I read a lot of stuff, and not all of it makes it to my social media feed. “Click Bait” is my weekly roundup of links pertaining to movies, politics, culture and anything else I found generally interesting this week.
RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman
The outpouring of love and sadness that followed Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death last Sunday is not rare for an actor, but it is rare for an actor such as he, an actor better known for villainous, repugnant character actor parts, for the mourning period to be so fervent for so long and for him to have gone in such a horrible way, not unlike another great actor’s career cut criminally too short in much the same way, Heath Ledger.
I likely first noticed Hoffman in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” in which he could not look less like his supposed brother Ethan Hawke, but was in control and was simply scary good. It wasn’t long before I started seeing his face in half of the great American movies of the last two decades, most memorably for me in “The Master” and in his fiery scene stealing moment in “Punch Drunk Love.”
There have been a lot of eulogies written, perhaps why I didn’t write one myself. Here are clips from some of the better tributes I read:
“Pathetic, repellent, undeserving of sympathy. Mr. Hoffman rescued them from contempt precisely by refusing any easy route to redemption. He did not care if we liked any of these sad specimens. The point was to make us believe them and to recognize in them — in him.”
Scott Tobias and the rest of The Dissolve:
“He set off small detonations whenever he appeared, and instantly amplified the stakes. He was the most electric actor of his generation.”
Derek Thompson in The Atlantic:
“He could puff himself up and play larger than life, but his specialty was to find the quiet dignity in life-sized characters—losers, outcasts, and human marginalia.”
“So it’s in that spirit that I’d like to say this: Phil Hoffman, this kind, decent, magnificent, thunderous actor, who was never outwardly “right” for any role but who completely dominated the real estate upon which every one of his characters walked, did not die from an overdose of heroin — he died from heroin. We should stop implying that if he’d just taken the proper amount then everything would have been fine.”
And this troubling report about Hoffman and his appearance in the remaining “Hunger Games” movies
Woody Allen/Dylan Farrow Scandal
The Dylan Farrow op-ed was rightfully harsh and powerful to read, but what I disliked about it was how she called out actors like Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin just for working with the man, and that as an indirect result, Blanchett might not win her Oscar for “Blue Jasmine”? Then I read this piece that expressed the frustration with columnists pushing their own agendas t0 anyone who might take sides. It’s right in saying that it’s not uncommon to express some healthy skepticism, and that some columnist shouldn’t accuse others of engendering a rape culture as a result.
Now Woody Allen has put out a response (and a fairly convincing one with evidence and sensical details) to Dylan Farrow’s piece, and I’d like to think this will be the end of it, but I’m sure it won’t.
Did the demise of video stores kill “word of mouth”?
This Dissolve piece raised an interesting point in how despite being entirely connected to any and all media through the web, the idea of “word of mouth” as generated by asking your local video store nerd or someone equivalent has changed, if not lessened. I commented on the piece if you care to dig through it, but my thought is that there are so many options today that word of mouth has to fight harder for anything obscure or interesting to “break out of that movie nerd bubble,” as the piece says.
The Beatles 50th Anniversary on Ed Sullivan Show
It’s so great to see people in the heat of Beatlemania yet again 50 years after their appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. It seems as though there’s an opportunity to pay tribute to the Beatles every year, but this one, their arrival in America, seems right. I’ve been fortunate enough to watch the many performances on Letterman this week, and I look forward to watching the big tribute tonight. The Dissolve paid tribute to the week by selecting “A Hard Day’s Night” as their Movie of the Week, and it couldn’t be more appropriate.
Bill Nye Debates Creationist Ken Ham
I expected to walk out of Ken Ham’s debate hating the man’s guts, but although I think Bill Nye demolished him in terms of the facts and evidence he presented, I respected Ham by the end of it. Ham has a point when he says “science” has been “hijacked by secularists,” even if that wording is somewhat aggressive. And his arguments were built mostly on interpretations of Genesis and the Bible rather than strictly on moral grounds, ad hominems or faulty rationalizations about how we should teach “both sides.” Nye said it best when he said after Ham’s presentation, “Thank you Ken. I learned something.”
This piece on Slate was also an interesting response to the whole debate.
I was introduced to Green Day not through this album but through “American Idiot” 10 years later. That album felt to my 14-year-old self the way “Dookie” felt to kids then, and it eventually got me to love “Dookie” with equal passion. I can only hope that album gets as much of a tribute 10 years from now as this one does.
Why is College Dating So Screwed Up?
I don’t expect to link to any more Cosmo articles any time soon, and I’m not in college any more either, but this article has a lot of truth to it. The author Charlotte Lieberman explains that as we’re all trying to be so cool, casual and cavalier through digital platforms, “Whoever cares less wins,” and it results in people not respecting one another or giving honest answers about what they want. I can relate to that in a dozen ways, but what I can’t relate to is Lieberman’s idea that men hold most of the power in these scenarios. She cites Harvard frat guys who run “social groups” in which they only invite the hottest of women to parties to pick and choose from as though this were the universal norm and that the dynamic of power and lack of respect doesn’t run both ways.
Paul Krugman’s column on the Affordable Care Act and an initially confusing report by the Congressional Budget Office won the week for me. I had someone tell me I can’t even fathom how comfortable my generation will be knowing they have healthcare coverage and security in order to whichever job I please, and that sentiment is echoed here. But here’s the phrase from his column I liked best:
“Think about it. We had the nonexistent death panels. We had false claims that the Affordable Care Act will cause the deficit to balloon. We had supposed horror stories about ordinary Americans facing huge rate increases, stories that collapsed under scrutiny. And now we have a fairly innocuous technical estimate misrepresented as a tale of massive economic damage.”
Fuck George Zimmerman and the Culture He Rode in On
“It’s not enough that Zimmerman killed Trayvon in cold blood, not enough that he walked away from it without being arrested immediately, not enough that it took thousands of people across the country marching and protesting to bring charges against him, not enough that he was acquitted and not enough that he remains free to accumulate more domestic violence charges. No, he has to also become a celebrity, built on his “career” of killing black children and abusing women.”
Kids, Gun Safety and a Predictably Outraged NRA
Here’s the story: 20/20 did a study in which kids who received the NRA’s gun safety training were put into controlled environments where an unloaded gun was improperly stored and kept track of how long it took for the kids to either alert an adult or touch it and point it at one another. Predictably, the NRA hates that the results were inevitably depressing and troubling. They have a point in saying the 20/20 piece is somewhat sensational and an example of journalists making the news, but what the hell is wrong with these guys?