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I woke up thinking about how the Left is also to blame for the rise of Trump. By practicing divisiveness, by condescending to huge swaths of the population, by assuming that values not shared (like Christianity) are values born of ignorance, we’ve abandoned the poorer people of this country–what sixties people used to call “the masses” with a straight face. The Thumb of Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer swears he doesn’t “just walk around reading books in hopes of finding new material.” Given the director’s screenwriting chops (“Run Lola Run,” “3”), it seems a legitimate claim, and yet he does possess a knack for literary adaptations. In his takes on everything from David Mitchell’s millennium-spawning meta-novel “Cloud Atlas” to Patrick Süskind’s period-film explosion “Perfume,” Tykwer has managed to adapt what has largely been considered unfit for screen. (No less than Stanley Kubrick declared “Perfume” unadaptable.) Most recently he has tackled A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers’s post-financial crisis novel about an American businessman adrift in a Mideast desert. As fish-out-of-water as tales ever go, it’s a surprisingly pleasurable effort that suggests Tykwer may be cinema’s new adaptation king – though he still lurks relatively under the radar. Continue Reading →
Mary Quite Contrary
I am in an existentialist funk. I almost modified that to “a bit of an existentialist funk” but you’re either in an existentialist funk or you’re not. I am in one.
Part of this stems from an overarching, extremely icky feeling that more things are ending than beginning. In fact, that’s all of it, though that feeling has many, many subsets. One of those subsets concerns this very blog. I try not to get too meta here, and in general am a big believer that if you can’t say anything nice, keeping mum is best. But lately that’s meant that I’m always keeping mum so I’m going to write through my ennui if only as a (wan) way to wave hello. Perhaps as a plus I’ll iron something out. Continue Reading →