Three things I liked: microreviews
The White Tiger: Jai’s nailed it, Aravind Adiga’s novel is solid. Corrosive first person voice is like Animal’s People. A howl of anger, Richard Wright’s Native Son transported to Delhi. For anyone who’s wondered how what life as Indian underclass, as part of the ‘Darkness,’ the opposite of India Shining, is really like. Tips on little scams employers and servants run on each other. First person eventually becomes tiresome — like listening to an interesting but long-winded narrator. It limits the language flourishes (for veracity) and the perspective (because a single narrator can’t see everything that happens). Some cool symbolism including Yama’s steed, a water buffalo, carrying carcasses to slaughter.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall: The Judd Apatow crew pops out another flick. Shallow but very funny. Mila Kunis is gorgeous and less annoying than in That ’70s Show. A very specific rom-com in a world of generic, focus-grouped ones — think Dracula puppet rock opera (!) Paul Rudd is hilarious as an amnesiac stoner surf instructor. Russell Brand hits it out of the park as your girlfriend’s cool new lover. Line about his tattoos, paraphrased: ‘That one’s [Tibetan] Buddhist, that one’s Hindu, that one’s Nordic. Those belief systems don’t even go together.’ Apatow flips movie history on its side with three shots of Jason Segel’s l0vestick and no female nudity.
Smart People: No desi connection, but of interest to those in academia — I saw this movie in Harvard Square, and there were lots of knowing laughs about bitchy campus politics. It’s the Sideways posse all over again. Damn funny, but bleaker than Sarah Marshall. Thomas Haden Church, looking like a leathery, older Ethan Hawke, has incredible, deadpan comic timing. Dennis Quaid as a Carnegie Mellon lit prof, Ellen Page from Juno. Quaid takes physical method acting to a new extreme, completely transforming his jockish frame into an awkward, peevish professor. Page is annoyingly twerpy as a Young Republican — her character is the unpleasant logical endpoint of her father Quaid’s curmudgeonliness. Sarah Jessica Parker is decent.
on Friday, April 25th, 2008, 3:17 pm in Film, Literature › 
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A really good read that illuminates the politics and jockeying for prestige in research labs is Intuition, by Allegra Goodman. She is the wife of an MIT computer science professor, and some of her characters are clearly modeled on professors both at MIT and Harvard.
IB, did you see Dark Matter?
I’ve been wanting to read Inutition forever — the premise was exciting and the vicarious thrill of watching people who do science muddling through — made it a very attractive prospect. This summer, hopefully.
I liked Smart People mainly for it’s convincing atmosphere. I liked the look and feel of the movie. Sarah Jessica Parker’s physician with her utilitarian apartment, glass topped dining table and microwaved dinner for the Prof boyfriend were quite good details (or am I saying too much?). Dennis Quaid had a comical walk - it really was Method Acting. He was awkward and such a middle-aged sad sack. The little Republican was chirpy and over-written, a caricature. Why do movies like this always have such know-it-all children? No one talks like that. Haden Church is turning into quite an interesting character actor, isn’t he? He’s funny.
Uneven but worth watching I think. I blocked out the academic stuff. Dear L-rd, how I hate academic stuff.
I had high expectations of Intuition, but was disappointed. The story was interesting enough but the writing was amateurish. What particularly annoyed me, whenever a character was introduced, there’d be three pages describing their childhood and character quirks: “When he was three, Jack solved the Rubick’s cube….”
No, I was initially not too enthusiastic about it because I’d read somewhere that the title, while alluding to the physics hypothesis, is used as a metaphor for the unknowable darkness inside people, or some such thing. The entire genre of science as allegory is something that I am generally not very excited about because it is generally done quite poorly and mangles the actual science, the one notable exception being Copenhagen (I haven’t seen Proof, the play, but the movie was quite bad, and the pop science interpretations of quantum physics, mathematics etc. in short stories, books etc. are usually downright awful).
The NY Times review of this movie seemed generally positive, though, and it seems to stick to the actual story more than metaphors, so I think I will check it out eventually.
Yep, the writing was ordinary, but the interplay of personalities and egos in research definitely held my attention, especially because I could see the real personality traits behind some of the characters.
Best actor playing a lit prof in a university in Pittsburgh? Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys!