Who needs real life when it can be filtered through film?
In 1932, Huey Long said "Fascism will come to America, but likely under another name, perhaps anti-fascism."
I'm awaiting the release of "All the King's Men" a remake of the 1949 film of the same name, which was based on the Robert Penn Warren novel of the same name. At first I thought it was a remake of the classic 1976 film"All the President's Men" (Hoffman and Redford), but Tessa pointed out that THAT film title was a nod to the prior film/novel about political corruption and intrigue.
Ah the lineage... in an case, the character of Willie Stark in "All the King's Men" is based on Huey Long.... I await Sean Penn's impassioned portrayal.
Now, I wonder if he traces his lineage to Robert Penn Warren...
Also awaiting, popcorn and junior mints at the ready:
~Sophia Coppola's Marie Antionette;
~The Helen Mirren vehicle "The Queen" about how the Queen dealt with Diana's death;
~Dito Montiel's autobiographical "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" starring Hollywood's best and much-maligned actor Robert Downey Jr. (as well as the break-dancing hooligan from "Step Up" -say what?)
~Inarritu's Babel and Kevin MacDonald's The Last King of Scotland look stunningly shot and crafted, and promise intelligent writing, but they may be too depressing for me right now.
Labels: art and film
posted by Arty Povera @ 11:03 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Yo yo yo!
I dunno where else I can leave a normal comment on your blog because I am too lazy to properly investigate, but I thought you would like this article. It's from the lavalife online magazine. I dunno, I found it pretty hard to get past the part about men being "more tolerant"...
"Does Hunger Influence Desire?
By Ambrose Diaz
We all know that feeling hungry can profoundly affect what we do. Now, new information indicates that being hungry can also affect who we do.
A recent study appearing in the British Journal of Psychology suggests that men who have been deprived of food are more attracted to heavier women than men whose bellies are full. During the study, 61 men (half of whom were hungry) were asked to rate various images of women's bodies on a scale of one to seven.
According to Dr. Viren Swami, a psychologist at Liverpool University's Department of Public Health and one of the study's directors: "Hungry men were much more tolerant and rated obese women more positively than men who had eaten."
What does the study tell us? Well, even though popular culture force-feeds us images of waif-like models and pencil-thin actresses, there is something hard-wired in men that leads us at our most primordial level to prefer rounder women.
Dr. Swami puts it this way: "In evolutionary terms, if you are overweight it means you have more resources." And in evolutionary terms, those "resources" would have been the difference between survival and death. A more ample woman would have a better chance at living longer and having healthier children if food were scarce.
Indeed, throughout the ages prior to the 20th century, thinness was equated with poverty while plumpness signalled wealth and prosperity. Even today, certain "primitive" cultures link girth with health and fertility. Paradoxically, the richest individuals in today's society -- those living in Western or what we might call Fast Food Nations, in a tip to author Eric Schlosser - are most at risk of dying due to obesity-related illness.
What happens now that our cultural upbringing seems to be at odds with our evolutionary instinct? It may be one explanation for eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia which have plagued entire generations of girls and women and now, sadly, seem to be gaining a foothold among boys and men as well.
The study also gives credence to the many 'fat admirers' (or more disparagingly dubbed 'chubby chasers') out there. Often thought of as fringe fetishists, it may be that fat admirers may be more in touch with their survival instinct than the rest of us.
Indeed, a fat admirer who goes by the Internet handle FatKatLuvr, says: "To put it plainly, I find fat women, large women, supersize or ultrasize women, more appealing because they represent the feminine form in all its glory. Ample, abundant, and ripe."
To put a twist on the old chestnut, while the way to a man's heart may be through his stomach, keeping that stomach empty might be the wisest thing to do. If appetite is linked to sexual preference, will we see bigger women withholding meals from their men in order to make themselves appear more attractive in the man's eyes?
By the way, rest assured, ladies, the directors of the study say they will be doing a similar experiment to see how hunger affects women's perceptions of men.
Dr. Martin Tovée, another of the experiment's directors, had this to say about the upcoming study. "Research suggests women's ability to judge not only their own but also other people's body shape is linked to their own body mass. As their body mass declines they tend to overestimate body mass. So the more weight they lose, the bigger they think they are."
According to Tovée, not only are popular culture and natural instinct at odds here, class structure also makes its way into the fray. "We know that diet is related to social class and obesity tends to be class-related, too."
I was talking about this study with my friend, Dan, and he dropped this pearl of wisdom: "Maybe having no food in my stomach will make a fat girl seem more appealing... I don't know. I'm not a scientist, but as far as I know, the only thing that's really gonna make a big girl look good to me is a belly full of beer."
Well, Dan's never been politically correct. He's the kind of friend that you can't really remember why you ever became friends with in the first place. But, what he said did strike a chord with me. The climate of our western culture is such that poking fun at almost any group, whether divided by race, class or sexual preference etc. is frowned upon. So why is fat prejudice still tolerated?
As FatKatLuvr puts it, "The discrimination of fat people is the last 'safe prejudice' and it should be stopped." Where does this discrimination come from and why does it seem so hard to quell?
Perhaps, as the study suggests, it's a struggle within us, between our old selves and our modern selves. Food for thought."
oh my. thanks for posting.
and ahem... lavalife magazine???...
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