Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights and Magnolia are two of my favorite films, which may be strange considering I'm not a huge fan of Robert Altman or ensemble films. But Anderson's new film, Punch Drunk Love, is very different from these previous works. Adam Sandler plays Barry Egan, a designer plunger salesman whose social behavior has been negatively shaped by his six sisters since childhood. When one of his sisters introduces him to Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), he begins to develop his courage, even deciding to immediately resolve threats and a debt owed to Dean Trumbell (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a sleazy phone sex operator.
As interesting as the plot may be if fully unfolded, Anderson seems to concentrate more on the visual and technical aspects of the film. There seem to be a number of homages to classic Hollywood film -- Barry wearing the same bright-blue suit throughout the entire film; elegantly dancing in a supermarket; the hard-working American professional archetype that may be more evident in classic cinema than in contemporary film; the simplistic boy-meets-girl romance between Barry and Lena -- as well as references to European cinema, such as the prominent dream-like imagery; the random and quasi-symbolic appearance of an abandoned harmonium, which seems to play no obvious role in the story; the artistic interweaving of prism-like color bars between scenes; and the numerous shots bathed in sunlight, a technique that serves to establish a sinister Hitchcockean feel throughout much of the film.
Jon Brion, who contributed music to Magnolia, returns to score this film, creating warm, yet somewhat unsettling music, to complement the onscreen action. But perhaps one of my favorite aspects of the film is Anderson's inclusion, in the preview and the film, of Shelley Duvall singing "He Needs Me," a popular but hard-to-place song from Altman's 1980 film, Popeye, which, to me, is also evocative of classic Hollywood.
Punch Drunk Love is perhaps something better seen than discussed in words. This is the end of my review.
And by the way, the wonderful Joyce Valenza published an interesting article on weblogging in the business section of the Philadelpia Inquirer today. She even quoted me! Yo Philly.
I am finishing up Eric Schlosser's 2001 examination of the fast food industry, Fast Food Nation. He reveals a number of interesting -- and horrifying -- facts involving the meat industry, fast food marketing strategies, E coli and contamination, advertising aimed at children, the psychology of comfort food, the unethical treatment of slaughterhouse workers and animals, and the cultural history of the fast food phenomenon.
I like the fact that Schlosser does not act like some angry young vegetarian (don't take offense, herbivores) preaching to the country to abstain from meat at all costs; in fact, near the beginning of the book he writes, "During the two years spent researching this book, I ate an enormous amount of fast food. Most of it tasted pretty good." He handles the muckraking critique of fast food in a somewhat objective manner, including evidence that the fast food industry operates both responsibly and irresponsibly, depending on the time, place, management, individual chain or restaurant, et cetera.
There are some great pieces of valuable information about the fast food stuffs Americans eat. To name a few: the strong scent of cooked meat and french fries is often bottled in a factory off the New Jersey Turnpike (one company burns sawdust and captures the exhaust, to be later pumped onto meat for a 'fresh-smoked' smell); slaughterhouse management consistently lies about its injury and death rates in its extremely dangerous working conditions, as a way to curb union behavior and governmental shut-downs; and over half of the beef in the country -- much of which ends up in McDonald's and Burger King and eaten by young children -- is contaminated.
Duran Duran, Pop Trash
Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle
Cyndi Lauper, She's So Unusual
Alphaville, Forever Young
The Vaselines, The Way of the Vaselines
Juliana Hatfield, Only Everything
P.J. Harvey, Is This Desire?
The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks
Frente, Marvin the Album
Destiny's Child, The Writing's on the Wall
The Cars, The Cars
The B-52s, Cosmic Thing
Duran Duran, Arena
The Doors, The Soft Parade Saturday Night Fever soundtrack
L7, Hungry for Stink
The Dandy Warhols, The Dandy Warhols
The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
Ace of Base, The Sign
The Waitresses, The Best of the Waitresses
Belle & Sebastian, Lazy Line Painter Jane
The Fad, The Fad The New Wave: Pop Music of the Early '80s
Goodbye Girl Friday, Mr. & Mrs.
Naked Highway, Hyperbollocks
Duran Duran, Pop Trash Classic Alternatives: '80s 12" Extended Rare Mixes
Phil Collins, Hits
Genesis, Turn It On Again: The Hits
Ladytron, Light & Magic
Ladytron, 604
The Go-Betweens, Before Hollywood
Beck, Midnight Vultures
Duran Duran, Seven & the Ragged Tiger
Abba, Arrival
The Cardigans, Long Gone Before Daylight
The Psychedelic Furs, All of This & Nothing
Air, Moon Safari
The Knack, Round Trip
Blondie, Parallel Lines
The Psychedelic Furs, Forever Now
The Donnas, Spend the Night
Nancy Sinatra, California Girl
Tatu, 200 KMH in the Wrong Lane
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Organisation
John-Manuel Andriote, Hot Stuff: A Brief History of Disco
Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction
Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
Jean Kilbourne, Deadly Persuasion
Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
