Fumarama

I am inclined to like the Queen. (i guess I am not willing to say that I definitely like her because I don't really know all that much about her. I did, however, read her wikipedia entry.)To be perfectly honest, I am not entirely sure what people have against her. Sure, it may offend our values that some people are born into positions of leadership rather than earn them. But no one is really naive enough not to know that somoene born into wealth even in our non-monarchy is far more likely to be a leader than someone who is not? And the queen does an awesome job with her power. She was never given a choice to be an actress or handbag designer or whatever overly wealthy girls in our country do. Instead she has dedicated her life to her country. Apparently she is incredibly well-informed on English and World Current Affairs. Apparently she reads every documents from every department sent to her. And takes her weekly meetings to advise the prime minister seriously. She serves as a figure head, inviting world leaders to her place and because she never shares her political views so she can be a united figure. She also gives to 620 charities. She even served in the British army in World War II!

The film in nearly universally praised for taking the stodgy Queen Elizabeth II and making her human. I am sympathetic to Elizabeth II and so I kind of thought the movie was harsh, but appreciate the film taking her down a notch so I have a more realistic view. The movie is about how Queen Elizabeth II mishandled Diana's death. She had no idea how to respond to the outpouring of grief among the British people after her ex daughter in laws death. She thought that the death should be a private matter. Queen Elizabeth could not act like Diana would, meaning get in front of the camera and act. Ultimately, the Queen committed a PR gaffe. Which is a problem when your job is to be the unifying figure for your country. The point of much of this is to show how out of touch the queen and the royals are with the rest of the nation and the world. Blair says as much several times in the movie. The queen eventually realizes with the help of Blair that she has to publicly mourn the death of a woman she hated. And that is how the movie ends.

I don't think this was the director's intent, but there is something really sad about Elizabeth having to go on television and express sadness over Diana's death. Here is a woman with so much pride, and furthermore, a woman who has used her power and wealth to serve her country. Suddenly, instead of worrying about things that are real, documents from the british government, meeting world leaders, even helping her grandsons mourn, she must worry about her image. Suddenly, it is not about what she actually does, but being perceived as doing something. It is all about managing her press. It is so American common celebrity or something. Tom Cruise loses popularity cause he jumped on Oprah's couch, and the queen loses popularity because she does not handle death in a way other people think is good. It is like the queen has been reduced to Paris Hilton or something.

P.S. I am currently listening to the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen." I like the appropriateness.

After I read The Crying of Lot 49, I became increasingly intrigued by the fact that Pynchon did no publicity for his books and no one really knew where he lived or what he looked liked. People thought he might live on the Upper West Side. I lived on the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights to be exact, but still. Pynchon could be any guy I passed on the street. He could be the wierd guy in the hungarian pastry shop i never paid any attention to. Ever since, I have loved the idea that someone I might dismiss if i saw them on the street is actually someone I would admire in other circumstances. I remember a story a couple of years ago about Souter being mugged on a jog. To me, Justice Souter is a brilliant legal mind and if I ever met him i would overwhelmed by my own inferiority, but to those muggers, he was just an old white guy in sweatpants.

Matt Damon in the Good Sheperd epitomizes such a character. In the first scene of the movie, Matt Damon leaves his hobby table (of putting little ship replicas in bottles!?), and all so very slowly gets on to a trolley bus, sits down reads his paper, and then enters a bland office in a bland office building somewhere in Washington DC. All while wearing a bland suit and glasses and a hat. Just another middle aged guy in DC. But this guy is a spy! The head of counterintelligence for the CIA! A total badass! or maybe kind of evil, depending on your view. But all while Damon's character is planning to undermine foreign governments, or watching someone be tortured, he never loses his underlying blandness, or stocism if you prefer.

Reviewers who loves the film find the character brilliant and those who hate it find him tedious. (everyone seems to agree though that Damon does a great job portraying him.) I am torn. I mean I love the contrast between what he does and what he seems like. And it is not like the character does not have emotions. But they are kind of rare and subtle. A couple of smiles, a hug for his son. The problem with the character is that I could not figure out his motivations. Why did he love the the deaf girl but not Angelina Jolie? Why did he make ships in bottles? Was he actually humorless, it seems at the beginning he is not but that eventually he is. There is one scene in particular that bothered me. Damon is meeting with an Italian guy and the Italian guy says something to the effect of: Italians have family and church, the Irish have the homeland, the Jews have their tradition, the (I do not use the N word in my blog) have their music, what do you have? Damon answers: We have the United States of America, the rest of you are just visitors. The statement comes as a shock. I did not know that Damon's character was kind of a racist, or nativist or whatever it is. Sure you can argue that all WASPs in the 60s were like that. But I had no proof up to this point, and none after, that he was like other wasps. The statement literally feels like it is out of nowhere, just hanging there in the middle of the movie, not connected to anything else or my understanding of the character. Ultimately then, despite my admiration for the stocism and subtlety, without any understanding of his motivations, the character actually felt pretty hollow.

It is good. Seriously. I mean it is not quite season 1 level, but in the past few episodes, it has evolved into a flawed but enjoyable dramedy, say Dawson's Creek before the college years. (sure Dawson's could be painfully lame at times, but it was also totally great).

The evolution is thanks almost entirely to the character of Taylor Townsend. She is awesome, and totally the anti-Marissa. She is genuinly strange and awkward and possibly even kind of annoying. She pretended to be a sleep therapist in order to get Ryan to like her. She totally invaded Summer's privacy to figure out Summer might be pregnant in a kind of OCD way that reminds me of.....well, me. She saw Summer's unopened box of tampons and because she know that Summer had her period when she had visited Summer at Brown a month earlier, and it was now a month and a half later, and Summer had bought the box two weeks earlier but not yet opened it, she figured out that Summer was late. And she tells Summer about this in the greatest way ever, opening with I have a secret... The best part is, that unlike Marissa, she does not (nor are we the audience expected to) take her problems all that seriously. And while everyone inexplicably fell in love with Marissa, people regularly get annoyed with Taylor.

You don't get to see many women characters who are both really wierd but also lovable. And I don't need flawed women, Marissa with her alcoholism and self-destruction was supposed to be flawed, but I mean genuine geeks. There are far more men that take this role. Kirk of Gilmore Girls, Screech on Saved by the Bell, John Cage on Ally McBeal, Hiro on Heroes, and Seth Season 1 on the OC. The only woman I can think of is Elliot on Scrubs. Elliot is different in that she is playing off equally wierd characters, but Taylor is the designated strange one.

I also absolutely love the Ryan/Taylor relationship. It was the relationship I was always hoping they would have for Ryan on the show. For someone who thinks about TV as much as I do, I actually spend less time trying to come up with future plotlines than you think. But I always hoped they would give Ryan someone who was not just so damn serious, a girl he did not have to save. Also, I wanted him to have some old school romantic comedy. Partly because his character is meant ot be not funny, Ryan in a romantic comedy would be funny. And the show got it right. When Taylor remarks that Ryan is funny, both Seth and Sandy were like well if she thinks he is funny, she must like him. My only complaint is that they moved the relationship a little fast. I mean I don't want the OC to totally change and have a full blown will they or won't they, that would be changing the show too much, but would extending this to like 5 episodes killed them? It is just that I am worried. Once the relationship is settled it might have to have drama. And the show might start to suck again.

From the TV column:

Disney, which is about to release Mel "[expletive] Jews . . . are responsible for all the wars in the world" Gibson's new flick "Apocalypto," must have been thrilled to learn that despite (or, more likely, because of) Michael Richards's recent racist rant at a comedy club, sales of the "Seinfeld" seventh-season DVD have shot up 75 percent over Seasons 5 and 6.

So much for Jesse Jackson's call for a boycott of the DVD

Doesn't this make you feel warm and fuzzy inside?