Black Swans and Red Shoes: The Short, Perilous Life of the Movie Ballerina
It came as no surprise that Natalie Portman won the Golden Globe for portraying Nina Sayers in Darren Aronofsky's "The Black Swan," and it seems likely that she'll pirouette away with the Academy Award, too. If she does, no actress since Jane Wyman won for "Johnny Belinda" will have been Oscared for stringing together so few coherent (or even audible) lines of dialogue. Repressed and whispery and not very articulate is our Nina, and who can blame her? Her life is a living hell. She's bedevilled by a monster mother, a couple of jealous colleagues -- one of whom is a shape-shifter and a ...
Felt Up at the Pat-down: Eugene Delgaudio's Laughable Homophobia
Every gay man knows the scenario: Some sweaty, balding, cross-eyed, toothless hog is overheard issuing a loud, public homophobic warning along the lines of "These homos had better keep their hands off ME!" No problem, Cletus. Your virtue is safe -- not only with me, but with any sentient human being blessed with the senses of sight and/or smell. Something tells me the ladies aren't exactly busting down your door, either, if you know what I mean, you Public Temptation, you. I've always supposed such sentiments have two basic sources, namely (a) the belief that gay men value sex to the ...
Twilight of a Duchess: The Last Living Mitford Sister Does Manhattan
NEW YORK -- Seventy years ago, a story about one of the Mitford sisters would have been hot political news. Especially a story about one of the two fascist sisters (Diana and Unity), or one about the communist sister (Jessica). The novelist sister (Nancy) made fewer headlines but sold a lot of books. As Deborah Mitford Cavendish, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, reminded a large audience at the Frick museum last night, every time their mother, Lady Redesdale, saw a headline beginning "Peer's Daughter," she knew one of the children was in trouble again. And trouble they were, and terribly ...
Gary Cooper in Red Lipstick: The Two Sides of Norman Rockwell
The much-publicized exhibition "Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell From the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (through Jan. 2, 2011) can be enjoyed on at least a couple of levels. I, of course, prefer the subversive interpretation. I am one of those readers who prefers the bloody-minded Robert Frost of "Design" and "Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same" to the kindly old white-maned Yankee bard cherished by my third-grade teacher, Miss Martin -- all the while admiring Frost for being able to appeal to the both of us. Likewise I see ...
Samaritan in a Beemer: "The Blind Side" and American Culture
Ah, the complacencies of Netflix. Thanks to the blessed delays built into the DVD-by-mail system, I was spared until now from seeing John Lee Hancock's "The Blind Side," which my Politics Daily colleague Mary C. Curtis wrote about elegantly and cogently on the occasion of Sandra Bullock's back-to-back Oscar win and marital woes. Mary clearly disliked the film, but if her respectful treatment of it is any indication, it didn't make her blow a gasket. I, on the other hand, have gasket parts all over my living room. It isn't Sandra Bullock's fault: she won the Oscar and a raft of lesser film ...
Prince William to Marry? Can He Escape the Wales Curse?
Last week on her blog, Tina Brown let us know about a mysterious two-day gap in the Buckingham Palace diaries, which Brown interpreted to mean that come June, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II would announce to the world the engagement of her grandson Prince William of Wales to his longtime girlfriend. That would be Kate Middleton, the most photographed English lass since William's mother captured the world's imagination in the early '80s. Brown predicts that after a June announcement, there will be a November wedding, probably at Westminster Abbey. Rumor also has it that the queen has been ...
Harold Ford 'Stonewalled' Into Withdrawing?
On the New York Times op-ed page and on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday, Harold Ford Jr., did what many New Yorkers feared he would do if elected to Kirsten Gillibrand's U.S. Senate seat: he made the weaker appear the stronger cause. He prevaricated. He dissembled. He put the best face on an embarrassing situation -- an important skill for a politician, but this particular politician was seeking to explain not why he was running, but why he was not running a race he nevertheless insists he could have won. It's pretty well known by now that Ford, erstwhile U.S. representative from Tennessee, ...
Deserted Village: Could Wal-Mart Save My Midwestern Hometown?
"These were thy charms -- but all these charms are fled." -- Oliver Goldsmith, "The Deserted Village" I can't put my finger on what, exactly, happened to my hometown. Or in my hometown. See, there's nothing happening in or to my hometown. I can't isolate one reason for its current state of torpor, even desolation. All I know is that when I left for college in 1976, it . . . I think the word is "bustled." Unlike many small towns in the Midwest, Mount Carmel, Ill., is not built around a courthouse square; rather, it is centered on a long main street -- Market Street -- that leads to and from ...
Get On Down, Moses: The Exodus and American History
Review of Bruce Feiler, America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story (New York: William Morrow, 2009). 368 pages. $26.99. Bruce Feiler must have had a great many unused notes on Moses lying around after he finished his best-selling "Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land through the Five Books of Moses." I honestly can think of no other reason for his coming out with "America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story," which resembles nothing so much as a heavily padded term paper -- padded with dialogue and narrative, that is, not with documentation -- by a student whose teacher taught him the ...
Hissy Fit over Obama's Nobel: We Wanted to Text Our Votes to Oslo?
Yes, Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize, and everyone, everyone, seems to be sputtering. The Republican National Committee has issued a new dumb statement having nothing to do with the issue at hand, and even the president's supporters -- almost to a man and woman, if my early-morning survey of the media is accurate -- seem to be asking whether Obama "deserves" it. What, after all, has the president "accomplished" so far in the arena of world peace? Shouldn't the Norwegians, well, wait awhile before honoring such a new and untried player on the international stage? Further -- and I ...
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