Pink Noise

Bringing New Understanding to the Director’s Cut
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: March 1, 2010

And now, just in time for Oscar junkies, comes a new statistical mincing of the movies that may someday yield an award category of its own: best fit between a movie’s tempo and the natural rhythms of the brain. More

From Youth’s Narrow Prism

Old Age, From Youth’s Narrow Prism
By MARC E. AGRONIN, M.D.
Published: March 1, 2010

The old woman had drawn down the shade in her room — hoping, I imagined, to stop the midday Miami sun from penetrating her grief. But the sun still hit the window full force and illuminated the shade like a Chinese lantern. More

Departures

Too much I've been watching Netflix, and Sunday morning I watched Departures. It passes the nekkid man test, and I enjoyed the movie. Then I reread A. O. Scott's review, where he excoriates the academy for giving it an Oscar. There are certainly things to be excoriated: the wife, the predictable plot; the sentimental turns, the invisible pregnancy, the wife yielding to the stubborn husband, the weeping cello, the choice of the coffin -- still, cute nekkid Asian man, and a movie centered on the rituals of death and the underclass that fulfills them. The raging against the night has gone by the time they arrive on the scene, and while preparing the corpse for the ashes, only the cast off glower and smoke. It's inclusive in religions and genders, and I guess I don't mind the sentimentality with so many dead bodies. On the other hand, maybe I just find the main actor very cute, especially without his clothes.

It certainly lack the heft of Antonia's Line, for example, which is quite the unsentimental counterpoint.

Sig Lines for Today

Where there are pie fights, there must be pie. Henry Clay

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read." Groucho Marx