Books
I finished
In Love, by Alfred Hayes this afternoon.
I wonder if the book, between the proposition that surely inspired
Indecent Proposal and the offer that the unnamed female protagonist makes to the unnamed male narrator, was scandalous at the time. The narrative device reminds me of
How I Met Your Mother. The story reminds me of
Mad Men. The writing reminds me of stream of consciousness writers like Kerouac or Faulkner, only more colorful and lively. Most of all, the book reminded me of the blues and the traps that we make for our own demises. Meandering, evocative, and incredibly quotable,
In Love has possibly one of the best first sentences I've read in a long time:
Here I am the man in the hotel bar said to the pretty girl, almost forty, with a small reputation, some money in the bank, a convenient address a telephone number easily available, this look on my face you think peculiar to me, my hand here on this table real enough all of me real enough if one doesn't look too closely.
This exchange between the two characters captures why I've come to love this book (which is only fitting, given how nihilistic the narrator is, particularly about love):
It’s a nice view, I said.
Yes.
Know what?
She turned slightly.
What?
I love view, I said.
Movies
I also watched
Zero Effect last night, which seemed appropriate given the start of the new Sherlock series on PBS on Sunday. Kim Dickens makes a great Irene Adler; I've enjoyed her in
Deadwood,
Friday Night Lights, and
Treme, and it will be interesting to see her in the upcoming
Gone Girl film.
Besides the Bill Pullman/Bill Paxton confusion, Bill Pullman's probably best known for his tendency to substitute squinting as acting confused or focused. But his oeuvre is iconoclastic; I can't think of many actors who can headline a summer blockbuster like
Independence Day while also starring in a David Lynch film. I can't think of anyone who could balance the many parts of Daryl Zero better than Pullman; maybe someone could have sold the romance with Dickens's character better, but that actor might not have been able to be as abrasive with Ben Stiller's Steve Arlo as Pullman. He brings a lot of life to the movie, and the movie is fairly flat in the scenes that don't feature him.
Update
Inspired by a recent viewing of
American Hustle, I watched
Silver Linings Playbook last night. Its handling of mental illness rang true in some of the early scenes, but it became more pat over time as it became more entwined in the romance between Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany and Bradley Cooper's Pat. What could be attributed to the redemptive power of their romance could be attributed to the fact that Pat started taking his prescribed medications.
That said, Bradley Cooper's performances in
Limitless,
American Hustle and
Silver Linings Playbook have convinced me to re-evaluate my opinion of his skills as an actor. I wasn't impressed when he starred in those group hang Love Actually wannabe romantic comedies like
He's Just Not That Into You,
New York, I Love You, and
Valentine's Day, but that might be taint by association with awful films.
Jennifer Lawrence's performance was incredible. I thought she played her character too young in
American Hustle, but her character in Silver Linings Playbook was all sharp angles and elbows, appropriate for the character.
I appreciate that the film didn't condemn, didn't judge. It had ample opportunities, from the attempts by Chris Tucker's Danny to escape from the psychiatric hospital to how dependent and mentally ill Robert DeNiro's Pat Sr. is to how Jacki Weaver's Dolores enables Pat Sr. and Pat. But the film is big-hearted enough to accept these characters for what they are, never judging, finding joys in their little triumphs.
- Ryu Murakami (144)
