Word: egos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When it comes to the crimes of unbridled ego and bearing false witness, writers are habitual offenders. At the age of 13, Briony Tallis is a born writer. The intricate English girl at the center of Atonement (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday; 351 pages; $26) is a self-regarding child, the kind who keeps a toy farm in her bedroom with all the animals pointing toward her. Eager to superintend the lives of those around her, she believes that through her powers of invention and language, "an unruly world could be made just so." In a complicated way, she turns...
...ignorant of E.T.’s presence far longer than she realistically could (a scene in which her daughter blatantly announces a speaking, moving E.T.’s proximity to her requires the mother to be improbably dense); the kindly scientist, who serves solely as a personal ego boost for Elliot; and the evil, E.T.-chasing authorities, who are masked, helmeted, shot at waist level or otherwise faceless...
While there are always better films that don’t receive nominations, the size of the budget (or the director’s ego) isn’t the only determining factor. From the Academy President’s introductory speech to the montage of recently deceased actors to the lifetime achievement honorees, there’s some sense of celebrating art for the sake of art—or at least of celebrating film as something more than disposable entertainment. Why else include an award for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short Subject, when the four-hour...
...Irving Hoffman might not have been so peeved if Lehman hadn't borrowed the Steve Dallas subplot from an infamous episode in the lives of Winchell and his daughter Walda. (Walda Winchell - how's that for ego extension?) To judge from Neil Gabler's account in his excellent biography, "Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity," Bill Cahn was no apple-cheeked beacon of cool jazz and high ethics. He was a hustler who had done time for vagrancy and petty larceny, was busted for going AWOL during the War and was discharged after being diagnosed with severe hysteria...
...movie script improves on the novelette in two basic ways: by what's added (the whipcrack pungency of Odets' dialogue) and what's missing. Sidney no longer has a souring affair with J.J.'s secretary. (The boy is all ego, not libido; he's too busy screwing his clients to waste time screwing a secretary.) Also gone are the interior monologues, and good riddance; Sidney has no soul to confide to us. But he has a handsome line of patter - a slick pitch (most likely a spitter) for shoddy merchandise. He stops you on the street, talks fast, and suddenly...