Word: gooding
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...Jacob is supposed to be 20. The movie includes a joke about Tiger Woods sexting, which places it squarely in 2010; if Jacob was conceived in early 1986 he should be 23. But whatever - Hot Tub Time Machine is not a durable good. If I saw it again tomorrow I would probably dwell on its lapses in continuity, its problematic plot seemingly held together with Silly Putty and whether, cinematically speaking, one really needs so many close-ups of dog poop, vomit and suspiciously manly fluids...
...stars John Cusack, who, despite a natural tendency toward the dour, was one of the most delightful things to come out of the '80s. With the exception of 2000's High Fidelity, Cusack spent the aughts in a serious rut (Serendipity, Martian Child), so it's good to see him come back, even in something this ludicrous. He plays Adam, the semistraight man of the enterprise: reasonably successful in business but disastrous in love (his girlfriend just moved out) and in friendship, having long ago ceased calling his old pals Nick (The Office's very funny Craig Robinson...
...well, duh response - "Black!" - sends all four shrieking to the safety of their room. It's funny, but in the present, Jackson isn't of ambiguous color, he's actually gone - and so the joke hangs in the air for an uncertain second. It's a reminder of how good it is to be able to laugh at the passage of time, because otherwise, you're crying...
...Indeed, Richards and his partners got a bit of unexpected good news in mid-March. A newly released report uncovered accounting tricks at Lehman Brothers, causing many to compare the defunct investment bank, which failed in September 2008, to Enron. That put the energy company, at least briefly, in the headlines again. And Lehman Brothers is in the play as well, portrayed by two actors in an overcoat as a Siamese twin. "It's a play about our society and the way it attracts greed and corruption," says Richards. "Enron was the beginning." (See a TIME cover story about Enron...
...chance. Most of the book is an account of how we decide whether behavior is good or not. In Smith's telling, the most important factor is our sympathy for one another. "To restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature," he writes. But he goes on to say that "the commands and laws of the Deity" (he seems to be referring to the Ten Commandments) are crucial guides to conduct too. Then, in what seems to be a strange detour from those earthly and divine parameters, he argues that the invisible hand...