This week Philip Seymour Hoffman, Woody Allen and Bill Nye were all in the news along with Green Day, The Beatles and George Zimmerman.
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:
A.O. Scott:
“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.”
Aaron Sorkin writing in TIME:
“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 Continue reading “Click Bait: Woody Allen, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Nye”
Are there actually millennials who are unaware of The Beatles, Beatlemania and their influence on popular culture in the 20th Century? Almost no other band in rock history has endured and maintained their popularity and legacy across generations quite like The Beatles. And yet despite being some of the most documented individuals of all time, there’s somehow still a need for yet another Beatles documentary complete with more “never before seen footage,” as if any could possibly exist.