Turkish Food: Chicken Döner Kabab with rice and salad
But the rest of “The Hunger Games” is pretty much a disaster—disjointed, muffled, and even, at times, boring. Collins herself labored on the script, along with Gary Ross and Billy Ray, and Ross (“Pleasantville,” “Seabiscuit”) directed. Working with the cinematographer Tom Stern, Ross shoots in a style that I have come to despise. A handheld camera whips nervously from one angle to another; the fragments are then jammed together without any regard for space. You feel like you’ve been tossed into a washing machine (don’t sit in the front rows without Dramamine). Even when two people are just talking calmly, Ross jerks the camera around. Why? As the sense of danger increases, he has nothing to build toward. Visually, he’s already gone over the top. And the action itself is a thrashing, incoherent blur—kids tumbling on the ground or wrestling with each other. Katniss stalks various kids with her bow and arrow, but she kills only one intentionally—a domineering sadist—and you don’t see the arrow hit him; you don’t even see him fall. Ross consistently drains away all the tensions built into the grisly story—the growing wariness and suspicion that each teen-ager must feel as the number of those still alive begins to diminish, or the horror (or glee) that some of them experience as they commit murder. The camera rushes through the wilderness, but, in the end, the movie looks less like a fight to the death than like a scavenger hunt. Katniss is always finding something useful in a tree or lying on the ground.
- In next week’s issue, David Denby reviews (online now) “The Hunger Games” and “Bully”: http://nyr.kr/GMKTBT
Cartoon of the day. For more cartoons from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/GIAo4z
(Source: newyorker.com)
McRaven didn’t actually kill bin Laden. The shot was fired by one of twenty-three SEALs who flew into Pakistan on the night of May 1st, stormed bin Laden’s compound, and took his body away. Their identities remain secret. And McRaven might have preferred the same. His name, however, became part of the lore of the raid after Panetta, who was the director of the C.I.A., told PBS’s Jim Lehrer that McRaven was the “real commander” of the Abbottabad mission. McRaven had long been revered inside the special-operations community, but he was hardly known outside of military circles. In fact, immediately after finishing with Panetta, Lehrer felt obliged to inform viewers that McRaven was in charge of Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC (McRaven has since received his fourth star and been promoted to commander of Special Operations Command, of which JSOC is one component.)
- Nicholas Schmidle on Admiral Bill McRaven. Last August, Schmidle wrote in detail about McRaven’s role overseeing the bin Laden mission.
Does the sweater have a Rudolph reindeer knitted across it, with a nose that actually lights up? You bet. It will no doubt be worn by the woman who will drag you kicking and screaming into the joyeux realm, and maybe you’d be better off if you just shut up and go along. Her sweater commands it.
Hank Stuever’s classic 2001 essay on the people in your office who wear the holiday sweaters. (via washingtonpoststyle)
2011: Twelve Months of Protest
February: Egypt. Protesters sleep under a plastic tarp in front of Egypt’s Parliament in central Cairo. Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11th, after a nearly thirty-year presidency.
“In February, I stayed in a hotel on Tahrir Square. The noise from the protests was constant, loud, and hypnotizing. When the president stepped down, there was a huge feeling of victory in the square and a sense of the responsibility that went with it. After the revolution, I moved to Cairo, to an apartment near the square. I still hear the protests from my windows: justice is not yet done. That will come after.” —Moises Saman/Magnum
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.” - Albert Camus
Heading back to school? On Twitter? Then this cartoon of the day is for you… Remember to enter this week’s cartoon caption contest: http://nyr.kr/r46had
