Monday Scramble: You've seen the grounds, of course
New at Portico: This week’s book, Walter Kirn’s Lost in the Meritocracy, probably ought not to be as entertaining as it is. On the last page, the author makes a lamentably post-graduate discovery: reading Twain and Dickens for pleasure. What he learned at Princeton can only be called bullshit. The book is horrifying evidence that we in America suffered a Cultural Revolution of our own.
On Friday, I saw Funny People, and I loved it. But it’s extremely unusual nature is somewhat concealed by its romper-room cast. Will this be the picture that makes audiences tell Judd Apatow that they preferred his “earlier, funnier” movies?
In addition to going to the movies every Friday morning (more or less), we’re going to take a good look at DVDs in our home library, also on a weekly basis. It just so happens that we begin with Allen Coulter’s Hollywoodland, a movie that we’ve come to like very much since it came out three years ago.
As for the Book Review review, we can’t remember an issue stuffed so full of cranky, unhelpful reviews of new fiction.