Today's must read Jinni Blog Christopher Korbel wrote a thinkpiece about a few of the Best Actor nominations from 2009 and what they're still telling us about today's men and their shared values.
The most unsettling of unanimously shared values is that they all reject their homes due to a strong desire for the Open Road. They all delight in living hermetically in the most estranged of environments.Really interesting piece so go read it.
More?
Lazy Circles remembers Hitchcock star Farley Granger. We like Farley.
Natasha VC another Grace Zabriskie fan. Natasha speaks the truth.
I Need My Fix Lady Gaga leads the VMA nominations, and commandeers 40% of the Best Video category. As it should be.
All Things Fangirls Remember when we shared this hottie Disney princes in their undies. The tables are turned. The Disney girls have now been sufficiently sexed up.
The Film Doctor "Cinema and the Eye" These screenshots have blinded me! So spooky I had to look away.Sunset Gun remembers Frances Farmer of Frances fame.
Tribeca Film Best in Show: Annette Bening.
NY Times "The Age of Laura Linney" I totally forgot to link to this over the weekend. I desperately want to see The C Word.
And totally random question of the day. Is David Boreanz getting younger every year? Or at least younger than he's been since he first left Buffy? Did he uncover some supernatural magics in all those Whedonverse years?
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9 comments:
I always liked Farley Granger. He was great in Rope and Strangers on a Train. And yes, he did look really good in those tennis shorts.
The C Word is pretty good, but comparatively the pilot isn't as good as Weeds.
The C Word is pretty good, but comparatively the pilot isn't as good as Weeds.
You can actually watch (or could have watched?) the pilot online for Laura Linney's series.
The article on the Best Actor characters was monumentally oversimplified, so much so, that I found it vaguely offensive.
"The most unsettling of unanimously shared values is that they all reject their homes due to a strong desire for the Open Road. They all delight in living hermetically in the most estranged of environments."
They don't delight in the road. They have been reduced to it. They are men who have deluded themselves into thinking that this is the way to higher enlightenment or understanding.
Eventually, all these filmmakers don't celebrate their characters' hermetic lifestyles but portray the men as tragic victims to years of self-induced seclusion. That's what potentially gives each film (for all its faults) a tragic conclusion. These men are left broken, and by the time, say Clooney, comes to this realization, it is too late to alter his life.
It's very easy to oversimplify as Korbel does; less so to analyze the motivations of each particular film.
Frankly, I found the article disgusting for its contented simplicity.
Ah, David Boreanz...what eye candy.
Michael -- i am so over Weeds (i literally can't sit through it anymore. i think it's past its expiration date for sure) so maybe that won't matter to me.
Sam -- hmmm. stuff to consider. Perhaps I should have read more carefully. But i always like reading takes on what the movies say about male identity because I think our society and our entertainment still has LOTS of unhealthy ideas about male identity that nobody ever quite gets around to viewing as unhealthy. it's like we're aware that we're fucked up about women but not aware at all that we're also fucked up about men.
Thanks for the link, Nathaniel. The best actor nomination article also reminded me of the wanderlust of Huckleberry Finn. Ryan Bingham's case in Up in the Air is complicated because the movie seems to undermine all of his pleasure in movement and non-attachment as it goes on, but I don't buy all of the emphasis on the family-oriented life of commitment. I happened to like his impulse to get away.
filmdr -- i agree that the movie pushes too hard in the opposite direction of Ryan Bingham's life choice. It was a more interesting movie when there was that frisson between what people may or may not want as far as families go.
but movies are very conservative that way.
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