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During Frieze New York, VIPs given access to the fair’s courtesy BMWs had a chance to hear a sound piece by Rick Moody called The Undependable Global Positioning System inside the fair which is pretty much what its title suggests: a robotic voice—similar to one that would provide directions on a GPS system—reciting the text of Mr. Moody’s story of the same name, which features rather unreliable navigational aids.
The work imagines what would happen if a GPS system had human flaws: the UGPS is not only spatially lost but existentially lost as well. Moreover, Mr. Moody’s humorous work bemoans the condition of our “rushed digital life” in which the experience of being lost is, well, being lost. The project is still in development, but right now it has its own website, which features a preview of an application that might become a more elaborate UGPS. Read More
Jamie Dimon
But not all is grim: After all, it’s Internet Week in New York, an annual tradition where new developers swim upstream (or eastward) in order to mate with our city’s finest tech-groupies. This force of nature is bookended by giant parties, where celebrities like Tori Spelling, Dylan McDermott and Ashton Kutcher have all been known to make an appearance. Mix liberally with free alcohol and stir: Nine months later, a whole new crop of techie bubble bursters are born. (You’ll be able to tell from the surge of Instagramed infant pictures on Facebook.) And the circle of life continues.
We know of at least one founder who’s probably not feeling very frisky, with Facebook’s nail-biting IPO speculation at a $100 billion valuation for investors. If that mind-boggling sum makes you dizzy, just imagine how social network titan Mark Zuckerburg is feeling, knowing that he’ll actually have to develop a sustainable long-term business model once the company goes public. Mr. Zuckerberg never completed his computer science degree either, but he doesn’t need the resume-builder. We, on the other hand, are abandoning prop trading and our ambitions to run a giant Internet portal to learn PHP. Hey, it worked well for Mr. Zuckerberg. Just don’t ask us to wear a hoodie.
Mike Bloomberg blamed the press for controversy over stop-and-frisk.
Christine Quinn on criticism from the lefty blogosphere: “I don’t work for them. My job is not to make some random no-name blogger happy.”
Charlie King with not be the new chairman of the state Democratic Party.
Dick Gottfried said that legalizing medical marijuana here will not turn New York into California. Read More
Gac Filipaj fled the war-torn Balkans in the early 1990s, as the former nation of Yugoslavia broke apart amid horrifying carnage. He came to New York, where he found work as a busboy. Before long, the onetime law school student got a job as a janitor at Columbia University—and if you think he wound up in Morningside Heights by accident, you’re mistaken. He cleaned toilets and swept the floors by day so that he could attend classes for free at night or whenever possible.
On Sunday, Mr. Filipaj received his bachelor of arts degree in classics during Columbia’s commencement exercises. It took the 52-year-old immigrant more than 10 years to finish his studies, which required him to read some old texts in Latin and Greek.
Gac Filipaj witnessed terrible cruelty in his native land. In New York, he found a new life, as millions of other immigrants have. He also found a city and an institution willing to give him a chance to realize his dreams. He told reporters that his favorite philosopher and writer is Seneca, the Roman statesman whose letters he studied at Columbia. “Difficulties strength the mind,” Seneca once wrote, “as labor does the body.”
Gac Filipaj survived great difficulty.
His mind and new city are stronger as a result.
A recent article in The New York Times cast a much-needed light on the handling of child-abuse allegations within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Brooklyn and within the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. The report contained several disturbing revelations, including evidence that the families of some victims have been shunned within their community for having reported allegations to law-enforcement officials.
The report also found that Mr. Hynes has refused to publicize the names of defendants from the ultra-Orthodox community because of privacy concerns. And yet he has been aggressive in publicizing the names of others accused of child abuse and related crimes. The double standard also is deeply troubling.
Allegations of child abuse have shaken many communities in recent years, from the Catholic Church around the world to the campus of Penn State University to the insular ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Wherever people in authority failed to do the right thing, victims were doubly victimized, and perpetrators were allowed to either walk free or, worse, commit more crimes against children.
Child abuse is a criminal offense that requires the intervention of secular law-enforcement officials. Quite simply, recent history has shown that bishops, rabbis and legendary football coaches are not prepared to deal with these horrific crimes. Their instinct is to cover up, to protect institutions rather than expose wrongdoing. Families who have been violated require support, not scorn. The Times report indicates, however, that within Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox communities, parents who reported allegations of child abuse to the district attorney rather than a rabbinical authority were treated as outcasts. The Times report noted that Mr. Hynes has never “publicly opposed” the community’s position that allegations of abuse must be brought to a rabbi first, leaving it to the rabbi to decide whether or not to bring them to Mr. Hynes’ attention.
There is no question that Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox communities are the very definition of insular, and that members of those communities worry about the ramifications of going to authorities with evidence of shocking crimes. What will outsiders think?
Discretion, then, is important. But discretion cannot mean a cover-up. It cannot mean a double standard. And it cannot mean placing the image of an institution or a community ahead of simple justice.
Mr. Hynes’s office established a special outreach effort to the ultra-Orthodox community several years ago, as the office came under criticism for its handling (or non-handling) of abuse cases. That was a step in the right direction. But Mr. Hynes and community leaders must make a greater effort to ensure that families do not fear going to authorities with evidence of crimes. And Mr. Hynes ought to treat defendants with a single standard, one that is central to the American justice system: Suspects are innocent until proven guilty. The discretion that Mr. Hynes shows to ultra-Orthodox suspects should govern his treatment of all suspects. If he wishes to take bows, he should do so after convictions. Not before.
How and why President Obama chose to announce his support for marriage equality is far less important than the announcement itself. The top elected official in the land is now on record in support of same-sex marriage. Who says progress is impossible?
History may well take note of a satisfying political narrative implicit in the president’s decision. It is impossible to imagine Barack Obama in the White House without thinking of those civil rights activists, famous and obscure, who fought for racial equality in the 1960s. And so the child of one civil rights movement has empowered another. That can hardly be a coincidence.
Of course, Mr. Obama’s announcement does not mean that marriage equality is a done deal. The voters of North Carolina, not to mention the governor of the state of New Jersey, have made it clear that they are not about to follow the leadership of New York and several other states in removing discriminatory practices in the issuance of marriage licenses.
But the president’s principled position, made in the midst of a difficult re-election campaign, clearly has moved the conversation forward. Critics no doubt will attempt to demonize the president and marriage equality supporters as Election Day approaches, but their strategy may (and should) backfire. After all, Dick Cheney, the grouchy pit bull of 21st-century Republicanism, supports marriage equality as well—indeed, he announced his support years before Mr. Obama did.
Mr. Cheney is hardly the only conservative Republican who supports marriage equality. Here in New York, where residents generally have good reason to suspect the worst of their elected officials, support for this civil rights issue can be found on both sides of the aisle. That speaks to the justice of the cause, and to the open-mindedness of some cultural conservatives who have re-evaluated their opposition to equality and voted accordingly. Just as New York became a leader on issues of social justice in the early 20th Century, the Empire State again has a chance to be both an example of progress and an advocate for broader change in the culture. New York’s public officials, led by Governor Cuomo, already have passed and signed marriage equality into law. Society has not collapsed; indeed, New York is a more-just place because of same-sex marriage.
So let New York add its powerful voice in politics and in culture to the ongoing national debate about justice and marriage. Let New York show that the civil right to a marriage license issued by a government agency does not, in any way, infringe on the rights of religious bodies that do not recognize same-sex marriage. New York’s commitment to marriage equality should be a source of pride, now more than ever. We don’t often get a chance to cheer for principled positions in politics. But on this issue, we can and we do.
Dark Shadows is outdated, unwelcome and unbearable. Based on a cornball daytime soap opera from the 1960s about an 18th-century vampire living in a 20th-century town on the coast of Maine, it’s so silly that you’d have to be 10 years old to find the boo factor.
Tim Burton, the director who never grew up, and his favorite star Johnny Depp, who is both fearless and overrated, follow the Gothic nightmare pranks of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd with more gross and dross in this cinematic aberration that gives things from the grave a dullness they don’t deserve. Good actors do find themselves drawn to this kind of fiddle-faddle. And why not? It must be fun to bare fangs dripping with boysenberry pancake syrup and fly into crystal chandeliers that wreak havoc on haunted house sets that look like Hollywood even though they’re shot in London. The plot scarcely survives another rehash, but there might be somebody who had too much taste in the 1960s to watch Jonathan Frid creep his way through the spiderwebs of Collinwood Manor in makeup of Chinese rice powder. (As a Tim Burton in-joke, he makes a guest appearance as a party guest here, shortly before he bit the dust for good in real life.) He was Barnabas Collins, whose family moved from Liverpool to Collinsport, Maine in 1752 and established a fishing empire. Unfortunately, he spurned the romantic advances of an evil witch named Angelique, who cast a spell that turned Barnabas into a vampire, drove his lover Josette to her death from the top of a cliff, and then buried him alive for 200 years. So much for background.
Cut to 1970. Construction workers dig up the casket of the mildewed Barnabas, who appears in the body of Johnny Depp, whose ancient Dracula cloak starts a fashion trend. Times have changed, and most of the fun comes from watching Barnabas trying to adjust to pop tunes, Iggy Pop posters, lava lamps and Erich Segal’s Love Story. He thinks the McDonald’s logo is a sign from Mephistopheles. In the role played on the old TV show by Joan Bennett, Michelle Pfeiffer is now the dowager of the family that has seen its fortune depleted and Collinwood Manor fall into ruins. She does the best she can to control her useless brother, Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), his neurotic 10-year-old son, David (Gully McGrath), and her gruesome daughter Carolyn (Chloe Moretz), who may or may not be a werewolf. There is also David’s chain-smoking, pill-popping psychiatrist, Dr. Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter in a flaming red wig), a cretinous caretaker (Jackie Earle Haley) and little David’s lovely nanny (Bella Heathcote), the reincarnation of Barnabas’ dead Josette. Lurking in the shadows is the 200-year-old Angelique (sexy Eva Green, who steals every scene). Barnabas takes one look at his old nemesis and screeches things like “Succubus of Satan!” and “Harlot of the Devil!” It’s supposed to be a Halloween party with comic overtones, but the script by Seth Grahame-Smith is stupider than The Addams Family. He’s got two more dorky creep shows on the way: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the soon-to-be-released Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Gosh, we’re lucky.
It doesn’t get any sillier than this, but I’m sure the Burton-Depp team will think of something. This time around the cemetery, the writing is stale, the jokes are corny, the blood as watery as recycled communion wine. To be charitable, I did laugh a few times. Especially when the decadent, dysfunctional Collins family drives through the town in a classic Chevy station wagon to the music from A Summer Place. There are also guest appearances by Christopher Lee, who has played plenty of bloodsuckers himself back in the day, and by aging wacko rocker Alice Cooper, who looks more like a vampire than Barnabas and is much too old for this kind of kid stuff. Overacting like a road company Bela Lugosi in Barbra Streisand glue-on nails and more mascara than Cher, Johnny Depp is about as scary as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Talk about cinema as self-delusion. Dark Shadows is dead on arrival, in more ways than one, and stays that way.
rreed@observer.com
DARK SHADOWS Running Time 113 minutes Written by Seth Grahame-Smith (screenplay) and John August (story) Directed by Tim Burton Starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Eva Green
In the dementedly overproduced and underwhelming action epic Battleship, what promises to be another brainless summer of so-called “blockbusters” takes another giant step backward. The wags already labeling this one “Terminator with water” are on the mark—I have to admit it has moments of noisy glory I couldn’t ignore. As another cookie-cutter ripoff inspired by comic books and video games (this time, Hasbro’s naval-combat pencil and paper-cum-board-turned-video game), you’re better here than with the idiotic Marvel’s The Avengers. To paraphrase a lyric from Guys and Dolls by the great Frank Loesser, “More than that I cannot wish you.”
Skipping through a mass of sci-fi prologue mumbo-jumbo, NASA’s transmission device, which is more powerful than anything known to science, has discovered another planet with the same water, air and climate as Earth. It’s called Planet G and suddenly, faster than a rocket launch, it has declared war, wiping out Hong Kong and heading for Hawaii. In Oahu, where 20,000 Navy men have assembled for the biggest game competition since the invention of the pinball machine, the spaceship strikes, attacking Pearl Harbor, recalling the Japanese air strike that once stun-gunned Franklin D. Roosevelt into military history. This time, the harbor where the U.S.S. Missouri stands as a World War II museum becomes the launch pad for war at sea with … aliens?
Taylor Kitsch, the camera-ready hunk from the Nautilus School of Dramatic Art who just survived the billion-dollar bomb John Carter, plays Lieutenant Alex Hopper, a screw-up of a weapons officer with no experience who takes over the state-of-the-art battleship John Paul Jones when the state-of-the-art U.S.S. Sampson, commanded by his veteran big brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard), is blown to scrap metal by the vastly superior vessels from outer space. Alex is in love with a beautiful physical therapist for disabled combat veterans named Sam (Brooklyn Decker), who is also the daughter of the Commander of the Pacific Fleet (played by Liam Neeson in a cameo of sorts). The admiral thinks Alex has a weak character and poor leadership and even worse decision-making skills, and is on the verge of kicking him out of the Navy. To make matters worse, Alex faces a powerful adversary in Captain Yugi Nagata (Tadanobu Asano), commanding officer of the Japanese destroyer Myoko. Poor Alex has got a lot to prove, with the help of an Army battalion leader and double amputee, played by Col. Gregory D. Gadson, a real-life veteran who lost both legs in Iraq in 2007, various boatswains, engine-room experts and pop star Rihanna, making her screen debut as a sarcastic crewmate and weapons specialist who changes her tune in battle (but, fortunately, does not sing). If you got all that straight, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.
But back to the aliens. Destroying Marine bases, helicopters, jet planes, warships on the sea and radar transmitters in the sky, they must wonder as much as I do, in the middle of an ozone-destroying nuclear war, how Alex’s girlfriend reaches him from a mountain top on her cell phone. It makes no sense why the John Paul Jones is the only destroyer in the Pacific Ocean to battle the alien invasion. “Let’s see if we can buy the world one more day,” says one sailor. “Who talks like that?” is the reply. And then, when they’re blown into ocean foam, the only humans left to come to their rescue, are the old World War II survivors on the 70-year-old floating museum, the U.S.S. Missouri. Even NASA is rendered helpless, but when it comes to Pearl Harbor, this movie asks you to save the patriotic applause for the old tugs. Never mind. It’s not the wooden acting, asinine plot or feebleminded dialogue that keep you awake. It’s the attacking UFOs sending out grinding wheels of fire that look like Good Year tire rims equipped with atomic bombs. Will the old salts called into action one last time to fire on the alien missiles with torpedoes from the 1940s raise Earth’s flag in triumph?
Battleship is dopey, preposterous and unintentionally hilarious in all the wrong places, but as directed by Peter Berg, it is also energetic, fast-moving and bracing. Summer audiences with a high tolerance for stupidity and low expectations will jerk and shake and wince in perfect unison with the cacophonous soundtrack. For artistry look elsewhere, but for inescapable time-wasting entertainment value, search no further than Battleship. rreed@observer.com
BATTLESHIP Running Time 131 minutes Written by Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber Directed by Peter Berg Starring Alexander Skarsgård, Brooklyn Decker and Liam Neeson
Hysteria is Jane Austen with a vibrator—a movie about the invention of the scandalous electro-mechanical device that changed women’s lives forever. Set in the Victorian era of scientific ignorance and cultural Puritanism, its style is still more Restoration comedy than Victorian decadence—postcolonial feminism with a temperament more Austen than Bronte. Nothing to snicker about here. Considering the subject, ripe with titillating possibilities, it’s surprisingly about as sexy as a week-old meat loaf. Tastefully directed by Tanya Wexler, it is a total joy from start to finish.
At the pinnacle of Victorian prudishness, when ignorance and disease were the order of the day, rusty surgical tools were prevalent and bleeding with leeches was a popular treatment for everything from gout to gonorrhea. Hysteria was the term used to diagnose nervous conditions in women suffering every sexual disorder from frigidity to an overstimulated uterus. This is the true story of Dr. Mortimer Granville (played by the charming Hugh Dancy), a progressive doctor devoted to advancing the suppressed sexual pleasure of women, enriched with witty dialogue, elegant production values and an intelligent screenplay that expands the historical canvas of life in London to include class prejudices as well as social hypocrisy. Disillusioned with the medieval practice of medicine in an England of chaos (this is also the year of Jack the Ripper and the Elephant Man), Dr. Granville was ready to denounce his Hippocratic Oath when he found employment as an assistant to Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), an elderly “specialist” experimenting with the treatment of housewives with sex problems and a foremost expert on the subject of “hysteria.” Eschewing warm baths and horseback riding in favor of vaginal massages, his business was already booming. But when the younger, more appealing Dr. Granville develops his own brand of manual finger manipulation, eager patients filled the waiting room with renewed reason to come out of their corsets. What nobody ever thought possible was the mysterious fact that all of these stressed-out women were experiencing something nobody had considered: They were just plain horny!
The result was heaven for the patients, but hell on the doctor’s hand. Suffering from severe cramps and nerve spasms that required the use of a cast, the good doctor turned to a goofy prissy-pot friend with a passion for gadgets named Edmund St. John-Smythe (a hilarious Rupert Everett) to invent a motor-driven stimulus that could be applied to a woman’s lower anatomy without overtaxing the wrist and fingers. The result was nothing short of a revolution. In the plot trajectory, Dr. Granville also attracted the attention of the elderly Dr. Dalrymple’s two daughters: placid, proper, obedient and favorite daughter Emily (Felicity Jones) and headstrong, outspoken Charlotte (a marvelous Maggie Gyllenhaal), a suffragette who disgraces her father by running a settlement house for the impoverished prostitutes of the East End slums. There is evidence galore that the vibrator contributed to the sexual independence of enlightened free-thinkers in the future of liberated women everywhere. Muffled praise of the vibrator eventually gave way to cries of “Heigh-ho, the dildo!”
Instead of provocative prurience, Hysteria brims over with humor and sweetness. Far from dogmatic, it is agreeable, lyrical, carefully scripted and acted with great feeling by an exemplary cast. The film is also an eye-opening footnote to history as it depicts a time so backward that women with libido challenges were declared insane and sent to asylums or punished by court-ordered hysterectomies. Don’t miss the closing credits, displaying a wonderful collection of museum-quality illustrations of changing styles and designs from the mid-19th century to the ugly plastic drug store models of today. The liberating vibrator may have started out in Victorian England, but eventually made it to the Sears Roebuck catalogue and, in the final and funniest scene in the picture, even Buckingham Palace. A clever, quick-witted, informed and terrific movie!
HYSTERIA Running time 100 minutes Written by Stephen Dyer and Jonah Lisa Dyer Directed by Tanya Wexler Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy and Jonathan Pryce