Girl Detective

#45 in my 2007 movie challenge was Sabrina, part of the Audrey Hepburn Collection that my husband G. Grod got me for Mothers Day, to balance out the other box set. Sabrina is a classic Cinderella tale, with a Parisian transformation, and a handsome “prince” who doesn’t recognize the chauffeur’s daughter who’s been pining after him for years. Holden is delightful as the playboy brother, Bogart is funny, and charming enough to pull off the May/December pairing with Hepburn’s radiant Sabrina. Cary Grant was originally cast in the Bogart role; it would have made an interestingly different film given the variance in the actors’ looks. Only the pre-Paris Sabrina clothes are by Edith Head. Hepburn chose Givenchy to design her character’s transformed look. The role helped to make her a star; the wardrobe made her an icon. (These details are from the documentary DVD extra, more here.)

June 16 was the five year anniversary of Girl Detective. I have a new look, a new bio, updated copyright, and the most recent version of WordPress. I’ve also opened comments again. Apparently, I thought I’d have all of these soon after last year’s anniversary. Better late than never.

2006
2005
2004
2003
The Beginning

I am thankful that no deaths or incidents are listed, but this recall is discouraging. How many toys that are labeled non-toxic may actually (perhaps accidentally) have lead paint? These toy trains are in the home of nearly every child I know. (Link via the Freakonomics Blog.)

RC2 Corp. Recalls Various Thomas & Friendsâ„¢ Wooden Railway Toys Due to Lead Poisoning Hazard

From “How Many Ways Can You Spell V1@gra?” by Brian Hayes at American Scientist (link via Arts & Letters Daily):

At the deepest level, spam is a social and economic phenomenon rather than a technological one. The senders and the intended recipients are people, not computers. Nevertheless, there’s the potential for some interesting computation in the making of the stuff, and even moreso in the defenses that help keep it in check. Cre@tive spe11ing is part of this story, and so is the automated production of meaningless drivel. On the defensive side, tools from statistics, pattern analysis and machine intelligence have been brought to bear. Twenty years ago, who could have guessed that the most widely deployed application of computational linguistics and computational learning theory would be fending off nuisance e-mail?

The spam filters on my private email address are great. Those on Gmail are pretty good. Email I send to friends who have Hotmail are periodically bounced back, presumably because their filters are too touchy. I stopped allowing comments here because the noise/signal ratio was too high; I was spending far more time deleting spam than I was responding to comments.

Hayes’s article made me wonder, as I have many times before: to what circle of Dantean hell will spam creators be consigned?

#44 in my 2007 movie challenge was Pretty in Pink, part of the “Too Cool for School” John Hughes box set that my husband got me for Mothers Day. I’d had an inexplicable craving to watch the Hughes movies again, but I worried that Pretty in Pink wouldn’t have aged gracefully. I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, the dazzling array of “volcanic ensembles” shows 80’s teen fashion in all its painful glory, but the story is a timeless one. Ringwald plays Andi, a senior in high school whose mother ran away a few years before. She lives with her shiftless but loving father on the wrong side of the literal tracks. Her best friend is Duckie, played by Jon Cryer, whose obsession with fashion is exceeded only by his unrequited love for Andi. Andrew McCarthy is “richie” Blane (Duckie: “That’s not a name! It’s a major appliance!”) who develops a crush on Andi, and tries to assure her that their Cinderella story will work. James Spader plays the deliciously nasty Steph, who tries to shame Blane out of dating Andi. The tension centers on whether Blane and Andi will go to the prom. Surprisingly, this conflict is not as superficial as it sounds. The ending does a pretty good job of having it both ways. Andi goes to the dance alone, where she meets Duckie, who redeems his movie-long annoyingness by telling her Blane came alone, and urging her to go with Blane when he tries to apologize. Blane and Andi make out in the parking lot to OMD, and, I assume, live happily ever after.

The story works because Ringwald is believable and like-able as the outcast girl who is scared to hope things might get better. Cryer is hilarious, and his lip-syncing to “Try a Little Tenderness” still has the power to wow me. Annie Potts is sympathetic as Andi’s older, weirder friend Iona, and McCarthy does a good job being the cute nice boy who’s “not like the others.”

One of the extras on the “Everything’s Duckie” edition of the DVD is an extended explanation that borders on apologia for why they changed the original ending, in which Andi and Duckie danced together. Test audiences didn’t like it, and neither did Ringwald, who felt affection for, but not chemistry with, Cryer’s Duckie. The cast got called back six months later to reshoot. McCarthy was in a play for which he’d shaved his head and lost weight. That’s why the cute boy is suddenly not as cute in the final scene. It’s not that he’s been pining for Andi, it’s that he’s gaunt and wearing a bad wig.

I can understand why many people, especially those who root for underdogs, believe that Duckie should have been the boy at the end. I agree with Ringwald, though. They didn’t have spark, and it’s a Cinderella story. The poor, nice girl needs to end up with the cute, nice, rich boy. Otherwise the message is an uncomfortable “stick to your own class, babe,” which would have made for a much darker movie, like John Sayles’s 1982 Baby It’s You.

I was sad to see, though, that Andi’s transformation of Iona’s “dreamy” prom dress was still as ugly and unbecoming as I remembered. The Duckie/Blane argument may go on forever, but I’ve never met anyone who liked the dress at the end better than the original.

I did my fair share of griping about the third (and now final) season of Veronica Mars, so I don’t want to be a hypocrite. Yet the final six episodes of the season/series were a welcome and entertaining reminder of why I started watching this show. (To be precise, though, I think I watched because my friend The Big Brain told me to).

The third season meandered and squandered excellent secondary characters, like Wallace, Mac, Dick, and Piz. It killed off two of the funniest ones, Sheriff Lamb and Dean O’Dell. These absences were all the more strange because season three also saw a lessened presence for star Kristen Bell. After two seasons of appearing in almost every scene, Bell needed a break. Unfortunately, she was like gravity for the show. When she was offscreen, the story and characters spun out of control. Additionally, season three was divided in two in case it was canceled midseason (it wasn’t), and took a long hiatus after Veronica solved the second long story mystery, the dean’s death. Many viewers didn’t return when VM resumed six weeks later. I nearly didn’t, but again, my friend The Big Brain told me to watch, and I’m glad he did.

The last six episodes were standalones. While the weekly mysteries weren’t that strong, the cast interactions were as good as ever. Veronica finally got a nice boy in Piz (though my friend Rock Hack thinks they did a bad job of making him Indie Rock Boy), told an annoying Logan to go to hell, and in general was her sassy, smart, kick-ass, girl-detective self for the remainder of the season/series. The second to last episode had Paul Rudd in an excellent turn as a has-been rocker, and the last episode finished with a dark, sexual storyline that harked back to season one. I choose to view the repetition of certain story elements (secret society, viral digital spread of a sex video, Veronica tracking down the guy who messed with her) as homages to great stories from season one, rather than rehashes of same.

During season three, I griped. In retrospect, I think the loss of focus felt like fingerprints from the interference of VM’s new network, the CW. I was reminded of the permanent downshift in quality that took place when Buffy the Vampire Slayer switched networks.

In the end, Veronica Mars, the character and the series, finished strong. The creators did a good job of ending in a way that gave closure, while leaving the door open. Creator Rob Thomas had an interesting idea for the fall. Rather than start with fall of the following school year, he suggested they jump ahead four years to Veronica in training as a government operative. Sadly, the CW decided to shut the door on both ideas.

Veronica Mars was never a ratings winner. As Nathan Alderman noted at TeeVee, though, it lasted three seasons, when it could have been canceled immediately. Season one still stands as one of the best, cohesive television seasons I’ve seen. While seasons two and three never attained that former glory, they still featured one of the most clever heroines on television. Veronica was a teenage, noir, girl detective. She was a strong, unique character, and I’m going to miss her come the fall.

#43 in my 2007 movie challenge was Network, which at 30+, is pleasingly timeless. It’s funny, sharp, and bitter, with great performances (all Oscar-nominated, or -winning) by Dunaway, Finch, and Holden. Finch died before nominations were announced, then won posthumously for Best Actor.

Network made me realize how much over the last three decades has been influenced by it: Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night and Studio 60, Good Night and Good Luck, Broadcast News. Those are the ones that came to mind immediately; there are many more. As is often the case, the famous line from the movie is not a direct quote. Finch says, “I’m AS mad as hell, and I’m not going to take THIS anymore!: (Emphasis mine.) The people who parrot him, though, misquote him with the more familiar “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” An 18-year-old Tim Robbins made his uncredited film debut in two scenes, the more notable of which is the last one.

#42 in my movie challenge for the year was The Prestige, the magic movie from last year that starred Michael Caine, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johanson. Dark and moody like Nolan’s Batman Begins, The Prestige also doesn’t stick strictly to reality. Bale is very good, Jackman is less so, and Johanson is forgettable. The story is told in three separate time lines that meld into one by the end. As in Nolan’s Memento, the non-linear storytelling is surprisingly not difficult (I can’t quite bring myself to say “easy”) to follow. Even though my husband and I saw aspects of the reveal well in advance, the ending still gave me pause, and threw its illumination back on previous scenes, once the movie was done. The Prestige FAQ at imdb.com has a good summary of these.

#41 in my 2007 movie challenge, Ocean’s Thirteen is, like Eleven, a fun, escapist, romp. Twelve was so badly reviewed I didn’t bother to see it. The sprawling cast features great vignettes from everyone, though Pacino and Ellen Barkin are underutilized, and somewhat flat. But the duo of Clooney and Pitt oozes the kind of cool that characterized Sinatra’s original.

#40 in my movie challenge for the year was Dreamgirls. Imbalanced. Pretty to look at and sporadically fun to watch. The two actors whose characters are most compelling are Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy. When the focus is on Beyonce and Jamie Foxx, the 2-hour-plus movie drags. Some of the musical numbers are good, especially the early Motown-inspired ones. Hudson’s wows in “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and Beyonce finally shows some spark in “Listen”, but other songs were so dull I got up to do laundry, and didn’t bother to pause the DVD. Beyonce dressed and made up as Diana Ross was worth seeing, but would’ve worked just as well as a magazine spread. The image didn’t translate to character, and did nothing to engage me in the story, and little to move it forward.

#39 in my 2007 movie challenge, Music and Lyrics, was an antidote to the bitterness of #38. M&L is predictable and rather thin, but Grant does a credible job playing a has-been pop star (a thinly veiled analog to Andrew Ridgeley of Wham!) while Barrymore does her usual ditzy/charming schtick. By the end, though, the sweetness between the two of them, and the humorous spectacle of the Britney-esque pop star for whom they’re writing a song, won me over. Further, the catchy, retro-80’s pop music was crafted by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, whose obvious affection for the music is easy to appreciate. The music video, and the pop-up version at the end, are hilarious sendups.

#38 in my 2007 movie challenge was Notes on a Scandal. It’s a short, but powerful story about a friendship between Blanchett’s free-spirited art teacher Sheba Hart and Dench’s battle axe history teacher. The nastiness of the film is dense and compressed, like a bitter diamond. The film does a deft balancing act of making both characters believable, understandable, and yet not quite likeable. Dench’s character is ugly inside and out, but her solitary meditations on a life of loneliness are heart wrenching. Sheba is short for Bathsheba, a reference to the Biblical story, in which a beautiful woman is seduced (or possibly commanded) away from her older husband, Uriah the Hittite by a handsome young man, King David.

#37 in my 2007 movie challenge was Adrienne Shelley’s Waitress. I feel cynical when I wonder if the reviews of this film are so effusive because Shelley was murdered before the film was released. It is a very good film, though. I was strongly reminded of the tone of Hal Hartley’s early films such as The Unbelievable Truth, which starred Shelley and that I saw at the Ritz in Philadelphia. It’s by turns bitter and sweet, like the chocolate called for in many of the movie’s pies. Keri Russell and her heart-shaped face are captivating as Jenna, a pie-inventing woman married to a controlling and abusive husband. Jeremy Sisto gives a chilling performance, all the more creepy because of his obvious love for Jenna.

Having the time to check Arts & Letters Daily, click through to the stories that interest me, read them from beginning to end, then quote the parts I like here.

Having the time, or taking the time, to read and think is something I value, and try to cultivate. Parenthood is not an excuse to give up learning. Instead, it can be a reminder to keep trying.

#36 in my 2007 movie challenge was Diggers, starring Paul Rudd. Is there anything he can’t do–television, movies, poker, music, dancing, comedy, and drama?

In Diggers he’s a 70’s clam digger who can’t quite work up the nerve to leave his small job and small town.

Diggers may seem like a tired premise: four working class buddies try with varying success to manage family, work and times that are a-changin’. Yet the acting, the humor of Ken Marino’s script (he played Vinnie Van Lowe on Veronica Mars), and director Katherine Dieckmann’s obvious affection both for the characters and story all elevate this little indie.

Rudd, Marino, and Maura Tierney gave strong performances that resulted in complex, sympathetic characters. Lauren Ambrose and Ron Eldard looked good, but their acting showed–they didn’t inhabit their characters as completely as the rest of the cast. I watched the deleted scenes both with and without commentary. Unlike other DVDs, where the deleted scenes make clear the reason they were cut, these flesh out the characters, and show the process of editing. Some were removed when the storyline changed, and characters were dropped, and sequences of events changed. Yes, a few were superfluous, but overall watching them improved my appreciation for the sweet film a great deal.

For his ten-page piece “The Art of Sushi,” from the June 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, Nick Tosches traveled the world to observe the economy and art of sushi from the market to the meal. The long article both informs and tantalizes. He describes a meal at Sugiyama, in New York, a restaurant that doesn’t have sushi (characterized by sweetened rice) though it does serve raw fish:

First, a course of monkfish liver, vinegared baby eel, which seems to have been filleted, and a jelly cake of crab and vegetables. (Later, I find out that the “baby eel,” noresore, which I assumed to have been filleted, is actually pre—baby eel–the flat, transparent larvae, whose season is brief and now, of the Japanese conger.) Then slices of raw bluefin tuna, raw bluefin toro, raw hamachi, raw hamachi toro, raw tilefish, steamed octopus, ama-ebi (sweet shrimp; the sweetness is in the meat of the brain), a raw Kumamoto oyster, and a fragrant spray of small, purple shiso flowers. Then a clear soup of seaweed, whitefish cake, bamboo, and asari (a sort of springtime Japanese littleneck). Then grilled black cod from Toyama and crisp-roasted mild green peppers. Then half a lobster (served with a spoon to blend the soft, dark meat of the head into the white tail meat) and shiitake and oyster mushrooms. Then a miso soup with straw mushrooms and seaweed. Then minced grilled eel, tilefish, and bonito steamed in a mixture of botan rice and sticky rice, wrapped in a large, salted houba leaf, served with pickled Japanese radish. Then hoji tea, which Sugiyama-san describes as “sticky” tea. He means it was made from tea twigs, and “sticky” is to be taken as an adjectival form of “stick,” which in fact turns out to be the first definition of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then a grapefruit-and-cream thing, invented by Sugiyama-san many years ago, made from hand-squeezed grapefruit juice, powdered sugar, lemon, Chardonnay, and scotch–all of which, magicked into a chilled semi-solid sphere, somehow ends up seeming to be an idealized peeled grapefruit, with no fibrous membranes, no pulp, no pits–served in very cold cream with a sprig of mint.

At Masa, which Tosches notes is probably the most expensive, and best for sushi, in the world, he had a meal that cost upwards of $1100:

baby firefly squid (hotaru ika) in a sauce of Japanese mustard (karashi) with rape-blossom buds (nanohana). Then chopped raw toro topped with caviar. Then seared bonito (katsuo tataki) with crispy seaweed (ogo), woodland ginger and bamboo (myoga take), wasabi greens, and those little purple shiso flowers. Then steamed asari clams from Chiba in their broth. Then icefish (shirauo)–tiny, almost translucent fish with buggy little black eyeballs which can be had for only a few weeks in early spring–served in sizzling white-sesame oil with Kalamata-olive paste and sprigs of newly budded prickly-ash leaves (kinome). Then a hot pot of cherry trout (sakura masu), whose season also lasts only a few weeks in spring. And then, after the kaiseki overture, the sushi feast begins.

Each piece of sushi is prepared individually and served immediately, as Takayama-san slices the fish, reaches into a cloth-covered barrel of rice, applies fresh-made wasabi paste to the side of the sliced fish that will be pressed to the rice, and, piece after piece, forms perfect sushi with dexterous rapidity in the palm of one hand with the nimble fingers of the other, placing it before you on a stoneware dish. He tells you to eat it with your hand….It’s really just a matter of preference, but you don’t want to piss this guy off while he’s feeding you. You’re given a small bowl of shoyu, into which only certain sushi should be dipped, and another small bowl of pale pickled ginger to be nibbled between courses.

The toro sushi is first. Then, in succession: striped jack; fluke; sea bream; snapper; squid; ama-ebi (the little shrimp with the sweet brain); cockle; red clam; giant clam; baby scallop; Nantucket scallop (freshly caught by a diver who sells only to Takayama-san and a few others); grilled toro sinew; herring; horse mackerel; uni; octopus; cooked shrimp; sea eel; freshwater eel; shiitake sushi; black-truffle sushi; a seaweed-wrapped roll of chopped toro and green, negi onion; young ume, a sort of Japanese plum, enclosed in a shiso leaf.

“And that’s all,” says Takayama-san with a smile.

After this dense article, I am curious where my favorite Twin Cities sushi restaurant, Origami, gets its fish. I’ve never yet been to Kikugawa; their menu has a kaiseki teishoku that sounds compelling. Most of all, though, I’m hungry, and reminded again that eating sushi at the bar, piece by piece, omakase-style (chef’s choice), is the best way to experience it.

In “The Biology of Imagination” at Entelechy (link via Arts and Letters Daily), Simon Baron-Cohen argues that our capacity for imagination is based in biology:

So, what has all this got to do with the original question of whether the capacity for human imagination is, at its core, biological? For Leslie, the capacity for meta-representation involves a special module in the brain, which humans have and that possibly no other species possesses. In the vast majority of the population, this module functions well. It can be seen in the normal infant at 14 months old who can introduce pretence into their play; seen in the normal 4 year old child who can employ mind-reading in their relationships and thus appreciate different points of view; or seen in the adult novelist who can imagine all sorts of scenarios that exist nowhere except in her own imagination, and in the imagination of her reader.

But sometimes this module can fail to develop in the normal way. A child might be delayed in developing this special piece of hardware: meta-representation. The consequence would be that they find it hard to mind-read others. This appears to be the case in children with Asperger Syndrome. They have degrees of difficulty with mind-reading.v Or they may never develop meta-representation, such that they are effectively ‘mind-blind’. This appears to be the case in children with severe or extreme (classic) autism. Given that classic autism and Asperger Syndrome are both sub-groups on what is today recognized as the ‘autistic spectrum’, and that this spectrum appears to be caused by genetic factors affecting brain development, the inference from this is that the capacity for meta-representation itself may depend on genes that can build the relevant brain structures, that allow us to imagine other people’s worlds.

Biology, though, is not the entire story. The content of imagination, Baron-Cohen concludes, is primarily cultural. As always, it seems the answer is not either nature or nurture, but both/and.

From the Chicago Tribune’s “Great books not meant to be used as weapons”

Up north in Canada, novelist Yann Martel (”The Life of Pi”) has started a book club of one member — Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Every couple of weeks since mid-April, he has been sending a new book to Harper in an effort to get the national leader to increase funding for the arts.

I want elected officials to work for literacy, but what Martel is doing feels obnoxious. I love books, but if Martel (or anyone) sent me a book every couple of weeks, I would show up at his house and chuck the books at his head.

I all but stopped giving and loaning books after I read this insightful deconstruction at Outer Life. Gift books create an obligation, both to read and to enjoy the book. I am terrible about reading books in a timely fashion. Gift books often sit on my shelf for years, gathering dust and sending out prickly rays of guilt. I try to finish a book before I recommend it. I learned that lesson from Smilla’s Sense of Snow. I also try only to recommend books I love. As the author of Outer Life noted in another post, recommendations are difficult, too. Too often I’ve sensed the careful phrasing of friends after I’ve loaned or given them something good but not great. And even if I loved the book, like John Burdett’s Bangkok 8, it won’t be every person’s cup of tea.

Instead, now, I try to gently recommend books. I review everything I read here, so readers can seek out or avoid books as they are inclined. The books I am pleased to receive are ones I’ve placed on my wish lists at Amazon. They’ll still sit on my shelf, but at least they are wanted.

This article from The Edge (link via Arts and Letters Daily) elucidates how and why many adults choose speculative beliefs over scientific findings:

…resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy.

New York Magazine’s “The Best Books You’ve Never Read“. Link via Mental Multivitamin.

Wait, I have read some of them! Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy, Ali Smith’s The Accidental, and Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen. All were well worth my time. But Normal Rush’s Mating, which one critic mentioned as his best? Feh. Hated it. Sexist, pedantic, and needlessly esoteric.

My suggestion for the list? Maureen McHugh’s Mothers and Other Monsters. Shockingly good.