Space-elevator yarn—or ribbon, to borrow the novel's idiom—is your typical visionary Arthur C. Clarke specimen hobbled by the author's typically wooden characters and dialog. Nevertheless, the ideas alone are worth the slog, and it's a quick read despite the intermittent and unnecessary forays into South Asian mysticism.
Artist: Gnarls Barkley. Album: St. Elsewhere.
Artist: Mellowdrone. Album: Box.
Artist: Solid State Revival. Album: Step Into the Sun - Single.
James B. Stewart's account of the Eisner years at Disney isn't as dishy as I would have liked, frequently glossing over the inherent cattiness of the entertainment industry in favor of dry, repetitive boardroom-minutes recaps; and the author is embarrassingly, squarely out of his depth whenever he attempts to discuss pop culture (poor fact-checking abounds); but the petty-sociopath-pathological-liar portrait of Eisner that emerges is nevertheless comprehensive, if somewhat lacking in editorial insight.
If Cars had been made by any other studio it would probably have registered marginally higher on my scale, but given that Pixar's films have earned the right to be judged only against one another, Cars must be received as a sincere but miscalculated bore. Even setting aside my complete ignorance of and bewilderment at so-called NASCAR culture, the movie's a clunker—from its sagging midsection to the filmmakers' problematic decision to place their characters in a world that, lacking the necessary context of human habitation, comes across as profoundly lifeless. Throw in a musical interlude that would challenge the harshest Trey Parker parody in its corniness and you've got a proper misfire. Worst of all, a preponderance of fart jokes and immediately dated pop cultural flotsam suggests the unwelcome influence of DreamWorks' bottom-line mentality. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Grade: C+
Artist: Katie Melua. Album: Piece by Piece.
I'm not that familiar with Dan Brown's novel, although what little I've read of and about it has suggested it's execrable. By that measure, the movie is a distinct improvement, merely plodding, relentlessly expository and episodic. Cinema sometimes completely transcends its literary source material, but this is an Akiva Goldsman-Ron Howard collaboration, so that isn't the case here. Goldsman's screenplay is lazy and literal (it's rare to find footnotes so poorly disguised as dialog outside the realm of Star Trek), Howard's direction square and uninspired. The excellent cast is mostly on autopilot—Ian McKellen does his Ian McKellen impression while Tom Hanks does his Michael Douglas/Harrison Ford impression, while Alfred Molina does his best totem pole impression. Only Paul Bettany and Audrey Tautou seem really alive here, and their commitment to thankless roles energizes what could have been an interesting reworking of the novel's core premise, which is somewhat intriguing if overblown. Grade: B-
There's some top-notch French chop-sockey in the opening scenes of this cheapie actioner—until the Luc Besson-scribed story, such as it is, gets mired in preachy civics and a tortured plot that plays out like a partially rendered video game. The rest, mercifully eighty minutes or so in toto, is an exercise in diminished returns and indifferent direction. But that opening sequence would make a great PS3 cut-scene. Grade: C+