"It now lately sometimes seemed a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or a pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe."
On page 934 Gately, drunk on pain, sees a vision of "the sad kid holding something terrible up by the hair and making the face of somebody shouting in panic: Too Late".-What were you intending to do when you started this book?
-I wanted to do something sad. I'd done some funny stuff and some heavy, intellectual stuff, but I'd never done anything sad. And I wanted it not to have a single main character. The other banality would be: I wanted to do something real American, about what it's like to live in America around the millennium.
-And what is that like?
-There's something particularly sad about it, something that doesn't have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news. It's more like a stomach-level sadness. I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness. Whether it's unique to our generation I really don't know. Source: www.salon.com
"Infinite Jest" is the uncanny nightmare of the dream offered us in today's headlines: groceries, videos, information, the world available "on demand."
It paints a nation of millions "plugged in" like the lab rat which freely chooses stimulation of its brain's pleasure center to food and water, and starves smiling.
Events resonate, repeat, recombine. The multitude of tales twist around each other as they descend. Imagine a double-helix in which visible directly across from each high is the low toward which one is falling. Forever falling the end always in sight. Such is the movement of Infinite Jest's plot. Such is the fate of the addicts whose courses it charts.
"In the case of "Infinite Jest," we are in a depressing, toxic and completely commercialized postmillennial America. The president is a former singer named Johnny Gentle, who heralds the advent of a "tighter, tidier nation."
[...] Again and again, the reader is asked to consider the dialectic between freedom and authority (be it the authority of the state or the authority of Alcoholics Anonymous), the relationship between cause and effect, passivity and power and the need of human beings to order their lives through obsession and distraction.
"It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me," says Hal, "that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly."
[...] At the end, that word machine is simply turned off, leaving the reader - at least the old-fashioned reader who harbors the vaguest expectations of narrative connections and beginnings, middles and ends - suspended in midair and reeling from the random muchness of detail and incident that is "Infinite Jest."
"So you're the movie critic for The Times” says Kirsten Dunst, sounding a tad too surprised for comfort. “Er, yes,” I chortle. “Cool” she breezes. “Your job is sooo hard.”
There is an awkward pause while we digest this touching moment of A-list pity. “I can't imagine what it must be like sitting in a room full of critics,” shudders the 26-year-old star. “I'm not into that kind of negative energy whatsoever.”
The sensible question to ask Miss Dunst at this painful juncture is “So what on earth are you doing here?” We are in a caravan on the film set of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People - a romantic comedy about an aspiring British critic who falls hopelessly in love with Dunst in New York. But there's a thundering knock on the door and Simon Pegg noisily enters and plonks himself on the banquette next to her.
Pegg is the blundering star, and geeky alter ego of Toby Young, the maverick journalist who wrote the bestselling true story on which the film is based. Young's brilliant account of his short and inglorious career working for the world's most glamorous fashion bible, Vanity Fair, is a sublime exercise in public humiliation. The temptation to prick the glossy reputation of an institution such as Vanity Fair must feel almost subversive to stars in the league of Dunst. “Have you ever been photographed by Vanity Fair?” I innocently ask her. Pegg cannot believe his ears.“The magazine?” checks Kirsten. “Yeaarh. I've been on the cover.” Obviously a lot of covers, if Simon's face is anything to go by. One forgets that Dunst is Spiderman's official squeeze, and the star of such esoteric wonders as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the rom-com Wimbledon. “I'm usually roped in for the young Hollywood ingénue covers they do ... you know ... ‘Here's the bratpack”.Peter Staughan's new script treatment, says Woolley, has given Young's comedy a romantic spine, an American heroine (Dunst), and infinitely more movie logic. “Our inspiration has always been Billy Wilder's 1960 movie The Apartment, with Jack Lemmon forever trying to climb up the greasy corporate pole,” Woolley admits. “That's what happens to Toby's character. The higher he gets, the lower he gets. Toby went to Vanity Fair thinking ‘That's it. I've made it.' Only to discover that he hadn't been hired for who he was, but for his novelty value.”
Young's set visits have apparently been legendary. “In true Toby fashion he did not enamour himself to us all,” says Woolley with wonderful tact. “I love Toby. He's a good guy. He's a genuine larger-than-life character, and he's got honesty and balls. But he's also got some form of Tourette's syndrome where he says the wrong thing at the wrong time. If the phrase, ‘He is his own worst enemy' was coined for anyone, it is Toby.”
"Some movies just stay on the screen when they are through, but Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist transcends that norm as its radiant truth and naturalistic approach cuts deep through our toughest layer of skin that isn’t penetrated very easily.The outcome hasn’t been demonstrated since Almost Famous captivated our emotions in 2000. Each film has similar main characters. Each boy is normal in his appearance but are thrown into a world where some rock-stars and rich men would kill for. It’s with these characters that each film bases their whole premise around; simple and loveable. You can’t teach that in acting school.
There comes a time when a movie achieves intimacy with its audience, and hence, that is how it acquires greatness. First time director Peter Sollett, adapting from a Cohn and Levithan novel, creates magic. He manages to establish a strong enough bond (strongest since Brokeback Mountain) that allows us to realize what we are watching is not only comedy done to perfection but it can also double as high end drama; almost like a monk who reaches his highest pinnacle during his religious learning’s. When comedy can do this, it is hard to beat.
Blatantly breaking away from the infectious raunchy humor which we came to call ‘comedy’ comes something out of defiance towards that; a movie that was made from the purest of heart with mounting intentions to create peace and harmony amongst every character. Nick and Norah desperately disregards any traits involving vulgar sex, terrible language and did I mention sex? What Sollett forays into is a movie world where sex isn’t on everyone’s mind. The lone thing that is on everyone’s mind is making the other person smile".
"The actors, of course, are all way better-looking than I imagined the characters in the book, but they all suit the roles beautifully in personality and make each character their own. I love that Michael Cera's Nick is a bit darker than earlier characters he's played, and that he's not the lovable dork who doesn't think he can get the girl -- he's a guy that's obsessing over the wrong ex-girlfriend, maybe, but he's already loved and lost the hot girl, and now can move on to trying a more mature relationship with a new girl, Norah. Which brings me to Kat Dennings. If you don't completely fall in love with her as Norah, I kind of want to start a fight with you". Source: blog.myspace.com
"There is, then, something unintentionally ironic about the word “infinite” in the film’s title. That word is supposed to imply, I guess, that that magical moment can go on forever—that the point in time where one is so in love that one just wants to make mix tapes for the other person doesn’t have to fade. There’s another word for being stuck infinitely in the same place. That word is hell. [...] Because despite Norah finally finding a guy that will bring her to orgasm and despite Nick finding a girl who will listen to and appreciate his mix tapes and despite Caroline’s relief that this time when she woke up from passing out the strange guys in the van she found herself in were not trying to rape her and despite the glee of an auditorium full of fans who would give their right pinkie to share a vomit flavored wad of gum with Kat Dennings or Michael Cera there was a sheen of sadness that permeated from the very pores of this film". Source: lookingcloser.wordpress.com
Michael Cera in "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist". ''I don't really think of it as a movie about being a teenager,'' says Cera, whose character, Nick, is a Yugo-driving aspiring rocker recently dumped by his girlfriend (Alexis Dziena). ''It's just about that feeling you get when you meet someone you like one night, and how you run the risk of easily losing touch with them forever.'' Dennings agrees. ''Yeah, there's always that threat in this movie,'' she says. ''They don't know each other's last names, and might not even meet again on Facebook!'' Source: www.ew.com
Kat Dennings with guitar.
"Femme fatale Jenny Lewis has never sounded so passionate and her songs never so hard-hitting and acerbic as on her aptly titled solo disk Acid Tongue. The album follows 2006’s Rabbit Fur Coat (which Spin named among the best albums of that year) and a series of acclaimed albums with indie rock fave Rilo Kiley". Source: indiepassion.blogspot.com Jenny Lewis with Jake.
"In preparation for our upcoming Top 50 Hottest Young Actors list, we have made the rounds of upcoming movie listings and selected the 10 young actors with the most exciting and challenging roles: Jake Gyllenhaal - two upcoming roles: as Tommy Cahill in Brothers and as Prince Dastan in Prince of Persia.
Based on Susan Bier’s film, also entitled Brothers, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Tommy Cahill, the brother of Sam Cahill (played by Tobey Maguire). Tobey’s character is a soldier who goes missing in Afghanistan, and Jake’s character tries to comfort his older brother's wife Grace (played by Natalie Portman) and her children.
The original Bier film is a drama about a UN-soldier who is in a helicopter crash somewhere in Afghanistan and is believed to be dead. His wife and younger brother both deeply mourn him, but eventually finds comfort in each other's company, leading to the two of them falling in love. Months later, the soldier reappears alive but deeply traumatized.
In Prince of Persia, based on the 2003 video game of the same name, Jake plays the title role. The film is directed by Mike Newell and also stars Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina. Filming is taking place in the United Kingdom and Morocco. As Prince Dastan, Gyllenhaal is a 6th century prince of Persia who teams up with Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) to rescue the Sands of Time, a gift from the gods that controls time, from the hands of the villainous nobleman, Nizam (Ben Kingsley)". Joseph Gordon-Levitt - He has about seven upcoming projects, all of them very exciting and diverse, so we choose three that really excite us. Joe Levitt is always an indie player, and we based our choices on that premise…
In The Frog King, Joe plays a struggling writer toiling away at his publishing house job who tries to keep the one good thing in his life -- his relationship with his girlfriend -- from going wrong. The film is based on Adam Davies’ book The Frog King. 500 Days of Summer tells the story of the relationship between Summer (played by Zooey Deschanel), who doesn't believe in true love and Tom (Gordon-Levitt), described as a hopeless romantic, who falls in love with her. Over a span of 500 days, it is told from the perspective of Tom, who is influenced by pop music and who breaks out into song throughout the movie.
He’s also slated to play Cobra Commander in GI Joe and one supporting role in Killshot (with Mikey Rourke, among others), but I would think his role (rumored) in Akira would be just as exciting, if not one of the three most exciting. It would be the first time that Joe gets to work with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Paul Dano - After Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood, you wouldn’t expect Paul Dano to go anywhere but up! With six new films coming his way, we took an immediate liking to two of them:
In Gigantic, he plays Brian, a depressed mattress salesman whose quest to adopt a Chinese baby is sidetracked when he falls for Happy (played by Zooey Deschanel). What makes this role so cool is that Dano will act alongside John Goodman, Ed Asner and Jane Alexander. Ed Asner will play Dano's pot-smoking, gangsta rap-loving father, and Jane Alexander is to be his long-suffering mother. John Goodman will play Zooey's brilliant, domineering dad.In another cool new project for Dano, he’ll be reunited with his L.I.E. co-star Brian Cox, only this time it’s not a serious drama but a comedy for the duo called The Good Heart.
Shia LaBeouf - The Big Studios’ favorite young actor LaBeouf stars in the $100 million DreamWorks production of the thriller called Eagle Eye.
Shia plays one of the two strangers (the other is played by Michelle Monaghan) who become the pawns of a mysterious woman they have never met, but who seems to know their every move. Realizing they are being used to further her plot for a political assassination, they must work together to outwit the woman before she has them killed.The movie is the follow-up to the big box office winner Disturbia, directed by D.J. Caruso.Universal, on the other hand, cast Shia in the upcoming Neil Burger thriller called Dark Fields. Based on the novel by Alan Glynn, Dark Fields tells the story of:
… an intellectual slacker and former cocaine addict now is eking out a living as a copywriter for a small publishing house. Through a bizarre series of coincidences, Eddie finds himself in possession of MTD-48, a drug that has some curious effects. On his first trip, Eddie discovers that the drug boosts the intellect, making him far smarter - but also faster, more intuitive, and more charismatic. [...] However, like all drugs, MDT-48 has its downside, including lethal withdrawal symptoms and terrifying side-effects that can render a user homicidal. If this were not enough, the drug itself is both created and distributed by a shadowy corporation worthy of Pynchonian paranoia, and it isn't too long before Eddie begins to suspect that he didn't just "find" MDT-48 after all".
Kat Dennings and Michael Cera at the premiere of "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" at TIFF. Rafi Gavron, writer Rachel Cohn, Michael Cera and director Peter Sollett. "Nick & Norah' Infinite Playlist" screenwriter Lorene Scafaria, Rachel Cohn and Kat Dennings.Jay Baruchel and Kat Dennings. Ari Graynor, Caroline in "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist". Michael Cera smirks. Rian Johnson, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz and Adrian Brody,"The Brothers Bloom" TIFF Premiere. Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz. Rian Johnson dancing with Rachel Weisz.
"Everyone in this room is connected, except Norah - she’s the kind of statue they don’t ever make, a statue of someone totally defeated".
Norah Silverberg meets Nick O'Leary at a club in downtown Manhattan. Nick is stuck in his usual emo-depressed state due to his recent break-up with Tris, who had inspired him to write beautiful songs. Norah comes from a bad relationship with a very politically-oriented boyfriend, Tal, whom she's dumped about five times in the last three years.
Nick can't stand the idea of confronting his ex-sexpot Tris approaching him with a new boyfriend, so he turns to this girl Norah, whom Nick had been contemplating previously at the bar, and asks her if she'll concede to be his five-minutes girlfriend. Norah concurs to it only because she wants to check out Nick's straightness as a confirmation of her earlier analysis of this attractive musician from Hoboken (who auto-describes himself as a random bassist in an average queercore band) and to peeve Tris, her mate in the Sacred Heart school.
Nick's bandmates are gay and ironic, Dev from a town in Jersey called Lodi (idol in reverse) and Thom from South Orange. Nora's best friend Caroline is feisty, with the long caramel hair, the big cherry Tootsie Pop lips and a promiscuous behaviour.
The story of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist belongs to the young adult genre, although its appeal is universal, since it explores the search for real sensations and everlasting nights in a mix-tape narrative allegory. It's told from alternative simultaneous views by the writers Rachel Cohn (Gingerbread, Cupcake, You Know Where to Find Me), Norah's bi-polar voice, and David Levithan (Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List, Realm of Possibility, Boy Meets Boy) who adopts shy Nick's voice. In the first chapters we can receive a wrong impression by the characters, because the first brushes are a bit harsh, in an intoxicated atmosphere of clubs crowded with frantic doped teenagers, and the boy and girl could come off as self-absorbed and narcissist music geeks.
"Sweat, malice, and hunger pour from me" are some of Nick's first thoughts on set. After their concert, he only can think of Tris' infidelities: "Three weeks, two days, and twenty-three hours ago. And she’s already with someone else. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I can’t stop them from playing". These constant negative thoughts turn Nick more broken and void by the minute. It's almost as if initially Nick and Norah were written as two obsessed indie passengers whose purpose is to fill their null soundtracks of their respective mute lives.
"He’s working the ironic punk boy–Johnny Cash angle too hard to be a ’mo. Jersey-boy bassist with Astor Place hair who wears torn-up, bleach-stained black jeans and a faded black T-shirt" is the accurate analysis of Nick by Norah's intensely radiographic girly mind. Her boyfriend Tal and best friend Caroline have made her believe she's possibly frigid and she expresses her fear of being the Tin-Woman in a exhaustive series of internal monologues throughout the novel. She is horribly confused expressing her sexuality with boys, auto-defining herself as a "horrid bitch from the planet Schizophrenia", although she's actually a Jewish valedictorian princess from Englewood Cliffs, a record company CEO's spoiled daughter. Norah had only kissed Tal and Becca Weiner from summer camp until this Saturday. Norah is a lonely creature who only trusts her archive of My So-Called Life episodes as a guide to her romance record.
(We must remember that romance heroines in the literature were princesses, duchesses, or other ladies of the court; "Romance" originally referred to the vernacular French language called romanz. In the 12th century, literature written down in romance was intended to distinguish from official Latin literature. So we could say this romance genre started as an alternative variety, the same "indie" stream Nick and Norah try to rout out.)
Norah often feels trapped because she's hesitating applying for Brown University and her undesired future with Tal, who made her awful playlists filled with YMA Sumac crap and belittled her on a regular basis.
The descriptions of the concerts, mosh pits, communal hardcore energy, and reactions of the underground punk scene are realistically dirty and deafening, allowing us feel the giddiness of sliding into a gigantic pulsating wave from a loud station, fulminating our ears and shrinking our stomachs. I liked the references to random Weezer fans, the hint of dialogue from the film Heathers and memorabilia of rock classics — not very beloved by Norah — as the Beatles, Patti Smith or Lou Reed.
Cohn and Levithan avoid gracefully ribald situations typical of punchy punky teen romance scenarios. Instead, they pen a wonderful vérité representational portrait of insecure personalities plagued with low-esteem and erotical euphony.
In chapter three Nick's romantic side unfolds: "When Tris passes by me it's like the world is no longer 3-D. The third dimension falls away, then the second, and all I'm left with is one dimension, and that dimension is her".
In chapter seven, Nick confesses: "I am liking Norah". "I'm liking that I have to earn her smiles and laughs".
There are various passages that are of high erotic voltage (being the most graphic the intimacy they find in the hotel Marriott's ice-room), with fervid advances between Norah and Nick, as in a scene in the small room to the side of the Ladies Room, which is probably one of the saddest make-outs I've ever read. Nick stops Norah's lustful inexperienced flirting and he realizes he just can't do it (despite his heat) because he sees the unsmiling look in Norah's eyes.
Feeling rebuked by Nick, Norah distances herself from him, misunderstanding his reaction, and looks for advice from Tris. Caroline would have tipped her but she's too drunk (Drunkzilla) and taken care by Nick's gang. The track on list now could be appropriately "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" (The Smiths), as Nick broods: "Fuck her for getting in that cab. Fuck her for fucking with my mind. Fuck her for not knowing what she wants. Fuck her for dragging me into it. Fuck her for being such a fantastic kisser. Fuck her for ruining my favorite band. If I had my guitar, I might be able to make some change. But instead all I have are the songs crashing together in my head. They’re all sad. They’re all bitter. And they’re all that I have".
Norah is also falling apart inside the taxi at the moment the station plays a Merle Haggard break-up ballad. "Happy endings don't happen" - she resents, while an equally tortured Nick is regretting his lack of confidence: "It's not enough to be sitting alone on a sidewalk writing a song for a girl if you don't have the guts to at least try talking to her again". But an amusing phone call will change the separated route of our protagonists, when they meet again in an Ukrainian afterhours restaurant in the East Village, Veselka. In this place both play to have a "formal" first date, eating borscht, confessing their shared fondness of B-sides tracks and the obscure band "Where's Fluffy?".
Thereafter, Nick begins to see Tris as a past girlfriend, a Hot Topic mall hussy who wears slutty short leather skirts, mass-produced “vintage” Ramones T-shirts, yellow leggings and who likes to be a party girl. He's wised up after getting over Tris' betrayal. It's relevant that later Tris is humanized to the point that the readers begin to care about her real intentions and discover she's not the groupie-fatale epiphyte they think. She tries her best to not cause more pain. "I want to — but I can’t — hate her", Norah discloses.
Norah's impressed with the explanation Nick offers her about her Tikkun Olan conversation, and his straight-edge philosophy totally clicks with her: "...the real punk goes down now with a straight edge: no alcohol, no drugs, no cigarettes, no skanks. The real punk now is the only punk left after all the madness: the music, the message".
The intertwined descriptive style of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist never loses its consciousness of the occlusive threats around the night in N.Y., but manages to wrap them with sunny smiles. On the edge of Times Square the rain lightens Nick and Norah's hearts: "she is so fucking beautiful, the way her mouth is uncertain about whether or not to smile".
Instants so lyrical as this one fixate us in such a hypnotic state we won't see the train coming into the subway, or the turnstiles. We're wandering, just as Nick and Norah, walking down Seventh Avenue, not knowing if we’re going to the subway or walking all the way back to the Lower East Side... Published today in blogcritics.org
"The British Telegraph is running a fairly standard puff piece on Tobey Maguire in the run up to the release of Spider-Man 3, with Maguire spouting the same 'maybe I will, maybe I won't' boilerplate when it comes to the next installment in the series. "They'll definitely develop a fourth movie and write a screenplay, and I would consider it if there's a good script, a good story that I felt was worth telling and Sam Raimi was involved and the right cast came together for it," he says. More interestingly, the paper seems to know something that I don't, which is that a $20 million offer is already on the table for Maguire, should he decide to put on the costume one more time. Maguire was paid $16 million for Spider-Man 3, was signed only for three films, and currently has no other film projects lined up, superhero or otherwise, according to the paper. Maguire blanches at the notion that he is confining himself to big-budget work: "When I read a script, it has nothing to do with the size of the budget or whether it has global appeal," he's quoted as saying. "I just want to tell stories and play different roles, and I always want to work with great filmmakers." The article also goes into the old story about Jake Gyllenhaal almost getting to put on the suit for Spider-Man 2 before a last-minute intervention by Ron Meyer, president of Universal, put the kibosh on that. In typical British press style, the reporter also feels compelled to point out that Maguire didn't "look particularly relaxed" during the interview, and looks more like a "classroom nerd" than a superhero". Source: www.cinematical.com
Quoting Hal/DFW on page 900:
-What were you intending to do when you started this book?
"Infinite Jest" is the uncanny nightmare of the dream offered us in today's headlines: groceries, videos, information, the world available "on demand."
"In the case of "Infinite Jest," we are in a depressing, toxic and completely commercialized postmillennial America. The president is a former singer named Johnny Gentle, who heralds the advent of a "tighter, tidier nation."
