will have pictures for you soon.

Spy, even in their late 80s heyday, did not always publish the greatest feature articles every month.  For me, if the feature articles were good that was just icing.  I always loved the charts, Kurt Anderson's flawless intro essays, Review of Reviewers, their Mailbag, the letters to the editor, their letters to the New Yorker (at that time the New Yorker would not publish letters to the editor), their "stunts" (Spy published a New Yorker masthead, another thing the New Yorker did not do back then), their New York Times gossip column, their Hollywood gossip column, the Liz Smith tote board,  and on and on, etc, ... Spy was so brilliant, and pithy, yet so dense, cram packed with miles of text.  It was like a little book you got every month and if you loved it (as I did/do then/now) you wanted to devour the whole thing, savoring every word.  It could take you a month to read and digest the latest issue.

S'funny, one of Spy's most loved items was Separated at Birth.  I never really got it, I guess.  It was amusing sometimes, I suppose.  And I still, to this day, do not understand The Spy List but I am probably just over thinking it.

This Summer Fun Issue has some of my all-time favorite feature articles that I remember from back in the day, though.  The Boys Who Would Be Buckley (about young up-and-coming Conservatives, with a nifty tote board chart ranking the contenders in different attributes); The Ugly European (about rude, low or no tipping European tourists); and Twinkie, Twinkie, Little Suet-Filled Sponge-Cake Crisco Log, Now I Know What You Are (in which Spy elucidates just what a Twinkie is, how it is made, what is actually in one and then hosts a bake-off between six great New York restaurant chefs.)  Great stuff.

Now that I think of it, that should be a quickfire on Top Chef, make them make Twinkies in 25 minutes.

I just got the magazine today and all I have read so far is Review of Reviewers.  (Which is brilliant, they skewer Esquire, Lee Eisenberg, and J. Hoberman.)  I will be snacking on Spy in to the wee hours for the next few weeks.

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The Oscar nominations were pretty ho-hum for me this year.  Three of the Best Picture noms are films I have no intention of seeing any time soon, if at all.  (Those would be True Grit, Black Swan, and The Fighter.)  I will be cheering for Colin Firth (he shoulda won last year), Annette Bening, and The Social Network.  I would not mind seeing Amy Adams win an Oscar, natch.  She is one of my faves.  I still have not seen Winter's Bone or 127 Hours and they are def on my to-see list.

My fave Oscar nomination story concerns James Franco.  The NYT arranged a phone interview with Franco to ask him what it would be like hosting an event in which he is up for a big prize, Best Actor.  Franco had to cut the interview short however, to go to class, at Yale, where he is pursuing a PhD in English Lit.  James Franco rocks.

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TCM is naturally pulling out the big guns tomorrow for the last installment of Peter Sellers, their star of the month.  We get Being There, Doctor Strangelove, and Lolita.  But we also get a Boulting Bros satire, Man in a Cocked Hat, which I know v little about and will be dvr-ing tomorrow.

Sellers' performance as Quilty in Lolita has aged poorly, perhaps.  And when Adrian Lyne's godawful remake came out a decade (or two or whenever) ago Sellers' Quilty took a minor beating.  You know, the usual complaints:  Sellers is over-the-top, he is performing (gosh, what  was he supposed to do?), etc, ...  Those who complain are wrong.  Nabokov wrote the screenplay, for crying out loud.  The novel the film is based on is a comic, parodic novel with maybe the most unreliable narrator of all-time.  Quilty is supposed to be a mischevious, base quick-change artist.  Sellers nailed it.  A masterful performance in my eyes.  

One more Sellers note re Strangelove.  Sellers was supposed to play the Slim Pickens role, too.  He came down with a mysterious leg injury right before the Kong scenes were to be shot.

I will always love Strangelove, even if it is a little long and Kubrick cut the pie-fight scene.  Just shows to go you what male sexual frustration can lead to if not properly released or dealt with.

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Simone takes Oscar home for good.  

Not all the films I saw this past weekend were bad.  I dvr'd Room at the Top off of TCM and it is a sooty little diamond.  Every part of the film is good.  The score is excellent, the performances are great (Simone Signoret won an Oscar for Best Actress and Laurence Harvey with his spot-on Yorkshire accent was a real revelation; I think I had only seen him in Darling before), the photography is phenomenal (Freddie Francis was the DP and I loved all the texture and grit and grime he gets out of those bombed out, factory filled Yorkshire villages), and the script and the direction really bring out the nuanced adult dramatic nature of this social-climbing story.  Jack Clayton directed and it is bloody obvious frame after frame what a massive impact this film had on British cinema and TV.  There was one scene where Renee yelled out, "That's like Hot Fuzz!" and she was totally right.  Those films have nothing in common other than they are both English productions with English directors but I imagine Edgar Wright, whether he thinks Room is daft and campy or a moving drama, knows Room at the Top v well, indeed, and cannot help but be influenced by it to even the slightest extent.  Great movie.  V highly recommended.

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That is it for me, tonight.  Mwah, ... 

There must have

Been reasons why I did not see The Social Network in a theater but I cannot recall them now.

Anyhoo, I saw it over this past weekend.  The movie is great, the first scene is amazing.  The Howard Hawks-like speed w/ which characters speak is invigorating and thrilling to watch.  The script by Aaron Sorkin is smart, spiked w/ sour wit, and still always moves the story forward.  There are good performances all over the screen but my favorites are Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer (as the Winklevoss twins), & Rashida Jones.

In fact, my favorite storyline in The Social Network is that of the "Winklevi".  I love how they are set up as WASP Supermen.  What is the quote, "I am 6' 5", 220 pounds and there are two of me"? The twins are uber-privileged, part of a dwindling old-money American aristocracy, who are first shown lapping their crew competition and then towering over a gawky, socially awkward Zuckerberg.  We never see the twins win anything again.  They always come up short, yet try to remain gentlemen.  Cameron Winklevoss finally snaps when his Harvard crew loses the big race in England.  There is something so correct and perfect and honest and lovable about the twins that goes against most traditional class-struggle movies or arcs, whathaveyou.

I am not rooting for Zuckerberg in this film.  It is brilliant that Sorkin found this class-turnabout in this Facebook story.  Zuckerberg is not likeable.  He is so socially awkward, so narcissistic, so loathesome, so condescending, etc, ... My skin crawls when Eisenberg asks Rashida Jones' lawyer out for dinner.  And the scene where Zuckerberg keeps trying to pull his ex-girlfriend away from her friends,  to "talk alone, for a minute" (everyone in this splendid script is seeking a private conversation at one point or another, yet so many are connected to this extremely non-private social network creation), well, folks, I have been there before and it is chilling and uncomfortable to watch.   Rooney Mara as Erica plants her feet firmly in the ground and tells him off.  Good for her.

I am not going to ruin the ending.  It is brilliant like the rest of the film.  But everybody involved here seems to have nailed it.  It had to be perfect to succeed and that is v dangerous territory to be playing around in.  The Citizen Kane references are correct.  Not in any way related to the film itself re how it looks, how it was shot, etc, ... but that they took on a media giant by telling his story as a big-budget Hollywood entertainment (and they weren't v nice to their "hero".)  People as talented as Sorkin and David Fincher had to be anxious and excited to tackle this remarkable real-life, real-time story:  One of the most socially awkward, icky guys around, who has  no friends at all creates frickin' Facebook.  Sorkin & Fincher dived in and nailed it.  Good for them.  


Actually, now that I think about it, there may be another way this film is like Kane.  There will be arguments over the decades about who was more integral to The Social Network, Sorkin, the screenwriter, or Fincher, the director.  Personally, I am in the Sorkin camp at this early juncture.  Just like I am in the Kael/Mankiewicz/Toland camp re Kane.

Winklevi & Zuckerberg.

P.S.  One more thing, it was so lovely to hear a real Beatles song in a movie.  I am sure they had a pay a mint but it was worth it.