Word: dystopias
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...worst is on display. In her new book of essays, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy (which for some reason has its title and subtitle reversed in the U.S.), the country isn't merely sundered into the worlds of the rich and the poor. It is a lawless dystopia, plagued by rapacity and violence: "In eastern India, bauxite and iron-ore mining is destroying whole ecosystems, turning fertile land into desert," she writes in the introduction. And in an essay, about the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat: "Women were stripped, gang-raped; parents were bludgeoned to death...
...this for New York in the mid-'70s: from its desperate blight emerged some pretty sharp movies. Back then, children, Hollywood was actually interested in reflecting contemporary society, and this poster child for urban dystopia provided the perfect setting. A raft of films - Serpico, Death Wish, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver - navigated that stinky Styx with the expertise of a champion white-water rafter. A lesser but still pertinent entry was The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which starred Robert Shaw as the criminal mastermind and Walter Matthau as the transit detective trying to talk...
With the exception of Johnson's remarkable run, the few successful 100-day sprints have been a triumph of vision over substance. Roosevelt, Reagan and Obama changed the national mood more than anything else - and moods can change back quickly, especially in our overripe, overwired cable-news dystopia. As impressive a start as Obama has had, these 100 days could come to seem an overambitious and naive presage of disaster if the President's financial policies are inadequate to meet the crisis; his budget proposals are gutted by Congress; and his attempts to leave Iraq, fight in Afghanistan and negotiate...
...there are for a project like this." Temporary exhibits change about every six months; now running (through June) is Constant World, an installation by Brooklyn-based artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, which combines sculpture, electronics and video for a culturally savvy discourse on the thin line between utopia and dystopia. Of course, you could ignore all that and just go up to your room; there are 90 of them, stocked with customized iPods, specially distilled bourbon and sterling-silver mint-julep cups. But even there you'll be surrounded by original art. That's the point...
...minutes. If Tykwer's use of pixelated photos, split screens and cartooning in Lola gets you thinking that The International will offer a fizzily anarchic reimagination of the thriller genre, fuhggedaboutit. Running or stumbling a full two hours, this is a medium-IQ sample of spy dystopia - dour, sit-throughable and generically entertaining...