Category Archives: Pop Culture

Code

EnigmaIn a world in which security now means electronic privacy and 128-plus-bit encryption technologies as much as it means a deadbolt on the door of your suburban home, Hollywood has re-imagined historical matters of national security as the province of seminal geeks, crytographers and math geniuses. Witness the probably overrated “A Beautiful Mind” which looks too awful for me to bring myself to see, or the upcoming “Windtalkers,” directed by John Woo, which tells the tale of Native American human code bearers in World War II. Last weekend I saw “Enigma,” the British version of this same conceit — which features a highly qualified cast but unfortunately amounts to little.

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Fan Wars

Atom Films is hosting a competition for fan-made films paying tribute to the Star Wars franchise, many of which are actually quite funny. The whole affair is sponsored by Lucasfilms and being judged by George Lucas himself. The New York Times has a slightly unfair article about Lucasfilms’ disqualification of any film from the competition that didn’t conform to its strict rule allowing ‘spoofs and documentaries only.’ In it, Jim Ward, V.P. of marketing at Lucasfilm utters this amazingly anti-fan comment: “…If in fact somebody is using our characters to create a story unto itself, that’s not in the spirit of what we think fandom is about. Fandom is about celebrating the story the way it is.” In other words: watch, listen and obey.

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Woof

Topdog/UnderdogSuzan-Lori Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog,” another Pulitzer Prize-winner, is excellent, a bracing two-person play starring the amazing Jeffrey Wright and the surprisingly good Mos Def. I saw it last night at the Ambassador Theater (Paul Newman was in the audience too!) and was riveted to my seat.

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Comics as Literature

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & ClayRight now I’m halfway through Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” which is the first fiction I’ve read in about a year. A friend gave it to me as a gift two years ago, but I only picked it up recently. It’s a good read and ambitious in scope, if a little over-rated. What makes it so entertaining is the very grown-up eye it turns to the comic book world, a kind of validation of the wide-eyed passion of geeky, power-starved, adolescent boys everywhere.

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Gazing Backwards

Magnet MagazineThe cover story from the latest issue of Magnet Magazine, which unfortunately does not post its editorial content on its rather thin Web site, tells the tale of that nearly-forgotten, early-nineties musical fad sometimes known as shoegazing. It’s very well-written but also bizarre to read as an historical account, having lived through that time period, having bought those records as they were released, having trekked to the clubs to see those pale, undynamic English people perform that music in the flesh before the mid-nineties swept them away. Most of those records seem insignificant now, or at least too self-conscious and non-committal, but it does make me sentimental to think of a very brief time when the formula was: the weirder the music, the greater the chance for success.

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