Author: Banksy
The Oscar-nominated Exit Through the Gift Shop takes an unconventional, entertaining look at a bygone era of street art. Directed by Banksy, the enigmatic (e.g. shrouded in darkness and disguised by a voice decoder) superstar of the movement, the film follows the scene’s most inspired figures as they adorn unsuspecting buildings and billboards with wit and whimsy. Commercialization comes quickly, and with varying results. Banksy cashes in, Sotheby’s style; Shepard Fairey (of the ubiquitous Obama “Hope” image) is promptly sued by the Associated Press; and Thierry Guetta–a wannabe Andy Warhol for the porkpie hat set–goes about industrializing street art’s winking subversion with a team of workers and an Ikea-sized showroom.
Exit Through the Gift Shop effectively explores the wonders of artistry, inevitable commodification of youth culture, and the thin, stubborn line between clever and stupid. Spirited, slightly ridiculous fun.
Author: Pascal Chaumeil
Alex (Romain Duris) is a professional match-breaker in this frothy, giddily entertaining French film. His impeccable record is challenged when he’s enlisted to end the engagement of Juliette (Vanessa Paradis) and Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln). Jonathan’s a philanthropic billionaire (and British, ladies!), but still not nearly good enough according to Juliette’s father, who hired Alex.
So Alex and his suspiciously, ridiculously high-tech associates (his sister and brother-in-law) pull out a variety of amusing stunts to capture Juliette’s aloof heart, and absurd hijinks ensue. Alex uses every weapon in his arsenal, including but not limited to Juliette’s weakness for George Michael and Dirty Dancing.
Much of the movie’s charm can be credited to Duris, a remarkably agile and versatile performer who is something like a French Heath Ledger. It will be interesting to see who will be cast in the impending American remake. My money is on Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Alex and Amanda Seyfried as Juliette. (Kindly spare me your Jake Gyllenhaal and your Scarlett Johannson!) But I’ll savor this delightful original now and save the teeth gnashing for later.
Author: Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes takes a go at the alchemy of a particular love triangle in this insightful, witty novel. Sturdy Stuart is an earnest, levelheaded banker (note that the book was published in 1992) and devoted husband to Gillian, a placid, somewhat inscrutable art restorer. Oliver, Stuart’s longtime friend, is a pedantic train wreck (think of an unholy Christopher Hitchens-Russell Brand alliance) whose untethered existence gives him plenty of time to systematically disrupt the happy couple.
Stuart, Gillian, and Oliver take turns narrating; so each character gets a chance to explain–and reveal varying degrees of delusion. This technique shows off Barnes’s deft understanding of human dynamics, as well as an unsentimental objectivity that makes for bracing realizations. Further, his elegantly adventurous facility with language rendered the book a remarkably good time. Highly recommended; and, so far, so is the sequel.
Author: Ruba Nadda
Cairo Time is a beautiful film long on scenery but short on story and–sorry, news buffs–politics. Juliette (played by Patricia Clarkson of Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Good Night, and Good Luck) is a pampered American who travels to Cairo to meet up with her husband, a UN official who has been delayed by unrest in Gaza. In the meantime, she is entertained by the winning Tareq (Alexander Siddig of Syriana and Miral), her husband’s friend.
They tour about the teeming, majestic city, which is exquisitely captured here. She fawns at the Pyramids of Giza, drinks a great deal of coffee, attracts much male attention, and smokes copious amounts of hookah. Unfortunately, Juliette is a bit of bore, and much of the dialogue and character interactions are stilted and odd. Some kind of a thing heats up with Tareq, but Juliette turns him down, then gives him longing looks.
The film is practically apolitical, except for the mysterious and disregarded hijacking of a tour bus by the Egyptian military. I’m not sure if the director (Ruba Nadda) was trying to capture Juliette’s myopic mentality, or if she just wanted to create a fantasy for the Ann Taylor crowd; but the result is that Cairo Time is nothing but a pretty, messy trifle.
Author: John Cook
Perhaps the biggest surprise at last night’s Grammy Awards was the Arcade Fire’s triumph in the Album of the Year category. The Montreal band beat out superstars like Eminem and Lady Gaga to win for their third album, The Suburbs. Perhaps this turn of events should not have been so astonishing, since the band’s high-energy, anthemic rock is, in many ways, old fashioned enough to appeal to Grammy voters who grew up on Bruce Springsteen and U2. Pop music is a young person’s game, but the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences seems to be largely populated by people at least quadruple the age of Justin Beiber.
Fans, new and old, of The Arcade Fire should check out a recent book on the band’s record label: Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small. The book focuses on the story of the label and of Superchunk (the band whose members started Merge in Chapel Hill, NC in 1989), but alternating chapters also focus on various important label bands such as Spoon, The Magnetic Fields, Neutral Milk Hotel and, of course, The Arcade Fire. Our Noise is especially of interest to fans of music of this ilk, but it’s a fun read for anyone who likes to see an underdog win big (and still maintain the values it started with).
Author: Portia De Rossi
This is a brave and disquieting account of actress Portia de Rossi’s nearly lethal struggles with self-acceptance. Amanda Rogers was an intensely driven girl who changed her name, had a successful modeling career, attended Australia’s most prestigious law school, and landed on a hit television series (Ally McBeal) by age twenty-four. She also suffered from an eating disorder and severely shaky self-esteem, and both went into overdrive when she faced the image-fixated scrutiny that comes with being a Hollywood ingénue.To further complicate matters, she was also a closeted lesbian who felt her career would instantly implode if her secret were revealed.
“Unflinching” has become such a hackneyed word in reviews, but it is the perfect way to describe de Rossi’s book. She boldly and lucidly sifts through her psyche as it unravels, then as she painstakingly rebuilds her life. Her writing is insightful, very candid, and slyly humorous.
I would recommend this book to anyone seeking a better understanding of eating disorders or the particular challenges of being different.
Author: Jacques Tardi
Comic book artist Jacques Tardi is a legend in his native France, but in the U.S. he has never been anything more than an intriguing cult figure. However, in 2009 Fantagraphics, a well-respected comics publisher based in Seattle, announced that they would begin putting out new translations of Tardi’s work. A slew of releases have come out since then, and a couple of months ago Fantagraphics put out the first volume of a proposed 10) featuring Tardi’s most famous creation – Adele Blanc-Sec.
This book collects Adele’s first two adventures, Pterror Over Paris and The Eiffel Tower Demon. These are thrilling, absurd, convoluted stories, with dinosaurs hatched from prehistoric eggs, crazy cults featuring famous actors, hilariously inept policemen and endless double-crosses. This book surely has it all; in fact, some might argue that it has too much stuff packed into too few pages, and that the plot twists and switched identities are so numerous and byzantine as to befuddle all but the most astute readers. But really, one shouldn’t take this book too seriously – it’s really just a couple of rollicking adventure stories that move at a breakneck speed, backed up with gorgeous art and the breathtaking setting of Paris circa 1911.
Author: James Miller
In Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, James Miller plucks twelve revered philosophers from the Ivory Tower and places them under the biographer’s unsparing microscope. The findings? There is a blowhard (Socrates), a disgraced politico (Aristotle), a robotic goody two-shoes (Kant), a humorless hypocrite (Rousseau), a humble vagabond (Emerson), and a delicate dandy turned grunting madman (Nietzsche).
Miller skillfully places these men (sorry, no Hannah Arendts here) within their respective ideological and historical contexts, then supplies enough fizzy tidbits to keep it popping. The result is an uncommonly efficient educational experience that somehow has both depth and levity.
Author: Laurence C. Smith
In forty years, the world will be a very different than it is now: the population will be about 50% greater, climate change will be in full swing, and the increasing prosperity of Asia and Africa will create voracious markets for natural resources. So, given the turbulence ahead, what kind of world is likely to emerge? Smith, a UCLA geography professor, uses the latest research and computer models to attempt to answer this question.
He focuses particularly on what he refers to as the NORCs (Northern Rim Countries) – Scandinavia, Canada, the Northern U.S. and Russia. Climate change could actually open up these areas to greater settlement and resource extraction, thus causing them to become much more important geopolitically. Smith envisions a world where swarms of ships crisscross the Arctic Ocean as it turns ice free every summer. He envisions huge cities sprouting up north of the Arctic Circle. He imagines immense pipelines shipping northern water resources to an increasingly thirsty south.
It is impossible to be certain how many of these predictions will come true. But Smith always supports his theories with plenty of figures and footnotes, and he also makes sure to always keep things highly readable and engaging.
Author: Mark and Jay Duplass
This quietly surreal comedy provides a refreshing alternative to scatological grossfests.
The film’s story is contained to the disruption of an insular relationship between a single mom (Marisa Tomei) and her son (Jonah Hill) by Tomei’s new lover (John C. Reilly.) Social misfit Hill, unaccustomed to sharing his mother’s time with an outsider, attempts a variety of covert strategies to oust the clueless Reilly from their lives.
The movie’s tension and comedy derive from the disconcertingly awkward situations that its cast manages to foment. The story motors along well with its weird, elusive sort of discomfort—far more vague than The Office’s routine of bumbling social mix-ups, but still somehow familiar. It’s a spare enough premise that its success follows entirely from the talents of the cast. Reilly and Hill are veteran outcast character actors and their interplay is unsurprisingly very convincing. And Tomei, cast once again as the ageless beauty paired with a creep, somehow manages to effectively enter their bizarre little world.
Cyrus is a rare film that manages to be genuinely quirky without being cutesy. Recommended.
Author: Rachel Shukert
Rachel Shukert takes Europe after landing a non-remunerative part as a male elf in an experimental theatre troupe. While this is less a “European Grand Tour” than a modest survey of tall, eccentric countries that aren’t Germany (i.e. Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands), Shukert’s sharply maniacal remembrances make for an inspired, inventive romp.
This work is the provident intersection of a delightfully deranged imagination, history-engorged cities and their bizarre inhabitants, and a candid tale about finally taking responsibility for your own happiness. It bears mentioning that the scatologically averse should steer clear, but just about everyone else will revel in Shukert’s honesty and absurdist humor.
Author: Gary Shteyngart
Essentially, this novel is comprised of a mixture of two elements: 1) a near-future dystopian setting and, 2) a cheesy love story. I picked up this book mostly because I was interested in the crazy sci-fi elements, but it was the two main characters and their relationship that actually won me over.
Shteyngart throws us into a world where all the most absurd elements of our culture are amplified to a piercing howl – China basically owns the US and everyone shares every single last thing about their superficial, youth-obsessed selves using various facebook-esque technologies. All of this is, I suppose, intended to be intensely humorous. But it all falls totally flat.
However, at the center of the novel is Lenny Abramov, an ugly, book-loving schlub in his late-30s who can’t for the life of him fit into this ludicrous, ludicrous world. He meets Eunice Park, the damaged daughter of Korean immigrants, who is much, much younger and much, much better looking than he is. He falls for her immediately and, though it takes a while, she somehow eventually falls for him too.
And it all ends horribly, and absurdly, and it turns out that Schteyngart is pretty good at breaking your heart. I came to really care about these characters, but I could never bring myself to become interested in the world in which they live.
