Also see
Coming-of-age films: Grow up
'Adventureland' bucks trend of quantity over quality
By Michael Phillips | Tribune Newspapers critic
April 15, 2009
No matter how severe the acne, most of us come of age sooner or later. This is why coming-of-age movies speak to us, often without the aid of such niceties as quality. Nuance, to paraphrase a line from Barry Levinson's "Diner," is not a word this genre favors. Fantasy's the main ingredient, plus a little truth thrown in for atmosphere.
How else to explain the widely beloved John Hughes? The former Glenbrook North High School student is a favorite son, and certainly he enjoyed a hot streak in the 1980s, with "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and others. I enjoy parts of "Sixteen Candles," his first film as a director. But when Greg Mottola's excellent "Adventureland" came out last week, accompanied by blurbs touting Mottola as this generation's John Hughes, I thought: Can we aim a little higher? Besides, Mottola would have to exploit his young-adult stereotypes a lot more crassly to deserve that handle.With its lack of stars and uncertain marketing campaign (It's "Superbad"! No, wait! It's not!), "Adventureland" grossed less than one-tenth of what "Fast & Furious" made opening weekend. They are not the same, these two: One is a coming-of-age comedy, bittersweet and wise; the other is a squealing-of-tires picture, loud and louder.
But since "Adventureland" opened, I've heard from a lot of Boomers who have fallen for it. And taking into account the middling box office for many of our better American coming-of-age comedies -- "Diner," "Rushmore," the overrated but worthwhile "Dazed and Confused" -- you realize that audiences prefer their coming-of-age chronicles raunchy and triumphalist in tone, with a reasonably straightforward male-oriented agenda. If there's some wit, as in the best of the Judd Apatow projects, it's a bonus.
The genre has its many moods. Remember "Summer of '42"? I saw it again yesterday. What's amazing about the 1971 pop artifact is how many of its individual vignettes -- nervous teenage boy buying condoms from a druggist; nervous teenage boy sweating out his close proximity to Jennifer O'Neill's thighs as she climbs a ladder -- are played earnestly, even gravely, not for the customary hormonal anxiety gags (customary since the '80s, that is). It's as solemn as "The Reader," which is saying something, and through the sheer infernal persistence of the Michel Legrand love theme, 15-year-old Hermie (Gary Grimes) ends up in the bed of O'Neill's war widow. Legrand's theme became the hit song "The Summer Knows," with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman: "The summer smiles, the summer knows/And unashamed, she sheds her clothes."
There's a line in "Dazed and Confused," Richard Linklater's 1976-set coming-of-ager, in which a class of female high school seniors discusses various episodes of "Gilligan's Island," specifically the Ginger-vs.-Mary Ann question. "Guys have it all," says one woman. Male fans of that show, she says, had both "the Madonna and the Whore. Women get nothing." Ironically, the women don't have much to do in Linklater's film.
French cinema is particularly rich for coming-of-age dramas, from Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" to Erick Zonca's "The Dreamlife of Angels" (1998). The latter, a piercing tale of female friendship, is the rare screen story with its sights set on how women process the challenges of adult sexuality. American cinema has no lock on R-rated raunch, also known as the "gettin'-some" genre of comedy, but it's where the money has always been, then ("Porky's") and now ("Superbad," in which our graduating high school senior heroes do not, in fact, get some, but try, and learn a couple of things about friendship).
Here's a coming-of-age picture you probably haven't seen: Olivier Assayas' 1994 French drama "Cold Water." It's terrific. Early on, the two main characters exchange small talk that speaks to the genre's eternal appeal:
"You're still a kid, but that's OK," says the teenage hellion played by Virginie Ledoyen, addressing her moony sometime-boyfriend played by Cyprien Fouquet. He smiles. He knows this restless, unhappy character is a little out of his league. "It's true," he says. "I've got my books, my records ... and no experience." Such is young love, however frustrated. Fed by literature and music -- and the movies -- we grow into our adult selves gradually or suddenly, depending on whom we meet along the way.
- - -
Coming of age, through the ages
"Little Women," 1933. The first sound-era adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic, directed by George Cukor, starring a radiant Katharine Hepburn.
"Shadow of a Doubt," 1943. Young Charlie (Teresa Wright) learns the truth about her favorite uncle (Joseph Cotten) in one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest achievements, co-scripted by Thornton Wilder.
"Rebel Without a Cause," 1955. James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo offer three indelible portraits in teen angst in this widescreen Nicholas Ray masterwork.
"Splendor in the Grass," 1961. Not having sex can make you clinically insane, as we learn from William Inge's screenplay, filmed by Elia Kazan.
"The Graduate," 1967. Plastics; anomie; sex with a married woman; Simon and Garfunkel.
"The Last Picture Show," 1971. Some towns are smaller, and more sexually roiling, than others.
"American Graffiti," 1973. George Lucas' monster hit rode a wave of '50s-era nostalgia (though the film was set in 1962).
"Risky Business," 1983. Tom Cruise scored with this savvy Reagan-era love letter to free enterprise. The cop-out ending ensured a big audience.
"Wish You Were Here," 1987. Little-seen but flavorsome British coming-of-age comedy, set in the 1950s, starring an audacious and wonderful Emily Lloyd.
"Y Tu Mama Tambien," 2001. Alfonso Cuaron's road trip movie was part fantasy, part reality and all emotional exuberance.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Hanger
Mark Twain is supposed to have said, history may not always repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.
I like the Trivial
Mystery of the missing links
By Joe Dollar
Published: March 28 2009 01:06 | Last updated: March 28 2009 02:50
No one in the office likes Porter. He is socially inept and his intense inward focus has left him tone deaf to clients and the markets. At the same time, he claims to be a leader. I find this sort of vainglorious declaration exasperating. That, and his continuing devotion to cufflinks.
When it comes to work-wear, I think we are all pretty happy that we still have a uniform to wear (that is, we’re still employed). We want to focus on what is important: keeping our business going. Porter is the one guy in our office who doesn’t seem to get this, and his cufflinks and bespoke clothing seem out of tune with the seriousness of the times.
While most of us have our heads down and are desperately trying to raise capital, he is focused on his cufflinks. Few people in the office are wearing them these days. They seem, generally, a banished totem of financial excess. But then ours has never been an office of wardrobe flourishes. Occasionally, the crispness of a colleague’s shirt or the lustre of his suit might get noticed but generally we keep dandyism in check.
The younger associates sometimes get ribbed as they are more likely to dress aspirationally. Early in a career, we each experiment with a work wardrobe before settling into some version of the uniform, losing the desire to use clothes as a means of personal expression along the way.
A few years ago, the younger associates were walking billboards for a thriving economy but now seem to be advertising their frugality.
I float my theory of a new dress-Calvinism in our office to Peter. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I have seen plenty of blue shirts in the office, even some fancy stripy ones.”
“But don’t you think there are fewer cufflinks?” I ask.
“Well, yes, and thank God for that!” It turns out Peter has a particular antipathy to cufflinks as his family has forced a collection of them upon him.
“I don’t even like them,” he announced. “I don’t like them because they prevent me from getting gifts that I might actually like or want. My family has decided that I like to collect cufflinks and now I get them for practically any occasion. It’s not even giving me a gift. It’s giving my shirt a gift.”
I realise that Peter is not the best person to critique my theory so I move on to Graham. “I guess that at a time when bankers are being vilified, cufflinks are an easy target for muckrakers,” he says.
“I think your theory seems a little Jamesian, though: thrifty and honourable barrel cuffs v corrupt ancien régime French cuffs. Credit default swaps don’t wear shirts.”
“But if they did ... ” I try to interject.
“Your theory is too US-centric. I was just in London, and the City is both on suicide watch and in cufflinks.” Graham was right. I felt I had to abandon my thesis.
Days later, economic tribulation came home to roost. At a lunch for department heads, we discussed staff cuts, specifically who we would be letting go.
We all make an effort to defend good people in these meetings – it’s a balance of loyalty, friendship and business. Except for Porter, who is more rigid in his outlook, eyeing only individual revenue generation and return. I want him to protect the people that work for him, to fight for them.
But, sitting next to me in his cufflinks, he has never seemed more villainous.
Vanessa Friedman returns next week
By Joe Dollar
Published: March 28 2009 01:06 | Last updated: March 28 2009 02:50
No one in the office likes Porter. He is socially inept and his intense inward focus has left him tone deaf to clients and the markets. At the same time, he claims to be a leader. I find this sort of vainglorious declaration exasperating. That, and his continuing devotion to cufflinks.
When it comes to work-wear, I think we are all pretty happy that we still have a uniform to wear (that is, we’re still employed). We want to focus on what is important: keeping our business going. Porter is the one guy in our office who doesn’t seem to get this, and his cufflinks and bespoke clothing seem out of tune with the seriousness of the times.
While most of us have our heads down and are desperately trying to raise capital, he is focused on his cufflinks. Few people in the office are wearing them these days. They seem, generally, a banished totem of financial excess. But then ours has never been an office of wardrobe flourishes. Occasionally, the crispness of a colleague’s shirt or the lustre of his suit might get noticed but generally we keep dandyism in check.
The younger associates sometimes get ribbed as they are more likely to dress aspirationally. Early in a career, we each experiment with a work wardrobe before settling into some version of the uniform, losing the desire to use clothes as a means of personal expression along the way.
A few years ago, the younger associates were walking billboards for a thriving economy but now seem to be advertising their frugality.
I float my theory of a new dress-Calvinism in our office to Peter. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I have seen plenty of blue shirts in the office, even some fancy stripy ones.”
“But don’t you think there are fewer cufflinks?” I ask.
“Well, yes, and thank God for that!” It turns out Peter has a particular antipathy to cufflinks as his family has forced a collection of them upon him.
“I don’t even like them,” he announced. “I don’t like them because they prevent me from getting gifts that I might actually like or want. My family has decided that I like to collect cufflinks and now I get them for practically any occasion. It’s not even giving me a gift. It’s giving my shirt a gift.”
I realise that Peter is not the best person to critique my theory so I move on to Graham. “I guess that at a time when bankers are being vilified, cufflinks are an easy target for muckrakers,” he says.
“I think your theory seems a little Jamesian, though: thrifty and honourable barrel cuffs v corrupt ancien régime French cuffs. Credit default swaps don’t wear shirts.”
“But if they did ... ” I try to interject.
“Your theory is too US-centric. I was just in London, and the City is both on suicide watch and in cufflinks.” Graham was right. I felt I had to abandon my thesis.
Days later, economic tribulation came home to roost. At a lunch for department heads, we discussed staff cuts, specifically who we would be letting go.
We all make an effort to defend good people in these meetings – it’s a balance of loyalty, friendship and business. Except for Porter, who is more rigid in his outlook, eyeing only individual revenue generation and return. I want him to protect the people that work for him, to fight for them.
But, sitting next to me in his cufflinks, he has never seemed more villainous.
Vanessa Friedman returns next week
Friday, March 27, 2009
Harsha Bhogle...
impresses me every single time I listen to, watch, or read him.
CUT AND PASTE OF THE ABOVE LINK:
Doing things without result in mind often leads to something big: Bhogle
13 Mar 2009, 0553 hrs IST, Vinod Mahanta and Krishna Gopalan, ET Bureau
Chatting up with Harsha Bhogle on management matters throws up multiple talk points - from cricket to management, Hyderabad to marketing, and some Harsha Bhogle
deep philosophy . With him around, talk is never at a discount. Harsha comes hand in gloves, ready for the drive, prepared to take on any dialogue. But that can only be expected of an ace commentator whom the cricket world admires, and fans adore.
Blame the pedantic streak on his academic background , since both his parents are professors. But it is his out-of-the-box jive and a 360-degree command over the game that has won him hearts, recently getting him voted as Cricinfo’s favourite TV cricket commentator. “I have found that if you do things without results in mind, it often leads to something big,” he says.
Always expect the unexpected from this IIM-A grad. His corporate presentation skills remain on par with his gift of the gab. After calling it a day at P&G in 1990, which was preceded by a stint at Rediffusion, Harsha changed tracks. He knew his calling all along - a life veering around the contest between bat and ball. So he hung up his management boots and hopped onto the cricket bandwagon. “I didn’t have great expectations.
I didn’t have great needs either and I was never in love with money,” he says. “Keeping expectations low is the biggest challenge in life. If your expectations are high, you are doing it for the results. In effect, you put undue pressure on yourself to achieve.”
The 48-year-old commentator played for his university and started out bowling leg breaks before turning into a batsman who could bowl. He feels the pulse of the game he comments upon now with the same passion he demonstrated on the field decades ago. “But I’m not a frustrated cricketer. Cricket is not only about technique. It is about emotions. The emotions of losing, winning, trying,” he says.
What has worked for Bhogle has been his outsider status, something that has endowed him with a unique perspective : a journalist with an Harsha Bhogle
advertising background, a noncricketer in broadcasting, a commentator turned corporate speaker, a cricket functionary who actually understands the logic behind the Duckworth-Lewis method.
Take a closer look at his various avatars - commentator, emcee, author, cricket advisor to the Indian Premier League’s Mumbai Indians, quizmaster, journalist. Scrutiny shows a set of smart diversifications in one core area: communications . For Harsha Inc, each one of his avatars is a revenue stream. Today, he wears his many hats with panache, marrying sports and management, dishing out liberal doses of customized corporate wisdom with a mix of sports and management.
It’s a perfect partnership at Prosearch Consultants, a firm he runs with his wife, Anita, a classmate from IIM-A . She generates the management content (80% of the work) while Harsha brings in his sports analogies (20% of the work, by his own admission). He, of course, gets to present it all. For an out-of-form FMCG company, Bhogle Inc conjures up this connect - “great teams have small dips, but they come back stronger.” According to him, winning can indeed get burdensome.
“If you are winning all the time, you start playing against yourself. If Sachin Tendulkar averages 45, it’s a bad series. If Yuvraj Singh averages 44, it’s a good series. So Tendulkar is condemned to be compared with himself all the time. Great companies carry the burden of great performance year upon year.”
Of course, Harsha makes no pretensions when it comes to his favourite cricketer. Sachin Tendulkar is not just good but “great” because “he is still in love with the game and never allows the periphery matters to dominate it. Harsha admiringly wrote in one of his columns, “ the master of the game thinks he is the servant of the game.”
The pitch now turns to the condensed and entertaining Twenty20 version of the gentleman’s game, and Harsha suddenly becomes a marketing maven. “It’s a case of product positioning and filling a market gap in the product portfolio ,” he says. He elaborates on how Twenty20 came into being, threatened by the English Premier League football.
“Test match cricket, on the contrary, will remain a connoisseur’s sport and the one-day format will be television’s growth engine. T20 will be the messiah of cricket and the future of the game.” That said, as Harsha draws a deep breath and says his dream is to “become the best cricket writer in India .” And what’s his mantra? “It’s not your job to listen to me. Rather, it’s my privilege that you are listening to me.”
13 Mar 2009, 0553 hrs IST, Vinod Mahanta and Krishna Gopalan, ET Bureau
CUT AND PASTE OF THE ABOVE LINK:
Doing things without result in mind often leads to something big: Bhogle
13 Mar 2009, 0553 hrs IST, Vinod Mahanta and Krishna Gopalan, ET Bureau
Chatting up with Harsha Bhogle on management matters throws up multiple talk points - from cricket to management, Hyderabad to marketing, and some Harsha Bhogle
deep philosophy . With him around, talk is never at a discount. Harsha comes hand in gloves, ready for the drive, prepared to take on any dialogue. But that can only be expected of an ace commentator whom the cricket world admires, and fans adore.
Blame the pedantic streak on his academic background , since both his parents are professors. But it is his out-of-the-box jive and a 360-degree command over the game that has won him hearts, recently getting him voted as Cricinfo’s favourite TV cricket commentator. “I have found that if you do things without results in mind, it often leads to something big,” he says.
Always expect the unexpected from this IIM-A grad. His corporate presentation skills remain on par with his gift of the gab. After calling it a day at P&G in 1990, which was preceded by a stint at Rediffusion, Harsha changed tracks. He knew his calling all along - a life veering around the contest between bat and ball. So he hung up his management boots and hopped onto the cricket bandwagon. “I didn’t have great expectations.
I didn’t have great needs either and I was never in love with money,” he says. “Keeping expectations low is the biggest challenge in life. If your expectations are high, you are doing it for the results. In effect, you put undue pressure on yourself to achieve.”
The 48-year-old commentator played for his university and started out bowling leg breaks before turning into a batsman who could bowl. He feels the pulse of the game he comments upon now with the same passion he demonstrated on the field decades ago. “But I’m not a frustrated cricketer. Cricket is not only about technique. It is about emotions. The emotions of losing, winning, trying,” he says.
What has worked for Bhogle has been his outsider status, something that has endowed him with a unique perspective : a journalist with an Harsha Bhogle
advertising background, a noncricketer in broadcasting, a commentator turned corporate speaker, a cricket functionary who actually understands the logic behind the Duckworth-Lewis method.
Take a closer look at his various avatars - commentator, emcee, author, cricket advisor to the Indian Premier League’s Mumbai Indians, quizmaster, journalist. Scrutiny shows a set of smart diversifications in one core area: communications . For Harsha Inc, each one of his avatars is a revenue stream. Today, he wears his many hats with panache, marrying sports and management, dishing out liberal doses of customized corporate wisdom with a mix of sports and management.
It’s a perfect partnership at Prosearch Consultants, a firm he runs with his wife, Anita, a classmate from IIM-A . She generates the management content (80% of the work) while Harsha brings in his sports analogies (20% of the work, by his own admission). He, of course, gets to present it all. For an out-of-form FMCG company, Bhogle Inc conjures up this connect - “great teams have small dips, but they come back stronger.” According to him, winning can indeed get burdensome.
“If you are winning all the time, you start playing against yourself. If Sachin Tendulkar averages 45, it’s a bad series. If Yuvraj Singh averages 44, it’s a good series. So Tendulkar is condemned to be compared with himself all the time. Great companies carry the burden of great performance year upon year.”
Of course, Harsha makes no pretensions when it comes to his favourite cricketer. Sachin Tendulkar is not just good but “great” because “he is still in love with the game and never allows the periphery matters to dominate it. Harsha admiringly wrote in one of his columns, “ the master of the game thinks he is the servant of the game.”
The pitch now turns to the condensed and entertaining Twenty20 version of the gentleman’s game, and Harsha suddenly becomes a marketing maven. “It’s a case of product positioning and filling a market gap in the product portfolio ,” he says. He elaborates on how Twenty20 came into being, threatened by the English Premier League football.
“Test match cricket, on the contrary, will remain a connoisseur’s sport and the one-day format will be television’s growth engine. T20 will be the messiah of cricket and the future of the game.” That said, as Harsha draws a deep breath and says his dream is to “become the best cricket writer in India .” And what’s his mantra? “It’s not your job to listen to me. Rather, it’s my privilege that you are listening to me.”
13 Mar 2009, 0553 hrs IST, Vinod Mahanta and Krishna Gopalan, ET Bureau
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Interesting Article on FT
Complexity
Published: March 16 2009 09:12 | Last updated: March 16 2009 16:07
High up peoples’ list of culprits for the credit crunch is complexity. The accusation? That certain financial products were incomprehensible to all but a tiny few. Buyers and sellers, therefore, had no idea what they were trading. Executives devised entire strategies on businesses they did not understand. Regulators and ratings agencies flapped about in the dark.
The solution is to make things simpler, right? Wrong. For that supposes humans are opposed to complexity when in fact they create it whenever possible. Many sociologists see the process of making the simple complicated as one method social groups employ to help identify themselves. Linguists sometimes refer to “esoterogeny” where speakers add verbal tricks in order to make their language harder for outsiders to understand and to foster inclusiveness.
So why do it in finance or any other industry? By making what they do incomprehensible to everyone, bankers, management consultants, plumbers and academics protect their franchise, and therefore their earnings. Adding complexity is doubly important in industries where nothing physical is created. It is no surprise, therefore, that those earning the most money ended up in jobs that none else could understand.
That makes a policy response pointless. If regulators tried to simplify asset backed securities, their complexity would simply take another form. Banks cannot have anyone off the street applying to trade derivatives (although research shows that random punters would be just as profitable). And dumbing down the entire banking industry would just result in a complexity bubble (and higher wages) emerging somewhere else.
Now that governments around the world have all the power – with workers from the private sector clambering to get on board – it is a fair bet that public offices will be next to pile on the gibberish. After all, bureaucracy in all its numbing detail is simply another form of complexity designed to keep a frustrated public at bay.
Published: March 16 2009 09:12 | Last updated: March 16 2009 16:07
High up peoples’ list of culprits for the credit crunch is complexity. The accusation? That certain financial products were incomprehensible to all but a tiny few. Buyers and sellers, therefore, had no idea what they were trading. Executives devised entire strategies on businesses they did not understand. Regulators and ratings agencies flapped about in the dark.
The solution is to make things simpler, right? Wrong. For that supposes humans are opposed to complexity when in fact they create it whenever possible. Many sociologists see the process of making the simple complicated as one method social groups employ to help identify themselves. Linguists sometimes refer to “esoterogeny” where speakers add verbal tricks in order to make their language harder for outsiders to understand and to foster inclusiveness.
So why do it in finance or any other industry? By making what they do incomprehensible to everyone, bankers, management consultants, plumbers and academics protect their franchise, and therefore their earnings. Adding complexity is doubly important in industries where nothing physical is created. It is no surprise, therefore, that those earning the most money ended up in jobs that none else could understand.
That makes a policy response pointless. If regulators tried to simplify asset backed securities, their complexity would simply take another form. Banks cannot have anyone off the street applying to trade derivatives (although research shows that random punters would be just as profitable). And dumbing down the entire banking industry would just result in a complexity bubble (and higher wages) emerging somewhere else.
Now that governments around the world have all the power – with workers from the private sector clambering to get on board – it is a fair bet that public offices will be next to pile on the gibberish. After all, bureaucracy in all its numbing detail is simply another form of complexity designed to keep a frustrated public at bay.
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