1. Denzel2. Clooney
Simply put, that's how I see it at the top. The two movie stars that I will pay money to see, no matter what. The two movie stars that when we're old and gray, we'll still talk about, tell our grand-kids about. Like Grant, Bogart, Newman, Beatty, Redford. Big stars. Not Hanks. Not Cruise. Not Crowe. That's just how I see it, folks.
In case you care, other movie stars I would pay money to see: Depp. Clive Owen. Christian Bale. Owen Wilson, when he's melancholy. Walken, when he's serious. De Niro, when he's not being a sap. That's it, I think.
I think we should cancel the Democratic and Republican primaries and allow the electorate to pick two from among Denzel, Clooney, Oprah, and Letterman for who gets to run the country for the next eight years. I'm pretty sure the promise of a signed photograph would persuade even the most perverse of dictators and terrorist leaders to their senses. It's worth a shot.
After a late lunch at Mandoo, a Korean mandoo joint on 32nd Street (good, not great), ED and I caught an early evening showing of Michael Clayton. Numerous glowing reviews had got me excited, notably David Denby's in the New Yorker:
By the time Michael Clayton started, I didn't know what to expect. Thankfully, the crappy previews were a function of seeing the movie in midtown, not a prelude to the quality of the film. Michael Clayton was good, quite good, if a little too tidy. Clooney's graceful bemusement as he eases through the world, as a winner or a loser, is a charming thing to watch. Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton's performances added sufficiently rich texture to Clooney's more narrowly-played protagonist, even if their respective pathos were just a little exaggerated. And I thought director Tony Gilroy's navigation of posh midtown law offices, hotel conference lobbies, Mercedes interiors, and corporate meeting rooms were effective in conveying a sinister menace through their sleek, perfectly appointed anonymity. And, of course, the movie's framing scene, with Clooney on a quiet hill in the chill light of a breaking dawn, was both beautiful and used to great effect.
---
When I got off the Q train yesterday morning, I dog-eared John LeCarre's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold on page 185. For no good reason, I had until now avoided reading any LeCarre, and had not read a page-turner in probably a few years. My mistake.
The thought had occurred to me to not get off the train, and keep riding uptown for another few stops. Or simply sit down in Starbuck's before going into the office. That would give me time to finish. But I didn't, and when I got back into the subway at Canal St. in the evening, I was livid to find that I had left the novel on my desk. One more day of suspense had to pass.
TSWCIFTC is great. It's hard and bleak, like a Cold War spy should be. It reflects the gray pallor cast over London and Berlin by the constant threat of double-cross and deceit. It twists and turns, turns back and twists again. Violence is taken for granted, yet there is both a professionalism and professional respect among the men who do the dirty work in the shadows of our fumbling diplomacy. The novel reads fast and with an impending sense of consequence. To the end, it's suspenseful and fun.
I have one quibble, and I will extend it back to Michael Clayton (corporate dirty work is our modern-day equivalent of Cold War espionage, no? Where we can recognize our enemies in ourselves, and aren't quite sure whose side we're on?) and perhaps extend it on to our dramatization of the professions of suspense, in general. My concern, of course, is the habit of adding a moralizing coda to each story, too often broadly wrought, as if to bring along the slower among our audience by saying "In addition to being suspenseful and cool, I am showing you how the world is fucked up, power corrupts, and ambition corrodes our sense of decency." A necessary point, always well illustrated throughout the substance of the book, but our auteurs' apparent concern that some among us might miss the point. From TSWCIFTC:
In case you care, other movie stars I would pay money to see: Depp. Clive Owen. Christian Bale. Owen Wilson, when he's melancholy. Walken, when he's serious. De Niro, when he's not being a sap. That's it, I think.
I think we should cancel the Democratic and Republican primaries and allow the electorate to pick two from among Denzel, Clooney, Oprah, and Letterman for who gets to run the country for the next eight years. I'm pretty sure the promise of a signed photograph would persuade even the most perverse of dictators and terrorist leaders to their senses. It's worth a shot.
After a late lunch at Mandoo, a Korean mandoo joint on 32nd Street (good, not great), ED and I caught an early evening showing of Michael Clayton. Numerous glowing reviews had got me excited, notably David Denby's in the New Yorker:In the “Ocean’s” franchise and earlier movies, Clooney played guys who were on top of everything. He’s very intelligent, and it’s easy enough for him to point his chin, glare, and tell people off. But in “Syriana” and now in “Michael Clayton” he has done something more interesting: he’s playing clever guys who lack the killer instinct, who have some strain of personal honor that holds them back from simply winning.You couldn't sucker me in to a movie any more easily. Coming in with these high hopes, it was with a curious combination of relief and dread that I felt them deflated by the steady onslaught of absolute crap in the previews. ED has good taste -- you can tell by the faces she makes at crappy previews. I wondered if I was in the wrong theater.
By the time Michael Clayton started, I didn't know what to expect. Thankfully, the crappy previews were a function of seeing the movie in midtown, not a prelude to the quality of the film. Michael Clayton was good, quite good, if a little too tidy. Clooney's graceful bemusement as he eases through the world, as a winner or a loser, is a charming thing to watch. Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton's performances added sufficiently rich texture to Clooney's more narrowly-played protagonist, even if their respective pathos were just a little exaggerated. And I thought director Tony Gilroy's navigation of posh midtown law offices, hotel conference lobbies, Mercedes interiors, and corporate meeting rooms were effective in conveying a sinister menace through their sleek, perfectly appointed anonymity. And, of course, the movie's framing scene, with Clooney on a quiet hill in the chill light of a breaking dawn, was both beautiful and used to great effect.
---
When I got off the Q train yesterday morning, I dog-eared John LeCarre's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold on page 185. For no good reason, I had until now avoided reading any LeCarre, and had not read a page-turner in probably a few years. My mistake.
The thought had occurred to me to not get off the train, and keep riding uptown for another few stops. Or simply sit down in Starbuck's before going into the office. That would give me time to finish. But I didn't, and when I got back into the subway at Canal St. in the evening, I was livid to find that I had left the novel on my desk. One more day of suspense had to pass.
TSWCIFTC is great. It's hard and bleak, like a Cold War spy should be. It reflects the gray pallor cast over London and Berlin by the constant threat of double-cross and deceit. It twists and turns, turns back and twists again. Violence is taken for granted, yet there is both a professionalism and professional respect among the men who do the dirty work in the shadows of our fumbling diplomacy. The novel reads fast and with an impending sense of consequence. To the end, it's suspenseful and fun.
I have one quibble, and I will extend it back to Michael Clayton (corporate dirty work is our modern-day equivalent of Cold War espionage, no? Where we can recognize our enemies in ourselves, and aren't quite sure whose side we're on?) and perhaps extend it on to our dramatization of the professions of suspense, in general. My concern, of course, is the habit of adding a moralizing coda to each story, too often broadly wrought, as if to bring along the slower among our audience by saying "In addition to being suspenseful and cool, I am showing you how the world is fucked up, power corrupts, and ambition corrodes our sense of decency." A necessary point, always well illustrated throughout the substance of the book, but our auteurs' apparent concern that some among us might miss the point. From TSWCIFTC:
"Christ Almighty!" Leamas cried. "What else have men done since the world began? I don't believe in anything, don't you see - not even destruction or anarchy. I'm sick, sick of killing but I don't see what else they can do. They don't proselytise; they don't stand in pulpits or on party platforms and tell us to fight for Peace or God or whatever it is. They're the poor sods who try to keep the preachers from blowing each other sky high."Don't we get this, through the betrayal of our protagonists? Through the abdication of justice finely meted, and the almost-always sacrifice of some lamb? In fact, don't those who who act out not just ambivalence, but actual acts of good or revelation generally crushed by the wheels of the machine, that is greater to them, and whose workings, only at the end, are revealed neatly to us?
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