Why is Faramir's character ruthlessly assassinated?

The point of Faramir--the WHOLE POINT of Faramir--is that he is not Boromir.  He never wants the Ring.  Also: he is never vicious, he does not take the hobbits on an asinine detour to Osgiliath, and he doesn't whine.  He is literate, cultured, and, for lack of a better word, a humanist.  He is not ambitious for himself, and he does not believe that the ends justify the means.  Again, he is not Boromir.

I will point you to an illuminating statement that the young man makes: "I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo."

Are we clear?

Why was Crazy Stupid Love so dumb and offensive?

That movie tells you that three types of women exist.  They are:

1. Women who cheat, for no reason (Julianne Moore)
2. Women who just pretend that they don't like vain, woman-hating skanks, but are in fact desperately hoping for one to come along so they can reform him (Emma Stone)
3. Women who are straight-up totally bonkers (Marisa Tomei)


The men, by contrast, are either well-meaning, harmless, put-upon husbands or self-confident, predatory (but apparently laudable) Lotharios.  Um, okay.  That's...progressive.  

For the whole movie, I kept hoping desperately that there would be some radical twist that made it less egregiously misogynist.  I don't know what that would have been, since we started off on the least correct foot, but I kept hanging on.  Maybe Emma Stone would figure out that breaking up with boring Josh Groban didn't mean she had to give up on her self-respect and she could be happily single or something.

It doesn't happen.  The women remain ciphers in Steve Carell's long-suffering, self-righteous life, and Ryan Gosling's sociopathy inexplicably becomes a non-issue.  Nobody gets any sort of comeuppance.  Also, the whole thing is profoundly unfunny.

Why does the United States have her political color scheme all cock-eyed?

Reds are lefties.  This is how it works everywhere else, on account of the whole communism thing.  The color reflects the bloodthirsty, revolutionary tendency of progressives.  Blues, by default, are the conservatives.  Boring, a little bit staid.

But, no, for some reason in this country we have red states and blue states and the red ones are the right-leaning ones.  Is this because of rednecks?  Or because the coastal states lean left (and the sea is blue)?

Whatever it is, it's stupid and an impediment to understanding.

Why are gentlemen wearing suits without ties?

(As usual, I use "gentleman" advisedly.)

Stop.  Suits need ties.  If you're not going to wear a tie, don't wear a suit.  Or wear an ascot.  Or a sweater vest, but only to football games.

It does not look charmingly relaxed.  It looks slovenly.

Why did Marvel have to do that horrible test run before they figured out how to make movies?

Allow me to remind you.  Starting in 2000, Marvel made: X-Men, X2 (apparently known in some places as Wolverine's Revenge, and about as enjoyable as that of Montezuma), X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, Hulk, and The Incredible Hulk.

These were mostly terrible.  X-Men and Spider-Man were no more than fine, and any goodwill they bred was certainly shunted off the table by their execrable sequels.  The less said about the Fantastic Four movies, the better.  And--amazingly--I did not even see the Hulk movies.  That is eleven movies, all falling on the spectrum between "mediocre" and "eye-gougingly horrible."  In less than a decade!  I mean, I guess we should be grateful that they didn't make a Sub-Mariner movie, although I don't really know how it could have been worse than Rise of the Silver Surfer, in which nothing happened.  At the very least there would have been pretty fish or something.


Is trial and error really a good way to go about film-making?  Because that is a lot of error.  And egregious error.  Even the effects people were phoning it in by the end of the X-Men debacle.


The way I see it, I am now owed eleven really good superhero movies from Marvel by 2020, if they want out of the George Lucas doghouse.  So far I count three and a half.  (X-Men: First Class, Iron Man, The Avengers, and half credit for Iron Man 2.  Thor was lousy and you know it.)  It's cool.  I can wait.


PS: This is the thousandth post (counting Barnes's and various admin).  Huzzah.


PPS: And that's not even counting the more minor Marvel heroes that time (and I) forgot.  See comments.  And I don't care who made the film; they're Marvel personalities.


PPPS: Oh, good lord, they're coming out with a Wolverine 2, in which he goes to Japan to train with a samurai or something.  I am not making this up.  Stop it, people.  That sounds atrocious.

Why do people need so much help finding books that aren't Fifty Shades of Grey?

I have seen a welter of blog posts that help you find out what to read this summer, if you don't want to read Fifty Shades of Grey.  Or I guess if you already have but you have lost so much cerebral capacity from the experience that the usual strategies do not avail you.  But somehow, being newly literate or something, you are still desperate for the sort of pleasure that reading gives.  I don't know.

Here's a hint: go to a library or bookstore, and pick up a book.  Any book.  Probably from the fiction section, but, again, whatever.  Does it say "E.L. James" on the cover?  No?  Then congratulations!  You have succeeded!

It's true; the publishing sector has been keeping a nefarious secret from you.  That secret is that, over the past several centuries, since the invention of the novel, they have published literally millions of the things.  Some of them are good!  Many of them you may like!  Very few of them will resemble your life in important particulars!  Escape will be achieved!

No, you won't like every novel you read.  That is no excuse to be a sheep about it.

Why are people proud of their social ineptitude?

They seem to wear it as a badge of intelligence, since genius types have been maladjusted forever.  Unfortunately for them, the causation does not work in this direction, and being a jerk does not make you brilliant.  But you know these people--they are so wrapped up in whatever it is they do that they cannot, for the life of them, be bothered to interact normally.

Most of us have a hint of this: we would rather be with people we know we like than otherwise.  That makes perfect sense.  I don't like people at all, as a rule.  But, in a crowd, I try to make conversation, take an interest, and be polite.

This is part of being a person--you have to make an effort.  And it's an effort for almost everyone.  Very few people are actually at ease with strangers; some just fake it more ably.  But social fictions are not useless merely because they are fictions.  In fact, they are the more important because they are not inherent.  They are that veneer of rational civilization that separates us from being cats (who are sociopathic loners).

And you are not that clever.  Andrew Wiles gets to be a spazz if he wants to, but you, my friend, do not.

Why did Edith Piaf record in English?

It's fine if Jo Stafford records "La Vie en Rose" in English.  It's not clear why Jo Stafford has to record "La Vie en Rose" at all, but if she records it, she may as well do it in English.

But Edith Piaf should not.  Her songs are immeasurably better in French, as the translations are invariably rather insipid, and she shouldn't pander.  Let's just compare, from the two versions of the great "Rien de Rien":

"No! No regrets.
No! I will have no regrets.
For the grief doesn't last, it is gone,
I've forgotten the past."

To:

"Non, rien de rien!
Non, je ne regrette rien!
C'est payé, balayé, oublié--
Je me fous du passé!"

"No regrets" has all the oomph of a sick kitten when compared to "Rien de rien."  It loses, among other things, the visceral emotion caught in the French rhotics.  It also loses the superb, rhyming ascending tricolon of payé - balayé - oublié, and the passion of Je me fous du passé, for which "I've forgotten the past" is a lifeless substitution.

I have regrets.

Why is Marius Pontmercy always miscast?

In movies, I mean.  The stage has more constraints, along the lines of "Can this guy sing?" and therefore gets about half a free pass.

The point of Marius is that he's absolutely gorgeous, completely unaware of it, and utterly ineffectual.  His only great passion is for Cosette; he loves his country only by default and out of despair.  And he has that weird thing about how he's secretly a baron.  Or something.  I'm going to get cards printed that say I'm a Viscountess.  I bet that's how titles work.

Anyway.  In 1998, when Liam Neeson was Valjean (which was brilliant, since Mr. Neeson exudes purity and gigantism), Hans Matheson was Marius.  Hans Matheson is not absolutely gorgeous.  There is something minor--but significant--wrong with his face.  I'm not sure what it is.  Also, he's kind of intense and has a hint of the crazy eyes, making him a decent Yuri Zhivago and a passable Thomas Cranmer.

Now, in 2012, when Hugh Jackman is apparently old enough to play Valjean (which means you're old too), Eddie Redmayne is Marius.  Now, he's attractive, if you like that sort of thing.  And by "that sort of thing" I mean "malnutrition."  And if Mr. Matheson has a hint of the crazy eyes, Mr. Redmayne has full-blown oculus demens.  He looks like a mad ascetic monk.  Plus, he's fair, which Marius isn't.

"Weird-looking madman" is not the same as "gorgeous dope."

Why is Alec Baldwin completely inescapable?

I don't like Alec Baldwin, and I never have, except for the blip of The Hunt for Red October, which might have been better without him.  (I'm not sure; Jack Ryan in Red October is kind of a bookish wuss.  Alec Baldwin doesn't strike me as very bookish, but you can't have everything.)  He was gross in Working Girl, he was stupid in Pearl Harbor, he was pointless in Notting Hill, and I literally do not remember him in Elizabethtown.  (Wow, has he made some terrible choices.)  And he's never been good-looking, even before he blew up like a zeppelin.  He's funny on 30 Rock, but not as funny as he thinks he is.  His Jack Donaghy public persona, therefore, leaves me somewhat cold.  


And he's everywhere.  His voice is in Lexus ads.  Not to be outdone, Capital One puts two of him on the screen at once!  Multiple times!  Being obnoxious and irritating, mostly.  And assuming that we all know and care about the Words With Friends kerfuffle, and think it's hilarious.  Which...one out of three isn't great.

Well, I could just stop watching television.  But I'm still not safe!  He comes on my classical NPR station to tell me about the New York Philharmonic.  Couldn't they have gotten someone actually classy?  Or a baboon?

Go away, Alec Baldwin.

Why did the Lupins name their kid Remus?

Why don't you just give the child a tattoo that says, "Please, werewolves, bite my son"?  If your surname is Lupin, I suggest steering clear of all wolf- and werewolf-related names.  No Romulus, no Beowulf, no Wolfgang, no Maugrim, no Oz, no Jacob, no none of that.

Or--I know!--he could take up recreational fence-jumping.  Or being bad at augury.

Maybe if he hadn't been so clearly doomed from the start, he wouldn't have had such a crappy death notice.*

* Seriously, this will get its own blog post.  Soon.

Why is the All-Star break at the worst time?

Wimbledon just ended, the Open Championship isn't till next week, Australia have lost their series to England, and now there's no baseball!

And today the Tour de France is even on a rest day.

I'm in sporting hell.

(No, the All-Star game doesn't count.  Not even a little bit.)

Why do women ruin films (part 10)?

Perhaps you have seen Moneyball.  And perhaps you hated it, because you hate baseball, or numbers, or America.  Possibly all three.  Perhaps you hate Brad Pitt's face (but I think I'm the only one, so I doubt it).

But what you should have hated was the awkward and terrible way in which they shoe-horned a "family" storyline into the narrative.  It didn't make sense, you didn't care, and it had nothing to do with the rest of the film, but there it was.

If one makes a film that consists primarily of people staring at screens, and talking in numbers and acronyms, it is not going to be a movie that the market-constructed "average woman" is going to want to see.  It will still not be a movie she wants to see if one throws a small female child at the wall and hopes it'll stick.  And it will make the original movie worse.

So don't do it.

Why is The Economist so navel-gazing?

First off, the Shard is an abomination, and it should not be your lead image if you want us to like London more. The first clue is that it is called the "Shard."  The second clue is that it looks like aliens decided to mine the rich veins of bad teeth found under London and dropped some equipment from space to do so. In fact, I hope it is merely scenery for an incredibly high-budget special episode of Doctor Who. The excrescence's only redeeming feature is that it is so far out of scale that one can tell that it's on purpose, though that is small consolation for bollixing up the entire Metropolis.

Second, we know that London is great.  We do not need a defensive and condescending special report to tell us so, especially from the last mouthpiece of Empire (however reasonable it generally is).  I'll wager that absolutely no one who reads The Economist is unaware of London's assets--and very few of them are ignorant of her drawbacks.  The ungrateful knuckle-draggers in the midlands or wherever at whom the whinging is directed are not among the readership.

This is gross, pointless, and partial journalism, if one can even call it journalism.  Get back to your surreal obituaries of Ray Bradbury, chaps.  (Although, seriously, what the hell was that?)

Why do people keep calling Moonrise Kingdom a "sleeper" hit?

It's Wes Anderson.  Every White Person between 18 and 40 is contractually obliged to see it, and the field is really even wider than that because it has Edward Norton in it, not just a Wilson or two.

Self-conscious Salingerian profundity?  Especially if nothing actually unpleasant happens, and it's shot, essentially, with Instagram?  The vintage wardrobes we wish we had?  We eat this stuff up like candy.

Why can't Mrs. Whitmore leave LA?

What the hell kind of interviews are they doing that necessitate her presence in an obvious global crisis?  Is she conducting the interviews for some sort of staff position?  Because that can probably wait.  Are they interviewing her about the aliens?  Because she knows jack, and holds no position that would make it reasonable for her to comment on them.

She does not have to wait until her helicopter will definitely crash, leading to heart-warming scenes with an exotic dancer and thence to a motherless childhood for her currently adorable daughter (thus cursing her to become Bland).

It is truly amazing, in a movie that had the best explosions of its age, plus Adam Baldwin, how much time they spent on ridiculous emotional manipulation.

Why is glassware such a pain to store?

The problem, of course, is that entertaining--on any scale--blows through glassware at an unbelievable rate.  Six person dinner parties require multiple dishwasher loads (cocktail hour, supper, digestifs, nightcaps, ill-advised raids on the Calvados at three in the morning...).

And then, as we all know, stemware is aggressively not stackable, except in the context of champagne fountains, so one requires extensive flat real estate for each separate glass.  Add glass's tendency to shatter, and the logistical nightmare expands rapidly.

I guess when we have finally transferred all our books onto our magical electronic thingies, we can use all those bookcases for glasses.  But then there's the dust issue.

The answer, as always, is an enormous house and an army of servants.

Why do goals scored against the Republic of Ireland count toward the Golden Boot?

It does not matter how pleased one is that Fernando Torres remembers at least sometimes where the net happens to be, or how cute he was with his daughter, or even how irrationally one might hate Italy, Ireland, or Mario Gomez.  Those goals were garbage goals, against garbage teams or in garbage time.  The assist was garbageous in the extreme.

This is a man who didn't even come on the pitch against Portugal.  And how--we practically had a sad-Fernando-Torres-on-the-bench-cam.  He's no Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.  He just has enough flashes of competence (and pinchbeck brilliance against a beaten Barça or ten-man Italy) to keep us from writing him off completely.  Putting two past the Republic, like a hat-trick against QPR, should not count.

Jeez, it's like no-hitting the Marlins Mariners.*

* This is not an observation original with me, but it's quite apt, so thanks, Tex!  And, wow, apparently my fingers auto-complete NL East teams once they get started.  Dumb.