Conversation over "You've Got Mail" at the New Yorker Movie Facebook Club

Lisa Salazar

Just rewatched You've Got Mail with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, a,1998 film based on the 1940 film, The Shop Around the Corner.

It stood up to the test of time, despite the obvious advances in technology (for one, I am writing this on Facebook via my Kindle, a technology which has nearly eclipsed the big box bookstores).

I was enthralled by a few things: the Ephron sisters' script that repeatedly referenced and reflected Pride & Prejudice; the very solid Godfather references; and the Manhattan-ness of it all.

And what a cast! Dave Chappelle as the sidekick (!), the erstwhile Greg Kinnear and inimitable Gene Stapleton. And lest I forget, a waspish Parker Posey.

I can definitely see another remake of this story within the next 60 years.

Anyone care to predict the remake of what they dare to predict is a modern classic?

Patrick McEvoy-Halston I love it. It's ebullient froth, life and charm. I remember one critic said that after reading Updike he is reminded as to why he took upon himself all the bother of learning to read--here folks, is the pleasure and joy. Also, it does have an interesting Freudian theme, even if registered unconsciously. The "father" steps in to enforce separation from a "mother" whose influence (only hesitatingly overtly acknowledged) is smothering a child's full development. The father is "Fox Books," of course, and the "mother" is the little shop, which speaks to her mother's accomplishments rather than her own. Done of course with great love of the departing mother, and exaggerated targeting of the rescuing father. It may be the film is only incidentally coincidental with real-life changes to the book industry, and really mostly reflects some known truth about Nora Ephron's early life. (Playing now at Joe's Apartment / 152 Riverside Drive, Between 87th and 88th Streets).

Lisa Salazar Love your take on the film; is the film you are referring to something else or YGM?

Patrick McEvoy-Halston Lisa Salazar She was a treasure.

Laura-Jean Kelly Dislike this film..something to do w the deceipt at the end and her almost subservant stance to him. He saves her and she's so femininely grateful. Uhh.
I've seen it 3 times now cuz i love the actors and always trying to like it but it still smacks of something i cant quite describe in words.

Love parker posey too.
She loves me and little shop around the corner are great.

Patrick McEvoy-Halston Laura-Jean Kelly Freudian subtext (rescuing father, smothering mother), and most feminists don't really do a lot of Freud right now. The film could have been done where he doesn't actually deceive her, and where she uses him and the destruction he incurs to get out of a life-path that was determined for her, but I don't Ephron was prepared to be overt. Still, in effect it doesn't pretend that finding oneself co-opted into a life that fit some other person superbly but which you, despite its many pro-offered comforts, are uncertain about, is all for the best. The fight in that, the righteous fight in that, is feminist, in my judgment. Posey IS great in that film. So too the rest of the supporting cast. Love them all.

Laura-Jean Kelly Just that to like this film and believe that the original beguiled is misogynist which i dont believe but i think Lisa Salazar you did is an example of what s wrong with the depiction of women in modern times in some of these newer hollywood movies and why we have the name chick flicks. Oh well.

Lisa Salazar Laura-Jean Kelly, I get you. But at the same time the look on her face when she "meets" him is just priceless. She wants it to be him, she's shocked, she's betrayed, she's in love. It is not a beautiful face but it's real. How did she pack that all in one look? Heartbreaking.

Laura-Jean Kelly Yah. Meg Ryan highly underrated.

Patrick McEvoy-Halston Lisa Salazar YGM

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump

Too late -- WE SAW your boobs

I think we're mostly familiar with ceremonies where we do anointing. Certainly, if we can imagine a context where humiliation would prove most devastating it'd probably be at a ceremony where someone thought themselves due an honor -- "Carrie," "Good Fellas." "We labored long to adore you, only so to prime your hope, your exposure … and then rather than a ladder up we descended the slops, and hoped, being smitten, you'd judged yourself worthless protoplasm -- a nothing, for letting yourselves hope you might actually be something -- due to be chuted into Hades or Hell." Ostensibly, nothing of the sort occurred during Oscars 2013, where the host, Seth Macfarlane, did a number featuring all the gorgeous Oscar-winning actresses in attendance who sometime in their careers went topless, and pointed this out to them. And it didn't -- not quite. Macarlane would claim that all obscenity would be directed back at him, for being the geek so pathe

The Invisible Counterpoint

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