Idol Chatter: October 2007 Archives

Since the trailer for "Michael Clayton" only left me scratching my head and grunting like a Cro-Magnon, I was surprised to find myself in full command of my cerebral cortex as I walked (upright) out of the theater. Actually, I wasn't in full command of it because I was still processing the film's intricate, layered look into the ethical underpinnings of a fictional Manhattan corporate law firm.

At this movie's heart is a moral dilemma: What would you do if you were single-handedly involved in the outcome of a $3 billion class-action lawsuit against the powerful agrochemical company that you worked for? Would you make public a "smoking gun" document that shows your company was negligent in causing rampant cancer among a group of small-time farmers and their family members? Collateral damage, anyone?

Don't answer too quickly. What's at stake is your entire professional career, the careers of your superiors in whose powerful presence you practically tinkle yourself and the reputation of your company whose potential financial loss is incalculable.

When one thinks of Jerusalem, the literal meaning of the name--City of Peace--might not be the first notion that comes to mind. However, the current limited theatrical release "O Jerusalem" depicts the desire for peace, for the city and the region, among those involved in the events surrounding the creation of Israel in the late 1940s.

Director Elie Chouraqui successfully brings the eponymous book by Dominique Lapierre and the late Larry Collins to the big screen--40 years after it was first released, and only after multiple directors, including Costa-Gavras and William Friedkin, took their turns.

This was clearly a passion project for Chouraqui, as his credits also include co-star, co-writer, and producer. He takes this story, based on historical accounts blended with fictional characters, and gives insight to the audience, which can get lost in news reports depicting hate in the region today.

Chouraqui doesn't hide the hate that was felt by a portion of those in the Arab, British, and Jewish populations of that time, but he highlights those with the hope for peace.

The big controversy surrounding Jessica Seinfeld’s new cookbook for parents, "Deceptively Delicious," is whether Jerry’s wife might have copied recipes (or even the idea for the book) from a less well-known author, Missy Chase Lapine, whose cookbook, "The Sneaky Chef," appeared a few months earlier.

Having worked at Parents Magazine for 20 years, I can vouch for the fact that sneaking veggies into foods kids like is nothing new. We used to get at least a dozen such tips from readers each year. It always struck me as morally dubious to sneak spinach into brownies or secrete squash in chocolate pudding. But, hey, I always allowed my kids to drown everything in ketchup, so I’m probably not one to talk.

Still, child-raising books with words like "sneaky" and "deceptive" in the title imply that it’s acceptable to lie to kids. Now food author Mimi Sheraton has joined the fray on Slate with a smart analysis of why sneaking veggies into sweets is to be discouraged on both nutritional and ethical grounds:

With the dangerous rise of childhood obesity and diabetes, do we really want to encourage the eating of sugars and starches? And, ultimately, and more seriously perhaps, lying to children via trickery--even "for their own good"--can feed a lifetime of distrust, as it should. I wonder how these undercover mothers keep their secrets. Are children locked out of the kitchens at cooking time, lest they see Mommy slipping pureed zucchini into their beloved mac 'n' cheese?

--By Wendy Schuman

The title of Sidney Lumet's latest is lifted from the old Irish saying "may you be in heaven thirty minutes before the devil knows you're dead," the entirety of which is typed across the screen as a disguised Ethan Hawke watches a bullet-riddled robber fly through the doors of his parents' jewelry store, set smack in the middle of suburban sprawl. In the film, which Lumet directed from a script by playwright Kelly Masterson, the half hour in heaven probably belongs to Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a broker who coerces his dim, sensitive younger brother Hank (Hawke) into robbing the store run by 'mom and pop' (Rosemary Harris and Albert Finney), then blissfully sits back, snorting coke in his office, while the robbery goes horribly awry.

Think Cain and Abel transplanted to Westchester or "King Lear" with a whining male Cordelia and a grudge-harboring older son. That, in a sense, is "Devil," which complicates already strained familial relations with an affair between Andy's wife Gina (Marisa Tomei) and Hank, and a brother-brother-father showdown that cements the third act in a tragic twist.

"Reservation Road," which opens this Friday, has nothing to do with the forthcoming "Revolutionary Road," though both are adapted from books about families in crisis. The former, directed by "Hotel Rwanda"'s Terry George and based on John Burnham Schwartz's excellent novel of the same name, is set in Stamford, Connecticut, where boats drift across the harbor, college campuses are surrounded by manicured green lawns, and children play the cello for their proud, doting parents. This vision of small town Americana is immediately smashed when ten-year-old Josh Learner (Sean Curley) is fatally hit by a car and the driver speeds away.

Ethan and Grace Learner, Josh's well-to-do parents, are played with powerful honesty by Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly. The accidental killer, a struggling lawyer named Dwight Arno, is played by Mark Ruffalo, who etches a tense, believable portrait of guilt tempered by self-loathing. But George, who basically tore my heart out with his superb screen vision of the holocaust in Rwanda, speeds through the grief-drenched proceedings to get to the crux of the story, a thriller in which victim tracks killer and killer warbles miserably, attempting make amends while retaining partial custody of his son Lucas (Eddie Alderson).

The sense of time in this movie is off. The cat-and-mouse game Ethan and Dwight play -- supposedly heightened when Ethan hires Dwight as his attorney -- is more procedural than thrilling. And the troubled relationship between Dwight and his ex-wife (an underused Mira Sorvino) isn't fleshed out enough for us to understand why Dwight rushed Lucas home from a Red Sox game on the fateful night when Josh was killed.

Have you noticed? There's an intake of fresh oxygen being sucked into the collective lungs of Christians who love music. It's finally time, it seems, for genuine Christian engagement with pop music – any pop music, made by anybody, sold...

Being something of a disaffected Orthodox Jew myself, I was captivated by Shalom Auslander’s no-holds-barred evocation of the right-wing modern Orthodox world in his new memoir “Foreskin’s Lament.” Echoing the themes of his debut story collection, “Beware of God,”...