quick review: my week with marilyn

Much ado is made of Sir Laurence Olivier’s surliness towards Marilyn in My Week With Marilyn, but the reading is unfair to Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and symptomatic of the obsessive worship ladled on the actress. As portrayed by Michelle Williams in a script based on memoirs by Collin Clark, Marilyn is a talented but undisciplined actress whose work ethic consists of arriving late, flubbing scenes, and perpetually deferring to the acting coach who clings to her like a security blanket.


 It’s arguable whether or not we’re expected to side with those characters in such awe of Marilyn they excuse her unprofessional behaviour, using those moments when her talent is constructively unleased as a glossy rationale. The film’s directorial leanings, tethered to its character’s reverence for Marilyn, certainly strives to include viewers in the genuflections. But for my part I’m with Olivier in putting Marilyn’s star power in a critical perspective. That perspective is further supported by Michelle Williams’ performance, which is certainly evocative and possessed of greater power than Meryl Streep’s impersonation of Margaret Thatcher. Credible as a source of fascination, the portrait of Monroe that emerges from Williams is of a damaged and damaging woman who lacked control over her sexual charisma, and the persona that emerges from it, unless focused through the lens of a camera. Although too innocent to be intentionally malicious, this version of Monroe acts as libido’s wrecking ball. That the film is willing to excuse the collateral damage, whether in the way she ultimately leaves the film’s protagonist or her lack of professionalism, is a symptom of the film’s inability to maintain a biographical detachment from its subject. The result is a superficial film, compelling for its performances but glib in its psychology and narrative.

review - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Director Geoff Ritchie’s first attempt to set afoot the game of re-tuning Sherlock Holmes as the protagonist of an action-buddy movie proved entertaining but unworthy of the Great Detective, an impression unchanged after a second viewing and the benefit of time. The effort to draw on previously marginalized aspects of the character, though interesting, presented a confused vision that indulged the worst tendencies of Hollywood spectacles: much loudness, little substance. Despite the undeniable chemistry of the film’s leads, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, and an attractive production, the film delivered not a compelling revision but an exaggerated blockbuster confection filled with overtorqued action, overcooked humour, and a plot better suited to an episode of Scooby Doo. That it was nevertheless more entertaining than it deserved to be speaks to how well-made the film was; the problem rested in translating Ritchie’s vision of the character into a faithful script.


Picking up where the first film left off, with Moriarty coming out of the shadows to become Holmes’ direct antagonist, A Game of Shadows achieves the successful tuning Ritchie aims for.  In part, that success is due to Jared Harris’ marvelous interpretation of Moriarty, a seemingly innocuous college professor who conveys a malicious criminal intelligence not through bombast but through softly spoken words. But the bulk of the credit goes to the script by Kieran Mulroney and Michele Mulroney, which successfully achieves in tone and balance what the previous film, written by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg, could only hint at. Action supplements rather than overwhelms intellect in this film, and genuine drama underlines the comical elements, resulting in a Sherlock Holmes we can credibly accept as both master detective and action hero, along with a Watson who is both an eminently worthy comrade-in-arms and a good bloke in his own right. The thrilling, high-stakes cat-and-mouse plot delivers on the intense struggle between two equal but opposing minds, while delivering fun little moments highlighting the enduring, though somewhat chafing, friendship between Holmes and Watson. 


A genuine and all-to-rare pleasure is how women in the film aren’t relegated to the status of distressed damsels, but are courageous, clever, and valuable participants in the narrative. Noomi Rapace, who memorably played Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, plays a gypsy who, despite being relegated to a supporting role, nonetheless commands attention and displays a fierce streak of womanly independence that demonstrates that “supporting” need not be “subordinate.” Also refreshing is Watson’ wife Mary, smartly played by Kelly Reilly and presented as a sharp who stands her own ground. A valuable player as Holmes works the game against Moriarty, she is not given the thankless task of fretting over her husband, but allowed to contribute in the intellectual effort to defeat the criminal mastermind. Where the trend in Hollywood is to demonstrate gender parity by presenting women capable of violence equal to that of men, Ritchie and his screenwriters here offer a more functional equivalence. 


All in all, a superior effort…and a far more convincing perspective on the Great Detective than even Steven Moffat could achieve in his ill-conceived 21st Century Sherlock Holmes series, Sherlock.

thoughts on the bank of Apple's money problem

Pity poor Apple; the company has a $100 billion stockpile of cash that it only now has figured out what to do with now that Tim Cook is CEO - pay out dividends and buy back stocks over a three-year period. From the LA Times:

The company said it will pay shareholders $2.65 per share each quarter beginning in Apple's fiscal fourth quarter, which starts July 1. The company said it hopes the dividend will make Apple stock a more attractive investment to wider base of investors, including those looking to make regular income from owning the stock.
...
In a conference call with investors this morning, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the company would spend $10 billion on a three-year stock repurchase program. Apple is buying back shares largely to be able to award more stock to its employees without diluting the value of existing shares, which happens when a company slices itself into a larger number of smaller shares.

The company said it would spend about $45 billion on the combined initiatives over the next three years.

Good news, then, for those people who want to make money without working for it - "those looking to make regular income from owning the stock." Apple's got your bank account covered. And what of the other $55 billion? No mention of that.


While the business news is abuzz with talk of dividends, the real issue goes unexamined; how did Apple amass such a large cash stockpile in the first place? Being stingy to investors is one answer. Apparently, Apple hasn't issued a dividend payment in more than a decade according to Yahoo!Finance. But let's consider alternative explanations, beginning with the following reminder:


profit = price - cost


Alternative 1: Apple's massive profits arise from a cost that is too low relative to what its products sell for, which means that the manufacturers are being short-changed ("exploited" in revolutionary-speak). Considering that Apple has succeeded in selling pricey products, it seems reasonable to conclude that customers at least tacitly accept that the high prices reflect the high value of the products. I'd argue that Apple depends, in part, on the high prices to drive the impression of a premium brand, raising the question of whether the market would rate Apple so highly if it offered dirt-cheap products.


Alternative 2: The manufacturers are reasonably paid, and it is the price that is too high relative to the cost. In this case, it means that Apple customers are being overcharged for the products they buy. Cue Steve Jobs real marketing genius; persuading people to dish out more money than they should for products they don't really need.


The overall conclusion is: whether Apple is scrooging investors, underpaying manufacturers, or overcharging customers, its $100 billion of stockpiled cash is the result of an exploitative business strategy, aided and abetted by an uncritical customer base susceptible to hype. Some would gush about how that makes Apple a capitalist success story. I'd argue that by extracting considerably more money from the economy than it puts in, it makes Apple the poster child of exactly what's wrong with our capitalist economy and consumerist culture.

The Lorax: Seuss, Speech, Marketing, and Orange as the New Green

The Lorax is not a great film, nor is it the best adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s book that one might envision. It is, however, as gently entertaining as it is unapologetic in its stance; a colourful, silly, melancholy, hopeful, stinging and, ultimately, accessible film.

Read my review of The Lorax at The Front Page Online.

dear dead person: you sucked and we’re better off without you

There’s an aphorism in Alice: Madness Returns that seems particularly apropos about this piece by Matt Taibi on the death of pop-conservative agent provocateur Andrew Breitbart: If we can speak ill of the living, why not the dead? It’s almost absurd to consider the taboo erected against a person once they’re dead, as if somehow being critical, if not celebratory, would do some incredible harm to the deceased. I’m not sure how, exactly; the dead are beyond the influence of the living, beyond offense, beyond hurt. Yet it is perfectly acceptable to be vile towards living beings, when the choice between civility and barbarity really does make all the difference. So when Matt Taibi dishes out scorn and grudging praise on the occasion of Andrew Breitbart's death, while calling out his vitriolic critics for conveniently neglecting Breitbart’s scatological treatment of Ted Kennedy’s death, he neatly illustrates how death is used as an inoculation against criticism.


Here’s the thing: all our funerary rituals, all our eulogies, all our obituaries – these are for our benefit. They are the means by which we grapple with the great inescapable, and they say more about us than they could about the dead.  Although I think it is distasteful to be rude and crass towards the death, it’s only because I think it’s distasteful to be rude and crass towards the living. Certainly, impolite displays to hostilities are not respectful gestures – towards those who mourn the deceased. But while civility should be maintained and compassion should be nurtured in all that we say and do, that doesn’t mean mollycoddling a person’s legacy once they have passed away, or expressing insincere grief over their death. In other words, feel free to say about the dead whatever you’d say about the living.