Rolling Stone - Issue 1110 (August 5, 2010)

Cover – Leonardo DiCaprio – “Hanging with Leo”

The cover article about Leonardo DiCaprio, by Brian Hyatt, was well put together without necessarily breaking any new ground as journalism. Hyatt manages to outline the daily life of the actor – far from typical or routine – without gushing about his celebrity status. The piece also includes a little background information about DiCaprio’s career, as well as discussing what keeps him relevant in the film industry (mainly, being Martin Scorsese’s new golden boy).

Considering the great pieces they’ve put out so far, I was very disappointed in this issue’s “National Affairs” article. Tim Dickinson’s coverage of the Obama administration’s failure to pass an effective climate control bill felt very forced and hollow, lacking any meaningful detail. It almost read like a piece that had been written earlier, with a few names and dates filled in to fit the occasion.

This is especially evident compared to Jeff Goodell’s article “The Poisoning,” which is much better journalism. Goodell’s article explains how BP, in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, chose the cheapest method of breaking up the oil – chemical dispersants. This choice was made regardless of the fact that the dispersants do not actually clean up the oil, but merely break it into separate chemicals which are just as dangerous to the ocean’s ecosystems as the oil itself. The article reveals that although the oil may be disappearing from view, the effects of the oil will be long-term and devastating.

Other articles (this was an especially feature-rich issue, for some reason) included a nice piece on M.I.A.’s career and a background piece on the personal histories of the “people” on MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” (I put “people” in quotations because it was surprising to see how many of them are college educated – one with a degree in business marketing – which makes me suspicious about how much of their personalities are really personas.)

The Reviews section was short and weak, with the new Arcade Fire album “The Suburbs” getting one of the best reviews while Bret Michaels’s “Custom Built” got one of the worst.

Poor People

The heart of William T. Vollmann’s 2007 book on world-wide poverty is a simple question: “Why are you poor?” Yet the simplicity of most of the answers that he received from impoverished people throughout the world allowed him to write this reflection on the nature of poverty. At times powerful and depressing, this book exposes life under the poverty line all over the world and the reality of what it means to live, as Adam Smith declared, not being able to “afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.”

Vollmann neatly breaks apart this longer philosophical work into several categories into which all of the chapters fit (with each chapter being, essentially, an individual essay or reflection), and so that is how I will break apart my discussion of his work.

In the first section, “Self-Defintions,” Vollmann provides us first with definitions which provide us the ability to discuss poverty, given that poverty itself exists as a somewhat abstract (if, at the same time, completely tangible) idea within the complex social-structure that is humanity. From here, he begins to paint us several portraits of poverty all over the world, from the drunk Sunee in Thailand to two beggar women in Russia (including their clearly disabled families) to two Japanese men who live under a bridge in Kyoto. These portraits are sometimes touching, sometimes disturbing, always interesting. From these sketches, Vollmann clearly reveals that poverty is not the same everywhere for everyone, including how the people came to poverty and even if the people consider themselves poor.

From here, Vollmann moves into his second section, “Phenomena,” in which he describes aspects of poverty evident at different levels in all poor people. These phenomena are invisibility, deformity, unwantedness, dependence, accident-prone-ness, pain, numbness, and estrangement. The most personally striking section is his explanation of how impoverished people everywhere suffer from invisibility, even though their suffering is evident. (Personally, it reminds me of the often deep poverty in which some of my students in Lynwood existed, though my ignorance often blinded me into denial of their circumstances.) Think about it – aren’t there parts of your own town, the poor part of town, that you won’t go? Through not driving through “skid row,” you have rendered those who live there invisible.

The third section, “Choices,” reveals choices which are not truly choices that the truly impoverished must live through in the attempt to escape poverty. He discusses the economic “amoritization” of labor to pay for freedom from poor circumstances, most often through prostitution, but sometimes through darker-than-mafia groups arranging marriages for visas at a massive human cost. Some, such as those in an oil town in Kazahkhstan sacrifice the poisoning of their health for new, nicer roads brought in by the American oil money.

Of course, Vollmann also touches on the “Hopes” that keep those who are in poverty use to keep surviving despite all of the odds being stacked against them. This hope of removal from poverty is most evident in the person of Gary, who gambles nightly on a lottery drawing that he knows is rigged. This hope also exists in the poor community which cleans its own toilet (really, a bowl) without any set outline of responsibility or consequences.

In the last section, “Placeholders,” Vollmann discusses his own personal feelings and experiences with poverty in proximity to his home. Most interesting, to me, was how he compassionately he interacts with the poor who vandalize his property, while, counter intuitively, he fears for the safety of himself and his property. Ultimately, Vollmann leaves us with no single answer or solution, aside from a reference to the pathetic United Nations call for “more aid, better directed.”

Aside from the hollow feeling left by the lack of any sort of positive resolution (and what did I really expect from a book titled “Poor People”), this book is fantastic. It effectively examines and reflects upon poverty through several lenses – statistics, science and psychology, personal experiences, and the visual. The use of photographs of most of those interviewed (except those who feared reprisal from authorities) makes every scene more vivid and powerful. Yet, at no point do Vollmann’s words request guilt or acceptance of blame from the reader. Instead, the book calls the reader to search his or her own soul and to examine his or her own thoughts and feelings about poverty. And, as such a thought provoking book, it is one of the best pieces of non-fiction I’ve ever read.

The Kids Are All Right

Nic and Jules (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore, respectively) are a happy lesbian couple with two beautiful children, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Without telling their moms, the children reach out to their sperm-donor father Paul (Mark Ruffalo). But, as Paul becomes more involved in their lives, the nuclear family begins to fall apart. Paul unwittingly sets each family member against each other, exposing holes in the family’s framework. With Joni about to move away from home for college, time winds down for the family to work out their problems and come to terms with who they are as individuals as well as with their place within the family.

To begin, all of the actors in this movie were fantastic. But Mark Ruffalo deserves a special mention because his character was so well fleshed out and believable. Ruffalo made us believe that Paul got caught up in his own ego, trying to be the father that he would never actually be. Yet, very subtly, Ruffalo had set us up to realize that Paul lived merely for the moment, with no real thought. And when things fall apart for him by the end, he effectively evokes pity without sympathy – especially with a well-timed quaver in his voice and eyes pleading for help.

This film impressed me because it did not use the lesbian relationship – so central to the story – to overpower the fact that it is ultimately about the meaning of family. The filmmakers could have used that very relevant feature of the story for some heavy-handed shock-and-awe effects. Instead, they chose to simply treat it like any other marriage – dropping the viewers into the middle of it without much exposition, which I believed helped the film overall. The viewers weren’t given an opportunity to develop any opposition to the nature of Jules and Nic’s relationship. Rather, most (though, admittedly, not all) of the strain in their marriage could have been taken out of a heterosexual marriage counseling session, and so the homosexual nature of their marriage was merely an aside or footnote, not the text of the story.

I must say that I loved this movie until the last five minutes or so. In fact, if I put this movie together, I would have ended it with the sequence of the family in the car, with each member looking briefly at the others and then out the window. Instead, the movie ends with a scene that reinforces the theme without adding to it, with one character almost directly stating the moral of the story. I can’t stand it when endings like this are so obviously tacked on to pander to those viewers who can’t wrap their heads around where the characters might be going – those who lack to ability to make informed inferences about what the characters will do beyond the ending based on the actions and dialogue of the characters up to that point. It’s almost as if these people – whoever they are – never grew beyond the fairy tale in which they have to be told that everyone lives “happily ever after.” I personally would have preferred an ending with a little ambiguity because it would have stimulated more discussion. The way it ended, nothing was left unanswered leaving no room for thinking.

Directed by: Lisa Cholodenko

Written by: Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg

The Believer - Seventy-First Issue: Odradek (May 2010)

I’ve got a bit of catching up to do on “The Believer,” both in terms of “reading of” the magazine and “writing about” the magazine. So, let’s get down to brass tacks.

Highlights included:

Stephen Phelan’s “Ninjas I Have Known” discusses how, exactly, one might go about becoming a ninja. Phelan discusses this process despite openly comparing ninjas in Japan to Robin Hood of England – more folk myth than true story. Yet, because there is such a demand for ninja paraphernalia, a rich fake-cultural market for ninjas exists.

“A Glimpse of the Unplumbed Depths” discusses Annie Julia Wyman’s interest in an anachronistic book of literary theory. Perhaps the most charming article in the issue, Wyman’s writing is witty enough to stay light while at the same time discussing complex issues of the depths of knowledge and the potential to ever know all there is to know about a specific subject.

The Believer interview with Daniel Clowes – underground comics legend and creator of “Ghost World” – was thoroughly enjoyable. I was surprised (though I probably shouldn’t have been) at how artistically and intellectually he was able to discuss the comics industry.

Weak points included:

Lev Grossman’s “The Death of a Civil Servant” discusses how Leonard Woolf (eventual husband of modernism pioneer Virginia Woolf) met up in Ceylon with another British man who wrote early fantasy fiction. The article would have been good, despite its massive length, if it didn’t feel so darned long.

In “A Sunburst Above a Receding Road: How I Ruined Lolita for Myself,” Namwali Serpell parallels her repeated readings of the book with the different phases of her love life. Although well-written, the main idea behind it – interpretations of a book changing with life experiences – isn’t terribly original, and so the whole thing rang just a bit hollow by the end.

Other notes:

I was happy that Nick Hornby returned to his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column, but the column itself did not totally live up to my expectations.

Maureen Howard’s conversation with Joanna Scott was completely incomprehensible to me. I literally have no context for either author or the cultural capital to know half of what they were talking about.

The Endless Summer

Despite living in Southern California, surrounded by the surfer dude culture, I’d never managed to see this 1966 documentary until now. The film traces the story of two surfers – Mike Hynson and Robert August – as they chase the summer season around the world searching for the best waves. They start in Hawaii and California, where we the viewers are given a brief tutorial on the techniques and jargon of surfing, until the oceans start getting too cold. They travel off to the eastern coast of Africa, where they introduce surfing to the “natives” (characterized in 1966 in ways that would not be PC now). Eventually they make their way down to South Africa, riding waves on pristine secluded beaches that may never have been surfed before. They are sorely disappointed to find poor surf in Australia and New Zealand, only to surf in Tahiti where they were told the reefs prevented any true waves. Eventually, they make their way back to Hawaii, having seen the world through the lens of surf.

What I love most about this movie is the fact that, behind the haze of the surf culture, it is a true adventure story. The two surfers, although their motivation may have been superficial, take off on a quest of epic proportions. And just like any other odyssey, they face adversity in different forms along their way – from prohibitive gas prices to pushy locals to shark and knife-like coral – only to eventually return home. Although “The Endless Summer” may have lacked the deep mythology of a great quest story, the archetype is the same and strikes at the heart of any young person – the desire to leave home, see the strange and foreign places, face and overcome obstacles and danger, and to return home stronger.

Of course, because the protagonists are obviously overgrown adolescent American men in their heyday of the 1960s, they barely speak or seem capable of doing anything well except surfing. Credit for keeping this film interesting, then, must be given to the film make Bruce Brown who provided the frame for the story and the narration to add structure. Although at times the narration seems a bit corny, and clearly any non-surfing scenes are staged (sometimes with poorly made props added in), it is the narrator who provides simple, comprehensible context for these men riding the waves.

The director’s greatest success may have been his ability to capture the awe-inspiring beauty of the water. Depending on the mood of the scene, the director managed to capture the ocean itself displaying different moods, from the serenity of the isolation at Cape St. Francis in South Africa to the enraged wrath of The Wedge in Newport Beach, California. Despite what must have been relatively primitive film technology (although I wasn’t a film major, so don’t quote me on that), the director managed to clearly and steadily capture the agility of the surfers aplomb.

In the end, all I can say is: a classic!

Written and Directed by Bruce Brown

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Tagline: "No Goats, No Glory."

Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a small-town journalist desperately trying to impress his estranged wife, travels to the Middle East to cover the Iraq War. On his way, he runs into Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who reveals that he's a psychic soldier on a secret mission. Turns out, as Cassady explains, that in the 1980s the Army trained a whole unit - the New Earth Army - to use new age strategies to fight the wars of the future, led by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). But, alas, a power struggle ensues with one trooper, Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), fracturing the group. Using his psychic mind and intuition, Cassady leads himself and Wilton to a secret base in the middle of the Iraqi desert. Apparently, after the New Earth Army was dismantled, Hooper founded a Blackwater-style group and is making major money launching psychic warfare. Ultimately, Cassady and Django decide to sabotage Hooper's operation by spiking all the food with LSD and then they go riding off into the sunset, never to be seen again and leaving Wilton to try to report the strange tale.

This movie is good. Not great, but good. But, if it isn't already evident, the movie is hard to explain in conventional terms as well. It isn't quite fiction, but it isn't quite non-fiction either. (The opening title states "More of this is true than you would believe.") For a movie that seems to drag on at points, it is surprisingly short.

The hazy gray middle area that this movie occupies is ultimately what held it back. Cassady is so strange, crazy, and off-the-wall that I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to laugh at his absurdist ideas or to pity him for his disconnection from reality. At times the movie is artistic journalism, self-discovery journey, road trip, social commentary, and comedy. None of these are necessarily exclusive from one another, but too many of them packed into just shy of 90 minutes pulled my mind around too much. There were even just a few too many big-name actors thrown into such a short script. (And, I'm not complaining, but it seems like Jeff Bridges can now only play "the washed-up ________ trying to redeem himself." Insert "hippie" for this movie, "country singer" for "Crazy Heart," and, probably, video game programmer for the new "Tron.")

Despite my final confusion, I can easily say that I enjoyed watching the movie. All of the leads - Clooney, McGregor, Bridges, Spacey - were fantastic, dynamic characters. The rich colors of the sets and scenes gave a sense of being just on the edge of reality, without falling away to fantasy. The best comparison I can think of is that this movie is like a grilled hamburger - good on its own, but a few more spices could have made it much better.

Directed by: Grant Heslov

Written by: Peter Straughan (screenplay) and Jon Ronson (book)

Men at Work

The Craft of Baseball

In “Men at Work,” George Will, the famous newspaper columnist and political commentator (now a weekly guest on ABC’s “This Week”), has written perhaps the most analytical book on the subject of baseball. No base goes untouched – if you don’t mind the pun. He discusses the history of the sport, both in terms of the rules and equipment as well as the business; the physical beauty and the laws of physics which govern the game; players with great careers and players who never met potential. Although his research is as exhaustive as a PhD dissertation, with as much reasoning and explanation as a Supreme Court decision, Will focuses particularly on four contemporary (for 1988-1989, during the writing process).

The book begins with Will’s lens focused on then-Oakland Atheletics manager Tony LaRussa (now with the St. Louis Cardinals). Through LaRussa, Will schools the readers on the finer points of managing a baseball team – from creating a line-up to setting up a hit-and-run to plotting different types of double-steals, including how to defend them if the opposition tries one. In accordance with the title, the book reveals all of the actual work that goes into managing a game, done mostly by scouts and bench coaches, which include pitching charts and batting charts and team tendencies for stealing and other plays. The most interesting section involved signs, how to steal signs, and how to avoid having signs stolen. For example, the book reveals that sometimes LaRussa’s hand motions are meaningless while something subtle another coach is doing is truly revealing the sign. Other times, a sign might even be given prior to the situation even arising so that the batter or runner already knows what to do while the coach appears to give no sign at all.

The second major section, discussing pitchers, uses Orel Hershiser, at the peak of his career, as the case-study. Hershiser enlightens us to how a pitcher thinks before and during a game. Will argues that nearly every major rule change has been to the detriment of pitchers in order to enhance offense. So, whenever batting averages start to sag, the game is adjusted to keep everything balanced and equal – even to the point of moving the pitcher’s mound back (from forty-five feet to its current sixty feet, six inches). What Hershiser shows, though, is the resiliency of pitchers, who simply adapt themselves to try to outsmart the hitters.

The third section looks at Tony Gwynn – the last batter to (almost) hit .400 – to provide insight into how great hitters approach the plate. Although Gwynn is often credited with a preternatural hand-eye coordination, Will shows us that that eye was trained through hundreds of daily batting practice swings – both before and after games. His approach to hitting - power to the gaps, looking to drive pitches away and adjust for contact on the inside – made him a nearly perfect hitter. His strive for perfection and constant practice, as well as his willingness to examine his imperfections and make adjustments, made him the best all-around hitter in the past three decades and the perfect person to dissect for Will’s book.

The last, and markedly weakest section, discusses defense with Cal Ripken Jr. as the case study. Part of the reason this section is so weak, as Will admits and openly discusses, is the inability to make comparisons of defensive ability using concrete statistics. Yet, Will argues – and correctly – that defense is a crucial part of the game and that it is easy to observe how great defense can help a team win and poor defense can lead to the opposition scoring runs. Ripken’s insights, although interesting, are simplistic at best and focus more on the cat-and-mouse of offensive strategies against defense and pitching which, in some cases, giving well-timed misinformation to a runner in order to gain a defensive advantage later.

“Men at Work” is possibly the best book about baseball ever written. It is certainly the best that I have ever read, and I’ve read most of ‘em. Will effectively mixes anecdotes and stories with statistics (and statistical anomalies), topping that off with great philosophical and analytical discussions of the game, how it is played, and its meaning to us as Americans (not to mention he has a sharp, dry wit keenly used). My biggest complain is that many of the pages are physically imposing with long, unbroken blocks of paragraph, which is more a condemnation of my own laziness as a reader than his ability as a writer, but which also means that the book takes a long time to read. Still, I absolutely enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to any baseball fanatic. I would not recommend it as a jumping-on point for someone who has never seen or played the great American pastime, but, if that’s the case, it may be too late for you already and your soul may already be lost to the abyss of modern entertainment.

Atonement

Tagline: “You can only imagine the truth.”

Director Joe Wright’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel “Atonement” tells version of the fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” set in World War II England.

In the first act, Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) has a crush on the one of her family’s servants Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), but her image of him is ruined when she reads an inappropriate note he had written to her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightly) and when she stumbles upon the two in a private moment of passion. When another family member is sexually assaulted, Briony lies and says that she saw Robbie doing it, using the raunchy note as evidence.

In the second act, taking place a few years later in the midst of World War II, Bobby has volunteered to join the British army in exchange for his freedom. Cecilia, realizing her sister’s lie, renews their affair and they exchange letters and passionate visits. Of course, the irony (in case you haven’t caught it) is that he has put his life in danger to earn freedom from a crime he didn’t commit. The two carry on a passionate affair, always with the promise of returning to England together.

The third act involves Brioney (now played by Romola Garai) coming to terms with the effects of her lie. She volunteers as a nurse, only to realize (in a very graphic moment) the power of love compared to the brutalities of war. Briony tracks down her sister, only to have to confront both Cecilia and Robbie, home on leave, together. Although it is too late to change much, Briony agrees to write a letter to the court explaining that she had lied as a child. She leaves, ashamed, giving the lovers a moment of privacy before he needs to report to the front lines.

The film has a coda, though, set in contemporary times. Briony is now an old woman (played by Vanessa Redgrave), and reveals that her latest novel, “Atonement” – telling the story of the triangle of love, sin, and contrition we’ve been watching – is completely true. Except! (she reveals) that Robbie actually died as the British army was evacuating Dunkirk and that her sister was killed by a bomb during the Battle of Britain. The part where Robbie and Cecilia meet up was completely made up by Briony for her book, giving them the chance to be happy together that she had originally taken away.

(Phew! Enough plot summary for now? I think so.)

I guess my strongest criticism of “Atonement” is that it tries to be too many things – an epic, a love story, a period piece, with sprinklings of social commentary. If it had focused on one of these aspects, it would have been a much better film overall. For example, although the visual and emotional effects of the scene of Robbie at the evacuation of Dunkirk were incredibly powerful, I feel that this scene did not necessarily add any meaning or depth to the rest of the movie. Although I appreciated that the film did not shy away from the brutal realities of war – Robbie and Cecilia do not live happily ever after – the final visual of old Briony confessing her sins and working for atonement was little overboard. (If you don’t understand from watching the rest of the movie that writing the book and giving new life to the dead was her penance, then you must be dense.)

My other major problem is that the film was too darn literary. I mean, I understand that it was adapted from a novel, but for a movie with essentially three major characters there was too much time spent creating verisimilitude by developing background characters. I don’t mind symbolism either, but too many times in this movie the symbols were so blatant as to be intellectually jarring (such as how the characters are standing in relation to each other in the scene when Robbie is arrested). Even the moment of catharsis – a powerful scene in which Nurse Briony visits a dying soldier who recalls his lost love – is so telegraphed that there may as well have been a caption reading “THE MOMENT OF CATHARSIS – BRIONY REALIZES THE ERROR OF HER WAYS.”

Part of the reason I am so critical of this movie, though, is because it is so close to being great in my opinion, but just misses the mark. I want desperately to hold it in high esteem, but I restrain myself. It has all the traits of a great movie, but felt like everybody – the director, the actors, even the composer – were trying for a great movie. The music, the scenery, the costumes, the performances – everything felt like it was created with Oscar gold in mind.

So, ultimately, I will say that this was a pretty good movie. (I avoid saying that it was “enjoyable” because any movie in which the audience is exposed, in seriousness, to a man missing part of his skull is hard to call “enjoyable.”) I recommend it highly, and I wish I had seen it in the theatre. I just wish it could have been better, somehow.

The Glory of Their Times

The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

Edited by Lawrence S. Ritter

Ritter’s book collects interviews he did (presented as first-person narratives) with great players from the early twentieth century. These men played during the last years of the “dead ball” era, yet were still able to set many records that stand today. Although, as baseball grows and changes, we seem to lose sight of all but only the absolute best of yesteryear, this book will help many of the lesser known legends and myths live on for future generations, regardless of how future eras of baseball adapt the game.

One of the book’s recurring themes (and, apparently, one of the inspirations for the book’s development) is the life and career of Ty Cobb. Although Cobb had died before Ritter began his interviews, his influence and impact on the men thatRitter interviewed is clearly evident. Many of the men mention Cobb’s aggressiveness on the basepaths and his nasty temper, although some also excuse his behavior by explaining that he was desperate to win. Although some of Cobb’s records still stand today, and he remains in the top five of many categories, his legend has lost some of its luster in recent years. Some of the stories told in this book about the southern soldier of the field shed some interesting light on baseball’s original villain and antagonist without necessarily exonerating him.

The other major recurring story is one of baseball’s most infamous plays – Snodgrass’s Muff in the 1912 World Series. Fred Snodgrass himself is interviewed in the book and openly confesses the error, but he points to the fact that by dropping that fly ball he merely allowed the tying to reach base and that they did not lose the game on that play. Many of the other players recall Snodgrass’s excellent career and point to the fact that on the next play after dropping the ball, Snodgrass made a diving stab to catch a ball that would have been a sure triple. Sadly, he is the victim of an ill-timed error which historically overshadows the rest of his playing years, but it was nice to read that at least the other players were able to see his great playing ability beyond that one play.

I was surprised repeatedly about how well these men were able to hit, even with a “dead ball.” They adapted their style of hitting to account for a ball that could rarely be smashed out of the park. Many of the men described how high they would “choke up” on the bat and slap at the ball, dropping it right over the reach of the infielders. This is in stark contrast to the modern era of baseball, when pride or ego will not allow the players to choke up to better control their swings against a tough pitcher.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. But, I tend to like pretty much anything that involves baseball. It was a little bit repetitive at a few points – different players recounting the same event in similar words. Yet, it was fun to read the surprisingly eloquent words of these players while watching a contemporary game in the background.

Herb and Dorothy

"You don't have to be a Rockefeller to collect art."

Herb and Dorothy Vogel lived very simply in a small rent-controlled apartment in New York. Herb worked the graveyard shift as a mail sorter for the USPS (now retired). Dorothy was a librarian. They lived conservatively on simple means, with no children but an eccentric menagerie of cats, fish, and turtles. Looking at them or talking to them would reveal nothing especially interesting or important about this couple.

What makes this couple (and, therefore, this documentary) so interesting, then, is how such an unassuming couple could accumulate such a massive art collection. Over the course of several decades, the Vogels collected nearly 5,000 pieces of artwork from young artists – many of whom, such as Chuck Close, would become incredibly famous. They survived on one income and dedicated their other income to buying artwork from up and coming artists of the minimalist and conceptual art movements, which they stored in piles and stacks in their apartment. Ultimately, they decided to donate their collection to the National Gallery and to various museums throughout the country.

This documentary, directed by Megumi Sasaki, snuck up on me. I went into it cautiously pessimistic. Yet, I grew to care about Herb and Dorothy as human beings, accepting their strange but incredible eccentricity. We learn about the history of their relationship with each other, as well as their relationships with various artists. We also learn about the strategies they used to acquire pieces of artwork on their limited income, including haunting galleries almost daily, visiting the artists’ studios and buying drafts and process pieces, and, in one case, cat-sitting for an artist in exchange for a collage.

Part of what makes this documentary so powerful is the lack of a narrator explaining everything. Instead of Morgan Freeman or Alec Baldwin telling us how to feel about the Vogels, we are left to our own interpretations based on the words and actions of the Vogels themselves and the testimony of friends. We see Herb and Dorothy through the lens of who they are and what they do.

Without a narrator, though, the film exposes its only major weakness. There is no real narrative flow or structure to the movie. The sequences are put together thematically, not necessarily chronologically, so there are sometimes major jumps in time without any real explanation. There are also a few gaps in the Vogels’ history that are merely glazed over – namely the 1980’s. Yet, these structural problems do not necessarily inhibit the viewing of the film; they just require that the viewer make some inferences and connect a few dots (though we viewers are loath to do so, considering we are so often spoon-fed by the film industry).

This documentary is surprisingly touching and enjoyable. I learned a lot about artwork and art collection. But the true moral of the story that a couple – madly in love with each other – can accomplish things that individual experts and professionals can only dream of doing.

Down and Out in Paris and London

George Orwell’s first book is a memoir of his times tramping about Paris and London scrounging around for food and shelter. The first half of the book covers his time living in Paris, working as a dishwasher in hotels and desperately trying to pay the rent. The second half of the book reveals his time living as a tramp (literally!) around the London area, moving from shelter to shelter and living on a daily ration of bread and butter.

As a memoir, it contains nearly now plot arc, but is merely sequenced by the order of the events, regardless of their value as part of the narrative. The closest parallel to a plot arc in the text is the fact that, as the book goes on, Orwell’s situation becomes more and more dire. The characters in the Paris portion of the book are much more entertaining and funny and, although he is often pawning most of his clothing for food money, it never seems as though he is in any real danger. This may be because he has his own apartment (even though shabby) and his friends are very creative when it comes to finding money. Regardless of the reason, in Paris his poverty felt more like watching a sitcom than reading the pleas for help of a desperate man.

Yet, when he arrives in London, he is suddenly is homeless and destitute. He is forced to wander from shelter to shelter each day, surviving on bread and butter and smoking cigarettes made from the tobacco of cigarettes other people threw away. At times, the reader actually fears for his life as he is locked in with strangers in cells at shelters. Despite the intellect that we know he has, he is caught in a situation with seemingly no way out (until a job he was promised before he moved to London becomes available). He is a man lost in a sea of impoverished masses.

As his situation grows worse, his prose becomes much more purpose driven. We begin to see the seeds of class and political ideals which would flavor his later (and much more famous) work, such as “Animal Farm” and “1984.” He blames the plight of the tramp on the capitalist society which punishes people who are productive but whose skills are not valued, while sometimes rewarding those whose skills are valued regardless of whether or not they are productive. Although his later texts would be characterized as blatantly anti-communist, certain passages of this book would be clearly anti-capitalist. (From these opposing points, then, we cannot infer any political leanings from his books, except an opposition to politics and institutions that would repress and control any part of those it purports to represent.

Ultimately, this is a pretty good start for a writer whose influence on literature (and the politics in literature) would become very powerful. It is not a great book, by any means, but it shows glimmers of the potential greatness that he would later achieve.

Rudo y Cursi

"Rudo y Cursi," written and directed by Carlos Cuaron, follows the story of two brothers in Mexico who have dreams of being soccer stars. Tato "Cursi" (Gael Garcia Bernal) makes it big first, with some help from Batuta the narrator (Guillermo Francella). Riding his coat tails, his brother Beto "Rudo" (Diego Luna) breaks into soccer as a goal keeper for a rival team. Both brothers have problems off the soccer field, though. Tato can't get his love life in order and begins to feel the pressures of fame, while Beto's gambling problem becomes overwhelming. The two men's soccer and personal lives are on a collision course, with Tato needing to score a goal to revive his personal life and Beto on his road to a record number of shut out games.

To start with the good stuff: The characters in this movie - especially the two protagonists - are incredibly rich and detailed. As the movie rolls along, they feel real, as though you actually know them. The sibling rivalry is portrayed spot-on, including the barrages of insults and minor fisticuffs.

Unfortunately, some of the scenes did play out very well, come off as silly or almost absurdist in a movie which, at times, is hyper-realistic. The biggest problem, though, is that the ending is a bit rushed. There is a lot of build-up to a pretty thrilling climax, but the resolution comes out of nowhere. Not only does the story not turn out how we expected, the ending is almost non sequitur.

Of course, because I enjoyed the movie so much, I interpret the ending to make it stronger. Perhaps the fact that we don't see the ending coming is part of the point. We are so consumed by our goals and ourselves (or, in this case, the lives of the brothers) that we often miss the obvious developments going on around us. The brothers were so consumed by themselves and their records and accomplishments, that they were blind to everything else. The world, and all the other people in it, move forward regardless of how important we see ourselves and what we do. Yet, at the same time, we are left to live only with ourselves and our successes and failures in a world to which we are not very important.

Rolling Stone - Issue 1108/1109 (July 8-22)

Cover – Lady Gaga Tells All

This interview cover story of Lady Gaga proved that she is just as schizophrenic as the many personas that she portrays through her songs and performances. At times, she seemed like she possessed some artistic sense, but would then falter and devolve into a whiny overgrown teenager. I suppose that time will tell whether this is an early interview of a pop music mastermind at the beginning of her legacy, or just a car with highbeams running down the highway of youth culture.

Of course, buried under the Lady Gaga lead was the issue’s most important article – Michael Hastings’ profile of Stanley McChrystal. We learn some interesting facts about the general’s formative years. The piece also discussed McChrystal’s controversial long-term anti-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, including ordering troops to show restraint in using lethal force while also requesting a troop surge. Unfotunately, McChrystal also made some comments disparaging the Obama administration’s management of the War on Terror. (These commends led directly to Obama relieving McChrystal of his duty and replacing him with Petraus.)

The issue also included a profile of reggae engineer Lee “Scratch” Perry and an obituary for madman actor Dennis Hopper. The coverage of the Bonaroo was surprisingly weak, giving me nothing I couldn’t have guessed or made up on my own.

The “Reviews” section didn’t cover much I was interested in. The new Eminem album “Recovery” received a surprisingly high review, as well as M.I.A.’s “Maya” record. In regards to movies, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” “Toy Story 3,” and “The Kids Are Alright” (no, not The Who) received the highest, while “Jonah Hex” earned the lowest review, one star, that I’ve seen in “Rolling Stone” in many years.