Stacked

I have a big stack of books that I "want to read next." Typically, I never get around to reading anything from this stack--maybe it's because the stack seems like an assignment and high school and college got me in the habit of always forsaking my assigned work for the benefit of extra-curricular work. Instead of reading the books that are piled up next to my bed, I often find myself re-reading Tumble Home or taking up my roommate's advice when he urges me to read whatever the latest quirky book about words he read is.

However, as I was heading to bed tonight, I realized that I'm more excited about my stack right now than I have been in a long time.

As well as Bauckham's academic apologetic tome (which I've been swearing I will return for six months now) and a classic theological hardcover by John Stott, I'll also soon be reading a "classic of modern Jewish theology." I should be polishing off collections of short fiction by Fitzgerald, Julian Barnes, and Miranda July soon, plus a new translation of the complete fictions of Borges. Round that out with a roommate-recommended novel and some surely-eloquent letters and speeches by our most articulate president (those were the days, right?), and it's finally becoming clear to my inner slacker that my stack is not an assignment, it's a wish list. And I get to read it. How awesome is that?

First, There Was Darkness...

About a month ago, I spent Friday and Saturday on the couch watching seven or eight movies. (It's not as sad as it sounds--I was sick.) The highlight of the weekend was getting to re-visit a movie that has actually had a discernible impact on my life, Dark City.

The movie, for those of you who haven't seen it, follows amnesiac John Murdoch, who can't remember whether or not he's a serial killer. In pursuit of a mysterious doctor who offers answers about his identity, Murdoch flees from the police (who think he's guilty) and a group of long-coated strangers (who want him killed). The movie begins in the visual and story-telling traditions of classic film noir, but as the plot weaves its way toward resolutions, the story becomes a fusion of German expressionism and classic early science-fiction.

Revisiting the movie was a fantastic experience, and I was going to write a blog entry about it, but I was lazy.

Two years ago, Roger Ebert mentioned in the boilerplate of a review on his website that he had just recorded a new audio commentary for the director's cut of Dark City, but there has been no mention of it anywhere since, including in the studio's annual Upcoming Releases schedules. I had honestly given up hope that it would ever actually be seen, envisioning it sitting on a shelf somewhere between the master print of Chimes at Midnight and the original ending to Kubrick's The Shining.

Well, I'm glad that I didn't write that blog entry a month ago, because this morning I got an e-mail from a good friend letting me know that the Dark City director's cut will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 28 (and I am now saved from needing to do two entries on Dark City in a month)!

It's long been rumored that the director's cut will not just restore a scene or two but will actually present the story with an entirely different pace and editing style (and, mercifully, without that blasted voice-over that kicks the movie off by revealing everything the viewer is supposed to learn at the end). As released, the film's editing was frenetic and left the viewer as de-centered as Murdoch, so I'm interested in seeing it at a more contemplative pace, having the opportunity to let my eyes linger over locations and environments that I only got to see in brief flashes before.

I know this may not be too exciting to the five of you who know that this blog exists, but the day this thing comes out is actually going to be pretty exciting for me. I just thought I'd share.

You can read the original news at dvdactive.com.

Go, Recession, Go!

Let’s be honest—our economy never really recovered from the last recession. Remember that one? It started around 2000 when pets.com shut down and suddenly every broker in the Financial District realized what every teenager on Geocities already knew: having a website didn’t mean you were about to receive piles of money.

However, a little article buried on the front page of nytimes.com this evening officially announced the beginning of a new recession.

Though most of us have probably already been working under the assumption that the recession started months ago, President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary is among the first and highest-profile public figures to go from saying, “A recession is possible” to saying, “Oops! We’re in a recession.”

I find interesting the up-front acknowledgment that there is a difference betwixt the “economic growth” that America has been experiencing for the last five years and the “real economy,” which is measured by the financial health of the majority of American families. Near the end of the article, they call President Bush’s tax cuts “regressive,” which they are.

I’m just starting out in my life and in my career, and I’m sure that our economy will eventually find its way back to stable health, but I don’t think that on this side of the resurrection I’m ever going to see the same buying power per dollar that my parents saw while I was growing up. More manufacturing and technology jobs are being shipped overseas for less money, but any benefit that would have for people in unrelated industries is more than offset by the fact that many foreign currencies are gaining on the U.S. dollar. (Even the Canadian dollar has surpassed the U.S. dollar lately. Seriously? The Canadian dollar?)

Conventional wisdom would tell you that now is the time to buy some real estate or invest in some stocks that you know are going to rebound, but my portfolio is pretty much tied up in food, shelter, and the new R.E.M. CD.

I hope this recession ends soon, because I don’t want to have to sell my food.

Clinton Tax Returns

An interesting commentary on the "revelation" that Hillary and Bill Clinton have made a lot of money in the last few years.

Have a good weekend!

I'm Watching Sports Night on CSC, So Stick Around!

Maybe it's because I recently had to write four different reviews of Aaron Sorkin's latest play, or maybe it's because I recently encountered someone who reminds me of the whole Josh Charles/Teri Polo storyline and makes me hear that blasted Neil Finn song, but I revisited Sports Night this evening. As expected, I laughed (okay, more than expected), but I was not prepared for how raw, honest, and complex some of the key exchanges were.

A few years ago, there was a book printed called 100 Things to Love and Hate About Television. The West Wing was in there, but another entry in the book called Sports Night "Aaron Sorkin's real gift" to popular culture. After hundreds of hours of The West Wing, the entire run of Studio 60, and a month dwelling on The Farnsworth Invention, I have to say that I agree with the book. For as witty, inspiring, incisive, or just flat-out entertaining as his later projects have been, none of it has made me think and feel as much as Sports Night did tonight.

This is not just because of the writing, although it is probably the most emotionally honest and self-consciously stylish Sorkin has ever produced. It is because here, the actors bring a painful humanity to their roles. Most scenes seem haunted by the specter of the fact that every character participating has been pursuing their careers at the expense of their real lives. That the actors can underline even superfluous control-room chatter with a stifled desire for a balanced human life makes the witty banter something more--an attempt to hide their unstable selves.

"I've done enough rotten things to women in my life--there's no question I'm going straight to hell," Josh Charles' character quips to a female correspondent who has repeatedly accused him of having slept with her and then not calling. "I really don't need you padding the ballot box." This is indicative of the attitude most of these characters take to their flaws and to their dis-satisfactions--they can't deny them, but they can't face them. So, they hide behind their "superior wit and guile." Whether that's all on the page or not, the cast plays it well.

So, when Felicity Huffman's character confronts Brenda Strong's and the two let loose with a flurry of cutting verbal attacks and vulnerable confessions with no attempt to use wit to hide themselves or soften the blows, it's not only interesting and gripping, it's unsettling. We've seen these characters say things that are true, but this is the first time any of them allow themselves to be honest.

I didn't think I could still be surprised by Sorkin, and was sure that I couldn't ever be surprised by Sports Night again.

Thankfully, I was wrong. This is why I'm lucky to be able to write.

Farnsworth Redux

This is the second of two reviews I've written of The Farnsworth Invention. Both were written for the same publication (The Redeemer Arts Greenhouse Newsletter) and I don't know which they're going to run; I'd prefer that they run the first, because I think it's better and I'd rather have the better one in my portfolio lookin' all pretty and printed.

The Farnsworth Invention
Directed by Des McAnuff, Written by Aaron Sorkin

“Do you know who Philo Farnsworth was? He invented television. I don’t mean he invented television like Uncle Miltie—I mean he invented the television! In a little house in Provo, Utah, at a time when transmitting moving pictures through the air would be like me saying I’ve figured out a way to beam us aboard the Starship Enterprise. He was a visionary, and he died broke and without fanfare.”

At least, that’s the angle of the historically-debated story that Aaron Sorkin wrote nine years ago on an episode of his much-acclaimed, little-seen Sports Night. It’s also the perspective on history he ultimately espoused in his recent historical fiction The Farnsworth Invention, which played at The Music Box Theatre through March 2. 

The play follows Farnsworth (Jimmi Simpson) and RCA head David Sarnoff (Hank Azaria) as they race to develop the invention that would end up dominating mass communication in the 20th century.  Sorkin’s drama plays fast and loose with historical facts, but that doesn’t matter. What matters to Sorkin, who has made a career out of not-so-subtly voicing his opinions on politics, the media, and social values through the mouths of his characters, is what the invention represents to each man. Sarnoff expects it to “end ignorance, end illiteracy, end war.” Farnsworth, drowning in alcohol and hiding in his research to avoid coming to terms with his son’s death, declares, “One day, a man will walk on the moon. And everybody will get to see it on television.”

These aspirations are far less partisan than Sorkin’s usual fare—in a show about sportscasters, for example, he wrote an episode about one character’s views on legalizing marijuana; a series about sketch comedy actors featured a three-episode arc about premature troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and a series-long sub-plot about the social impact of the religious right.

Whether he shares his character’s political leanings or not, he is a singular talent when it comes to writing dialogue. It is that panache which brought viewers of all stripes to The West Wing and which won his short-lived Sports Night a devoted following. (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, on the other hand, never gained a strong fanbase.)

To anyone who has watched a season of any of those shows, The Farnsworth Invention may have a familiar feel. To someone who has watched every season of those shows, multiple times, it feels like a low-rent cover band. The songs are the same—the characters are arguing with unrealistic fluency about artistic and journalistic integrity, addiction, workaholism, and social responsibility—but the rhythm section feels off-measure. The play only really excels when Simpson and Azaria (whose characters are also our dueling narrators) stop talking to the audience and start talking to each other. The two leads find a rhythm and naturalism in the dialogue that makes the scenes they share gripping. Sadly, too many members of the supporting team can’t quite keep up.

After the fictionalized argument between Sarnoff and Farnsworth that constitutes the play’s climax, Sarnoff soliloquizes about the importance of his work. Taking a monologue directly from a West Wing episode, he declares, “We came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire! And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is on a timeline of explorations and this is what’s next.” If that seems a little awkward and grandiose, it should—the monologue was originally written about deep-space exploration.

But Azaria makes it work.

What's Your Story?

Hello, to the three or four people who have probably ever read this, and who have, by now, given up waiting for an update. I'm going to try to carve some time out of this busy week/weekend to give you some more to read, but first I'm giving you a chance to prime the pump.

Thoreau said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I don't think that's necessarily true. I'm loathe to admit it, but even if it's true, I put more stock in what Hollywood hack Richard Curtis said about the story most people live out: that everyone you see is playing some role in living out a love story. Maybe it's the gospel influence that makes me see love as more intrinsic to the human heart than desperation, even if desperation is the appropriate response to the condition in which we find ourselves.

Anyway, what's your story? I know, the topic is lame and a month late, but I'm desperately trying to avoid doing real work. Give me a few things to read, and I'll come back with stories about Ninja Nuns and how F. Scott Fitzgerald led me to Jesus.