→ January 9, 2012
→ By

Margin Call.

Margin Call jumped on my radar when the late, lamented Yahoo! blog The Projector gave it a glowing review back in October, and then named it their must-see movie of the week a fortnight afterwards. Featuring an absurdly deep cast, the film follows an investment bank or hedge fund heavily exposed to CMOs during a 24-hour period right at the start of the U.S. housing market meltdown. It features no violence, no sex, no weapons drawn, no manufactured drama, and is entirely gripping from the moment a junior analyst (played by Zachary Quinto, whose production firm financed the film) discovers that his employer is, in effect, bankrupt.

Quinto plays Peter Sullivan, a former engineering student turned financial analyst whose boss, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), is fired in the opening scenes after 17 years at the company. Dale hands Sullivan a flash drive with an unfinished spreadsheet on it that he indicates is important – and it is, as Sullivan discovers, dragging his new boss Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) back into the office at 10 pm to point out that the firm’s portfolio has it on the verge of collapse. Emerson goes to his boss, the depressed, disgruntled Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who takes it to his boss, the amoral Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), who eventually calls in the head of the firm, played by Jeremy Irons (I told you the cast was strong) as if this was an updated work of Shakespeare and he is both the play’s central figure and its empty conscience.

Margin Call‘s central energy source is that one bit of knowledge – that the market is close to a panic, and such a drop in the housing market would drive this unnamed firm out of business – which it uses to power all of its characters, allowing us to sit back and watch their reactions. There’s no gotcha moment, no twist of a bit of unknown information revealed in the final scene to change the film’s direction; most of the movie takes place overnight, when U.S. markets are closed and thus can’t move. This movie is about the reactions of professionals with widely varying backgrounds, loyalties, and years of experience in the industry, and how they move in response to the news that the empire they built is crumbling, and that saving it will hurt others, and could even cause a wider financial panic. It’s not quite a character study, as we don’t stay with any one character long enough to give him/her sufficient depth, but a characters study, almost like witnessing a sociological experiment.

It felt to me far more like a great play than a typical movie – or perhaps more like a British film than an American one, with an emphasis on dialogue and interactions to move the story forward rather than exogenous events inserted by the writer(s). Irons’ arguments with Spacey, who seems to be growing a conscience or merely working harder to suppress it, Bettany’s conversation with the seemingly-principled Tucci, and Quinto’s vaguely comic-relief chatter with a younger colleague played by Penn Badgley had me hanging on their words, not just for their import to the story but to how they were structured and delivered. There is, of course, a message about greed, and the disconnect such traders felt with the owners of the mortgages they swapped and sold without regard to the effects on those ‘regular’ people; I also thought the dog symbolized the soul or conscience of its owner (saying more would spoil it). But I was far more wrapped up in the intensity of the conversations, the emotional reactions to the news coming down the wire, and the way characters rationalized their actions to themselves than I was in the larger themes the film might have wanted to express. It had slow moments, including a long ramp-up to the handoff of the flash drive that kicks off the main plot, and some less effective subplots (including Demi Moore, delivering little in an empty role other than appearing in the hackneyed “sitting sideways on window bench overlooking Manhattan” shot), but as a fan of simple, cerebral dramas, I found more than enough strengths to overcome some slight choppiness of the script.

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→ December 26, 2011
→ By

Cauliflower steaks … and I Want My Hat Back.

Before I get to the recipe, I have to talk about my favorite gift from Christmas this year – one I gave, not one I received. I’m not even sure how I first heard about Jon Klassen’s book I Want My Hat Back, which has apparently spawned its own online meme, but it is one of the most clever, sneakily macabre childen’s books I have ever seen, one that my daughter and I both loved on first read. It’s about a bear who has lost his hat, asks various forest animals if they’ve seen it, and eventually realizes where his hat is, a few pages after the reader has figured it out. It’s dry and a little twisted, but also perfectly captures how kids lie even when they’re caught red-handed. I’d put the vocabulary level at age 3 or 4, but the subject matter might make 5 a better minimum age. My five-year-old daughter wasn’t disturbed, and she asked to read it again last night, which is good, because I wanted to read it to her again anyway.

—

As for this peculiar side dish, I got the idea from the most recent issue of Bon Appetit, a magazine with which I’ve had pretty mixed results over the years. (The original recipe does include a useful photo if you can’t picture a cauliflower steak.) I’m just finishing a free subscription I received because my wife bought me one of their cookbooks as a gift, and the book included a coupon for a free year of the magazine, but I won’t be renewing because their recipes don’t work well and the magazine seems so much more focused on eating out (and expensively) than on actual cooking. Anyway, the idea of a cauliflower cut vertically into large steaks appealed to me, but I changed up the sauce to something that I thought better suited the mellow, slightly sweet flavor of well-browned cauliflower.

To cut the ‘steaks,’ start with a whole head of cauliflower and trim away all green leaves while leaving the stem intact. Standing the head on its base, make a small mark with your chef’s knife in the center of the top of the cauliflower, and then make similar marks at least ½” in either direction, enough to cut four slabs from the head. Anything less than a half inch won’t hold together when cooked; too much more than about 5/8” and you’ll only get two steaks that won’t cook through before the outside burns. You can cut the remaining florets and brown them with the steaks, or save them for another use (like soup).

This sauce is tangy, but contains no heat; you could also roast a hot pepper, like a red jalapeño, and add it to the puree, or finish the sauce with a few drops of red chile oil.

Cauliflower ‘Steaks’ with Roasted Red Pepper sauce

1 cauliflower head, cut as described into four steaks
2 red bell peppers
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 Tbsp sherry vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbsp olive oil

1. Roast the peppers on all sides under a broiler, about 40 minutes total (turning as needed), until well charred. Throw the garlic cloves on the same sheet pan for about ten minutes to soften and brown slightly. Set the garlic aside.
2. Place the peppers in a bowl and cover with foil for ten minutes to allow the steam to escape the peppers and separate the flesh from the skin. Remove the charred skin, the stems, and any seeds, saving the liquid from inside the peppers.
3. Place the peppers, garlic, pepper liquid, and sherry vinegar in a bowl or cup and puree with an immersion blender, or puree in a food processor. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper and set aside.
4. When the peppers are done, set the oven to bake at 400 degrees. Heat a large saute pan or skillet over medium-high heat.
5. Add 1 Tbsp olive oil to the skillet and heat until shimmering. Add two of the four cauliflower steaks and cook one and a half to two minutes until nicely browned. Flip the steaks carefully with a spatula (place your hand on the cool side to flip without splashing the hot oil on yourself) and brown the alternate sides. Remove the steaks and any stray bits of cauliflower to a rimmed sheet pan, add another tablespoon of oil to the pan, and brown the other two steaks.
6. Roast in the oven for ten minutes until you can easily pierce them through with a paring knife. Remove, season with salt and pepper, and serve on a bed of the roasted red pepper sauce. Finish with a drizzle of an assertive, peppery olive oil if desired.

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→ December 24, 2011
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011 film).

I rate John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy among the best suspense novels I have ever read, a wordy but incredibly tense spy novel from 1974 that borrows from the great detective novels of thirty to forty years prior. Hearing Gary Oldman was set to play the lead in the first adaptation for the theaters was exciting and worrying, not so much about Oldman but about how well such a dense book could be adapted to the two-hour constraints of the modern cinema. The worry was needless, as the adaptation, while dispensing with much of the detail of the book, is extremely faithful to the novel’s plot, and one of the most intense smart films I have ever seen.

(I have not seenthe six-hour BBC adaptation from 1979, starring Sir Alec Guinness as Smiley, so I can’t offer a comparison – and, given the differences in duration and thus most likely in pacing, perhaps I’m also not hampered by the comparison either.)

The four words in the film’s title refer to codenames for five* senior British intelligence officers, one of whom is a Soviet double agent, referred to as “Gerald” in the book but only as “the mole” in the movie. As the movie opens, we see a botched operation in Budapest that appears to leave another British agent mortally wounded, after which the head of the unit, known only as “Control,” and senior agent George Smiley (Oldman) are sacked. Several months later, after Control’s death, Smiley is approached by Oliver Lacon, the civil servant who oversees MI6, the domestic intelligence agency known colloquially as “the Circus” (for Cambridge Circus, where Le Carré has located MI6’s offices), to lead an off-the-books investigation to identify the mole. Officially retired, Smiley recruits the young Peter Guillam, still employed by MI6, and one other retired agent to find out how Budapest truly went awry, what happened in Istanbul with rogue agent Ricky Tarr, and to ultimately set the trap into which the mole will walk.

*The fifth is Smiley, who is absolved from guilt when the investigation begins, while the name “Poorman” is used for the remaining suspect.

Oldman plays Smiley with tremendous understatement, especially in comparison to roles like Stansfield or Sirius Black, very much in keeping with Le Carré’s Smiley, who, even when beset by inner turmoil, rarely lets it reach the surface, and prefers to conduct his interrogations as the facilitator rather than the aggressor. This is a film of absent looks and tense pauses, with Smiley setting up the pins for others to knock down. Whether this is Best Actor nomination material or not depends largely on performances I haven’t seen by other actors, but its subtlety might mask its degree of difficulty to the point where voters overlook how key Oldman’s performance was to the film; his one great scene, reimagining a conversation with a briefly captured Soviet agent in Delhi several years previously, nearly explodes with Smiley’s emotional turmoil (and the symbolism of the purloined lighter), yet never quite boils over. One can only imagine the American remake, what with smashed lamps or over-the-top profanity or whatnot.

Aside from Oldman, the cast reads like the leading British actors were all fighting each other to get parts in the film, resulting in some powerful performances by big names in modest roles. Colin Firth appears as the caddish Bill Haydon; Ciarán Hinds (perhaps known best as Albus Dumbledore’s brother in the last two Harry Potter films) is underused as Roy Bland; John Hurt, as Control, is apparently morphing into Ian McKellen; Stephen Graham (of Snatch and Boardwalk Empire) has a critical cameo; and Benedict Cumberbatch (who plays Sherlock Holmes in the current BBC series starring that character) is even more critical as Peter Guillam, as tied up by internal demons as Smiley yet less able to restrain them. Even Tom Hardy, as Ricky Tarr, the one character who shows substantial emotions in the film (crossing the line into the pathetic, a deviation from the literary Tarr), manages to avoid sliding into the melodramatic.

The pacing of Tinker Tailor is outstanding, a direction set in the opening sequence, where the screenwriters have heightened the tension by putting the blown operation first. I remembered just enough of the book to follow the story without trouble – I actually remembered the codename of the mole, but not his actual identity, so I wasn’t sure of the ending until the big reveal. However, if you haven’t read the book, the film doesn’t waste much time with explanatory material, and it might take you a few scenes to figure out who’s who and what exactly is under investigation. The flashback scenes aren’t that clearly delineated from the present-day investigation, since they only go back a year or so and can’t be distinguished with hair and makeup. Karla, the fanatical KGB super-agent who never appears in the film except in flashbacks where only his torso is visible, also never receives any sort of introduction before characters begin referring to his existence. We lose some of the backstory of the four suspects, but it’s less necessary in a film that revolves around Smiley and the unraveling of the intrigue, rather than, say, the psychological motivation of the traitor.

The upside of the lack of long-winded explanatory passages is that the film drops you right in the heart of the action, grabs you by the throat, and spends two hours daring you to breathe. And yet there are no cheap, mass-market gimmicks to turn a taut, intelligent spy novel into a mainstream action flick; the furthest it panders is the occasional bit of inserted humor, or the on-screen death of a character whom I think was merely presumed killed by the Russians in the book, but nothing that changes the plot itself, which is ideal as the plot is the book’s greatest strength. (Connie Sacks’ one laugh-inducing line, while funny, is hopelessly out of tune with the rest of the movie, unfortunately.) Deviate from the details if you must, but when the plot’s the thing, leave it be, and the screenwriters – one of whom died at age 49 of cancer before the film was released – did just that.

The only real issue I had with this adaptation is the ending, where the final exposure of the mole’s identity is cut quite short, replaced with a series of wordless scenes set to a recording of “La Mer,” a great song that seemed forced here in a film so reliant on silence through its first 120 minutes. I could have done with less of that, especially the final flashback to the agency holiday party, and more with Smiley confronting the turncoat. It was an average finish to an otherwise plus film, one I’d gladly see again to watch for details I missed because I was so engrossed in the plot.

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→ December 13, 2011
→ By

Write More Good and Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big.

So The Bureau Chiefs, the geniuses behind the Twitter account @FakeAPStylebook (and now @FakePewResearch), sent me a copy of their first book, Write More Good, earlier this year. It’s almost all fresh material rather than a compendium of tweets, combining a fake writing stylebook with a fake self-help book for would-be journalists. And it is hilarious, especially since I do write for a living.

Each chapter covers a different area of journalism, some on specific sections of a newspaper, others on fundamentals like grammar or not getting yourself sued into oblivion. (To wit, the glossary entry on Scientology is simply “Our legal department informs us that Scientology is just swell.” Although the entry on Clear Channel – “see: Skynet” – might ruffle some feathers.) Freed from the constraints of 140 characters per joke, the writers stretch out to entire paragraphs before returning to 140-character jokes in the form of bullet points and glossary entries, although the book is surprisingly short on footnotes.

If you’ve read the @FakeAPStylebook feed, you know the writers (there are many, or just one with many personalities) can veer from crude humor to subtle satire from one tweet to the next. That style worked better for me on the printed page, which surprised me, but the constant careening between styles of humor kept me off balance the way an episode of Parks and Recreation does. The section on how to write about global warming, for example, includes bullet points about how your editor is going to put a picture of a sad polar bear next to the article, how you are obligated to mention in an article on a climate-change conference that it is currently cold somewhere in the world, how you should quote pundits who criticize celebrity activists who drive SUVs, and “We’re not saying not to mention cow farts when talking about climate change, but, dude: cow farts. That’s hysterical.” (Followed by a table of suggested “storms of the century names” that reminded me of this e-card.)

The sports chapter was, of course, a particular favorite, including thoughts on dealing with angry fans on the Internet, followed by references to Mario Mendoza, Darko Mlicic (RIP), Gerry Cooney, and, for no apparent reason, jai alai. The book is loaded with references to films, literature, and historical figures and events that more than once sent me to the computer to figure out what I’d missed. And the unconventional format means that if you didn’t like (or get) one joke, just keep reading, because there are ten more on the same page. It’s less a labor of love than the fruits of frustration for journalists who have seen journalism from the inside and are still undergoing intensive therapy to try to forget it.

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If, however, you’re looking for something you can share with your little one(s), I just bought another of Berkeley Breathed’s children’s books, since Mars Needs Moms! was such a hit with my daughter. (Too bad the movie got such awful reviews.) This one, Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big, isn’t as sentimental as that book, with more outrageous humor and hints of the snark that made Bloom County such a big part of my 1980s memories.

Told by Edwurd’s little sister, Fannie Fudwupper, Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big is the story of a little liar who spins some pretty tall tales until, one day, he breaks a ceramic pig dear to his mother and, rather than taking responsibility, comes up with an elaborate fib so big that the Army and Air Force get involved, as well as some sort of space monster whose head is as big as the Earth and who has an eye on the end of his nose. These unforeseen consequences (piled on an earlier, funnier fib) lead to a surprisingly sweet resolution as well as a lesson on lying – I think. The meter and wordplay seem like a cross between an homage to and parody of Dr. Seuss, while the exaggerated drawings call to mind the best Bloom County Sunday strips.

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And, of course, my wife’s Etsy shop, featuring earrings and necklaces she’s designed, remains open for business. Enter coupon code “TWELVE” to get 12% off (note: entering “FIFTY” will not have the analogous effect).

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→ December 12, 2011
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The Master and Margarita.

I don’t often re-read books, primarily for the reason that there are too many books out there I have never read and would like to, but also because a second read never quite stimulates the mind the way the first read does. The narrative greed isn’t the same when you remember every major plot twist, no matter how skilled the writer. The fun in encountering some clever turn of phrase, or pun, or imaginative element is lost the second time around as well. For those reasons, I’d avoided a re-read of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita for years, fearing I remembered too much to enjoy reading it again, even though it sits atop my personal ranking of the top 101 novels I’ve read. It’s almost exactly twenty years since I first read Bulgakov’s masterpiece, and I’m relieved to report it held up well against the expectations of my memories of the book, perhaps aided by the fact that I read a different translation this time around.

Bulgakov was a state playwright under the Soviets, but was himself an anti-communist who suffered under the repressive regime that refused to publish many of his works and denied his request to emigrate to a country where he could practice his craft freely. This novel, completed over the last decade of his life and published more than 20 years after his death during a brief thaw under Nikita Khrushchev, destroys the communist regime while also mocking the oligarchs who flourished through their obeisance and outright cowardice. It’s wickedly subversive, and yet often so subtle that I’m surprised the Soviets saw it for what it was – or were willing to publish it after they understood its true intent.

Bulgakov’s masterpiece is a sly satire of communism and Russian life under that political and economic system in Russia between the world wars, told via multiple narratives that all collide across time as the book concludes, with the one common thread among them coming in the person of Satan himself. The devil, calling himself Dr. Woland, appears in Moscow with his retinue – comprising Behemoth, an anthropomorphic cat; Azazello, an ugly stout man with flaming red hair; and Koroviev, also known as Fagot, a sort of chief-of-staff character who always wears a checked jacket and pince-nez (apparently an allusion to The Brothers Karamazov) – to reveal the baseness of the privileged classes under communism. Bulgakov’s Satan is not quite the Satan of the Bible – in some ways, he’s a forerunner of Tyler Durden, causing mayhem to provide meaning to a deadened life in a repressive society – just as Bulgakov’s Yeshua ha-Nozri, betrayed by Judas and crucified under Pontius Pilate, is not quite the Biblical Jesus.

The titular characters, while central to the novel’s themes of freedom, cowardice, and redemption, don’t appear until roughly a quarter of the novel has passed. Bulgakov opens the scene with a discussion between the poet Ivan Homeless and the avowed atheist Berlioz, only to have their talk interrupted by the appearance of a strange foreigner, Woland, who endeavors to show Berlioz that the devil does, in fact, exist, with a gruesome demonstration. This begins a chain of events where Woland and his retinue take over Berlioz’ apartment and hold a “seance” at a local theater where they dazzle the people with magic tricks that have hilarious consequences for the greedy audience members. The master, meanwhile, first appears in a sanitarium in conversation with Ivan Homeless, telling the story of his arrest by the secret police for his authorship of an anti-communist novel about Pontius Pilate, and how that arrest separated him from the love of his life, Margarita, for whom Woland has a special plan in the greatest scene among many in this complex novel.

Cowardice is the most explicit theme of The Master and Margarita, even though I think Bulgakov’s ultimate intent was to expose the emptiness of the Soviet state. Pontius Pilate, in a story that Woland begins telling but that the master completes in his novel-within-the-novel*, knows that the decision to pardon a common criminal over the peaceful philosopher Yeshua ha-Nozri is the wrong one, but given more than one opportunity to try to change that decision, he does nothing more than make a perfunctory request that his superior reconsider it. The master, while implicitly condemning Pilate’s own cowardice, exhibits some of his own, giving up on his life and his art when confronted by a seemingly invincible State that threatens to “disappear” any who threaten its sovereignty or integrity.

*That bit of meta-fiction gives rise to the most famous line from the novel, Woland’s response to the master’s lament that he burned the manuscript for the work that landed him in an asylum for its seditious nature: “Manuscripts never burn.”

Those disappearances are the subject of frequent allusions in the novel, in oblique references to the secret police and in Woland’s habit of moving people around the country or in transmogrifying them into other forms, such as the vaguely porcine man who becomes a flying pig. These fantastical elements were a major part of why I fell in love with the novel when I first read it at age nineteen – I hadn’t seen a classical novel deviate so far from the typical constraints of realistic literature; the most fantastical elements I’d come across were the coincidences that populated great works written before the last half of the 19th century. I didn’t know it as magical realism at the time, or even understand it as a literary technique – I think I just associated it with science fiction or fantasy novels – but Bulgakov’s use of it has to be one of the earliest such examples in literature, along with the works of Franz Kafka, much of whose work was published during the time Bulgakov spent writing The Master and Margarita. What better way to satirize a totalitarian state than through Satan exercising a similar disregard for human life, property, and individuality, alluding to a religion that the state sought to extinguish?

This is a remarkably rich, inventive novel, decades ahead of its time, socially important, funny, outrageous, and a tremendous pleasure to read.

Some stray thoughts:

* I first encountered the book in a class taught by Professor Donald Fanger (now emeritus) at Harvard called “Comedy and the Novel.” How good was that class? Six of the eight novels we read are on the Klaw 101, as is the book he told me a few years later was the unofficial ninth title he couldn’t squeeze into the semester, At Swim-Two-Birds. It was, by far, the best class I took in college, and the one that has had the greatest influence on me after the fact.

* I just discovered that there’s a graphic novel version of The Master and Margarita available, as well as one for Kafka’s The Trial. I’m curious how the illustrator handled Woland’s retinue – Bulgakov’s descriptions are quite vivid, but while Woland and his crew are somewhat anthropomorphic, they could easily turn into monsters without straying far from the original text, which I don’t think was Bulgakov’s intent.

* I’ve become slightly obsessed with spotting possible influences on J.K. Rowling, including A Dance to the Music of Time and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I might add The Master and Margarita to the list for the magical realism elements involved in Apartment #50, especially those elements that appear in the chapter “The Great Ball at Satan’s,” which seemed to show up all over Hogwart’s.

Next up: I’m way behind on writeups, having already finished Richard Hughes’ A High Wind in Jamaica and moved on to Haruki Murakami’s After Dark.

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→ December 2, 2011
→ By

Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a tense story of a woman who, after fleeing a cult-like commune, shows increasing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder as she attempts to reestablish her normal life and a relationship with her selfish sister and difficult brother-in-law. Based on the true story of a friend of writer/director Sean Durkin, the film is driven by two very strong performances and the use of both silence and background noise to allow the audience to feel the tension grow with the main character’s own mental troubles.

The film begins when Martha (Elizabeth Olsen, the younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley) flees the commune where she has lived for two years and calls her sister to ask for help; the call is awkward and Martha nearly gives up, showing how far she had fallen into the clutches of the commune’s charismatic, depraved leader Patrick (John Hawkes). From there, we see parallel narratives, one tracking Martha’s first few days of freedom with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law ted (Hugh Dancy) who want to help her as long as it’s no real inconvenience to them, the other following her two years in the cult from her first day to the incident that triggered her decision to escape. Both narratives follow similar curves with an initial ascent followed by a long, gradual decline, a dichotomy where each storyline intensifies the other.

The commune’s true nature only becomes apparent through gradual glimpses through Martha’s memory – and it’s possible that Martha isn’t a reliable narrator, given what happens to her in the other narrative – that reveal the commune to us more or less as it was revealed to her. She’s taken in as a bit of a lost soul, charmed by Patrick, eventually drugged and raped by him (which is explained to her as a “special” event that begins the “cleansing”) as part of her initiation. Patrick exercises control over the commune’s members through very subtle psychological manipulation, although that turns darker as the story develops. Martha – whom Patrick has rechristened “Marcy May,” as he renames all of the members – drifts into the lifestyle of the commune, never questioning any of its practices because she’s pleased, or at least satisfied, to have something resembling a family.

That need for family is explained in part by Martha’s time with her sister and brother-in-law, both flawed themselves and particularly ill-equipped to deal with a woman who has just fled a cult but claims she simply left a boyfriend. Her problems in this timeline start out as mere distance, moodiness, and ignorance of some social customs, but degenerate into delusions and paranoia, and Lucy and Ted show very little compassion or even the ability to generate it – we go through more than 80% of the movie before Lucy finally confronts Martha directly with the question of what happened to her during her two years out of contact. Their parents gone, Lucy is Martha’s only family, but there’s little warmth between them and more obligation than outright love, which stands in the way of Martha’s recovery almost as much as her own unwillingness to discuss what happened does.

Olsen is superb in the film, her first screen role, particularly in the second half of the film when she’s required to show a broader range of emotions; in the first half, she’s emotionally vacant in both narratives, but gets to stretch out into two different faces of the same character as the narrative unfolds. But Hawkes dominates his half of the story by almost trying not to dominate it: There’s no showiness, no bravura, just small gestures, eye contact, a faint change in the tone of his voice to convey the power he has over his charges. Olsen’s growing fear is the primary driver of the tension in the commune storyline, but Hawkes’ magnetism manages to elevate it even when all we have is the threat of his entrance. He’s a monster despite never acting like one; she’s the victim but never acts victim-like, only showing it through a slow crescendo of confusion and fear.

Both leads will at least be in the running for Best Actor/Actress nominations, although those categories are incredibly competitive, and if nothing else I think Martha Marcy May Marlene – the reason for the fourth name is too good to spoil – will end up with a Best Original Screenplay nod. If you can find it and like a tense, psychological drama with the tension of a British thriller, it’s well worth seeing.

I’d like to discuss the meaning of the end of the film, but for those of you who haven’t seen it, you may want to skip ahead. This paragraph has no value other than providing a warning and a buffer.

–

And this is another buffer, in case you didn’t listen the first time. Spoilers ahead.

There are three ways to interpret the end of the film, two literal, one other metaphorical. Perhaps the man is from the cult and has come to capture, harm, or kill Martha, which is certainly what she’s fearing. Perhaps the man’s appearance is just a coincidence; he could even be a random stalker, but not from the cult. But I favor a third interpretation – that the man’s status is irrelevant; the point of the scene is that Martha isn’t free of the effects of her two years in the cult, and might never be free. She will assume any incident like this is about the cult, or she’ll even experience more delusions like the two she had at the house and will see someone from the cult where there’s no one. The idea that her ordeal isn’t over is paramount, which is why it’s unnecessary to show the viewer the outcome of the incident in the street.

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→ November 26, 2011
→ By

The Muppets.

When I originally heard that Jason Segel was writing a script for a brand-new Muppet movie that would attempt to reboot the franchise, I was excited, and nervous. It’s been almost 20 years since the last decent Muppet film (The Muppet Christmas Carol, among our favorite holiday movies), and after a long hiatus since the last one, it was going to take a big hit to overcome any skepticism after the mediocre Muppets from Space and the disastrous Muppet Treasure Island to revive the brand. Segel’s endeavor could easily have been the death of the Muppets, too. I’m beyond thrilled to report that it’s a rebirth instead, and one of the most enjoyable nostalgia projects I could imagine.

Segel has created a two-layered script that accomplishes the most important thing in any Muppet film: He has them put on a show, which, naturally, is needed in the story to save the theater from destruction at the hands of evil oil baron Tex Richman (played by Chris Cooper, clearly having the time of his life). The basic story has Segel’s character, Gary, and his little brother, Walter (who is a Muppet, but no one seems to realize this, which is a great conceit that just sits in the background like an inside joke), headed to Los Angeles with Gary’s girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), where they go to tour the Muppet Studios only to learn of Richman’s evil plot. They track down Kermit the Frog, living in semi-retirement in the home that he should have shared with Miss Piggy, and persuade him to put the gang back together for “one more show.” And Walter, who has never been able to fit in as the lone felt creature in a town full of actual humans, lives the ultimate fan’s fantasy, working alongside his idols and finding, for the first time in his life, a community where he really fits in.

The macro story here, and the real theme of the The Muppets, is that there are, and have always been, millions of Muppet fans out there just waiting … and waiting … for someone (one of us, as it turned out) to bring them back into the spotlight in a movie that cuts right to the heart of what we love about the characters individually and as an ensemble. Segel is such a fan that he inserts himself and his fuzzy alter-ego brother into the movie, only to wisely work Gary and Mary back out of the story in the second half of the film so that the Muppets can take over. And take over they do, with Walter on board, and a great turn by Jack Black playing the, um, reluctant guest host of the show-within-the-film. Amy Adams also deserves mention for an incredibly game performance that includes a very silly dance number in the middle of a diner and a slew of wide-eyed, deadpan lines that kept emphasizing how very absurd all of this is. Having seen her in The Fighter a few hours later, I feel like she’s the Nicole Kidman of this generation of actresses, up for absolutely anything and able to nail whatever role she’s given; let’s hope she doesn’t botox herself into zombiedom in her 40s like Kidman has.

That’s not to say the celebrity cameos, such a critical element in the best Muppet movies, are absent – they’re there, and many of them make an impact in just a few seconds of screen time. Neil Patrick Harris has one line and it’s one of the funniest jokes in the film. Mickey Rooney’s cameo is a funny nod to past cameos. Jim Parsons’ cameo would be ruined if I tried to explain it, but he’s nails. I kept waiting for someone to point at Rashida Jones with both hands and say, “Ann Perkins,” and she was one of the best at interacting with the Muppets, grabbing Kermit by the lapels and shaking him like half the guest stars on the original The Muppet Show used to do. Dave Grohl hams it up as “Animool,” maybe his best performance since the “Big Me” video. And Zach Galfinakis has to be a lock to appear as Hobo Joe in every Muppet movie going forward.

Segel also shows off his knowledge of the characters with some Muppet cameos as well. The Beautiful Day Monster is taking pledge calls in the balcony, and Wayne and Wanda appear for a moment when the lights come back on after Chris Cooper briefly cuts the power to the theater. The Newsman (one of the few voices that didn’t work for me) appears briefly in the balcony as well. Marvin Suggs and the Muppaphone appear in the “Life’s a Happy Song” reprise. Behemoth is in Jack Black’s dressing room – and how did he not eat anything? – with a few other monsters I couldn’t name. If Segel had a checklist of Muppets to include, he couldn’t have been more complete.

The music, which really set the two good Muppet movies (the original and the Christmas Carol) apart, is outstanding here, making Bret McKenzie the somewhat unlikely heir to the legacy of Paul Williams, who wrote most of the music in those two earlier flicks. “Life’s a Happy Song” is the breakout hit, stuck in my head for the rest of the day (which is fine by me) and so good they included it twice, while “Man or Muppet” inserts some much-needed humor at a point where the film threatened to get all serious-like on us. But the gem on the soundtrack was actually written by a songwriting team largely responsible for writing bubblegum pop songs for Disney artists: “Pictures In My Head” has Kermit walking down the hall in his House of Usher, looking at old photographs of his castmates and wondering “Would anyone watch or even care, or did something break we can’t repair?” It’s the first of a surprising number of highly emotional moments in the film.

One of those other emotional moments comes when Segel, constantly paying homage to history, has Kermit and Miss Piggy perform a duet of “Rainbow Connection,” which is a high point of the film but had particular resonance for me. In 1994, PBS aired an episode of “Great Performances” on the life of Jim Henson; when they reach the end of his life in the documentary, the producers used “Rainbow Connection,” apparently at Jerry Juhl’s suggestion, to close the discussion of Henson’s life and death and lead into the closing credits. I’ve only seen the show once, when it first aired, but that song, already a favorite of mine, has always brought me back to that point in the documentary, where the full impact of our loss seems to hit all at once. (If whoever holds the copyright on that show has any sense of marketing, they’ll put it out on DVD now while the Muppets are hot again.)

If you don’t love these characters already, however, the film is going to feel a little thin. The story is good by Muppet movie standards, but the contortions required to get the Muppets back together and on the stage don’t leave much time for plot. The film is actually not that funny – it’s sweet, sentimental, almost romantic, but has only a handful of real laugh-out-loud moments, more from the humans than the Muppets. (I’m pleased to report that the much-maligned “fart shoes” joke turned out to be funnier, and more clever, than the trailer indicated.) Chris Cooper rapping is something I never need to see again – and really, can we just put a moratorium on older white male actors rapping badly in film and on TV? It’s not funny now, because it was never funny. I mentioned the Newsman’s voice being off, and Fozzie Bear’s voice was only intermittently right, like two people were behind it, or like the one person behind it couldn’t hold the right pitch and kept slipping out of character, although the vast majority of Muppet voices were more than good enough. I could also pick nits at the absence of a ballroom scene or Veterinarian’s Hospital, but now I’m just being (in my wife’s words) a “Muppet sap.”

I was a little surprised that they tweaked some of the Muppet characters’ personalities, although that may just emphasize just how much I have invested in the characters at this point. Kermit remains the flawed hero, frequently frustrated but less stalwart than in the past, and I missed his old habit of freaking out and flailing his flippers all over the place. (They had a chance, too, in the kidnapping discussion.) Gonzo seemed a little less, well, gonzo, and I don’t remember any lines from his pal Rizzo. Even Miss Piggy seemed a little older and wiser, with just one real “Hiiiii-YAH” in the film, although she made it count. But again, if you lack history with them, you’re not even noticing this stuff, let alone nitpicking like I am. You’ll find it a sweet film with fun music, corny humor, and very high production values compared to any previous Muppet film, but you won’t get all choked up when Kermit walks out of the theater doors for what might be the last time.

If you do love the characters, and I assume by this point you know where I stand on that subject, you couldn’t ask for a better film than this. It’s a tribute, a love letter, a nostalgia trip, a shot in the arm, and probably the impetus for a slew of sequels – and perhaps a revival of the TV show? Please? – written and performed by people who feel the same way we do. But the highest praise I can offer is that after we walked out of the theater, my five-year-old daughter, who knows the characters but obviously doesn’t have the same history with them, said to us, “I want to buy that movie.” I’m hoping her generation takes to these characters the way mine did.

Oh, and next spring, when I need to go see high school players scattered across the country, I am absolutely going to travel by map.

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→ November 25, 2011
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Ruhlman’s Twenty.

(Edit, 5/9/12: Ruhlman’s Twenty just won the James Beard Award for Best Cookbook, General Cooking. Not that it needed the validation.)

I’ve mentioned Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook’s Manifesto a few times already, having talked to the author on the November 11th podcast, but held off on a full review until I’d had a chance to cook a few things from the book. I’ve tried five recipes so far, all hits, and given how informative and readable the surrounding text is, this has quickly become one of the most essential cookbooks I own.

The “Twenty” of the book’s title refers to twenty chapters, each revolving around a core cooking technique or, in a few cases, a critical ingredient such as salt, eggs, or onions, mastery of which is critical for success in the kitchen. I can’t think of anything a home cook would need to know that’s not covered somewhere in this book, and he runs from basic steps to advanced home-cooking techniques such as building egg white foams, mounting sauces with butter, and making confit with duck or lemons. But what has always set Ruhlman apart, aside from his conversational writing style, is that he drills down to the fundamentals behind a recipe. Each section has several pages of explanation, peppered with anecdotes or even quotes from chefs Ruhlman has worked with, and each recipe has more commentary. The one stir-frying recipe explains why restaurant stir-fries are different than anything you can produce at home, then gives six key tips for producing the best stir-fried dishes possible on your consumer-grade stove.

For Thanksgiving, I used two of the book’s three recipes involving duck, one in the chapter on acid (seared duck breasts with cranberry gastrique), the other in the chapter on braising (braised duck legs), and both were straightforward with excellent results. The legs couldn’t be easier – salt them the night before, sweat some aromatics in a pot, add the duck, white wine, thyme, and water just to cover, and braise in a 300 degree oven for three hours; I managed to keep one leg together for the photograph but the other was so tender that the meat fell off the bone when I tried to extract it from the pot. I brined the breasts overnight to keep them moist, since I tend to prefer duck breast closer to medium than the recommended medium-rare (it gets dry and tough when overcooked, and the brining at least slows down the drying-out); Ruhlman’s recipes should hammer home how easy it is to make duck at home, because searing the breasts requires nothing more complicated than cross cuts on the skin and heating up a single heavy skillet. Even the sauce was simple and produced a bright-red result with the sweet/sour profile that pairs extremely well with the lean, dark breast meat. (Mistral in Boston also serves a cranberry gastrique with its signature duck dish, although they roast a half-bird rather than braising the legs separately.) Using both recipes also allowed me to render about ¾ cup of fat from the two dishes, which I’ll deploy today or tomorrow on some Yukon Golds. The only hitch was that the sauce made by reducing the braising liquid from the legs, boosted with sherry vinegar and fish sauce (for umami), didn’t do much for me – and the leg meat didn’t need any help anyway.

I joked with Ruhlman that cooking scrambled eggs over simmering water, instead of directly over the heat source, was “crazy talk,” but the science behind it is pretty sound – it’s the same way you melt chocolate on the stovetop or make zabaglione (a thick custard of eggs and sweet marsala, beaten while sitting over simmering water). This method heats the food gently and slowly, preventing overcooking or scorching, and in the case of the eggs keeping the finished product soft. You have more time to develop curds, and unless you walk away or crank up the heat on the water, you’ll end up with a pile of soft, custardy eggs with a built-in sauce that is incredibly rich, with the texture of a dessert dish in a normally pedestrian breakfast food.

Ruhlman’s pan-roasted pork tenderloin uses one of my favorite techniques, what I learned as the “sear-roast” – sear it on the stovetop, finish in the oven – but boosts it through aggressive seasoning and frequent basting with a butter-garlic-thyme sauce that builds in the pan as you cook the meat. Pork tenderloin has become more popular (and more expensive) in recent years because, as the name implies, it’s naturally tender, since the muscle does virtually no work while the animal is still oinking. The downside is that it’s lean and dries out easily, so boosting it with butter as Ruhlman does makes perfect sense, while the sear-roast technique gives you substantial flavor from the Maillard reaction while allowing you to slow the cooking of the interior in the oven. One thing worth mentioning about the book that appears in this recipe is that Ruhlman assumes some basic familiarity with many ingredients – for example, he explains here that you might want to deal with the tapered end of the tenderloin to prevent overcooking, but doesn’t discuss trimming the tough and extremely annoying silverskin, which can cause the meat to curl during cooking. I don’t see that as an oversight, but it might make Ruhlman’s Twenty a bit intimidating as a first cookbook.

The flip side of that assumption is that Ruhlman also assumes some intelligence and aspirations on the part of the reader. The recipes work if you follow them step-by-step, but when you read the text around them and at the head of each chapter, you build your understanding of the twenty techniques to the point where the recipes become guidelines; in that respect, this book has more in common with his slim but essential volume Ratio, which distilled numerous recipes for baked goods, stocks, and sauces to ratios of core ingredients to allow for endless improvisations.

One great example of that is the two-step pan sauce for roasted chicken, which starts with a basic “rustic” sauce using just white wine, onion, and carrot (the last two are “aromatics”), then adds a second step if you want a “refined” sauce that uses butter, shallot, and herbs, finishing with the optional lemon juice and/or mustard. You can build almost any pan sauce from that framework; the only essential ingredient is the butter, and perhaps the shallot, but you can substitute or add aromatics or herbs, or use a different deglazing liquid. I did it straight, just switching around some herbs based on what I had in the house, and it was among the best pan sauces I’ve ever made, in part because Ruhlman has you deglaze and reduce multiple times to intensify the flavors in the aromatics. Do it his way once (and read the surrounding text) and you’ll understand the reasons behind each step, making you the master of the recipe the second time around.

I should also mention that the photography in Ruhlman’s Twenty is off the charts – these are photographs that will make you want to head for the kitchen, right from the first recipe, sage-garlic-brined pork chops (breaded, pan-fried, and finished with a butter-caper sauce, with the rest of the recipe on page 315). The braised lamb shank photo is beautiful enough that I thought briefly about eating lamb again – and that recipe includes eighteen clear photos to take you through the recipe step by step.

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→ November 23, 2011
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The Wire, season two.

The Wire: The Complete Series is on sale again on amazon for almost 60% off, at $85.49 – perfect timing for me, as many of you have asked for my thoughts on season two, which I just finished watching on Friday.

I get why so many of you warned me that season two might be disappointing; some said it’s the worst season, or just not as good as the first, or just so different that I might not like it. I wouldn’t say any of that held true for me, though – it was just as good as the first, in large part because it was so different, and aside from one complaint about the plot I would be hard-pressed to offer any negative sentiments.

Again, for the handful of you who haven’t seen the series (I’m fairly certain I’m the last one on this particular ship), The Wire follows an ad hoc group of Baltimore police officers who, under the charge of Lieutenant Cedric Daniels, form a major case squad to pursue drug dealing operations. In season two, the squad has been spread to the winds after the end of the Barksdale case from the first season, but gradually Lt. Daniels puts the group back together to pursue a vendetta for a police commander, Stan Valchek, who is angry with the leader of the dockworkers’ union over the placement of a stained glass window in their local church. (Seriously.) That case mushrooms into a sprawling investigation that links the union to white slavery, black marketeering, and a source of drugs for Proposition Joe’s gang (which is a good thing, because we need more Proposition Joe).

The feel of the season is different because of the change in theme. The first season was very much about the inherent fallacy behind the war on drugs, and how ineffective and expensive that battle is likely to be. The second season revolves around the decline of blue-collar employment, which, like the drug war, is behind the economic and social decay of many older American cities. The dockworkers are struggling and their union head bets it all, in effect, on double-zero, putting illegally gained funds into lobbying efforts to dredge a nearby canal and increase port traffic. Those funds are the proceeds of payoffs from smugglers, who attract the attention of the police when one of the containers contains the bodies of thirteen dead women who were being smuggled into the U.S. to work as prostitutes, likely under duress.

The new storyline brought in a host of new characters, most strong, led by the union leader, Frank Sobotka, and the port officer who ends up joining the major case squad, Beadie Russell. Sobotka’s story plays out almost like a classical tragedy – he’s probably doomed from the start, and is so heavily invested in his work that he’s ignorant of the impending danger to members of his immediate family. (Ziggy, his son, was one character I could have done without, or simply done with less of; I almost felt sorry for him when he finally snapped, but then again, could anything we know of his history really excuse what he did?) And Sobotka is faced with some difficult choices, ones with nothing but gray area, because of his moral and political responsibility to his fellow dockworkers.

Russell was a little less well-formed than Sobotka, and her development from security guard to investigator wasn’t as well written as the development of Carver in season one from goofball to surveillance expert (although I suppose this season showed that was a fluke and he just regressed to the mean). The Russell character worked more because of how Amy Ryan played her, almost like she was trying to shed the stereotypical soft female cop image and develop some toughness, much of which falls apart in the final episode. People win Emmys for that sort of thing – that is, when the Emmys are aware that the series exists in the first place.

The expansion to the docks comes at the expense of the Barksdale storyline, although the writers did a solid job of keeping that thread alive throughout the season so they can pick it up again at a future point. Avon Barksdale remains in jail, so Stringer Bell – still the strongest central character in the show from my point of view – becomes more central, even ordering the murder of a potential turncoat and setting up a hit on someone Barksdale hired to work for the group. Bodie’s attempts to grow into some sort of leader within the Barksdale crew was one of the stronger points in the first half of the season, but was dropped for the second half as the focus shifted more and more to the docks. His scene in the flowershop, while insanely silly, was a highlight of the season for me.

That one complaint about the plot I mentioned earlier was pretty significant, even if it was probably realistic (and here comes a spoiler). The FBI agent who tips off the Greek about raids and eventually about Sobotka felt like a tacked-on element, as if the writers needed to ensure that this case wasn’t a total win for the cops, with very little on the agent’s true motivation for protecting a murderous mobster. Is he unaware of the Greek’s body count? Does he view that as an acceptable tradeoff for the information the Greek provides, especially on terrorism? Is this sanctioned by his bosses? Will he ever face any consequences? I get that a rout for the cops would seem too network-police-procedural, and absolutely not realistic, but to have them sunk because of a leak from outside their group, felt like a deus ex machina for the bad guys – a less compelling resolution than we saw in season one.

* I’m not sure what was funnier – Proposition Joe’s response to Sergei’s comments about family (“I got motherfuckin’ nephews and cousins fucking all my shit up…”) or McNulty’s one line when they finally move in on the white slavery operation (“You’re late”), but I remain continually impressed by the writers’ ability to weave in humor without interrupting the flow of the narrative. If you think about it, not only is that more like real life than the idea of separating humorous moments from everything else, but it’s the natural human response to stress, anxiety, or sometimes even grief or despair. It should appear everywhere, and should be seamless. That doesn’t make it easier to write, but it does mean it’s important to make the effort.

* And the wait for the payoff on the “Why always Boris?” joke – one of the longest I can remember in any TV series – was absolutely worth it. I wonder if that was planned from the start.

* So does anyone else think FedEx knew they’d get tremendous word of mouth by hiring the actor who played Bodie to appear in one of their new commercials, or was it just their own dumb luck?

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→ November 21, 2011
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Here’s Looking at Euclid.

In case you’re interested, amazon has the Blu-Ray edition of The Lord of the Rings trilogy on sale for $49.99 (almost 60% off). Not sure how long that sale will last.

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Alex Bellos’ Here’s Looking at Euclid (known as Alex’s Adventures in Numberland in the U.K.) is a little lighter than the last math book I read, focusing instead of numerical oddities and paradoxes as well as the history of basic math. He keeps the tone light by revolving each chapter around one or more interesting personalities, such as the English dentist who used &#981 (the golden ratio) to design more attractive dentures or the various people involved in the invention and rise of sudoku.

Bellos’ gift with this book is to take mathematical subjects that might seem intimidating, such as the nature of irrational numbers like &#981 and &#960 or the concept of the normal distribution, and wraps them in interesting, easily accessible stories that might be enjoyed even by the math-phobic. There’s also an undercurrent here, only mentioned explicitly in one chapter, of sentiment that we don’t really do a good job of teaching math in American public schools. He talks about the need for someone to develop the number zero, without which no numerical system can properly function, and discusses a tribe in the Amazon that has no word for any number larger than five. The chapter on probability revolves around – what else? – gambling, from a conversation with a slot-machine developer to stories of people who figured out how to beat the house and forced changes like more frequent shuffling of more decks at the blackjack table. The final chapter was a real rarity, as it brought together one of my interests (math) with one of my wife’s (crafting) with a discussion of hyperbolic crochet, a way of building models of surfaces with constant negative curvature using yarn, which leads into a discussion of infinity and, of course, a stop at the Hilbert Hotel.

The book is not a straight narrative, but a series of chapters that can stand on their own, although Bellos tries to put them in a logical order from smaller concepts to larger ones. Readers generally interested in math will likely read it straight through – and quickly, as I did, because it’s well-written and I love the topic – but the design does allow anyone frustrated by the mathier sections to just jump ahead to the next part or the next chapter. There’s very little in here that a high school junior wouldn’t follow, however; calculus is mentioned but never used, and the hardest conceptual material appears in the final chapter.

Sudoku fans among you might be surprised to read about the puzzle’s history in the chapter “Playtime,” about math-based puzzles (including comments from Martin Gardner, not long before he died). A square of n smaller squares containing all the integers from 1 to n where all the rows, columns, and corner-to-corner diagonals add up to the same total is called a “magic square,” and has been known and studied since antiquity in Chinese, Indian, and Arab cultures, even finding favor with modern mathematicians like Leonhard Euler. The closest predecessor of modern Sudoku was first designed in 1979 by an American, Howard Garns, but redesigned by a Japanese puzzle maker named Maki Kaji and popularized by a New Zealand man named Wayne Gould, who saw one of Kaji’s puzzles in 1997 and wrote a computer program to generate them en masse. (For whatever it’s worth, I can’t stand sudoku.)

I’d love to see Bellos tackle more difficult mathematical material, given how well he translated the subjects he covered here into plain English and his ability to build a narrative around one or more people that kept the book from ever becoming dry. But I can imagine a sequel to Here’s Looking at Euclid (although I shudder to imagine the potential titles – Are Euclidding Me?) that keeps the material on the same level, as the world of math and numbers has far more stories to tell than Bellos fit into this one book.

Next up: Write More Good: An Absolutely Phony Guide, written by the very funny folks behind the @FakeAPStylebook Twitter account. I’ve read 75 pages so far, but that’s enough to know that every writer in the world will find at least something in here that s/he finds absolutely hilarious, since it touches on all areas of writing and has enough one-liners and short sections that there’s a good mix of dry humor and crude. I received review copies of both this and Euclid from the publishers.

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