All this was probably a sign from The Big Man to take a break from the Times, but I didn't, and so I finally came across the following movie review:
With their flicker editing, narrative drive and revved-up soundtracks, these are movies made for plugged-in, hard-wired audiences for whom multitasking isn't a modern complaint but an objective fact. In other words, anyone weaned on MTV, Michael Bay, the Internet, PlayStation and commercial music and doesn't see what the big deal is.
Sorry, I accidentally pasted the paragraph that's in every summer movie review, ever. This time it's talking about the new Pitt/Jolie vehicle, Smokin' Pokin':
The undernourished screenplay was Simon Kinberg's thesis project at Columbia University, where it's possible he came across Stanley Cavell's book "Pursuits of Happiness," about a cinematic subgenre the Harvard professor calls "the comedy of remarriage." Such 1930's and early 1940's comedies as "The Awful Truth" and "The Philadelphia Story," Mr. Cavell writes, ask the question, "What does a happy marriage sound like?"
Emphasis mine, as is the derisive sigh. (I had a friend in Third Grade who read too much Garfield, and would actually say the word "Sigh." He also pronounced the last two letters in "Arrgh!")
Yes, it is possible said Columbia thesis guy came across such a book in Low Library. But perhaps it's also possible that he went to Kim's Video, where he found a copy of True Lies, after which he decided to write a script that departed about as far from James Cameron's movie as Marshmallow Mateys depart from Lucky Charms.
And yet, did God not tell us, "All things are possible?" (Luke 18:27). Does LFO not tell us "Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets?" I also think it's fly when girls stob by for the summer. For the summer.
