The Invisible Counterpoint

Noah Anyone who's seen Aronofsky's previous film might be wondering what is up with this one, for it's about the inverse of "Black Swan." In "Black Swan," a parent's control over her child has to be breached in order for her to realize her potential. To facilitate this is another ballerina, who consistently prompts her to explore her rebellious side, to live a little. No snake in the garden is she, but someone with good intentions -- and who is in fact necessary to assist Natalie Portman's Nina in shoving her mother aside and embracing her own fate.  In "Noah," Noah is the parent determined to have his will hold over his children, and he is leveraged powerfully; impossibly powerfully -- by God. One of his boys -- Ham -- to some extent plays the equivalent of Natalie Portman's rebellious child Nina, in that he shows signs of wanting to step outside of his father's influence and discover the world for himself. But those he...

Her (Spike Jonze) "The film, with its dewy tone and gentle manners, plays like a feature-length kitten video, leaving viewers to coo at the cute humans who live like pets in a world-scale safe house." ( Richard Brody ) This statement is made by someone who clearly lives outside the safe house. I personally think the number of people out there like that, on the outside, are dwindling, and therefore imagine rather more people are relating to the film than he assumes are cooing. Brody lives in New York, and might assume that most people living in giant metropolises are still denizens of environments who go to kitten videos only as respite from the harsh city, but this may be more and more untrue. The reason is that the leverage cities need to be this way--and it does require leverage: the city as maybe not an easy but a possible sure way to cosmopolitan independence, is an acquisition, a height--may exist too shallowly right now so that in truth they're playing out now ...

When you see an article titled “The Day the Movies Died,” you can probably expect a boatload of negativity. That said, Mark Harris’ polemic in this month’s GQ on the state of Hollywood is pretty even-handed. After all, it blames the upcoming string of lame comic book movies and sequels on the one group you might not have expected: Us, the people who do most of the hand-wringing. “We can complain until we’re hoarse that Hollywood abandoned us by ceasing to make the kinds of movies we want to see, but it’s just as true that we abandoned Hollywood,” Harris writes. “Studios make movies for people who go to the movies, and the fact is, we don’t go anymore. […] Put simply, we’d rather stay home, and movies are made for people who’d rather go out.” The moral? If you like movies, start supporting the good ones and ignoring the bad ones. [ GQ ] (Christopher Rosen, “ Only You Can Save Movies, and 7 Other Stories You’ll Be Talking About Today,” Movieline, 18 Feb. 2011) Anyone who reads ...