The Fog of War
Robert McNamara was a cold warrior with a soft heart. He led the Pentagon under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson until the disagreements between Johnson and McNamara over Vietnam became too large. This film is one long interview with McNamara. The subtitle of the documentary is “Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.” The lessons he has to offer are profound and some of them you have never heard before. I don’t want to give away some of the amazing things that he reports. Anyone living in the 21 century should see what McNamara has witnessed in his lifetime.
Welcome to the Afterlife of Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow had to die before I would pay any attention to him. I read today’s obituary in the New York Times (click on “more” button) and immediately realized that I should put some of his novels on my summer reading list. I just ordered myself a copy of The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, and Humboldts’ Gift. The New York Times has a special web feature on the work of Bellow. There is also an interesting obituary note in Slate. His editor shares most interesting memories of how Bellow worked. Other writers comment on Below’s influence.
Melinda and Melinda
Is it more accurate to see life as a comedy or a tragedy? This is philosophical question gives Woody Allen the hook to explore the complications that arise when an old friend shows up at her friend’s dinner party with more than a little bit of baggage. I was intrigued enough to take another look at Woody Allen who has become too repetitive for me in recent years. The film gives you a few good laughs, particularly when Will Farrell’s muses over whether it would be OK for a liberal Democrat to have sex with a Republican. But on the whole it doesn’t break any new ground. Allen’s problem is that he makes too many movies (one a year), leaving him no time to make a really good one. The storyline gives Radha Mitchell (who also played in Finding Neverland and Man on Fire the opportunity to show just how good an actress she is. Somewhat irritatingly you feel that Woody Allen is stuck in Will Farrell’s body because you hear Woody talking.
Peter Pan
I started to read Peter Pan. The last time that I came into contact with the characters of the story was in the movie Hook, which invented a sequel to the original Peter Pan. I have not heard about the plot of the original story since childhood and almost completely forgotten it. Reading the book today, therefore, is just like reading a new story. It starts in the most delightful way: All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried,
Closer
Closer is depressing in every respect. Nobody gets closer to love, to beauty, to understanding. Not the writer of the script (Patrick Marber), not the director (Mike Nichols), not the viewer (you and me). Watching the film, I felt real anxiety about getting old. Almost 40 years ago Mike Nichols directed Who is Afraid of Virginia Wolf, a wonderful movie based on a play in the same name. Both movies focus on psychological warfare that can break out in relationships. But Closer has lost all sense of psychological believability, drowned out by what I now fear to be the tragic desires of old age. As a young man, Nichols had clear before his eyes that a highnoon shootout in a relationship is all the clashing of personalities, life plans, accomplishments and backgrounds. Skip Closer and get closer in Who is Afraid of Virginia Wolf.
A London Taxi Ride in Berlin
I spent less then twenty-four hours in Berlin. On the way back to the airport, I was picked up by a lady who likes to do things a bit differently. In Germany, eighty-five percent of taxi cabs are Mercedes Benz cars. But if you call her up (+49-170-434-02-06), she will chauffer you around Berlin in a London taxi. After September 11, business is slower for taxi drivers everywhere in Europe and America, giving them time to talk about their plight. The fastest way from my hotel to the airport took us along the old parliament (Reichstag) building. 
On a previous visit, I had seen the new glass top of the parliament building. Symbolically and architecturally, the glass dome is very appealing. Now I passed for the first time the newly constructed office building for the members of parliament, which lies across from massive new chancellery. Both buildings are modern in spirit, straight lines everywhere, no ornamentations, lots of glass. Although the buildings are not particularly bad, I found quarter mile area between the two distressingly sterile. I realized that what was missing were trees and vegetation. Life locked away. It was all glass, stone, and asphalt. The German government paid about 10 billion Euros to move its operations from Bonn to Berlin. The trees were not missing for a lack of money.
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The Motorcycle Diaries
On an abstract level all novels are either stories about travel or character development. The first half of The Motor Cycle Diaries falls solidly in the travel category. Not being burdened by responsibilities for others, two young people decide to take a motorcycle tour through the different countries of South America. The camera captures arresting pictures of the landscape that made me want to pack up my bags and see the continent with my own eyes. Somewhat unexpectedly the second half of the movie tries to become a film about character development. At the end we are told that one of the two became a famous political figure. The character development mission of the film failed utterly to prepare me for what one of the two men ended up doing in life.
“I only need 5 hours of sleep.” Liar!
WARREN ST. JOHN and ALEX WILLIAMS on today’s NYT provide good news for you night owls. The notion that early risers live more healthily and are more productive is a self-promotional myth. People need to find the sleeping patterns that suits them best!
The Crow of the Early Bird
Mr. Iger, who is married to the television journalist Willow Bay, with whom he has four children, is up at 4:30 in the morning, works out and arrives in the office by 6:30.
The New York Times, March 14, profile of Robert A. Iger, the new president of the Walt Disney Compan
Finding Neverland
This enchanting film dramatizes how the playwright James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) created with his best known work, Peter Pan. In 1903 Barrie’s latest play is a total failure with audiences and critics alike. To distract himself from his creative problems, Barrie (John Depp) starts playing daily with the four fatherless boys and their widow mother (Kate Winslet) who he met in the park. One of the boys, Peter, is particularly distraught over his father’s death. Barrie encourages him to take up writing to let his imagination find beauty and happiness. The interactions with these four boys give wings to Barrie’s imagination and allow him to write Peter Pan. The script based on a marvelous play; the acting is superb. Particularly moving is the performance of Freddie Highmore who plays Peter. The film inspired me to put Peter Pan on my reading list.
The Aviator
The Aviator received the most Academy Award nominations for the year 2004, with 11 total. This is very difficult to understand because the film is a painfully weak piece of work for Martin Scorcese (director) and John Logan (writer). Both Scorcese in Gangs of New York and Logan in The Last Sumarai have shown that they can do justice to historical material on the big screen. After seeing or reading a good biography we are supposed to understand a person better. Logan’s script about Hughes fascinating life fails to explain anything. All Logan does is to copy the explanatory structure of Orson Well’s Citizen Kane and provide us with a contrived childhood explanation for Hughes adult life. Scorcese empathizes with Howard Hughes so strongly that he seems to have lost his own directorial mind in the process. Scorcese, for example, designed each year in the film to look just the way a color film from that time period would look. Furthermore, many of the sets are designed very cheaply, perhaps also to imitate movies from the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, this means that you never forget that the drama is staged. Rather than lend sophistication to the film, it makes the film look amateurish. Then suddenly, out of the blue, comes a scene in which Hughes crashes with his plane in the middle of L.A. Using the best special effect technology that money can buy today, the scene has more realism than most scenes in the film. Clearly enormous amounts of money and effort went into the scene. But it is clearly over the top in its scale and its violence compared to anything that happened before. At this moment you murmur to yourself: What happened to Scorcese legendary touch? The only explanation I can offer for why the The Avatior won the Oscars for best art direction, best cinematography, and best costume design, as well as for best-supporting actress is that the average voters in the Academy of Motion Pictures are so self-absorbed that they would vote rather for a bad movie about Hollywood than a good film about another industry. The one Oscar that strikes me as well-deserved is Kate Blanchett’s for the supporting actress. Blanchett does an outstanding job playing Katherine Hepburn. If Howard Hughes were alive today, he would have made a better movie.
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